Science & Technology News

Scientific theories including the “Big Bang” believed to have brought the universe into being 13.7 billion years ago and the idea that life developed through a process of evolution do not conflict with Catholic teaching, Pope Francis said on Tuesday. Addressing a meeting of the Pontificial Academy of Sciences, an independent body housed in the Vatican and financed largely by the Holy See, Francis said scientific explanations for the world did not exclude the role of God in creation. The Church once opposed early scientific explanations of the universe that contradicted the account of creation in the Bible, famously condemning the 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei who showed that the earth revolved around the sun. Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950 and Pope John Paul reiterated that in 1996.

The decision by the Pentagon goes well beyond previously established military protocols and came just as the White House pushed to roll back steps by U.S. Dozens more will be isolated in the coming days as they rotate out of West Africa, where the military has been building infrastructure to help health authorities treat Ebola victims, the Pentagon said.

Governments must avoid doing anything to deter desperately needed health workers from coming to West Africa to fight Ebola, the head of the U.N. mission battling the virus said on Monday, adding that quarantine decisions must not be based on hysteria. “Decisions (on quarantine) should be based on science and fact and not hype and hysteria and decisions should be taken in a way that will promote the most rapid, effective response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa possible,” Anthony Banbury, head of the U.N. Ebola Emergency Response Mission (UNMEER), told Reuters.

By Katharine Houreld KARACHI Pakistan (Reuters) – Taliban militants have long been the scourge of Pakistan’s polio vaccination campaign, attacking aid workers and the police who protect them as they distribute doses to children. “Pakistan’s polio programme is a disaster. It continues to flounder hopelessly, as its virus flourishes,” the Independent Monitoring Board, which advises agencies fighting polio, will say in a report to be released this week. Eradicating polio is not rocket science,” said Elias Durry, head of the World Health Organization (WHO) polio campaign in Pakistan.

By Paulo Prada SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Despite opposition from nearly half of Brazil’s voters, leftist President Dilma Rousseff won re-election on Sunday and will have another four years to try to revive growth in a once-booming economy gone stagnant. The 66-year-old Rousseff, who was a Marxist guerrilla in her youth, overcame growing dissatisfaction with the economy, poor public services and corruption to narrowly clinch a second term for herself and the fourth in a row for her Workers’ Party. After a bitter, unpredictable campaign that pitted poorer Brazilians grateful for government anti-poverty programs against those exasperated with a stalled economy, Rousseff must now seek to continue flagship social services even as she tweaks economic policies to restore growth. Speaking to a relieved crowd of supporters on Sunday night in Brasilia, the capital, Rousseff acknowledged the close race and the call for change expressed by many voters.

By Joseph Ax and Douwe Miedema NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House has told states that have imposed mandatory quarantines for some travelers from Ebola-hit West Africa that the policy could impede the fight against the disease, while the first health worker isolated under the rules plans to sue. Kaci Hickox, a nurse placed in 21-day quarantine in a New Jersey hospital after returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, will contest her quarantine in court, her attorney said on Sunday, arguing the order violates her constitutional rights. New Jersey and New York are imposing quarantines on anyone arriving with a high risk of having contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where the epidemic has killed nearly 5,000 people. The White House voiced its concern to the governors of New York and New Jersey about the potential impact of quarantine orders, a senior administration official said on Sunday.

By Douwe Miedema and Jonathan Allen WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Quarantines imposed on travelers coming from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa who have had contact with the disease could discourage American health workers from going there to help fight the epidemic, a senior U.S. “I don’t want to be directly criticizing the decision that was made but we have to be careful that there are unintended consequences,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said of the measures imposed by New York, New Jersey and Illinois. “The best way to stop this epidemic is to help the people in West Africa, we do that by sending people over there, not only from the U.S.A. but from other places,” Fauci told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding such quarantines were “a little bit draconian.” The three states imposed 21-day mandatory quarantines in the last two days for anyone arriving with a risk of having contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, arrived in Guinea’s capital Conakry on Sunday on a mission to see first hand how the global response is failing to stop the deadly spread of Ebola in West Africa. The three West African countries are bearing the brunt of the worst outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever on record that the World Health Organization says has killed nearly 5,000 people. A small number of cases have also been reported in Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States. “I will take what I know and I learn and obviously provide it to President Obama, who’s got world leaders now on speed dial on this issue.” “Hopefully the more specific we can be in terms of what the requirements are and what other countries could usefully do, the more resources we can attract,” she said.

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President Barack Obama on Saturday commended New Yorkers for their calm reaction to the city’s first case of Ebola and said that medical authorities were responding effectively to the threat from the deadly virus. “It’s important to remember that of the seven Americans treated so far for Ebola – the five who contracted it in West Africa, plus the two nurses from Dallas – all seven have survived,” Obama said. He did not refer to new 21-day quarantines implemented late on Friday by New York and New Jersey for medical workers returning from Ebola hotspots. The first person to be quarantined under the states’ new measures was a medical worker who arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday after treating Ebola victims in West Africa.