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Month: March 2024
Usher, Fantasia Barrino, ‘Color Purple’ Honored at 55th NAACP Image Awards
LOS ANGELES — Usher was named entertainer of the year at the 55th annual NAACP Awards on Saturday night, which highlighted works by entertainers and writers of color.
After Usher accepted his award at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, the superstar R&B singer spoke about being thankful about the journey of his successful career that has lasted three decades.
He reeled off several of his recent big moments including his sold-out residency in Las Vegas, getting married, releasing his ninth studio album “Coming Home” and his Super Bowl halftime performance, which became the most-watched in the game’s history.
Usher beat out Colman Domingo, Fantasia Barrino, Halle Bailey and Keke Palmer.
“I don’t know how many people do that much stuff in one setting,” said the multi-Grammy winner, who was presented the award by Oprah Winfrey. After being surprised by Winfrey’s presence, he thanked those who have supported him throughout the years.
“This is for you, you, my number ones,” the singer said as the audience repeated his words back to him. The final words of his speech were recited lyrics from his popular song “Superstar” from his 2024 album “Confessions,” which has sold more than 10 million units in the U.S.
Earlier in the ceremony, Usher was honored with the President’s Award for the singer’s public service achievements through his New Look Foundation. He thanked the strong women in his life, including his mother and wife Jenn Goicoechea, whom he married after his Super Bowl halftime performance last month.
“The say behind or beside or with every strong man is a stronger woman,” he said.
Queen Latifah hosted the awards ceremony aired live on BET.
“The Color Purple” was awarded best motion picture. The musical film featured star-studded cast including Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Domingo, H.E.R., Danielle Brooks, Corey Hawkins and Bailey.
Barrino, who starred as Celie in the film, won for best actress in a motion picture.
“I didn’t prepare a speech, because I didn’t think I was going to win,” the singer-actor said. “I was afraid to play Celie, but I’m glad I did. Because I kept saying ‘If I don’t win an award, the awards that I will win will come from the people who watched ‘Color Purple’ and the women who will relate to her and feel like Oscars when they walk out.’”
New Edition was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. The induction is bestowed on individuals who are viewed as pioneers in their respective fields and whose influence shaped their profession.
“We stand here in brotherhood,” said Michael Bivins while his group members behind him. The Grammy-nominated group includes Bobby Brown, Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant, Ronnie DeVoe and Ricky Bell.
“You’ve seen our story. You know what we’ve been through,” said Bivins, who spoke about the group overcoming conflict and tension in their earlier years to now holding a residency in Las Vegas.
“But we call each other every day,” he continued. “We text each other every day. We check on our families. You watched us grow up. We’re still growing.”
Damson Idris won best actor in a drama television series for his role in “Snowfall.” Henson and Domingo took home best supporting roles in “The Color Purple.” Domingo also won best actor in a motion picture for his role in “Rustin.”
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Extermination Planned for Island Mice Breeding Out of Control, Eating Birds
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Mice accidentally introduced to a remote island near Antarctica 200 years ago are breeding out of control because of climate change, and they are eating seabirds and causing major harm in a special nature reserve with “unique biodiversity.”
Now conservationists are planning a mass extermination using helicopters and hundreds of tons of rodent poison, which needs to be dropped over every part of Marion Island’s 297 square kilometers (115 square miles) to ensure success.
If even one pregnant mouse survives, their prolific breeding ability means it may have all been for nothing.
The Mouse-Free Marion project — pest control on a grand scale — is seen as critical for the ecology of the uninhabited South African territory and the wider Southern Ocean. It would be the largest eradication of its kind if it succeeds.
The island is home to globally significant populations of nearly 30 bird species and a rare undisturbed habitat for wandering albatrosses — with their 10-foot wingspan — and many others.
An undisturbed habitat, at least, until stowaway house mice arrived on seal hunter ships in the early 1800s, introducing the island’s first mammal predators.
The past few decades have been the most significant for the damage the mice have caused, said Dr. Anton Wolfaardt, the Mouse-Free Marion project manager. He said their numbers have increased hugely, mainly due to rising temperatures from climate change, which has turned a cold, windswept island into a warmer, drier, more hospitable home.
