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WHO, Africa CDC Launch Response Plan to Mpox Outbreak

This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)
This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)
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WHO, Africa CDC Launch Response Plan to Mpox Outbreak

This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)
This handout photograph taken and released by the European Union's Press Service on September 5, 2024, journalists work during the reception of a batch of mpox vaccines donated by European Union at the tarmac of Kinshasa International Airport in the Nsele district of Kinshasa. (AFP / European Union handout)

The Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization launched on Friday a continent-wide response plan to the outbreak of mpox, three weeks after WHO declared outbreaks in 12 African countries a global emergency.

The estimated budget for the six-month plan is almost $600 million, with 55% allocated to mpox response in 14 affected nations and boosting readiness in 15 others, while 45% is directed towards operational and technical support through partners, Africa CDC director-general Dr. Jean Kaseya told reporters on Friday.

The plan focuses on surveillance, laboratory testing and community engagement, Kaseya said, underscoring the fact that vaccines aren't enough to fight the spreading outbreak.

The organization said that since the start of 2024, there have been 5,549 confirmed mpox cases across the continent, with 643 associated deaths, representing a sharp escalation in both infections and fatalities compared to previous years. The cases in Congo constituted 91% of the total number. Most mpox infections in Congo and Burundi, the second most affected country, are in children under age 15.

The plan comes a day after the first batch of mpox vaccines arrived in the capital of Congo, the center of the outbreak. The 100,000 doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine, manufactured by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, have been donated by the European Union through HERA, the bloc’s agency for health emergencies. Another 100,000 are expected to be delivered on Saturday, Congolese authorities said.

“These vaccines are vital in safeguarding our health workers and vulnerable populations, and in curbing the spread of mpox,” Kaseya said Thursday.

The 200,000 doses are just a fraction of the 3 million that doses authorities have said are needed to end the mpox outbreaks in Congo, the epicenter of the global health emergency. The European Union countries pledged to donate more than 500,000 others, but the timeline for their delivery remained unclear.

Emmanuel Lampaert, Doctors Without Borders representative in Congo, said that vaccination was an additional tool, and that basic health measures were still crucial to combat the outbreak, and there were obviously challenges with that in many parts of Congo.

Congo issued an emergency approval of the vaccine, which has already been used in Europe and the United States in adults, but it remained unclear on Friday when the vaccination campaign would begin. For the moment, the rollout would be reserved for adults, Kaseya said, with priority targeted groups being those who have been in close contact with infected people and sex workers.

The European Medicines Agency is examining additional data to be able to administer it to children ranging in age from 12 to 17, which could happen at the end of the month, HERA Director-General Laurent Muschel said.

“We don’t have all the answers,” Muschel told reporters on Friday. “We learn by doing. We are going to adapt the strategy depending on the impact of the vaccination campaign."

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Varieties

African Ants at the Center of International Smuggling … Queen Sold for Over $1,000

Ants become the center of an international smuggling trade (AFP) 
Ants become the center of an international smuggling trade (AFP) 
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African Ants at the Center of International Smuggling … Queen Sold for Over $1,000

Ants become the center of an international smuggling trade (AFP) 
Ants become the center of an international smuggling trade (AFP) 

Kenyan ant expert Dino Martins gushes over the red and black insects that have become the center of an international smuggling trade.

Martins has been visiting the network of nests of these Giant African Harvester Ants outside Nairobi for 40 years.

“They're big and bold... They're the tigers of the ant world,” the entomologist told AFP.

“Each nest here has just one queen and she is the mother who founded this nest 40, 50 or even 60 years ago,” he said.

Martins was shocked when he learned that thousands of queens from this Messor cephalotes species were being harvested and shipped abroad in syringes and test tubes to be sold for hundreds of dollars each.

The trade came to light in Kenya last year when two Belgian teenagers were arrested in possession of nearly 5,000 queen ants, and accused of “biopiracy.”

Kenyan authorities fear a new form of poaching, focused less on ivory and furs, and more on insects, reptiles and rare plants.

The judge even compared it to the slave trade.

“Imagine being violently removed from your home and packed into a container with many others like you... It almost sounds as if the reference above is to the slave trade,” he said in his ruling.

The Belgians were handed a fine of around $8,000, but as more cases have emerged, sentences have hardened: last month a Chinese national was sentenced to one year in prison for attempting to traffic 2,000 ants.

On several European websites, the queens go for around 200 euros ($230).

Colonies can take 20-30 years to produce new queens. They provide all manner of services to the ecosystem: dispersing grass seeds, aerating the soil, and providing food for animals like pangolins.

Martins also considers the smuggling trade unethical simply because “ants have feelings.”

The trade “exploded” with the arrival of the internet, said Jerome Gippet, a researcher at the Swiss University of Fribourg.

Formerly the interest of a few passionate individuals, it eventually gave way to sophisticated networks of collectors, intermediaries and smugglers.

A study Gippet published in 2017 found more than 500 ant species -- a third of the total -- were sold online. More than 10% were potentially invasive with uncertain impacts on foreign ecosystems.

