A neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn is stunning visitors with its spectacular Christmas lights. The Dyker Heights neighborhood boasts some of the most over-the-top holiday displays. Elena Wolf takes us there in this story narrated by Anna Rice.
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Month: December 2021
New research from Britain and South Africa suggests the fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus is milder and results in fewer hospitalizations than other versions.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland unveiled a study Wednesday showing that people who had contracted omicron were at least 60% less likely to be admitted, compared to those who had been infected with the delta variant, which had been dominating the world in recent months.
A separate study conducted at Imperial College London revealed that people diagnosed with omicron were 15%-20% less likely to seek emergency care at a hospital, while also showing a 40%-45% decline in the number of omicron patients who needed to be admitted for severe symptoms.
And scientists at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases Wednesday released a study that discovered the risk of hospitalization was 70%-80% lower among patients who tested positive for omicron, compared with those who tested positive for delta or other strains. The NICD researchers also said Wednesday the omicron outbreak in that country appears to have peaked, with a 20% decline in new infections in the last week.
But John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned Thursday during a virtual press briefing that South Africa should not be used as an example for what may happen in other nations with omicron.
More encouraging news came Wednesday in the U.S.-based military publication Defense One, which said the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the largest of its kind in the U.S. military, will soon announce the development of an experimental vaccine that can offer protection against all coronaviruses, including the one that causes COVID-19, as well as its variants, including omicron and delta.
Researchers at Walter Reed have begun the first phase of human clinical trials of its new vaccine after gaining positive results from animal trials completed earlier this year. Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, the director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, told Defense One that it has been working to develop the “pan-coronavirus” vaccine for two years. He said the human trials took longer than expected to begin because researchers needed to find subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID-19.
Meanwhile, authorities around the world continue to impose more coronavirus restrictions in response to the wildfire-like spread of omicron. In Australia, Premier Dominic Perrottet of New South Wales state reintroduced an indoor mask-wearing mandate Thursday after it recorded 5,715 new cases, nearly double the 3,763 new cases posted on Wednesday – the bulk of Australia’s record one-day total 8,357 confirmed cases.
In China, authorities in the northern city of Xi’an have imposed a strict lockdown of the entire area of 13 million residents in an effort to curb a spike in new cases. The order bans people from leaving their homes unless they have essential jobs, and mandates that only one person per household may shop for supplies every two days.
Xi’an, the capital city of Shaanxi province, has confirmed more than 200 new locally transmitted cases in recent weeks, although it is not known if the surge is being driven by omicron or delta.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Pope Francis urged Vatican cardinals, bishops and bureaucrats Thursday to embrace humility this Christmas season, saying their pride, self-interest and the “glitter of our armor” was perverting their spiritual lives and corrupting the church’s mission.
As he has in the past, Francis used his annual Christmas address to take Vatican administrators to task for their perceived moral and personal failings, denouncing in particular those pride-filled clerics who “rigidly” hide behind Catholic Church traditions rather than seek out the neediest with humility.
As they have in the past, cardinals and bishops sat stone-faced as they listened to Francis lecture them in the Hall of Blessings, which was otherwise decked out in jolly twinkling Christmas trees and poinsettias.
“The humble are those who are concerned not simply with the past but also with the future, since they know how to look ahead, to spread their branches, remembering the past with gratitude,” Francis told them. “The proud, on the other hand, simply repeat, grow rigid and enclose themselves in that repetition, feeling certain about what they know and fearful of anything new because they cannot control it.”
The proud who are so inward-looking are consumed with their own interests, the pontiff said.
“As a consequence, they neither learn from their sins nor are they genuinely open to forgiveness. This is a tremendous corruption disguised as a good. We need to avoid it,” he added.
Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has used his Christmas address to rail against the Curia, as the Holy See’s bureaucracy is known, denouncing the “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that some members suffer and the resistance he had encountered to his efforts to reform and revitalize the institution and the broader Catholic Church.
Those reforms kicked into high gear this year, and some of the top Catholic hierarchy bore the brunt as Francis ordered a 10% pay cut for cardinals, imposed a 40-euro ($45) gift cap for Holy See personnel and passed a law allowing cardinals and bishops to be criminally prosecuted by the Vatican’s own tribunal.
On top of that, Francis added his Christmas greetings in the form of another public brow-beating of Vatican clerics, who normally are treated with the utmost deference by their underling and the faithful at large.
Francis told them to stop hiding behind the “armor” of their titles and to recognize that they, like the Biblical figure of Naaman, a wealthy and decorated general, were lepers in need of healing.
“The story of Naaman reminds us that Christmas is the time when each of us needs to find the courage to take off our armor, discard the trappings of our roles, our social recognition and the glitter of this world and adopt the humility of Naaman,” he said.
Francis also repeated his call for tradition-minded clerics to stop living in the past, saying their obsession with old doctrine and liturgy concealed a “spiritual worldliness” that was corrupting.
“Seeking those kinds of reassurance is the most perverse fruit of spiritual worldliness, for it reveals a lack of faith, hope and love; it leads to an inability to discern the truth of things,” he said.
Francis this year took his biggest step yet to rein in the traditionalist wing of the church, reimposing restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Pope Benedict XVI had relaxed in 2007.
He intensified those restrictions last weekend with a new set of rules that forbids even the publication of Tridentine Mass times in parish bulletins.
Francis said the proud who remain stuck in the past, “enclosed in their little world, have neither past nor future, roots or branches, and live with the bitter taste of a melancholy that weighs on their hearts as the most precious of the devil’s potions.”
“All of us are called to humility, because all of us are called to remember and to give life. We are called to find a right relationship with our roots and our branches. Without those two things, we become sick, destined to disappear,” he warned.
