Month: March 2022

Explorer Shackleton’s Ship Found in Antarctic Century After His Death

Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be one of the most heroic expeditions in history.

A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula.

The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s search expedition Endurance22 announced the discovery on Wednesday.

Images and video of the wreck show the three-masted wooden ship in pristine condition, with gold-leaf letters reading “Endurance” still affixed to the stern and the ship’s lacquered wooden helm still standing upright, as if the captain may return to steer it at any time.

“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen,” said Mensun Bound, the director of the exploration. Bound noted the wreck is still upright, clear of the seabed “and in a brilliant state of preservation.”

The discovery is “a titantic find” in “one of the world’s most challenging environments,” said maritime historian Steven Schwankert, who was not involved in the expedition.

The combination of deep, dark waters — no sunlight penetrates to 10,000 feet — frigid temperatures and sea ice have frustrated past efforts to find Endurance, but also explain why the wreck is in such good condition.

The bottom of the Weddell Sea is “a very inhospitable environment for just about everything — especially the kind of bacteria, mites and wood-eating worms that would otherwise enjoy munching on a wooden shipwreck,” Schwankert said.

The expedition Endurance22 embarked from Cape Town, South Africa, in early February in a ship capable of breaking through 1-meter-thick ice. 

The team, which included more than 100 researchers and crew members, deployed underwater drones that combed the seafloor for two weeks in the area where the ship was recorded to have sunk in 1915. 

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said expedition leader John Shears. 

The British explorer Shackleton never achieved his ambition to become the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In fact, he never set foot on the continent. 

“Despite being designed to resist collision with ice floes and to break through pack ice, Endurance could not withstand being crushed by heavy sea ice,” said Ann Coats, a maritime historian at the University of Portsmouth. 

Shackleton himself noted the difficulty of the endeavor in his diary. 

“The end came at last about 5 p.m.,” he wrote. “She was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain.” 

Before the ship disappeared 3,000 meters below icy waters, Shackleton’s crew loaded food and other provisions into three lifeboats to escape and set up camp on ice floes, where they used sled dogs to carry their provisions, according to Shackleton’s diary. 

Shackleton and his captain, Frank Worsley, then sailed across 1,287 kilometers of treacherous icy waters in a 7-meter ship to the island of South Georgia, a remote whaling community, to get help. That successful trip is considered a heroic feat of fortitude, and Shackleton’s decisive response to imminent tragedy is still held up today as a model of how to lead in difficult circumstances. 

“Shackleton was a very good planner and a good improviser — I have a feeling that the polar explorers of today would not survive the same kinds of things he endured,” said Anna Wahlin, a polar researcher at the University of Gothenburg, who just returned from a two-month mission studying ice shelves and warming ocean currents in Antartica. 

In Antartica, “everything is gray or white,” and after only a few weeks, explorers “start to miss smelling Earth, walking in the forest, hearing birds chirp, seeing things that are green,” she said. 

The expedition to find Endurance comes a century after Shackleton’s death in 1922. British historian and broadcaster Dan Snow, who accompanied the researchers, tweeted that the wreck’s discovery on Saturday happened “100 years to the day since Shackleton was buried.” 

The ship is protected as a historic monument under the 6-decade-old Antarctic Treaty that is intended to protect the region’s environment. 

Researchers filmed the wreck, but nothing was recovered or disturbed. Instead, expedition organizers say they want to use laser scans to create a 3-D model of the ship that can be displayed in both traveling exhibits and a permanent museum exhibit. 

“Shackleton, we like to think, would have been proud of us,” the expedition’s Bound wrote in a blog post. 

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US Major League Baseball Cancels More Games After Talks Stall

Major League Baseball canceled more games on Wednesday and pushed back Opening Day until April 14 after talks on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with players stalled again.

MLB locked out its players in December after failing to reach terms on a CBA and had canceled the first week of the regular season.

“Regrettably, after our second late-night bargaining session in a week, we remain without a deal,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Because of the logistical realities of the calendar, another two series are being removed from the schedule, meaning that Opening Day is postponed until April 14.

“We worked hard to reach an agreement and offered a fair deal with significant improvements for the players and our fans,” Manfred added. “I am saddened by this situation’s continued impact on our game and all those who are a part of it, especially our loyal fans.”

MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), which represents the players, remain far apart on issues like luxury tax, minimum salaries and an international draft, according to media reports.

The 2022 season was scheduled to begin on March 31, and this year marks the first missed MLB games because of a labor dispute since the players’ strike of 1994-1995.

That work stoppage forced a premature end to one season, delayed the start of the next year’s and turned off fans, with attendance plummeting when play finally resumed.

“In a last-ditch effort to preserve a 162-game season, this week we have made good-faith proposals that address the specific concerns voiced by the MLBPA and would have allowed the players to return to the field immediately,” Manfred said.

The MLBPA said in a statement that the MLB’s decision to cancel additional games was “completely unnecessary.”

“After making a set of comprehensive proposals to the league earlier this afternoon, and being told substantive responses were forthcoming, players have yet to hear back,” the MLBPA said in a statement on Twitter. “Players want to play and we cannot wait to get back on the field for the best fans in the world.” 

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Ukrainian Charged in Ransomware Spree Is Extradited to US

A Ukrainian man charged last year with conducting one of the most severe ransomware attacks against U.S. targets has been extradited to the United States and made a court appearance Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department said.

According to an August 2021 indictment, Yaroslav Vasinskyi accessed the internal computer networks of several victim companies and deployed Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware to encrypt the data on their computers, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Vasinskyi was allegedly responsible for the July 2021 ransomware attack against Florida software provider Kaseya, the department said.

Reuters could not reach a representative of Vasinskyi. Kaseya did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The Ukrainian national was accused in the indictment of breaking into Kaseya over the July 4 weekend last year and simultaneously distributing with accomplices REvil ransomware to as many as 1,500 Kaseya customers, encrypting their data and forcing some to shut down for days, the Justice Department said.

While most of the 1,500 businesses paralyzed as a result around the globe faced limited concerns, the disruption was felt keenly in places such as Sweden, where hundreds of supermarkets had to close because their cash registers were inoperative, and New Zealand, where schools and kindergartens were knocked offline.

Vasinskyi was charged in the indictment with breaking into the victim companies and installing encryption software developed by the core REvil ransomware hacking group. REvil directly handled the ransom negotiations and split the profits with Vasinskyi and other affiliates. This model allowed the notorious ransomware gang to extort numerous companies for cryptocurrency.

Vasinskyi was arrested in Poland in October. The Justice Department charged him and a Russian late last year.

U.S. law enforcement authorities transported Vasinskyi to Dallas, Texas, where he arrived March 3, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

REvil was involved in an attack last year against top global meat processor JBS S.A.

