Urgent Warning Over Oral Sex

 EVERYONE knows that smoking can give you lung cancer. And that drinking alcohol can lead to liver cancer.

But far fewer people are aware of the growing link between oral sex and several major cancers.
In fact, new research suggests less than one third of Americans know that HPV – a common STI – can cause cancer.

The new study, which will be presented Tuesday at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting, monitored over 2000 US adults’ knowledge about the virus’s connection to cancer over a six year period. The research revealed that about two-thirds of respondents had heard of HPV.

But only 70.2 per cent were aware of the link between the virus and cervical cancer, a significant 7.4 per cent drop from 77.6 per cent in 2014.

“That was very shocking for us,” said lead author of the study Professor Eric Adjei Boakye of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, US told NBC News.

Meanwhile, only 30 per cent knew it could cause throat or anal cancers. Nearly all sexually active women and men become infected with HPV at some point, according to the NHS.

It can be spread through any form of skin-to-skin contact, including kissing and sex.

There are about 200 different strains of the disease, most of which are harmless. But two strains – HPV16 and HPV18 – are responsible for most HPV-related cancers.

HPV related cancers include:

• vulva
• vagina
• penis
• anal
• head
• throat.

Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in a specific type of throat cancer, called oropharyngeal cancer, in the west.

According to separate research, people with six or more lifetime oral sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practise oral sex.

The main cause of this disease is HPV.

Symptoms of mouth and oropharyngeal cancer include:

1. Ulcers that don’t heal
2. Pain in your mouth
3. Red or white patches in your mouth or throat
4. Difficulty swallowing
5. Speech problems
6. A lump in your neck
7. Weight loss
8. Bad breath

Many common conditions can cause these symptoms, but it’s important to get them checked by a doctor or dentist, Cancer Research UK noted.

Aside from the HPV virus, activities like smoking, drinking alcohol and chewing tobacco can also increase someone’s risk of developing mouth and oropharyngeal cancer, Cancer Research UK said.

Not eating enough fruit and vegetables can have the same effect.

HPV jabs

In the UK, girls are offered their first HPV jab dose in Year 8, and their second one up to two years later.

Boys were also added into the programme in 2019, in the hope that  HPV-related cancer cases would fall dramatically in the future.

But recent government figures showed that HPV vaccine coverage decreased by 7 per cent in Year 8 girls and 8.7 per cent in year 8 boys in 2021 to 2022, when compared to the previous academic year.

If a school child misses their doses, you can speak to the school jab team or GP surgery to book as soon as possible.

Source: thesun.co.uk

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Boeing 737 crash: Coroner rules Britons unlawfully killed

 Three British people who died in a plane crash were unlawfully killed, a coroner has ruled. Sam Pegram, Oliver Vick and Joanna Toole were among 157 people who died aboard a Boeing 737 Max airliner in Ethiopia in 2019.

Lawyers for the families had sought a verdict of unlawful killing ahead of an inquest into their loved ones deaths. The court heard flight ET302 from Addis Ababa to Kenya crashed shortly after take-off because of a design flaw.

A sensor failure meant that flight control software, known as MCAS, deployed at the wrong time and pushed the aircraft into a catastrophic dive. Despite the pilots’ efforts to regain control of the plane, it crashed in remote farmland outside the Ethiopian capital.

West Sussex coroner Penelope Schofield said the incident occurred as a result of a series of failures relating to the development and operation of MCAS.

The flight control software was designed to make the plane easier and more predictable to fly under very specific circumstances. This would avoid the need for pilots used to the previous generation of 737 to undergo expensive retraining, something which would otherwise have made the plane less attractive to airlines.

Two employees of the manufacturer, the coroner said, had deliberately deceived regulators and operators of the 737 Max over the operation of a safety critical system.

The inquest heard Mr Pegram’s parents describe the 25-year-old humanitarian worker as a kind, compassionate man with an infectious sense of humour.

“He had a passion for human rights, but also had the drive and inner strength to make a difference,” his father Mark said.

Ms Toole’s father explained how his 36-year-old daughter, a sustainability campaigner, had “the rare combination of empathy for animals and people”.

The death of a child, he said was “like losing a part of yourself,” he added.

Mr Vick, a humanitarian worker from Berkshire, was described by his mother Cheryl as a devoted father to his daughters, who had an “unwavering focus on making the world a better place for as many people as possible”.

Abdulqadir Qasim, a former Somali refugee, who arrived in the UK aged 25 had been on his way to Kenya to have a meeting about a new job when he died in the crash.

There was no inquest into his death, but in a video statement in court on Monday, his wife Qamar described how he had been a “wonderful husband and father”.

His youngest son, she said, had been a toddler at the time of the crash and could not remember his dad.

Prior to the Ethiopia crash, an identical failure caused another Boeing 737 Max to crash into the sea off Indonesia, killing 189 people.

The 737 Max was eventually grounded for 20 months after the two crashes.

The company has admitted responsibility for the loss of the Ethiopian flight, but in an agreement with the US government it gained immunity from prosecution in exchange for $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in fines and compensation.

Source: BBC

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China launches world’s first methane-fuelled space rocket

Success of Zhuque-2 puts China ahead of US firms SpaceX and Blue Origin in developing methane-fuelled space rockets.

A private Chinese company has launched the world’s first methane-liquid oxygen space rocket into orbit, China’s state media reported.

The Zhuque-2 carrier rocket blasted off at 9am local time (01:00 GMT) on Wednesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and “completed the flight mission according to the procedure”, state media reported.

The launch was the second attempt by Beijing-based firm LandSpace – one of the earliest companies in China’s commercial space sector – to launch the Zhuque-2, and its success beat out US rivals in developing what may become the next generation of launch vehicles, which are considered to be less polluting, safer, cheaper and a suitable propellant for a reusable rocket.

