The number of people going hungry in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has nearly quadrupled in the last two years, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Central America has been battered by an economic crisis. New data released by the U.N.’s World Food Program showed nearly 8 million people across the four countries are experiencing hunger this year, up from 2.2 million in 2018. “The COVID-19-induced economic crisis had already put food on the market shelves out of reach for the most vulnerable people when the twin hurricanes Eta and Iota battered them further,” Miguel Barreto, WFP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement. He was referring to two hurricanes that hit Central America in November. “We’re eating the little food that people give to us,” said Marina Rosado, 70, who along with her son and grandchildren live along a boulevard in the Honduran city of Lima that was inundated by flooding last year. The storms that destroyed their home were the latest blow pushing the family further into hunger, Rosado said, after pandemic-related restrictions limited their ability to collect bottles and cans in the streets to sell to recycling companies. The WFP also noted that 15% of those surveyed by the organization in January 2021 said that they were making concrete plans to migrate — nearly double the percentage in 2018.
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Golfer Tiger Woods suffered injuries in a single-car crash early Tuesday in California. Esha Sarai has more.Produced by: Esha Sarai
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, bookseller and activist who helped launch the Beat movement in the 1950s and embody its curious and rebellious spirit well into the 21st century, has died at age 101. Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco institution, died Monday at his home, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti said. A month shy of his 102nd birthday, Ferlinghetti died “in his own room,” holding the hands of his son and his son’s girlfriend, “as he took his last breath.” The cause of death was lung disease. Ferlinghetti had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine last week, his son said Tuesday. Few poets of the past 60 years were so well known, or so influential. His books sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, a fantasy for virtually any of his peers, and he ran one of the world’s most famous and distinctive bookstores, City Lights. Although he never considered himself one of the Beats, he was a patron and soul mate and, for many, a lasting symbol — preaching a nobler and more ecstatic American dream. “Am I the consciousness of a generation or just some old fool sounding off and trying to escape the dominant materialist avaricious consciousness of America?” he asked in “Little Boy,” a stream of consciousness novel published around the time of his 100th birthday. City LightsHe made history. Through the City Lights publishing arm, books by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and many others came out and the release of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem “Howl” led to a 1957 obscenity case that broke new ground for freedom of expression. He also defied history. The internet, superstore chains and high rents shut down numerous booksellers in the Bay Area and beyond, but City Lights remained a thriving political and cultural outlet, where one section was devoted to books enabling “revolutionary competence,” where employees could get the day off to attend an anti-war protest. “Generally, people seem to get more conservative as they age, but in my case, I seem to have gotten more radical,” Ferlinghetti told Interview magazine in 2013. “Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic.” The store even endured during the coronavirus outbreak, when it was forced to close and required $300,000 to stay in business. A GoFundMe campaign quickly raised $400,000. His poetryFerlinghetti, tall and bearded, with sharp blue eyes, could be soft-spoken, even introverted and reticent in unfamiliar situations. But he was the most public of poets and his work wasn’t intended for solitary contemplation. It was meant to be recited or chanted out loud, whether in coffee houses, bookstores or at campus gatherings. His 1958 compilation, “A Coney Island of the Mind,” sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the U.S. alone. Long an outsider from the poetry community, Ferlinghetti once joked that he had “committed the sin of too much clarity.” He called his style “wide open” and his work, influenced in part by e.e. cummings, was often lyrical and childlike: “Peacocks walked/under the night trees/in the lost moon/light/when I went out/looking for love,” he wrote in “Coney Island.” Ferlinghetti also was a playwright, novelist, translator and painter and had many admirers among musicians. In 1976, he recited “The Lord’s Prayer” at the Band’s farewell concert, immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz.” The folk-rock band Aztec Two-Step lifted its name from a line in the title poem of Ferlinghetti’s “Coney Island” book: “A couple of Papish cats/is doing an Aztec two-step.” Ferlinghetti also published some of the earliest film reviews by Pauline Kael, who with The New Yorker became one of the country’s most influential critics. Personal lifeHe lived long and well despite a traumatic childhood. His father died five months before Lawrence was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919, leaving behind a sense of loss that haunted him, yet provided much of the creative tension that drove his art. His mother, unable to cope, had a nervous breakdown two years after his father’s death. She eventually disappeared and died in a state hospital. Ferlinghetti spent years moving among relatives, boarding homes and an orphanage before he was taken in by a wealthy New York family, the Bislands, for whom his mother had worked as a governess. He studied journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received a master’s in literature from Columbia University, and a doctorate degree from the Sorbonne in Paris. His early influences included Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and Ezra Pound. Ferlinghetti hated war, because he was in one. In 1945, he was a Navy commander stationed in Japan and remembered visiting Nagasaki a few weeks after the U.S. had dropped an atom bomb. The carnage, he would recall, made him an “instant pacifist.” In the early 1950s, he settled in San Francisco and married Selden Kirby-Smith, whom he divorced in 1976. (They had two children). Ferlinghetti also became a member of the city’s rising literary movement, the so-called San