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US House Lawmakers Urge Department of Justice to Investigate Amazon

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has written a letter asking the Department of Justice to determine whether online retailer Amazon engaged in obstruction of Congress during an investigation of the company’s competitive practices. 

The letter said the company had “engaged in a pattern and practice of misleading conduct” that suggested it had sought to influence or obstruct an investigation into how it operates. 

The House Judiciary Committee conducted a 16-month probe into how Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook operated. 

During the investigation, lawmakers focused on Amazon’s use of private-label products and collection of third-party data. 

Amazon allegedly copied popular products in India and then manipulated search results to increase the sales of its own products, Reuters reported. 

The committee’s letter to DOJ alleges Amazon made untrue or misleading statements when asked about those practices. It also said Amazon refused to provide evidence that would “either corroborate its claims or correct the record,” according to the 24-page letter. 

“It appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results — subjects of the Committee’s investigation,” according to the letter, which was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler, House Antitrust Subcommittee Chair David Cicilline, and Democratic and Republican committee members.  

“As a result, we have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” the letter added. 

Amazon told CNBC that “there’s no factual basis for this, as demonstrated in the huge volume of information we’ve provided over several years of good faith cooperation with this investigation.” 

When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos testified to the committee in July 2020, he said the company prevents Amazon employees from using seller data but could not say it had never happened. 

Lawmakers said investigations by news organizations like Reuters and The Wall Street Journal contradicted Bezos’ testimony, as well as testimony of other Amazon employees. 

“Amazon attempted to clean up the inaccurate testimony through ever-shifting explanations of its internal policies and denials of the investigative reports,” the lawmakers said. “The committee uncovered evidence from former Amazon employees, and former and current sellers, that corroborated the reports’ claims.” 

“After Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” the letter said.  

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 

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WHO Concerned About Drop in COVID-19 Testing

The World Health Organization expressed concern Wednesday that many countries are drastically reducing COVID-19 testing, inhibiting the ability of public health professionals to monitor where the coronavirus is, how it’s spreading and how it’s evolving.

During a briefing at agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while cases and deaths were declining globally and many countries had lifted restrictions, the pandemic was far from over, “and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.”

Tedros said the WHO on Wednesday published new guidelines on self-testing for COVID-19 and recommended that self-tests be offered in addition to professionally administered testing services. He said evidence showed that users can reliably and accurately self-test, and that self-testing may reduce inequalities in testing access.

The WHO chief said he hoped the new guidance would also help increase access to testing, which is too expensive for many low-income countries, where those tools could play an important role in expanding testing.

Tedros also said the agency and its partners in the ACT Accelerator grouping — part of the WHO’s COVAX initiative, which has focused on equitable access to vaccines globally — were seeking to raise funds “to ensure that all countries that need self-tests will be able to receive them as quickly as possible.”

Regarding the situation in Ukraine, Tedros said the WHO had so far delivered 81 tons of supplies to the country and was establishing a pipeline of supplies for health facilities throughout Ukraine.

He said Tuesday that the agency had delivered five tons of medical supplies to Kyiv to support surgical care for 150 trauma patients, and other supplies to manage a range of health conditions for 45,000 people for a month.

Tedros said the WHO “continues to call on the Russian Federation to commit to a peaceful resolution to this crisis, and to allow safe, unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance for those in need.”

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Recipient of Pig Heart Transplant Dies After Two Months

A man who received the first heart transplant from a pig two months ago has died, the University of Maryland Medical Center said Wednesday. 

Doctors did not say the specific reason David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday, only saying his condition had been worsening over the past several days. 

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort,” Bennett’s son, David Bennett Jr., said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end.” 

Prior to the January 7 transplant, Bennett had been in poor health and was ineligible for a human heart. 

Organ transplants from animals — xenotransplantation — have largely failed because the human body rejects them almost immediately, but in this case, the pig had been genetically modified with human genes in the hope of delaying rejection.  

At first, things seemed to be going well for Bennett, and last month, the hospital released a video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed. 

“We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery at the Baltimore hospital, said in a statement. 

Bennett lived longer than one notable case in 1984 when a baboon heart was transplanted to a baby. The baby lived 21 days. 

“We have gained invaluable insights learning that the genetically modified pig heart can function well within the human body while the immune system is adequately suppressed,” said Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and scientific director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We remain optimistic and plan on continuing our work in future clinical trials.”

More than 106,000 people are on the organ donation waiting list in the United States. Last year, more than 41,000 transplants were performed, and of those, 3,800 were heart transplants. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 

 

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African Nations Appeal for TB Funding Amid COVID Disruptions COVID Africa

Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is calling for governments to renew the fight against the respiratory illness, which kills over one million people each year. In South Africa, a hotspot for TB, a mobile screening team is trying to make up for disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.

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US Golfing Great Tiger Woods to Be Inducted Wednesday in World Golf Hall of Fame

U.S. golfing great Tiger Woods will be formally inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame Wednesday night at a ceremony in Florida.

Woods’ 14-year-old daughter Sam, who was born the day after he finished second at the 2007 U.S. Open, will formally introduce him at the new headquarters of the PGA Tour in Ponte Verde Beach.

The 46-year-old Woods dominated his sport from the moment he turned professional in 1996, becoming the first Black golfer to win a major event when he won The Masters the following year. He has since won 15 major titles, putting him second only to fellow American great Jack Nicklaus, and is tied with another golfing legend, Sam Snead, for the most PGA Tour victories with 82.

His career has been interrupted by numerous back and leg injuries which have required several surgeries. The worst of his injuries occurred last year when he suffered serious fractures to his lower right leg and damage to his ankle and foot when the vehicle he was driving sped off a road outside of Los Angeles.

Woods announced last February that he will “never” play full time on the PGA Tour again due to his injuries, but he appeared with his son Charlie at a team tournament where they finished in second place.

Also being inducted in Wednesday’s ceremonies are retired PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchen, three-time U.S. Women’s Open champion Susie Maxwell Berning, and Marion Hollins, a 1920s amateur champion who later became an influential golf course architect and developer.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

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WHO Says COVID Boosters Needed, Reversing Previous Call

An expert group convened by the World Health Organization said Tuesday it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses, in a reversal of the U.N. agency’s previous insistence that boosters weren’t necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity.

In a statement, WHO said its expert group concluded that immunization with authorized COVID-19 vaccines provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death amid the global circulation of the hugely contagious omicron variant.

It said vaccination, including the use of boosters, was especially important for people at risk of severe disease.

Last year, WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a moratorium on booster doses while dozens of countries embarked on administering the doses, saying rich countries should immediately donate those vaccines to poor countries instead. WHO scientists said at the time they would continue to evaluate incoming data.