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A suggestion by Australia’s most populous state to charge unvaccinated people for COVID-19 medical costs has received widespread criticism. The New South Wales proposal has angered doctors and some federal politicians, who argue that health care in Australia is free and universal.
The New South Wales government has said that unvaccinated patients being treated for COVID-19 have been irresponsible and have burdened taxpayers with “very substantial costs.” And they could be forced to pay for their hospital care.
“There already is two classes of the hospital system because you have got the unvaccinated that are there because they have not been taking responsibility for their actions, and you have got the vaccinated there who have got a genuine requirement for health care, said State Transport Minister David Elliott.
But members of Australia’s federal government have been skeptical about making unvaccinated COVID-19 patients pay for their treatment. The Australian Medical Association said the proposal was “unethical,” and it doubted that it was even legal.
The president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Dr. Karen Price, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that it would affect disadvantaged communities.
“We might make all sorts of judgments on people who smoke or have an unhealthy lifestyle, and the unvaccinated would be a large cohort of those people who might have low health literacy, and we know in some of our Indigenous communities where vaccination rates are low, this would be an unethical procedure to implement,” he said.
Ninety percent of eligible Australians are fully vaccinated.
On Thursday, New South Wales recorded 5,715 COVID-19 cases — a new daily record for any Australian jurisdiction during the pandemic.
Testing clinics have been overwhelmed as Australians rush to be screened ahead of Christmas. A negative result is required for travel between various states and territories.
Western Australia has become the first jurisdiction to introduce mandatory COVID-19 booster shots for certain sections of its population.
It is also reintroducing internal border controls with Tasmania and the Northern Territory to try to curb the spread of the omicron variant. Entry into Western Australia from other parts of the country will be prohibited without an exemption.
U.S. health officials say 2021 is shaping up to be even deadlier than last year.
It’s too early to say for sure, since all the death reports for November and December won’t be in for many weeks. But based on available information, it seems likely 2021 will surpass last year’s record number of deaths by at least 15,000, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death statistics.
Last year was the most lethal in U.S. history, largely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A CDC report released Wednesday shows 2020 was actually worse than the agency previously reported.
The report presents a final tally for last year of about 3.384 million U.S. deaths, about 25,000 more than a provisional count released earlier this year. Such jumps between provisional and final numbers are common, but 2020’s difference was higher than usual because of a lag in death records from some states that switched to new electronic reporting systems, Anderson said.
The CDC this week also revised its estimate of life expectancy for 2020. Life expectancy at birth that year was 77 years, a decrease of 1.8 years from 2019. The agency previously estimated the decline at 1.5 years.
Anderson said it’s likely that the nation will see more than 3.4 million deaths in 2021. Other experts said they think deaths for the year will end up either about the same as in 2020, or higher.
“It’s really sad,” said Ali Mokdad, a mortality statistics expert at the University of Washington.
A large reason is COVID-19, which hit the U.S. hard around March 2020 and became the nation’s No. 3 cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer.
Last year, COVID-19 was the underlying cause in about 351,000 deaths. This year, the number is already 356,000, and the final tally could hit 370,000, Anderson said.
Experts also think the 2021 numbers will be affected by a drug overdose epidemic that is expected to — for the first time — surpass 100,000 deaths in a calendar year.
An increase in annual deaths is not unusual. The annual count rose by nearly 16,000 from 2018 to 2019 — before COVID-19 appeared.
But the coronavirus clearly had an impact. The nation had the smallest rate of population gain in history between July 2020 and July 2021, primarily because of the COVID-19 deaths, said Kenneth Johnson, a University of New Hampshire researcher.
Officials had hoped COVID-19 vaccines would slash the death count. But vaccinations became available gradually this year, with only 7 million fully vaccinated at the end of January and 63 million at the end of March.
Since then, many Americans have chosen not to get vaccinated. The CDC says 204 million Americans are fully vaccinated — or about 65% of the U.S. population that are age 5 and older and eligible for shots.
Indeed, that’s a big part of why COVID-19 deaths could climb despite the availability of effective vaccines, Mokdad said. The appearance of new, more transmissible variants of the coronavirus only made the problem worse, he added.
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined an effort by Apple Inc. to skip a shareholder proposal asking the iPhone maker to provide greater transparency in its efforts to keep forced labor out of its supply chain.
A group of shareholders earlier this year asked Apple’s board to prepare a report on how the company protects workers in its supply chain from forced labor. The request for information covered the extent to which Apple has identified suppliers and sub-suppliers that are a risk for forced labor, and how many suppliers Apple has taken action against.
In a letter from the SEC reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, regulators denied Apple’s move to block the proposal, saying that “it does not appear that the essential objectives of the proposal have been implemented” so far.
The letter means that Apple will have to face a vote on the proposal at its annual shareholder meeting next year, barring a deal with the shareholders who made it.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
American lawmakers last week passed a bill banning imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor.
“There’s rightfully growing concern at all levels of government about the concentration camplike conditions for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims living under Chinese government rule,” Vicky Wyatt, campaign director for SumOfUs, a group supporting the shareholder proposal, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Apple routinely asks the SEC to skip shareholder proposals, and the requests are granted about half the time.
The SEC also denied Apple’s request to skip a shareholder proposal that would give investors more information about the company’s use of nondisclosure agreements.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of an antiviral COVID-19 pill, the pill’s maker Pfizer Inc. said Wednesday.
The company says the pill, which is to be taken with another antiviral drug, ritonavir, is 90% effective in preventing hospitalization and death in high-risk people.
“The efficacy is high, the side effects are low and it’s oral. It checks all the boxes,” Dr. Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic told The Associated Press. “You’re looking at a 90% decreased risk of hospitalization and death in a high-risk group—that’s stunning.”
The pill is the first at-home treatment for the virus and is approved for use in those 12 and older who are at high risk.
Pfizer says it’s ready to start delivery of the drug immediately in the U.S. and will produce 120 million courses in 2022.
