The introduction of a nationwide mental health hotline has increased the numbers of people calling for help in the United States and the need for more counselors to answer their calls. For VOA, Svitlana Prystynska has this story from the Western state of Colorado. Camera – Vladimir Petruniv.
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The World Health Organization is warning of a resurgence of deadly meningitis in Africa because COVID-19 has disrupted lifesaving vaccination campaigns.
The near elimination of the deadly form of meningitis type A in Africa is one of the continent’s biggest health success stories. Over the last 12 years, about 350 million Africans have received a single dose of MenAfriVac, a vaccine designed specifically for the African meningitis belt.
The WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said not a single case of meningitis Group A has been reported on the continent in the past five years.
“Now, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed vaccination campaigns targeting more than 50 million African children, raising the risk that these gains will be reversed,” she said. “In addition, major outbreaks caused by meningitis Group C have been recorded in seven of the African Sub-Saharan meningitis belt countries in the past nine years.”
Moeti noted a four-month outbreak last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo claimed more than 200 lives.
Francois Marc Laforce, director of technical services for the Serum Institute of India, played a pivotal role in the development of the MenAfriVac vaccine at the Serum Institute nearly two decades ago. He said that besides meningitis Group C, Africa currently is contending with residual outbreaks of other forms of meningitis.
“A new vaccine again specifically designed for the African meningitis belt will, hopefully, be prequalified later this year or early next year,” he said. But this vaccine holds the promise of finishing what MenAfriVac began, such that Africa may be the first continent to be free of meningitis epidemics.”
Meningitis is caused by inflammation of the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord. Acute bacterial meningitis can cause death within 24 hours. Young children are most at risk. About half the cases and deaths occur in children under age five.
The WHO launched a new strategy Thursday to defeat bacterial meningitis in the African region by 2030. The plan calls for shoring up diagnosis, surveillance, care, and vaccination. The WHO estimates $1.5 billion will be needed to implement the plan between now and 2030.
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A new malaria vaccine developed by Britain’s University of Oxford is 80% effective in preventing infection, according to trial results published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal. Scientists say it represents a huge breakthrough that has the potential to save millions of lives and eventually eradicate the disease.
The vaccine, named R21/Matrix-M, had already shown encouraging trial results after three primary doses. Maintaining that immunity has always been a big challenge and the latest trial shows that a booster dose is effective, explained Professor Adrian Hill, the director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and co-author of The Lancet paper.
“The technology has been complex to develop because we need very strong antibody responses to get protection against malaria and those antibodies, like all responses, decline over time,” Hill told VOA.
“One of the worries was that this would be short-term protection and only last for a few months. That’s definitely not the case with the data we’re releasing today,” Hill said. “And indeed, 80% efficacy in the second year of follow up after a booster dose is really very encouraging in that respect.”
The latest phase II trial involved 450 children between 5 and 17 months old, recruited from the Nanoro region in Burkina Faso. The results show a higher strength booster dose was 80% effective in preventing malaria infection. No serious side effects were seen.
“This is a parasite we’re trying to vaccinate against. It’s not a virus. It’s got thousands of genes. [So it’s] complex to design a vaccine,” Hill said. “Over 100 have been in clinical trials and this looks like the best data so far. So we’re excited.”
The Serum Institute of India, which has produced billions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, is producing the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine. It has signed an agreement to rapidly scale up production if the vaccine receives World Health Organization (WHO) approval in coming months.
“We’re trying to do something similar with malaria, to produce a low-cost vaccine — a few dollars a dose — and to manufacture that really upscale so we can get 100 million doses or more out there as soon as possible,” Hill told VOA.
Malaria killed an estimated 627,000 people in 2020, the most recent available data. The majority are children under five years old in sub-Saharan Africa.
The WHO approved the first-ever malaria vaccine in October of last year, called RTS,S. But R21 may offer even greater hope, said Hill.
“A vaccine with high efficacy like this should be able to save hundreds of thousands of lives a year and ultimately millions of lives over the next decade or so,” he said. “After we get a vaccine rolled out for that very vulnerable population, we’ll be looking at a travelers’ vaccine and then we’ll be looking at a vaccine that could actually eliminate regionally and eradicate globally this terrible disease.”
Results from the ongoing phase III trial involving 4,800 children are due later this year and it’s hoped that mass production and rollout can begin in 2023, following WHO approval.
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Companies that accept U.S. funding under a plan to build up America’s computer chip-making capacity will be barred from establishing advanced fabrication facilities in China for 10 years, the administration of President Joe Biden announced this week.
The Commerce Department rolled out its plan to distribute $50 billion provided by the CHIPS Act, which Biden signed into law last month. In an appearance at the White House on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the rules include specific language on transferring technology to China.
“Companies who receive CHIP funds can’t build leading-edge or advanced technology facilities in China for a period of 10 years,” she said. “Companies who receive the money can only expand their mature node factories in China to serve the Chinese market.”
Mature node factories refer to semiconductor fabrication facilities that only produce older technology that is already widely available.
Raimondo reminded her audience of the semiconductor supply shortage during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “We saw the impact of the chip shortage on American families when car prices drove a third of inflation because of lack of chips, factory workers were furloughed, household appliances were often unavailable, all because of a lack of semiconductors.”
“With this funding, we’re going to make sure that the United States is never again in a position where our national security interests are compromised or key industries are immobilized due to our inability to produce essential semiconductors here at home,” she said.
Low US capacity
The CHIPS Act is a response not just to the computer chip shortage that snarled global supply chains during the pandemic but also to the perceived national security threat that a lack of domestic semiconductor manufacturing presents.
According to the Commerce Department, the U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s most advanced computer chips but does not produce any of them. As for less advanced chips, the U.S. consumes 30% but manufactures only 13%.
Because advanced chips are used not only in consumer goods but in weapons systems and other technology important to national security, the federal government worries that global adversaries could choke off supply in the event of a conflict.
