Month: October 2022

US Rolls Out Voluntary Cybersecurity Goals

The United States is trying to make it easier for companies and organizations to bolster their cybersecurity in the face of growing attacks aimed at crippling their operations, stealing their data or demanding ransom payments.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) rolled out their new Cybersecurity Performance Goals on Thursday, describing them as a critical but voluntary resource that will help companies and organizations make better decisions.

“Really what these cybersecurity performance goals present is a menu of options to advance one’s cybersecurity,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters, describing the rollout as a “watershed moment” for cybersecurity.

“They are accessible, they are easy to understand, and they are identified according to the cost that each would entail, the complexity to implement the goal, as well as the magnitude of the impact that the goal’s implementation would have,” he added.

For months, U.S. officials have been warning of an ever more complex and dangerous threat environment in cyberspace, pushing the government’s “Shields Up” awareness campaign, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

They have also called attention to cyberattacks by Iran and North Korea, while warning that both nation states and non-state actors have increasingly been scanning and targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, from water and electric companies to airports, which were struck by a series of denial-of-service attacks earlier in October.

Private cybersecurity companies have likewise warned of a growing number of attacks against health care companies and education and research organizations.

While some bigger U.S. companies and organizations have been able to devote time, money and other resources to confront the growing dangers, U.S. officials are concerned that others have not.

In particular, CISA has worried about small to mid-sized businesses, along with hospitals and school systems, often described by officials as target rich but resource poor because they do not have the money or resources to defend systems and data from hackers.

Officials said the new guidelines, which focus on key areas like account security, training, incident reporting, and response and recovery, and come with checklists, are designed to ease the burden. The officials also said they anticipate the goals will change and evolve along with the threat.

The newly unveiled goals “were developed to really represent a minimum baseline of cyber security measures that if implemented, will reduce not only risk to critical infrastructure but also to national security, economic security and public health and safety,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly, calling them a “quick start guide.”

“[It’s] really a place to start to drive prioritized investment toward the most critical practices,” she said.

According to CISA, many of the new goals are already resonating, including with state and local officials running U.S. elections.

“We’ve been working with them to implement several of these best practices, as well as ensuring that they have the tools and resources and the capabilities to ensure the security and resilience of election infrastructure,” Easterly told reporters Thursday. “I’ve met with election officials even just over the past few days … and they all expressed confidence in particular in the cybersecurity across all of their systems.”

CISA also said Thursday that U.S. states and territories needing more help can take advantage of $1 billion in grants that are being made available over the next four years.

The grants, designed specifically to help protect U.S. critical infrastructure, were first announced last month.

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UN: Greenhouse Gas Cuts Needed to Prevent Climate Catastrophe

GENEVA – A U.N. report warns the window for preventing a climate catastrophe is fast closing. The U.N. Environment Program’s latest Emissions Gap Report urges unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and a rapid transformation of societies to head off the worst.

The U.N. report finds the world is falling far short of the Paris climate goals agreement, with no credible pathway for limiting a temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said progress since last year’s climate change conference, COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, has been woefully inadequate. She said nations have failed to deliver on their pledges for greater emissions cuts.

She noted greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 45 percent by 2030 to stop climate change. However, instead of stabilizing global temperatures at 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level, she said temperatures will likely rise 2.4 to 2.6 degrees by 2100.

“We are sliding from climate crisis to climate disaster. This report is sending us a very, very clear message. If we are serious about climate change, we need to kickstart a system-wide transformation now. We need a root and branch redesign of the electricity sector, of the transport sector, of the building sector, and food systems.”

Additionally, she said financial systems must be reformed so they can bankroll the required transformations. She says incremental changes no longer are an option. Bold action must be taken now.

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Peterri Talaas called the transformational changes doable. He noted the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, earlier this year reported that prices of climate-friendly energy solutions have been dropping.

“Nowadays, it is cheaper to invest in solar or wind energy as compared to the fossil energy. And the good news is also that 32 countries have reduced their emissions during the past 15 years, whereas their economies have been growing. So, there is not an automatic connection between economic growth and emissions growth.”

He mentioned European countries, the United States, Japan, and Singapore as some of the countries that have managed to grow their economies while reducing emissions.

Environmental experts estimate a global transformation to a low-emissions economy is expected to require investments of at least $4 trillion to $6 trillion a year. They are urging nations attending next week’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to agree to foot the bill and to up their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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MSF Warns of Measles, Cholera Outbreaks at Kenya Refugee Complex

The charity Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that Kenya’s Dadaab Refugee Complex faces a high risk of measles and cholera outbreaks as thousands of new refugees arrive from areas of Somalia where the diseases are circulating. 

More than 233,000 refugees live in three overcrowded camps in the complex.  

Doctors Without Borders, best known by its French acronym MSF, reported a sharp rise since January in the number of people fleeing to Kenya to escape drought, hunger and violence. 

Many of the new arrivals are from southern Somalia, where measles and cholera outbreaks recently have occurred, the charity said.  

MSF’s deputy program manager for Kenya, Adrian Guadarrama, said Thursday in Geneva that many are being received by refugee communities inside camps, but many more are living in very poor conditions on the outskirts of the camps. 

