As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage on, an invisible fight is emerging for many at home, triggered by the anxiety, joblessness, death, isolation and uncertainty that accompany the virus.May is mental health awareness month, and never before has the topic of mental health been more relevant. Federal agencies and experts are reporting increasing rates of mental health problems and predict that this is only the beginning of a lasting mental health crisis.Nearly half the people in the United States say the coronavirus pandemic is adversely affecting their mental health, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. The tracking poll, which surveyed 1,226 Americans from March 25-30 and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, indicates 45% of adults say the crisis has had a negative impact on their mental health, and 19% say it has had a “major impact.” “These numbers represent the tip of an iceberg,” Paul Gionfriddo, president and CEO of Mental Health America (MHA), said. “Tens of thousands of people are already experiencing serious mental health problems because of the pandemic, many of them young.”The number of people screened by MHA for anxiety increased by more than 70% from January to April, and the number screened for depression rose by 64%, Gionfriddo said.Of the people who contacted Mental Health America, 7,140 reported having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, a number 42% higher than what Gionfriddo said he would have expected based on experience before the pandemic.In the three months since the beginning of the pandemic, demand for mental health resources has skyrocketed, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which reported 41% more calls and emails to their hotline from March 1 to April 23 compared to the same period in 2019.”HelpLine callers mentioning COVID-19 are most frequently experiencing serious anxiety about their physical and emotional health,” Dawn Brown, director of community engagement at NAMI, said. “Some callers are experiencing panic attacks when reaching us, and our volunteers help them work through the panic until they’re able to talk about the issue.”Seventy-five percent of callers need support and reassurance during this time, Brown said. Depression is the second-most-commonly reported condition, and the increase has been attributed to isolation and hopelessness.This isn’t the first time a mental health crisis has emerged in the wake of a tragedy or national emergency. Following the global financial crisis in 2007 and the accompanying Great Recession, the U.S. saw high rates of depression, anxiety and alcohol abuse, and a 13% increase in suicides. In 2008 alone, over 46,000 lives were lost to suicides attributed to unemployment and income inequality. In a survey conducted March 27-29 of 1,062 Americans by McKinsey & Company with a margin of error of 3 percentage points, 35% of all respondents said they were both depressed and anxious, while 42% of those who either had a job reduction or loss said they were both depressed and anxious. One out of four respondents reported “binge drinking,” one out of five reported taking prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons, and one out of seven reported using illicit drugs.As joblessness rates reach the worst level seen since the Great Depression, surpassing what was reported in 2008, experts are beginning to worry that the United States is not equipped to handle the increase. Models using data from past national emergencies show that there will likely be an increase in suicides, overdose deaths and substance abuse.”We offer testing to protect people from the virus. We offer stimulus to protect their livelihoods,” Gionfriddo said. “We need to offer mental health screening and services to protect their lives.”While the new stimulus package does allocate funding to mental health resources, it is only a small percentage of the multitrillion-dollar emergency coronavirus funding.Mental health resources With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, many psychologists are transitioning to remote consultations through telemedicine. Lynne Gots, a licensed psychologist, is just one of the thousands of mental health professionals treating patients from home. She said telemedicine has improved greatly over the past few months.”I absolutely will continue to use telemedicine after the crisis. I’ve had a lot of people tell me they actually really like it,” Gots said.Gots outlined ways people can protect their mental health during the pandemic in an article for NAMI. Maintaining a routine, following a regular mental health treatment plan, and practicing mindfulness and acceptance techniques are just some of the ways people can manage the burden of COVID-19 and help to stay healthy, she said.Gots also stressed the importance of taking reasonable precautions but not going overboard or allowing anxiety to dictate behavior.Cultivating self-compassion is another way Gots said people can help to manage loneliness and maintain their mental health.”To ease feelings of isolation, acknowledge your struggle, with kindness, rather than self-judgment, and recognize that millions of people worldwide are sharing your experience right now,” Gots said. “Our only choice is to cope as best we can, forgive ourselves for having bad days, and remind ourselves it will not be like this forever.”Mental Health America, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the National Alliance on Mental Illness provide resources such as educational information, free online screenings and helplines. More information on mental health and COVID-19 can be found on the CDC’s website.
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Month: May 2020
First Trials Race to find Covid-19 Vaccine
A main coronavirus vaccine trial — a joint venture between an American and a German company — got underway this week in the United States. Some participants are U.S. medical students. This trial joins others around the world, as pharmaceutical companies compete to discover the breakthrough for COVID-19. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti takes us through what’s being done and how.
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Mother’s Day This Year Means Getting Creative from Afar
Treats made and delivered by neighbors. Fresh garden plantings dug from a safe 6 feet away. Trips around the world set up room-to-room at home.Mother’s Day this year is a mix of love and extra imagination as families do without their usual brunches and huggy meet-ups.As the pandemic persists in keeping families indoors or a safe social distance apart, online searches have increased for creative ways to still make moms feel special.Absent help from schools and babysitters, uninitiated dads are on homemade craft duty with the kids. Other loved ones are navigating around no-visitor rules at hospitals and senior-living facilities.Some medical facilities are pitching in by collecting voice and video recordings from locked-out relatives when patients are unable to manage the technology on their own.In suburban St. Louis, Steve Turner and his family hope to FaceTime with his 96-year-old mother, Beverly, but they plan something more, too. Her birthday coincides with Mother’s Day this year.”We’re going to create a big Mother’s Day-birthday banner signed by the kids and grandkids who live here,” Turner said. “She loves butterflies and we’ll draw some on. We’re working with the home to find a place where we can stand outside a window so she can see us.”Anna Francese Gass in New Canaan, Connecticut, is hunkered down with her husband and three children and will enjoy her usual Mother’s Day breakfast in bed of rubbery eggs, slightly burnt toast and VERY milky coffee. But the day won’t include her own mom, who lives nearby.”I ordered a bunch of daffodil and tulip bulbs online, and me and the kids are planning to plant them in her flowerbed. She can supervise from the window. I just know it will put a huge smile on her face,” Francese Gass said.In Alameda, California, 23-year-old Zaria Zinn is sheltering at home with her parents and younger sister. Knowing