“I'm not advocating for a ban on the ant trade. It's very useful in educational terms, in terms of reconnecting with nature, or simply providing enjoyment... But it has to be done responsibly,” he said.

 

 

Varieties

Jackson Pollock Work Sells for $181 Mn

American painter Jackson Pollock at his studio in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1953. (Archive via Getty Images)
American painter Jackson Pollock at his studio in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1953. (Archive via Getty Images)
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Jackson Pollock Work Sells for $181 Mn

American painter Jackson Pollock at his studio in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1953. (Archive via Getty Images)
American painter Jackson Pollock at his studio in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1953. (Archive via Getty Images)

A Jackson Pollock painting sold for a record $181.2 million on Monday at Christie's in New York, leading a blockbuster day at the auction house.

With its black drips of paint accented by touches of red on a huge canvas spanning over three meters (nine feet), Pollock's "Number 7A, 1948" sold for $181.2 million, including fees.

According to ARTnews, the sale makes it the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction.

The previous auction record for the abstract expressionist painter was $61.2 million, set in 2021. Other works by him have been sold privately for up to $200 million.

"It is with this work that Pollock finally frees himself from the shackles of conventional easel painting and produces one of the first truly abstract paintings in the history of art," Christie's said in a statement.

"Danaide," a bronze head sculpted around 1913 by Romanian-born artist Constantin Brancusi, sold for $107.6 million, topping its previous record of $71.2 million set in 2018.

"No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)" by American painter Mark Rothko sold for $98.4 million, while Catalan artist Joan Miro's "Portrait of Madame K." was bought for $53.5 million.

The sales smashed previous records for Rothko ($86.9 million) and Miro ($37 million) set in 2012.

Monday's eye-watering auction follows a string of records set at Sotheby's in November last year.

Austrian master Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer", which he painted between 1914 and 1916, sold for $236.4 million, becoming the second most expensive work ever sold at auction.

"The Dream (The Bed)" (1940), a self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, sold for $54.7 million, setting a record for the price of a painting by a woman.

The most expensive painting ever sold at auction remains the "Salvator Mundi," (Savior of the World), a Renaissance work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was bought for $450 million in 2017.

Varieties

EU-China Spacecraft Takes off on Mission to Probe Solar Winds

The SMILE spacecraft is prepared for launch in Kourou, French Guiana. (ESA/AFP)
The SMILE spacecraft is prepared for launch in Kourou, French Guiana. (ESA/AFP)
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EU-China Spacecraft Takes off on Mission to Probe Solar Winds

The SMILE spacecraft is prepared for launch in Kourou, French Guiana. (ESA/AFP)
The SMILE spacecraft is prepared for launch in Kourou, French Guiana. (ESA/AFP)

A joint European-Chinese spacecraft blasted off into orbit Tuesday to investigate what happens when extreme winds and giant explosions of plasma shot out from the Sun slam into Earth's magnetic shield.

Particularly fierce solar storms can knock out satellites, threaten astronauts -- and create dazzling auroras in the skies known as the northern or southern lights.

To find out more about this little-understood space weather, the van-sized SMILE spacecraft is tasked with making the first-ever X-ray observations of the Earth's magnetic field.

The spacecraft achieved lift-off on a Vega-C rocket at 0352 GMT on Tuesday from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

Fifty-five minutes later, SMILE detached at 700 kilometers (435 miles) of altitude to make its own way onwards to an extremely elliptical orbit thousands of kilometers above the surface of our planet.

SMILE will be at an altitude of 5,000 kilometers when it flies over the South Pole, allowing it to transmit data to the Bernardo O'Higgins research station in Antarctica.

But the spacecraft will be 121,000 kilometers above the Earth when it swings over the North Pole -- an orbit which the European Space Agency (ESA) says will allow the mission to "observe the northern lights non-stop for 45 hours at a time for the first time ever".

SMILE -- or the Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer -- is a joint mission between the ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

- Dazzling auroras -

Solar wind is a stream of charged particles shot out from the Sun.

Sometimes this wind is kicked up into a huge storm by massive eruptions of plasma called coronal mass ejections. Hurtling at around two million kilometers an hour, these powerful blasts take a day or two to reach the Earth.

When they arrive, the Earth's magnetic field acts as a shield, deflecting most of the charged particles.

However, during particularly intense events, some particles can penetrate our atmosphere, where they have the potential to take out power grids or communication networks.

During the worst geomagnetic storm on record, in 1859, bright auroras were seen as far south as Panama -- and telegraph operators around the world were given electric shocks.

Solar winds can now also pose a danger to satellites orbiting the Earth, as well as astronauts sheltering inside space stations.

Given these threats, scientists want to learn more about space weather, so the world can better forecast and prepare for big blasts in the future.

To help with this endeavor, the SMILE mission plans to detect the X-rays emitted when charged particles from the Sun interact with the neutral particles of the Earth's upper atmosphere.

SMILE is expected to start collecting data just an hour after it is put into orbit.

The mission is designed to run for three years, but could be extended if all goes well.

Lift-off was originally planned for April 9, but was postponed due to a technical issue.