The U.S. government has a contract with the company for 10 million courses priced at $530 per course.
The drug will be sold under the name Paxlovid and will have to be taken every 12 hours for five days once COVID-19 symptoms appear. Potential users of the new drug will have to show a positive virus test.
Drug giant Merck is also working on a similar drug.
Despite the promise, health officials say getting a vaccine is still the best way to stave off the worst effects of the virus.
Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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In India, the government has proposed legislation to raise the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years old, bringing it on par with men and saying it will empower women. But many women activists say the planned law would do little to address deep-seated societal problems that result in millions of young girls being married at an age even younger than 18.
“We are doing this so that they can have time to study and progress. The country is taking this decision for its daughters,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after The Prohibition of Child Marriage [Amendment] Bill was introduced in parliament Tuesday. The action comes more than a year after he said, during an Independence Day speech, that the government is considering raising the legal age of marriage for women.
The government says the aim is to provide equal opportunity to women by giving them more time to complete their education, access employment opportunities, attain psychological maturity before marriage and ensure gender parity.
“In a democracy, we are 75 years late in providing equal rights to men and women to enter into matrimony,” Smriti Irani, minister of women and child development, said in parliament Tuesday.
The proposed law would mark a major change for women in a country where, according to several estimates, about 50 percent marry before turning 21.
Some women’s groups have supported the bill. “Completing her education and employability ensures a better life for a girl than being dependent on her husband all her life,” Ranjana Kumari, director of the New Delhi-based Center for Social Research, told VOA.
She wants the marriage age for both genders to be the same. “Why should the boy be elder to the girl? Who has made that decision?” she questioned.
The government says the proposed change is also prompted by concerns for the health of women who become mothers at a young age. Early marriages are linked to higher infant mortality and low life expectancy, especially among rural women.
According to Irani, raising the age of marriage for women would help bring down the incidence of teenage pregnancies.
Some experts, however, cautioned that the proposal might backfire because it does not address the underlying causes of early marriage such as poverty, patriarchal attitudes and lack of access to education, and fear that if these root causes are not solved, an age change could do more harm than good.
They point out that although marriages for girls under 18 are currently illegal, child marriages still pose a major challenge in the country — as many as one quarter of women ages 20 to 24 were married before they turned 18, according to the National Family Health Survey, 2019-21.
“The bill is well-intentioned but thoughtless,” says Mary John, professor at the Center for Women’s Development Studies, a research and advocacy organization. According to her, many of the indicators that the government is trying to address, like maternal mortality, will not be solved by simply raising the age of marriage.
“An anemic woman will remain anemic, whether she gets married at 18 or 21. She stops being anemic only if she gets better health and nutrition,” John told VOA.
Pointing out that the proposed law will lead to criminalizing many women whose families marry them off at an early age, she said, “It betrays a carelessness and disinterest in women’s empowerment and will leave a large number of women without protection.”
Some women activists call the bill a token gesture that will not empower women. They say that the government should focus on improving access to educational facilities, which remain deficient, especially in the country’s vast rural areas, better nutrition and health care, and ensure safety and security for women.
“There cannot be any gain through a law either educationally or economically or on health indicators. Unless you earmark enough funds to tackle these basic problems, how can you change these issues?” Annie Raja, general secretary of The National Federation of Indian Women, told VOA.
She says if the aim is to implement gender parity, then the government should reduce the marriage age for men to 18.
Others argue that if a girl at 18 is old enough to vote or be treated as an adult if she commits a crime, there is no reason why she cannot marry at that age.
Responding to such criticism, supporters of the bill say that this move should not be seen as a problem but an opportunity. “There are a lot of other recommendations made by the government to facilitate education for girls up to graduation and also to have reproductive health rights made available to all girls,” according to Kumari.
However, she agrees that every arm of society, such as government, political parties or civil society, will have to work to make a higher age for marrying girls acceptable to communities. “Just by changing the law you do not change society or the institution of marriage, which is a social institution accompanied by cultural practices.”
The proposal has also been welcomed by hundreds of young girls, who have been campaigning in the northern Indian state of Haryana to raise the marriage age for women.
“It’s a huge step forward,” said 17-year-old Prachi Chauhan, one of the campaigners. “Such a law will help take away societal and parental pressure to get married soon after turning 18 that many girls face.”
Suhasini Sood contributed to this story.
Researchers in Australia have identified a gene that indicates the kidney has its own way of resisting damage. However, they have also identified a mutation of the gene that can in patients with, for example, diabetes, trigger the development of renal disease.
A gene called VANGL1 has been found to help stop the immune system from attacking the kidney. But Australian researchers say the genetic mutation, which is present in about 15% of the population worldwide, can cause renal disease in patients with diabetes and other autoimmune conditions.
The mutation is highly prevalent among indigenous people on the Tiwi Islands, 80 kilometers from the city of Darwin in the Northern Territory. According to the study, just less than 50% of the islands’ residents have the genetic mutation.
The islands’ recorded rates of kidney disease are four times those of mainland indigenous Australians and about 11 times that of non-Indigenous Australians, according to researchers.
Dr. Simon Jiang is from the John Curtin School of Medical Research at Australian National University. He says the mutation is mostly benign in healthy adults.
“If your body is not inflamed and you are otherwise healthy, it is probably not too much of an issue. It is when you have another condition that occurs on top of it. And so in the Tiwi Islands, rates of infection, of diabetes and probably some immune diseases, are a lot higher than the rest of Australia. And so, when you have that process happening within your body, what is initially a reasonably benign mutation suddenly takes on a new turn and becomes something that is really bad news for the kidney,” Jiang said.
The study could lead to better transplant screening that would identify potential donors who have the genetic mutation.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.
