Monkeypox primarily transmitted through sexual activity, says new study

A new study has shown 95% of monkeypox cases have been transmitted through sexual activity. US health officials are concerned that it could become an entrenched STD, like gonorrhea, herpes or HIV.



Monkeypox is in the endemic stage in some African nations.

New research published by the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that 95% percent of monkeypox cases have been transmitted through sexual activity.

The research was led by scientists at Queen Mary University of London. It looked at 528 confirmed infections in 16 countries between April 27 and June 24, 2022.

According to the study, 98% of infected people were gay or bisexual men, and 41% had HIV. The median age was 38.

Their median number of sex partners in the prior three months was five, and around a third were known to have visited sex-on-site venues such as sex parties or saunas within the previous month.

The study also showed monkeypox patients have been showing symptoms previously unrelated to the virus, such as single genital lesions and sores on the mouth or anus.

Many of these are similar to symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and could lead to misdiagnosis, said researchers.

"It is important to stress that monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted infection in the traditional sense — it can be acquired through any kind of close physical contact. However, our work suggests that most transmissions so far have been related to sexual activity mainly, but not exclusively, among men who have sex with men," said first author John Thornhill, in a statement.

Researchers stressed that monkeypox can also be spread by contact with respiratory droplets, clothing or other surfaces.

"Most cases were mild and self-limited, and there were no deaths. Although 13% of the persons were admitted to a hospital, no serious complications were reported in the majority of those admitted," said the researchers.

Monkeypox DNA was present in the semen of 29 out of 32 people tested, but it's still unclear whether semen is capable of transmission.

 

Watch video 05:02 COVID-19 and monkeypox: Similar but different

Monkeypox could become 'entrenched STD' in US

US health officials have also raised concerns that monkeypox is on the verge of becoming an entrenched STD, such as gonorrhea, herpes, or HIV, although there is no consensus among experts on the likely path of the disease.

More than 2,400 cases of monkeypox have been reported in the US as part of a global outbreak.

Authorities have limited information on the spread of the disease, and are worried about its spread during summer.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the Associated Press that the US government's response is growing stronger every day and vaccine supplies will soon surge.

"I think we still have an opportunity to contain this," she said.

World Health Organization (WHO) experts are currently debating whether to classify the outbreak as a global health emergency.

Monkeypox is in the endemic stage in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.

Before April 2022, monkeypox virus infection in humans was seldom reported outside Africa, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

tg/wmr (AFP, AP)

SCIENCE

Why are omicron variants of the coronavirus on the rise?

New research shows why exactly the omicron variant is so infectious. We take a look at the science behind COVID-19 variants, and how future vaccines will deal with them

Coronavirus mutations give rise to new variants

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is quite versatile, with a large number of variants and subvariants. The omicron variant alone has more than 130 sublineages.

In Europe, the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are currently on the rise. Why are they spreading so fast, despite the fact that many people have already been vaccinated?

Omicron is better at evading the immune system

"New variants are traditionally defined as a new set of mutations that is believed to change how the virus functions. Typically, these variants have increased infection rates and increased disease severity," Krishna Mallela, professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Colorado in the US, told DW.

Now scientists are beginning to understand why specific mutations cause variants to be more infectious, like omicron, or more deadly, like delta — and it comes down to how the coronavirus enters cells, and how our immune system fights it off.

A recent study from the US showed that omicron is more infectious because it can better evade our immune system.

After vaccination or a prior infection, antibodies circulate in your body and hunt for viruses. They detect coronavirus via its spike protein, which then signals for the virus to be neutralized.

The study shows that the mutations in omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2 change the structure of the spike protein.

"The mutations are at the spots where antibodies bind to the spike protein. The mutations cause a different binding surface, which is less recognized by the antibodies. This leads to the evasion of antibody protection," Kamal Singh, an immunologist from University of Missouri in the US, told DW.

Essentially, your immune system is less good at hunting down and destroying omicron virus particles. This evasiveness is what caused the huge rise in infections around the world since omicron was first identified in South Arica in November 2021.

Why is delta more deadly?

