United News of Bangladesh

The World Health Organization (WHO) has catalogued the 19 fungi that represent the greatest public health risk today to promote research and strengthen the response to fungal infections and antifungal resistance. People most at risk are those with underlying health problems or a weakened immune system, the UN health agency said. The invasive fungal infections increased significantly among hospitalised patients, often with devastating consequences when the Covid-19 pandemic gathered pace. "New groups at risk of invasive fungal disease are constantly being identified," the WHO said Tuesday. "As the fungi that cause common infections – such as candida oral and vaginal thrush – become increasingly resistant to treatment, risks for the development of more invasive forms of infections in the general population are also growing." There are only four types of antifungal medicine available today, which is a problem, as fungal infections are becoming more common and resistant to treatment. Even more worrying is the fact that most fungal pathogens lack rapid and sensitive diagnostics, and those (medicines) that exist are not widely available or affordable globally, the WHO said. People at greatest risk from invasive fungal infections include those with cancer, HIV or AIDS, organ transplants, chronic respiratory disease and tuberculosis. Latest data shared by the WHO indicates that fungal diseases are expanding in number and reach worldwide. Global warming and the increase in international travel and trade are believed to be responsible, the UN health agency said. To tackle the fungal disease, the WHO urged the strengthening of laboratory and surveillance capacities, to better understand the burden of infection and antifungal resistance. The UN health agency's catalogue focuses on fungal pathogens that can cause invasive acute and subacute systemic fungal infections which have proved resistant to medication. The pathogens are ranked and listed in three priority groups: critical, high and medium. The critical group includes Cryptococcus neoformans, Candida auris, Aspergillus fumigatus and Candida albicans.  

A Swiss railway company claimed the record for the world’s longest passenger train Saturday with a trip on one of the most spectacular tracks through the Alps. The Rhaetian Railway company ran the 1.9-kilometer-long (1.2-mile-long) train composed of 100 coaches along the Albula/Bernina route from Preda to Berguen. The route was designated a UNESCO World Heritage in 2008 and leads through 22 tunnels, some of which spiral through mountains, and across 48 bridges, including the curved Landwasser Viaduct.

Two NASA spacecraft at Mars — one on the surface and the other in orbit — have recorded the biggest meteor strikes and impact craters yet. The high-speed barrages last year sent seismic waves rippling thousands of miles across Mars, the first ever detected near the surface of another planet, and carved out craters nearly 500 feet (150 meters) across, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science. The larger of the two strikes churned out boulder-size slabs of ice, which may help researchers look for ways future astronauts can tap into Mars’ natural resources. The Insight lander measured the seismic shocks, while the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provided stunning pictures of the resulting craters. Imaging the craters “would have been huge already,” but matching it to the seismic ripples was a bonus, said co-author Liliya Posiolova of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. “We were so lucky.” Mars’ atmosphere is thin unlike on Earth, where the thick atmosphere prevents most space rocks from reaching the ground, instead breaking and incinerating them. A separate study last month linked a recent series of smaller Martian meteoroid impacts with smaller craters closer to InSight, using data from the same lander and orbiter. Read: NASA says spacecraft succeeded in changing asteroid’s orbit The impact observations come as InSight nears the end of its mission because of dwindling power, its solar panels blanketed by dust storms. InSight landed on the equatorial plains of Mars in 2018 and has since recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes. “It’s going to be heartbreaking when we finally lose communication with InSight,” said Bruce Banerdt of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the lander’s chief scientist who took part in the studies. “But the data it has sent us will certainly keep us busy for years to come.” Banerdt estimated the lander had between four to eight more weeks before power runs out. The incoming space rocks were between 16 feet and 40 feet (5 meters and 12 meters) in diameter, said Posiolova. The impacts registered about magnitude 4. The larger of the two struck last December some 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) from InSight, creating a crater roughly 70 feet (21 meters) deep. The orbiter’s cameras showed debris hurled up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the impact, as well as white patches of ice around the crater, the most frozen water observed at such low latitudes, Posiolova said. Posiolova spotted the crater earlier this year after taking extra pictures of the region from orbit. The crater was missing from earlier photos, and after poring through the archives, she pinpointed the impact to late December. She remembered a large seismic event recorded by InSight around that time and with help from that team, matched the fresh hole to what was undoubtedly a meteoroid strike. The blast wave was clearly visible. Scientists also learned the lander and orbiter teamed up for an earlier meteoroid strike, more than double the distance of the December one and slightly smaller. “Everybody was just shocked and amazed. Another one? Yep,” she recalled. Read: NASA’s new telescope shows star death, dancing galaxies The seismic readings from the two impacts indicate a denser Martian crust beyond InSight’s location. “We still have a long way to go to understanding the interior structure and dynamics of Mars, which remain largely enigmatic,” said Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Geophysics in Switzerland, who was part of the research. Outside scientists said future landers from Europe and China will carry even more advanced seismometers. Future missions will “paint a clearer picture” of how Mars evolved, Yingjie Yang and Xiaofei Chen from China’s Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen wrote in an accompanying editorial.