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National Hockey League players will not compete in February’s Beijing Winter Olympics in the wake of 50 NHL games being postponed over COVID-19 issues, according to multiple reports Tuesday.
ESPN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and other newspapers cited unnamed sources in saying the league and the NHL Players Association had reached agreement not to send talent to China.
Without the NHL’s elite millionaire stars, national teams at the Olympics will likely resemble those at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, when minor-league and recently retired players filled out rosters, with the Olympic Athletes from Russia capturing the gold medal.
The NHL and players union had agreed to send players to the 2022 and 2026 Winter Olympics unless league seasons were impacted by COVID-19 postponements.
With Tuesday’s Washington at Philadelphia game being postponed by an outbreak from the visitors, the NHL has been forced to postpone 50 games this season.
Staying home during the period of the Beijing Olympics would open two weeks to reschedule contests and still provide something of a rest for most of the players.
The NHL plans to pause the season after Tuesday’s lone contest, which finds Tampa Bay at Vegas.
Games planned for Wednesday and Thursday were called off ahead of a scheduled three-day Christmas weekend break, which was tweaked to have players return to work on Sunday.
Teams would be off Wednesday through Saturday and return Sunday for testing, with negative tests required to enter team facilities.
On Sunday, the NHL announced that all games involving cross-border travel for US and Canadian clubs would not be played. Nine teams had already shut down operations to the break by Monday.
That’s when concerns rose about the NHL skipping Beijing.
“The NHL and NHLPA are actively discussing the matter of NHL Player participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, and expect to be in a position to announce a final determination in the coming days,” a league spokesman said Sunday.
An advertising-technology billionaire has formally resigned his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and rebuked the faith over social issues and LGBTQ rights in an unusual public move.
Jeff T. Green has pledged to donate 90% of his estimated $5 billion advertising-technology wealth, starting with a donation to a LGBTQ-rights group in the state, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
In an unusual public step, Green said in a Monday resignation letter to church President Russell M. Nelson that he hasn’t been active in the faith widely known as Mormon for more than a decade but wanted to make his departure official and remove his name from membership records.
“I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights,” he wrote. Eleven family members and a friend formally resigned along with him. He will donate $600,000 to the group Equality Utah.
The church didn’t immediately return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday, but in recent years has shown a willingness to engage on LGBTQ rights that is unusual for a conservative faith. While it maintains its opposition to same-sex marriage, the faith didn’t block a 2019 ban on so-called conversion therapy in Utah and in November high-ranking leader Dallin Oaks said in a speech that religious rights and LGBTQ rights can coexist.
Green, for his part, said most church members “are good people trying to do right,” but he also worries about the faith’s transparency around its history and finances.
Green, 44, now lives in Southern California. He is the CEO and chairman of The Trade Desk, an advertising technology firm he founded in 2009.
He also mentioned concerns about a $100 billion investment portfolio held by the faith. It was the subject of an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower complaint in 2019, from a former employee who charged the church had improperly built it up using member donations that are supposed to go to charitable causes.
Leaders have defended how the church uses and invests member donations, saying most is used for operational and humanitarian needs, but a portion is safeguarded to build a reserve for the future. The faith annually spends about $1 billion on humanitarian and welfare aid, leaders have said.
The church has also come under criticism for conservative social positions. Women do not hold the priesthood in the faith, and Black men could not until the 1970s.
In recent years, though, the faith has worked with the NAACP and donated nearly $10 million for initiatives to help Black Americans. It has also worked with Equality Utah to pass a state LGBTQ nondiscrimination law, with religious exemptions.
Another prominent onetime Latter-day Saint sued the faith this year, accusing it of fraud and seeking to recover millions of dollars in contributions. James Huntsman is a member of one of Utah’s most prominent families and brother of a former governor. The suit was later tossed out.
New Orleans is shortening parade routes for the upcoming Mardi Gras season because there are fewer police officers, medics and other first responders to handle the crowds, officials said Tuesday.
The city canceled Mardi Gras parades this past February because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 parade crowds are considered a big reason that New Orleans was an early pandemic hot spot.
“The big news and the best news is that Mardi Gras is returning to the city of New Orleans and to the world in 2022,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.
As city officials announced their Carnival plans, Governor John Bel Edwards said Tuesday that he’s again extended Louisiana’s public health emergency, which was first enacted by the Democratic governor in March 2020.
He’s modified it several times since then, and the latest version contains few restrictions for businesses and no statewide mask mandate.
But Edwards announced that agencies led by his Cabinet secretaries will again start requiring employees and visitors to wear masks inside their offices, including at Office of Motor Vehicle locations around the state.
“While vaccines and booster doses are the strongest tools we have in the fight against COVID, public health experts also agree that masks are an important way to slow the spread of the omicron variant now. This means you should be masking indoors around people who aren’t in your household,” Edwards said in a statement.
The face covering recommendation comes as infectious disease experts say Louisiana appears to be entering its fifth surge of the coronavirus outbreak, driven by the fast-spreading omicron variant of the virus. The number of new cases of COVID-19 has doubled over the past week, and hospitalizations of patients with the coronavirus illness are starting to grow again.
That hasn’t derailed Mardi Gras plans in New Orleans, however.
Weeks of Carnival season parades lead up to Fat Tuesday, which will be on March 1. Members of each parade krewe pay for that group’s parade.
Some krewes have not decided whether to roll, but none has given pandemic guidelines, mandates or restrictions as the reason for their uncertainty, Cantrell said.
“Clearly it’s about the bottom line and the impacts COVID has had on our community and on our economy and particularly on their krewe members. … They pay the price for us to enjoy our Mardi Gras,” the mayor said.
She said krewes will have to follow city pandemic restrictions.
Cantrell noted that “if things go wrong in our city” she might have to change its plans for Carnival and Mardi Gras.