With all the omicron news lately, it's easy to forget the variants that came before — like delta. Delta is the most virulent coronavirus variant, leading to more severe symptoms and increased mortality among infected patients. UK statistics show that risk of death with omicron is 67% lower than delta infection.

Research has shown that delta is particularly deadly because of mutations on the spike protein, protuberances on the surface of the virus. A new US-based study found that two mutations cause increased expression of the spike protein on the delta variant of the virus.

That's important because SARS-CoV-2 is like a thief trying to sneak into your house, or rather your cells — and it does this via spike proteins.

Its system of breaking into cells is via a protein expressed on the surface of cells in your body, called ACE2. This protein is like a door into your cells. Normally it's closed and requires a key to open it.

SARS-CoV-2 has managed to trick ACE2 into thinking it should be let into your cells. In essence, it's duplicated the keys to your house.

In biological terms, the keys are the spike proteins, which bind to ACE2. Once inside, the virus then replicates and spreads.

Coronavirus enters human cells via its spike proteins

For delta, more spike proteins mean greater ability to enter cells and reproduce, leading to higher quantities of coronavirus in the body.

Mallela, the study's lead author, explained how the mutations also affects the immune system's ability to neutralize the virus.

"Our study found delta reduces the spike protein binding to an important class of antibodies [in the human body]. This causes higher infectivity rates and worse symptoms," he said.

Future vaccines look to combat new variants

Coronavirus vaccines have been hugely successful, reducing mortality and severe symptoms worldwide. However, new variants are likely to appear in the coming years, and they could be more transmissible and deadly.

Scientists are working hard to be one step ahead, developing new coronavirus vaccines that train the immune system to deal with new variants. 

"There are about 220 vaccine candidates in clinical trials around the world," said Mallela. "These updated vaccines will allow us to generate an immune response that is better suited to tackle the variants that are in circulation at the time of vaccinating." 

And there's reason to be optimistic. For example, UK-based scientists recently showcased a promising new vaccine that better protects against newer coronavirus variants like omicron. The study authors used new nanoparticle technology to create a vaccine that can easily be adapted to target future variants.

'Just waiting to die': The Kenyans surviving on berries in drought-stricken north

 It has been three years since the small village of Purapul in northern Kenya saw any significant rainfall and residents have been forced to turn to eating bitter wild berries in order to survive, though some say it is just a matter of time until they succumb to starvation. Their plight is part of a severe drought affecting people across the Horn of Africa, where an estimated 18 million people are on the verge of famine.

UN court rejects Myanmar challenge in Rohingya genocide case

NEWS WIRES
Fri, 22 July 2022 

© Toby Sterling, Reuters

The UN's highest court ruled on Friday that a landmark case accusing military-ruled Myanmar of genocide against minority Rohingya Muslims can go ahead.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague threw out all of Myanmar's objections to a case filed by the west African nation of The Gambia in 2019.

The decision paves the way for full hearings at the court on allegations over a bloody 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya by majority-Buddhist Myanmar.


"The court finds that it has jurisdiction... to entertain the application filed by the republic of the Gambia, and that the application is admissible," ICJ president Joan Donoghue said.

Hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya fled the southeast Asian country during the operation five years ago, bringing with them harrowing reports of murder, rape and arson.

Around 850,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh while another 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar's southwestern Rakhine state.

Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told reporters outside the court he was "very pleased that the court has delivered justice".

Several dozen Rohingya activists demonstrated outside the court while the judgment was read out.
'Great moment for justice'

"This decision is a great moment for justice for Rohingya, and for all people of Burma," said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, referring to the country by its former name.

"We are pleased that this landmark genocide trial can now finally begin in earnest."

Myanmar's representative, attorney general Thida Oo, said her country was now "looking forward to finding the best way to protect our people and our country."

Mainly-Muslim The Gambia filed the case in November 2019 alleging that Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

Myanmar was originally represented at the ICJ by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, but she was ousted as civilian leader in a coup last year and is now in detention.

Myanmar had argued on several grounds that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter, and should dismiss the case while it is still in its preliminary stages.

But judges unanimously rejected Myanmar's argument that Gambia was acting as a "proxy" of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in the case.