For example, a large percentage of the chips the U.S. imports come from Taiwan, which has come under increasingly serious threat from China, whose government claims the island nation as part of its country.
‘Unusual’ policy
James A. Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told VOA that the 10-year time limit is “an unusual” policy for the U.S., and it probably represents an effort to find middle ground between technology companies and China hawks in the federal government.
“I can’t think of any other case where we’ve put a time limit like that. … It’s not how we usually do things internationally,” he said.
The Commerce Department, Lewis said, found itself between technology companies reluctant to be completely cut off from one of the world’s largest markets on one side, and Congress and the White House on the other. Lawmakers and President Biden are both eager to prevent China from producing cutting-edge semiconductors.
Technology restrictions not new
Although a decade-long ban on the manufacture of advanced semiconductor technology in China may be stricter than expected, U.S. companies are used to facing restrictions on the export of critical technology.
“U.S. companies will follow U.S. law. They will continue to sell chips to Chinese buyers in accordance with existing law,” Doug Barry, a vice president with the U.S.-China Business Council, told VOA in an email exchange. “They have long been required to apply for export licenses to sell certain kinds of chips and have halted sales to specific China entities when U.S. law required them to do so.”
Barry said that his organization’s members “support the policies of a strong indigenous semiconductor industry and robust national security.”
He added: “The key for preserving U.S. competitiveness in important technologies is to narrow the scope of export and investment controls, and to consult regularly with the business community to avoid unintended policy consequences.”
Chinese embassy responds
In a reply to a query from VOA, the Chinese embassy in Washington emailed a response to the measure from spokesperson Liu Pengyu.
“The Chinese side opposes the relevant Act’s intervention in and restriction on economic, trade and investment cooperation of the global business community,” Liu said. “The Act which includes terms limiting relevant companies’ normal investment and trade in China and normal China-U.S/ sci-tech cooperation. It would distort the global semiconductor supply chains and disrupt international trade. China is firmly against that.”
In conclusion, Liu said, “The U.S. politicizes, instrumentalizes and weaponizes tech and trade issues, and engages in tech blockade and decoupling in an attempt to monopolize the world’s advanced technologies, perpetuate its hegemony in the sci-tech sector, and damage the closely-knit global industrial and supply chains. Such moves would hurt others without benefiting oneself.”
A bifurcated future
Lewis, of CSIS, said the 10-year ban strengthens the possibility that China will simply go its own way, investing in the capacity to produce its own technology, perhaps to standards that would not be compatible with Western technology.
Were it to do so, it might find willing customers in countries such as Russia and Iran, which find themselves on the receiving end of U.S.-backed sanctions. China might also begin to compete with the U.S. in other markets.
“If nothing changes, by 2030 we’ll see a bifurcated system,” Lewis said. “It’s a new kind of competition. There’ll be Chinese stuff made on Chinese standards that they’ll want to sell to the global market. And there will be Western stuff made on Western standards that they’ll want to sell to the global market.”
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A panel of federal health advisers voted Wednesday to recommend approval for an experimental drug to treat Lou Gehrig’s disease, a remarkable turnaround for the much-debated medication that was previously rejected by the same group earlier this year.
The Food and Drug Administration advisers voted 7-2 that data from Amylyx Pharma warranted approval, despite hours of debate about the strength and reliability of the company’s lone study. The FDA is not required to follow the group’s advice, but its positive recommendation suggests an approval is likely later this month.
The FDA has approved only two therapies for the disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, which destroys nerve cells needed for basic functions like walking, talking and swallowing.
Patients support drug
ALS patients and their families have rallied behind Amylyx’s drug, launching an aggressive lobbying campaign and enlisting members of Congress to push the FDA to grant approval.
Despite a negative review published by FDA’s internal scientists ahead of the meeting, a majority of the outside panelists said Amylyx had presented enough evidence to suggest the drug is helping patients live longer. The same group of neurology experts narrowly voted against the drug in March, because of concerns about missing data and other issues in the company’s study.
“To deprive ALS patients of a drug that might work, it’s probably not something I would feel terribly comfortable with,” said Dr. Liana Apostolova of Indiana University’s School of Medicine, who voted for approval. “At the previous meeting it wasn’t that clear and it’s still questionable.”
Amylyx also appeared to benefit from an unusual exchange in which a company executive — at the FDA’s request — committed to pull the drug from the market if its benefits aren’t confirmed by a large, ongoing study.
The FDA has the power to force companies to pull drugs from the market, though it’s generally faster if drugmakers voluntarily take that step. In cases where companies resist removal the regulatory process can drag on for years.
New data prompts second look
Wednesday’s vote concluded a rare second meeting to review several new statistical analyses submitted by Amylyx in support of the treatment’s benefit in slowing disease and extending life.
The ALS drug review is being closely watched as an indicator of FDA’s flexibility in reviewing experimental medications for the terminally ill and its ability to withstand outside pressure.
Amylyx conducted one small, mid-stage trial of its drug that showed some benefit in slowing the disease, but it was plagued by missing data and other problems, according to FDA reviewers.
“The final result — for a single study — is borderline and not very statistically persuasive,” FDA statistician Tristan Massie told panelists.
Company says data shows drug extends life
The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company says follow-up data gathered after the study concluded showed the drug extended life. Patients who continued taking the drug survived about 10 months longer than patients who never took the drug, according to a new company analysis.
Panelists favoring the drug cited that data, along with the drug’s mild side effects, to suggest there would be little downside for patients even if it doesn’t ultimately slow ALS.
Hanging over the review is FDA’s controversial approval of the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm last year, which was reviewed by the same agency scientists and outside advisers.
In that case, the FDA disregarded the overwhelmingly negative vote by its outside advisers, three of whom resigned over the decision. The agency’s approval — which followed irregular meetings with drugmaker Biogen — is under investigation by Congress and federal inspectors.