Francisco Renaissance, and soon helped establish a gathering place. Peter D. Martin, a sociologist, had opened a paperback store in the city’s North Beach section and named it after a recent Charlie Chaplin film, “City Lights.” When Ferlinghetti saw the storefront, in 1953, he suggested he and Martin become partners. Each contributed $500. Ferlinghetti later told The New York Times: “City Lights became about the only place around where you could go in, sit down, and read books without being pestered to buy something.” ControversiesThe Beats, who had met in New York in the 1940s, now had a new base. One project was City Lights’ Pocket Poets series, which offered low-cost editions of verse, notably Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Ferlinghetti had heard Ginsberg read a version in 1955 and wrote him: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?” a humorous take on the message sent from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman upon reading “Leaves of Grass.” Ferlinghetti published “Howl and Other Poems” in 1956, but customs officials seized copies of the book that were being shipped from London, and Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges. After a highly publicized court battle, a judge in 1957 ruled that “Howl” was not obscene, despite its sexual themes, citing the poem’s relevance as a criticism of modern society. A 2010 film about the case, “Howl,” starred James Franco as Ginsberg and Andrew Rogers as Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti would also release Kerouac’s “Book of Dreams,” prison writings by Timothy Leary and Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems.” Ferlinghetti risked prison for “Howl,” but rejected Burrough’s classic “Naked Lunch,” worrying that publication would lead to “sure premeditated legal lunacy.” RecognitionFerlinghetti’s eyesight was poor in recent years, but he continued to write and to keep regular hours at City Lights. The establishment, meanwhile, warmed to him, even if the affection wasn’t always returned. He was named San Francisco’s first poet laureate, in 1998, and City Lights was granted landmark status three years later. He received an honorary prize from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000 and five years later was given a National Book Award medal for “his tireless work on behalf of poets and the entire literary community.” “The dominant American mercantile culture may globalize the world, but it is not the mainstream culture of our civilization,” Ferlinghetti said upon receiving the award. “The true mainstream is made, not of oil, but of literarians, publishers, bookstores, editors, libraries, writers and readers, universities and all the institutions that support them.” In 2012, Ferlinghetti won the Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize from the Hungarian PEN Club. When he learned the country’s right-wing government was a sponsor, he turned the award down.
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Facebook Inc.’s oversight board has received a “user statement” for the case it is deciding about whether the social media company was right to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, a board spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday. Facebook handed the case to its independent board in January after it blocked Trump’s access to his accounts over concerns of further violent unrest following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by the former president’s supporters. The board’s process gave administrators of Trump’s page the option to submit a statement challenging Facebook’s decision. The spokeswoman said the board would have no further comment until it had issued a decision. The appeal was first reported by the UK’s Channel 4 News. Earlier this month, the oversight board said it was extending the public comment period on the case for a week, citing “high levels of interest.” The oversight board spokeswoman said the board had received more than 9,000 comments on the Trump case, the most the board has had for any case. Several academics and civil rights activists have publicly shared their letters urging the board to ban Trump permanently. Republican lawmakers have railed against the ban and demanded Trump’s accounts be reinstated.
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The European Union and the World Health Organization teamed with the international advocacy organization Global Citizen on Tuesday to host a virtual panel discussion on global recovery of the COVID-19 pandemic.The webcast included leaders from the United States and the African Union, as well as actors and musicians seeking to solicit donations from organizations and individuals. The effort aims to set the stage for the world to bounce back from the pandemic, addressing issues such as vaccine equity, world hunger, the climate crisis and international aid.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a news conference on COVID-19 vaccination plan at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Jan. 8, 2021.In her comments, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed a call by French President Emmanuel Macron’s to donate vaccines to health care workers in Africa.”Vaccines must reach all corners of the planet as soon as possible,” she said.The EU has contributed an additional $606.3 million to the WHO-backed COVAX vaccine cooperative program to supply COVID-19 shots to emerging economies, doubling the bloc’s contribution. Last week, the Biden administration pledged $4 billion to the program.U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry made comments from his office in Washington, saying the recovery discussion represents a “bold plan of action” to get the world through and beyond the pandemic. He said protecting the planet should be part of that plan.South African President Cyril Ramaphosa receives the Johnson and Johnson coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination at the Khayelitsha Hospital near Cape Town, South Africa, Feb. 17, 2021.South African President and African Union chairman Cyril Ramaphosa urged wealthy countries to donate 5% of their vaccine supplies to needy countries, particularly on the African continent.Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish said the pandemic forced her to cancel a world tour after just three shows last year. But she said the pandemic has demonstrated how quickly people adapt. She threw her support behind vaccine equity and urged others to do the same.WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also talked about vaccine equity, saying that just two countries account for half of the 210 million doses administered so far in the world.