Only states, and not organisations, are allowed to file cases at the ICJ, which has ruled on disputes between countries since just after World War II.
'Brutality and cruelty'

They also unanimously dismissed Myanmar's assertions that Gambia could not file the case because it was not a direct party to the alleged genocide, and that Myanmar had opted out of a relevant part of the genocide convention.

Finally they threw out by 15-1 Myanmar's claim that there was no formal dispute at the time Gambia filed the case, and that the court therefore had no jurisdiction.

It could however take years for full hearings and a final judgment in the case.

"Action will be taken against the military and their brutality and cruelty. And this gives us hope for our suffering," a Rohingya living in northern Rakhine state in Myanmar who requested anonymity told AFP.

A Rohingya woman living in a displaced persons camp near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, added: "This is not only good for us (Rohingya) but also for the rest of Myanmar people who are suffering at the hands of Myanmar military."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in March that the Myanmar military's violence against the Rohingya amounted to genocide.

The International Criminal Court, a war crimes tribunal based in The Hague, has also launched an investigation into the violence against the Rohingya

(AFP)

'The tip of the iceberg': Three Picasso artworks discovered in three months

Joanna YORK - 

A sketch worth hundreds of thousands, a children’s book and a ‘missing’ masterpiece... In the past three months, three unique artworks by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso have been found, in strange and unexpected circumstances. Is this a coincidence or not?


© Romeo Gacad, AFP

When the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, won a landslide victory in May, 2022, he went to visit the home of his mother Imelda, former first lady and wife of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

In a video showing mother congratulating son, one detail in Imelda’s opulent home stood out. On the wall, was a distinctive painting of an abstract nude rendered in blues and greens, on a red and orange bed. It was unmistakably Pablo Picasso’s “Femme Couchée VI”.

The painting was one of more than 200 that Imelda and Marcos senior acquired while the dictator was in power, using money siphoned from the Philippines to Switzerland. By the time he was deposed in 1986, he had plundered as much as $10 billion.

In 2014, “Femme Couchée VI” was targeted for seizure by anti-corruption authorities in the Philippines trying to recover some of those missing billions, but they failed to confiscate it and the work was declared “missing”. Since it was sighted in Imelda’s living room, questions have swirled over whether she owns the authentic version of the painting or a fake, or possibly both.

“It’s an astonishing story, for quite a few reasons,” Ruth Millington, art historian and author of “Muse”. “A criminologist might take decades or hundreds of years to track down a painting, but this one has been spotted online.”

As Picasso’s paintings of his muses are his most highly valued works, the real “Femme Couchée VI” is likely to be worth tens of millions of dollars. “It’s a bold and brazen move from the family if it is the real deal to show it on the walls behind her,” Millington adds. “But, if it's a replica, then it's ultimate attempt to troll the authorities who are searching for the real painting.”

“An important discovery”

One month after Bongbong Marco’s victory in the Philippines, a second artwork by the Spanish artist was unexpectedly found, this time by his granddaughter Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso in France.

Searching through family storage in June, 2022, she came across a collection of origami birds and sketchbooks filled with colourful images of animals, clowns and acrobats by the artist.

When she showed the books to her mother – Picasso’s eldest daughter Maya Ruiz-Picasso – memories came flooding back. The artist had used the sketches to teach his daughter, now aged 86, to draw when she was a child. On some pages, her notes and sketches appeared alongside those of her father. Next to one circus scene she wrote the number “10” indicating her approval.

“It’s an incredibly important discovery,” Millington says. “We all know that Picasso was intrigued by children's imagination. This is showing hard proof of that in the form of the sketchbook. It also shows that dialogue between him and his daughter bringing that personal element into it.”

Weeks later, on July 5, 2022, yet another artwork by the master of Cubism unexpectedly came to light

After being tipped off by customs officials, authorities at Ibiza airport in Spain searched through the luggage of a passenger arriving from Switzerland and found drawing, believed to be Picasso’s “Trois Personnages”, hidden in his bags.