“They are probably one of the most successful animals in the world. They’ve got to all sorts of places,” Wolfaardt said. But now on Marion Island, “their breeding season has been extended, and this has resulted in a massive increase in the densities of mice.”
Mice don’t need encouragement. They can reproduce from about 60 days old and females can have four or five litters a year, each with seven or eight babies.
Rough estimates indicate there are more than 1 million mice on Marion Island. They are feeding on invertebrates and, more and more, on seabirds — both chicks in their nests and adults.
A single mouse will feed on a bird several times its size.
Conservationists snapped a photo of one perched on the bloodied head of a wandering albatross chick.
The phenomenon of mice eating seabirds has been recorded on only a handful of the world’s islands.
The scale and frequency of mice preying on seabirds on Marion has risen alarmingly, Wolfaardt said, after the first reports of it in 2003. He said the birds have not developed the defense mechanisms to protect themselves against these unfamiliar predators and often sit there while mice nibble away at them. Sometimes, multiple mice swarm over a bird.
Conservationists estimate that if nothing is done, 19 seabird species will disappear from the island in 50 to 100 years, he said.
“This incredibly important island as a haven for seabirds has a very tenuous future because of the impacts of mice,” Wolfaardt said.
The eradication project is a single shot at success, with not even a whisker of room for error. Burgeoning mice and rat populations have been problematic for other islands. South Georgia, in the southern Atlantic, was declared rodent-free in 2018 after an eradication, but that was a multiyear project; the one on Marion could be the biggest single intervention.
Wolfaardt said four to six helicopters will likely be used to drop up to 550 tons of rodenticide bait across the island. Pilots will be given exact flight lines and Wolfaardt’s team will be able to track the drop using GPS mapping.
The bait has been designed to not affect the soil or the island’s water sources. It shouldn’t harm the seabirds, who feed out at sea, and won’t have negative impacts for the environment, Wolfaardt said. Some animals will be affected at an individual level, but those species will recover.
“There’s no perfect solution in these kinds of things,” he said. “There is nothing that just zaps mice and nothing else.”
The eradication project is a partnership between BirdLife South Africa and the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, which designated Marion Island as a special nature reserve with the highest level of environmental protection. It has a weather and research station but is otherwise uninhabited and dedicated to conservation.
The department said the eradication of mice was “essential if the unique biodiversity of the island is to be preserved.”
Wolfaardt said the amount of planning needed means a likely go-ahead date in 2027. The project also needs to raise about $25 million — some of which has been funded by the South African government — and get final regulatory approvals from authorities.
Scientists have tried to control the mice of Marion in the past.
They were already a pest for researchers in the 1940s, so five domestic cats were introduced. By the 1970s, there were around 2,000 feral cats on the island, killing half a million seabirds per year. The cats were eliminated by introducing a feline flu virus and hunting down any survivors.
Islands are critical to conservation efforts, but fragile. The Island Conservation organization says they are “extinction epicenters” and 75% of all species that have gone extinct lived on islands. About 95% of those were bird species.
“This really is an ecological restoration project,” Wolfaardt said. “It’s one of those rare conservation opportunities where you solve once and for all a conservation threat.”
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Russian-Belarusian Band Returns to Stage After Detention in Thailand
Warsaw, Poland — A Russian-Belarusian rock band that denounces Moscow’s Ukraine invasion returned to the stage this week, voicing defiance after being detained in Thailand in January and threatened with deportation to Russia.
The band, Bi-2, formed in the 1980s in Belarus when it was part of the Soviet Union, left Russia in protest over the invasion and has been touring ever since in countries with large Russian-speaking communities.
Ahead of a concert in Vilnius on Thursday, band members met with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and supporters of late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month.
“We have become hostages to Russian history,” Egor Bortnik, one of the band’s two founders, told AFP ahead of a concert in Warsaw on Saturday.
But 51-year-old Bortnik, who is better known by his stage name “Lyova,” said he was “not against the war.”
“On the contrary, I’m for the war. I just want Ukraine to liberate its own territory,” he said.
“Putin has to gather his orcs and get out of Ukraine,” Bortnik said, using a disparaging term for Russian soldiers frequently used by Ukrainians.