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Professional golfer Tiger Woods was involved in a serious car accident Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The car reportedly rolled over near Ranchos Palos Verdes, California, and Woods had to be extracted from the wreckage. Video footage of the crash scene showed a vehicle on its side in a ditch at the bottom of a hill with a badly damaged front end. Pieces of the car were spotted around the wreckage. FILE – Tiger Woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters, at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, April 14, 2019.Woods, who was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where he was being treated for “moderate to critical” injuries, was reportedly the only occupant of the car. “Tiger Woods was in a single-car accident this morning in California where he suffered multiple leg injuries,” Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, told Golf Digest’s Daniel Rapaport. “He is currently in surgery, and we thank you for your privacy and support.” Woods was undergoing treatment of compound fractures on at least one leg, according to NBC News. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Office said the golfer’s injuries were non-life threatening. The Los Angeles Times reported Woods had been traveling at high speed and lost control of the vehicle, crossed over a center divider and rolled several times before coming to a stop. Woods, 45, was in the Los Angeles area for the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational, a tournament run by his charity. The 15-time major tournament winner did not play in the tournament because he was recovering from a December 23 back surgery, the fifth such procedure for one of golf’s all-time greats.
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U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry urged the U.N. Security Council Tuesday to start treating the climate crisis like the “urgent security threat” that it is.“The climate threat is so massive, so multifaceted, that it is impossible to disentangle it from other challenges that the Security Council faces,” Kerry told a virtual summit on climate and conflict.“We bury our heads in the sand at our peril,” he cautioned.His participation at the summit comes just days after the United States officially rejoined the Paris Agreement, reversing a Trump administration decision to leave the landmark pact. Kerry said that was “an inexcusable absence by our country from this debate.”The main international instrument for mitigating climate change is the 2015 Paris Agreement. Signed by virtually every country in the world, it aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and limit the planet’s temperature increase during this century to 2 degrees Celsius, while working to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees. Most of the international climate debate focuses on the environmental impact of global warming, but Tuesday’s meeting was intended to highlight the ripple effect that it has on peace and security.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a speech during a meeting of the German federal parliament, Bundestag, at the Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 18, 2020.“Climate disruption is a crisis amplifier and multiplier,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the 15-nation council. “Where climate change dries up rivers, reduces harvests, destroys critical infrastructure and displaces communities, it exacerbates the risks of instability and conflict.”A Swedish study found in 2018 that eight of the 10 countries hosting the largest U.N. peacekeeping operations were in areas highly exposed to climate change. “Whether you like it or not, it is a matter of when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with the security impacts of climate change,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who chaired the meeting.French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the council name a special envoy for climate security to coordinate its work in this area.“I can only see advantages in having a report from the secretary-general every year to the Security Council on the impact of international security and climate change in order to plan ahead, to warn us, and to make recommendations so we can play our role,” Macron said.But not every member agreed that the council is the right forum for considering climate change.“We agree that climatic changes and environmental problems can exacerbate conflicts,” said Moscow’s Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia. “But are they the root cause? This is rather doubtful.”He said Russia agrees that there is an “urgent need” to respond to climate change, but believes it should be done within specific mechanisms, including the Paris Agreement.
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Orangutans are a critically endangered species and the coronavirus pandemic halted efforts to protect and increase their population. But as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, rescue efforts in Indonesia are back under way.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
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Nigeria’s reported rapes tripled during COVID-19 pandemic to a few thousand, but the U.N. Children’s fund says one in four girls have been victims of sexual violence – meaning countless thousands of rapes are going unreported due to stigma. A Nigerian programmer has created an application for rape survivors to report the attacks and seek help while avoiding stigma. Percy Dabang reports from Yola, Nigeria.Camera: Halley Cromwell Produced by: Jon Spier
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The latest International Labor Organization FILE – Travelers request an Uber ride at Los Angeles International Airport’s LAX-it pick up terminal, Aug. 20, 2020.However, there are a number of downsides to this new form of work. For example, Ryder notes workers sometimes have to pay a commission or a fee just to access the digital labor market. “Workers also frequently struggle to find sufficient well-paid work to earn a decent income, and many do not have access to social protection, and this has become a particular point of concern obviously in the course of the current pandemic. Moreover, workers are often unable to engage in collective bargaining that would allow them to have the way to address some of these issues,” he said.The report finds working hours often can be long and unpredictable. It says half of online platform workers earn less than $2 per hour, women earn less than men and workers in developing countries earn about 60 percent less than those doing the same job in developed countries. Since digital labor platforms operate across multiple jurisdictions, the ILO says international labor standards governing digital platform workers must be enacted. Among its recommendations, authors of the report say self-employed platform workers should have the right to bargain collectively. They say all workers, including platform workers, should have access to adequate social security benefits.
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Malian linguists and braille experts have translated the most widely spoken African language in Mali, Bambara, to braille for the country’s blind. Bambara is spoken and understood by about 15 million Malians, even more than the colonial language, French, making it an important step for blind people. Annie Risemberg profiles a teacher of the new braille translation in this report from Bamako.