Upon discovery of the work, the passenger claimed it was a copy and showed authorities an invoice worth approximately $1,560. But a further search of his bags unearthed a second invoice, from an art gallery in Zurich. The sketch, believed to be authentic, is valued at more than $460,000.

A prolific artist

Picasso was a prolific creator, estimated to have made around 50,000 artworks during his lifetime, compared to around 20,000 from Andy Warhol and 900 paintings from Van Gough. And these are just the authentic versions. “There's more fake Picasso's than real Picasso's, and there's a lot of real Picasso's,” says Dr Donna Yates, associate professor of criminal law and criminology at Maastricht University, in the Netherlands.

Currently, demand for works by the Spanish master is booming. “Since the pandemic, people are putting their money into artwork and trying to sell them on in a way that nobody quite expected,” Millington says. Insecurity in other markets is making art seem like a safe bet, “and a solid investment is something by a great master, like Picasso.”

In the case of works such “Femme Couchée VI”, infamy and intrigue only increase the value. Millington says, “even the fake now might be worth quite a lot because of the story around it.”

In a market that is full of Picasso’s – real and fake – where those works are in high demand, what to make of three unexpectedly coming to light in such different circumstances, in such a short space of time?

While the stories may be unique, they are not entirely unexpected. “It’s almost weirdly predictable,” says Yates. “It seems strange that we've got three kinds of Picasso things happening, but he produced a lot of work so there's a lot of Picasso artwork out there. At the same time, a lot of people target his work in a number of ways because he is very famous and his works are desirable.”
'The Wild West'

The art market is worth an estimated $65.1 billion globally, and the art crime market is also highly valuable. There are no global figures for the cost of art crime, but in the US alone the FBI’s art crime team has recovered more than 15,000 items valued at over $800 million since 2004.

According to Yates, a single case of a potential fake Picasso and another of illegal smuggling occurring within three months of each other are “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the true scale of art crimes occurring globally.

The smuggling incident in Ibiza is perhaps the least surprising of the three recent Picasso discoveries. “People think that artwork is always shipped around in well-packaged crates by professional art handlers, but often it is moved around in hand luggage,” Millington says.

Not only does this avoid costs such as taxes and the permissions needed to move some works of value, but the chances of getting caught are slim. “Often the least sophisticated forms of smuggling are the most successful,” says Yates. “Another one of the most common ways to smuggle things is through the post.”

The process of how valuable artworks fall into the hands of smugglers is relatively straightforward. Essentially works are sold to the highest bidder. “And frankly, more and more private individuals have much more money than museums do to buy these pieces,” says Yates. Once an individual owns an artwork, there is little to stop them transporting it as they please or selling it on to whom they wish.

Perhaps the most unique of the three discoveries are the sketchbooks and origami found in France. But although there is no hint of foul play, even this discovery may not as straightforward as it seems.

Artifacts that can shed new light on the creative process of a great artist are extremely rare, and in this case the timing is exceptionally opportune.

In April 2022, the Picasso Museum in Paris launched a nine-month exhibition entitled “Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Daughter of Pablo” dedicated to Picasso’s relationship with his eldest daughter. Two months in, a surprise discovery of new artifacts is sure to help promotion efforts, especially as the sketchbooks and birds are to be added to the items on display.

Nonetheless, Millington is pleased that they will be displayed in a museum, “where there's some reflection on Picasso and his interest in children's imagination.”

“I think they would do extremely well on the art market, but the market is so unregulated,” she says. “It’s like the Wild West.”

Wrestling boss Vince McMahon retires from WWE amid hush money probe

Author: AFP|

Update: 23.07.2022 

Vince McMahon -- pictured in 2009 -- said he is retiring as WWE Chairman and CEO 

/ © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Vince McMahon, the promoter who built a pro wrestling show into a global entertainment empire, Friday announced he was retiring as head of World Wrestling Entertainment -- under a cloud of serious sexual misconduct allegations.

McMahon, whose longtime friends include Donald Trump, became a character in his own wrestling promotions at one stage and even launched a rival to the NFL -- his over-the-top XFL.