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Apple on Wednesday avoided price hikes of its best-selling iPhones during its biggest product launch of the year, focusing on safety upgrades rather than flashy new technical specs, with the exception of a new adventure-focused watch.
The iPhone maker leaned into safety technologies, like the ability to detect a car accident and summon a rescue from a remote mountaintop, to add allure to its devices. Apple positioned itself as the brand to allow users to pursue excitement and adventure — with a safety net.
Such intangible features “are the things that make you not just want the products for yourself, but also for loved ones,” said Ben Bajarin, head of consumer technologies at Creative Strategies. “Ultimately, the increased emphasis on safety — safety as a service — is super interesting as a value proposition.”
The iPhone lineup that generates half of Apple’s sales got tweaks to cameras and battery life, though only the iPhone Pro lineup got an upgrade to a completely new processor chip.
Prices of the high-end iPhone 14s are the same as last year’s iPhone 13 models. But Apple dropped its cheapest option, the iPhone Mini, meaning its lowest-priced model now costs $100 more than last year.
The iPhone 14 will start at $799 and the iPhone 14 Plus at $899 and be available for preorder starting Friday. The iPhone Pro will cost $999 and the iPhone Pro Max $1,099 and be available September 16.
“They decided to essentially maintain pricing despite inflationary pressure,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte.
Nintendo and T-Mobile have also said they will hold off on price increases.
Satellite SOS feature
Apple said its satellite SOS feature will work with emergency responders. It also said that users will be able to use its FindMy app to share their location via satellite when they have no other connectivity.
The service will be free for two years with the iPhone 14. Apple did not say what would happen after that period.
Shares in Globalstar jumped 20% on Wednesday after the satellite services firm announced it would be the satellite operator for Apple’s emergency SOS service.
The Cupertino, California-based company also showed a trio of new Apple Watches, including a new Watch Ultra model aimed at extreme sports and diving and designed to challenge sports watch specialists such as Garmin and Polar.
On the watch front, the $799 Ultra has a bigger battery to last through events like triathlons and better waterproofing and temperature resistance to operate in outdoor environments, as well as better GPS tracking for sports.
All of the watches, which include a Series 8 priced the same as last year and an updated, cheaper SE model, and new iPhones will have the ability to detect when a user has been in a serious car crash and call emergency services.
Ovulation detection
The new Series 8 watch has a temperature sensor that will retroactively detect ovulation. The company emphasized the privacy approach of its cycle tracking. Privacy and reproductive health data have become a focus for tech companies in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.
But while accessories like the Apple Watch have driven incremental sales from Apple’s existing user base, the iPhone remains the bedrock of its business with 52.4% of sales in its most recent fiscal year, and investors continue to wonder what, if anything, will be the company’s next major product category.
Analysts expect that category to be a mixed reality headset that could come to market as soon as next year, but Apple gave no hints at those potential products on Wednesday.
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Elon Musk will be able to include new evidence from a Twitter whistleblower as he fights to get out of his $44 billion deal to buy the social media company, but Musk won’t be able to delay a high-stakes October trial over the dispute, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, denied Musk’s request to delay the trial by four weeks. But she allowed the billionaire Tesla CEO to add evidence related to whistleblower allegations by former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko, who is scheduled to testify to Congress next week about the company’s poor cybersecurity practices.
Twitter has sued Musk, asking the Delaware court to force him to go through with the deal he made in April to buy the company. Musk has countersued and a trial is set to start the week of October 17.
Musk’s legal team has argued that the allegations made by Zatko to U.S. officials may help bolster Musk’s claims that Twitter misled him and the public about the company’s problem with fake and “spam” accounts. Zatko, a well-known cybersecurity expert known by his hacker handle ” Mudge,” said he was fired in January after raising flags about Twitter’s negligence in protecting the security and privacy of its users.
The judge’s ruling followed an hourslong hearing Tuesday at which attorneys for Musk and Twitter argued with each other about the merits of Zatko’s claims and the pace at which both sides are producing evidence ahead of the trial.
Twitter’s attorneys sought to downplay the relevance of Zatko’s allegations to the merger dispute, arguing that an initial 27-page complaint he sent to Twitter and a later retaliation claim made no mention of the “spam bot” issues that Musk has given as a reason to terminate the deal. Zatko “never said a word about spam or bots” until his July whistleblower complaint, said Twitter attorney William Savitt.
Twitter has argued for weeks that Musk’s stated reasons for backing out were just a cover for buyer’s remorse after agreeing to pay 38% above Twitter’s stock price shortly before the stock market stumbled and shares of the electric-car maker Tesla, where most of Musk’s personal wealth resides, lost more than $100 billion of their value.
McCormick, the judge, said Wednesday the newly published whistleblower complaint gave Musk’s team grounds to amend its countersuit but she declined to weigh in on the details.
“I am reticent to say more concerning the merits of the counterclaims at this posture before they have been fully litigated,” she wrote. “The world will have to wait for the post-trial decision.”
McCormick, however, sided with Twitter’s concerns that delaying the trial would make it harder for the company to get back to business.
“I am convinced that even four weeks’ delay would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify,” she wrote.
In afternoon trading, Twitter shares added 5.5% to $40.77.
One of history’s most famous composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, has a Ukrainian connection. His son lived in Lviv for three decades. So Ukrainian musicians, with a bit of help from the caretakers of Mozart’s legacy, put together a very special tribute. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych
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As the world grapples with multiple climate-related disasters on different continents, a watchdog group in Washington is pressing the Biden administration to take more aggressive action to reduce emissions in the United States.
A report, issued by the liberal-leaning Revolving Door Project, outlines a wide number of actions that the group believes President Joe Biden can implement by executive action, meaning that he would not need to coax cooperation from U.S. lawmakers currently preoccupied with looming midterm elections.