But she said she is confident the city can make it through the omicron variant, flu season and the holiday season.
With 80% of its residents fully vaccinated, New Orleans is a national leader, she said.
The Africa Football Cup of Nations tournament is scheduled to begin January 9 at Olembe Stadium in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.
On Monday, Confederation of African Football President Patrice Motsepe visited the 60,000-seat stadium, which is still under construction less than three weeks before the opening match.
Motsepe says construction workers are improving on the stadium and he is optimistic Cameroon will be ready for the opener.
“There is a huge commitment and a focus to make sure that some of those issues that are being put in place in the next few days, good progress will be made,” he said. “My message is to Africa and to the world that the people of Cameroon are ready to show the world the best of African Football and also the best of African hospitality. It is going to be a successful AFCON, so come January 9, there must be a kickoff.”
Motsepe’s visit came amid persistent local media reports that Olembe Stadium would not be ready.
Bulldozers dug and arranged roads at the stadium entrance on Tuesday, a day after Motsepe’s visit. Several dozen young people transported and planted trees, flowers and grass that officials say will beautify the facility.
Among the workers is 35-year-old building construction engineer Luc Eloundou. Eloundou says he is not sure the entire parking lot of the stadium will be complete within a week as requested by the government of Cameroon.
“Last month we were about 1,000 people here, but now I am seeing up to 300. Workers are not coming. Why? They work without money. Some borrow money to come and work but they don’t have their salaries. The work is much, even in more than a year we will not be able to finish the work,” he said.
Jean Fradique, technical director of the stadium, says 2,000 workers have been recruited to make sure that before a joint CAF/FIFA control mission visits, the stadium is ready for the opening match.
Fradique says workers are arranging parking spaces for cars that will bring football fans, players and match officials to the stadium. He says the huge mobilization of over 2,000 workers and several hundred compactors and construction equipment within the past two months is indicative that Cameroon is bent on finalizing construction work within one week.
Stadium construction began in March 2017. The government said the facility would be ready for the 2020 AFCON. But in January 2020, the CAF postponed the tournament for a year, saying Cameroon was not ready.
The CAF moved the tournament again in January 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Local media in Cameroon say between COVID-19 and construction delays, the tournament may be postponed yet again. For now, the CAF says the tournament is on.
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The United Nations estimates 7.7 million people, half of Somalia’s population, will require humanitarian assistance and protection in 2022.It is appealing for $1.5 billion to assist 5.5 million of the most vulnerable among them.
Decades of conflict, recurrent climatic shocks, disease outbreaks, and increasing poverty, including the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are devastating the lives and livelihoods of people in Somalia.
They are facing acute hunger. Many are on the verge of famine because the rains have failed to fall for a third year in a row.U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula says 80 percent of the country is affected by drought.
Speaking on a video link from the capital Mogadishu, he tells VOA 169,000 people have abandoned their homes in search of water, food, and grazing land for their livestock.
“When I visited the countryside, I saw many dead animals,” he said. “The people I met with, including one woman told me that she lost all her 200 goats, and two camels and her donkey and she and her three children are living under a tree…and the elderly people I met with told me they had not seen this level of drought since the 1970s and 80s.”
Abdelmoula says conditions in Somalia are dire. He expresses concern about a less than adequate response to the U.N. appeal given the fierce competition for funds. He says Somalia has been pushed to the back burner because of emerging crises elsewhere, especially Tigray in northern Ethiopia and Afghanistan.
He adds the international community would be making a big mistake were it to abandon Somalia.
“When this happened back in the 90’s, some serious consequences ensued. This includes mass migration, starvation and famine, the emergence of al-Shabab and the political instability and widespread piracy,” he said.
Recent projections indicate drought could displace up to 1.4 million Somalis in the coming six months, adding to the nearly 3 million people already displaced by conflict and natural disasters.
Humanitarian coordinator Abdelmoula says at least 1.2 million children under age five are likely to be acutely malnourished in 2022.He warns some 300,000 children projected to be severely malnourished are at risk of dying without imminent assistance.
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New York’s largest convention center hosts about 175 events each year that draw hundreds of thousands of people to the city. To help offset the environmental impact, the owners have installed an urban farm and solar farm…on the building’s roof. Tina Trinh reports.
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U.S.-based drugmaker Moderna says that initial laboratory tests show a third shot of its current COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus.
In a statement released Monday, the company said a half dose of the vaccine given as a booster increased the antibodies levels 37 fold, while a full dose of the vaccine — which is used in the full dose regimen — boosted antibodies levels over 80 fold.
Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, says the study — which has not been peer-reviewed — proves the company’s vaccine is effective, “extremely safe” and “will protect people through the coming holiday period and through these winter months, when we’re going to see the most severe pressure of omicron.”
U.S. federal health officials authorized both the Moderna and the two-shot Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to be used as booster shots for all adults last month.
Moderna’s announcement comes a day after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the United States, warned that omicron is “raging through the world” as he urged Americans to get vaccinated and get a booster shot.
The World Health Organization said Sunday that omicron, which was first detected last month in a handful of southern African nations, is now present in 89 countries.
New York state marked a third consecutive day of record-setting new infections Sunday with nearly 22,500 confirmed cases. The rising number of infections has triggered closures of numerous theater shows and restaurants in New York City in a scene reminiscent of March 2020 when COVID-19 first struck. Residents have been standing in long lines for hours at city-run testing sites.
The outbreak continues to affect three of the major professional sports leagues in North America. The National Hockey League postponed a total of 27 games Saturday and Sunday, and has postponed at least 12 more games through December 23 because they involved travel between the U.S and Canada. The National Football League was forced to move a handful of Sunday games to Monday and Tuesday due to widespread COVID-19 outbreaks among several teams, with more than 100 players combined entering the league’s health and safety protocols.
