After consulting with Germany’s 16 regional governors, German Chancellor Angela Merkel Wednesday announced new restrictions on the size of gatherings to prevent the country’s coronavirus infection figures from accelerating.At a Berlin news briefing following her virtual meeting with the governors, Merkel said she wants to act regionally and address the virus where it is surging rather than shut down the whole country, which she said should be avoided at all costs.  “In order to achieve this, we must have minimum standards for certain frequencies of infections,” said Merkel.The German chancellor said in places where there are more than 35 new infections per 100,000 residents recorded in a week, the number of people attending gatherings at public or rented facilities should be limited to 50 and no more than 25 should attend events in private homes.She said that where infections hit at least 50 per 100,000 residents, those figures should be cut to 25 and 10 respectively.Merkel said she expects the rate of infection to rise as the change in weather means more people will spend time inside in the coming months. She said the number of daily infections could rise to 19,200 in three months if the rate of infection continues as it has over the past three months.  “This underlines the urgency for us to act,” said Merkel.The chancellor also discouraged travel to high risk areas in Europe in the coming months, saying staying in Germany was a good option. She said low risk European nations such as Italy might be a good option, noting the number of COVID-19 cases are very low there now and “they are acting very carefully.”Johns Hopkins University reports Germany has over 289,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and just over 9,450 deaths.
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The world recently reached a tragic milestone of one million known deaths linked to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.  Experts say more testing is key to combating the virus’s spread.  A biotech company in Taiwan has developed a robot capable of conducting thousands of COVID tests each day, making it possible to safely revive the economy.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.Camera: Reuters
Producer: Arash Arabasadi     
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Cancer experts in Ghana lament that little attention is paid to screening for colorectal cancer, leading to a high death rate for the disease, despite its relatively low occurrence. They hope the recent death of American actor Chadwick Boseman, the star of the Hollywood film “Black Panther,” might bring fresh awareness. Stacey Knott reports from Accra.By the time a patient comes to Dr. Clement Edusa with colon cancer, it is often too late. The medical director of the Sweden Ghana Medical Center will see cancer that has been misdiagnosed and spread, as the patient has sought out other treatments, including some from ill-equipped small clinics or herbalists. Edusa says while Ghana does not see many cases of colon cancer, as lifestyles change, he expects to see an increase, and there need to be systems in place to provide detection and affordable treatment. “Definitely, there is going to be an increase. But don’t forget that apart from that, you need to have a structure in place to do the screening,” said Edusa. “So, if you don’t have a national program which sort of pulls in the people to do the screening, you won’t get it early. So, you will have an increase in numbers and people coming late, and of course, more fatalities.” August 29th 2020 – Actor Chadwick Boseman has died at the age of 43. He was born on November 29th 1976 in Anderson, South Carolina and died of colon cancer on August 28th 2020 in Los Angeles, California.While fans have been mourning the loss of Boseman, who died of colon cancer a month ago, a beloved actor and preacher in Ghana also met this fate this year. Bernard Nyarko’s son Gideon says his dad’s illness was gradual. By the time he got his colon cancer diagnosis, doctors could do little, as it had spread.  “He went to the hospital, but they were not able to diagnose the main source of his illness,” said Nyarko. “They were linking it to other sorts of illnesses. It was later that we discovered it was colon cancer. That was 2019.”When Gideon saw images of Boseman’s weight loss, he saw the similarities of how his own father looked toward the end.Pedestrians look up at a mural by artist Shane Grammer of late actor Chadwick Boseman’s character T’Challa from the 2018 film “Black Panther,”, Sept. 8, 2020, in Los Angeles.He hopes both his father’s case and that of Boseman will create awareness of the need for early detection and better training in health services.
Some organizations in Ghana have taken up this mantle.Cancer Support Network Ghana tries to get cancer survivors to speak out to encourage others to go for screenings, to ultimately lower fatality rates in Ghana, says oncology nurse Eric Brobbey.“People think that when you have this cancer you’re going to die, but there are people who have lived for many years,” said Brobbey. “So, when they come out to share their stories, it encourages others to also seek treatment.”Ibrahim Rauf from the Zurak Cancer Foundation focuses on low-income communities, advocating prevention, education and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.“The lifestyles that expose people to cancers kind of run through, regardless of which cancer you are referring to,” said Rauf. “So, we might not be heavily focused on colon cancer now, but then we believe the awareness we are creating is giving people the opportunities to adopt lifestyles that save them from it.”The ultimate hope is that more people will be aware of the signs and risks of cancers, including colon cancer, and that eventually all screenings, diagnoses and treatments will be funded by the government. 