Headlines this week underscore the challenges facing the planet. As the report was issued, Pakistan was suffering from catastrophic floods that have displaced tens of thousands and ravaged crops; a powerful typhoon recently dropped a meter of rain on South Korea; China is suffering its worst heat wave on record; and the western United States is gripped by a drought of historic severity.
The Environmental Protection Agency may seem like the most obvious focus of the report’s attention, and the list of steps that agency might take is indeed long. However, the report also homes in on actions available to many other federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, that are not typically associated with climate change issues.
“Every part of the government should be thinking very much about how to consider climate in the work that they do — how to incorporate it into their existing mandates to protect their various domains, and to be thinking and acting very creatively and aggressively on this,” Max Moran, a research director at the Revolving Door Project and one of the report’s authors, told VOA.
EPA urged to act
The Environmental Protection Agency has the most expansive authority over climate-related issues in the federal government, but its enforcement capacity was significantly reduced during the Trump administration.
“The EPA can be one of the most powerful governmental actors in the United States when it is given the resources and direction to effectively implement its mandate,” the Revolving Door Project notes. “It has broad authority to police pollution and environmental degradation to minimize environmental destruction and public health impacts.”
The report urges the agency to be more aggressive in punishing corporations that violate environmental regulations, pointing out that penalties handed out by the agency often involve companies hiring their own auditors to assure future compliance or funding projects that have little to do with mitigating the damage they have caused.
As the agency works to reinvigorate its enforcement capacity, the report recommends multiple other ways in which it can step up its policing of rules regulating some of the most environmentally damaging emissions, including the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
Departments of Interior, Justice
The report notes a number of measures available to the Department of the Interior to reduce carbon emissions, one of the largest of which is capping abandoned oil and gas wells. Although old wells are not commercially viable, they still emit thousands of tons of methane into the environment every year, and capping them would greatly reduce the volume of gas that escapes.
In addition, the report calls on Interior to stop leasing federal land to energy companies for further development of fossil fuel extraction operations and to reform mining regulations to reduce damage to the environment from factors including the degradation of water sources and the runoff of dangerous chemicals.
The Department of Justice, the report argues, is insufficiently aggressive about prosecuting criminal violations of environmental laws.
“Environmental litigation is key to ensuring that companies and individuals comply with environmental laws,” it says. “Without the threat of litigation, the laws protecting ecosystems and public health are toothless.”
It notes that one government database identifies “thousands of facilities across the country with multiple significant violations” that have remained out of compliance for years without facing prosecution.
Administration shifts climate team
There is reason to believe the Biden administration is prepared to focus more on executive action than it has in the first year and a half of the president’s term. For most of that time, Biden was trying to negotiate with a balky Congress on major environmental legislation, and aggressive action by the executive branch might have made agreement more difficult to reach.
Now, however, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which included the largest investment in green energy and other climate-conscious programs in history, the likelihood of further legislation is unlikely in the near term.
Last week, Biden announced that he has hired a veteran Washington insider, John Podesta, as a senior adviser in charge of rolling out the billions in tax incentives and other programs put in place by the IRA.
At the same time, Biden announced the promotion of Ali Zaidi to national climate adviser, to replace the departing Gina McCarthy. Zaidi is a veteran of the Obama administration where, for eight years, he served in a variety of posts related to climate policy.
In a statement announcing the nomination, Biden seemed to signal that more executive action is coming.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest step forward on clean energy and climate in history, and it paves the way for additional steps we will take to meet our clean energy and climate goals,” the president said.
While the IRA earned the support of some Republicans in Congress, there is significant resistance in the GOP to greater regulation in general, and greater environmental regulation in particular. If the Biden administration does become more assertive about environmental regulation, Republicans will have little recourse in the near term. However, they are likely to use the issue to try to drive turnout in both November’s midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.
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A multimedia exhibition of African American culture in the Western US state of Colorado includes works by an artist who found new direction during the coronavirus pandemic. VOA’s Scott Stearns has the story from Denver.
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Augmented reality books add new dimensions to storytelling by including animation and sound. VOA’s Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles, California.
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Electronic cigarette maker Juul Labs has agreed to pay nearly $440 million to settle a two-year investigation by 33 U.S. states into the marketing of its high-nicotine vaping products, which have long been blamed for sparking a national surge in teen vaping.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced the deal Tuesday on behalf of the states plus Puerto Rico, which joined together in 2020 to probe Juul’s early promotions and claims about the benefits of its technology as a smoking alternative.
The settlement, which includes numerous restrictions on how Juul can market its products, resolves one of the biggest legal threats facing the beleaguered company, which still faces nine separate lawsuits from other states. Additionally, Juul faces hundreds of personal lawsuits brought on behalf of teenagers and others who say they became addicted to the company’s vaping products.
The states’ investigation found that Juul marketed its e-cigarettes to underage teens with launch parties, product giveaways and ads and social media posts using youthful models, according to a statement.
“We think that this will go a long way in stemming the flow of youth vaping,” Tong said at a news conference at his Hartford office.
“I’m under no illusions and cannot claim that it will stop youth vaping,” he said. “It continues to be an epidemic. It continues to be a huge problem. But we have essentially taken a big chunk out of what was once a market leader, and by their conduct, a major offender.”
The $438.5 million will be paid out over a period of six to 10 years. Tong said Connecticut’s payment of at least $16 million will go toward vaping prevention and education efforts. Juul previously settled lawsuits in Arizona, Louisiana, North Carolina and Washington.
The settlement total amounts to about 25% of Juul’s U.S. sales of $1.9 billion last year. Tong said it was an “agreement in principle,” meaning the states will be finalizing the settlement documents over the next several weeks.
Most of the limits imposed by Tuesday’s settlement won’t immediately affect Juul, which halted use of parties, giveaways and other promotions after coming under scrutiny several several years ago.