how much their mother loves and misses traveling, they’re turning their house and neighborhood into a trip around the world with help from decorations and virtual tours online.”We made a DIY passport for her and we’re creating stamps for each location,” she said.Their itinerary: Machu Picchu, Paris and Iceland, with some DIY spa time and a Hollywood-style movie night.Making the most of Mother’s Day in isolation is top of mind for Google search users. The company said the term “Mother’s Day gifts during quarantine” recently spiked by 600% in the U.S. Among Pinterest’s 335 million users, searches for “Mother’s Day at home” have jumped by 2,971%, the company said.In Rochester, New York, Melissa Mueller-Douglas and her 7-year-old daughter, Nurah, had planned to get together with mom and daughter friends at a hotel for a Mother’s Day sleepover. When it was canceled because of the pandemic, they got busy on Pinterest searching for ideas to bring the party home, just the two of them.They have eye masks with rhinestones to decorate, thread for mother-daughter bracelets, instant film for a photo shoot and a chocolate fountain purchased at Walmart. Dad and Nurah’s 3-year-old brother will paint together downstairs after a mom-son bike ride earlier in the day.”We’ve repurposed a shimmery tablecloth and made giant flowers out of tissue paper for a photo shoot backdrop. We’ll be creating a secret handshake and writing in top secret journals to each other,” Mueller-Douglas said. “We’re calling it The Best Day Ever Slumber Party.”Kayla Hockman, 26, in Los Angeles has been worried about her 77-year-old grandmother in Fontana, California, about 50 miles away. Usually, she and her sister treat her and their mom to brunch or an adventure out.”My grandma’s been quite depressed lately since she hasn’t left her house in two months, and she’s slowly losing hope,” Hockman said. “She and my grandpa have a lot of problems with walking now. This whole thing of not being able to see anyone has been really taking a hard toll on them.”To cheer her up, they’re planning a party on her lawn.”It’s going to be a surprise pop-up Mother’s Day brunch with momosas' and painting," Hockman said. "We're going to set it up for all of us to paint a sunflower, her absolute favorite. She'll paint on her porch and we'll be on the lawn, all 6 feet apart."Willie Greer in Memphis thought food, enlisting the help of a neighbor to make his mom's recipe for pecan pie and deliver it to her in Dallas to brighten her isolation Mother's Day. He said the neighbor was happy to do it after he sent her the recipe."My siblings and I will also create athank you’ video for mom. Since we can’t all be together, each of us will record a short message and at the end we’ll all sing `A Mother’s Love’ by Gena Hill,” he said. “I’m pretty sure this is the part where my mom cries her eyes out.”These days, virtual experiences are all we have, so Lisa Hill in Portland, Oregon, decided to embrace that notion for her 79-year-old mom in Stuart, Florida, after she met a cooking instructor while volunteering to prepare meals at a shelter.Hill has been cooking alongside Lauren Chandler, who has taken her usual in-home cooking sessions online with a twist: She’s throwing in a free 45-minute session for clients to donate.”I feel so far away from her. I can’t cook for her. I can’t visit,” Hill said. “She’s nervous about everything going on right now and it will be a good social interaction.”
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Five Players Test Positive for Coronavirus in Spain
Five players in Spain’s top two divisions have tested positive for COVID-19 since clubs began testing players and staff members last week, organizing body La Liga said in a statement on Sunday.La Liga said the players would remain at their homes where they would continue individual training before being tested again “in the next few days” to determine whether they can return to their club’s training ground.Many clubs including champions Barcelona have returned to individual training as part of the second stage of La Liga’s four-phase protocol for getting back to activity after play was halted in early March due to the pandemic.Real Madrid are due to resume training for the first time in two months on Monday, while La Liga has said it hopes matches will resume, without spectators, by June.
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Pandemic Gives Fresh Momentum to Digital Voice Technology
In a world suddenly fearful of touch, voice technology is getting a fresh look.Voice-activated systems such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri have seen strong growth in recent years, and the virus pandemic could accelerate that, analysts say.Voice assistants are not only answering queries and shopping, but also being used for smart home control and for a range of business and medical applications which could see increased interest as people seek to limit personal contact.”Voice has already made significant inroads into the smart home space, and voice control can mean avoiding commonly touched surfaces around the home from smartphones, to TV remotes, light switches, thermostats, door handles and more,” said analyst Jonathan Collins of ABI Research.The pandemic is likely to provide “additional motivation and incentive for voice control in the home that will help drive awareness and adoption for a range of additional smart home devices and applications,” Collins said.ABI estimates that voice control device shipments for smart home devices hit 141 million last year, and in 2020 will grow globally by close to 30 percent.For the broader market of voice assistants, Juniper Research estimates 4.2 billion devices in use this year, growing to 8.4 billion by 2024, with much of the interactions on smartphones.Smart locks, doorbellsCollins said he expected to see growing interest in smart locks and doorbells, along with other smart home systems, to eliminate the need for personal contact and face-to-face interaction as a result of the pandemic.Avi Greengart, a technology analyst and consultant with Techsponential, said data is not yet available but that “anecdotally, voice assistant usage is way up” as a result of lockdowns.Greengart said he expects a wider range of business applications for voice technologies in response to health and safety concerns.”Looking forward, office spaces will need move towards more touch-free controls; voice can be a solution, although motion triggers for lighting is often easier and more friction-free,” he said.”However, I do expect smart speakers — along with an emailed list of commands — to be a common feature at hotels and other rental properties. The fewer touch points, the better.”Post-pandemic outlookJulian Issa of Futuresource Consulting said there appears to be “an uptick in the use of voice assistants since the virus outbreak” during the pandemic.”Whilst avoiding touching surfaces may play a small part in this, it is mainly due to consumers spending far more time at home with their devices,” Issa said.Chris Pennell, another Futuresource analyst, said he expects adoption of digital assistants is likely to accelerate, “especially in client facing areas such as healthcare, retail and entertainment.”One example of this already in use is a Mayo Clinic tool using Amazon Alexa which allows people to assess their symptoms and access information on the virus.Other medical applications are also in the works for voice technologies.Veton Kepuska, a Florida Tech computer engineering professor who specializes in speech recognition technologies, is seeking to develop voice-activated medical robots that can help limit physical contact and contagion.”If we had this infrastructure in place, we would have been better off today,” said Kepuska, who was spurred by the COVID-19 outbreak to seek funding for the research effort.Kepuska said this effort could lead to a “humanoid” medical robot which can take over many tasks from doctors or nurses with voice interaction.”The pandemic has created a situation where we need to think about how to deliver services to people who need our help without putting ourselves in danger,” he said.