"As I approach 77 years old, I feel it's time for me to retire as chairman and CEO of WWE," McMahon said in a statement. "Throughout the years, it has been a privilege to help WWE bring you joy, inspire you, thrill you, surprise you, and always entertain you."

McMahon stepped down from his roles with WWE last month pending the results of an internal investigation after allegations he had an affair with an employee and paid her $3 million to keep the matter secret.

His daughter Stephanie was named interim CEO and chairman while the ongoing investigation continues -- amid widening allegations of misconduct.

The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that McMahon has paid more than $12 million to four women formerly associated with WWE over the past 16 years to keep quiet about affairs and alleged misconduct, including a former female wrestler who claims he coerced her into oral sex.

- Global phenomenon -

WWE boss Vince McMahon recruited the likes of Hulk Hogan -- pictured in 2018 -- who went on to become a megastar far beyond his ring performances / © AFP/File

After taking over from his father, also named Vince, and grandfather Jess, McMahon transformed the WWE from its regional beginnings, into a publicly traded international enterprise with hundreds of employees in offices worldwide.

As he took the sport global, the younger McMahon delivered a unique and colorful brand of wrestling, recruiting the likes of Hulk Hogan -- who went on to become a megastar far beyond his ring performances.

WWE wrestlers became cultural icons as McMahon used music and storytelling to introduce his stars into mainstream culture, delivering major events such as the first Wrestlemania in 1985 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

"The Rock" went from WWE icon to Hollywood superstar while "Captain" Lou Albano was in a Cyndi Lauper music video, and Hogan had star turns alongside Mr. T and Sylvester Stallone in a prime example of the crossover star mix that McMahon delivered.

McMahon also has longstanding ties to the celebrity-turned-president Donald Trump, who is a WWE Hall of Fame inductee -- and who gave McMahon's wife Linda a government role as head of the small business administration.

At the culmination of a staged feud, Trump once famously body-slammed the WWE boss, and shaved his head in the middle of a wrestling ring on live television.

WWE chairman Vince McMahon (C) prepares to have his head shaved by Donald Trump (L) and Bobby Lashley (R) while being held down by 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin after losing a Battle of the Billionaires best at the Wrestlemania event in Detroit in April 2007 / © Getty Images North America/Getty Images/AFP/File

Through telecasts and live shows, the WWE became a star-making machine melding the entertainment and sport realms, producing such colorful characters as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, "The Undertaker," and Ted DiBiase, also known as "The Million-Dollar Man."

McMahon had kept in the background as a commentator until the late 1990s when he developed an evil "Mr. McMahon" character and a notable dispute with Austin, his own soap opera storylines becoming a big draw.

In February, 2001, McMahon launched the XFL with many of the same flashy extreme moves and off-field storylines that worked in WWE, but the would-be NFL rival folded after one season due to low television ratings and a comeback bid in 2020 was undone by Covid-19.

- 'Dedication & passion' -

McMahon thanked his family, employees and performers for building WWE's success.

"Our global audience can take comfort in knowing WWE will continue to entertain you with the same fervor, dedication, and passion as always," McMahon said.

McMahon said he leaves the company is the hands of daughter Stephanie and co-chief executive officer Nick Khan.

"As the majority shareholder, I will continue to support WWE in any way I can," he said.

Photo triggered Amazon murders of journalist, guide: AG

Author: AFP|

Update: 23.07.2022 

A demonstration in Rio to call for justice for the murder of Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillip / © AFP/File

The murders in June of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon were likely sparked when they sought to photograph a boat belonging to their killers, the Attorney General's office said Friday.

Pereira had asked Phillips to photograph the boat, according to a statement from the office that said this detail may count as an aggravating factor in sentencing.

The details were revealed after the filing Thursday of charges against the three men suspected of committing the double murder.

Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima have both confessed to the crime, according to officials, while Oseney da Costa de Oliveira -- brother of Amarildo -- has not.

The trio stands accused of murder in the first degree and of hiding the bodies.

"Bruno was killed by three bullets, one in the back without any possibility of defense," said the statement.

"Dom was killed simply because he was with Bruno, in order to ensure impunity for the previous crime."

Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead while returning from an expedition in a remote region of the rainforest that is plagued by drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and fishing.