Teen use of e-cigarettes skyrocketed after Juul’s launch in 2015, leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to declare an “epidemic” of underage vaping among teenagers. Health experts said the unprecedented increase risked hooking a generation of young people on nicotine.
But since 2019 Juul has mostly been in retreat, dropping all U.S. advertising and pulling its fruit and candy flavors from store shelves.
The biggest blow came earlier this summer when the FDA moved to ban all Juul e-cigarettes from the market. Juul challenged that ruling in court, and the FDA has since reopened its scientific review of the company’s technology.
The FDA review is part of a sweeping effort by regulators to bring scrutiny to the multibillion-dollar vaping industry after years of delays. The agency has authorized a handful of e-cigarettes from Juul’s competitors for adult smokers looking for a less harmful alternative.
While Juul’s early marketing focused on young, urban consumers, the company has since shifted to pitching its product as an alternative nicotine source for older smokers.
“We remain focused on our future as we fulfill our mission to transition adult smokers away from cigarettes—the number one cause of preventable death—while combating underage use,” the company said in a statement.
Juul has agreed to refrain from a host of marketing practices as part of the settlement. They include not using cartoons, paying social media influencers, depicting people under 35, advertising on billboards and public transportation and placing ads in any outlets unless 85% of their audience are adults.
The deal also includes restrictions on where Juul products may be placed in stores, age verification on all sales and limits to online and retail sales.
“These are some of the toughest mandates at any point on any industry,” Tong said, “which is incredibly important because at the end of the day this is about protecting our kids and protecting all of us from a very significant public health risk.”
Juul initially sold its high-nicotine pods in flavors like mango, mint and creme. The products became a scourge in U.S. high schools, with students vaping in bathrooms and hallways between classes.
But recent federal survey data shows that teens have been shifting away from the company. Most teens now prefer disposable e-cigarettes, some of which continue to be sold in sweet, fruity flavors.
Overall, the survey showed a drop of nearly 40% in the teen vaping rate as many kids were forced to learn from home during the pandemic. Still, federal officials cautioned about interpreting the results given they were collected online for the first time, instead of in classrooms.
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Zimbabwe is struggling to contain a measles outbreak that has killed nearly 700 people, most of them children and young people.
Zimbabwe’s government said Tuesday thousands of people have been infected with measles since an April outbreak and 698 people have died, most of them children.
Zimbabwe’s health ministry blames some religious sects for the outbreak. It says some religious groups and traditional leaders preach against getting vaccinations.
Health authorities have since been struggling to contain the infectious viral disease, which causes a rash, cough, and high fever, and can be fatal for unvaccinated children.
“Measles is a very contagious, infectious disease that spreads when a number of unvaccinated children rises beyond critical thresholds,” said Alex Gasarira, the World Health Organization’s representative in Zimbabwe. “So, what we have in Zimbabwe right now is because the number of unvaccinated children has risen because of several factors: Community who are not comfortable to have their children vaccinated, disruption [of] vaccination services because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic.”
The rising death toll is fueling calls in Zimbabwe for mandatory shots to halt the virus, but experts says the effort has to be well organized.
“Compulsory immunization has to be well planned, and it has to cover every child in this country,” said Tinashe Mundawarara of the Zimbabwe Health Law and Policy Consortium. “That would ensure that the best interest of the child is really considered.”
Zimbabwe’s health authorities have not yet made the measles vaccination mandatory and were not immediately available for comment.
But they have been campaigning for all children between six and 15 years old to be immunized and are working with aid groups like the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF, to educate those who resist.
UNICEF Zimbabwe’s Dr. Tajudeen Oyewale said his organization and others are working with the government to contain the outbreak.
“Just like [during] the COVID response, the government of Zimbabwe and partners are taking seriously the current outbreak of measles that we currently have in the country,” he said. “At present, the government has deployed rapid response team supported by UNICEF, WHO and other partners to help better track the incidents of measles. More importantly, UNICEF and our community actors are also working hand in hand to increase awareness of the measles vaccine and also help address community resistance to the vaccination.”
The measles outbreak was first reported in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland province, which borders Mozambique, and has since spread nationwide.
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The death toll from a measles outbreak in Zimbabwe has risen to almost 700 children, the country’s health ministry has said.
Some are calling for the enactment of legislation to make vaccination mandatory in a country where anti-modern medicine religious sects hold sway on large swathes of the population of 15 million people.
The southern African country’s health ministry announced at the weekend that 698 children have died from measles since the outbreak started in April.
The ministry said 37 of the deaths occurred on a single day on Sept. 1. The health ministry said it had recorded 6,291 cases by Sept. 4.
The latest figures are more than four times the number of deaths announced about two weeks ago when the ministry said 157 children, most of whom were unvaccinated due to their family’s religious beliefs, had succumbed to the disease.
Dr. Johannes Marisa, the president of the Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association, told The Associated Press on Monday that the government should escalate an ongoing mass vaccination campaign and embark on awareness programs targeted especially at anti-vaccine religious groups.
“Because of the resistance, education may not be enough so the government should also consider using coercive measures to ensure that no one is allowed to refuse vaccination for their children,” said Marisa. He urged the government to “consider enacting legislation that makes vaccination against killer diseases such as measles mandatory.”
UNICEF on Monday said it “is deeply concerned” with the number of cases and deaths among children due to measles. The agency said it is assisting the government to combat the outbreak through immunization programs.
The measles outbreak was first reported in the eastern Manicaland province in early April and has since spread to all parts of the country.
Many of the deaths have been of children who were not vaccinated, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said in August.
Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has invoked a law used to respond to disasters to deal with the outbreak.
The government has embarked on a mass vaccination campaign targeting children aged between 6 months and 15 years old and is engaging traditional and faith leaders to support the drive.
Zimbabwe continued vaccinating children against measles even during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, but the drive has been hampered by religious groups that preach against vaccines.