The band was detained in Phuket, Thailand, in January on immigration charges in a case that has alarmed Russians critical of President Vladimir Putin living abroad.
The organizers of their concerts said all the necessary permits had been obtained, but the band was issued with tourist visas in error, and they accused the Russian consulate of waging a campaign to cancel the concerts.
After a week in detention, the band members were released and traveled to Israel, where they met with Foreign Minister Israel Katz who said in a statement that the episode showed that “music will win.”
Several of their concerts in Russia were canceled in 2022 after they refused to play at a venue with banners supporting the war in Ukraine, after which they left the country.
“I put my prosperity on the line when the war began, and I had to leave Russia. It was unexpected, it was not a process we had prepared for,” Bortnik said.
Bortnik, who moved to Israel while still a teenager, said he was more used to emigration than some of his peers who left Russia in the wake of the war.
“I understand how difficult it is,” he said.
Bortnik said he was no “geopolitician” and does not write explicitly “political songs” although their lyrics can “hit a nerve that is constantly vibrating.”
He said Putin’s demise could be sudden and violent and would also bring down Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for three decades.
“If something happens to Putin then there could be a civil war — the finale for any tyranny,” he said.
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US Sanctions Network Smuggling American Tech to Iran’s Central Bank
Washington — The U.S. Treasury Department unveiled sanctions against a network of companies and individuals for facilitating illegal technology transfers from dozens of U.S. firms to Iranian entities, including the country’s central bank.
The sanctions relate to Informatics Services Corporation (ISC), the technology arm of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), the Treasury Department said in a statement Friday.
It also sanctioned a number of alleged ISC subsidiaries and front companies based in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, and three individuals allegedly linked to them including Pouria Mirdamadi, a French-Iranian dual national.
Brian Nelson, the U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the CBI “has played a critical role” in providing financial support to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the foreign arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Quds Force.
“The United States will continue to use all available means to disrupt the Iranian regime’s illicit attempts to procure sensitive U.S. technology and critical inputs,” he said in a statement.
The Treasury’s move freezes any U.S. assets associated with the sanctioned individuals and entities, and generally prohibits Americans from doing business with them.
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What Makes People Happy? California Lawmakers Want to Find Out
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Assemblyman Anthony Rendon likes to spend his spare time away from the Capitol in Sacramento with his 4-year-old daughter at home near Los Angeles. Last weekend, he took her ice skating and afterward to an indoor playground, then let her get a donut after she agreed to ride her scooter on the way there.
“Those are the types of things that make me happy,” he said this week in an interview outside the state Assembly chambers, where he’s served as a lawmaker for a dozen years.
Now Rendon, a Democrat who was one of the longest-serving Assembly speakers in California history, is spending his last year in office trying to make happiness more central to policymaking. He created a first-in-the-nation group to study the issue, called the Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes, which held its first public hearing this week.
It would be “silly” for lawmakers to not study how they can make people happier, Rendon said.
“Because if we have everybody clothed, everybody housed, everybody has a job and they’re miserable, then we’ve failed at what we’re trying to do,” he said, adding that lawmakers should think about happiness as a priority in policymaking.
In California, three-quarters of adults say they are “very happy” or “pretty happy,” while 26% say they are “not too happy,” according to a September 2023 survey from the Public Policy Institute of California. Adults aged 18 to 34, people who are renters, those without a post-high school degree, and Californians with an annual household income of $40,000 or lower tend to be less happy than others.
California is breaking new ground in the United States. At least 12 state legislatures in the nation have committees focused on mental health and substance abuse issues, but no other state legislature has a committee devoted to happiness, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But the idea to consider happiness in public policy isn’t unprecedented: The landlocked country of Bhutan in South Asia prioritizes happiness as a goal of public policy, measuring it through something written into its constitution called the Gross National Happiness Index. The country surveys residents on their level of happiness, and officials work to increase happiness by providing residents with free health care and education, protecting cultural traditions, and preserving forests, said Phuntsho Norbu, consul general of the Kingdom of Bhutan to the United States.
The government cannot make every person happy, but it should “create the right conditions that will allow people to pursue happiness,” Norbu said.