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Iraq’s Ancient Nineveh Re-created Via VR Technology
Stone by stone, digital artists and game developers from Mosul are rebuilding Nineveh’s heritage sites in the digital world.By looking through a virtual reality headset, a person can see the wonders of ancient Iraq. Via VR, it’s possible to fly over Nergal Gate, built 2,700 years ago, and see two winged bulls at its entrance.”Since we started the virtual reality lab, we tried to focus on Mosul’s archaeological sites,” said project co-ordinator Moyasser Nasseer. “It is an opportunity for people to discover archaeological sites that still exist as well as sites recently destroyed by Daesh (Islamic State) when they occupied Mosul.”QAF Media Lab designers want to create an immersive game, in which players solve mysteries to discover Nineveh’s heritage sites. They hope it might also draw tourists. (Reuters video screenshot)Nineveh was an Assyrian city in ancient Mesopotamia. It’s around where modern-day Mosul is located in northern Iraq.The designers want to create an immersive game in which players solve mysteries to discover Nineveh’s heritage sites. They hope it might draw tourists to an area recovering from recent conflicts, said artist Basma Qais.”First of all, we want to redefine the national identity of people living in Mosul, encourage tourism and also have people reconsider their perception of Mosul, especially those who don’t know Mosul,” she said.To build the 3-D models of Nineveh, the team from QAF Media Lab collected data from sites that still exist today. They also used archive material to rebuild sites damaged over the centuries, or more recently by Islamic State.With the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis and the boom of the online entertainment industry, the market for virtual reality games is expanding. People under lockdown enjoy being able to travel at least virtually, while students and researchers get access to the project data online, Nasseer said.
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Cameroon Continues to Suffer Staggering Mother, Child Birth Mortality Rate
Coinciding with Friday’s observance of the African Day for the Reduction of Maternal and Newborn Mortality, Cameroon disclosed that tens of thousands of newborn babies continue to die at birth and thousands of women continue to lose their lives while giving birth each year in the central African of 25 million. Health officials say the situation is worse on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria, where most mothers do not go to hospitals.
Martina Lukong Baye, Cameroonian Coordinator of the National Multisector Program to Combat Maternal, Newborn and Child Mortality, says it is unfortunate that the number of mothers and babies dying in Cameroon has remained high due to many women neglecting prenatal care and some delivering at home using untrained traditional birth attendants.
“We are counting about 4,000 women dying every year from causes linked to pregnancy or delivery. It is pathetic. It is about 22,000 newborn babies that we lose every year. It is really, really unacceptable.” Baye said.
Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health, however, reports that the number of pregnant women who die has dropped from 8,000 in 2015 to 4,000 in last year, and babies who are dying each year has decreased from 30,000 in 2015 to 22,000 last year.
Baye says Cameroon could do more to reduce most of the deaths by paying more attention to reasons why the women and babies die.
“The first direct cause of women dying in Cameroon is bleeding. We do not have enough blood available in our health facilities to give these women. The other cause too, now, that is quite prominent now is hypertension in pregnancy. The other cause now would be infection after delivery and, of course, home deliveries,” Baye said.
According to a 2018 Cameroon government-sponsored demographic and health survey, 33% of Cameroonian deliveries are carried out at home or with African traditional birth attendants, without trained health staff members.
The situation is critical on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria, where Boko Haram has chased medical staff away and torched hospitals, and the border with the Central African Republic that has been an epicenter of CAR rebel atrocities.
Malachie Manaouda, Cameroon’s health minister, says the government has taken measures to improve health care delivery at hospitals as an urgent measure to reduce the deaths.
He says the universal health coverage plan Cameroon is developing prioritizes mother and child care. He says President Paul Biya is personally supervising the plan as an indication of a strong political will to stop women from dying while giving birth, and babies from dying before, during or shortly after birth.
Manaouda said Cameroon has, within the past three years, equipped maternities and trained and recruited about a thousand midwives and pediatricians to attend to the needs of mothers and babies. He also said the government two years ago instructed all hospitals on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and Cameroon’s border with CAR to offer free prenatal care.
The African Day for the Reduction of Maternal and Newborn Mortality, observed since 2009, offers an opportunity for African countries, members of the African Union, to intensify actions aimed at reducing maternal and infant mortality, examine challenges faced, and press for greater political commitment among African countries to stop mothers and babies from dying.
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Little Richard, Flamboyant Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneer, Dies at 87
Little Richard, the self-proclaimed “architect of rock n' roll" whose piercing wail, pounding piano and towering pompadour irrevocably altered popular music while introducing black R&B to white America, has died Saturday. He was 87.Pastor Bill Minson, a close friend of Little Richard's, told The Associated Press that Little Richard died Saturday morning. Minson said he also spoke to Little Richard's son and brother.Minson added that the family is not releasing the cause of death.Born Richard Penniman, Little Richard was one of rockn’ roll’s founding fathers who helped shatter the color line on the music charts, joining Chuck Berry and Fats Domino in bringing what was once called “race music” into the mainstream. Richard’s hyperkinetic piano playing, coupled with his howling vocals and hairdo, made him an implausible sensation — a gay, black man celebrated across America during the buttoned-down Eisenhower era.He sold more than 30 million records worldwide, and his influence on other musicians was equally staggering, from the Beatles and Otis Redding to Creedence Clearwater Revival and David Bowie. In his personal life, he wavered between raunch and religion, alternately embracing the Good Book and outrageous behavior.”Little Richard? That’s rock n' roll," Neil Young, who heard Richard's riffs on the radio in Canada, told biographer Jimmy McDonough. "Little Richard was great on every record."It was 1956 when his classic "Tutti Frutti" landed like a hand grenade in the Top 40, exploding from radios and off turntables across the country. It was highlighted by Richard's memorable call of "wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom."A string of hits followed, providing the foundation of rock music: "Lucille," "Keep A Knockin'," "Long Tall Sally," "Good Golly Miss Molly." More than 40 years after the latter charted, Bruce Springsteen was still performing "Good Golly Miss Molly" live.n’ roll!” Little Richard crowed at the 1988 Grammy Awards as the crowd rose in a standing ovation. “I am the originator!”Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, during the Great Depression, one of 12 children. He was ostracized because he was effeminate and suffered a small deformity: his right leg was shorter than his left.The family was religious, and Richard sang in local churches with a group called the Tiny Tots. The tug-of-war between his upbringing and rock `n’ roll excess tormented Penniman throughout his career.Penniman was performing with bands by the age of 14, but there were problems at home over his sexual orientation. His father beat the boy and derided him as “half a son.”
The Beatles' Paul McCartney imitated Richard's signature yelps — perhaps most notably in the "Wooooo!" from the hit "She Loves You." Ex-bandmate John Lennon covered Richard's "Rip It Up" and "Ready Teddy" on the 1975 "Rock and Roll" album.