Phillips, the author of dozens of articles on the Amazon and a long-time contributor to The Guardian newspaper and other major news organizations, was traveling to the Javari Valley as part of research for a book.

Pereira was serving as his guide, and had previously traveled with him to the area.

An outspoken defender of Indigenous rights, Pereira had received multiple death threats prior to his murder.

Police are investigating a possible link to illegal fishing on protected Indigenous lands -- an issue close to Pereira's heart -- as a motive for the killing.

Czechs start razing pig farm built over WWII Roma camp


Jan FLEMR
Fri, July 22, 2022 


The demolition of a sprawling pig farm, built on the site of a wartime concentration camp for the Roma minority south of Prague, got underway on Friday following decades of controversy.

Targeted by the Nazis, some 1,300 Roma were imprisoned in the Lety camp during World War II, and 327 died there, including 241 children under 14 years of age.

More than 500 others were sent on to Nazi Germany's infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied southern Poland.

The Moscow-steered communist regime, which ruled in former Czechoslovakia after the war, built the pig farm on the site in the 1970s.

The regime was toppled in 1989, four years before Czechoslovakia split into two states.

But even then successive Czech governments took decades to finally allow the demolition as the largely impoverished Roma minority stayed on the sidelines of society.

"Today marks the beginning of the end of one of the most shameful chapters in our modern history," parliament speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova said at a ceremony in Lety.

Together with other officials, she symbolically started the demolition by dismantling a model made of little concrete bricks.

Cenek Ruzicka, whose mother was a Lety survivor, was less restrained as he grabbed a pickaxe and started smashing one of the buildings of the farm that was once home to 13,000 pigs.

His brother had a go at the windows with a hammer.

"As you can see, it has ended well. Of course I didn't expect it to take so long," Ruzicka told AFP.

- 'My culture drove me' -

Late Czech president Vaclav Havel unveiled a memorial near the farm in 1995, but officials then tiptoed about the farm which had been taken over by a private company.

A breakthrough came only in 2018 when the government agreed to buy the farm and build a Roma Holocaust memorial on the site, under pressure from the Roma minority and international institutions including the United Nations and the EU.


A visitor centre is due to be completed early next year as the first part of the memorial whose total construction cost is expected to be more than 100 million Czech koruna ($4 million).

Ruzicka, whose grandmother and three-month-old sister died at the camp, was a major driving force behind the move.

"My culture drove me. The guys from our community of the original Czech Roma are terribly proud, we never give up," said Ruzicka, who was born in 1946.

The Czech Republic, an EU country of 10.5 million people, has a Roma community estimated to number between 250,000 and 300,000.

Of the 9,500 Czech Roma registered before World War II, fewer than 600 returned home after the Holocaust.

Historians believe the Nazis exterminated over half of the roughly one million Roma who had lived in Europe prior to World War II.

The European Union estimates that 10-12 million Roma currently live in Europe, around six million of them in EU nations.

frj/dt/pvh

Battered by climate change, Latin America must brace for worse: report

by Andrea FIGUERAS ARISO

Hurricane Iota caused widespread devastation in Nicaragua in 2020.

Floods, heat waves and the longest drought in 1,000 years: Latin America is grappling with devastating climate change impacts that will only get worse, a World Meteorological Organization report warned Friday.

In its State of the Climate report for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for 2021, the WMO said ecosystems, food and water, human health and welfare were all taking a battering.

Glaciers in the tropical Andes have lost more than 30 percent of their area in less than 50 years, increasing the risk of water scarcity in many regions, it said.

Sea levels continued to rise at a faster rate than globally, and the so-called Central Chile Mega Drought—13 years and running—is the longest in at least 1,000 years.

Meanwhile, deforestation rates "were the highest since 2009, a blow for both the environment and climate change mitigation," said the report.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation doubled from the 2009-2018 average, with 22 percent more forest area lost in 2021 than the previous year.

The Amazon provides oxygen-producing and carbon-trapping functions that are crucial not only for the region but for the world.