Numerous scientific studies have since proven that booster doses of authorized vaccines help restore waning immunity and protect against serious COVID-19. Booster programs in rich countries including Britain, Canada and the U.S. have been credited with preventing the surge in omicron infections from spilling over into hospitals and cemeteries.

WHO said it is continuing to monitor the global spread of omicron, including a “stealth” version known as BA.2, which has been documented to have re-infected some people after an initial case of omicron. There’s mixed research on whether it causes more severe disease, but vaccines appear just as effective against it.

WHO noted that the current authorized COVID-19 vaccines are all based on the strain that was first detected in Wuhan, China more than three years ago.

“Since then, there has been continuous and substantial virus evolution and it is likely that this evolution will continue, resulting in the emergence of new variants,” the agency said. It added that coronavirus vaccines would likely need to be updated.

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Study: COVID-19 Can Cause Brain Shrinkage, Memory Loss

COVID-19 can cause the brain to shrink, reduce grey matter in the regions that control emotion and memory, and damage areas that control the sense of smell, an Oxford University study has found.

The scientists said that the effects were even seen in people who had not been hospitalized with COVID, and whether the impact could be partially reversed or if they would persist in the long term needed further investigation.

“There is strong evidence for brain-related abnormalities in COVID-19,” the researchers said in their study, which was released on Monday.

Even in mild cases, participants in the research showed “a worsening of executive function” responsible for focus and organizing, and on an average brain sizes shrank between 0.2% and 2%.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Nature journal, investigated brain changes in 785 participants aged 51–81 whose brains were scanned twice, including 401 people who caught COVID between their two scans. The second scan was done on average 141 days after the first scan.

The study was conducted when the Alpha variant was dominant in Britain and is unlikely to include anyone infected with the Delta variant.

Studies have found some people who had COVID suffered from “brain fog” or mental cloudiness that included impairment to attention, concentration, speed of information processing and memory. Read full story

The researchers did not say if vaccination against COVID had any impact on the condition but the UK Health Security Agency said last month that a review of 15 studies found that vaccinated people were about half as likely to develop symptoms of long COVID compared with the unvaccinated.

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As Hershey Raises Prices, Ivory Coast Cocoa Farmers Grapple With Climate Change

Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year due to higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Hershey, the largest producer of chocolate products in the United States, said last month it will raise prices on its products across the board due to the rising cost of ingredients.   

Meanwhile, chocolate makers like Dana Mroueh said they are seeing cocoa prices rise in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer.  

“We’ve noticed the price of cocoa is going up these few years, especially organic cocoa. So, from the beginning to today, those five years, we can say the price has risen 20 percent,” Mroueh said.  

Demand for chocolate in America increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and cocoa producers in Ivory Coast are struggling to keep up with that demand.   

Experts say one reason is the impact of climate change.  

Harvard University says that by 2030, parts of West Africa will be too hot and dry to adequately produce cocoa. The West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast alone produce 70 percent of global supply.  

Cocoa farmer Raphael Konan Kouassi took VOA to his plantation, a shady orchard where fat green and yellow cocoa pods hung from tree trunks. He said trees are yielding less due to rising temperatures and poor rains.  

“Almost all of the young plants die in the high season. If you have not been able to get water to them, you have no cocoa,” he said.  

Kouassi receives government assistance in the form of cocoa trees, which are more resilient to the fluctuations of climate change, but he said government distributions happen at the wrong time of year for the saplings to survive.  

Christian Bunn of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, a global scientific organization, said information about how the climate is changing can inform farmers on how to better nurture their crops.  

“What we’re seeing is that the onset of both dry and wet season can change. It’s less reliable. During the season, there may be breaks in terms of rain during the dry season, or there’s a dry spell during the wet season, and the overall distribution or amounts of rainfall they’re receiving may change,” Bunn said.  

The data shows it may be better for farmers to stop producing cocoa and diversify into other crops, he said.   

However, Olga Yenou, the CEO of an Ivorian company that supplies The Hershey Company, said higher prices for cocoa could be welcomed by farmers.  

“My opinion is that these farmers should have better prices, should earn more, because they work hard. Most are poor,” Yenou said.  

Her wish appears to be coming true. As climate change continues to bite, prices continue to surge.  

 

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Amazon Rainforest Nears Climate ‘Tipping Point’ Faster Than Expected

Hammered by climate change and relentless deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is losing its capacity to recover and could irretrievably transition into savannah, with dire consequences for the region and the world, according to a study published Monday.   

Researchers warned that the findings mean the Amazon could be approaching a so-called tipping point faster than previously understood.    

Analyzing 25 years of satellite data, researchers measured for the first time the Amazon’s resilience against shocks such as droughts and fires, a key indicator of overall health. 

Resilience has declined across more than three-quarters of the Amazon basin, home to half the world’s rainforest, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

In areas hit hardest by destruction or drought, the forest’s ability to bounce back was reduced by approximately half, co-author Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, told AFP. 

“Our resilience measure changed by more than a factor of two in the places nearer to human activity and in places that are driest,” he said in an interview.   

Climate models have suggested that global heating – which has on average warmed Earth’s surface 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels – could by itself push the Amazon past a point of no return into a far drier savannah-like state. 

If carbon pollution continues unabated, that scenario could be locked in by mid-century, according to some models. 

“But, of course, it’s not just climate change – people are busy chopping or burning the forest down, which is a second pressure point,” Lenton said. 

“Those two things interact, so there are concerns the transition could happen even earlier.” 

Besides the Amazon, ice sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO2 and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, and the Atlantic Ocean current are all are vulnerable to tipping points that could radically alter the world as we know it. 

Global fallout 

Deforestation in Brazil has surged since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, hitting a 15-year high last year. 

Scientists reported recently that Brazil’s rainforest – 60% of the Amazon basin’s total – has shifted from a “sink” to a “source” of CO2, releasing 20% more of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed. 

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb CO2 emissions. Vegetation and soil globally have consistently absorbed about 30% of carbon pollution since 1960, even as emissions increased by half.  

“Savannification” of the Amazon would be hugely disruptive, in South America and across the globe.  

More than 90 billion tons of CO2 stored in its rainforest – twice worldwide annual emissions from all sources – could be released into the atmosphere, pushing global temperatures up even faster. 

Regionally, “it’s not just the forests that take a hit,” said Lenton. “If you lose the recycling of rainfall from the Amazon, you get knock-on effects in central Brazil, the country’s agricultural heartland.” 

Ominously, the new findings marshal data pointing in the same direction. 

“Many researchers have theorized that a tipping point could be reached,” said co-author Niklas Boers, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.  

“Our study provides vital empirical evidence that we are approaching that threshold.” 