Last week, he said, MSF teams recorded three cases of measles and two suspected cases of cholera in Dagahaley, one of Dadaab’s three refugee camps. 

“This should be an alarm for all the actors and stakeholders involved in the response in Dadaab. Because we know that just one case of any of these diseases can cause a full-blown outbreak very quickly, affecting not only the refugee community, but also the host community,” Guadarrama said. 

Kenya’s Health Ministry last week issued a cholera alert following confirmation of 61 cases in six counties. 

Guadarrama said Kenya stopped registering new arrivals in Dadaab in 2015.  

Unregistered refugees, he said, cannot get basic services and assistance. He said clean drinking water is scarce, and toilets and handwashing points lacking. These conditions, he said, make the unregistered refugees highly vulnerable to life-threatening diseases. 

Guadarrama said the need for measles and cholera vaccination campaigns is urgent, but that devising a strategy is complex. Some people are scattered in the outskirts, he said, while others are inside Dagahaley camp. 

“We talk about a camp of 115,000. So, just to identify them is quite a challenge,” he said. “And this is why having screening, or a reception center or a registration center — that would be ideal — would allow us to cope with those activities and provide access to basic services including vaccination, for example.” 

Guadarrama said the humanitarian situation in the camps and in the surrounding communities is not yet at the breaking point and there is still time to avoid an emergency in a long and protracted crisis. 

 

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Musk Says He Doesn’t Seek ‘Free-for-All Hellscape’ for Twitter

Elon Musk is telling Twitter advertisers he is buying the platform to “help humanity” and doesn’t want it to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything can be said with no consequences.

The message to advertisers posted Thursday on Twitter came a day before Musk’s deadline for closing his $44 billion deal to buy the social-media company and take it private.

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk wrote, in an unusually-long message for the billionaire Tesla CEO who typically projects his thoughts in one-line tweets

He continued: “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”

The message reflects concerns among advertisers — Twitter’s chief source of revenue  that Musk’s plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and drive away users.

Friday’s deadline to close the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in an epic battle during which Musk signed an April deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to conclude the deal. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial that would likely lead to a judge forcing Musk to complete the deal.

But Musk has been signaling that the deal is going through by Friday, paying a visit to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters Wednesday and changing his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit.”

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Germany to Become One of Europe’s First Countries to Legalize Cannabis

Germany on Wednesday unveiled plans to legalize cannabis, potentially making it one of the first countries in Europe to make marijuana legal.

Presenting his plans to the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said the proposal aims to achieve “the most liberal cannabis liberalization in Europe, and, on the other hand … the most tightly regulated market.”

Germany’s federal Cabinet reportedly approved the plan, kicking off a lengthy process to legalize growth, cultivation and distribution of the plant.

German laws must comply with European legislation, and under the proposal, the government would regulate cannabis production, sale, and distribution as part of a controlled, legalized market, said Lauterbach, describing the reform as a possible “model” for other European countries.

Although many European countries have decriminalized small amounts of cannabis for recreational purposes, only one, Malta, has fully legalized it.

The proposed plan would also legalize the acquisition and possession of 20 to 30 grams of cannabis for personal consumption, cultivation of up to two or three plants per person, and sales through specialized stores. Use of cannabis would remain prohibited for anyone under 18.

According to the plan, the government would also introduce a special consumption tax and develop education and abuse prevention programs, while ongoing investigations and criminal proceedings connected to cannabis would be terminated.

Legalizing cannabis would push out Germany’s cannabis black market and could increase annual tax revenues, create 27,000 new jobs, and generate cost savings of about $4.7 billion, according to a report by Reuters.

Wednesday’s announcement was met with mixed reactions throughout the country. A national pharmacists association warned of potential health risks of legalizing cannabis, while some regional officials expressed concerns that Germany would become a drug-tourism destination, similar to the Netherlands, where some coffee shops are allowed to sell cannabis under strict conditions.

According to The Guardian, Germany’s health minister said the Dutch system “combined two disadvantages: liberal use but not a controlled market. What we have learned from the Dutch experience is that we don’t want to do it that way. We want to control the entire market.”

Some information from this report came from Reuters.

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Biden Urges Americans to Get COVID Boosters, as Funding Hangs in Balance

President Joe Biden got his third COVID-19 booster shot Tuesday and urged Americans to do the same before major holidays and winter flu season. But with no more congressional funding coming for COVID relief, where does this leave nations the U.S. vowed to help? Anita Powell reports from the White House. Patsy Widakuswara contributed.

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Adidas Ends Partnership With Kanye West Over Antisemitic Remarks

Adidas ended its lucrative partnership with the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, over his offensive and antisemitic remarks, which drew widespread criticism from Jewish groups, celebrities and others on social media who said the German sportswear company was being too slow to act.

The sneaker giant became the latest company to cut ties with Ye, who was suspended from Twitter and Instagram this month over antisemitic posts that the social networks said violated their policies. The outcry swelled after demonstrators on a Los Angeles overpass unfurled a banner Saturday praising Ye’s antisemitic comments.