When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in 1986, he was among the charter members with Elvis Presley, Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke and others.Few were quicker to acknowledge Little Richard's seminal role than Richard himself. The flamboyant singer claimed he paved the way for Elvis, provided Mick Jagger with his stage moves and conducted vocal lessons for McCartney."I am the architect of rock
Richard left home to join a minstrel show run by a man known as Sugarloaf Sam, occasionally appearing in drag.In late 1955, Little Richard recorded the bawdy “Tutti Frutti,” with lyrics that were sanitized by a New Orleans songwriter. It went on to sell 1 million records over the next year.When Little Richard’s hit was banned by many white-owned radio stations, white performers like Pat Boone and Elvis Presley did cover versions that topped the charts.Little Richard went Hollywood with an appearance in “Don’t Knock the Rock.” But his wild lifestyle remained at odds with his faith, and a conflicted Richard quit the business in 1957 to enroll in a theological school and get married.Richard remained on the charts when his label released previously recorded material. And he recorded a gospel record, returning to his roots.A 1962 arrest for a homosexual encounter in a bus station restroom led to his divorce and return to performing.He mounted three tours of England between 1962 and 1964, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones serving as opening acts. Back in the States, he put together a band that included guitarist Jimi Hendrix — and later fired Hendrix when he was late for a bus.
In 1968, Richard hit Las Vegas and relaunched his career. Within two years, he had another hit single and made the cover of Rolling Stone.By the mid-1970s, Richard was battling a $1,000-a-day cocaine problem and once again abandoned his musical career. He returned to religion, selling Bibles and renouncing homosexuality. For more than a decade, he vanished.”If God can save an old homosexual like me, he can save anybody,” Richard said.
But he returned, in 1986, in spectacular fashion. Little Richard was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and appeared in the movie “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.”A Little Richard song from the soundtrack, “Great Gosh A’Mighty,” even put him back on the charts for the first time in more than 15 years. Little Richard was back to stay, enjoying another dose of celebrity that he fully embraced.Macon, Georgia, named a street after its favorite son. And Little Richard was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In August 2002, he announced his retirement from live performing. But he continued to appear frequently on television, including a humorous appearance on a 2006 commercial for GEICO insurance.Richard had hip surgery in November 2009 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, and asked fans at the time to pray for him. He lived in the Nashville area at the time.
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At UN, Reflections on World War II, COVID Challenge
The U.N. Security Council reflected Friday on the lessons learned from World War II on the 75th anniversary of its end in Europe, as the world faces its biggest collective challenge since then — the coronavirus.“How we react to the new challenge before us — the COVID-19 pandemic — could be as significant as how the world rebuilt after fascism was vanquished,” U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo told a virtual meeting of more than 80 nations, including nearly 50 foreign ministers, organized by Estonia, which presides over the Security Council this month.The end of six brutal years of war, massive death and destruction in Europe marked a turning point. From the devastation, the European Union, the United Nations and NATO were born, along with a new world order. The European High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell attends a video conference with Europeans Foreign Ministers in Brussels, Belgium, April 22, 2020.
“COVID-19 is a test of our humanity, but also of the multilateral system itself,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said of the disease caused by the coronavirus. “The rules-based international order — with the U.N. at its core — must be upheld and strengthened.”He expressed concern that the pandemic has rattled societies and exposed vulnerable nations to great peril.“It has the potential to deepen existing conflicts and generate new geopolitical tensions,” Borrell said. “It is a reminder that peace, democracy and prosperity must constantly be nurtured, expanded and made more inclusive.”Several diplomats warned that, 75 years after World War II, some of the characteristics that marked Nazi Germany are reemerging on the world stage.“The voices of populism, authoritarianism, nationalism and xenophobia are making themselves heard ever more loudly,” the U.N.’s DiCarlo said. “We must confront those who would drag the world back to a violent and shameful past.”Germany, which was an aggressor in World War II and is now a leading nation on the European and international stage, also expressed concern about rising nationalism.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas addresses the media at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on March 17, 2020, to comment on the situation concerning the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Photo by Tobias Schwarz / AFP)“In Germany, we have a saying: ‘He who closes his eyes to the past will be blind to the present,’ ” Foreign Minster Heiko Maas said. He urged political support for international institutions and multilateralism, and threw his government’s support behind the U.N. chief’s call for a global humanitarian cease-fire.On March 23, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the cease-fire to focus attention and resources on fighting the virus. Dozens of nations and at least 16 armed groups have signed on, but so far, the 15-nation Security Council has been unable to adopt a resolution supporting the truce.The United States, which accuses Beijing of lying and covering up the spread of the coronavirus early on, has butted heads with China at the Security Council over the language in the draft resolution.The Trump administration has blasted the World Health Organization for what it says is a bias favoring China and has suspended funding to the agency. Washington wants a reference to supporting the WHO in the fight against COVID-19 removed from the draft resolution. China wants it to remain.In this file photo taken on Feb. 8, 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference at the African Union headquarters.France and Tunisia, which drafted the text, thought they found a way around it, changing the WHO reference to “specialized health agencies” of the United Nations — of which there is just one. Washington rejected that on Friday afternoon, ending yet another week without support from the U.N.’s most powerful body for Guterres’ now seven-week-old appeal.The feud between the two powers has frustrated diplomats who want to see strong support from the council for a global cease-fire, but fear the foot-dragging will further corrode the council’s credibility, which has found itself paralyzed on other important crises, including the war in Syria.Council resolutions require nine votes in favor and no vetoes from the five permanent members, which include China and the United States, to pass.
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At UN, Reflection on World War II, Current Challenge
The U.N. Security Council reflected Friday on the lessons learned from World War II on the 75th anniversary of its end in Europe, as the world faces its biggest collective challenge since then — the coronavirus.“How we react to the new challenge before us — the COVID-19 pandemic — could be as significant as how the world rebuilt after fascism was vanquished,” U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo told a virtual meeting of more than 80 nations, including nearly 50 foreign ministers, organized by Estonia, which presides over the Security Council this month.The end of six brutal years of war, massive death and destruction in Europe marked a turning point. From the devastation, the European Union, the United Nations and NATO were born, along with a new world order. The European High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell attends a video conference with Europeans Foreign Ministers in Brussels, Belgium, April 22, 2020.