The number of people infected with tuberculosis, including the kind resistant to drugs, rose globally for the first time in years, according to a report issued Thursday by the World Health Organization. The U.N. health agency said more than 10 million people worldwide were sickened by tuberculosis in 2021, a 4.5% rise from the year before. About 1.6 million people died, it said. WHO said about 450,000 cases involved people infected with drug-resistant TB, 3% more than in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted services for people with TB along with many other health programs. WHO said many people went undiagnosed, noting that the number of people newly identified with TB fell from 7 million in 2019 to 5.8 million in 2020. Dr. Mel Spigelman, president of the non-profit TB Alliance, said more than a decade of progress was lost in 2020. “Despite gains in areas like preventative therapy, we are still behind in just about every pledge and goal regarding TB,” Spigelman said. After COVID-19, TB is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. It is caused by bacteria that typically affects the lungs. The germs are mostly spread from person to person in the air, such as when an infected individual coughs or sneezes. Read: Reporting on tuberculosis: icddr,b-led USAID ACTB announces media fellowship for journalists TB mostly affects adults, particularly those who are malnourished or have other conditions like HIV; more than 95% of cases are in developing countries. According to the WHO report, only one in three people with drug-resistant TB are receiving treatment. “Drug-resistant TB is curable, but alarmingly, cases are on the rise for the first time in years,” Dr. Hannah Spencer, who is with Doctors Without Borders in South Africa, said. “It’s urgent that shorter, safer and more effective treatments are scaled up now.” Spencer called for lowering the prices of TB treatment so a complete treatment course costs no more than $500. WHO said ongoing conflicts in eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East have worsened the options for patients seeking TB diagnosis and treatment. Ukraine had one of the world’s worst TB epidemics even before Russia invaded the country in late February. Health experts fear the inability of patients to get treated could fuel the rise of more drug-resistant TB across the region. While TB patients displaced by the war can seek care anywhere in Ukraine, the country has seen a shortage of key medicines and authorities face challenges in keeping track of patients.

Prince Harry’s memoir, an object of obsessive anticipation worldwide since first announced last year, is coming out Jan. 10. The book will be called “Spare” and is being billed by Penguin Random House, as an account told with “raw, unflinching honesty” and filled with ”insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.” In a statement released Thursday, Penguin Random House summoned memories of the stunning death in 1997 of Prince Harry’s mother, Diana, and of Harry and his brother, William, “walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow — and horror.” “As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling — and how their lives would play out from that point on,” the statement reads in part. “For Harry, this is his story at last.” The memoir’s title is an apparent reference to Prince Harry’s being a royal “spare,” not the first in line to succession. William, Prince of Wales, is next in line. The 416-page book will come out in 16 languages, from Dutch to Portuguese, and also will be released in an audio edition read by Prince Harry. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Harry, the Duke of Sussex, will be using proceeds from “Spare” to donate to British charities. He has already given $1.5 million to Sentebale, an organization he co-founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho to help children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS. Penguin Random House identifies Prince Harry as “a husband, father, humanitarian, military veteran, mental wellness advocate, and environmentalist.” Read: Meghan addresses youth summit on UK visit with Prince Harry Royals watchers and the public at large have speculated endlessly since the book was first announced in July 2021, billed as “intimate and heartfelt” and tentatively scheduled for this year. The Duke of Sussex had already revealed a news-making willingness to discuss his private life when he and his American-born wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, were interviewed for a March 2021 broadcast by their neighbor in Santa Barbara, California, Oprah Winfrey. The couple spoke of Meghan’s deep unhappiness with her new life in England, the alleged racism within the royal family and Harry’s fear that his wife’s life might be endangered had they remained in his native country. In 1992, Diana worked with author Andrew Morton on her explosive memoir “Diana: Her True Story,” in which she described at length her unhappy marriage to the future King Charles, Harry’s father. Harry and Meghan stepped back from their royal duties in 2020 and moved to the U.S. Harry told Winfrey that his family cut him off financially and that he helped pay for his security with money left to him by his mother. They have launched numerous initiatives, including a Netflix production deal and the “impact-driven non-profit” Archewell Foundation. The book’s delay led to rumors that Harry was hesitating to say too much about his family, or was perhaps revising the narrative after his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September. He has spoken of being estranged from his brother, William, although the siblings and their wives appeared in public together during the mourning period following the Queen’s death. “Penguin Random House is honored to be publishing Prince Harry’s candid and emotionally powerful story for readers everywhere,” the global CEO of Penguin Random House, Markus Dohle, said in a statement. “He shares a remarkably moving personal journey from trauma to healing, one that speaks to the power of love and will inspire and encourage millions of people around the world.”