The Christian sects are against modern medicine and tell their members to rely on self-proclaimed prophets for healing.
Church gatherings that have resumed following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions have “led to the spread of measles to previously unaffected areas,” said the health ministry in a statement last week.
Measles is among the most infectious diseases in the world and mostly spreads in the air by coughing, sneezing or close contact.
Symptoms include coughing, fever and a skin rash, while the risk of severe measles or dying from complications is high among unvaccinated children.
Outbreaks in unvaccinated and malnourished populations have been known to kill thousands. Scientists estimate that more than 90% of the population needs to be immunized to prevent measles outbreaks.
The World Health Organization in April warned of an increase in measles in vulnerable countries as a result of a disruption of services due to COVID-19.
In July, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said about 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine immunizations against common childhood diseases, calling it a “red alert” for child health.
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Cambodian Americans in California are coming together at a traditional night market, showcasing Khmer culture and sharing in recovery from past trauma inflicted by the Khmer Rouge. For VOA, Genia Dulot takes us there.
Camera and produced by: Genia Dulot
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Watching the powerful historical testament to the horrors of war and the depths of human cruelty in “The Kiev Trial” at the Venice Film Festival, it can seem that little has changed.
The out-of-competition documentary by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa uses archival footage of a now-forgotten war crimes trial of 15 Germans held in Kyiv in 1946.
But the atrocities that witnesses recount in the black-and-white film has echoes of war crimes that Ukraine accuses Russia of having committed on its soil in recent months.
The International Criminal Court is currently investigating war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine.
“History repeats itself when we do not learn from history. When we don’t study and don’t want to know,” warned Loznitsa, speaking to journalists Sunday.
This year, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February, “we all realized we were (back) 80 years ago,” he said.
“We just started to repeat the same things. And it means we did not learn after the war.”
The trial was held in January 1946, just as the Allies’ groundbreaking Nuremberg Trials against Nazi war criminals were beginning
Stalin sought to use the trials in Kyiv for his own propaganda purposes, Loznitsa said.
The Ukranian director relied on about three hours of footage shot by the Soviets to document the trial, including the arraignment, witness testimony, defense statements and verdict — and finally, the public hanging of the 15 defendants.
The atrocities occurred on different dates and in different places throughout Ukraine, including Babyn Yar, where nearly 34,000 Jews were shot to death in massive pits.
Babyn Yar was the subject of a documentary by Loznitsa last year that played at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Buried alive
In “The Kiev Trial,” witnesses describe the countless horrors inflicted on the local population by the Germans — children shot in their mothers’ arms, the elderly ordered to lie down in pits and shot by drunken firing squads, old men set upon by dogs, people thrown down a mine shaft, patients in a psychiatric hospital shot, and more.
The prosecutor asks one defendant why he felt it necessary to shoot the children in a town that his troops were razing to the ground.
“Because they were all running around the village,” he replies.
A woman testifies how she played dead after the mass shooting at Babyn Yar. After being buried alive in a pit with the dead and wounded, she managed to crawl out and escaped.
All 15 defendants are found guilty and given a sentence of death by hanging.
Gallows are set up in a huge square and a massive crowd assembles to watch the public execution — including the film’s viewers, spectators to the footage.
“It’s very, very tough but it’s important to watch it,” Loznitsa said.
Loznitsa said one of the reasons that Russian forces were committing war crimes against Ukrainians today was because Russia itself was never held accountable for its past actions through the Soviet era, as Germany was.
“Because this kind of trial did not happen, like the Nuremberg Trial, you have this country in such circumstances, how it is now,” he said.
Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, a Russian director who is one of the producers of the film, agreed.
“It’s happening because nothing has changed in Russia, in fact,” said Khrzhanovskiy, who is artistic director of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.
“The head of the country is a KGB guy. Can you imagine that after the Second World War the head of Germany is somebody from the Gestapo?”
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The little-known story of a teenage scientist who passed U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union is the subject of a new documentary that premiered at the Venice Film Festival this week.
A Compassionate Spy, by celebrated U.S. filmmaker Steve James, hopes to reignite debate about nuclear weapons at a time of rising geopolitical tensions.
“Climate change and other issues have taken our attention away from that threat, but it’s always been there and it’s coming back,” James told AFP in Venice.
Ted Hall was just 19 when he was recruited to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II that led to the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapon.
Sympathetic to the Communist cause and fearing a future in which only the U.S. had the bomb, Hall decided to pass designs to Moscow.
The story has been largely forgotten, even though Hall came clean in the last years of his life in the 1990s.
“Many people will no doubt conclude that he should not have done it, that his fears of the U.S. becoming fascist or the U.S. pre-emptively striking the Soviet Union were not grounded,” said James, who is known especially for his landmark 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams.
“But there’s no question he did it for the right reasons — he didn’t do it for profit or fame, he did it because he had a genuine fear of what the U.S. is capable of.
“And ultimately, we’re the only ones who have dropped a nuclear bomb, so it’s not an unreasonable fear.”
Although the FBI long suspected Hall of espionage, it was never able to find conclusive evidence.
But the tension for him and his family was almost unbearable, especially when two other spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed in the U.S. in 1953.
The film makes clear the vastly different attitudes towards Russians in 1944, when the Soviet Union was a wartime ally, seen as heroically standing up to Nazism.
Hall later said he would not have done it had he known about the crimes of Joseph Stalin at the time.
“Maybe he was willfully naive,” said James. “But we have to remember, he was so young.”
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The Washington, D.C., area is multicultural, with embassies, international businesses and a host of ethnic restaurants.
People from Ethiopia, El Salvador, the Caribbean and more live in the city and the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs.
To showcase the food, artisans and traditional dance of these many cultures, the Around the World Cultural Food Festival recently took place for the 6th year. The event is the largest outdoor cultural food festival in the Washington area.
