This week President Joe Biden announced additional measures to protect communities from extreme heat that has hit parts of the United States. In Los Angeles, authorities are coping as best they can and trying some innovative ways to beat the heat. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian
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Month: July 2023
Saguaro Cacti Collapsing in Arizona Extreme Heat, Scientist Says
Arizona’s saguaro cacti, a symbol of the U.S. West, are leaning, losing arms and in some cases falling over during the state’s record streak of extreme heat, a scientist said on Tuesday.
Summer monsoon rains the cacti rely on have failed to arrive, testing the desert giants’ ability to survive in the wild as well as in cities after temperatures above 43 Celsius degrees (110 Fahrenheit) for 25 days in Phoenix, said Tania Hernandez.
“These plants are adapted to this heat, but at some point the heat needs to cool down and the water needs to come,” said Hernandez, a research scientist at Phoenix’s 140-acre (57-hectare) Desert Botanical Garden, which has over 2/3 of all cactus species, including saguaros which can grow to over 12 meters (40 feet).
Plant physiologists at the Phoenix garden are studying how much heat cacti can take. Until recently many thought the plants were perfectly adapted to high temperatures and drought. Arizona’s heat wave is testing those assumptions.
Cacti need to cool down at night or through rain and mist. If that does not happen they sustain internal damage. Plants now suffering from prolonged, excessive heat may take months or years to die, Hernandez said.
Cacti in Phoenix are being studied as the city is a heat island, mimicking higher temperatures plants in the wild are expected to face with future climate change, Hernandez said.
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Vietnam Orders Social Media Firms to Cut ‘Toxic’ Content Using AI
HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM – Vietnam’s demand that international social media firms use artificial intelligence to identify and remove “toxic” online content is part of an ever expanding and alarming campaign to pressure overseas platforms to suppress freedom of speech in the country, rights groups, experts and activists say.
Vietnam is a lucrative market for overseas social media platforms. Of the country’s population of nearly 100 million there are 75.6 million Facebook users, according to Singapore-based research firm Data Reportal. And since Vietnamese authorities have rolled out tighter restrictions on online content and ordered social media firms to remove content the government deems anti-state, social media sites have largely complied with government demands to silence online critiques of the government, experts and rights groups told VOA.
“Toxic” is a term used broadly to refer to online content which the state deems to be false, violent, offensive, or anti-state, according to local media reports.
During a mid-year review conference on June 30, Vietnam’s Information Ministry ordered international tech firms to use artificial intelligence to find and remove so-called toxic content automatically, according to a report from state-run broadcaster Vietnam Television. Details have not been revealed on how or when companies must comply with the new order.
Le Quang Tu Do, the head of the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, had noted during an April 6 news conference that Vietnamese authorities have economic, technical and diplomatic tools to act against international platforms, according to a local media report. According to the report he said the government could cut off social platforms from advertisers, banks, and e-commerce, block domains and servers, and advise the public to cease using platforms with toxic content.
“The point of these measures is for international platforms without offices in Vietnam, like Facebook and YouTube, to abide by the law,” Do said.
Pat de Brun, Amnesty International’s deputy director of Amnesty Tech, told VOA the latest demand is consistent with Vietnam’s yearslong strategy to increase pressure on social media companies. De Brun said it is the government’s broad definition of what is toxic, rather than use of artificial intelligence, that is of most human rights concern because it silences speech that can include criticism of government and policies.
“Vietnamese authorities have used exceptionally broad categories to determine content that they find inappropriate and which they seek to censor. … Very, very often this content is protected speech under international human rights law,” de Brun said. “It’s really alarming to see that these companies have relented in the face of this pressure again and again.”
During the first half of this year, Facebook removed 2,549 posts, YouTube removed 6,101 videos, and TikTok took down 415 links, according to an Information Ministry statement.
Online suppression
Nguyen Khac Giang, a research fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told VOA that heightened online censorship has been led by the conservative faction within Vietnam’s Communist Party, which gained power in 2016.
Nguyen Phu Trong was elected as general secretary in 2016, putting a conservative in the top position within the one-party state. Along with Trong, other conservative-minded leaders rose within government the same year, pushing out reformists, Giang said. Efforts to control the online sphere led to 2018’s Law on Cybersecurity, which expands government control of online content and attempts to localize user data in Vietnam. The government also established Force 47 in 2017, a military unit with reportedly 10,000 members assigned to monitor online space.
On July 19, local media reported that the information ministry proposed taking away the internet access of people who commit violations online especially via livestream on social media sites.
Activists often see their posts removed, lose access to their accounts, and the government also arrests Vietnamese bloggers, journalists, and critics living in the country for their online speech. They are often charged under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Criminal Code, which criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”
According to The 88 Project, a U.S.-based human rights group, 191 activists are in jail in Vietnam, many of whom have been arrested for online advocacy and charged under Article 117.
“If you look at the way that social media is controlled in Vietnam, it is very starkly contrasted with what happened before 2016,” Giang said. “What we are seeing now is only a signal of what we’ve been seeing for a long time.”
Giang said the government order is a tool to pressure social media companies to use artificial intelligence to limit content, but he warned that online censorship and limits on public discussion could cause political instability by eliminating a channel for public feedback.
“The story here is that they want the social media platforms to take more responsibility for whatever happens on social media in Vietnam,” Giang said. “If they don’t allow people to report on wrongdoings … how can the [government] know about it?”
Vietnamese singer and dissident Do Nguyen Mai Khoi, now living in the United States, has been contacting Facebook since 2018 for activists who have lost accounts or had posts censored, or are the victims of coordinated online attacks by pro-government Facebook users. Although she has received some help from the company in the past, responses to her requests have become more infrequent.
“[Facebook] should use their leverage,” she added. “If Vietnam closed Facebook, everyone would get angry and there’d be a big wave of revolution or protests.”
Representatives of Meta Platforms Inc., Facebook’s parent company, did not respond to VOA requests for comment.
Vietnam is also a top concern in the region for the harsh punishment of online speech, Dhevy Sivaprakasam, Asia Pacific policy counsel at Access Now, a nonprofit defending digital rights, said.
“I think it’s one of the most egregious examples of persecution on the online space,” she said.
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Meat Allergy Caused by Ticks Getting More Common in US, CDC Says
NEW YORK — More than 100,000 people in the U.S. have become allergic to red meat since 2010 because of a weird syndrome triggered by tick bites, according to a government report released Thursday. But health officials believe many more have the problem and don’t know it.
A second report estimated that as many as 450,000 Americans have developed the allergy. That would make it the 10th most common food allergy in the U.S., said Dr. Scott Commins, a University of North Carolina researcher who co-authored both papers published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health officials said they are not aware of any confirmed deaths, but people with the allergy have described it as bewildering and terrifying.