Adidas said it expected to take a hit of up to 250 million euros ($246 million) to its net income this year from the decision to immediately stop production of its line of Yeezy products and stop payments to Ye and his companies.

“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”

Jewish groups, noting Adidas’ past links to the Nazi regime, said the decision was overdue. The World Jewish Congress noted that during World War II, Adidas factories “produced supplies and weapons for the Nazi regime, using slave labor.”

“I would have liked a clear stance earlier from a German company that also was entangled with the Nazi regime,” said Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the main Jewish group in the country where Adidas is headquartered.

For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

The rapper has alienated even ardent fans in recent years, teasing and long tinkering with albums that haven’t been met with the critical or commercial success of his earlier recordings. Those close to him, like ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her family, have ceased publicly defending him after the couple’s bitter divorce and his unsettling posts about her recent relationship with comedian Pete Davidson.

Ye has told Bloomberg that he plans to cut ties with his corporate suppliers. After he was suspended from Twitter and Facebook, Ye offered to buy conservative social network Parler.

An email message sent to a representative for Ye was not immediately returned.

Adidas, whose CEO Kasper Rorsted is stepping down next year, said it reached its decision after conducting a “thorough review” of its partnership with Ye, whose talent agency, CAA, as well as Balenciaga fashion house had already dropped the rapper.

Despite the growing controversy, Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, believes that Adidas’ delayed response was “understandable.”

“It’s a hugely profitable, edgy brand association,” Adamson said. “The positives are so substantial in terms of the audience it appeals to — younger, urban, trendsetters, the size of the business. I’m sure they were hoping against hope that he would apologize and try to make this right.”

Adamson noted that Adidas was facing pressure from everywhere including customers, employees and stakeholders.

“There’s the short-term profits of selling shoes, and then there is the long-term equity of the Adidas brand,” he said.

In the hours before the announcement, some Adidas employees in the United States had spoken out on social media about the company’s inaction.

Sarah Camhi, a director of trade marketing at the company who described herself as Jewish, said in a LinkedIn post that she felt “anything but included” as Adidas.

“remained quiet; both internally to employees as well as externally to our customers” for two weeks after Ye made his antisemitic remarks.

The rapper, who has won 24 Grammy Awards, has been steadily losing audience on radio and even his streaming numbers have declined slightly over the last month. According to data provided by Luminate, an entertainment data and insights company whose data powers the Billboard music charts, his airplay audience slipped from 8 million in the week ending Sept. 22, to 5.4 million in the week ending on Oct. 20. The popularity of his songs on streaming on demand also went down in the same period, from 97 million to 88.2 million, about a 9% drop.

Ye has earned more of a reputation for stirring up controversy since 2016, when he was hospitalized in Los Angeles because of what his team called stress and exhaustion. It was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

He recently suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast,” among other comments. He also was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his Yeezy collection show in Paris.

MRC studio announced Monday that it is shelving a complete documentary about the rapper. JPMorganChase and Ye have ended their business relationship, although the banking breakup was in the works even before Ye’s antisemitic comments.

Gap said Tuesday that it is also taking immediate steps to remove Yeezy Gap products from its stores and has shut down yeezygap.com in light of West’s comments. The clothing retailer said that in September it was ending their relationship but at the time, it said that it planned to continue to sell Yeezy Gap products that were in the pipeline.

Jewish groups have pointed to the danger of the rapper’s comments at a time of rising antisemitism. Such incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high last year, the Anti-Defamation League said in a letter to Adidas last week urging it to break with Ye.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, applauded the company’s decision to drop Ye.

“This is a very positive outcome,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “It illustrates that antisemitism is unacceptable and creates consequences.”

The saga of Ye, not just with Adidas but with brands like Gap and Balenciaga, underscores the importance of vetting celebrities thoroughly and avoiding those who are “overly controversial or unstable,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail.

“Companies or brands that fail to heed this will get stung, especially if they become overly reliant on a difficult personality to drive their business,” Saunders said.

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LogOn: US Navy Turns to Driverless Ships for Indo-Pacific Strategy

As the U.S. military considers China’s military strength in the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S. Navy is turning to driverless ships to multiply its forces. VOA’s Jessica Stone takes us along for a closer look at this military innovation. Camera: Keith Lane

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Ukraine War Art Exhibit Opens in New York City

A New York City charity art exhibition includes more than 150 war-themed posters designed by Ukrainian artists to show the true impact of Russia’s war on their country. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

Camera: Alexander Barash

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CDC Warns of Possible Surge of Flu Cases

After two years of low influenza case numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns of a possibly harsh flu season.  

“The United States has experienced relatively little influenza activity since 2020, thanks, in part, to community mitigation measures used to control the spread of COVID-19, making the country ripe for a severe influenza season,” the CDC told VOA in an email.  

According to the CDC, the flu is already spreading in parts of the South, with relatively high activity levels in Georgia and Texas, compared to the same period last year.  

Although the influenza season in the U.S. is just beginning, “based on what we have seen in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, flu has the potential to hit us hard this year,” Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month.