'Decades of progress' stalled

The report also documented the third-highest number—21—of named storms on record for the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, and extreme rainfall that caused hundreds of fatalities and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes.

Floods in Cuba last month.

"Increasing sea-level rise and ocean warming are expected to continue to affect coastal livelihoods, tourism, health, food, energy, and water security, particularly in small islands and Central American countries," said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.

"For many Andean cities, melting glaciers represent the loss of a significant source of freshwater... for domestic use, irrigation and hydroelectric power."

Worsening climate change, compounded by the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, have "stalled decades of progress against poverty, food insecurity and the reduction of inequality in the region," added Mario Cimoli of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, 7.7 million people experienced high levels of food insecurity in 2021.

The LAC region had registered an average rate of temperature increase of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade between 1991 and 2021, said the report—double the 1961-1990 rate.

"Unfortunately, greater impact is in store for the region as both the atmosphere and ocean continue to rapidly change," said a WMO press release.

Chile is experiencing its longest drought in 1,000 years.

"Food and water supplies will be disrupted. Towns and cities and the infrastructure required to sustain them will be increasingly at risk."

The region was in urgent need of early warning systems to help it adapt to climate extremes, said the WMO.Four climate change records broken in 2021: WMO State of the Climate Report

© 2022 AFP

Ancient Siberian dogs relied on humans for seafood diets

by Issam AHMED

A new study has shed light on the dietary transitions that allowed early Siberian dog populations to

 increase as people put them to work in roles such as sledding.

As early as 7,400 years ago, Siberian dogs had evolved to be far smaller than wolves, making them more dependent on humans for food including sea mammals and fish trapped below the ice, a new study showed Friday.

Robert Losey of the University of Alberta, who led the research published in Science Advances, said the findings helped explain the growth in the early dog population, as people put them to work for hunting, herding and sledding.

"The long term changes in dog diet have really been oversimplified," he told AFP, explaining that prior work had focused only on two main ideas to explain how dogs transitioned from wolves, a process that began some 40,000 years ago.

The first of these was that friendlier wolves approached human camps during the Ice Age to scavenge for meat, eventually became isolated from their wild counterparts, and were then intentionally bred into dogs.

The second was that some dogs evolved a better capacity to digest starches following the agricultural revolution, which is why some modern dog breeds have more copies of the AMY2B gene that creates pancreatic amylase.

To study ancient dog diets in more depth, Losey and colleagues analyzed the remains of around 200 ancient dogs from the past 11,000 years, and a similar number of ancient wolves.

"We had to go to collections all over Siberia, we analyzed those bones, took samples of the collagen, and analyzed the protein in labs," he said.

Based on the remains, the team made statistical estimates for body sizes.

They also used a technique called stable isotope analysis to generate dietary estimates.

They discovered that dogs of 7,000-8,000 years ago "were already quite small, meaning that they just couldn't do the things that most wolves were doing," said Losey.

This in turn led to greater dependence on humans for food, and reliance on small prey and scavenging, rather than prey bigger than themselves, which wolves hunt.

"We see that dogs have marine diets, meaning they're eating fish, shellfish, seals and sea lions, which they can't easily get themselves," he said.

Ancient dogs were found to be eating fish "in areas of Siberia where the lakes and rivers are frozen over for seven to eight months of the year."

Wolves of the time, and today, were hunting in packs and mainly eating various species of deer.

Benefits and challenges

These new diets brought dogs both benefits and challenges.

"Beneficial because they could access stuff from humans, and those are oftentimes easy meals, but it came with the costs of all these new diseases and problems, like not enough nutrition," said Losey.

While the new bacteria and parasites they were exposed to could have helped some adapt, some dog populations might not have survived.

Most of the first dogs of the Americas died out, for unclear reasons, and were replaced by European dogs—though it's not thought colonization was to blame.

Those dogs that did survive acquired more diverse gut microbiomes, helping them further in digesting more carbohydrates associated with life with humansStudy shows how diet has transformed the ancient dog into a family pet

More information: Robert J. Losey et al, The evolution of dog diet and foraging: Insights from archaeological canids in Siberia, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6493

Journal information: Science Advances 

© 2022 AFP

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