Online pornography viewing poses risks to priests and nuns, according to Pope Francis, who claims that it “weakens the priestly heart.” At a Vatican meeting, the 86-year-old Pope was asked how social media and digital technology should be used, BBC reports. He claimed that pornography was “a vice that so many people have — even priests and nuns.” Read more: Pope blasts Russia's 'infantile' war, EU-Libya deal in Malta “The devil enters from there,” BBC quoted Pope Francis as saying. He advised priests and seminaries to use social media and other aspects of the digital world, but to not spend too much time there. He declared: “The pure heart, the one that Jesus receives every day, cannot receive this pornographic information.” Read more: Pope to UN forum: Hunger is 'crime' violating basic rights “Delete this from your phone, so you will not have temptation in hand,” he urged the group. According to church doctrine, pornography violates chastity.

Elon Musk, the billionaire poised to acquire Twitter later this week, strolled into the company’s headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink and tweeting “Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!” Musk’s $44 billion deal to take Twitter private faces a Friday deadline, although the video he posted offered no evidence that the acquisition is complete. Twitter and Musk representatives had no comment on that question, although Twitter did confirm that Musk’s video tweet was real. Musk also changed his Twitter profile to refer to himself as “Chief Twit” and his location to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The splashy video — a vintage Musk production — also pulled the spotlight back to the world’s richest man and his on-again, off-again pursuit of the social platform. The Friday deadline to consummate the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in an epic battle during which Musk signed a deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to conclude the deal. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial. Robert Anderson, a law professor at Pepperdine University, said he fully expects the deal to close by Friday’s deadline but didn’t see much substance to Musk’s video. “I don’t see anything unusual about it, other than that he brought a sink,” he said. Musk had been expected to visit Twitter this week and is expected to return again Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in a report by Bloomberg News. His apparent enthusiasm about visiting Twitter headquarters stood in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions that the building should be turned into a “homeless shelter” because, he said, so few employees actually worked there. The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut three quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberation. Several hours after posting his sink video, Musk tweeted that he was meeting “a lot of cool people at Twitter today!” He gave no details. One of Musk’s biggest obstacles to closing the deal was keeping in place the financing pledged roughly six months ago. A group of banks, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, signed on earlier this year to loan $12.5 billion of the money Musk needed to buy Twitter and take it private. Solid contracts with Musk bound the banks to the financing, although changes in the economy and debt markets since April have likely made the terms less attractive. Musk even said his investment group would be buying Twitter for more than it’s worth. Less clear is what’s happening with the billions of dollars pledged to Musk by investors who would get ownership stakes in Twitter. Musk’s original slate of equity partners included an array of partners ranging from the billionaire’s tech world friends with like-minded ideas about Twitter’s future, such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, to funds controlled by Middle Eastern royalty. The more equity investors kick in for the deal, the less Musk has to pay on his own. Most of his wealth is tied up in shares of Tesla, the electric car company that he runs. Since April, he has sold more than $15 billion worth of Tesla stock, presumably to pay his share. More sales could be coming. Musk, 51, has shared few concrete details about his plans for the social media platform. While he’s touted free speech and derided spam bots since agreeing to buy the company in April, what he actually wants to do about either remains a mystery. Technology analysts have speculated that Musk wants to use Twitter to help create an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat service, which allows users to do video chats, message, stream video, scan bar codes and make payments. Musk’s flirtation with buying Twitter appeared to begin in late March. That’s when Twitter said he contacted members of its board — including co-founder Jack Dorsey — and told them he was buying up shares and was interested in either joining the board, taking Twitter private or starting a competitor. Then, on April 4, he revealed in a regulatory filing that he had become the company’s largest shareholder after acquiring a 9% stake worth about $3 billion. At first, Twitter offered Musk a seat on its board. But six days later, CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not be joining the board after all. His bid to buy the company quickly followed. Inside Twitter, Musk’s offer was met with confusion and falling morale, especially after Musk publicly criticized one of Twitter’s top lawyers involved in content-moderation decisions. In July, Musk abruptly reversed course, announcing that he was abandoning his bid to buy Twitter. His stated reason: Twitter hadn’t been straightforward about its problem with fake accounts he dubbed “spam bots.” Twitter sued, and two weeks before a 5-day trial was scheduled to begin, Musk changed his mind again, saying that he wanted to complete the deal after all.