Researchers often look to the Southern Hemisphere because its flu season hits first, usually from May to October, to foreshadow what will happen in the north, where flu season usually starts in October, peaks in December and can last through May. 

Australia’s flu season hit that country two months earlier than usual and caused one of its worst seasons in recent years, with cases peaking about three times higher than average, according to the Australian government’s Department of Health and Aged Care. During Australia’s 2022 flu season, of the 225,332 laboratory-confirmed cases, there have been 308 influenza-associated deaths, the agency reported. In comparison, in 2020, of the 21,266 laboratory-confirmed cases, there were 37 influenza-associated deaths. 

The flu hit younger people especially hard in Australia. Although COVID-19 has been relatively mild for younger people, experts caution that children may be at especially high risk this year. That’s because many children have not been exposed to the flu due to COVID-19 safety precautions, including the use of masks, remote learning and social distancing taken in recent years, leaving them without natural immunity. 

Influenza A, which causes more serious illness than other strains of the virus, is more prevalent this year, according to CDC data. It also spreads about two to three times more rapidly than Influenza B, a less common type of influenza.  

Although influenza symptoms are similar to those of a common flu, they are typically more intense and begin more abruptly. The symptoms include common cold symptoms, such as a cough or runny nose, but also range to symptoms such as a fever or body aches. Some people also experience vomiting or diarrhea, although this is more common in children than adults.  

The CDC urges that Americans ages 6 months and older get a flu shot by the end of October. Experts say it’s the best way to be protected from the ailment. 

“Over the past two years, we’ve seen some worrisome drops in flu vaccination coverage, especially in some groups of people who are at the highest risk of developing serious flu illness,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a news conference earlier this month.  

Health officials fear fewer people will be vaccinated because of the anti-vaccine sentiment that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases found that fewer Americans said they will get the flu shot compared to years before.  

The CDC told VOA News in an email that to help avoid the flu, “people should continue to practice the everyday preventive actions that we saw work so well during the pandemic like social distancing, frequent handwashing, staying home when you are sick, and covering coughs and sneezes.”   

“With a potentially challenging flu season ahead, I urge everyone to protect themselves and their families from flu and its potentially serious complications,” Walensky said. 

 

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US Technology Helps Improve Crop Yields in Drought-stricken Africa 

More frequent and severe droughts in Africa are hampering food production, especially in arid parts of the continent where farmers struggle to eke out a living. A water retention system developed in the U.S. is helping African farmers fight the trend and improve crop yields in drought-affected areas. Juma Majanga reports from Kibwezi, Kenya.  

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Europe’s Bees Stung by Climate, Pesticides and Parasites

Bees pollinate 71 of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of food worldwide. They also pollinate wild plants, helping sustain biodiversity and the beauty of the natural world.

But climate change, pesticides and parasites are taking a terrible toll on bees, and they need protecting, said European beekeepers, who held their annual congress in Quimper, western France, this week.

The congress, which said some European beekeepers were suffering “significant mortalities and catastrophic harvests due to difficult climatic conditions,” was an opportunity for beekeepers and scientists to respond to the major concerns.

The European Union, the world’s second-largest importer of honey, currently produces just 60% of what it consumes.

French beekeepers, for example, expect to harvest between 12,000 and 14,000 metric tons of honey this year, far lower than the 30,000 tons they harvested in the 1990s, according to the National Union of French Beekeepers (UNAF).

“I’ve been fighting for bees for 30 years, but if I had to choose now, I don’t know if I’d become a beekeeper,” said UNAF spokesman Henri Clement, who has 200 hives in the mountainous Cevennes region in southeastern France.

Clement is 62 and not far off retiring.

“But it’s not much fun for young people who want to take up the profession,” he said.

Many of the topics buzzing around the congress were evidence of this — pesticides, climate change, and Asian hornets, parasitic varroa mites and hive beetles, all invasive alien species in Europe.

Challenges includes rain, drought

With climate change, “the bigger issue is just the erratic weather and rain patterns, drought and things like that,” said U.S. entomologist Jeff Pettis, president of Apimondia, an international federation of beekeeping associations in 110 countries.

“In certain places, the plants had been used to a certain temperature. And now it goes up, and you have a hot dry summer, and there are no flowers,” Pettis told AFP.

No flowers means no pollen, which means bees dying of hunger.

Climate scientists say human-induced global heating is intensifying extreme weather events such as flooding, and heatwaves that exacerbate wildfires.

“The fires seem to be a big issue,” Pettis said. “They come sporadically, and we lose hives directly from flooding and fires.

Pettis, a former scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, published a study in 2016 on the quality of pollen produced by goldenrod, a hardy perennial also known as solidago that produces a myriad of small yellow daisy-like flowers.

The study showed that the more carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — that accumulates in the atmosphere, the lower the amount of protein in goldenrod pollen.

North America bees are dependent on nourishment from goldenrod pollen to get through the winter, Pettis said.

“Getting inferior food … should affect wintering. It could happen with other pollen sources. We don’t know.”

As in France, 30% to 40% of hives in the United States are dying every winter, Pettis said, decimated by varroa mites, pesticides and the destruction of wild spaces where wild plants grow

“Today, there are even American startups that are developing drones to pollinize plants in the place of bees. It’s utterly appalling,” said Clement.