With flags flying, 40 nations were represented at a park in historic Alexandria, Virginia. The event featured African countries, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. Thailand, Lebanon, Jamaica and El Salvador were also included.
Corina Serbanescu, the event manager, said the festival provides the opportunity to learn about various cultures.
“Although the Washington area is multinational,” she said, “people don’t necessarily know about one another’s cultures, including the food.”
Feride Ozkan, owner of Istanbul Kitchen in McLean, Virginia, was giving visitors a taste of Turkish cuisine including chicken borek, made with vegetables and mozzarella cheese, and simit, a Turkish bagel.
“Turkish cuisine consists of a melting pot of cultures brought together over the centuries,” she said. “I’m serving food that I learned to cook from my mom that she learned from her mother.”
As Devin Holum from Washington took a bite of borek made with beef, he said, “I had a good time going to Turkey on vacation a few years ago … and I’m enjoying the food and feeling like I’m back in the country again.”
With a long line at another booth, Sus Grondin-Butler was serving Indonesian chicken satay. Considered a national dish of Indonesia, satay is made from skewered and grilled marinated meat.
“What makes Indonesian food unique is that each of the islands has their own style of cuisine. Some is sweeter, while other food is spicier,” she said. “Since Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, there is also that influence.”
Visitors were also given a taste of cultures through traditional dance performances.
As dancers shimmied and moved their hips, the Raqs El Hob dance company performed Egyptian belly dancing.
Adriane Whalen, artistic director of the Washington-based troupe, said, “There’s the beauty of the dance and the costumes, of course, but I also love that it celebrates women coming together. Some of the moves today can be seen in hip hop and jazz dancing.”
Shortly after, the colorfully clad Armonias Peruanas — which means Peruvian Harmony — kicked up their heels.
Lourdes Curay, the troupe’s director, said, “We have hundreds of dances that are unique from different regions of Peru, and we wanted the audience to see the richness of our country.”
Ricardo Martinez, who grew up in El Salvador, danced to the music.
“You can’t help but get on your feet because the music and dancing are so exciting.”
Another popular performance featured Indian dancers from the Kalavaridhi Center for the Performing Arts in Herndon, Virginia.
Kalavaridhi Center founder Sheela Ramanath was born in India.
“Traditional Indian dancing tells stories about right and wrong and draws a lot from Indian mythology,” she said. “The dances are also connected to nature, where every living creature is respected.”
Besides dance, vendors were showing off their artistic sides.
Henna artist Kavita Dutia immigrated from India to the United States 15 years ago.
“The art of applying henna on hands and feet is a very old custom,” she explained as she painted the design of a leaf on a young woman’s hand with a brown paste. “Henna brings happiness and joy to life.”
“I thought it would be fun to do this,” said Cara Shawly, a college student. “It’s pretty and like getting a tattoo but one you know won’t last forever.”
Items from around the world were being sold at the festival.
Monica Mensah from Ghana was selling traditional clothing and baskets. Her business is called Back to the Roots.
“I am here to showcase Ghana,” she said. “I want everyone to know that Ghana has a beautiful culture with peaceful, friendly and welcoming people.”
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Barack Obama is halfway to an EGOT.
The former U.S. president won an Emmy Award on Saturday to go with his two Grammys.
Obama won the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series, Our Great National Parks.
The five-part show, which features national parks from around the globe, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground.
He was the biggest name in a category full of famous nominees for the award handed out at Saturday night’s Creative Arts Emmys, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough and Lupita Nyong’o.
Barack Obama is the second president to have an Emmy. Dwight D. Eisenhower was given a special Emmy Award in 1956.
Barack Obama previously won Grammy Awards for his audiobook reading of two of his memoirs, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land. Michelle Obama won her own Grammy for reading her audiobook in 2020.
EGOT refers to a special category of entertainers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. To date, 17 people have done it.
The late Chadwick Boseman also won an Emmy for his voice work on Saturday. The Black Panther actor won for outstanding character voiceover for the Disney+ and Marvel Studios animated show What If…?
On the show, Boseman voiced his Black Panther character T’Challa in an alternate universe where he becomes Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy.
It was one of the last projects for Boseman, who died in 2020 of colon cancer at age 43.
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Argentine health officials said Saturday that four people in a clinic in northwestern Tucuman province had died of Legionnaires’ disease, a relatively rare bacterial infection of the lungs.
Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters that Legionnaires’ had been identified as the underlying cause of double pneumonia in the four, who had suffered high fevers, body aches and trouble breathing.
The deaths, all since Monday, occurred in a single clinic in the city of San Miguel de Tucuman.
The latest, on Saturday morning, was that of a 48-year-old man with underlying health problems. A 70-year-old woman who had undergone surgery in the clinic was also a victim.
Seven other symptomatic cases have been identified, all from the same establishment and nearly all involving clinic personnel, provincial officials said.
Of those seven, “four remain hospitalized, three of them under respiratory assistance, and three are under home surveillance, with less complicated clinical symptoms,” said provincial health minister Luis Medina Ruiz on Saturday.
The disease, which first appeared at a 1976 meeting of the American Legion veterans group in the U.S. city of Philadelphia, has been linked to contaminated water or unclean air-conditioning systems.
When the outbreak in Tucuman was first detected, doctors tested the afflicted for COVID-19, flu and hantavirus, but ruled all of them out.
Samples were then sent to the prestigious Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires. Tests there pointed to Legionnaires’.
Vizzotti said authorities are working to ensure the clinic is safe for patients and staff.
Hector Sale, president of the Tucuman provincial medical college, earlier this week described the bacterial infection as “aggressive.”
But he added that it is not normally transmitted person-to-person, and that no close contact of any of the 11 infected people showed symptoms.