Camera: Annie Risemberg
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Linguists and Braille experts in Mali have translated the country’s most widely spoken African language, Bambara, into Braille for the country’s blind. Bambara is spoken and understood by about 15 million Malians, even more than the colonial French, making it an important step for blind people. Moussa Keita has been at the Malian Union of the Blind (UMAV) since childhood — first, as a student, and now, as a teacher. He is one of six instructors who will soon teach Braille in Bambara, the country’s most widely spoken language. Before now, students learned Braille in Mali’s colonial language, French. In the shade of a tree by his classroom on the UMAV campus, Keita explains his pride in Bambara Braille. “When I think of this project, that thought not just of the visually handicapped, but moreover, that thought of Africans, particularly of Malians, to write Braille in their own language … to try and adapt Braille to Bambara, which isn’t even the official language … really, it’s a feeling of pride and joy for us,” he said. Keita’s student, 15-year-old Abdoulaye Kané, explains the usefulness of Bambara Braille to him in the classroom. “Now, if you don’t understand how to write something in French, you can write and read the word in Bambara. Then, you can understand how to write it in French,” he says. Abdoulaye Diallo is a blind physical therapist and a Braille specialist. Diallo writes prescriptions and patient information on paper with a tool called a slate and stylus. The Braille is then translated into written French by clinic staff. Taking a pause from treating patients, Diallo sits behind his clinic and talks about how teaching Braille in Bambara is a breakthrough for students and for blind adults who never had the chance to go to school. “If I’m an adult, illiterate, and I’m going to learn Bambara, but I can see, I learn Bambara, and I can do whatever I want,” he said. “If I’m an adult, but I’m blind, and I don’t know Bambara, I’m in the margins. So, it’s this Bambara [Braille], he says, which will save, which will give autonomy, to all these people who were in the margins. Issiaka Ballo, a linguist expert at the University of Bamako, was contacted in 2019 by a nonprofit group called Sightsavers to spearhead the project to adapt Braille to Bambara. Bambara has more letters than the French alphabet and more intonation, so new letters had to be created — but only within the six points available in the Braille cell. Speaking from the Braille printing room at UMAV, Ballo says blind students in Mali will now have more access to education. “If they can learn these subjects in their language, I think that will only strengthen the knowledge and mastery of science, the knowledge and mastery of literature, the knowledge about the world around us,” he said. In many schools, instruction is done in the local language rather than in French. Ballo says the next step is to translate Mali’s other national languages like Fulani and Songhay into Braille.
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Is it better to give more people partial protection from COVID-19, or maximum protection to fewer people? As limited supplies of vaccines begin rolling out in parts of the world, some experts are suggesting authorities go against the recommended vaccine schedule. Rather than giving two shots spaced three or four weeks apart, they say it would be better to delay the second shot and instead focus on giving as many people their first shots as possible. With an out-of-control pandemic, they say, some protection is better than nothing. And new data suggest that the vaccines work pretty well after one shot. Many experts don’t like the idea, however. Big questions remain about how long protection lasts after the first shot and whether one shot is enough to protect against emerging variants. Experts agree that everyone needs a second shot to get the highest level and longest-lasting protection. The question is how soon after the first. The longer the second shot can wait, the more people can potentially get the first. First shot promising Some new data suggest that the first dose of vaccine provides pretty good protection. The British government Monday released figures showing that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 72% effective against infection after one dose. It reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 75%. In those older than 80, the shot cut the risk of death by more than half. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks with a woman waiting to receive an Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, during his visit at a vaccination center at Cwmbran Stadium in Cwmbran, south Wales, Britain, Feb. 17, 2021.The report follows an Israeli study published last Thursday that showed similar results for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It is welcome news for the British government, which decided to postpone second shots for up to 12 weeks when a new, highly contagious variant drove up COVID-19 cases late last year. “[P]rioritizing the first doses of vaccine for as many people as possible on the priority list will protect the greatest number of at-risk people overall in the shortest possible time,” Britain’s chief medical officers said in a statement announcing the policy December 30.This approach “will have the greatest impact on reducing mortality, severe disease and hospitalizations, and in protecting the NHS (National Health Service) and equivalent health services,” they said. A pharmacist prepares a syringe with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a COVID-19 vaccination site at NYC Health + Hospitals Metropolitan, in New York, Feb. 18, 2021.The British Society for Immunology backed the government’s decision, saying that a longer wait between shots would not make the second one less effective. “Most immunologists would agree that delaying a second ‘booster’ dose of a protein antigen vaccine … by eight weeks would be unlikely to have a negative effect,” the group said in a statement. Durability One big concern, however, is how long protection from one dose lasts. FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md., Dec. 22, 2020.”Although the numbers [from] a single dose do look interesting, the one thing we don’t know is how durable it is,” chief U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said in a briefing Friday. Since the virus is so new and the vaccines are even newer, scientists just don’t have much evidence to go on. But some researchers say they know enough, based on what they have learned from other vaccines. “Once you get good protection, it doesn’t suddenly disappear. It gradually wanes over time,” said Danuta Skowronski, epidemiology lead for influenza and respiratory diseases at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control. “You have the time to make those decisions about the second dose.” “What you don’t have time for is waffling on giving the first dose of vaccine while so many people are dying,” she added. The second shot not only generates a longer-lasting immune response, however. It also ratchets up the strength of the response. That may be especially important with new variants circulating. All the current vaccines are less effective against these variants. But they still seem to prevent the most serious COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and death. “You want enough of a … response that even if you diminish it, you don’t diminish it so much to get out of the realm of protection,” Fauci said. But scientists do not know what that level is. It is also possible that people with less-than-complete protection can help breed tougher variants that undermine the vaccines. However, some note, the virus mutates the more it spreads, and even partial protection will slow that spread. FILE – A South African woman is briefed before taking a COVID-19 test at the Ndlovu clinic in Groblersdal , 200 kms north-east of Johannesburg, Feb. 11, 2021.The variants that have emerged already “arose before any vaccine was there at all,” noted Harvard University epidemiologist William Hanage. Biologists who study viral evolution are “generally comparatively relaxed” about the threat of undervaccinated people breeding variants, Hanage said. “I don’t think that there’s any particular reason to think that a delay is going to produce more vaccine escape variants.”