“I never connected it with any food because it was hours after eating,” said one patient, Bernadine Heller-Greenman.
The reaction, called alpha-gal syndrome, occurs when an infected person eats beef, pork, venison or other meat from mammals — or ingests milk, gelatin or other mammal products.
It’s not caused by a germ but by a sugar, alpha-gal, that is in meat from mammals — and in tick saliva. When the sugar enters the body through the skin, it triggers an immune response and can lead to a severe allergic reaction.
Scientists had seen reactions in patients taking a cancer drug that was made in mouse cells containing the alpha-gal sugar. But in 2011 researchers first reported that it could spread through tick bites, too.
They tied it to the lone star tick, which despite its Texas-themed name is most common in the eastern and southern U.S. (About 4% of all U.S. cases have been in the eastern end of New York’s Long Island.)
One of the studies released Thursday examined 2017-22 test results from the main U.S. commercial lab looking for alpha-gal antibodies. They noted the number of people testing positive rose from about 13,000 in 2017 to 19,000 in 2022.
Experts say cases may be up for a variety of reasons, including lone star ticks’ expanding range, more people coming into contact with the ticks or more doctors learning about it and ordering tests for it.
But many doctors are not. The second study was a survey last year of 1,500 U.S. primary care doctors and health professionals. The survey found nearly half had never heard of alpha-gal syndrome, and only 5% said they felt very confident they could diagnose it. Researchers used that information to estimate the number of people with the allergy — 450,000.
People with the syndrome can experience symptoms including hives, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe stomach pain, difficulty breathing, dizziness and swelling of the lips, throat, tongue or eye lids. Unlike some other food allergies, which occur soon after eating, these reactions hit hours later.
Some patients have only stomach symptoms, and the American Gastroenterological Association says people with unexplained diarrhea, nausea and abdominal pain should be tested for the syndrome.
Doctors counsel people with the allergy to change their diet, carry epinephrine and avoid tick bites.
The allergy can fade away in some people — Commins has seen that happen in about 15% to 20% of his patients. But a key is avoiding being re-bitten.
“The tick bites are central to this. They perpetuate the allergy,” he said.
One of his patients is Heller-Greenman, a 78-year-old New York art historian who spends summers on Martha’s Vineyard. She has grown accustomed to getting bitten by ticks on the island and said she has had Lyme disease four times.
About five years ago, she started experiencing terrible, itchy hives on her back, torso and thighs in the middle of the night. Her doctors concluded it was an allergic reaction but couldn’t pinpoint the trigger.
She was never a big meat eater, but one day in January 2020 she had a hamburger and then a big, fatty steak the following evening. Six hours after dinner, she woke up nauseated, then suffered terrible spells of vomiting, diarrhea and dizziness. She passed out three times.
She was diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome shortly after that and was told to avoid ticks and to stop eating red meat and dairy products. There have been no allergic reactions since.
“I have one grandchild that watches me like a hawk,” she said, making sure she reads packaged food labels and avoids foods that could trigger a reaction.
“I feel very lucky, really, that this has worked out for me,” she said. “Not all doctors are knowledgeable about this.”
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Successful US AIDS Relief Program Faces Challenge in Congress
A 20-year-old, U.S.-funded AIDS relief program that is credited with saving tens of millions of lives around the world may not be reauthorized if conservative and anti-abortion activists are successful in a campaign against it.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush, and since then it has channeled more than $110 billion in support for the fight against the AIDS epidemic in more than 50 countries around the world.
It has been particularly successful in Western and sub-Saharan Africa, where it helps provide antiretroviral medication to the more than 25 million people who are living with the disease.
The program received $6.9 billion in fiscal 2023. Through its history, the program has typically been reauthorized for five years at a time, in order to provide some certainty about the flow of relief dollars. It was last authorized in 2018. Advocates of the program are calling for a “clean” reauthorization that does not alter the program or introduce uncertainty about the flow of funds.
However, that reauthorization is now in doubt, as conservative lawmakers and activists have expressed concern that the program works with various organizations around the world that, in addition to combating AIDS, provide reproductive health services, including abortion.
‘Radical’ ideology
In a joint letter to key members of Congress this spring, dozens of anti-abortion groups urged lawmakers to reconsider their support for the program unless new rules are put in place that restrict the way it can spend federal funds.
“The American people do not support using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion at home or abroad,” the groups wrote. “For that reason, there exists long-standing precedent not to fund abortion, directly or indirectly, through U.S. foreign assistance. We are concerned that grants from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are used by nongovernmental organizations that promote abortions and push a radical gender ideology abroad.”
Failure to reauthorize the program would not necessarily kill it, because Congress could still appropriate money for it each year. But it would chip away at the administrative foundation of PEPFAR, leaving it less able to adapt to changing conditions in countries participating in the program, including changes in local laws that affect the provision of specific kinds of aid, and changes in the prevalence of the virus.
Pressuring lawmakers
Several influential conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America, have said that they oppose a clean reauthorization of the program. They said they would add any vote that renewed the program without changes to their legislative scorecards.
Those scorecards, which track lawmakers’ adherence to the wishes of conservative activist organizations, are influential because a low score can leave a member of Congress open to a reelection challenge from a more conservative rival.
Autumn Christensen, vice president of public policy for SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement emailed to VOA that her organization believes the Biden administration has “bowed to the pressures of the international abortion lobby and integrated broader sexual and reproductive services (which includes abortion) into their strategic plans.”
Christensen praised legislation proposed by Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, that would reauthorize PEPFAR for a single year and explicitly deny any funding to organizations that “promote or perform” abortions.
Mexico City policy
Those advocating for a clean reauthorization of PEPFAR point out that it is already illegal under U.S. law for foreign aid funds to be spent on the delivery of abortion services.
A 1973 provision of the Foreign Assistance Act, known as the Helms Amendment, reads, “[N]o foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.”
That language has, for generations, blocked direct funding of abortion with U.S. aid. However, it has not blocked U.S. aid programs from providing funds to organizations that provide access to abortions using funds from other sources.
Opponents of a clean PEPFAR reauthorization are demanding that stronger anti-abortion protections, such as the “Mexico City policy,” be incorporated into the program.
First adopted in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan’s administration, the policy bars U.S. aid from being disbursed to any organization that provides access to abortion services, even with non-U.S. money.
Since its original introduction, the Mexico City policy has been rescinded by every Democratic presidential administration upon taking office and has been reinstated by every Republican.
Former President Donald Trump not only reinstated the policy early in his presidency, but he strengthened it. By 2019, it was U.S. policy to refuse to provide funds to groups that even spoke in favor of abortion rights or supported other organizations that did.
President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s reinstatement of the policy when he took office in 2021.