‘Saving grace’ 

To assess change in the resilience of the rainforest, Lenton, Boers and lead author Chris Boulton from Exeter University analyzed two satellite data sets, one measuring biomass and the other the “greenness” of the canopy.   

“If too much resilience is lost, dieback may become inevitable – but that won’t become obvious until the major event that tips the system is over,” said Boers. 

There may be a “saving grace” that could pull the Amazon back from the brink. 

“The rainforest naturally has a lot of resilience – this is a biome that weathered the ice ages, after all,” said Lenton. 

“If you could bring the temperature back down again even after passing the tipping point, you might be able to rescue the situation.” 

“But that still puts you in the realm of massive carbon dioxide removal, or geoengineering, which has its own risks.” 

Just under 20% of the Amazon rainforest – straddling nine nations and covering more than 5 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) – has been destroyed or degraded since 1970, mostly for the production of lumber, soy, palm oil, biofuels and beef. 

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Meet the Kurdish Sisters Defying Tradition, Breaking Barriers Through Weightlifting 

Three sisters from Irbil have won gold and silver medals in weightlifting events in the regional 2021 Arab Weightlifting Championship. While preparing for future weightlifting competitions, the three Kurdish women are inspiring young girls to step into a male dominated field. VOA’s Ahmad Zebari reports from Irbil, narrated by Namo Abdulla.
Camera: Ahmed Zebari 
Produced by: Ahmed Zebari 

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Afghanistan Faces Return to Highest Maternal Mortality Rates

Afghanistan faces a serious risk of backtracking to its notoriously high maternal mortality rates because of sudden drops in foreign funding, a shortage of health care workers, mobility restrictions and worsening poverty, health professionals have told VOA.  

More than 1,600 Afghan mothers were dying for every 100,000 live births in 2001. With strong technical and financial support from donors, the country reduced the rate to about 640 deaths by 2018.  

Donors were spending about $1 billion annually on Afghanistan’s health sector, but all development funding ceased immediately when the Taliban returned to power in August.  

The abrupt funding shortage crippled the country’s donor-dependent public health system amid a global pandemic and a nearly universal poverty rate in the country.  

By September 2021, more than 80% of the country’s health care facilities were reported as dysfunctional because of a lack of funding and medical supplies and a shortage of personnel.  

“After the change of the government in August, there was a significant drop [cumulative around 25%] in the availability and utilization of maternal health services,” Joy Rivaca Caminade, a communication specialist with the World Health Organization in Afghanistan, told VOA.  

The United Nations’ children’s agency, UNICEF, gave a similar bleak assessment. 

“Following the events of mid-August 2021, Afghanistan’s health sector was close to collapse, with coverage of many lifesaving interventions for women and children falling between 20 and 30% within days,” said Joe English, a UNICEF spokesperson.  

Such setbacks have given rise to one of Afghanistan’s long-standing health crises — high maternal mortality. 

Mortality rates during childbirth might even have gone back to what they were in 2001, said Nadia Akseer, a scientist at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.  

While there is no data showing how much infant and maternal mortality rates have worsened over the past six months, public health experts say the situation has deteriorated and the future remains uncertain.  

Too little aid  

After aid organizations warned that Afghanistan was facing widespread starvation and famine during the cold season, Western donors agreed to provide only lifesaving humanitarian assistance, to be delivered through U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations.  

In December, the World Bank announced it was transferring $100 million from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund — a multidonor fund set up to coordinate international aid — to UNICEF and WHO to fund emergency health activities in the country until June 2022.  

U.N. agencies have welcomed the funding resumption and say the aid flow must continue or there will be serious public health consequences.  

There are also concerns about the insufficiency of the funding as well as the mechanisms established for disbursement.  

In addition to the nearly $1 billion in foreign assistance, the former Afghan government used to allocate about $200 million for the health sector from domestic resources annually.  

The current humanitarian funding is only a fraction of what the country used to spend on health programs. And while the aid is insufficient, some are criticizing the U.N.-led aid disbursement regime. 

“We know that U.N. agencies have high overhead costs, and they have their own fees,” Akseer told VOA, adding that donors must find a more cost-effective aid delivery system and consider removing economic sanctions on Afghanistan.  

The World Bank and other Western donors have said no funding should be given to or disbursed through the Afghan Health Ministry, which manages public health facilities and personnel all over the country.  

The United States, the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, has imposed strong economic and political sanctions on the Taliban government, blocking access to about $9 billion in foreign assets, held mostly by the U.S. To help mitigate the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has issued special licenses for the delivery of essential aid to needy Afghans on the condition that the aid will not directly benefit the Taliban.  

U.N. and partner health care NGOs use foreign funds to ensure health facilities remain operational and to tackle a host of public health crises facing Afghanistan, including the pandemic, a recent increase in measles cases, growing malnutrition among children, and infectious diseases — not just infant and maternal health.  

Brain drain  

According to a Doctors Without Borders statement on February 23, “The Afghan heath system has been under-funded, under-staffed and dysfunctional for years. Most health facilities in Afghanistan remain under great pressure due to shortages of staff and equipment—some are barely functioning or are closed altogether.”  

Even in 2016, Afghanistan had the lowest number of doctors per every 1,000 people (0.3) in Asia, according to the World Bank.  

Tens of thousands of educated Afghans, among them health care professionals affiliated with international organizations, have been evacuated out of Afghanistan over the past six months.  

This has created a “brain drain of health professionals,” Akseer said.  

“Let’s say a midwife who worked in a typical village in Afghanistan and who was trained by an international organization, that affiliation is her ticket out of the country.” 

WHO confirmed the shortage of health professionals but added there was no data to measure how this was impacting the delivery of essential health services across the country.  

Afghanistan’s health problems have been compounded by economic and institutional crises.  

“The increase in poverty to over 97%, the large-scale loss of livelihoods, and widespread displacement do not bode well for maternal and child health,” said English, the UNICEF spokesperson.  

The Taliban’s restrictions on women’s mobility has also limited Afghan mothers’ access to health care services, aid agencies say.  

“It’s very possible that just in the past six months we’ve seen higher rates of maternal mortality and maternal illness than maybe the country has seen in the past 15 years,” Akseer said.  

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US High Court Won’t Review Decision Freeing Cosby from Prison

The Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up the sexual assault case against comedian Bill Cosby, leaving in place a decision by Pennsylvania’s highest court to throw out his conviction and set him free from prison.

The high court declined prosecutors’ request to hear the case and reinstate Cosby’s conviction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year threw out Cosby’s conviction, saying the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.

As is typical, the Supreme Court did not say anything in rejecting the case. The case was included in a long list of cases the court said Monday it would not hear.

The 84-year-old Cosby became the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when a jury in 2018 found him guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. A jury had previously deadlocked in Cosby’s case, resulting in a mistrial in 2017.