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The COVID-19 death toll has climbed to more than one million people worldwide.  And because of a recent surge of infections in many countries including in Europe and the United States, more coronavirus deaths are expected in the coming months. But there are also signs that death rates are dropping and people who contract the virus now are faring better than those infected early on.  VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo has more.Produced by:  Bakhtiyar Zamanov   
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By the time a patient comes to Dr. Clement Edusa with colon cancer, it is often too late.The medical director of the Sweden Ghana Medical Center will see cancer that has been misdiagnosed and spread, as the patient has sought out other treatments, including some from ill-equipped small clinics or herbalists.Edusa said while Ghana does not see many cases of colon cancer, as lifestyles change, he expects to see an increase, and there need to be systems in place to provide detection and affordable treatment.“Definitely, there is going to be an increase,” Edusa said. “But don’t forget that apart from that, you need to have a structure in place to do the screening. So, if you don’t have a national program which sort of pulls in the people to do the screening, you won’t get it early. So, you will have an increase in numbers and people coming late, and of course, more fatalities.”FILE – Chadwick Boseman poses in the press room at the American Music Awards on Nov. 24, 2019, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.While fans have been mourning the loss of American actor Chadwick Boseman, who died of colon cancer a month ago, a beloved actor and preacher in Ghana also met this fate this year.Bernard Nyarko’s son Gideon said his dad’s illness was gradual. By the time he got his colon cancer diagnosis, doctors could do little, as it had spread.“He went to the hospital, but they were not able to diagnose the main source of his illness,” Nyarko said. “They were linking it to other sorts of illnesses. It was later that we discovered it was colon cancer. That was 2019.”When Gideon saw images of Boseman’s weight loss, he saw the similarities of how his own father looked toward the end.Gideon Kankam Nyarko with his late father, Ghanaian actor Bernard Nyarko who died this year of colon cancer. (Courtesy of Gideon Kankam Nyarko)He hopes both his father’s case and that of Boseman will create awareness of the need for early detection and better training in health services.Some organizations in Ghana have taken up this mantle.Cancer Support Network Ghana tries to get cancer survivors to speak out to encourage others to go for screenings, to ultimately lower fatality rates in Ghana, said oncology nurse Eric Brobbey.“People think that when you have this cancer you’re going to die, but there are people who have lived for many years, Brobbey said. “So, when they come out to share their stories, it encourages others to also seek treatment.”Ibrahim Rauf of the Zurak Cancer Foundation works to increase cancer awareness in low-income communities, in Accra, Ghana, Sept. 26, 2020. (Stacey Knott/VOA)Ibrahim Rauf from the Zurak Cancer Foundation focuses on low-income communities, advocating prevention, education and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.“The lifestyles that expose people to cancers kind of run through, regardless of which cancer you are referring to,” Rauf said. “So, we might not be heavily focused on colon cancer now, but then we believe the awareness we are creating is giving people the opportunities to adopt lifestyles that save them from it.”The ultimate hope is that more people will be aware of the signs and risks of cancers, including colon cancer, and that eventually all screenings, diagnoses and treatments will be funded by the government. 
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A British jet suit company has teamed with a paramedic service to test the flying suits’ capabilities for emergency use in Britain’s mountainous northern lake district.Gravity Industries released video Tuesday of a recent test of its jet suit in simulated rescue situations in northwest Britain’s vast Lake District National Park in Cumbria.The jet suit company teamed up with local paramedic team Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS), which says reaching walkers in distress is one of their biggest challenges.In one test simulation, a paramedic in a jet suit – which, in this case, was test pilot and Gravity Industries founder Richard Browning – was sent up a mountain in a scenario in which a 10-year-old girl had fallen from cliffs and sustained a serious leg injury.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 14 MB480p | 20 MB540p | 29 MB720p | 72 MB1080p | 123 MBOriginal | 127 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe paramedic, following coordinates given for the location of the casualty, follows a hiking trial up the steep, rocky terrain, traveling at about 51 kilometers per hour (kph) and reaches the scene in 90 seconds, traveling a distance that might have taken a rescuer as long as 25-30 minutes on foot.GNAAS director Andy Mawson, who reached out to Gravity Industries about using their jet suit for emergency services, says its lifesaving potential “is just huge.”The suit has an altitude limit of 3,658 meters, easily surpassing the height of the Lake District’s – and Britain’s – highest peak of 978 meters.Browning launched Gravity Industries in March 2017 and has since flown more than 100 flight events across 30 countries. 
