Conservation | Policy | Events | People | Research | Trend watch | Facilities

CONSERVATION

Panda diplomats arrive in Germany Chinese President Xi Jinping presented two giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) to the Berlin Zoo on 5 July, and opened a new panda enclosure at the facility. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was present at the ceremony ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, called the animals “special ambassadors”. The pandas, Meng Meng (‘sweet dream’) and Jiao Qing (‘darling’), are on loan to Germany for 15 years. The zoo hopes that the couple will produce offspring — a rare event for pandas in captivity. The bears will also be part of a programme at Berlin’s Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, where scientists will study the animals’ pheromone-based communication system and finicky eating habits.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Credit: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty

POLICY

Methane ruling A federal appeals court has ruled that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot delay enforcement of a rule enacted during President Barack Obama’s administration to reduce methane emissions from new oil and gas wells. The regulation had been scheduled to take effect on 2 June, but in May the EPA delayed the effective date by 90 days; on 12 June, the agency proposed extending the delay to 2 years. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on 3 July that delaying the effective date is “tantamount to amending or revoking” the regulation, which the agency cannot do without crafting a new rule to take its place.

Modified moth The US Department of Agriculture has approved the release of genetically modified diamondback moths (Plutella xylostella) in a field in New York state, the agency announced on 6 July. The moths express a fluorescent protein to allow them to be easily tracked, and carry a gene that prevents female offspring from reaching maturity, with the goal of reducing the local wild population of the species. Diamondback moths are plant pests that cost up to US$5 billion in lost crops worldwide each year. The moths were developed by the company Oxitec, based near Oxford, UK, and are being tested by a laboratory at Cornell University’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva. 

French carbon plan The French government announced an ambitious aim on 6 July to become a carbon-neutral economy by 2050 — and laid out a slew of measures to achieve the goal. It plans to shut down its remaining coal power plants by 2022, and will move to stop the issuing or renewal of any gas or oil exploration licences — which means that France’s large shale-gas reserves are likely to stay in the ground. Diesel and petrol vehicles will be phased out by 2040. The government also said that it will increase spending on research to underpin the transition, but has so far given few details. The moves are part of President Emmanuel Macron’s push to make tackling climate change a priority, and a response to US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw his country from the Paris climate accord.

Weapons treaty A global treaty banning nuclear weapons was backed by 122 countries on 7 July at the United Nations in New York City. Once ratified by at least 50 countries, the treaty will ban them from acquiring the weapons or allowing them on their territory. The nine countries that already have nuclear weapons boycotted the proceedings. But observers think that the treaty will further the goals of nuclear disarmament by stigmatizing possession of the weapons, as have past global bans on anti-personnel landmines, cluster bombs and chemical and biological weapons. In March, more than 3,000 scientists, including around 30 Nobel laureates, penned a letter in support of the ban.

EVENTS 

Huge ivory haul Hong Kong customs officials confiscated an estimated 7.2 tonnes of illegal ivory on 4 July. If that figure bears out, the haul, which has a market value of US$9.2 million, would be the largest ever. The goods were found in a shipping container from Malaysia under cartons of frozen fish. Hong Kong is a hotspot for illegal ivory trading, in part because it has an active legal market for the material, on which illicit pieces are often passed off as registered items. Critics say that the legal markets encourage the slaughter of elephants. Mainland China has pledged to end its legal ivory trade by the end of 2017; Hong Kong is considering closure by 2021.

Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock

Smuggled relics Hobby Lobby, a craft corporation based in Oklahoma City, will relinquish about 3,450 antiquities allegedly smuggled out of Iraq, according to a 5 July announcement from the US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The haul includes clay slabs covered in cuneiform, a mode of writing that dates back to 3,500 bc. Hobby Lobby, whose evangelical Christian owners have said that they collect artefacts to preserve them for future generations, will pay a fine of US$3 million and have agreed to release the items to the US government. The company originally bought more than 5,500 artefacts, including the ones listed in the civil complaint, in 2010.

PEOPLE

CDC director picked Obstetrician and gynaecologist Brenda Fitzgerald will direct the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services announced on 7 July. Fitzgerald has led the Georgia Department of Public Health since 2011, and has championed early-intervention programmes to improve maternal health and counter childhood obesity. Before that, she practised medicine, advised former speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich on health-care policy and served in the US Air Force. Fitzgerald’s appointment does not require confirmation by the Senate, unlike many other top government jobs. See page 137 and go.nature.com/2sajfsw for more.

Scientist fined A French lung specialist was fined €50,000 (US$57,000) and given a six-month suspended prison sentence on 5 July for failing to disclose his ties to the oil industry during an air-pollution inquiry in the country’s Senate. In April 2015, Michel Aubier had testified about the financial and economic costs of air pollution and was speaking on behalf of the public authority that runs Paris public hospitals. French newspapers later revealed that for 20 years, he had been paid by the French oil company Total. The case marks the first time that the French Senate has pressed criminal charges over false testimony.

RESEARCH

Resistant bacteria More than 60% of countries surveyed worldwide have reported cases of gonorrhoea that resist last-resort antibiotics, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Scientists with the WHO, among others, published a study on 7 July stating that 97% of the countries surveyed reported gonorrhoea cases resistant to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin; 81% reported cases resistant to azithromycin; and 66% found resistance to cephalosporins (T.Wietal.PLOSMed.http://doi.org/b9fc; 2017). But a drug called zoliflodacin, currently in development, has proved effective against the infection. Phase III trials are slated to begin in November 2018 in countries including South Africa, the United States and Thailand.

TREND WATCH

Sub-Saharan Africa is seeing a rapid increase in the prevalence of non-communicable diseases as its population ages and people move out of poverty, according to a 5 July report in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. From 1980 to 2014, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among adults jumped by 81% in sub-Saharan Africa, and by 129% in Africa as a whole. The report projects that the economic burden of diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa will increase from US$19 billion in 2015 to as much as $59 billion by 2030.

Credit: Source: R. Atun et al. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. http://doi.org/b9jj (2017)

FACILITIES

DeepMind in Canada The artificial-intelligence (AI) research firm DeepMind, owned by Google, announced on 5 July that it plans to open a centre in Edmonton, Canada, later this month. It will be the company’s first office outside London, where DeepMind was founded as a start-up in 2010. ‘DeepMind Alberta’ will be operated with the University of Alberta, also in Edmonton. The centre will be led by three AI experts from the university, including Michael Bowling, who in 2015 headed a team that wrote the first program able to beat the best human players at poker. The Edmonton centre joins a list of AI-related investments in Canada following the government’s Can$125-million (US$97-million) Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. The country also has major AI hubs around Montreal and Toronto.

Observatory cuts The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is dropping two major components of its Ocean Observatories Initiative, a US$386-million project to bolster ocean-monitoring efforts. Later this year, the NSF will permanently withdraw instrumented deep-sea moorings at two spots in the Southern Hemisphere: off the southwestern tip of South America, and in the Argentine Basin of the Atlantic Ocean. The decision follows concerns about the cost of servicing all seven of the initiative’s locations. The cuts will focus efforts on sites in the Northern Hemisphere, the NSF said on 6 July. These include similar moorings as well as other instrumentation off the east and west coasts of the United States.