Cosby spent nearly three years in prison before Pennsylvania’s high court ordered his release.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission. Constand has done so.

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‘Lost Daughter’ Wins Top Prizes at Independent Spirit Awards

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” “Drive My Car” and “Summer of Soul” were among the big winners at the 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards Sunday.

The ceremony hosted by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally was held in a tent by the beach in Santa Monica, broadcast on AMC and IFC. It is the cool, casual counterpart to some of the more traditional film awards shows.

“If you don’t win, you can just walk straight into the ocean,” Offerman said.

Gyllenhaal won best feature, director and best screenplay for her adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel “The Lost Daughter.”

Through tears, Gyllenhaal said that more than anything she believes in love. She was effusive in her praise for her crew.

“You were the first people to tell me I was a director,” she said. “Thank you to Netflix — I can’t even believe this — for your support. … Nobody ever makes their first movie and comes out loving their financiers.”

“I love independent film,” Gyllenhaal added. “I grew up making independent film.”

Japan’s “Drive My Car, which has also been nominated for a best picture Oscar, picked up best international feature.

Taylour Paige won best female lead for “Zola,” which was based on a Twitter thread about a wild trip to Florida.

“Wow, I am in shock. I wrote something because I’m not eloquent and I’m drunk,” Paige said.

She thanked her grandmother who passed away on the day she got word of her nomination and Zola for, “knowing that your story was worth telling.”

Simon Rex won best male lead for playing an ex-porn star in Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket.” Rex said his career was in the dumps before Baker called him for the shoestring film.

“I’m reeling from the whole experience,” Rex said. “This is basically a glorified student film…I’m grateful and humbled.”

Mullally and Offerman got the show off to a lively start, both in three-piece suits and vests with no shirt underneath. Sarah Silverman made an appearance in a pre-taped segment offering her services as a backup host because Mullally and Offerman joined Twitter “before 2015.”

The married co-hosts said they’d hoped to be the biggest Hollywood couple in the room and were dismayed that Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard were there to upstage them.

“A-listers and indie stars? Pick a lane you greedy bastards,” Offerman said.

They acknowledged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Offerman said he hopes “Putin (expletive) off and goes home” and implored the audience to send him off with a “Spirit Awards salute.” Many raised their hands with a middle finger.

The show’s honorary chair Kristen Stewart also spoke about the war.

“We’re compelled to stand with the people of Ukraine,” Stewart said. “We stand with the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing this war.”

Historically, the Spirit Awards are held on the Saturday afternoon before the Oscars, but this year moved up a few weeks.

“Summer of Soul” won best documentary. The film brings back to life the largely forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.

“I’m not going to cry right now, I’m not, I’m not,” “Summer of Soul” director Questlove said.

Troy Kotsur got another boost before the Oscars, winning best supporting actor for “CODA.” He also won the Screen Actors Guild prize.

“I can feel the spirit of the arts and we can celebrate together,” Kotsur said.

“Squid Game’s” Lee Jung-jae also followed up his SAG win with a Spirit Award.

Marlee Matlin, who presented the first screenplay award to Michael Sarnoski for “Pig,” implored the screenwriters to think of deaf actors when crafting scripts.

Andrew Garfield made an appearance to present the Robert Altman Award to his friend Fran Kranz, who he acted with in a Mike Nichols play. Kranz’s debut “Mass” is a small ensemble about a mediation in the aftermath of a school shooting between parents of a victim and parents of the perpetrator.

Best supporting female went to Ruth Negga, for her turn in Rebecca Hall’s “Passing.” A technical glitch muted the first part of her virtual speech. The black-and-white Netflix film also won best cinematography, for Edu Grau

The show can sometimes serve as a preview of what will happen on Oscar night. Last year, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” picked up best feature and director at the Spirit Awards before going on to win the top prizes at the Oscars. “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” “Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave” also all won at the Spirits before taking best picture at the Oscars.

Because of their production budgets, many top awards contenders this year were not eligible, including “Belfast,” “King Richard” and “The Power of the Dog.” To be considered, films must have cost less than $22.5 million to make.

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They’re Off: Mushers Begin Trek to Nome; Seavey Seeks Record

The 50th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race started Sunday with 49 mushers setting their sights on Alaska’s western coast.

The race will take the mushers across Alaska’s untamed and unforgiving terrain, including two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and the unpredictable Bering Sea ice.

The winner is expected to cross the finish line in the western Alaska coastal community of Nome about nine days after the start.

For the first time ever in 2021, the race did not finish in Nome because of the pandemic. Instead, the race started in Willow, went to the ghost town of Iditarod and then doubled back to Willow.

Dallas Seavey won the 2021 race, matching musher Rick Swenson for the most wins ever with five apiece. Swenson, 71, last won in 1991 and hasn’t raced the Iditarod since 2012.

Seavey is looking to make history by becoming the first musher to hold six titles. Seavey has said he will likely take a break after this year’s race to spend time with his daughter.

There are two four-time champions in the race with Martin Buser and Jeff King. Buser is running in his 39th Iditarod, and King stepped in just days before the race started to run musher Nic Petit’s team after Petit said on Facebook he contracted COVID-19. Also in the race are 2018 winner Joar Leifseth Ulsom and 2019 winner Pete Kaiser.

Fifteen mushers signed up but withdrew from the race before it started, including Petit and the 2020 winner Thomas Waerner of Norway, who wasn’t able to secure travel documents to the U.S.

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Basketball Africa League’s 2nd Season Begins

The fledgling Basketball Africa League tipped off its second season in Dakar, Senegal, on March 5, 2022, with a dozen men’s club teams from as many African countries vying for the 2022 BAL championship title.

Senegal’s Dakar Université Club and Guinea’s Seydou Legacy Athlétique Club faced off in the season opener. They had their eyes on the prize claimed by Egypt’s Zamalek in last year’s inaugural season.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the BAL’s original 2020 launch date by a year and restricted its games to two weeks in Rwanda’s capital. This season’s 38 scheduled games will extend over three months among Dakar, Kigali and Cairo.

The BAL teams have been split into two conferences: Sahara and Nile. The Sahara teams — from Guinea, Morocco, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia – will compete against each other through March 15 at the Dakar Arena. Nile teams – from Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, South Africa and South Sudan — will play April 9 through 19 at Cairo’s Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex. Each conference’s top four teams will qualify for the playoffs, with a single-elimination tournament and finals at Kigali Arena May 21 to 28.

The BAL is a joint venture of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). It represents the NBA’s first collaboration operating a league outside North America.

“The NBA is making an investment in growing the game across the continent, broadly speaking,” NBA Africa’s president, Victor Williams, said at a February event celebrating a new NBA office in Lagos, Nigeria. Its original Africa office opened in Johannesburg in 2010.