And the National Basketball Association announced it was postponing five games Sunday with players on a handful of teams testing positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total number of postponed games to seven.
The surge has also reached the halls of the U.S. Congress, with two prominent lawmakers, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, both announcing Sunday they had tested positive. Warren and Booker each said they had been vaccinated and gotten a booster shot.
Meanwhile, Israel announced Monday that it has banned travel to 10 nations — Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States — due to the rapid spread of omicron. Under the country’s “red list,” Israelis who return from these nations are required to quarantine, even if they are vaccinated.
Israel’s health ministry reported 175 cases of the new variant on Sunday
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai is denying that she wrote a social media post last month accusing a now-retired Communist Party official of sexually assaulting her.
In a video posted Sunday on the website of the Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, Peng told the interviewer she has “never said or written anything accusing anyone of sexually assaulting me,” a point she said she needed “to emphasize…very clearly.”
Peng said in the interview that her initial post on the social media site Weibo was “a private matter” and told the interviewer she was able to move about freely.
The newspaper said the video was taken Sunday in Shanghai, where the 35-year-old Peng was attending a skiing competition. The video showed her standing alongside former National Basketball Association star Yao Ming and other Chinese sports figures.
Peng, a former Olympian who won titles at Wimbledon and the French Open, said on November 2 that former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli coerced her into sex before it evolved into an on-off consensual relationship. Her post was quickly deleted and she vanished from public view for several days. She eventually appeared at a tennis event and spoke by video with Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee president, during which she said she was safe.
Her disappearance sparked concern among some of the world’s top tennis players, including Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, Billie Jean King and Novak Djokovic, and
The Women’s Tennis Association suspended all of its sponsored tournaments in mainland China and Hong Kong.
A Chinese state-run media outlet then released a statement it said was an email Peng had sent to WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon in which she denied the allegations and insisted she was not missing or unsafe, but just “resting at home, but Simon questioned the email’s legitimacy and called for an open investigation into Peng’s initial accusations.
“We remain steadfast in our call for a full, fair and transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation of sexual assault,” the WTA said in a statement issued after Peng’s video was posted.
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CNN is closing its offices in the United States to all nonessential employees as COVID-19 cases increase, the network said on Saturday in an internal memo to staff seen by Reuters.
CNN, part of AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia division, will close its offices to all employees who do not have work in the office, the memo said.
“We are doing this out of an abundance of caution,” CNN President Jeff Zucker said in the memo. “And it will also protect those who will be in the office by minimizing the number of people who are there.”
Employees who need to come to the office will be required to wear a mask at all times, CNN said.
The network will also make changes to its studios and control rooms to minimize the number of people at offices, according to the memo.
The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The network had set a tentative return-to-office date in January and it isn’t known if that date will move, the Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
CNN requires all employees to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 to come to office or to work on field with other employees.
In August, the company terminated three of its workers for coming to the office unvaccinated.
“The Netherlands is shutting down again,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Saturday in a televised address. The new measures, beginning Sunday, Rutte said, are because of a “fifth wave” of COVID-19, due to the highly contagious omicron variant.
Under the new rules, all non-essential shops will be closed to at least mid-January. Only two guests will be permitted to visit a household at one time. Four guests, however, will be allowed during the upcoming holidays from Dec. 24-26 and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Schools will be immediately closed until at least Jan. 9.
While the Netherland boasts an 85% inoculation rate of its population, only 9% have received booster shots.
Jaap van Dissel, the chief of the Dutch outbreak management team, said the shutdown will give people time to get their booster jabs and gives hospitals time to prepare for the possible surge in COVID cases.
Other European countries are also moving to reimpose restrictions to contain the variant’s spread.
The new variant has fueled infections in Britain close to the peak levels of early 2021, while other European countries and the United States are also experiencing surges.
Scientists are warning the British government needs to go further to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed amid the surge. The warning comes after the government reimposed an indoor mask requirement and ordered people to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test when entering night clubs or large venues.
Britain’s Health Security Agency said Friday that 65 patients were hospitalized in England with omicron.
In France, the government said it would start inoculating children ages 5-11 beginning Wednesday. As he declared Friday the omicron variant was spreading like “lightning,” Prime Minister Jean Castex proposed requiring proof of vaccination for those entering public establishments.
The measure, which requires parliamentary approval, has triggered plans for protests Saturday in Paris, where the New Year’s Eve fireworks display has been canceled.
Anti-lockdown protests also are planned for Saturday in Turin, Italy.
Egypt has detected its first three cases of the new variant, according to the country’s health ministry. The ministry said Friday the three infected people were among 26 travelers who tested positive for coronavirus at Cairo International Airport.
The ministry did not say where the three came from, but the Masrawy news outlet reported they were among travelers from South Africa, which announced the discovery of the variant on Nov. 25.
In China, Beijing will maintain its relatively strict containment measures, while the rest of the country will remain flexible. “There is no one-fit-for-all policy” for local governments, a Chinese government said Saturday at a news conference.
China has identified two cases of the omicron variant and has mostly contained the spread of COVID-19 since it was first discovered in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
A recent study has found the risk of reinfection with omicron is more than five times higher compared to the delta variant, and it has shown no sign of causing milder symptoms.
“We find no evidence of omicron having different severity from delta,” said the study by Imperial College London. The study noted, however, that data on hospitalizations is still limited.
The study, conducted in England between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11, was based on 333,000 cases of infections involving different variants of the coronavirus.
More than 5.3 million people have died of COVID-19 globally since the coronavirus emerged two years ago, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
Administering vaccines
The center reported more than 8.6 billion doses of vaccines had been administered worldwide as of midday Saturday, a massive logistical campaign complicated by omicron’s surge.
Several countries are racing to accelerate vaccination campaigns as mounting evidence supports the need for booster doses to combat the omicron variant.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that his country would send 15 million doses of vaccines to Africa, where infections are surging and vaccination rates are low. Erdogan made the announcement at a summit of African leaders in Istanbul.