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The U.K. will begin its autumn COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the coming weeks after authorizing booster shots made by Pfizer and Moderna that have been modified to target both the original virus and the widely circulating omicron variant.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said Saturday that it had approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in people aged 12 and older after finding it was both safe and effective. The agency authorized the Moderna vaccine last month.
The government will offer the vaccine to everyone age 50 and over, as well as front-line health care workers and other groups considered to be particularly at risk of serious illness as the National Health Service prepares for a surge in infections this winter.
“These innovative vaccines will broaden immunity and strengthen our defenses against what remains a life-threatening virus,” Health Secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement. “If eligible, please come forward for a booster jab as soon as you are contacted by the NHS.”
Previous COVID-19 vaccines targeted the initial strain, even as mutants emerged. In the new “bivalent” boosters, half of the shot targets the original vaccine and half offers protection against the newest omicron variants.
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A cap designed for Black swimmers’ natural hair that was banned from the Tokyo Olympics has been approved for competitive races.
Swimming governing body FINA said on Friday the Soul Cap was on its list of approved equipment.
“Promoting diversity and inclusivity is at the heart of FINA’s work,” executive director Brent Nowicki said in a statement, “and it is very important that all aquatic athletes have access to the appropriate swimwear.”
The London-based Soul Cap brand was designed larger than existing styles to contain and protect dreadlocks, weaves, hair extensions, braids, and thick and curly hair.
Last year, British swimmer Alice Dearing was refused permission to wear a Soul Cap in the 10-kilometer marathon swim in Tokyo, with FINA suggesting the size could create an advantage.
The furor at that decision prompted an apology from the governing body and a promise to review the application.
Soul Cap welcomed the approval that has come more than one year later as “a huge step in the right direction” in a sport that historically has had few Black athletes.
“For a long time, conventional swim caps have been an obstacle for swimmers with thick, curly, or volume-blessed hair,” the company said. “They can’t always find a cap that fits their hair type, and that often means that swimmers from some backgrounds end up avoiding competitions or giving up the sport entirely.
“We’re excited to see the future of a sport that’s becoming more inclusive for the next generation of young swimmers.”
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A protest by a group of HIV-positive people in New Delhi, demanding a regular supply of life-saving antiretroviral therapy drugs across the country, ended this week, after 42 days, as the government has reportedly resumed the interrupted supply of the drugs.
Around 2.3 million people are infected with HIV in India. Since 2004, the government has been providing free antiviral therapy, known as ART, to HIV-positive people in India. The therapy stops replication of the virus, helping patients live longer and cutting the risk of transmission of the virus to others. Around 1.5 million HIV patients depend on the free government-supplied ART drugs.
The demonstration, at the central office of the Health Ministry’s National AIDS Control Organization, or NACO, which manages HIV and AIDS prevention and control programs in India, began in July, after activists claimed the supply of the drugs became irregular, with many medicines no longer available in centers. The activists said many HIV-positive people were only getting drugs for three, four, or five days and others were not getting the drugs at all.
HIV activist Hari Shankar, a leader of the Delhi protest, said this week after withdrawing from the protest that the authorities had resumed the supply of ART drugs to each patient for a month, after a gap of three or four months.
“Our network informed us this week that the ART centers across the country have begun handing out at least one month’s supply of drugs to each patient. They have fulfilled our main demand,” Shankar, a member of the HIV/AIDS activist group Delhi Network of Positive People, or DNP Plus, told VOA Thursday.
In an emailed statement, the health ministry told the VOA last month that there was “no stock-out of drugs” and there were “no instances of disruptions or non-availability of treatment services or ARV medicines at the national and state levels.”
Over 90% of HIV-positive people receiving ART cannot afford to buy the drugs from the market and they were suffering badly because of the crisis of the supply from the ART centers, the activists said during the protest. They also expressed concerns that the drug crisis could lead to many patients becoming fatally ill.
Many HIV-positive people have expressed relief after the NACO resumed its regular supply of ART drugs this week.
“During the crisis, in July and August, I took my daily ART doses after buying the drugs with money borrowed from relatives. I cannot afford to buy them with my meager earnings. I began worrying that very soon I would have to skip my doses,” Khelen, a 45-year-old HIV-positive man, who uses one name and works as a porter in Imphal, the capital of the northeastern state of Manipur, told VOA.
“Now I have heard this week that there is no stock-out of the drugs at the ART centers starting this week. This is truly very happy news for me.”
DNP Plus founder Loon Gangte said that despite resistance from different quarters he and his colleagues had to continue their protest until the authorities met their demand.
“Pressure came from many sides to make us withdraw our protest. But we were very concerned about the health of our hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive brothers and sisters in the country and so we stood our ground and kept insisting that we would not call off our protest until our main demand is met,” Gangte told VOA.
“Now we have happily ended our protest as soon as the ART centers across the country have resumed the regular monthly supply of the drugs to all patients.”
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Jane Fonda said on social media Friday that she has cancer.
“So, my dear friends, I have something personal I want to share. I’ve been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and have started chemo treatments,” the 84-year-old actor wrote in an Instagram post.
“This is a very treatable cancer,” she added, “so I feel very lucky.”
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer that begins in the white blood cells and affects parts of the body’s immune system.
Fonda acknowledged that unlike many, she is privileged to have insurance, and access to the best doctors and care.
“Almost every family in America has had to deal with cancer at one time or another and far too many don’t have access to the quality health care I am receiving and this is not right,” she said.
Fonda said she has begun a six-month course of chemotherapy, is handling the treatments well, and will not let it interfere with her climate activism.
Fonda has dealt with cancer before. She had a tumor removed from her breast in 2010 and has also had skin cancer.
Part of a legendary Hollywood family, Fonda gained fame for both her acting and her activism starting in the late 1960s.
She won Oscars for her performances in 1971′s Klute and 1978′s Coming Home.
She has also starred in the films Barbarella and 9 to 5, and in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie.
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