“COVID-19 is a test of our humanity, but also of the multilateral system itself,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said of the disease caused by the coronavirus. “The rules-based international order — with the U.N. at its core — must be upheld and strengthened.”He expressed concern that the pandemic has rattled societies and exposed vulnerable nations to great peril.“It has the potential to deepen existing conflicts and generate new geopolitical tensions,” Borrell said. “It is a reminder that peace, democracy and prosperity must constantly be nurtured, expanded and made more inclusive.”Several diplomats warned that, 75 years after World War II, some of the characteristics that marked Nazi Germany are reemerging on the world stage.“The voices of populism, authoritarianism, nationalism and xenophobia are making themselves heard ever more loudly,” the U.N.’s DiCarlo said. “We must confront those who would drag the world back to a violent and shameful past.”Germany, which was an aggressor in World War II and is now a leading nation on the European and international stage, also expressed concern about rising nationalism.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas addresses the media at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on March 17, 2020, to comment on the situation concerning the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Photo by Tobias Schwarz / AFP)“In Germany, we have a saying: ‘He who closes his eyes to the past will be blind to the present,’ ” Foreign Minster Heiko Maas said. He urged political support for international institutions and multilateralism, and threw his government’s support behind the U.N. chief’s call for a global humanitarian cease-fire.On March 23, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the cease-fire to focus attention and resources on fighting the virus. Dozens of nations and at least 16 armed groups have signed on, but so far, the 15-nation Security Council has been unable to adopt a resolution supporting the truce.The United States, which accuses Beijing of lying and covering up the spread of the coronavirus early on, has butted heads with China at the Security Council over the language in the draft resolution.The Trump administration has blasted the World Health Organization for what it says is a bias favoring China and has suspended funding to the agency. Washington wants a reference to supporting the WHO in the fight against COVID-19 removed from the draft resolution. China wants it to remain.In this file photo taken on Feb. 8, 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference at the African Union headquarters.France and Tunisia, which drafted the text, thought they found a way around it, changing the WHO reference to “specialized health agencies” of the United Nations — of which there is just one. Washington rejected that on Friday afternoon, ending yet another week without support from the U.N.’s most powerful body for Guterres’ now seven-week-old appeal.The feud between the two powers has frustrated diplomats who want to see strong support from the council for a global cease-fire, but fear the foot-dragging will further corrode the council’s credibility, which has found itself paralyzed on other important crises, including the war in Syria.Council resolutions require nine votes in favor and no vetoes from the five permanent members, which include China and the United States, to pass.
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Smallpox Eradication 40 Years Ago Has Parallels With Coronavirus Pandemic
As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the World Health Organization reports the methods used to rid the world of the devastating disease can be used today to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.In the 20th century alone, more than 300 million people died from smallpox until it was eradicated in 1975 in an effort led by the World Health Organization. Observers agree the monumental achievement was made possible by global unity and cooperation, in which even the U.S. and Russia collaborated during the height of the Cold War.Rosamund Lewis, the head of WHO’s Smallpox Secretariat, told VOA the parallels today with COVID-19 have to do with the methods used decades ago to eradicate smallpox.”That was achieved through basic public health, basic epidemiology, shoe-leather epidemiology, of basically case finding, contact tracing, quarantine, isolation of cases, treatment,” Lewis said. “These are the basic methods and approaches, which supported the eradication effort. Of course, for smallpox there was a vaccine and for COVID-19 we do not have one yet. Hence, again the importance of research and development.”Samples of the smallpox virus are kept under strict containment in two WHO collaborating centers, in the United States and Russia. Lewis says controversy still swirls over whether the live virus should be retained for research purposes or destroyed, considering the risks posed if the virus accidentally escaped from one of the facilities.However, the debate might be moot, Lewis says, as WHO and many countries have a stockpile of vaccine in the event of a resurgence of smallpox, and treatments for the disease have been approved.
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‘Smart Helmets’ at Rome Airport Check On Passengers’ Temperatures
Fiumicino International Airport in Rome is the first one in Europe to use “smart helmets” to check the temperature of travelers from a safe distance. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo explains how the helmets are helping fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
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Grandson of WWII Icon Took a Different Path
If DNA is destiny, it took an unexpected turn when the grandson of legendary World War II commander General Claire Lee Chennault was growing up.General Claire Lee Chennault (1890-1958), who commanded the legendary Flying Tigers and later the 14th Air Force in China, landed on the covers of Time and Life magazines during WWII. (U.S. Air Force)New York-based jazz musician Paul Sikivie says he was brought up with “a sense of awe” regarding his grandfather, one of the most storied commanders in the Asia theater during that war. But “he belonged to the world at large and not so much to me.” Sikivie is one of two grandsons of Chennault and his second wife, Anna. His mother is a noted medieval Chinese literature specialist, his father a Belgian-American physicist. “I wanted to be a geneticist for a while after ‘Jurassic Park’ was made into a movie; I never thought about Chinese language and literature as something for me,” Sikivie, now 37, recalled as he looked back on his childhood aspirations. By age 14, Sikivie knew he wanted to be a musician. Four years later, he knew his calling was jazz. “St. Thomas by Sonny Rollins came on NPR and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said of jazz’s enduring appeal. Paul Sikivie plays the bass alongside vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant at a memorial concert for Lawrence Leathers held on Feb. 3, 2020, at Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center. (Frank. Stewart/Jazz at Lincoln Center)Would that have made sense to his grandfather, who landed on the covers of Life and Paul Sikivie, right, in a family photo with his parents, Pierre Sikivie and Cynthia Chennault, brother Michael, and grandmother Anna Chennault, in an undated photo. (Photo provided by Cynthia L. Chennault)Perhaps his grandfather would also understand the notion of the “band of brothers” that has also been central to Sikivie’s journey as a musician. Lawrence Leathers, a noted drummer on the New York jazz scene, was one of them. Leathers, who died last year, “was like a brother to me. I learned a lot about being present and always reaching for the next level from being around him and playing music with him,” Sikivie said. Sikivie, Leathers and pianist Aaron Diehl often played as a band, traveling both in the United States and other parts of the world — including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where General Chennault had once set foot. Looking toward the future, the jazz bassist said, “I am continuing to learn how to organize my thoughts, feelings, values into music; there’s really no limit to the ways [in which] this can be accomplished.”
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Poll: Most in US Back Curbing In-Person Communal Worship Amid Virus
While the White House looks ahead to reopening houses of worship, most Americans think in-person religious services should be barred or allowed only with limits during the coronavirus pandemic — and only about a third say that prohibiting in-person services violates religious freedom, a new poll finds.
The survey by the Center for Public Affairs Research suggests that, even as President Donald Trump projects eagerness to reopen, many religious Americans are fine with waiting longer to return to their churches, synagogues and mosques.
Among that group is 54-year-old Andre Harris of Chicago, a onetime Sunday school teacher who has shifted his routine from physical worship to the conference calls his church is holding during the pandemic.
Harris, a Methodist, said that until “either there’s a vaccine, or if we know that things have calmed down, I am not comfortable going back to the actual building.”
Just 9% of Americans think in-person religious services should be permitted without restrictions, while 42% think they should be allowed with restrictions and 48% think they should not be allowed at all, the poll shows. Even among Americans who identify with a religion, 45% say in-person services shouldn’t be allowed at all.
White evangelical Protestants, however, are particularly likely to think that in-person services should be allowed in some form, with just 35% saying they should be completely prohibited. Close to half – 46% — also say they think prohibiting those services violates religious freedom.
That constituency’s support for some form of in-person worship underscores the political importance of Trump’s public calls to restore religious gatherings as a symbol of national recovery from the virus, as energizing evangelical voters remains a key element of the president’s reelection strategy. Trump won praise from some evangelical leaders for citing the aspirational ideal of “packed churches” on Easter during the first weeks of the pandemic, though his goal didn’t materialize on Christianity’s holiest day.
