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Overnight News Digest December 4, 2022 [1]

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Date: 2022-12-04

BBC

SKA: Construction to begin on world's biggest telescope

One of the grand scientific projects of the 21st Century begins its construction phase on Monday. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the largest radio telescope in the world when completed in 2028. Split across South Africa and Australia, with a headquarters in the UK, the facility will address the biggest questions in astrophysics. It will perform the most precise tests of Einstein's theories, and even search for extra-terrestrials. Delegations from the eight countries leading the project are attending ceremonies in the remote Murchison shire in Western Australia and in the Karoo of South Africa's Northern Cape. When the festivities are over, the bulldozers will move in.

NPR

In the hunt for a male contraceptive, scientists look to stop sperm in their tracks

Condoms have been used to prevent pregnancy since the Middle Ages, with the rubber version arriving in the industrial mid-1800s. Over the years, they've become more effective and comfortable to use. But it was the invention of birth control pills, followed by IUDs in the 1960s, that created a seismic shift in humans' ability to control reproduction. A growing range of pills, patches and implants became available to women. And yet, a stretchy sheath that covers the penis remains the only medically approved form of contraception for men, short of vasectomy. But now, researchers are looking into both hormonal and non-hormonal contraceptives for sperm bearers. The hope is that couples will begin to treat contraception more as a shared responsibility. In the 1990s, the World Health Organization sponsored trials for male hormonal contraceptive — where men were given high doses of testosterone — but those drugs never came to market. Researchers thought they weren't effective enough to sell, and side effects were serious, including toxicity for the heart, liver and kidney, and a potential increased risk of prostate cancer.

Euronews

Sperm count drop is accelerating worldwide and threatens the future of mankind, study warns

Sperm counts worldwide have halved over the past five decades, and the pace of the decline has more than doubled since the turn of the century, new research shows. The international team behind it says the data is alarming and points to a fertility crisis threatening the survival of humanity. Their meta-analysis looked at 223 studies based on sperm samples from over 57,000 men across 53 countries. It shows for the first time that men in Latin America, Asia, and Africa share a similar decline in total sperm counts and concentration as previously observed in Europe, North America, and Australia. The authors warn that the mean sperm count has now dropped dangerously close to the threshold that makes conception more difficult, meaning couples around the world may encounter problems having a baby without medical assistance.

NPR

Discovery of ancient bronze statues in Italy may rewrite Etruscan and Roman history

ROME — Italian archaeologists are hailing a recent discovery as the "most exceptional" in the last half-century. They believe it could rewrite the history of the relationship between the Etruscan and Roman civilizations. Over a period of a few weeks in September and October, a team of archaeologists unearthed two dozen bronze statues of human figures, more than 2,000 years old and perfectly preserved in the hot mud and waters of an ancient, sacred pool. The site is the hot springs of the Tuscan town of San Casciano dei Bagni — San Casciano of the Baths, one of many picturesque hilltop towns towering over lush green valleys dotted with majestic cypress trees. But in the third century BCE, this place had a unique attraction: the ancient Etruscans built a sanctuary at the local hot springs that later gave the town its name. The Etruscans lived and thrived for 500 years in what today is central Italy — the regions of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio — before the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BCE, after the last Etruscan king who had ruled Rome was overthrown.

Reuters

In Mexico, endangered monarch butterflies inspire hopes of a comeback

SIERRA CHINCUA, Mexico, Dec 4 (Reuters) - From a distance, they appear like autumn foliage: millions of endangered monarch butterflies blanketing trees in a kaleidoscope of brown, orange and black. As the crisp mountain air warms, they flutter above dazzled visitors who have come to see an annual tradition that persists despite the environmental and human pressures threatening it. Every year, migratory monarchs travel up to 2,000 miles (3,000 km) from the eastern United States and Canada to spend the winter among the forests of central and western Mexico. he migratory monarch population has fallen between 22% and 72% over the past decade, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which declared the species endangered in July. Scientists blame climate change, pesticides and illegal logging for the population decline. The monarchs' presence in the states where they spend the winter, Michoacan and neighboring Mexico state, extended across 45 acres (18 hectares) in the mid-1990s. But by last winter the area had fallen to just 7 acres (3 hectares).

Deutsche Welle

Will EU oil embargo really hurt Russian war machine?

The EU has stopped buying Russian seaborne crude oil as it seeks to deprive Moscow of a key revenue source fueling its war in Ukraine. The move will hurt Russia but not as much as the bloc would have liked. With the first phase of the European Union's ban on Russian crude oil and petroleum products kicking in on Monday, December 5, European countries will stop buying seaborne crude oil from Russia with limited exceptions, robbing Moscow of revenues that it needs to sustain its war efforts in Ukraine. The embargo comes simultaneously with a price cap backed by the Group of Seven advanced economies on Russian oil, also meant to hurt Russia's oil earnings while ensuring that it does not send oil prices skyrocketing. With the European Union having already shunned much of Russian oil over the past six months and Russia already selling much of its crude at steep discounts, it remains unclear just how big a blow the oil embargo and the price cap would inflict on the Kremlin's war chest.

Al Jazeera

Global arms sales rise for 7th year despite supply chain issues What fools we mortals be.

Sales of arms and military services by the world’s 100 biggest defence companies rose 1.9 percent to $592BN in 2021 despite supply chain issues that held up shipments of critical components, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The increase, accelerating from 1.1 percent in 2019-2020, marked the seventh consecutive year of rising global arms sales, SIPRI said in its Arms Industry Database released Monday. SIPRI said supply chain issues continued to hold back trade in 2021 and were likely to get worse as a result of the Ukraine war. “We might have expected even greater growth in arms sales in 2021 without persistent supply chain issues,” Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, director of the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, said in a statement. “Both larger and smaller arms companies said that their sales had been affected during the year. Some companies, such as Airbus and General Dynamics, also reported labour shortages.”

New York Times

Moscow Insists It Will Not Comply With Oil Price Cap

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/4/2140050/-Overnight-News-Digest-December-4-2022

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