Known impacts
Matthew Kavanagh is the director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown Law School’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He told VOA that the impact of the Mexico City policy is already well-known to public health researchers.
“PEPFAR is one of the most successful and impactful global health programs in the world’s history,” Kavanagh said. But when the Trump administration reinstated the Mexico City policy, “quite a few organizations actually dropped out from being PEPFAR recipients,” he said.
Kavanagh said that many of the organizations that are most experienced at providing the kind of interventions that made PEPFAR successful are local family planning organizations that offer a range of services and counseling, often including abortion.
“Local family planning organizations were no longer allowed to provide HIV prevention programming and to receive PEPFAR funding, and that was a huge loss for the program,” he said.
He also warned against plans to reauthorize the program for just one year, saying that doing so would create damaging uncertainty for organizations serving desperate people.
“Organizations around the world are depending on this for lifesaving programs,” Kavanagh said. “People are not put on HIV treatment for one year, and then taken off. People are on HIV treatment for their lives, and we need to ensure that these programs don’t have to worry that they’re going to be shut down at the end of the year.”
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Argentina Escapes 2-Goal Hole, Rallies to Draw With South Africa
Sophia Braun and Romina Nunez scored goals in a five-minute span late in the second half, rallying Argentina to a 2-2 draw with South Africa in the Women’s World Cup on Friday (local time).
Linda Motlhalo put South Africa in front in the 30th minute, and Thembi Kgatlana doubled the lead in the 66th minute before Australia rallied.
In the 74th minute, Braun fired a right-footed shot from 20 yards out and found the top right corner.
Argentina’s Yamila Rodrigues delivered a cross from the top of the box on the right side in the 79th minute, and Nunez ran onto the ball and headed it in from near the penalty spot to tie the score.
The result still leaves the teams tied for third place in Group G, both with one point at 0-1-1. The other two teams in the group, Sweden and Italy, both 1-0-0 with three points, will meet Saturday in Wellington, New Zealand.
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Biden Announces Advanced Cancer Research Initiative
The Biden administration on Thursday announced the first cancer-focused initiative under its advanced health research agency. The goal is to help surgeons more easily differentiate between healthy tissue and cancerous cells.
The Precision Surgical Interventions program, which is being launched under the administration’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, will aim to significantly improve cancer outcomes over the next few decades.
In a Thursday statement announcing the initiative, President Joe Biden called the investment “a major milestone in the fight to end cancer as we know it.” The initiative is part of Biden’s “cancer moonshot” initiative.
The hope is that the investment will help doctors develop tools that will remove all cancerous cells while avoiding healthy nerves and blood vessels.
Biden said he eventually wants the cancer death rate to be cut in half.
“Harnessing the power of innovation is essential to achieving our ambitious goal of turning more cancers from death sentences to treatable diseases and — in time — cutting the cancer death rate in half,” he said.
“As we’ve seen throughout our history, from developing vaccines to sequencing the genome, when the U.S. government invests in innovation, we can achieve breakthroughs that would otherwise be impossible, and save lives on a vast scale. ARPA-H follows in that tradition of bold, urgent innovation,” Biden said, using an acronym for his Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health initiative.
“What’s true is that many cancer treatments still start with surgery,” Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, told The Associated Press. “So being really smart and attacking and developing new technology to make that first step better could really revolutionize how we are able to treat cancer for so many Americans.”
Formed in 2022, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The military-focused agency played a central role in developing GPS and the internet.
The “cancer moonshot,” as well as the ARPA-H more broadly, are part of the Biden administration’s unity agenda, which “aims to bring people from both parties together to get big things done for the American people,” Biden said in the statement.
In September, ARPA-H will host an event in Chicago for interested researchers with the intent of quickly authorizing projects.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Health Threats Surge in Sudan, Regionally, as Conflict Escalates
The World Health Organization on Thursday warned that health threats are surging as the war in Sudan escalates and millions of people, many sick and wounded, flee for safety within Sudan and across borders to neighboring countries where health services are fragile and hard to reach.
The war, which erupted April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, is not contained within the country but has profound regional implications.
The conflict has displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, including 2.5 million inside Sudan. Nearly 760,000 people have been forced to flee as refugees to six neighboring countries, with many people reportedly arriving in poor health, carrying infectious diseases and other afflictions.
The Federal Ministry of Health reports at least 1,136 people have been killed and more than 12,000 injured since the conflict began. “Of course, this is very underreported of the number of casualties,” said Nima Abid, World Health Organization representative in Sudan.
He said the scale of the health crisis triggered by the conflict in Sudan was enormous, noting that the fragile health system in Sudan was unable to cope with the multiple emergencies that exist as “two-thirds of the hospitals in the affected areas are not functional” and are unable to respond to the huge public health needs.
WHO has verified 51 attacks on health facilities since the conflict began, resulting in 10 deaths and 24 injuries and “cutting off access to urgently needed care.”
Abid said that “all the organizational activities have stalled; vector control activities have stalled. Currently, we have a large measles outbreak with more than 2,000 cases and 30 deaths.
“I mean, even before the war, the vaccination coverage was not high,” added Abid, noting that the Blue Nile and White Nile states were the most heavily affected. “So, now we have outbreaks affecting almost 10 states.”
Abid also said he was concerned that cases of malaria, dengue and rift valley fever will rise during the current rainy season, noting that “all these vector-borne diseases are endemic in Sudan” and control measures have stopped.
“We do have an outbreak of cholera in South Kordofan,” he said, “with more than 300 cases and seven deaths. So, all this will have an impact on the health system and public health in Sudan.”
Neighboring Chad is hosting a quarter million Sudanese refugees, and the U.N. expects an equal number will arrive in the country by the end of the year. “This will significantly increase the health needs and exert huge pressure on the available health facilities,” said Jean-Bosco Ndihokubwayo, WHO representative in Chad.
WHO reports around 2,500 people are arriving in Chad every day, many with serious gunshot wounds, while many others arrive sick with infectious diseases, malaria and cholera.
Ndihokubwayo cited malnutrition as the most serious health problem facing people in refugee camps.
“For the time being, we have more than 4,000 children who are suffering from serious malnutrition. Two hundred and fifty children are being hospitalized, 65 dead … and when this is combined with a disease like measles in children who are poorly nourished, it has huge effects as it does with our other current diseases,” he said.
The World Health Organization reports cases of malaria among children under age 5, as well as suspected cases of yellow fever also have been identified among some 17,000 Sudanese who have sought refuge in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.). It added that a suspected cholera outbreak has been reported among many displaced people in northern Ethiopia.
Magdalene Armah, Incident Manager for the Sudan Crisis, WHO regional office for Africa, said the African region has received 65% of the Sudanese population that has fled the country.
She said it was important to establish cross-border operations to ensure that all vulnerable populations are reached with health care. “We want to increase access to health care services by expanding the set-up of emergency teams that are in the various border regions.