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The Australian government says Facebook has agreed to allow Australians to resume viewing or sharing news content after the two sides reached an agreement over a proposal to make the digital giants pay domestic news outlets for their content. The two sides announced the deal Tuesday just hours before the Australian Senate was set to begin debate on a set of amendments to a bill that was passed just last week by the lower House of Representatives. The amendments include a two-month mediation period that would give social media giants and news publishers extra time to broker agreements before they are forced to abide by the government’s provisions. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg issued a joint statement with Communications Minister Paul Fletcher saying Facebook will restore Australian news outlets on the social media platform “in the coming days.”An illustration image shows a phone screen with the “Facebook” logo and Australian newspapers in Canberra, Australia, Feb. 18, 2021.Facebook regional director William Easton issued a statement saying the company was “satisfied” the Australian government agreed to the changes and guarantees “that address our core concerns about allowing commercial deals that recognize the value our platform provides to publishers relative to the value we receive from them.” Facebook blocked Australian news content last week despite ongoing negotiations with Canberra. The websites of several public agencies and emergency services were also blocked on Facebook, including pages that include up-to-date information on COVID-19 outbreaks, brushfires and other natural disasters. Australian media companies have seen their advertising revenue increasingly siphoned off by big tech firms like Google and Facebook in recent years. Google had also threatened to block news content if the law were passed, even warning last August that Australians’ personal information could be “at risk” if digital giants had to pay for news content. But the company has already signed a number of separate agreements with such Australian media giants as the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.
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NASA on Monday released the first high-quality video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface. The quality was so good — and the images so breathtaking — that members of the rover team said they felt like they were riding along. “It gives me goose bumps every time I see it, just amazing,” said Dave Gruel, head of the entry and descent camera team. The Perseverance rover landed last Thursday near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater to search for signs of ancient microscopic life. After spending the weekend binge-watching the descent and landing video, the team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared the video at a news conference. The surface of Mars directly below NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is seen using the Rover Down-Look Camera in a combination of images acquired Feb. 22, 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)”These videos and these images are the stuff of our dreams,” said Al Chen, who was in charge of the landing team. Six off-the-shelf cameras were devoted to entry, descent and landing, looking up and down from different perspectives. All but one camera worked. The lone microphone turned on for landing failed, but NASA got some snippets of sound after touchdown: the whirring of the rover’s systems and wind gusts. Flight controllers were thrilled with the thousands of images beamed back — and also with the remarkably good condition of the rover. It will spend the next two years exploring the dry river delta and drilling into rocks that may hold evidence of life 3 billion to 4 billion years ago. The core samples will be set aside for return to Earth in a decade. NASA added 25 cameras to the $3 billion mission — the most ever sent to Mars. The space agency’s previous rover, 2012’s Curiosity, managed only jerky, grainy stop-motion images, mostly of terrain. Curiosity is still working. So is NASA’s InSight lander, although it’s hampered by dusty solar panels. This combination of images from video made available by NASA shows steps in the descent of the Mars Perseverance rover as it approaches the surface of the planet, Feb. 18, 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)Deputy project manager Matt Wallace said he was inspired several years ago to film Perseverance’s harrowing descent when his young gymnast daughter wore a camera while performing a backflip. Watching the video “I think you will feel like you are getting a glimpse into what it would be like to land successfully in Jezero Crater with Perseverance,” he said. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief, said the video and also the panoramic views following touchdown “are the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit.” The images will help NASA prepare for astronaut flights to Mars in the decades ahead, according to the engineers. There’s a more immediate benefit. “I know it’s been a tough year for everybody,” said imaging scientist Justin Maki, “and we’re hoping that maybe these images will help brighten people’s days.”