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A team of scientists studying data from a satellite orbiting Mars say they have discovered evidence of several lakes of what they believe is salty, liquid water beneath the surface of the planet’s south pole.The discovery, detailed in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, expands upon a tentative finding in 2018, which was made using data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express satellite.A radar instrument known as the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) produced evidence of what astronomers believed was a large saltwater lake under the ice at Mars’s south pole, a finding that was met with excitement and some skepticism at the time.Since then, the same group of scientists examined 10 years’ worth of radar images sent from the spacecraft and found not only more evidence confirming the original salt lake, but enough for at least three more lying underneath the Martian surface.Confirming the existence of liquid water on Mars is significant, in that it could provide a possible habitat for life.The new evidence came after researchers examined over 100 radar images taken by the satellite from 2010 through 2019. The scientists saw what seemed to be several subglacial liquid bodies ranging in size from just over 19 kilometers across to as small as just under 5 kilometers.The average temperature on Mars is around minus 26 degrees Celsius, far too cold for water to remain liquid at the surface. But the researchers believe the lakes maintain their liquid state due to their high concentrations of salt. Some scientists believe Mars was once a wet, warm world and may even have hosted life forms at some point in its early history. But over time, the planet’s atmosphere was stripped away because it lacks a magnetic field like Earth’s, making it seemingly inhospitable.This latest discovery suggests that some pockets of the Martian terrain may be habitable and could contain some form of microbial life that escaped from the planet’s freezing surface to the waters beneath. 
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The number of people killed by COVID-19 has surpassed 1 million, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which put the total number of infections worldwide at more than 33 million.    Lamenting what he called “an agonizing milestone,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the world to overcome the challenge presented by the pandemic and to learn from past mistakes made at the outset. “Responsible leadership matters,” Gutteres said. “Science matters. Cooperation matters — and misinformation kills.” COVID-19 is the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in Wuhan, China, late last year. As the pandemic reached the grim milestone, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said the actual toll is probably higher.     FILE – Coffins with the bodies of victims of coronavirus are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 2, 2020.”If anything, the numbers currently reported probably represent an underestimate of those individuals who have either contracted COVID-19 or died as a cause of it,” Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, said at a briefing in Geneva.  The one million fatalities are among the more than 33.2 million people around the world who have been sickened by the disease, and there are growing signs that many nations are about to experience a second wave of the outbreak, especially the United States, which leads the world with over 7.1 million total cases, including over 205,000 deaths. FILE – A caution tape is put up around the playground at Public School 33 following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, Sept. 27, 2020.Officials in New York City, the initial epicenter of the pandemic in the United States in March and April, are reporting a surge of new COVID-19 cases across the city after several months of decreasing numbers.  Officials are especially concerned with eight neighborhoods in the Brooklyn and Queens boroughs, some of them home to large Orthodox Jewish communities.  The increase comes as the city prepares to reopen its public schools to in-person instruction this week.  New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo also expressed concern Monday about a surge of new cases in two counties, Rockland and Orange, located north of New York City.  FILE – Dough Hassebroek walks his son Felix to Ardor School in Brooklyn, New York, Sept. 21, 2020.A new study released Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed the rate of infections in children ages 12 to 17 is about twice that in children between the ages of five to 11.  But the CDC study pointed out that the statistics were collected during a period when most students were not attending in-person classes, suggesting that the low number of confirmed cases in children result from a lack of testing.   The CDC also said young children often have mild symptoms, and may even be asymptomatic, which could also account for their low numbers of confirmed cases. “The American people should anticipate that cases will rise in the days ahead,” U.S. Vice President Mike Pence warned on Monday.   More testing  U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday promised to make 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests available.  He said the “massive and groundbreaking expansion” of testing would help protect the elderly in nursing homes, allow schools to reopen more safely, and help get the economy back on track.     President Donald Trump leaves after an event about coronavirus testing strategy, in the Rose Garden of the White House, Sept. 28, 2020, in Washington.Trump had previously said he wanted to slow down testing because discovering more cases could make it appear the disease is spreading faster.    WHO announced that 120 million rapid diagnostic tests for the coronavirus will be made available to low- and middle-income countries.     WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said manufacturers Abbott and SD Biosensor are working in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to “make 120 million of these new, highly portable and easy-to-use rapid COVID-19 diagnostic tests available over a period of six months.”          
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