“We want to ensure that vaccination campaigns can happen to mitigate further outbreaks. We want to ensure that disease surveillance goes down to the communities,” she said, adding that it was important that humanitarian agencies had the funding to enable it to carry out these vital health projects.
WHO and its partners are working to deliver emergency assistance and medical supplies to people in Chad, as well as in C.A.R., Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan, as swiftly as possible. But WHO says resources are overstretched, so providing aid to those in need is becoming increasingly difficult.
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UN Chief: Planet Is Boiling; Time Running Out to Stop Climate Crisis
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that it is not too late to “stop the worst” of the climate crisis, but only with “dramatic, immediate” action.
“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” Guterres told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York, where the temperature outside was approaching 86 degrees Fahrenheit before 10 a.m. and set to hit 91 degrees Fahrenheit later in the day.
He spoke as the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released new data confirming July is set to be the hottest month ever recorded.
“According to the data released today, July has already seen the hottest three-week period ever recorded; the three hottest days on record; and the highest-ever ocean temperatures for this time of year,” Guterres said.
The U.N. chief, who has been ringing the alarm bell on the climate crisis since he entered office in January 2017, noted it has been a difficult summer in many parts of the world because of climate-related events, including fires, floods and scorching heat.
“For the entire planet, it is a disaster,” he said. “And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame.”
He said the rising temperatures are consistent with all the scientific predictions; the only surprise is how fast it is happening.
He acknowledged progress on renewable energies and positive steps from industrial sectors but warned that none of it is going far or fast enough.
“Accelerating temperatures demand accelerated action,” the U.N. secretary-general said.
Guterres called for ambitious new national emissions reduction targets from G20 countries — as they are responsible for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. He urged developed countries to reach net zero emissions as close as possible to the target date of 2040, and emerging economies by 2050.
He also repeated his mantra that there must be a transition away from fossil fuels to renewables.
“And we must reach net zero electricity by 2035 in developed countries and 2040 elsewhere, as we work to bring affordable electricity to everyone on Earth,” the secretary-general noted.
He said countries on the climate “frontlines” — who have contributed the least to the climate crisis — need financial help from developed nations for adaptation and mitigation. Developed countries have committed to contributing $100 billion per year to help developing countries, but they have fallen short. Guterres urged them to honor those commitments.
In September, the U.N. chief will convene a Climate Ambition Summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly high-level week, ahead of November’s two-week long climate review conference — COP28 — in Dubai.
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Portugal Beats Vietnam 2-0 for First World Cup Win
Portugal’s Telma Encarnacao scored one goal and set up the other in a 2-0 win over fellow Women’s World Cup debutants Vietnam, sending the Southeast Asian side out of the tournament at Waikato Stadium on Thursday.
Portugal is third in Group E with three points and will face the U.S. in their final group game in Auckland while Vietnam, yet to score or pick up a point, take on the Netherlands in Dunedin. Both matches will be played Tuesday.
The U.S. are level on four points with the Netherlands but top the table on goal difference after the teams drew 1-1 earlier Thursday.
Portugal coach Francisco Neto made seven changes to the team that lost 1-0 to the Netherlands in their Group E opener and the decision paid off as first-half goals from Encarnacao and Francisca Nazareth earned them a first ever World Cup win.
Neto will be thrilled with Thursday’s accomplished performance as Portugal dazzled under the floodlights — a stark contrast to their struggling first display — although the scoreline did not reflect their dominance.
Encarnacao swept Portugal in front after seven minutes with a smart first-time finish from Lucia Alves’ cross before turning provider for Nazareth, who fired the ball past goalkeeper Tran Thi Kim Thanh in the 21st minute.
Only 11 places separate the two teams in the world rankings, with Portugal sitting higher at 21, but the contest was one-sided and the Europeans were firmly on top throughout with five attempts on target in the first half alone.
They could not add more gloss to the result, however, as Kim Thanh, who helped restrict holders the United States to three goals in Vietnam’s opening defeat, was once again key in ensuring they did not concede more than two.
However, despite Kim Thanh’s efforts, Vietnam struggled to create chances and managed only one shot on target in the match when Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy drew a save from Patricia Morais just before the break.
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Ambassador: China Will Respond in Kind to US Chip Export Restrictions
If the United States imposes more investment restrictions and export controls on China’s semiconductor industry, Beijing will respond in kind, according to China’s ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, whose tough talk analysts see as the latest response from a so-called wolf-warrior diplomat.
Xie likened the U.S. export controls to “restricting their opponents to only wearing old swimsuits in swimming competitions, while they themselves can wear advanced shark swimsuits.”
Xie’s remarks, made at the Aspen Security Forum last week, came as the U.S. finalized its mechanism for vetting possible investments in China’s cutting-edge technology. These include semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, all of which have military as well as commercial applications.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is also considering imposing new restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, despite the objections of U.S. chipmakers.
Wen-Chih Chao, of the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs Studies at Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University, characterized Xie’s remarks as part of China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomacy, as China’s increasingly assertive style of foreign policy has come to be known.
He said the threatened Chinese countermeasures would depend on whether Beijing just wants to show an “attitude” or has decided to confront Western countries head-on.
He pointed to China’s investigations of some U.S. companies operating in China. He sees these as China retaliating by “expressing an attitude.”
Getting tougher
But as the tit-for-tat moves of the U.S. and China seem to be “escalating,” Chao pointed to China’s retaliation getting tougher.
An example, he said, is the export controls Beijing slapped on exporters of gallium, germanium and other raw minerals used in high-end chip manufacturing. As of August 1, they must apply for permission from the Ministry of Commerce of China and report the details of overseas buyers.
Chao said China might go further by blocking or limiting the supply of batteries for electric vehicles, mechanical components needed for wind-power generation, gases needed for solar panels, and raw materials needed for pharmaceuticals and semiconductor manufacturing.
China wants to show Western countries that they must think twice when imposing sanctions on Chinese semiconductors or companies, he said.
But other analysts said Beijing does not want to escalate its retaliation to the point where further moves by the U.S. and its allies harm China’s economy, which is only slowly recovering from draconian pandemic lockdowns.
No cooperation
Chao also said China could retaliate by refusing to cooperate on efforts to limit climate change, or by saying “no” when asked to use its influence with Pyongyang to lessen tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“These are the means China can use to retaliate,” Chao said. “I think there are a lot of them. These may be its current bargaining chips, and it will not use them all simultaneously. It will see how the West reacts. It may show its ability to counter the West step by step.”
Cheng Chen, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Albany, said China’s recent announcement about gallium, germanium and other chipmaking metals is a warning of its ability, and willingness, to retaliate against the U.S.