The first launch attempt of the Zhuqu-2 in December had failed.

News of LandSpace’s successful launch – which places China ahead of rivals such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin in the race to develop space vehicles fuelled by methane – came on the same day that China reported plans to send two rockets to the moon by 2030.

According to Chinese state media, one of the two planned rockets will carry the spacecraft that will land on the moon’s surface and the other will transport the astronauts.

Both the rockets will enter the moon’s orbit and after a successful docking the Chinese astronauts will enter the lunar lander to descend onto the moon’s surface, state media reported on Wednesday, quoting a China Manned Space Agency engineer.

The twin-rocket plan would overcome China’s longstanding technological hurdle of developing a heavy-duty rocket powerful enough to send both astronauts and a moon lander probe into space.

After Chinese astronauts have completed their scientific tasks and collected samples from the moon, the lander will transport the astronauts back to the orbiting spacecraft, on which they will then return to Earth, said Zhang Hailian, deputy chief engineer at the China Manned Space, at a summit in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In 2020, China brought back samples from the moon on an uncrewed mission, making China only the third nation to have retrieved lunar samples after the United States and the Soviet Union.

LandSpace’s methane-liquid oxygen rocket is deemed to be less polluting, safer, cheaper and a suitable propellant for a reusable rocket.

The Chinese company also became only the second private Chinese company to ever launch a liquid-propellent rocket. In April, Beijing Tianbing Technology successfully launched a kerosene-oxygen rocket, taking another step towards developing rockets that can be refuelled and reused.

Chinese commercial space firms have rushed into the sector since 2014, when the government allowed private investment in the industry. LandSpace was one of the earliest and best-funded entrants.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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South Africa named world’s best country to visit

 Readers surveyed by the UK’s Telegraph newspaper say South Africa is the world’s best tourist destination.

The right-wing paper gushes over the beauty of Cape Town, calling it “a supermodel at the foot of Table Mountain”. It also hails the “fine vintages” of South Africa’s wine country and calls the Garden Route “a ribbon of road-trip nirvana”.

Kenya and Botswana also rank in the Telegraph’s top 10, at number seven and number 10 respectively.

Source: BBC

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Microsoft says China-linked hackers accessed government emails

China rejects allegations that its hackers targeted Western accounts, accusing the US of spreading ‘disinformation’.

Hackers linked to China have accessed email accounts of Western government agencies and organisations in a cyberespionage campaign, Microsoft has said.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan appeared to confirm the allegations on Wednesday, saying that the United States had detected a breach of federal government accounts “fairly rapidly” and is investigating the matter.

But China rejected the accusations, calling the US the “world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief”.

“It is high time that the US explained its cyberattack activities and stopped spreading disinformation to deflect public attention,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters on Wednesday.

Microsoft had said early on Wednesday that the hacking group, dubbed Storm-0558, forged digital authentication tokens to access webmail accounts running on its Outlook service. The activity began in May.

“As with any observed nation-state actor activity, Microsoft has contacted all targeted or compromised organizations directly via their tenant admins and provided them with important information to help them investigate and respond,” the company said in a statement.

It added that the “adversary is focused on espionage”, including gaining access to emails for intelligence collection.

Microsoft did not specify which organisations or governments had been affected, but it said the hacking group involved primarily targets entities in Western Europe.

The company said it was working with the US Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to “protect affected customers and address the issue”.

White House National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said an intrusion in Microsoft’s cloud security had “affected unclassified systems”, without elaborating.

“Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in their cloud service,” Hodge was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

The US Department of State similarly said on Wednesday that it had detected “anomalous activity” and took immediate steps to secure its computer systems.

The department “will continue to closely monitor and quickly respond to any further activity”, a spokesperson told Reuters by email, without mentioning China.

Earlier this year, the State Department warned against possible Chinese cyber activities. “The US intelligence community assesses that China almost certainly is capable of launching cyberattacks that could disrupt critical infrastructure services within the United States, including against oil and gas pipelines and rail systems,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in May.

The issue risks renewing tensions between Washington and Beijing after visits by top US officials to China. The two countries are locked in an intensifying economic and geopolitical competition, but US and Chinese leaders stress that they are not seeking confrontation.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that she held “productive” talks with Chinese officials during a trip to the country, adding that ties between the two nations are on “surer footing” as a result of the dialogue.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Beijing in June on a trip that was delayed for months after the US accused China of flying a high-altitude spy balloon in the country’s airspace.

China insisted the aircraft, which was eventually shot down by US forces, was a weather balloon that strayed off its course and condemned the decision to bring it down.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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The Afrocentric school teaching kids to love their culture

 Education in much of Africa is largely based on post-colonial Eurocentric or American curriculums that teach little about African history and culture, while what there is, is often skewed.

Children in Freedom School is an Afrocentric school in Kenya taking a different approach to how children learn. They aim to mentor children to embrace who they are and to own their African heritage.

“We’ll tell them, for example, about Mali emperor Mansa Musa who has been dead for roughly 700 or 800 years and yet is still the richest man that has ever lived,” said founder Dr Utheri Kanayo.

The idea for the school was sparked when Dr Kanayo decided to focus on the education of children after a brief teaching stint, at the University of Cambridge in the UK, saw her base her educational research on the African continent.

In 2013, Dr Kanayo and her husband quit their jobs in the UK and moved to Kenya.

The school originally started as a charity but slowly morphed into a scholarship and mentorship programme. Now, they focus on teaching African history, culture and literature alongside basic education like mathematics.

“If we can start teaching children from when they are small, then we don’t have to decolonize minds in the future,” Dr Kanayo.

They were recently shortlisted for the World’s Best School Prize, putting them among the top 10 schools worldwide in the Overcoming Adversity category.

Source: BBC

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