Toxic threat

Toxic pesticides are another factor decimating bee colonies and other pollinating insects.

French molecular biophysics scientist Jean-Marc Bonmatin said parasites such as varroa were “boosted by the presence of neonicotinide pesticides, which directly poison pollinators.”

Neonicotinoids, chemically similar to nicotine, are systemic pesticides.

Unlike contact pesticides, which remain on the surface of the treated leaves, systemic pesticides are taken up by the plant and transported to its leaves, flowers, roots and stems, as well as to its pollen and nectar.

These toxic substances can remain in the soil for between five and 30 years, Bonmatin said.

The EU restricted the use of three neonicotinoids — but not all — in 2013 and banned them outright in 2018.

But since 2013, several EU states have repeatedly granted “emergency authorizations” to use noxious insecticides on major crops.

He said open-source software called Toxibee was being launched soon to help farmers protect bees by identifying the least toxic molecules to use on their crops.

“Before they spray the crops with pesticides, they can try to limit their noxious effect,” he said. “Because what kills bees will one day damage people’s health, too.”

Pettis strove, however, to remain upbeat, pointing to some of the ways people can help bees.

“[We should] diversify agriculture and try not [to] be driven by chemically dependent agriculture, support organic and more sustainable farming.”

He also stressed the incredible resistance of some bee species, helped by factors in the natural world.

He cited the example of a black bee found on the Ile de Groix in Brittany, which has survived varroa attacks without beekeepers treating them for mites or giving them supplementary feeding.

“We think the bees are dependent on us, but in reality, they survive pretty well even without us,” he said. “And you still have the beauty of the bees. It’s such a good thing to work with bees.”

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Leslie Jordan, Versatile Emmy-winning Actor, Dies at 67

Leslie Jordan, the actor whose wry Southern drawl and versatility made him a comedy and drama standout on TV series including “Will & Grace” and “American Horror Story,” has died. The Emmy-winner, whose videos turned him into a social media star during the pandemic, was 67. 

“The world is definitely a much darker place today without the love and light of Leslie Jordan. Not only was he a mega talent and joy to work with, but he provided an emotional sanctuary to the nation at one of its most difficult times,” a representative for Jordan said in a statement Monday. “Knowing that he has left the world at the height of both his professional and personal life is the only solace one can have today.” 

The native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who won an outstanding guest actor Emmy in 2005 for his role as Beverly Leslie in “Will & Grace,” had a recurring role on the Mayim Bialik comedy “Call me Kat” and co-starred on the sitcom “The Cool Kids.” 

Jordan’s other eclectic credits include “Hearts Afire,” “Boston Legal,” “Fantasy Island” and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” He played various roles on the “American Horror Story” franchise series. 

Jordan died Monday in a single car crash in Hollywood, according to reports by celebrity website TMZ and the Los Angeles Times, citing unnamed law enforcement sources. 

Jordan earned an unexpected new following in 2021 when he spent time during the pandemic lockdown near family in his hometown. He broke the sameness by posting daily videos of himself on Instagram. 

Many of Jordan’s videos included him asking “How ya’ll doin?” and some included stories about Hollywood or his childhood growing up with identical twin sisters and their “mama,” as he called her. Other times he did silly bits like completing an indoor obstacle course. 

“Someone called from California and said, ‘Oh, honey, you’ve gone viral.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I don’t have COVID. I’m just in Tennessee,'” said Jordan. Celebrities including Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Alba and Anderson Cooper, along with brands such as Reebok and Lululemon, would post comments. 

Soon he became fixated with the number of views and followers he had, because there wasn’t much else going on. By the time of his death, he amassed 5.8 million followers on Instagram and another 2.3 million on TikTok. 

“For a while there, it was like obsessive. And I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. Stop, stop, stop.’ You know, it almost became, ‘If it doesn’t happen on Instagram, it didn’t happen.’ And I thought, ‘You’re 65, first of all. You’re not some teenage girl.'” 

The spotlight led to new opportunities. Earlier this month he released a gospel album called “Company’s Comin'” featuring Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Eddie Vedder and Tanya Tucker. He wrote a new book, “How Y’all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived.” 

It was Jordan’s second book, following his 2008 memoir, “My Trip Down the Red Carpet.” 

“That sort of dealt with all the angst and growing up gay in the Baptist Church and la, la, la, la, la. And this one, I just wanted to tell stories,” he told The Associated Press in a 2021 interview. Among the anecdotes: working with Lady Gaga on “American Horror Story,” how meeting Carrie Fisher led to Debbie Reynolds calling his mother, and the Shetland pony he got as a child named Midnight. 

In a 2014 interview with Philadelphia magazine, Jordan was asked how he related to his role in the 2013 film “Southern Baptist Sissies,” which explores growing up gay while being raised in a conservative Baptist church. 

“I really wanted to be a really good Christian, like some of the boys in the movie. I was baptized 14 times,” Jordan said. “Every time the preacher would say, ‘Come forward, sinners!’ I’d say ‘Oooh, I was out in the woods with that boy, I better go forward.’ My mother thought I was being dramatic. She’d say, ‘Leslie, you’re already saved,’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t think it took.'” 