Even if the U.S. invests heavily in reshaping these industrial chains, it will take a long time to assemble the links, she said.
Chen said that if the U.S. further escalates sanctions on China’s high-tech products, China could retaliate in kind — using tariffs for tariffs, sanctions for sanctions, and regulations for regulations.
Most used strategy
Yang Yikui, an assistant researcher at Taiwan National Defense Security Research Institute, said economic coercion is China’s most commonly used retaliatory tactic.
He said China imposed trade sanctions on salmon imported from Norway when the late pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Beijing tightened restrictions on imports of Philippine bananas, citing quarantine issues, during a 2012 maritime dispute with Manila over a shoal in the South China Sea.
Yang said studies show that since 2018, China’s sanctions have become more diverse and detailed, allowing it to retaliate directly and indirectly. It can also use its economic and trade relations to force companies from other countries to participate.
Yang said that after Lithuania agreed in 2021 to let Taiwan establish a representative office in Vilnius, China downgraded its diplomatic relations from the ambassadorial level to the charge d’affaires and removed the country from its customs system database, making it impossible for Lithuanian goods to pass customs.
Beijing then reduced the credit lines of Lithuanian companies operating in the Chinese market and forced other multinational companies to sanction Lithuania. Companies in Germany, France, Sweden and other countries reportedly had cargos stopped at Chinese ports because they contained products made in Lithuania.
When Australia investigated the origins of COVID, an upset China imposed tariffs or import bans on Australian beef, wine, cotton, timber, lobster, coal and barley. But Beijing did not sanction Australia’s iron ore, wool and natural gas because sanctions on those products stood to hurt key Chinese sectors.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Horan’s Goal Helps US Get 1-1 Draw with Netherlands at Women’s World Cup
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND — Lindsey Horan, angry over being knocked down minutes earlier by Danielle Van de Donk, scored a revenge goal minutes later in the second half Thursday to help the United States squeeze out a 1-1 draw with the Netherlands at the Women’s World Cup.
The Dutch struck first with a goal from Jill Roord in the first half to surprise the Americans, who remained unbeaten in 19 consecutive matches with Horan’s second-half score.
Horan’s goal on a header off a corner kick in the 62nd minute followed several minutes of jawing between the two teams: Horan was angry after she was knocked off her feet and even cursed in the direction of Van de Donk — her teammate for club team Lyon.
The Americans tried to calm Horan, who responded with her 29th international goal, fourth in the World Cup, and second consecutive in this tournament.
Before the ball even crossed the goal line, Horan’s expression showed she knew she was on target.
With the draw, neither team secured a spot in the knockout round yet with one group match remaining. Both the Americans and the Dutch sit atop the Group E standings with a win and a draw, but the U.S. has the edge for the lead with more goals.
The game was a rematch of the 2019 Women’s World Cup final, a 2-0 win for the Americans in a game played in Lyon, France. It was the Americans’ second straight trophy in the tournament, and fourth overall.
Roord’s strike from atop the box went through Horan’s legs to put the Dutch ahead in the 17th minute.
Dominique Janssen had a good chance from distance in the 29th minute, but U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher jumped for it and the ball skirted above the crossbar and into the netting.
Horan’s header off a cross in the 36th minute went wide left as the pace became more frenzied with halftime looming.
Rose Lavelle, who was hampered by a knee injury in the run-up to the World Cup, was subbed in for the United States at the half. Lavelle scored one of the goals in the World Cup final four years ago, replaced Savannah DeMelo.
The Netherlands went into halftime with that single goal lead. It was just the sixth time the United States had trailed at the half in 52 World Cup matches, and first time since trailing Sweden at the break in the opening round in 2011.
Skies were sunny but temperatures were in around 12 degrees Celsius in New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington, and there was a stiff breeze for the match. The crowd was announced at 27,312.
The Americans, vying for a record third consecutive World Cup title, defeated Vietnam 3-0 in their tournament opener. Sophia Smith scored a pair of goals and Horan added the other.
U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski used the same lineup for the Dutch that he used against Vietnam. He’s turned to Julie Ertz, normally a midfielder, to play at center back in the absence of veteran Becky Sauerbrunn, who injured her foot and was not able to play in the World Cup.
The Dutch were without forward Lineth Beerensteyn, who was hurt early in her team’s 1-0 victory over Portugal to open the tournament. Katja Snoeijs replaced her in the starting lineup against the United States.
The Dutch was also missing leading scorer Vivianne Miedema, who ruptured her ACL while playing for Arsenal in December. She has 95 career goals for the Dutch.
The United States was undefeated in all but one of its meetings with the Dutch — the first game in 1991.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the team at their hotel on the eve of the match and was at the game. Blinken was in Wellington for a formal bilateral meeting with New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta, and he will also meet with Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
The top finisher in Group opens the knockout round in Sydney against the second-place finisher in Group G, which includes Sweden, South Africa, Italy and Argentina.
The second-place finisher heads to Melbourne against the top Group G team.
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Study: Ocean Currents Vital for Distributing Heat Could Collapse by Midcentury
A system of ocean currents that transports heat northward across the North Atlantic could collapse by midcentury, according to a new study. Scientists have said that such a collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise and extreme weather across the globe.
In recent decades, researchers have both raised and downplayed the specter of Atlantic current collapse. It even prompted a movie that strayed far from the science. Two years ago, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said any such catastrophe was unlikely this century. But the new study published in Nature Communications suggests it might not be as far away and unlikely as mainstream science says.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is a vital system of ocean currents that circulates water throughout the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s a lengthy process, taking an estimated 1,000 years to complete, but has slowed even more since the mid-1900s.
A further slowdown or complete halting of the circulation could create more extreme weather in the Northern Hemisphere, sea level rise on the East Coast of the United States and drought for millions in southern Africa, scientists in Germany and the U.S. have said. But the timing is uncertain.
In the new study, Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen, two researchers from Denmark, analyzed sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic between 1870 and 2020 as a way of assessing this circulation. They found the system could collapse as soon as 2025 and as late as 2095, given current global greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are large uncertainties in this study, in many prior studies, and in climate impact assessment overall, and scientists sometimes miss important aspects that can lead to both over- and underprediction of impacts,” Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, a carbon management company, said in a statement. “Still, the conclusion is obvious: Action must be swift and profound to counter major climate risks.”
Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author on a 2018 study on the subject, published an extensive analysis of the Ditlevesens’ study on RealClimate, a website that publishes commentary from climate scientists. While he said that a tipping point for the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation was “highly uncertain,” he also called the IPCC estimate conservative.
“Increasingly the evidence points to the risk being far greater than 10% during this century,” he wrote, “… rather worrying for the next few decades.”