Trump has since consulted with religious leaders on a phased-in return to in-person worship.
“It’s wonderful to watch people over a laptop, but it’s not like being at a church,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall on Sunday. “And we have to get our people back to churches, and we’re going to start doing it soon.”
Vice President Mike Pence is set to meet with faith leaders Friday in Iowa to talk about their reopening of worship. Iowa is one of several states, including Tennessee and Montana, where restrictions on in-person services are starting to ease as stay-home orders imposed to stop the virus run their course.
That’s in line with the preference of Patrick Gideons, 63, of Alvin, Texas, who said worshipers “should be able to do what they want.”
“If they want to be able to hold church the way they normally do, they should be able to do that,” said Gideons, a self-described born-again Baptist.
As houses of worship wrestle with when to reopen, draft guidance by a team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that offered recommendations for faith gatherings has been shelved by the Trump administration. While those guidelines aimed to help religious organizations use best practices to protect people from the virus, leaders in various denominations have already initiated their own internal discussions.
“Churches are very aware of the implications of people gathering in their buildings,” Kenneth Carter, president of the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, said in a recent interview about the draft CDC guidance.
Compared with in-person religious services, Americans are more likely to favor allowing drive-through services, although most still say there should be limits. Overall, 25% think that those services should be allowed without any limits, and 62% say they should be allowed with limits.
The Justice Department last month sided with a Mississippi church in its legal challenge to local limits on drive-in worship. Still, the poll found 56% of Americans say prohibiting drive-in services does not violate religious freedom.
White evangelical Protestants were more likely than those of other faiths to favor allowing drive-through services without restriction, at 40%. In total, those who identify with a religious faith are more likely than those who do not to favor no restriction on drive-through religious services, 28% to 15%.
As many houses of worship have paused in-person services during the virus, a sizable share of religious Americans have used technology to connect with their faith. One-fifth of religious Americans said they watched live streaming religious services online at least weekly in 2019 — but since the outbreak began, that has risen to 33%.
About a third of evangelical Protestants streamed services at least weekly in 2019, but about half do now. Among Catholics, the share streaming services weekly has increased from 11% to 22%.
For members of the Southern Baptist Convention, when and how to resume in-person worship “would be a congregation-by-congregation decision,” Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a recent interview about the draft CDC guidance.
Moore predicted that some virtual worship would continue even as different areas transition back to in-person gatherings. Part of his work in offering resources to inform decisions, Moore said, involves “preparing churches for the fact that reopening probably won’t be one Sunday when everything goes back to the status quo.”
“Instead, there’s going to be probably a lengthy period of time where multiple things are happening at once,” Moore said.
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No Sure Way to Predict Impact of Loosening COVID Restrictions
As some states moved to open their economies from the pandemic lockdown this week, Salon owner Shelley Luther reacts as supporters chant for her after she was released from jail in Dallas, May 7, 202 for refusing to keep her business closed amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19.Best guessIn the absence of experience, models provide policymakers with the best guesses available for what the implications of their decisions will be. But with a virus that scientists discovered less than six months ago, there is a tremendous amount that modelers don’t know. And it changes all the time.”All of these models are dependent entirely upon the assumptions that you put into them,” said Mark Roberts, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Public Health Dynamics Lab. “Unfortunately, there’s just a tremendous amount of uncertainty about this virus right now and about how it behaves.”For example, scientists have only in the last month or so concluded that people can spread the virus without showing symptoms. “That was not originally in our model,” Roberts said.Modelers don’t agree on how important certain factors are — temperature, for instance. IHME factors in a 2% decrease in spread for every 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature.”As heat increases and weather gets warmer, we will see a reduction in circulation,” said health metrics sciences professor Ali Mokdad at the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “So, that’s a positive.”Roberts is not so sure. It’s an option in their model, but “we’ve turned it off because we don’t know how big a difference it makes.”Each model makes assumptions about the effectiveness of policies like social distancing. Much of the data comes from early outbreaks in China. But those results may not hold up elsewhere. “If the government in China says lock down, people tend to obey,” said biologist Katriona Shea at the Penn State University Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics. In the United States, however, “it’s a different political system, and you’ll get very different responses to the same management interventions,” she said.People wear mask as they ride bicycle in downtown Chicago, May 7, 2020.New mobilitySome factors are changing constantly, and models have to adjust accordingly. People are starting to move around more, even in states that have not relaxed restrictions. But the impact of mobility on the spread of the virus has changed since earlier in the pandemic because people’s behavior has changed in other ways. “Americans, as they are moving about right now, are being very careful and wearing masks and keeping a safe distance,” Mokdad said. “The new mobility is different than the old mobility.”For all of these elements, different modelers devise different formulas to calculate the impact and plug different numbers into their equations. They can come to different conclusions. For policymakers, basing decisions on the wrong model can mean lives lost or resources wasted, Shea said. So, she is spearheading an effort to “crowdsource” multiple models into tools that not only forecast where the epidemic is headed, but can help officials answer key questions about how to contain it.While forecasts are important to help prepare for the future, Shea said, “I think even more important is what to do to make the forecast as positive as it possibly can be.”
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Experts Worry CDC Is Sidelined in Coronavirus Response
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found its suggestions for fighting the coronavirus outbreak taking a backseat to other concerns within the Trump administration.
That leaves public health experts outside government fearing the agency’s decades of experience in beating back disease threats are going to waste.
“You have the greatest fighting force against infectious diseases in world history. Why would you not use them?” said Dr. Howard Markel, a public health historian at the University of Michigan.
The complaints have sounded for months. But they have become louder following repeated revelations that transmission-prevention guidance crafted by CDC scientists was never adopted by the White House.
The latest instance surfaced Thursday, when The Associated Press reported that President Donald Trump’s administration shelved a CDC document containing step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the current pandemic.
The administration has disputed the notion that the CDC had been sidelined, saying the agency is integral to the administration’s plans to expand contact tracing nationwide.
But it’s clear that the CDC is playing a much quieter role than it has during previous outbreaks.
The nation’s COVID-19 response has seen a strange turn for the CDC, which opened in 1946 in Atlanta as The Communicable Disease Center to prevent the spread of malaria with a $10 million budget and a few hundred employees. Today, the agency has a core budget of more than $7 billion — a sum that has been shrinking in recent years — and employs nearly 11,000 people.
The CDC develops vaccines and diagnostic tests. Its experts advise doctors how best to treat people, and teach state, local and international officials how to fight and prevent disease. Among the CDC’s elite workforce are hundreds of the world’s foremost disease investigators — microbiologists, pathologists and other scientists dispatched to investigate new and mysterious illnesses.