Jordan said he considered himself a storyteller by nature. 

“It’s very Southern. If I was to be taught a lesson or something when I was a kid, I was told a story,” he told the AP. 

 

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Kenyan Museums, Farmers Conserve Indigenous Seeds as GMOs Are Legalized

Kenya’s museums and partners are conserving and promoting indigenous seeds after the government lifted a ban on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, for farming. The museum says the native seeds are at risk because of the GMO seeds, which the government and some farmers say will help them to produce more crops faster as the region suffers a historic drought. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi, Kenya. Videographer: Jimmy Makhulo

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WHO Says a Polio-Free World Within Grasp

In marking World Polio Day, advocates for a polio-free world are urging nations to commit to a new five-year strategy to eradicate this crippling disease and consign it to the trash bin of history.

An estimated 350,000 children were paralyzed by polio when the World Health Organization launched its Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988. In the world today, polio is endemic only in Pakistan, and Afghanistan. So far this year, 29 cases have been recorded, putting the possibility of a polio-free world within reach.

The WHO notes the final stretch is the most difficult and cautions nations against letting down their guard too soon. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the 29 recorded cases include a small number in southeast Africa linked to a strain originating in Pakistan.

“While it does not affect the WHO African region’s wild polio free certification, it shows us that as long as polio continues to circulate anywhere, it is a threat to children everywhere. Despite this news, we have a unique window of opportunity right now to end polio for good.”

The WHO warns polio also can spread within communities through circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses. These variants, it notes, can emerge in places where not enough people have been immunized against this crippling disease. It reports these variants continue to spread across parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe and new outbreaks have been detected in Britain, Israel and the United States in recent months.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell says the new polio eradication strategy is designed to take the world to the finish line. She says the strategy includes tactics to protect children from variant outbreaks and stop their spread to other countries.

“We are also working with governments to speed up our response to these outbreaks, acting immediately to ensure that they do not harm more children,” Russel said. “And we continue working to integrate polio activities with other immunization and health programs so we can reach high-risk children who have never received vaccines before. The new strategy will help us end all forms of polio. It will also help prepare countries to respond to future health threats.”   

If this goal is reached, polio will become only the second disease after smallpox to have been wiped off the face of the Earth. U.N. health agencies say it will cost $4.8 billion to achieve this historic milestone.    

The economic returns, they say, will be significant. They estimate eradicating polio would result in savings of more than $33 billion.    

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More Women Playing the Hero in Hollywood Films

Fierce female leads were once rarities in U.S. action movies. More recently, blockbuster franchises and streaming platforms have placed women at the center of the action, saving the day with their strength and ingenuity. Increasingly, these powerful heroines are ethnically diverse, appealing to wider audiences. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more. Videographer: Adam Greenbaum, Julie Taboh

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Cameroon Says Cholera Hits Minawao, a Nigerian Refugee Camp

Authorities in Cameroon say they are struggling to contain a cholera outbreak in an overcrowded refugee camp on its northern border with Nigeria. In the past week, three people have died in the Minawao refugee camp and at least 81 have been infected from the bacteria, which spreads through dirty water and food. The camp was designed to hold fewer than 15,000 refugees but currently has more than five times that number.

The camp located on Cameroon’s northern border is home to 76,000 Nigerians who have fled Boko Haram terrorist attacks.

Helen Ngoh, spokesperson for UNHCR Cameroon says the U.N. body needs support to contain the ongoing wave of infections and to prevent future outbreaks in the refugee camp.

“In Minawao specifically UNHCR needs at least 450,000 U.S. dollars to be able to increase portable water supply and also to be able to cover an existing gap of 900 latrines and to be able to improve waste management in the camp as well. All of these needs are extremely urgent at this point,” she said.

UNHCR says it is investigating suspected cases and treating patients free of charge. The refugee agency says it is also finding out if the disease has spread to host communities.

Ngoh said several hundred humanitarian workers have been deployed to the camp and host communities to educate refugees on prevention measures, which she said are basically respecting hygiene rules.

Nigerian refugee Special Bulama is among aid workers raising awareness about the outbreak and teaching civilians good hygiene practices.

Bulama says he has personally spoken about the disease to scores of families in the camp.

“We are telling the refugees to take care of themselves, they must boil water before they take [drink], they must wash their hands with Sabulu [soap], keep their latrines very safe because flies can take this disease to their food or to their water. We are telling them to help us to avoid this problem of cholera,” he said.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health has confirmed the outbreak. Government health officials say at least 22 people have died of cholera in several villages on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and Chad. Humanitarian workers and health officials say many more people may be infected or are feared dead in difficult to access villages within the past two weeks.

The U.N. reports that up to October, more than 1,000 cases of cholera were reported in Nigeria.

Cameroon says hospitals in border localities are overwhelmed.

Officials in Cameroon say they are engaged in discussions with Nigeria and Chad to jointly combat cholera, a bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration, usually spread through contaminated water. It can be fatal if not treated.