A FIBA official said this second BAL season would “expand the scope and the entertainment value of the game” beyond the inaugural season’s two-week run in Kigali.

“Countries across Africa will see the games firsthand,” Sam Ahmedu, president of FIBA Africa Zone 3, told VOA. “It will help to also popularize the game and attract more sponsorship.”

Among BAL’s backers are companies such as Nike, Pepsi, Hennessy cognac and RwandAir.

The BAL’s parent organization, NBA Africa, has drawn strategic partners such as former president Barack Obama and investors including former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While football is the continent’s dominant team sport, interest in hoops has been growing. CNBC has reported the NBA’s goal of making it a top sport on the continent within a decade, focusing on the continent’s predominantly young and growing population. Africa has the world’s youngest population, with 70% of those in sub-Saharan Africa under age 30, the United Nations reports.

This season, each BAL team will have one prospect from the NBA Academy Africa, a basketball training center in Saly, Senegal, for top high school-age prospects. It’s through a new program called BAL Elevate.

“There is a natural synergy between the BAL and NBA Academy Africa, and this program will provide another pathway for elite African prospects to reach their potential as players and people,” Amadou Gallo Fall, the BAL’s president, said in a press release.

A talent pipeline?

Right now, the NBA has more than 50 players who either were born in Africa or have at least one African parent, according to a BAL representative.

Those players include two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, raised in Greece by parents from Nigeria; Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers and Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors, both native Cameroonians; and Neemias Queta of the Sacramento Kings, whose parents hail from Guinea-Bissau.

Some see efforts such as the BAL or the Basketball Without Borders program as a pipeline to the NBA. Last year’s league play drew 15 NBA scouts or team representatives, the Raptors’ scouting manager, Sarah Chan, told VOA at the time.

But other hoops devotees such as Relton Booysen contend the BAL should cultivate and keep talented players on the continent.

“My opinion is that the BAL is a prize. It is a prize for anyone in Africa, in the world, to play in the BAL,” said Booysen, head coach of the Cape Town Tigers, a South African team making its league debut April 10 in Cairo against Angola’s Pedro de la Rionda club. “It’s not like you want to use the BAL to feed players for the NBA. … I believe that the BAL will grow as big as the NBA and bigger.”

Hoops as cultural diplomacy

Scott Brooks, a sociologist and associate director of Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute, said he sees efforts such as the BAL as a form of cultural diplomacy. “This is a global kind of community when you’re talking about basketball,” he said.

“It’s not just American culture taking over. We always get a piece of other cultures coming back,” Brooks added. “That’s what really makes this exciting.”

Brooks praised programs such as Basketball Without Borders, the NBA and FIBA’s global community development and outreach program to nurture young players — not only in the sport but also in academics, health and values.

“It’s not just building athletes, it is building leaders in Africa,” said Brooks, who also lauded the BAL’s president, Amadou Gallo Fall, for playing an instrumental role in such development. “His vision is not just that they play basketball,” Brooks said, but that “they learn servantship … and they come back to the continent and help him build it.”

Participating teams hope the BAL tournament will raise their visibility and support.

For instance, the Rwanda Energy Group (REG), which qualified for this season’s competition, is relatively unknown to Kigali resident Jean de Dieu Rukundo. “I have no idea about REG, but anyway I wish them success,” he told VOA.

REG’s sports coordinator, Geoffrey Zawadi, expressed confidence in netting new admirers. He said the 5-year-old club already has won two national league trophies and “our fan base is increasing year after year.”

VOA will partner for a second season with the BAL, broadcasting 31 games across its extensive radio network in Africa. That includes select games in English, French, Portuguese, Kinyarwanda and Wolof. New this year, VOA and the BAL will collaborate on additional programming including weekly podcasts from Dakar, Cairo and Kigali that will air across VOA and BAL online platforms. Games will be livestreamed at NBA.com and TheBAL.com.

This report originated in VOA’s Africa Division. Contributors include: Joad Jose Santarita, Portuguese Service; Edward Rwema, Central Africa Service; Yacouba Ouedraogo and Tresor Matondo, French to Africa Service; and Mike Mbonye, English to Africa Service.

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Malawi Moves to Reduce Rise in Pangolin Trafficking 

Trafficking in pangolins continues to rise in Malawi as the country registers a drop in ordinary wildlife crime, such as trafficking in elephant tusks and rhino horns. Wildlife authorities say pangolin-related arrests in Malawi more than tripled between 2019 and 2020. Police in Malawi say a month rarely passes with no pangolin-related arrest. Authorities fear this may lead to extinction of the endangered mammals.

The latest is the arrest last Thursday of five people in Mangochi district, in the south of Malawi after they were found selling a live pangolin.

“The four suspects are Malawian while their accomplice is a well-known businessman from Pakistan,” said Ameena Tepani Daudi, who speaks for the police in the district. “The five were arrested at the Pakistan national’s house following a tip from members of the community. We found all of them in a bedroom while negotiating about selling price. And the pangolin was found hidden in a sack bag.”

Daudi said via a messaging app that suspects are expected in court soon.

“All suspects have been charged with illegal possession of specimens of listed species which contravenes section 110(b) of National Parks and Wildlife Act. And they will appear before court, possibly next week,” she added.

Police say the incident is among many pangolin-trafficking arrests in recent years.

Last year’s report by Lilongwe Wildlife Trust says Malawi is a range state for the Temminck’s ground pangolin, the only pangolin species found in southern Africa, now threatened with extinction.

Brighton Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, says the increase in pangolin trafficking is not surprising, considering recent research estimating that global pangolin populations have declined by 80% in the last 20 years.

“For Malawi, we can speculate that a shift from ivory trafficking to pangolin is because, one, the size of a pangolin is so small, easy to conceal but also it is fetching a reasonable amount of money on a black market. But also the existence in the country of foreign nationals that eat pangolin pangolins as delicacy, but also use of scales in medicine, that’s why an increase in pangolin trafficking,” he said.

Kumchedwa says last  week’s arrest of a Pakistani national in connection with pangolin trafficking confirms that the presence of some foreign nationals, particularly from Asia is fueling trafficking in pangolin.

Kumchdewa says strategies are in place to prevent possible extinction of the endangered mammals in Malawi and these include stiffer penalties to perpetrators.

According to the revised anti-wildlife-trafficking law in Malawi, perpetrators caught in possession of live pangolins or any of their derivatives face a prison sentence of up to 30 years, with no option for a fine.

“But also we have our own investigation unit, which is helping quite a lot, because it is largely intelligence-led law enforcement. But also, more than that, is how the courts have indeed applied the law. They are giving custodial sentences. We are seeing people taken to jail for seven years, five years found in possession of a pangolin,” he said.