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With the Ebola virus flaring in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a new outbreak in Guinea, Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum is worried.“This is a great concern for us, especially since the COVID and Ebola crises are occurring” simultaneously, said Muyembe, who manages DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research and is coordinating his country’s responses to both infectious diseases.A renowned expert on the Ebola virus, the 78-year-old microbiologist sees it as a more urgent threat than COVID-19 in his country. Meanwhile, the pandemic’s official Locations of current Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Guinea and DRC as of Feb. 22, 2021In past Ebola outbreaks, anywhere from 25% to 90% of infected people died, the World Health Organization reports. By comparison, the overall mortality risk of COVID-19, a respiratory disease, is 1% or less, but rises with age and risk factors, according toThe Congolese government’s Ebola response coordinator, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, visits a new Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment center in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Aug. 6, 2019. (Reuters)New tools to combat EbolaSome positive developments in Ebola prevention and treatment emerged, Muyembe noted, citing vaccines and drug therapies.“We have the tools to vaccinate and to treat the sick. Thus, we break the chain of transmission, and the virus can go back into the forest,” he said.In late 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Ervebo, a one-shot vaccine. Last July, the European Union approved Zabdeno, with a two-dose regimen.Gains also have been made in treatment. Late last year, the FDA approved two therapies for treating Ebola infections: the antibody cocktail Inmazeb and the human monoclonal antibody Ebanga. The DRC institute worked with the U.S. National Institutes of Health to develop the latter, Muyembe said, noting that his team revisited promising research that Western partners had asked them to set aside more than a decade ago.The institute has sent some of the treatment to North Kivu, Muyembe said, and “we will also send some shipments to Guinea to treat the sick. This is something we can do in the framework of African solidarity to help our friends in Guinea.”He added that Congolese health experts also would be sent there.Distribution of the Ebola vaccine is targeted, not widespread, as is planned for COVID-19 vaccines. In part, that is because Ebola spreads through direct contact; COVID can spread from an infected person through droplets that hang in the air and are harder to avoid.“If you’re spending money manufacturing vaccine and getting it into the arms of every person in a given country, that’s money that’s not being spent on something else that’s way more common, like (the) measles vaccine, or even other non-health-related issues,” Tiffany Harris, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, told VOA. Raising awarenessMuyembe made a point of getting a shot in front of news cameras as soon as the Ebola vaccine was available. He will do the same with a COVID-19 vaccine, he said, to bolster public awareness and to allay suspicions of a Western ploy to sterilize or otherwise harm Africans.Misinformation is “amplified here in Africa,” Muyembe said. “It is up to us to convey the true messages of peace and security” to get people “to accept the COVID vaccine. But it’s not easy.”Health authorities have ramped up public awareness campaigns in Ebola-affected areas, joining much broader COVID-19 awareness campaigns on radio, social media and other platforms throughout Africa.“You can end an epidemic, but you cannot end the virus,” Muyembe said of Ebola. “… It can come back, so we have to be vigilant.”Adam Phillips of VOA’s English to Africa Service contributed to this report. Photos uploaded to Voltron:DRCONGO-HEALTH-EBOLA-VACCINATION (AFP 000_1MH6OU)Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum gets inoculated with an Ebola vaccine November 22, 2019, in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. (AFP) (Ebola-Muyembe-Reuters)Congolese government’s Ebola response coordinator Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum visits the new MSF (Doctors Without Borders) Ebola treatment center in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 6, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner Map:Suggested revised text for caption: – Instead of: Current EVD outbreaks in Guinea and DRC – Suggested revise: Locations of current Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Guinea and DRC as of Feb. 22, 2021 On the map itself, can we replace Katwa either with North Kivu or say Katwa, North Kivu
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans Monday to begin easing coronavirus lockdown measures. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Johnson credited Britain’s rapid vaccination program for allowing the country to begin reopening — amid growing scientific evidence that the vaccines will help to bring the global pandemic under control. Camera: Henry Ridgwell
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Norway’s National Museum says a small, barely visible sentence written with a pencil on Edvard Munch’s 1893 masterpiece “The Scream” was penned by the Norwegian painter himself.The painting, which shows a waif-like figure cradling its head in its hands with its mouth agape, has become a global icon for the expression of human anxiety. The sentence — “can only have been painted by a madman” — was scribbled in the top left-hand corner.The painting is being prepared to be exhibited at the new National Museum of Norway that is set to open in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, in 2022. In this connection, the canvas has undergone research and conservation.”The writing is without a doubt Munch’s own,” Mai Britt Guleng, curator at the National Museum, said in a statement Monday, adding it was compared to the painter’s diaries and letters.”The handwriting itself, as well as events that happened in 1895, when Munch showed the painting in Norway for the first time, all point in the same direction,” Guleng said.The writing on the canvas was added after Munch had completed the painting but for years it has been a mystery, the museum said in a statement. Speculation has ranged from it being an act of vandalism by an outraged viewer to something written by Munch himself.Guleng said the inscription was likely made “in 1895, when Munch exhibited the painting for the first time.”The painting at the time caused public speculation about Munch’s mental state. During a discussion night when the artist was present, a young medical student questioned Munch’s mental health and claimed his work proved he was not sound.”It is likely that Munch added the inscription in 1895, or shortly after, in response to the judgment on his work,” the statement read.Munch was profoundly hurt by the accusations, returning to the incident again and again in letters and diary entries. Both his father and sister suffered bouts of depression and Munch was finally hospitalized after a nervous breakdown in 1908, Guleng said.The National Gallery was temporarily closed in 2019 to secure a safe moving process to the new National Museum, which is under construction in downtown Oslo. The museum will exhibit 400,000 objects ranging from antiquity to the present day and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, textiles, furniture and architectural models.