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World Polio Day: Pakistan’s Polio Problem Persists

Photos of Zarghoona Wadood sightseeing in Egypt with two other wheelchair-using women went viral last year in Pakistan, becoming a symbol of what women with disabilities can do.

Wadood was just 7 months old when polio paralyzed her legs. Her parents didn’t know to get her vaccinated.

“I can’t even move from my bed unless the wheelchair is near me … the wheelchair is a part of me now,” Wadood, now 38 and employed with the U.N. World Food Program, told VOA.

She is one of thousands of Pakistanis disabled by polio, an incurable and highly infectious viral disease that can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing muscles to stop working.

The invention of polio vaccines in the 1950s and 1960s wiped the disease from the industrialized world, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative launched in 1988 largely eliminated the disease through mass vaccination campaigns in the developing world as well.

As the global health community marks World Polio Day on Oct. 24, only Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to grapple with the wild polio virus.

In Pakistan

After 15 months without any reported cases of the wild polio virus, Pakistan has recorded 20 cases since April — 17 in the former tribal region of North Waziristan that borders Afghanistan and three from nearby areas.

Dr. Shahzad Baig, who leads Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Program blames a poor security situation, migration patterns, harassment of polio teams, mistrust of the vaccine, and complicity among members of local communities and polio workers to find ways to circumvent vaccination enforcement.

“They are not confident that [the vaccine] is safe for the children,” Baig told VOA. “They think that the government is forcing this vaccine on the children, [so] there is some hidden agenda.”

Despite Pakistan’s decades-long Polio Eradication Program, many Pakistanis still believe the vaccine will make their children infertile or that it contains pork-based ingredients forbidden by Islamic scripture. In 2019, a rumor that the vaccine was making children sick caused a spike in refusals. That year ended with Pakistan recording 149 cases, significantly more than the year before.

And the vaccine has become a bargaining chip used to pressure the government to meet a community’s needs.

“So, the roads, the bridges, you know, electricity and anything they want there, when the campaign comes, they will say, ‘You do that and that is when we will accept the vaccination,’” Baig said.

Local customs also leave children vulnerable to the virus. Often male health workers cannot enter homes in the absence of a male member of the household. In more conservative communities that don’t allow women to work, the lack of female polio workers further limits access to children.

Baig told VOA that less than 1% of polio team members in former tribal areas are women.

Saira Abid, a polio worker from North Waziristan, told VOA it breaks her heart that most of the polio cases were recorded in her ancestral village.

Displaced by the military operation against terrorists in 2014 and forced by financial hardship to break tradition, Abid has been working as a community health worker in Peshawar since 2015.

“Whenever I go to my village, I see the word ‘locked’ chalked on the wall because men are not allowed to go inside,” Abid said. During a mass-vaccination campaign, polio workers mark the vaccination status of each household on a wall by the main door.

While Abid feels comfortable working in Peshawar’s urban setting, she says it’s not safe for her to work in her village because of strict local customs and the presence of militants. In June, three members of a polio team were killed and another injured in North Waziristan.

Safety is a long-running issue for polio workers in Pakistan. Many have been killed by either militants who see vaccination as part of a Western agenda or attacked by parents angry at being pressed to vaccinate their children.

In Afghanistan

Polio worker safety is also an issue across the border in Afghanistan, where eight polio workers were killed in separate attacks in February.

Remarkably, Afghanistan has recorded only two cases of wild polio virus so far this year, indicating the lowest level of the virus in the country’s history, according to the World Health Organization.

However, Afghanistan’s cases of vaccine-derived polio stand at 43. The vaccine uses a weak form of the polio virus, which can sometime infect a separate, unvaccinated person.

“If we succeed to implement the planned polio campaigns with high coverage of 95%, we can interrupt the circulation of polio virus by the end of 2022,” Kamal Shah Sayed, a UNICEF spokesperson in Afghanistan, told VOA earlier this year.

The Taliban pledged support for polio campaigns after taking control of Afghanistan last August, but for three years before that, they banned vaccination drives in areas under their control.

Since November 2021, at least seven campaigns have been conducted in Afghanistan.

World Polio Day

On World Polio Day, Afghanistan is wrapping up an immunization campaign while Pakistan is launching one.

From 3.6 million children inaccessible in Afghanistan in 2018, a WHO statement in August said the number of children missing vaccination had fallen to 700,000.

In Pakistan, despite frequent anti-polio drives, more than 400,000 children are missed every year, according to the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Baig of Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Program is concerned that the summer’s massive flooding has increased the risk of polio spreading via unsanitary conditions, and flood victims unhappy with government relief efforts may boycott the campaign to pressure authorities to provide them better facilities.

Zarghoona Wadood, who toured Egypt last year, is also a disability rights activist. She wants parents to learn from her experience and vaccinate their children against polio, just as her parents did for her three younger siblings.

“No matter what I am, I still have a disability, everybody cannot have the same strength that I have,” Wadood told VOA. “A lot of people give up and they isolate themselves … so why are you doing this to your children?”

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Climate Protesters Throw Mashed Potatoes at Monet Painting

Climate protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a German museum to protest fossil fuel extraction Sunday but caused no damage to the artwork.