Kumchedwa asked Malawians to be more patriotic and help the government by reporting to authorities about people involved in illegal pangolin trade, as well as in other protected animals.

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Pulitzer Winner Walter Mears Dies, AP’s ‘Boy On The Bus’

Walter R. Mears, who for 45 years fluidly and speedily wrote the news about presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it, has died. He was 87.

“I could produce a story as fast as I could type,” Mears once acknowledged — and he was a fast typist. He became the AP’s Washington bureau chief and the wire service’s executive editor and vice president, but he always returned to the keyboard, and to covering politics.

Mears died Thursday at his apartment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight days after being diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer, said his daughters Susan Mears of Boulder, Colorado, and Stephanie Mears of Austin, Texas, who were with him.

They said he was visited on his last night by a minister, with whom he discussed Alf Landon, the losing Republican presidential candidate in 1936, a year after his birth.

Mears’ ability to find the essence of a story while it was still going on and to get it to the wire — and to newspapers and broadcasters around the world — became legend among peers. In 1972, Timothy Crouse featured Mears in The Boys on the Bus, a book chronicling the efforts and antics of reporters covering that year’s presidential campaign.

Crouse recounted how, immediately after a political debate, a reporter from The Boston Globe called out to the man from AP: “Walter, what’s our lead? What’s the lead, Walter?” The question became a catchphrase among political reporters to describe the search for the most newsworthy aspect of an event — the lead. “Made me moderately famous,” Mears cracked in 2005.

It was a natural question. Mears had to bang out stories about campaign debates while they were still underway. Newspaper editors would see his lead on the wire before their own reporters filed their stories. So it was defensive for others on the press bus to wonder what Mears was leading with, and to ask him.

Early in his Washington career, he was assigned to write updates on the 1962 congressional elections. His bureau chief asked a senior colleague to size up how Mears worked under pressure and report back. “Mears writes faster than most people think,” the evaluator wrote, then, tongue in cheek, “and sometimes faster than he thinks.”

“Walter’s impact at the AP, and in the journalism industry as a whole, is hard to overstate,” said Julie Pace, AP executive editor and senior vice president. “He was a champion for a free and fair press, a dogged reporter, an elegant chronicler of history and an inspiration to countless journalists, including myself.”

Kathleen Carroll, a former AP executive editor, said he taught generations of journalists “how to watch and listen and ask and explain.”

“Walter was also a wonderful human being,” she said. “He loved his family — being a grandfather was one of the great joys of his life. He loved golf and the Red Sox, in that order. He loved politics and he loved the AP.”

Mears didn’t seem to mind being known as a pacesetter. “I came away with a slogan not of my making, but one that stuck for the rest of my career,” he recalled in his 2003 memoir, Deadlines Past. Over four decades, Mears covered 11 presidential campaigns, from Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 to Bush-Gore in 2000, as well as the political conventions, the campaigns, debates, the elections and, finally, the pomp and promise of the inaugurations.

In tribute, Jules Witcover, who covered politics for The Sun in Baltimore, said Mears combined speed and accuracy with an eye for the telling detail.

“His uncanny ability to cut to the heart of any story and relate it in spare, lively prose showed the way for a generation of wire service disciples, and he did so with a zest for the nomad’s life on the campaign trail,” Witcover said.

At other times in his career, Mears served AP as Washington bureau chief and as the wire service’s primary news executive, the executive editor in the New York headquarters. But he missed writing and went back to it.

He left once, to be Washington bureau chief for The Detroit News, but returned to AP nine months later. “I couldn’t take the pace,” he said. “It was too slow.”

In 1977 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work covering the election in which Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated a sitting president, Gerald R. Ford, who had inherited his office through the resignation in disgrace of Richard M. Nixon.

It was the Pulitzer, not the Crouse catchphrase, for which Mears thought he would be remembered. Asked to address a later crop of Pulitzer winners, he told them they would never have to wonder what would be the first words of their obituaries: They would be, he said, “Pulitzer Prize-winning.”

Winning his Pulitzer, Mears said, was “the sweetest moment in a career that is like no other line of work.”

In his lead paragraphs, Mears captured the essence of events, not just the words but the music. 

When the 1968 Democrats, in a convention held in the midst of antiwar rioting on the streets of Chicago, finally chose their nominee, he wrote: “Hubert H. Humphrey, apostle of the politics of joy, won the Democratic presidential nomination tonight under armed guard.” 
When, earlier that year, a gunman killed John Kennedy’s brother: “Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds early today, prey like his president brother to the savagery of an assassin.” 
And, in 1976, when former peanut farmer Carter took the presidency from its accidental occupant: “In the end, the improbable Democrat beat the unelected Republican.”

Said Terry Hunt, former AP White House correspondent and deputy bureau chief in Washington: “You can’t talk about Walter without using the word legendary. He was a brilliant writer, astonishingly fast, colorful and compelling.”

David Espo, former special correspondent and assistant Washington bureau chief agreed. “No one ever wrote faster or with more clarity, nor worked harder and made it look easier than Walter did,” he said. “He took care to mentor those less talented than he, in other words, all of us.”

Mears was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and grew up in Lexington, the son of an executive of a chemical company. He graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1956 and within a week joined the AP in Boston.

In those days, news was written on typewriters and transmitted on teletypes. “They were slow and they clattered,” Mears once wrote, “but the din was music to me.”

His first assignment was far from the din. He single-handedly covered the Vermont Legislature. “It was fun covering a citizen legislature with a representative from every hamlet in the state” — 276 of them, he recalled years later, including one elected by his townspeople to keep the fellow from being eligible for welfare.

Mears covered John F. Kennedy in 1960 whenever Kennedy campaigned in New England and covered Barry Goldwater’s hapless race against Lyndon Johnson four years later. He was back at it every presidential year, even after he retired in 2001.

On election night, 2008, he wrote an analysis of Barack Obama’s victory, and the challenge before him.

“Obama is the future,” he wrote, “and it begins now, in troubled times, for a president-elect with a costly agenda of promises that would be difficult to deliver in far better economic circumstances.”

No cheerleading from Mears there. He didn’t believe in reporters expressing political opinions and he kept his own to himself. Although he got to know the candidates he covered, sometimes shared after-hour drinks and played golf with them, he always addressed them by their titles.

He considered a distance between newsperson and newsmaker to be appropriate. He once explained: “I can’t really say I ever felt close to any of them, maybe because I always felt that there’s a line there, there’s sort of a reserve that I think needs to be maintained because you’re not covering a friend. You’re covering somebody who’s trying to convince the American people to give him the most important job they’ve got at their command.”

After retiring, Mears taught journalism for a time at the University of North Carolina and made his home there, in Chapel Hill.