Lawmakers on California’s new committee heard this week from experts about the things that make people happy, what public officials can do to help and what role state and local government can play. The committee isn’t set on any solutions yet but plans to release a report with its findings after lawmakers adjourn for the year at the end of August, said Katie Talbot, Rendon’s spokesperson.
Assembly member Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat representing part of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, hopes the committee’s work can address poor mental health among youth in California, which her 11-year-old daughter has told her is a big issue in her class at school.
“It’s a true crisis that we have on our hands right now,” Schiavo said. “This is really getting to the heart of what that crisis is about.”
Research demonstrates that leisure activities, social relationships and life circumstances contribute to a person’s happiness, said Meliksah Demir, a professor of happiness at California State University, Sacramento. Public officials can work toward improving happiness by investing in mental health resources, making green spaces more accessible and teaching about the value of happiness early on in schools, Demir said.
Happiness has wide-ranging benefits that include making people more likely to vote, more creative and healthier, he said.
The Public Policy Institute of California’s September survey found that 33% of adults overall say they are very satisfied with their job, 31% say they are very satisfied with their leisure activities and 44% are very satisfied with their housing.
Californians’ level of happiness decreased during the pandemic, but experts are still researching the decline, said Mark Baldassare, the group’s survey director.
California, which is often ahead of other states on issues such as climate policy and civil rights, is behind many parts of the world in prioritizing happiness in policymaking, Rendon said. He was inspired to create the happiness committee in part by a report on happiness released annually by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Last year’s report said that how people view the effectiveness of government — including how well it raises money, delivers services and avoids civil war — can influence their happiness. The United States was 15th in a world happiness ranking based on a three-year average from 2020 to 2022, according to the report. Scandinavian countries, including Finland and Iceland, ranked the highest.
Rendon’s decision to create the happiness committee aligns with his approach to making state policy that focuses on “bigger picture” social issues, longtime labor lobbyist Kristina Bas Hamilton said. People have different perspectives on government involvement in their lives, but the creation of the committee evokes the ultimate purpose of government, she said.
“Government’s role is to provide for its people,” Bas Hamilton said. “The goal is to have happy citizens. That’s the goal of all public policy.”
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Kenyan Doctors Strike; Patients Left Unattended or Turned Away
NAIROBI, Kenya — Doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals began a nationwide strike Thursday, accusing the government of failing to implement a raft of promises from a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 after a 100-day strike that saw people dying from lack of care.
The Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union said they went on strike to demand comprehensive medical cover for the doctors and because the government has yet to post 1,200 medical interns.
Davji Bhimji, secretary-general of KMPDU, said 4,000 doctors took part in the strike despite a labor court order asking the union to put the strike on hold to allow talks with the government. And Dennis Miskellah, deputy secretary general of the union, said they would disregard the court order the same way the government had disregarded three court orders to increase basic pay for doctors and reinstate suspended doctors.
Miskellah said medical interns make up 27% of the workforce in Kenya’s public hospitals, and their absence means more sick people are being turned away from hospitals. Some doctors, however, have remained on duty to ensure patients in the intensive care units don’t die.
In an interview with broadcaster Citizen TV, Miskellah said doctors were committing suicide out of work-related frustration, while others have had to fund-raise to get treated for sickness due to a lack of comprehensive health coverage.
The impact of the strike was felt across the country with many patients left unattended or being turned away from hospitals across the East African nation.
Pauline Wanjiru said she brought her 12-year-old son for treatment on his broken leg, which had started to produce a smell, but she was turned away from a hospital in Kakamega county in western Kenya.
In 2017, doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals held a 100-day strike — the longest ever held in the country — to demand better wages and for the government to restore the country’s dilapidated public-health facilities. They also demanded continuous training of and hiring of doctors to address a severe shortage of health professionals.
At the time, public doctors, who train for six years in university, earned a basic salary of $400 to $850 a month, similar to some police officers who train for just six months.
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Namibia to Begin HPV Vaccine Rollout in April
Windhoek, Namibia — A top Namibian health official tells VOA the southern Africa country is set to begin distribution of the HPV vaccine to adolescent girls in April as a preventative measure in the fight against cervical cancer.
Namibia has a population of about 1 million women ages 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer.