Two activists from the group Last Generation, which has called on the German government to take drastic action to protect the climate and stop using fossil fuels, approached Monet’s “Les Meules” at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum and threw a thick substance over the painting and its gold frame.

The group later confirmed via a post on Twitter that the mixture was mashed potatoes. The two activists, both wearing orange high-visibility vests, also glued themselves to the wall below the painting.

“If it takes a painting – with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it – to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all: Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting!” the group wrote on Twitter, along with a video of the incident.

In total, four people were involved in the incident, according to German news agency dpa.

The Barberini Museum said later Sunday that because the painting was enclosed in glass, the mashed potatoes didn’t cause any damage. The painting, part of Monet’s “Haystacks” series, is expected to be back on display Wednesday.

“While I understand the activists’ urgent concern in the face of the climate catastrophe, I am shocked by the means with which they are trying to lend weight to their demands,” museum director Ortrud Westheider said in a statement.

Police told dpa they had responded to the incident, but further information about arrests or charges was not immediately available.

The Monet painting is the latest artwork in a museum to be targeted by climate activists to draw attention to global warming.

The British group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery earlier this month.

Just Stop Oil activists also glued themselves to the frame of an early copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s “The Hay Wain” in the National Gallery.

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Salman Rushdie Lost Sight in One Eye Following Attack, Agent Says

Salman Rushdie lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand following an attack on stage at a literary event in western New York in August, his agent said.

Andrew Wylie, who represents literary giants such as Saul Bellow and Roberto Bolano, described the extent of the injuries Rushdie suffered in the “brutal” attack in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Wylie described the author’s wounds as “profound,” and noted the loss of sight of one eye. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso.”

The agent declined to say whether “The Satanic Verses” author, 75, was still in the hospital more than two months after police said a 24-year-old New Jersey man stabbed the writer in the neck and torso just before Rushdie was to give a lecture at Chautauqua Institution, a retreat about 19 km from Lake Erie.

The novelist was rushed to the hospital after sustaining severe injuries in the attack, including nerve damage in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the likely loss of an eye, Wylie said at the time.

The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after “The Satanic Verses” was published. Some Muslims saw passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head, and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.

While Iran’s pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie’s head kept growing and the fatwa was never lifted.

Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was “irrevocable.”

The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges. He is being held without bail in a western New York jail. 

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India Launches 36 Internet Satellites Delayed by Ukraine War

India launched a rocket carrying 36 private internet satellites on early Sunday, stepping in to keep the orbital constellation growing after a monthslong interruption related to the war in Ukraine.

The liftoff from southern India was the first launch for London-based OneWeb since breaking with the Russian Space Agency in March because of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We have accomplished the orbit very accurately, now the rocket is in its intended orbit,” said S. Somanath, the chairperson of India’s space agency. He said 16 satellites were put into orbit and expressed optimism that “the remaining 20 satellites will get separated as safely as the first of the 16.”

OneWeb now has 462 satellites flying — more than 70% of what the company said it needs to provide broadband services around the world. Despite this year’s disruption, OneWeb said it remains on track to activate global coverage next year with a planned constellation of 648 satellites. It’s already providing service in the northernmost latitudes.

Each OneWeb satellite weighs about 330 pounds (150 kilograms).

It was the 14th launch of OneWeb satellites and relied on India’s heaviest rocket, normally reserved for government spacecraft. All of the previous OneWeb flights were on Russian rockets; the first was in 2019.

The launch is important for India and reflects the gradual opening of its space agency to private customers, said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a director specializing in space and security at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

Rajagopalan said India is an expert at launching smaller satellites and has been trying to corner this market, pitching itself as a satellite launch facility.

With the war in Ukraine still raging, it could open an opportunity for India as many countries shun Russian launch services.

“It could spur that trend in a big way,” she said.

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Uganda Says Two More Ebola Cases Confirmed in Kampala Hospital

Two more people in an isolation unit of Uganda’s main hospital have tested positive for Ebola, bringing total cases recorded in the facility to five, the health minister said on Sunday.

The five confirmed cases in Kampala are the first known transmission of the virus in the city, coming days after the information ministry said the country’s Ebola outbreak was coming under control and was expected to be over by the end of the year.

Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said on Saturday that three patients among 60 people in isolation at Kampala’s Mulago Hospital tested positive for the disease a day earlier.

She had said the three infected people had been in contact with a patient from Kassanda district in central Uganda who had died in Mulago.

“Two more contacts to the Kassanda case, who are quarantined in Mulago Isolation facility, tested positive for Ebola yesterday…” Aceng said on Twitter.

She added the two had been transferred to a treatment unit at a hospital in Entebbe, 41 km (25 miles) away.

The government has introduced a three-week lockdown around the Mubende and Kassanda districts in central Uganda, the epicenter of the outbreak of the Sudan variant of the Ebola virus.

A government statement on Friday said the outbreak had by then infected 65 people and killed 27. It was not clear if the numbers included the three first new Kampala cases.

The government said last week two other cases of Ebola confirmed in Kampala had come from Mubende and were regarded as originating there, not the capital.

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