His wife, Frances, died in January 2019. His first wife and their two children were killed in a house fire in 1962. Mears directed that a portion of his ashes be distributed with Frances’ remains and the rest in Massachusetts with those of his first wife and two children lost in the fire.

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To Fight Its War, Russia Closing Digital Doors

Russia’s blocking of Facebook is a symptom of its broader effort to cut itself off from sources of information that could imperil its internationally condemned invasion of Ukraine, experts say.

The often-criticized social network is part of a web of information sources that can challenge the Kremlin’s preferred perspective that its assault on Ukraine is righteous and necessary.

Blocking of Facebook and restricting of Twitter on Friday came the same day Moscow backed the imposition of jail terms on media publishing “false information” about the military.

Russia’s motivation “is to suppress political challenges at a very fraught moment for (Vladimir) Putin, and the regime, when it comes to those asking very tough questions about why Russia is continuing to prosecute this war,” said Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Russia thus joins the very small club of countries barring the largest social network in the world, along with China and North Korea.

Moscow was expected to quickly overpower its neighbor but the campaign has already shown signs that it could go longer and could lead to the unleashing of its full military ferocity.

“It’s a censorship tool of last resort,” Feldstein added. “They are pulling the plug on a platform rather than try to block pages or use all sorts of other mechanisms that they traditionally do.”

Earlier this week independent monitoring group OVD-Info said that more than 7,000 people in Russia had been detained at demonstrations over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Web monitoring group NetBlocks said Russia’s moves against the social media giants come amid a backdrop of protests “which are coordinated and mobilized through social media and messaging applications.”

The war is meanwhile taking place during a period of unprecedented crackdown on the Russian opposition, with has included protest leaders being assassinated, jailed or forced out of the country.

‘No access to truth’

Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last week, Russian authorities have stepped up pressure against independent media even though press freedoms in the country were already rapidly waning.

In this context, Facebook plays a key information distribution role in Russia, even as it endures withering criticism in the West over matters ranging from political division to teenagers’ mental health.

Natalia Krapiva, tech legal counsel at rights group Access Now, said social media has been a place where independent, critical voices have been talking about the invasion.

“Facebook is one of the key platforms in Russia,” she said, adding that its loss is “a devastating blow to access to independent information and for resistance to the war.”

Russia has been hit with unprecedented sanctions from the West over the invasion, but also rejections both symbolic and significant from sources ranging from sporting organizations to U.S. tech companies.

Facebook’s parent Meta and Twitter however have engaged on the very sensitive issue of information by blocking the spread of Russian state-linked news media.

Russia’s media regulator took aim at both, with Roskomnadzor accusing Facebook of discrimination toward state media.

Big U.S. tech firms like Apple and Microsoft have announced halting the sale of their products in Russia, while other companies have made public their “pauses” of certain business activities or ties.

On Friday U.S. internet service provider Cogent Communications said it had “terminated its contracts with customers billing out of Russia.”

The Washington Post reported Cogent has “several dozen customers in Russia, with many of them, such as state-owned telecommunications giant Rostelecom, being close to the government.”

It’s exactly the kind of measure Ukrainian officials have been campaigning heavily for as they ask Russia be cut off from everything from Netflix to Instagram.

Yet experts like Krapiva worry about what that would mean for dissenting or critical voices inside Russia.

“There’s a risk of people having no access to truth,” she said.

“Some Ukrainians have been calling for disconnecting Russia from the internet, but that’s counterproductive to disconnect civil society in Russia who are trying to fight.”  

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Will COVID Mutate in Animals and Jump Back to Humans?

A new variant of the coronavirus found in white-tailed deer in Canada was later discovered in a person who lived nearby and had contact with the deer population, according to a recent study. The researchers say it’s possible the deer transmitted the virus to the human.

Emerging evidence that COVID-19 is gaining a foothold in wildlife could have negative long-term consequences for humans, according to Nükhet Varlik, associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark.

“Even if we managed to vaccinate the entire human population, the disease can still come back — from the animals back to us — which is, in fact, what happened with some of the other historical pandemics,” Varlik says. “So, in the long term, I don’t think COVID can be eradicated, to be honest.”

Six out of every 10 infectious diseases in people are zoonotic, meaning they pass between species, from animals to humans.

Examples of zoonotic viruses include the flu, West Nile virus, the plague, rabies and Lyme disease.

The coronavirus outbreak has been linked to a market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were slaughtered on site. And although the virus is classified as zoonotic, no animal reservoir of the disease has been found.

Any new COVID-19 variant that animals might pass back to humans has the potential to mutate into something totally new.

“It’s definitely going to evolve differently in an animal than it will in a human,” says Cody Warren, a virologist and immunologist who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Now we have what we’re considering a human virus trying to evolve to grow in an animal, and so, it’s going to undergo its own unique evolutionary trajectory in that animal.”

Multiple COVID-19 variants such as delta and omicron have been found in humans, and scientists cannot rule out the possibility that some variants came from animals.

“Most of the attention and resources are focusing on, ‘How do we test humans?’ and ‘How do we coordinate hospital beds?’” says Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor and chair of emerging infectious diseases at Pennsylvania State University. “But, in this process, we haven’t really been looking at animals. …That’s why we have a lot of missing links to trace back the origins of these viruses. So, it may be that we haven’t been looking into some animal species in some part of the world where this evolution largely may have happened. We have lots of gaps in connecting the dots.”

Kuchipudi, a veterinary virologist, co-authored a separate study that found evidence of COVID-19 in white-tailed deer in Staten Island, New York. Researchers tested the animals between December 12, 2021, and January 31, 2022, and found COVID-19 antibodies in 19 of the 131 animals sampled.

When a virus goes from humans back into animals, the process is referred to as spillback.

“And what I think is most concerning about that is that it gives new opportunities for the virus to evolve in new, unique and innovative ways,” says Warren. “And that virus could potentially evolve in a way and then jump back into humans and spread again throughout the human population as a new disease.”

Kuchipudi emphasizes the need to begin monitoring high-risk animals where the force of infection is high and based on their frequent exposure to humans in order to stop, or at least minimize, transmissions from animals to humans.

“Then we can track down what is happening in terms of the virus evolution. But will we also be able to determine what are the routes through which this exposure has happened? Is it through wastewater or leftover food?” says Kuchipudi. “Although we found deer have the virus, it is not entirely clear how the free-living deer, that don’t really come close to humans typically, are picking up the infection.”

Right now, there is no coordinated, concerted effort nationally or internationally to address the problem of COVID-19 in animals, according to Kuchipudi. But he is hopeful that is changing. The American Rescue Plan provides $300 million for the monitoring and surveillance of animals believed susceptible to COVID-19.

“I see a lot of momentum happening,” Kuchipudi says. “A lot of relevant people recognize this is a problem. And I think most federal and state agencies are very seriously discussing looking into this.”

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