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Former Military Officials Testify Before US Congress About Extraterrestrials, Alien Craft
The U.S. government “absolutely” has recovered extraterrestrial craft, according to a former combat officer who was a member of a Department of Defense task force that investigated unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP.
Dave Grusch, in response to a House member’s questions during a congressional hearing Wednesday, said he knows the exact locations of such alien craft and that he had provided this information to the intelligence community’s inspector general.
Grusch, who has become a whistleblower and testified that he has faced retaliation for his revelations, told lawmakers that the U.S. government also possesses evidence of non-human biologics. Grusch did not elaborate, stating he had not seen any alien craft or beings himself, but was basing his testimony on dozens of interviews he had conducted within the U.S. intelligence community.
The Air Force veteran, who also worked for two intelligence agencies, was one of three former military officers who appeared before the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee, which held a 135-minute open televised hearing on unidentified flying objects.
The technology “is beyond anything we have,” said David Fravor, who in 2004 as a U.S. Navy pilot videotaped off the coast of California a physics-defying flight of an object, known as the “Tic-Tac.”
“There’s four sets of human eyeballs [that witnessed the incident], we’re all very credible,” testified Fravor. “It’s not a joke.”
A third witness, Ryan Graves, was an F/A-18 Super Hornet U.S. Navy pilot stationed in Virginia in 2014 when his squadron first began encountering unknown objects. He described what he and his colleagues saw as a “dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere” approximately 1.5 to 4.5 meters in diameter. Such incidents became so frequent, according to Graves, that air crews would discuss potential risks from the objects as a routine part of their pre-flight briefings.
Under questioning by a lawmaker, Graves said he knew the craft could not be of domestic origin because they were able to remain completely stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds and then could accelerate to supersonic speeds.
Graves said there were similar reports by military pilots and others from nearly everywhere in the world the U.S. Navy operates.
The hearing contained other sensational testimony, for which there has been no independent confirmation but is similar to statements the witnesses and others have made in recent years in mainstream media articles, including those published by The New York Times.
A Defense Department entity established to investigate UAP phenomena, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is refuting Grusch’s claim that access to some materials for an earlier task force was denied.
“To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads,” said Sue Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson.
Grusch told the bipartisan group of lawmakers there is more classified information, including about a flying object the size of a football field, he could reveal “in a closed session at the right level.”
Lawmaker Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, said the committee was denied access to the Secure Classified Information Facility, or SCIF, within the U.S. Capitol to hear further testimony from the witnesses regarding classified matters.
Several members of the committee pledged to work to make more information about the topic public.
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” lawmaker Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, said in expressing appreciation for the witnesses appearing at a public congressional hearing. “I want to thank everybody. We made history today.”
Lawmaker Robert Garcia, a freshman California Democrat, told the witnesses they “had a lot of courage” and characterized Wednesday’s hearing as the most bipartisan discussion he had experienced during his first seven months in Congress.
“Many Americans are deeply interested in this issue, and it shouldn’t take the potential of nonhuman origin to bring us together,” added lawmaker Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat.
Luna recently accused the U.S. government of stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts for transparency, saying she and other lawmakers were rebuffed by officials when they went to an Air Force base in Florida seeking information on UAP sightings by military pilots.
“They refuse to answer questions posed by whistleblowers, avoiding the concerns of Americans and acknowledging the possible threat of UAPs poses to our national security as well as public safety,” Luna said at a news conference last week. “It is extremely unnecessary and an overclassification.”
During Wednesday’s session, Graves noted there are many more credible witnesses with significant information but who are “hesitant to come forward” because they fear ridicule and retaliation.” He said a centralized method for reporting sightings would circumvent potential retaliation, a system lawmakers expressed interest in creating through bipartisan legislation.
UAP are “a national security issue worth looking at,” according to John Kirby, a former Navy admiral, who is a National Security Council spokesman. He said the matter is taken seriously by President Joe Biden and his administration.
“In some cases, these phenomena have affected military training, have impacted military readiness,” Kirby told White House reporters following the congressional hearing. “The truth is we don’t have hard and fast answers on these things.”
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Provocative Irish Singer Sinead O’Connor Dies at 56
Sinead O’Connor, the gifted Irish singer-songwriter who became a superstar in her mid-20s but was known as much for her private struggles and provocative actions as for her fierce and expressive music, has died at 56.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time,” the singer’s family said in a statement reported Wednesday by the BBC and RTE. No cause was disclosed.
She was public about her mental illness, saying that she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. O’Connor posted a Facebook video in 2017 from a New Jersey motel where she had been living, saying that she was staying alive for the sake of others and that if it were up to her, she’d be “gone.”
When her teenage son Shane died by suicide in 2022, O’Connor tweeted there was “no point living without him” and was soon hospitalized.
Recognizable by her shaved head and elfin features, O’Connor began her career singing on the streets of Dublin and soon rose to international fame. She was a star from her 1987 debut album “The Lion and the Cobra” and became a sensation in 1990 with her cover of Prince’s ballad “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a seething, shattering performance that topped charts from Europe to Australia and was heightened by a promotional video featuring the gray-eyed O’Connor in intense close-up.
She was a lifelong nonconformist — she would say that she shaved her head in response to record executives pressuring her to be conventionally glamorous — but her political and cultural stances and troubled private life often overshadowed her music.
A critic of the Catholic Church well before allegations sexual abuse were widely reported, O’Connor made headlines in October 1992 when she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while appearing live on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and denounced the church as the enemy. The next week, Joe Pesci hosted “Saturday Night Live,” held up a repaired photo of the pope and said that if he had been on the show with O’Connor, he “would have gave her such a smack.”
Days later, she appeared at an all-star tribute for Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden and was immediately booed. She was supposed to sing Dylan’s “I Believe in You,” but switched to an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War,” which she had sung on “Saturday Night Live.”
Although consoled and encouraged on stage by her friend Kris Kristofferson, she left and broke down, and her performance was kept off the concert CD. (Years later, Kristofferson recorded “Sister Sinead,” for which he wrote, “And maybe she’s crazy and maybe she ain’t/But so was Picasso and so were the saints.”)
She also feuded with Frank Sinatra over her refusal to allow the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at one of her shows and accused Prince of physically threatening her. In 1989 she declared her support for the Irish Republican Army, a statement she retracted a year later. Around the same time, she skipped the Grammy ceremony, saying it was too commercialized.
In 1999, O’Connor caused uproar in Ireland when she became a priestess of the breakaway Latin Tridentine Church — a position that was not recognized by the mainstream Catholic Church. For many years, she called for a full investigation into the extent of the church’s role in concealing child abuse by clergy.
In 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI apologized to Ireland to atone for decades of abuse, O’Connor condemned the apology for not going far enough and called for Catholics to boycott Mass until there was a full investigation into the Vatican’s role, which by 2018 was making international headlines.
