Day: December 5, 2022

A deadly mix of conflict, COVID-19 and climate change have pushed more than 7.3 million people across seven countries in East Africa to the very brink of a hunger crisis. Of critical concern are vulnerable children who are experiencing high levels of malnutrition.

• Conflict is one of the leading drivers of hunger globally. Every country where World Vision has a presence in East Africa is either in conflict or neighbouring a country in conflict. The region has also endured substantial climate shocks, undermining people’s ability to feed themselves. The economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ripple effect from the war in Ukraine has driven hunger to unprecedented levels.

• Impact on children and humanitarian needs, including safeguarding risks, are enormous. This challenging period could also erode human and economic development gains that have been made towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals across the region.

• World Vision is deeply concerned for millions of children in East Africa, who are enduring a devastating hunger crisis. According to UN OCHA, about 4.9 million children are malnourished in drought-affected areas in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. This is inclusive of about 1.4 million children who are severely acutely malnourished in the HOA states.

• World Vision has reached more than 7.7 million people, including 4.2 million children, since April 2021. World Vision has responded with food distributions in multiple countries. Further, World Vision re-declared its multi-country response comprising Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. We aim to reach 5 million people, including 2.7 million children, by April 2023 through the second phase of the response. World Vision has been implementing a multi-country hunger emergency response in the above-mentioned countries for the last 17 months and has been able to re-purpose and raise new funds, to the tune of US $ 139 million. However, the needs have insurmountably increased and we require an additional US$ 45 million.

Source: World Vision

In a remote corner of the Western Australian outback, work has begun on the world’s largest radio telescope. Astronomers say the Square Kilometre Array will be capable of searching the stars for signals of intelligent life and listening back to the start of the universe.

It is an international scientific collaboration. 130,000 antennas and 200 satellite dishes will make up the Square Kilometre Array project, or SKA. It will comprise two giant and super sensitive telescopes at observatories in Australia and South Africa.

By listening and looking deep into space, scientists hope the project can help answer some fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe? How did the first stars come to shine? and What exactly is “dark energy” — the mysterious phenomena that appears to be pulling the cosmos apart?

Experts have said the SKA needs to be set up far away from the disturbances of radio frequencies on earth like those from computers, cars and planes.

They have said it will be eight times more sensitive than existing telescopes and will map the sky 135 times faster.

Danny Price, a senior research fellow at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy at Curtin University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Monday that the SKA has unprecedented astronomical power.

“It is going to be one of the most sensitive instruments that humanity has ever built,” Price said. “To put it into perspective the SKA could detect a mobile phone in the pocket of an astronaut on Mars.”

Australia, South Africa, Canada and Britain are among more than a dozen countries providing funding to the project.

A land agreement between traditional Indigenous owners, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization — the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency and the Western Australian and federal governments has allowed construction of the international Square Kilometre Array telescope to officially start Monday.

The giant radio telescope is expected to be operational by the end of the decade.

Source: Voice of America

The first shipment of grain as part of Ukraine’s own initiative to supply countries in need arrived Monday in Djibouti for delivery to neighboring Ethiopia amid the region’s worst drought in decades.

Ukraine’s embassy in Ethiopia confirmed that the “Grain from Ukraine” shipment of 25,000 tons is separate from a United Nations World Food Program effort that has funded humanitarian grain shipments from Ukraine.

A second ship with 30,000 tons of wheat will be heading to Ethiopia next week, while a third vessel is being loaded with 25,000 tons of wheat bound for Somalia, an embassy statement said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month announced the initiative aimed at helping “countries the most struck by the food crisis.” Ukraine has said it plans to send more than 60 ships to Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Kenya, Yemen and other countries.

Millions of people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are going hungry during a drought following the fifth straight failed rainy season, while conflicts in Ethiopia and Somalia have worsened the crisis.

Ethiopia has not yet commented on the new grain shipment from Ukraine. But Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in August criticized reports of a U.N. effort to ship grain from Ukraine to Ethiopia as an attempt to paint “a picture that we are starved.”

Source: Voice of America