In 2009, when a new type of flu virus known at the time as swine flu spread around the world, the CDC held almost daily briefings. Its experts released information on a regular basis to describe the unfolding scientific understanding of the virus, and the race for a vaccine.
The federal response to the coronavirus pandemic initially followed a similar pattern.
The CDC first learned in late December of the emergence of a new disease in China, and the U.S. identified its first case in January. In those early days, the CDC held frequent calls with reporters. It also quickly developed a test it could run at its labs, and a test kit to be sent to state health department labs to detect the virus.
But February proved to be a disaster. The test kit was flawed, delaying the ability of states to do testing. A CDC-run surveillance system, meant to look for signs of the virus in people who had thought they had the flu, was slow to get off the ground. Officials at the CDC and at other federal agencies were slow to recognize infections from Europe were outpacing ones from travelers to China.
But politically speaking, one the most striking moments that month was something that the CDC — in the eyes of public health experts — got perfectly right.
In late February, Dr. Nancy Messonnier — a well-respected CDC official who was leading the agency’s coronavirus response — contradicted statements by other federal officials that the virus was contained. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen – and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” she said.
Stocks plunged. President Donald Trump was enraged.
The White House Coronavirus Task Force moved to center stage. Vice President Mike Pence took control of clearing CDC communications about the virus. CDC news conferences stopped completely after March 9. Messonnier exited the public stage.White House Coronavirus Task Force membersCDC Director Robert Redfield continued to keep the low profile he’s had since getting the job. Two other task force members — Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator, and Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health — became the task force’s chief scientific communicators.
Health experts have praised Fauci, but they say CDC’s voice is sorely missed.
“At the White House briefings, they (CDC) should be talking about antibody tests and if they work. How long do people have the virus if they’re infected? What are the data for that? The issue ought to be front and center. These are the questions CDC can answer,” said Dr. James Curran, a former CDC star scientist who is now dean of Emory University’s public health school.
The government has continued to look to CDC officials for information and guidance, but there have been repeated instances when what the agency’s experts send to Washington is rejected.
In early March, administration officials overruled CDC doctors who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, the AP reported.
Last month, USA Today reported that the White House task force had forced the CDC had to change orders it had posted keeping cruise ships docked until August. The post was altered to say the ships could sail again in July, the newspaper reported.
And last week, officials nixed CDC draft guidance that was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen. The 17 pages of guidelines were never approved by Redfield to present to the White House task force, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They were only discussed at the task force level once the drafts leaked publicly, and no decisions about them were ever made.
Still, the CDC guidelines were the subject of intense debate at the upper echelons of the White House. Some officials saw them as essential to helping businesses and other organizations safely reopen.
Others, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, did not believe it appropriate for the federal government to set guidelines for specific sectors whose circumstances could vary widely depending on the level of outbreak in their areas, according to a person familiar with the discussion. What was necessary for a coffee shop in New York and one in Oklahoma was wildly different, in their view.
They worried about potential negative economic impact from the guidelines, and some aides expressed doubts about whether the government should be prescribing practices to religious communities.
The decision not to issue detailed sector guidance is also in keeping with the White House’s strategic decision to leave the specific details of reopening to states. While Trump had at one point claimed absolute authority to detail how and when states open, he’s adopted a largely hands-off approach as more and more states begin to lift lockdowns.
Trump suggests his decision is in keeping with the principles of federalism, but White House aides acknowledge that it also lessens the political peril for the president — who has come under pressure from conservative allies, particularly in states that haven’t experienced wide outbreaks, to swiftly reopen the country.
On a conference call Thursday afternoon with the House members on the White House’s “Opening Up America” panel, lawmakers in both parties pressed the White House to release sector-specific guidance of the sort currently held up by the administration.
“There was clear bipartisan support for the need to have CDC guidance and the need to have best practices,” said Democratic Congressman Ted Deutsch.
The CDC did not respond to a Thursday request for an interview with Redfield.
In a recent interview with the AP, the agency’s No. 2 administrator, Dr. Anne Schuchat, was asked to address reports that CDC recommendations were being ignored in Washington.
She paused, and then replied slowly.
“The CDC is providing our best evidence-based information to policy makers and providing that on a daily basis to protect the American people,” she said, without further comment.
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Marine Life Declines for Another Year in Contested, Overfished South China Sea
Marine life in the politically disputed South China Sea took another hit over the past year, researchers said, due to overfishing and lack of international efforts to protect species.Vessels from multiple Asian countries are going farther out into the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea and casting deeper because coastal waters yield increasingly little, scholars and published research indicate. Giant clam harvesting, added to use of cyanide and dynamite bombing for fish, damaged coral reefs last year, the analysts said.Marine life in the sea that stretches from Taiwan southwest to Singapore comes into focus every May, when China declares a moratorium on fishing above the 12th parallel, which encompasses waters most frequented by China but bisecting both Vietnam and the Philippines. The bans that began in 1995 will last this year from May 1 to August 16.“We’re all in this pretty rapid decline when it comes to biodiversity in the South China Sea and we certainly don’t see any evidence that anybody is doing anything about it,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.Fishing in the sea expanded rapidly in the 1980s and early 1990s, to about 10 million tons per year but then started stagnating, researchers Cui Liang of China’s Xiamen University and Daniel Pauly from the University of British Columbia said in a 2017 paper.Since then, the study said, boats have fished deeper and caught smaller fish. Still, the South China Sea accounted for 12 percent of the global fish catch just five years ago, according to CSIS. Analysts could not estimate the total 2019 catch volume because of lack of national-level data.“The coastal areas are already overfished, so that means that fishing fleets from China, Taiwan, Korea, even Japan would actually be swarming now into the center of the South China Sea area, which means there is that concern about overfishing, and then, not to speak of that island-building processes that China conducted,” said Herman Kraft, a political science professor at University of the Philippines Diliman.Among the problems is continued use by Asian fishing crews of dynamite and cyanide bombing, the conservation group Global Underwater Explorers said on its website. The practice, which wrecks coral reefs and fish spawning zones, is “widespread throughout Asia and the South China Sea, from Indonesia to southern China,” the website said.CSIS pointed to “large-scale” clam harvesting and dredging for island construction. China has wrecked 40,000 acres of coral reef to build islets for human use, Poling said. Giant clam harvesting last year by Chinese boats hurt coral around Scarborough Shoal west of Luzon Island in the Philippines, media outlets in Manila said.Military groups in the sea’s Spratly Islands have shot turtles and seabirds, raided nests and fished with explosives, the World Wildlife Fund said on its website. One turtle species, the hawksbill, is endangered.Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam claim all or part of the sea that is also valuable because of its energy reserves and marine shipping lanes. An estimated 37 million people depend on fishing there for a living, while state-to-state conservation talks are rare.The declining fishery stocks push each country’s fleet to look harder for what’s left, Poling said. About 4 million Chinese fishing crew members are expected to obey China’s moratorium, but crews from other countries, which contest sovereignty over that tract of sea, are unlikely to change course because they do not recognize the Chinese claim.Most conservation efforts to date come from individual countries.About five years ago, academics in the Philippines suggested creating a protected area in the Spratlys, and the idea gained a following in government agencies, although not at the presidential level, Kraft said. Vietnam had proposed nearly 20 years ago that a separate160-square-kilometer tract of the archipelago become a protected area. Both countries control some of the Spratly islets.Coral in 3,500 square kilometers of open sea around the Taiwan-controlled Pratas islets showed improvement last year because the Taiwanese coast guard has stepped up patrols to keep foreign-registered fishing vessels away, said Chuang Cheng-hsien, a conservation section chief under the Marine National Park Headquarters. China also claims the three Pratas atolls.Eight or nine years ago, he said, foreign vessels would fish near the protected atolls.“They get pushed out now, so there’s a big difference in numbers between now and the past,” he said. “In that area there’s virtually no destruction by mechanized fishing boats.”