“People assumed I didn’t believe in God. That’s not the case at all. I’m Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation,” she wrote in The Washington Post in 2010.
O’Connor announced in 2018 that she had converted to Islam and would be adopting the name Shuhada’ Davitt, later Shuhada Sadaqat — although she continued to use Sinead O’Connor professionally.
“Her music was loved around the world and her talent was unmatched and beyond compare,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in a statement on social media.
O’Connor was born on December 8, 1966. She had a difficult childhood, with a mother whom she alleged was abusive and encouraged her to shoplift. As a teenager she spent time in a church-sponsored institution for girls, where she said she washed priests’ clothes for no wages. But a nun gave O’Connor her first guitar, and soon she sang and performed on the streets of Dublin, her influences ranging from Dylan to Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Her performance with a local band caught the eye of a small record label, and, in 1987, O’Connor released “The Lion and the Cobra,” which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and featured the hit “Mandinka,” driven by a hard rock guitar riff and O’Connor’s piercing vocals. O’Connor, 20 years old and pregnant while making “Lion and the Cobra,” co-produced the album.
“Nothing Compares 2 U” received three Grammy nominations and was the featured track off her acclaimed album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” which helped lead Rolling Stone to name her Artist of the Year in 1991.
O’Connor announced she was retiring from music in 2003, but she continued to record new material. Her most recent album was “I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss,” released in 2014 and she sang the theme song for Season 7 of “Outlander.”
The singer married four times; her union to drug counselor Barry Herridge, in 2011, lasted just 16 days. O’Connor had four children: Jake, with her first husband John Reynolds; Roisin, with John Waters; Shane, with Donal Lunny; and Yeshua Bonadio, with Frank Bonadio.
In 2014, she said she was joining the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party and called for its leaders to step aside so that a younger generation of activists could take over. She later withdrew her application.
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Jury Acquits Kevin Spacey in London on Sexual Assault Charges Dating Back to 2001
A London jury acquitted Kevin Spacey on sexual assault charges on Wednesday after a four-week trial in which the actor said he was a “big flirt” who had consensual flings with men and whose only misstep was touching a man’s groin while making a “clumsy pass.”
Three men accused the Oscar winner of aggressively grabbing their crotches. A fourth, an aspiring actor seeking mentorship, said he awoke to the actor performing oral sex on him after going to Spacey’s London apartment for a beer and either falling asleep or passing out.
All the men said the contact was unwanted but Spacey testified that the young actor and another man had willingly participated in consensual acts. He said a third man’s allegation that he grabbed his privates like a striking “cobra” backstage at a theater was “pure fantasy.”
He said he didn’t remember a fourth incident at a small party at a home he rented in the country but accepted that he touched the groin of a man he had met at a pub during a night of heavy drinking. He said he had misread the man’s interest in him and said he had probably made an awkward pass.
Defense lawyer Patrick Gibbs said three of the men were liars and incidents had been “reimagined with a sinister spin.” He accused most of them of hopping on a “bandwagon” of complaints in the hope of striking it rich.
Prosecutor Christine Agnew told jurors that Spacey was a “sexual bully” who took what he wanted when he wanted. She said he was shielded by a “trinity of protection”: he knew men were unlikely to complain; they wouldn’t be believed if they did complain; and if they did complain, no action would be taken because he was powerful.
Spacey, who turned 64 on Wednesday, faced nine charges, including multiple counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
The accusations date from 2001 to 2013 and include a period when Spacey — after winning Academy Awards for “The Usual Suspects” and “American Beauty” — had returned to the theater, his first love. During most of that period he was artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre in London.
The men came forward after an American actor accused Spacey of an incident of sexual misconduct as the #MeToo movement heated up in 2017.
Several of the men said they had been haunted by the abuse and couldn’t bear to watch Spacey’s films.
One of the men broke down when speaking with police as he provided details in a videotaped interview about the oral sex incident that he said he’d never told anyone before. Another man said he was angry about the abuse that occurred sporadically over several years and began to drink and work out more to cope with it.
Spacey choked up and became teary eyed in the witness box as he described the emotional and financial turmoil that the U.S. accusations brought and the barrage of criticism that followed on social media.
“My world exploded,” Spacey testified. “There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything in a matter of days.”
Gibbs said Spacey was being “monstered” on the internet every night and became toxic in the industry.
Spacey was booted from “House of Cards” and his scenes in “All the Money in the World,” were scrubbed and he was replaced by Christopher Plummer. Aside from some small projects, he has barely worked as an actor in six years.
A New York jury last year swiftly cleared Spacey in a $40 million lawsuit by “Star Trek: Discovery” actor Anthony Rapp on allegations dating back three decades.
Spacey had viewed the London case as a chance for redemption, telling German magazine Zeit last month that there were “people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London.”
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Media Academy in Somalia Hopes to Empower Women Through Film
Founders of the Somali Digital Media Academy say women’s involvement in the Mogadishu film industry is surging. Abdiaziz Barrow spoke to women who are contributing to the visual history of their country in this report from the Somali capital, narrated by Salem Solomon. Camera — Abdulkadir Zubeyr
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Japan Imposes Microchip Export Ban, Angering China
Japan imposed export controls on advanced microchip technologies this week, mirroring recent moves by the United States and the Netherlands. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Tokyo, the controls are widely seen as targeting China
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US Rejoins UNESCO Cultural and Educational Organization
First Lady Jill Biden Tuesday marked the United States’ return to the United Nations’ cultural organization after five years away, amid concerns that its absence has let China take a lead in key areas like artificial intelligence and technology education.
“I was honored to join you today as we raise the flag of the United States, a symbol of our commitment to global collaboration and peace,” Biden said in Paris, as the American flag joined 193 others under the shadow of the city’s major cultural landmark, the Eiffel Tower. “The United States is proud to join as a member state of UNESCO. Madam Director-General, you’ve worked long and hard to help us realize this goal.”
The roots of the withdrawal date back to 2011, when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization gave Palestine full membership as a state. Palestine is not a U.N.-recognized state. That led the Obama administration to freeze U.S. financial contributions to UNESCO – about a fifth of the agency’s budget.
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In 2017, the U.S. State Department cited “mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO” as reasons to complete the withdrawal the following year.
The Biden administration now faces a $619 million debt. The Biden administration has asked for $150 million in the 2024 budget.
UNESCO also has designated 1,157 properties around the world as having major cultural significance, including the ancient town of Bethlehem, technically in Israel but classified by UNESCO as being in Palestine.
The prominent American Jewish Committee told VOA they supported the U.S. decision to rejoin UNESCO despite its concerns about what it sees as lack of recognition of Jewish culture and the Jewish state.