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A NASA unmanned resupply ship docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday carrying more than 3,600 kilograms of research equipment and supplies to the orbiting laboratory. The spacecraft, built by aerospace company Northrop Grumman, was bolted into place on the Earth-facing port of the ISS shortly after arrival. Along with basic supplies for the space station, the ship’s cargo included equipment to conduct science investigations into the creation of artificial retinas for treating degenerative human eye diseases, zero-gravity advanced computer capabilities, and the cause of muscle weakening that astronauts can experience in microgravity using tiny worms. Northrop Grumman named the supply capsule the S.S. Katherine Johnson, after the African American NASA mathematician whose work was made famous in the movie “Hidden Figures.” Her calculations contributed to the February 20, 1962, flight in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. The supply ship blasted off from Wallops Island in Virginia on Saturday. It will remain at the space station until May, when it will depart for Earth carrying several tons of trash.
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Grammy-winning electronic music pioneers Daft Punk have announced that they are breaking up after 28 years.
The helmet-wearing French duo shared the news Monday in an 8-minute video called “Epilogue.” Kathryn Frazier, the band’s longtime publicist, confirmed the break up for The Associated Press.
Daft Punk, comprised of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, have had major success over the years, winning six Grammy Awards and launching international hits with “One More Time,” “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and “Get Lucky.”
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo met at a Paris school in 1987. Prior to Daft Punk, they formed an indie rock band named Darling.
They officially formed Daft Punk in 1993, and the helmeted, mute and mysterious musicians released their debut album, “Homework,” 1997. They first found success with the international hit “Da Funk,” which topped the Billboard dance charts and earned them their first Grammy nomination. A second No. 1 hit and Grammy nomination followed with “Around the World.”
Daft Punk spent time touring around the world and reached greater heights with their sophomore album, 2001’s “Discovery.” It included the infectious smash “One More Time” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” which Kanye West famously flipped into his own hit “Stronger,” released in 2007. It won West the best rap solo performance Grammy at the 2008 show, where West and Daft Punk performed together onstage.
A year later, a live version of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” won Daft Punk the best dance recording Grammy — their first win — and their “Alive 2007” album picked up best electronic/dance album.
But it was the 2014 Grammys where Daft Punk really took the spotlight, winning album of the year for “Random Access Memories” and making history as the first electronic act to win the highest honor at the Grammys. The duo won four awards that night, including record of the year for their bombshell hit “Get Lucky,” featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers.
“Random Access Memories” was regarded as a genre-bending album highlighted by its mix of live instrumentation, disco sounds, funk, rock, R&B and more. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 295 on their list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” last year.
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The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is appealing for $9.4 million to fund efforts to prevent a new Ebola outbreak from spreading across West Africa.
The IFRC said Monday the money will be used to step up “surveillance and community sensitization efforts” in Guinea, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
“Ebola does not care about borders,” said Mohammed Mukhier, the IFRC’s Regional Director for Africa. “Close social, cultural and economic ties between communities in Guinea and neighboring countries create a very serious risk of the virus spreading to Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, and potentially even further.”
Health officials in Guinea declared an epidemic Sunday after three cases were detected in Gouécké, a rural community in N’Zerekore prefecture. At least one victim there has died. It is the first Ebola outbreak in Guinea since 2016.
The 2014 Ebola outbreak, the biggest in history, killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Guinea was expecting the delivery of 11,000 doses of Ebola vaccine from the World Health Organization Sunday, but the Reuters news agency says the shipment was delayed due to heavy dust brought by winds from the Sahara Desert. The shipment is now due to arrive in Conarky on Monday, with vaccination efforts due to begin on Tuesday.
Guinea is also expecting another 8,600 doses of vaccine from the United States.
There have also been four confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including two deaths. WHO has around 20 experts supporting national and provincial health authorities in the DRC.
The United Nations announced it is releasing $15 million from its emergency relief fund to help fight the outbreaks in both Guinea and the DRC.
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Israel closed all its Mediterranean beaches until further notice Sunday, days after an offshore oil spill deposited tons of tar across more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) of coastline in what officials are calling one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.Activists began reporting globs of black tar on Israel’s coast last week after a heavy storm. The deposits have wreaked havoc on local wildlife, and the Israeli Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry determined Sunday that a dead young fin whale that washed up on a beach in southern Israel died from ingesting the viscous black liquid, according to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority has called the spill “one of the most serious ecological disasters” in the country’s history. In 2014, a crude oil spill in the Arava Desert caused extensive damage to one of the country’s delicate ecosystems. The Environmental Protection Ministry and activists estimate that at least 1,000 tons of tar, a product of an oil spill from a ship in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, have washed up on shore. The ministry is trying to determine who is responsible. It declined commenting on details of the investigation because it was ongoing. Yoav Ratner, coordinator of the ministry’s oil spill contingency plan, said that there were still many “unknown unknowns” about the extent of the ecological damage and therefore it was difficult to say how long cleanup would take. Thousands of volunteers took to the beaches on Saturday to help clean up the tar, and several were hospitalized after they inhaled toxic fumes. The military also deployed thousands of soldiers to assist in the operation. The Environmental Protection, Health and Interior Ministries issued a joint statement Sunday warning the public not to visit the entire length of the country’s 195-kilometer (120-mile) Mediterranean coastline, cautioning that “exposure to tar can be harmful to public health.” Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel told Hebrew media that her department estimates the cleanup project will cost millions of dollars.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured one of the country’s tar-pocked beaches on Sunday and praised the ministry’s work.Representatives from a coalition of Israeli environmental groups said in a press conference on Sunday that the ministry was woefully underfunded, and that existing legislation did little to prevent or address environmental disasters. Arik Rosenblum, director of the Israeli environmental group EcoOcean, said that the Environmental Protection Ministry is “fighting this situation and many other situations with their hands tied behind their back” because of inadequate legislation. They cautioned that this disaster should be a wake-up call for opposition to a planned oil pipeline connecting the United Arab Emirates and Israeli oil facilities in Eilat — home to endangered Red Sea coral reefs.