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60 years later, Access to Birth Control Pill and Other Contraceptives Still Lacking Worldwide
On May 9th, 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the world’s first commercially produced oral contraceptive. The birth control drug — popularly known as ‘The Pill’ — was hailed by supporters as “revolutionary” but 60 years later, insufficient access to the drug and other methods of birth control around the world have hampered what many hoped would be the magic pill for female reproductive rights. VOA’s Jesusemen Oni has more.
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WHO ‘Deeply Troubled’ by Reports of Spike in Domestic Violence
The World Health Organization says it is “deeply troubled by reports that domestic violence has spiked dramatically in many areas of Europe during COVID-related lockdowns.”Speaking from Copenhagen Thursday, the WHO Europe chief, Dr. Hans Kluge, said he had seen reports of increases in reports of domestic and other interpersonal violence against men, women and children from countries including Belgium, Britain, France, Russia, Spain and others amid the coronavirus pandemic.FILE – Padlocks and ribbons signed “Free for Khachaturyan sisters” are attached on the Patriarshy Bridge during an action against domestic violence, with the Kremlin in the background, in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 14, 2019.While statistics are difficult to come by, Kluge estimates that 60% of women are suffering domestic violence, and that calls to help hotlines have jumped about five times. What perhaps is more troubling is the fact that most domestic violence cases go unreported.Kluge said if lockdowns were to continue for six months, the organization would expect an extra 31 million cases of gender-based violence globally.Saying there is no single solution to the problem, Kluge called on government officials to consider it a moral obligation to ensure help services are available to communities.He said that some countries have already responded to the emerging crisis, noting that Italy has developed an app where people can request help without making a phone call. Spain and France have programs where pharmacists can be alerted to problems by people using code words. Scotland has also allocated additional funds to social services related to domestic violence.
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Contracts, Black Hole Discovery and Musical Compositions Top This Week in Space
The focus of future U.S. missions to the moon may soon shift from research to commerce. Meanwhile, European scientists have discovered the closest black hole to our solar system. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi explores This Week in Space.
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Bundesliga Soccer to Resume on May 16 in Empty Stadiums
The Bundesliga soccer season will resume on May 16 in empty stadiums, picking up right where it left off two months ago amid the coronavirus pandemic.Thursday’s announcement comes one day after clubs were told the season could restart following a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors.”Everyone has to be clear. We’re playing on probation,” German soccer league managing director Christian Seifert said. “I expect everyone to live up to this responsibility. Our concept is designed to catch infections early.”Seifert said the return of soccer was because of the success the country’s leaders and health officials have had in response to the outbreak.Germany has had a high number of COVID-19 infections — nearly 170,000 by Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University — with about 7,000 deaths, a lower number compared to elsewhere.The country’s relative success in combating the virus has been attributed to early testing, a robust health service and strict lockdown measures that are now being loosened.”That we’re allowed to play again boils down to German politics for managing this crisis, and the health system in Germany,” Seifert said. “If I were to name the number of tests that I was asked about in teleconferences with other professional leagues, with American professional leagues, with clubs from the NFL, the NHL, Major League Baseball and others, and I tell them how many tests are possible in Germany, they generally check, or there’s silence, because it’s just unimaginable in the situation over there.”Only about a third of Germany’s massive testing capacity of almost 1 million a week is being currently used, said Lars Schaade, the deputy head of the Robert Koch Institute.Seifert said the season will restart with the 26th round of games, including the Ruhr derby between Borussia Dortmund and Schalke on the opening Saturday. That match will test local authorities who hope to keep groups of fans from gathering around the stadium or at bars to watch on television.Pay-TV broadcaster Sky said it will show all games on the first two weekends for free in Germany.Seifert, who was speaking in Frankfurt after a video conference with members from each club, warned that everyone involved will need to maintain strict hygiene measures to ensure another suspension will not be necessary.The Bundesliga was suspended on March 13 with nine rounds remaining. Seifert said the last round is now planned for the weekend of June 27-28. He said the second division will also begin on May 16.”The decision means economic survival for some clubs,” Seifert said.Seifert said there have been 10 positive cases of COVID-19 in the first two waves of tests among the 36 professional clubs, with another two positive cases found in a third wave.It was initially planned that teams would spend two weeks in quarantine before games could resume, but a compromise on shorter training camps in isolation for each team was reached because players have been undergoing regular tests.Seifert said a decision on whether to temporarily allow five substitutions per match depends on FIFA rules. FIFA made the proposal to help players cope with game congestion but it is still subject to approval from the International Football Association Board, soccer’s law-making body.
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NASA Studies Astronauts’ Own Microbes from Space Station
Microbes carried on the bodies of visiting astronauts are being sampled on board the International Space Station in hopes of learning how to better protect their health and the health of people on Earth.“Microbial tracking” is a series of experiments in which samples are taken by ISS crew members and studied by researchers on the ground. The experiments have shown microorganisms living on surfaces inside the space station so closely resembled those on an astronaut’s skin that scientists could tell when a new crew member arrived and departed, just by looking at the microbes left behind.The findings show how monitoring microbes will be important for protecting the health of astronauts on the ISS and in future long-term space projects. But they could also tell us something about relatively closed environments on Earth, like hospitals, where understanding the presence of microbes and other potentially dangerous organisms have never been more important.Livermore National Laboratory Biologist Crystal Jaing is the principal investigator for the microbial tracking study. She says understanding how the space station crew interacts with the “microbial community” is important to prevent complications for human health on a spacecraft during long flights, or, perhaps, in a home, on public transportation or a hospital.Results of the study were published last week in the science journal PLOS One.
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