“UNESCO is an important agency,” Jason Isaacson, chief policy and political affairs officer for the American Jewish Committee, told VOA. “It’s not perfect. Nor is any other U.N. entity. But it does really important work. And it is a vehicle for soft power, for the exercise of soft power in the United States to not be in that agency meant that other players — competitors, rivals of the United States — could have a seat at the table, could have cultural programs, scientific exchanges, educational programs, in countries all over the world, especially the developing world in places and in ways that the United States could not.”
Recognition of iconic sites
UNESCO’s most famous totems are its world heritage sites, which include monuments that have weathered long stretches of human history. This month, a massive heat wave forced authorities in Athens to close the Acropolis, a massive edifice that has loomed over the Greek capital for three millennia.
Simmering ethnic conflict in Ethiopia in recent years has hampered religious pilgrims’ access to the massive, ancient rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, a mountain town known in the 13th century as ‘New Jerusalem.’
And the COVID pandemic has kept footfalls light on China’s great Great Wall, the massive fortification whose construction began in the 3rd Century B.C. and UNESCO estimates once boasted a total length of 20,000 kilometers.
This year, UNESCO added another entry to its vaunted list: the historic center of the bustling Ukrainian port city of Odesa, a critical port for Ukraine’s agricultural exports.
This month, a Russian airstrike tore through the city, dropping a missile through the roof of its soaring cathedral and shattering the altar.
UNESCO issued a condemnation.
“On this night alone in Odesa, nearly 50 buildings were damaged, 25 of them architectural monuments,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “The historic center. A world heritage site that UNESCO has taken under its protection.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, UNESCO has verified damage to 270 of its designated “cultural sites” in Ukraine.
The heavy responsibility of carrying all this cultural weight is lighter now that the U.S. is back, said UNESCO’s director-general, Audrey Azoulay.
“In these times of division, rifts and existential threats to humanity, we reaffirm here and today our union,” she said. “The star-spangled banner of the United States of America will float in a few moments over the Paris skies.”
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US Works With Artificial Intelligence Companies to Mitigate Risks
Can artificial intelligence wipe out humanity?
A senior U.S. official said the United States government is working with leading AI companies and at least 20 countries to set up guardrails to mitigate potential risks, while focusing on the innovative edge of AI technologies.
Nathaniel Fick, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy, spoke Tuesday to VOA about the voluntary commitments from leading AI companies to ensure safety and transparency around AI development.
One of the popular generative AI platforms is ChatGPT, which is not accessible in China. If a user asked it politically sensitive questions in Mandarin Chinese such as, “What is the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre?” the user would get information that is heavily censored by the Beijing government.
But ChatGPT, created by U.S.-based OpenAI, is not available in China.
China has finalized rules governing its own generative AI. The new regulation will be effective August 15. Chinese chatbots reportedly have built-in censorship to avoid sensitive keywords.
“I think that the development of these systems actually requires a foundation of openness, of interoperability, of reliability of data. And an authoritarian top-down approach that controls the flow of information over time will undermine a government’s ability, a company’s ability, to sustain an innovative edge in AI,” Fick told VOA.
The following excerpts from the interview have been edited for brevity and clarity.
VOA: Seven leading AI companies made eight promises about what they will do with their technology. What do these commitments actually mean?
Nathaniel Fick, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy: As we think about governance of this new tech frontier of artificial intelligence, our North Star ought to be preserving our innovative edge and ensuring that we can continue to maintain a global leadership position in the development of robust AI tools, because the upside to solve shared challenges around the world is so immense. …
These commitments fall into three broad categories. First, the companies have a duty to ensure that their products are safe. … Second, the companies have a responsibility to ensure that their products are secure. … Third, the companies have a duty to ensure that their products gain the trust of people around the world. And so, we need a way for viewers, consumers, to ascertain whether audio content or visual content is AI-generated or not, whether it is authentic or not. And that’s what these commitments do.
VOA: Would the United States government fund some of these types of safety tests conducted by those companies?
Fick: The United States government has a huge interest in ensuring that these companies, these models, their products are safe, are secure, and are trustworthy. We look forward to partnering with these companies over time to do that. And of course, that could certainly include financial partnership.
VOA: The White House has listed cancer prevention and mitigating climate change as two of the areas where it would like AI companies to focus their efforts. Can you talk about U.S. competition with China on AI? Is that an administration priority?
Fick: We would expect the Chinese approach to artificial intelligence to look very much like the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] approach to other areas of technology. Generally, top down. Generally, not focused on open expression, not focused on open access to information. And these AI systems, by their very definition, require that sort of openness and that sort of access to large data sets and information.
VOA: Some industry experts have warned that China is spending three times as much as the U.S. to become the world’s AI leader. Can you talk about China’s ambition on AI? Is the U.S. keeping up with the competition?
Fick: We certainly track things like R&D [research and development] and investment dollars, but I would make the point that those are inputs, not outputs. And I don’t think it’s any accident that the leading companies in AI research are American companies. Our innovation ecosystem, supported by foundational research and immigration policy that attracts the world’s best talent, tax and regulatory policies that encourage business creation and growth.
VOA: Any final thoughts about the risks? Can AI models be used to develop bioweapons? Can AI wipe out humanity?
Fick: My experience has been that risk and return really are correlated in life and in financial markets. There’s huge reward and promise in these technologies and of course, at the same time, they bring with them significant risks. We need to maintain our North Star, our focus on that innovative edge and all of the promise that these technologies bring in. At the same time, it’s our responsibility as governments and as responsible companies leading in this space to put the guardrails in place to mitigate those risks.
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Congo Beefs Up Street Security Ahead of Francophone Games
Congo has stepped up security in the capital, Kinshasa, amid concerns about the safety of athletes taking part in the International Francophone Games starting this week, the government said.
Around 4,500 additional police backed by state security agents have been deployed ahead of the event, said Isidor Kwanja, the game’s coordinator.
Athletes will be personally escorted by the police and their accommodation has been fitted with surveillance cameras.
The lack of security in the city is the latest setback for organizers of the 10-day Jeux de la Francophonie, which had already been pushed back two years from 2021 to bring infrastructure up to international standards.
Authorities have scrambled to finish tracks, sports stadiums and accommodations in time for Friday’s start date. Some participants have also voiced concerns about safety in Kinshasa, where petty crime, muggings and kidnappings for ransom are relatively common.
The murder of an opposition spokesman this month exacerbated doubts over authorities’ ability to secure the games.
Both Canada’s Quebec and Belgium’s French-speaking Wallonia have cut back on athletes.
Around 3,000 athletes from more than 40 countries will take part in the games, which are held every four years with the aim of promoting the French language.
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Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill to Come to US in 2024
Next year, a daily oral birth control pill will be available in the United States without a prescription for the first time. Reproductive health advocates say the move will improve the well-being of women in the country, but some groups have raised concerns. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains.
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