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Israel has reopened many schools, malls and gyms that were closed for several weeks. Some venues, however, are open only to those with a “green passport,” a document showing they have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The opening comes amid reports that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine works better than expected. Malls reopened after almost two months, and there were lines outside some of the stores. Parking lots were jammed, and many children went back in school for the first time in months. But some venues, like gyms, cultural events and hotels, are open only to those with a green passport, a document showing that they have either received both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or have recovered from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Israel is not imposing an obligation to get vaccinated. Edelstein said that contrary to what he called “fake news,” Israel is not imposing sanctions on anyone who does not get vaccinated. At the same time, some in Israel said that limiting venues like gyms and hotels to those who have been vaccinated was in effect a sanction on those who hadn’t received the shots. FILE – Israelis receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from medical professionals at a coronavirus vaccination center set up on a shopping mall parking lot in Givataim, Israel, Feb. 4, 2021.So far, about one-third of Israel’s population of 9.2 million has received both doses, and nearly half have received the first shot. A further 3 million Israelis are not eligible to receive the vaccine, either because they are under 16 or because they have recovered from the infection. The director of Israel’s Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Ronni Gamzu, says the results of the Pfizer vaccine are even better than in clinical trials. They show that the vaccine is very effective and very, very minor side effects almost, you know what, almost none, we have seen cases here and there, and we have seen the effectiveness is what was stated in the studies of Pfizer and Moderna, around 95 percent, and if you look at people admitted to the hospital it is even more than that. The protection is solid, said Gamzu.Israel’s Health Ministry said that after two doses, Israelis saw their risk of illness from the coronavirus drop 98.5 percent, and their risk of hospitalization drop almost 99 percent. The statement was based on data from a poll of 1.7 million Israelis who had received both shots by the end of January. Among those being vaccinated are Arab citizens of Israel, and Palestinians in east Jerusalem, which is under Israeli control; but, the 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have yet to be inoculated. The Palestinian minister of health said on Friday that Israel has agreed to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian laborers who work regularly in Israel. Some human rights groups say that because Israel controls entry and exit into the West Bank and Gaza, it is responsible for providing vaccinations for the residents there.
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Major winter storms, extreme cold and power outages shut down more than 2,000 vaccination sites and delayed delivery of 6 million vaccine doses in all 50 states last week, White House senior adviser Andy Slavitt said in a briefing with reporters Friday.Extreme weather has spread across large swaths of the United States since Feb. 14. Crippling snowfall and record-cold temperatures hit Oklahoma and Arkansas and triggered power outages across Texas.The storms set back the Biden administration’s efforts to ramp up vaccine delivery. Earlier in the month, more than 1.5 million doses per day were delivered on average. Preliminary data from last week show a steep drop-off, but full numbers are not yet available.The weather delayed President Joe Biden’s visit to a Kalamazoo, Michigian, plant producing vaccine from drugmaker Pfizer from Thursday to Friday.The weather is improving and deliveries are getting back on track, with 1.4 million doses shipping Friday, Slavitt said. But the backups will take time to clear.”We anticipate that all the backlog doses will be delivered within the next week, with most being delivered within the next several days,” he said.The weather caused disruptions all along the supply chain, Slavitt said.A plant packaging vaccines from pharmaceutical company Moderna was knocked offline by a winter storm.”Roads are being cleared for the workforce to leave their homes,” Slavitt said. “They are working today through Sunday to package the backlogged orders.”Road closures held up deliveries between manufacturing, distribution and shipping sites. And workers at all three major shipping companies, UPS, FedEx and McKesson, have been snowed in, he added, holding up shipments.Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech need to be kept extremely cold while stored, but Slavitt told CNN Thursday that “there hasn’t been a single vaccine that’s spoiled” due to the delays.”The vaccines are sitting safe and sound in our factories and hubs, ready to be shipped out as soon as the weather allows,” he told reporters Friday.The disruptions were severe enough for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker to discuss sending the state’s National Guard to rescue doses trapped in Kentucky and Tennessee.After federal officials rushed 135,000 doses to the state, Baker spokesperson Kate Reilly said Friday that the governor “appreciates the efforts made to get this critical shipment here and is not anticipating additional delays from the federal government for vaccine shipments at this time.”Slavitt said the federal government is asking vaccinators to extend hours and offer extra appointments to catch up.”We will be able to catch up, but we understand this will mean asking more of people,” he said.
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