“It is disgraceful for humanity that only 6% of Africa’s population has been vaccinated,” Erdogan said.
A vaccine developed in India, Covovax, was granted emergency approval Friday by the World Health Organization. WHO vaccines chief Mariangela Simao said the approval “aims to increase access particularly to lower-income countries.”
In Europe, European Union governments agreed to order more than 180 million doses of a BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine adapted for omicron, the head of the European Commission said Friday.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday the government plans to accelerate booster shots to around 31 million vulnerable people. He also said he spoke Friday with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla about oral treatments.
South Africa, which first identified the omicron variant, said Friday it would donate about 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to other African countries next year via a medical supplies platform established by the African Union.
Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press and Reuters.
In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn’t been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But that’s small comfort to Ken Trzaska.
Trzaska is president of Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school that canceled classes for days after a ransomware attack last month that knocked critical computer systems offline.
“That first day,” Trzaska said, “I think all of us were probably up 20-plus hours, just moving through the process, trying to get our arms around what happened.”
Even if the United States isn’t currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or kept millions of Americans from filling their gas tanks, the problem hasn’t disappeared. In fact, the attack on Trzaska’s college was part of a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit.
The college’s ordeal reflects the challenges the Biden administration faces in stamping out the threat — and its uneven progress in doing so since ransomware became an urgent national security problem last spring.
Smaller-scale attacks continue
U.S. officials have recaptured some ransom payments, cracked down on abuses of cryptocurrency, and made some arrests. Spy agencies have launched attacks against ransomware groups and the U.S. has pushed federal, state and local governments, as well as private industries, to boost protections.
Yet six months after Biden’s admonitions to Putin, it’s hard to tell whether hackers have eased up because of U.S. pressure. Smaller-scale attacks continue, with ransomware criminals continuing to operate from Russia with seeming impunity. Administration officials have given conflicting assessments about whether Russia’s behavior has changed since last summer. Further complicating matters, ransomware is no longer at the top of the U.S.-Russia agenda, with Washington focused on dissuading Putin from invading Ukraine.
The White House said it was determined to “fight all ransomware” through its various tools but that the government’s response depends on the severity of the attack.
“There are some that are law enforcement matters and others that are high impact, disruptive ransomware activity posing a direct national security threat that require other measures,” the White House statement said.
Ransomware attacks — in which hackers lock up victims’ data and demand exorbitant sums to return it — surfaced as a national security emergency for the administration after a May attack on Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast.
The attack prompted the company to halt operations, causing gas shortages for days, though it resumed service after paying more than $4 million in ransom. Soon after came an attack on meat processor JBS, which paid an $11 million ransom.
Biden met with Putin in June in Geneva, where he suggested critical infrastructure sectors should be “off limits” for ransomware and said the U.S. should know in six months to a year “whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order.”
He reiterated the message in July, days after a major attack on a software company, Kaseya, that affected hundreds of businesses, and said he expected Russia to take action on cybercriminals when the U.S. provides enough information to do so.
Since then, there have been some notable attacks from groups believed to be based in Russia, including against Sinclair Broadcast Group and the National Rifle Association, but none of the same consequence or impact of those from last spring or summer.
‘Whole-of government’ effort
One reason may be increased U.S. government scrutiny, or fear of it.
The Biden administration in September sanctioned a Russia-based virtual currency exchange that officials say helped ransomware gangs launder funds. Last month, the Justice Department unsealed charges against a suspected Ukrainian ransomware operator who was arrested in Poland and has recovered millions of dollars in ransom payments. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, told The New York Times his agency has begun offensive operations against ransomware groups. The White House says that “whole-of-government” effort will continue.
“I think the ransomware folks, the ones conducting them, are stepping back like, ‘Hey, if we do that, that’s going to get the United States government coming after us offensively,'” Kevin Powers, security strategy adviser for cyber risk firm CyberSaint, said of attacks against critical infrastructure.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, have shared a small number of names of suspected ransomware operators with Russian officials, who have said they have started investigating, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
It’s unclear what Russia will do with those names, though Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted the countries have been having a useful dialogue and said “a working mechanism has been established and is actually functioning.”
It’s also hard to measure the impact of individual arrests on the overall threat. Even as the suspected ransomware hacker awaits extradition to the U.S. following his arrest in Poland, another who was indicted by federal prosecutors was later reported by a British tabloid to be living comfortably in Russia and driving luxury cars.
Some are skeptical about attributing any drop-off in high-profile attacks to U.S. efforts.
“It could have just been a fluke,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. He said asking Russia to crack down on large-scale attacks won’t work because “it’s way too granular of a request to calibrate criminal activity they don’t even fully control.”
Top American officials have given conflicting answers about ransomware trends since Biden’s discussions with Putin. Some FBI and Justice Department officials say they’ve seen no change in Russian behavior. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said there’s been a discernible decrease in attacks but that it was too soon to say why.
It’s hard to quantify the number of attacks given the lack of baseline information and uneven reporting from victims, though the absence of disruptive incidents is an important marker for a White House trying to focus its attention on the most significant national security risks and catastrophic breaches.
Victims of ransomware attacks in the past few months have included hospitals, small businesses, colleges like Howard University — which briefly took many of its systems offline after discovering a September attack — and Virginia’s Legislature.
Not if, but when
The attack at Lewis & Clark, in Godfrey, Illinois, was discovered two days before Thanksgiving when the school’s IT director detected suspicious activity and proactively took systems offline, said Trzaska, the president.
A ransom note from hackers demanded a payment, though Trzaska declined to reveal the sum or identify the culprits. Though many attacks come from hackers in Russia or Eastern Europe, some originate elsewhere.