Facebook parent Meta on Wednesday reported that its revenue declined for a second consecutive quarter, hurt by falling advertising sales as it faces competition from TikTok’s wildly popular video app. The quarter’s weak results raised fresh questions about whether Meta’s plans to spend $10 billion a year on the metaverse — a concept that doesn’t quite exist yet and possibly never will — is prudent while its main source of revenue is faltering. The quarterly results from Meta Platforms Inc. sent its stock tumbling 19% in after-hours trading to $105.20. If the sell-off holds through Thursday’s regular trading day, it will be the lowest it’s been since 2016. The stock closed Wednesday down 61% for the year. Meta’s disappointing results followed weak earnings reports from Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft this week. The Menlo Park, California, company earned $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, in the three month period that ended Sept. 30. That’s down 52% from, $9.19 billion, or $3.22 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.90 per share, on average, according to FactSet. Revenue fell 4% to $27.71 billion from $29.01 billion, slightly higher than the $27.4 billion that analysts had predicted. Some of the company’s investors are concerned Meta is spending too much money and confusing people with its focus on the metaverse, a virtual, mixed and augmented reality concept that few people understand — while it also grapples with a weakening advertising business. “Meta has drifted into the land of excess — too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency,” wrote Brad Gerstner, the CEO of Meta shareholder Altimeter Capital, earlier this week in a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy but deadly when growth slows and technology changes.” In addition to an accelerating revenue decline, Meta also forecast weaker-than-expected sales for the current quarter, further raising worries that the revenue slump is more of a trend than an aberration. “While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company.” Meta said it expects staffing levels to stay roughly the same as in the current quarter — a departure from previous years’ double-digit workforce growth. The company had about 87,000 employees as of Sept. 30, an increase of 28% year-over-year. “To return to stronger growth, Meta needs to turn its business around,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “As Facebook Inc., it was a revolutionary company that changed the way people communicate and the way marketers interact with consumers. Today it’s no longer that innovative groundbreaker.” She added that “Meta would benefit from less priority on the metaverse and more on fixing its core business.” Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which includes its metaverse and virtual reality efforts, had an operating loss of $3.67 billion in the third quarter, compared with a loss of $2.63 billion a year earlier. Its revenue was $285 million. Meta said it expects Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 to “grow significantly year-over-year.” Despite the revenue decline, Meta grew its user base. Facebook’s monthly active users were 2.96 billion as of Sept. 30, up 2% from a year earlier. And 3.71 billion people logged in to at least one of Meta’s family of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger — up 4% year-over-year.

UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, has warned that by 2050, nearly every child on earth would be affected by heatwaves, which have already become an inevitable health risk for many nations. Today, 559 million children are already exposed to a high number of heatwaves, placing them on the front lines of climate change, the UN agency noted. More than two billion youngsters are expected to be exposed to "more frequent, longer lasting, and more severe" heatwaves by the middle of this century. “The climate crisis is a child rights crisis – and it is already taking a devastating toll on children’s lives and futures,” warned UNICEF Executive Director, Catherine Russell. This year’s wildfires and heatwaves that have swept through India, Europe, and North America were “yet another sobering example of the impact of climate change on children”, she added. New data from the agency published in its report on Tuesday, The Coldest Year Of The Rest Of Their Lives, underscores that young children face greater risks than adults when faced with extreme heat events. This is because they are less able to regulate their body temperature compared to adults. The more heatwaves children are exposed to, the greater the chance of health problems including chronic respiratory conditions, asthma, and cardiovascular diseases. Read: Supporting Mothers at Work: UNICEF joins hands with Bangladesh garment industry “The world urgently needs to invest in building their resilience – and in adapting all the systems children rely on to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing climate,” UNICEF maintained. This is regardless of whether average global temperatures rise by 1.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels if greenhouse gas emissions are low, or whether they rise by 2.4C, if emissions are high. Protecting children from the escalating impacts of heatwaves should be a priority for all countries, UNICEF said, in a call for “urgent and dramatic emissions mitigation measures to contain global heating - and protect lives”. Children in northern regions will face the most dramatic increases in high heatwave severity, while by 2050, nearly half of all children in Africa and Asia will face sustained exposure to extreme high temperatures over 35C (95F), UN Children’s Fund data showed. “This will have a devastating impact on children,” said Vanessa Nakate, climate activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. “The more frequent, longer lasting and more severe heatwaves children are exposed to, the greater the impacts on health, safety, nutrition, education, access to water and future livelihoods.” “Almost every country is experiencing changing heatwaves,” UNICEF said. “What each government does now will determine the survival of those least responsible for this crisis – our children and young people.”

Rishi Sunak became Britain’s third prime minister of the year on Tuesday and now must turn his attention to taming an economic crisis that has left the country’s finances in a precarious state and millions of Britons struggling to afford food and energy bills. Sunak, the U.K.’s first leader of color, met at Buckingham Palace with King Charles III, who had just accepted the resignation of Liz Truss. In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the monarch plays a ceremonial role in appointing government leaders. Sunak — at 42 the youngest British leader in more than 200 years — is expected to immediately begin appointing a Cabinet and getting to grips with an economy sliding toward recession. The third Conservative prime minister this year, he will also try to unite a governing party that is riven with divisions. Sunak was selected as leader of the governing Conservative Party on Monday as it tries to stabilize the economy, and its own plunging popularity, after the brief, disastrous term of Liz Truss. Truss departed after making a public statement outside 10 Downing St., seven weeks to the day after she was appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II, who died two days later. Truss offered a defense of her low-tax economic vision and her brief term in office before being driven from the prime minister's official residence for the last time. “I am more convinced than ever that we need to be bold and confront the problems we face," she said. She stood by the free-market principles of “lower taxes” and “delivering growth,” despite the market mayhem triggered by her Sept. 23 budget package. Truss wished Sunak success as Britain continues "to battle through a storm.” Sunak's top priorities will be appointing Cabinet ministers, and preparing for a budget statement that will set out how the government plans to come up with billions of pounds (dollars) to fill a fiscal hole created by soaring inflation and a sluggish economy, and exacerbated by Truss’ destabilizing economic experiments. The statement, set to feature tax increases and spending cuts, is currently due to be made in Parliament on Monday by Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt — if Sunak keeps him in the job. Sunak, who was Treasury chief himself for two years until July, said Monday that Britain faces “a profound economic challenge.” Sunak becomes prime minister in a remarkable reversal of fortune just weeks after he lost to Truss in a Conservative election to replace former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Party members in the summer chose her tax-cutting boosterism over his warnings that inflation must be tamed. Truss conceded last week that she could not deliver on her plans — but only after her attempts triggered market chaos and worsened inflation at a time when millions of Britons were already struggling with soaring borrowing costs and rising energy and food prices. The party is now desperate for someone to right the ship after months of chaos under Truss and Johnson, who quit in July after becoming mired in ethics scandals. Sunak was chosen as Conservative leader after becoming the only candidate to clear the hurdle of 100 nominations from fellow lawmakers to run in the party election. Sunak defeated rival Penny Mordaunt, who may get a job in his government, and the ousted Johnson, who dashed back from a Caribbean vacation to rally support for a comeback bid but failed to get enough backing to run. As well as stabilizing the U.K. economy, Sunak must try to unite a governing party that has descended into acrimony as its poll ratings have plunged. Conservative lawmaker Victoria Atkins, a Sunak ally, said the party would “settle down” under Sunak. “We all understand that we’ve now really got to get behind Rishi — and, in fairness, that’s exactly what the party has done,” she told radio station LBC.