Each year, about 375 women in Namibia are diagnosed with the disease, and the fatality rate is over 50%.
The Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, known as HPV, has been proven to greatly lessen the chance of getting cervical cancer.
Ben Nangombe, executive director at Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services, says health workers will begin vaccinating about 183,000 girls between the ages of nine and 14 next month.
He says the ministry has been allocated $7 million to procure single dose vaccines for this purpose.
Mehafo Amunyela, who works at the #Be Free Youth Program in the capital’s Katutura Township, told VOA that vaccine hesitancy could be a hurdle to fully immunizing the target population. She said she hopes that through awareness campaigns, children and their families can be educated about the advantages of getting the vaccine.
“We saw the reaction of the public toward the COVID vaccine when it came out, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and remember that the reason we don’t have illnesses like polio is because of vaccines, that they worked then, and they still do now,” she said.
The Cancer Association of Namibia says the vast distances between most towns and villages in Namibia could present another logistical challenge in the immunization program.
The association says to achieve the target of immunizing 183,000 girls, awareness campaigns should be undertaken in the different indigenous languages spoken in the country.
With the rollout of the HPV vaccine, Namibia is on the path to do its part in meeting the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 90% of girls worldwide by 2030, with the long-term goal of eliminating cervical cancer within the next century.
Although cervical cancer is preventable and curable, the disease claimed 350,000 lives worldwide in 2022 according to the WHO.
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‘Squid Game’ Star Found Guilty of Sexual Misconduct
Seoul — South Korea’s “Squid Game” actor O Yeong-su has been found guilty of sexual misconduct, a local court said Friday, after he was charged with assaulting a woman in 2017.
The 79-year-old in 2022 became the first South Korean to win a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actor in a series for his performance as a seemingly vulnerable old man in the mega-hit Netflix dystopian thriller.
The actor was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, the Seongnam Branch of the Suwon District Court told AFP.
He has been also ordered to complete 40 hours of classes on sexual violence, the court added.
The victim’s own records of the assault and her claims are “consistent … and appear to be statements that cannot be made without actually experiencing them,” judge Jeong Yeon-ju said, according to the court.
O was indicted in 2022 without detention on charges of sexually assaulting a woman, who has not been identified, on two occasions.
The incidents took place when O was staying in a rural area for a theatre performance in 2017, on a walking path and in front of the victim’s residence, respectively, according to the Suwon District Court.
“Squid Game,” a series that depicts a dark world where marginalized individuals are forced to compete in deadly versions of traditional children’s games, quickly gained immense popularity on Netflix.
Within less than four weeks of its release in 2021, it attracted a staggering 111 million viewers.
The show’s success has amplified South Korea’s increasingly outsized influence on global popular culture, following global fame won by the likes of K-pop band BTS and the Oscar-winning film “Parasite.”
Multiple figures in South Korea’s film industry — including late filmmaker Kim Ki-duk and actor Cho Jae-hyun — have faced sexual assault allegations.
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Alec Baldwin Seeks Dismissal of Grand Jury Indictment in Fatal Shooting of Cinematographer
SANTA FE, N.M. — Defense attorneys for Alec Baldwin urged a New Mexico judge on Thursday to dismiss a grand jury indictment against the actor in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the Western movie “Rust.”
The indictment in January charged Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Oct. 21, 2021, at a movie ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to the charge. His attorneys in a new court filing accused prosecutors of “unfairly stacking the deck” against Baldwin in grand jury proceedings that diverted attention away from exculpatory evidence and witnesses.
They say that prevented the jury from asserting their obligation to hear testimony from director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting while standing near Hutchins, as well as assistant director and safety coordinator Dave Halls and props master Sarah Zachry.
“The grand jury did not receive the favorable or exculpatory testimony and documents that the state had an obligation to present,” said the court motion signed by defense attorney Luke Nikas. “Nor was the grand jury told it had a right to review and the obligation to request this information.”
Prosecutor Kari Morrissey declined to comment and said a response will be filed with the court.
Baldwin’s motion also asserts that the grand jury received inaccurate and one-sided testimony about the revolver involved in the fatal shooting.