With vital education systems affected, including email and the school’s online learning platform, administrators canceled classes for days after the Thanksgiving break and communicated updates to students via social media and through a public alert system.
The college, which had backups on the majority of its servers, resumed operations this month.
The ordeal was daunting enough to inspire Trzaska and another college president who he says endured a similar experience to plan a cybersecurity panel.
“The stock quote from everyone,” Trzaska said, “is, ‘Not if it’s going to happen, but when it’s going to happen.’”
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The Occupational Health and Safety Administration said Saturday that it would not issue citations tied to its coronavirus vaccination mandate before Jan. 10, so that companies have time to adjust to and implement the requirements.
The federal agency separately said there would be no citations of companies regarding its testing requirements before Feb. 9.
The announcement came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District in Cincinnati decided on Friday that the mandate for large employers could go forward, reversing a previous court decision made after 27 Republican-led states, conservative groups, business associations and some individual companies challenged the mandate.
OSHA said in a statement that it would not issue citations before the listed dates “so long as an employer is exercising reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance with the standard.”
The mandate was previously slated to take effect Jan. 4.
The Biden administration’s vaccine requirement applies to companies with 100 or more employees and covers about 84 million U.S. workers. Employees who are not fully vaccinated have to wear face masks and be subject to weekly COVID-19 tests. There are exceptions, including for those who work outdoors or only at home.
Administration officials estimate that the mandate will save 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations over six months.
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The head of the World Health Organization says the continuing surge of COVID-19 cases is a result of the unequal distribution of vaccines.
Speaking at the First International Conference on Public Health in Africa, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that it has been just over a year since the first COVID-19 vaccines began to be administered.
He said, “A year ago, we all hoped that by now vaccines would be helping us all emerge from the long, dark tunnel of the pandemic. Instead, as we enter the third year of the pandemic, the death toll has more than tripled, and the world remains in its grip. COVID-19 has now killed more than 5 million people. And they’re just the reported deaths.”
Tedros told the virtual conference that the rapid development of not one, but several safe and effective vaccines, is a triumph of science. But he said, “the inequitable distribution of vaccines has been a failure for humanity.”
The WHO chief said that while more than 8.5 billion doses have been administered globally – the largest vaccination campaign in history, only 8% of Africa’s eligible population is fully vaccinated.
“We have often said that as long as vaccine inequity persists, the more opportunity the virus has to spread and mutate in ways no one can prevent or predict. And so, we have omicron,” the director-general said.
Tedros noted, however, that vaccine-sharing programs are “picking up speed.” He said, “In the past 10 weeks, COVAX has shipped more vaccines than in the first nine months of the year combined.”
Egyptian health authorities said they have identified the country’s first cases of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Three people were found to have the variant among 26 travelers who tested positive for coronavirus at Cairo International Airport, the Health Ministry said in a statement late Friday. It didn’t say where the three came from.
The local Masrawy news outlet reported the three were among travelers from South Africa.
The ministry said two of the people infected showed no symptoms, while the third suffered from mild symptoms. The three have been isolated in a Cairo hospital, it said.
Authorities on Friday reported more than 900 confirmed new cases of coronavirus and 43 deaths over the previous 24 hours.
Egypt has reported a total 373,500 cases, including 21,277 fatalities, since the pandemic began.
Pfizer Inc on Friday forecast that the COVID-19 pandemic would not be behind us until 2024 and said a lower-dose version of its vaccine for 2- to 4-year-olds generated a weaker immune response than expected, potentially delaying authorization.
Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said in a presentation to investors that the company expects some regions to continue to see pandemic levels of COVID-19 cases over the next year or two. Other countries will transition to “endemic” with low, manageable caseloads during that same time period.
By 2024, the disease should be endemic around the globe, the company projected.
“When and how exactly this happens will depend on evolution of the disease, how effectively society deploys vaccines and treatments, and equitable distribution to places where vaccination rates are low,” Dolsten said. “The emergence of new variants could also impact how the pandemic continues to play out.”
Pfizer developed its COVID-19 vaccine with Germany’s BioNTech SE, and currently expects it to generate revenue of $31 billion next year. It plans to make 4 billion shots next year.
The drugmaker also has an experimental antiviral pill called Paxlovid which reduced hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk individuals by nearly 90% in a clinical trial.
Three analysts estimate sales of $15 billion to $25 billion for it next year, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Pfizer’s forecast came after the emergence of the omicron variant last month, which has more than 50 mutations compared with the original version of the virus. That has reduced the effectiveness of two doses of the vaccine against infection, and spurred fear of rapid spread around the globe.
Prior to the omicron variant, top U.S. disease doctor Anthony Fauci forecast the pandemic would end in 2022 in the United States.
Pediatric vaccine
The Pfizer vaccine is authorized in the United States for people aged 5 and older. But it said on Friday that its study in children between the ages of 2 and 4 who were given two 3-microgram doses of the vaccine found it did not create the same immune response that a larger dose of the vaccine had in older children.
The 3-microgram dose did generate a similar immune response in children aged 6 to 24 months, the company said. The company said it will now test a three-dose course in both age groups, as well as in older children. It had previously expected data from 2- to 4-year-olds this year but said it did not expect the delay would meaningfully change plans to file for emergency use authorization in the second quarter of 2022.
Pfizer and BioNTech have also been developing a version of their vaccine tailored to combat the quick-spreading omicron variant, although they have not decided whether it will be needed. They expect to start a clinical trial for the updated vaccine in January, Pfizer executives said.
Variant-specific shots, if needed, could boost sales in 2022. The highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus has been det
ected in over 77 countries and has spread to about one-third of U.S. states.The vaccine was around 95% effective in the adult clinical trial, but Pfizer has said that immunity wanes some months after the second dose. Early data suggests that three doses of the shot may be necessary to protect against the omicron variant.