“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted by a jury last week in the shooting and is being held without bond pending an April sentencing hearing. Involuntary manslaughter carries a felony sentence of up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Baldwin was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and injuring Souza. Baldwin has maintained that he pulled back the gun’s hammer, but not the trigger.
Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed at a two-week trial for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited. They also said she failed to follow basic gun-safety protocols.
Halls last year pleaded no contest to negligent handling of a firearm and completed a sentence of six months of unsupervised probation.
Baldwin is scheduled for trial in July.
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US Senate Considers Bill That Could Ban TikTok in United States
The White House is urging senators to quickly begin considering a bill that would address national security concerns related to the social media app TikTok. The House approved the measure earlier this week. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports. Camera: Saqib Ul Islam.
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Ukraine Oscar Winner Mstyslav Chernov Talks to VOA About His Film
This month’s Academy Awards ceremony saw a big first for Ukraine as Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol” won the best documentary Oscar. The film is a first-person account of being in the eastern Ukrainian city during the first weeks of Russia’s invasion. Khrystyna Shevchenko talked with Chernov. Anna Rice has that story.
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World’s Largest Drone Maker Expands in US Amid Rights Abuse Allegations
washington — Chinese drone maker DJI is expanding in the U.S. with its first flagship store in New York City amid allegations of links to human rights abuses and ties to China’s military.
DJI’s “first concept” North American store on New York’s Fifth Avenue welcomes customers into a futuristic, minimalist space to shop. The company describes itself on its website as “the world’s leader in civil drones and creative camera technology.”
“We continue to see growing consumer demand throughout North America as we expand our consumer product portfolio,” said Christina Zhang, senior director of corporate strategy at DJI.
Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, the company was founded in 2006. DJI, also known as Da Jiang Innovations, has become the world’s largest drone maker, having achieved global dominance in less than 20 years. The company now supplies 70% of the world’s consumer drones and nearly 80% of U.S. consumer drones.
Abuse allegations
On March 5, the day of DJI’s official store opening in New York, the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), a Washington research and advocacy group, released a report titled Surveillance Tech Series: DJI’s Links to Human Rights Abuses in East Turkistan.
The report accuses DJI of being involved in mass surveillance and rights violations against Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other Muslim communities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which the group calls East Turkistan.
“DJI is directly involved in mass surveillance schemes in East Turkistan and has supplied public security agencies with tools to surveil and target Uyghurs, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz people,” the UHRP report said. “Xinjiang public security departments entered into seven procurement orders with DJI that were worth nearly US$300,000 between 2019 and 2022.”
The report stated that DJI sells drones to Xinjiang’s paramilitary organization, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which the U.S. government sanctioned because of its “connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities” in Xinjiang.
“Other documents show tenders worth US$47,000 for DJI drones for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps,” the UHRP report stated.
The report also said that a DJI drone captured footage of dozens of individuals, seemingly Uyghur prisoners, blindfolded and shackled at a train station in southern Xinjiang. The video, first released on YouTube in 2019, garnered widespread media attention.
“It’s unethical to support a company that knowingly engages in egregious rights violations,” Nuzigum Setiwaldi, the report’s author, told Voice of America.
The U.S. and several Western parliaments have accused China of genocide in Xinjiang, targeting Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim populations. The U.N. human rights office released a report saying the human rights violations in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity. China criticized Western nations for spreading “lies” about human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet.
A spokesperson from DJI told VOA the company has not engaged in any activities, including sales distribution and product development, that violate or abuse human rights.
“Like other manufacturers, we do not have control over how our products are used as they are available off the shelf,” wrote a DJI spokesperson in an email response. “However, we have demonstrated – through years of investments in product safety and security initiatives – that our products are developed for peaceful and civilian use only.”
Chinese military company or not?
In 2022, The Washington Post reported that DJI obscured ties to Chinese government funding.
In the same year, the U.S. Department of Defense classified DJI as a “Chinese military company.” As of January, DJI remains on the list of such companies operating in the United States. The department said it maintains companies on the list to counter China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, which supports the modernization of the Chinese army.
Reuters reported that former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who ran the U.S. Justice Department from 2015 to 2017 and is now with the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison law firm, wrote a letter to the Defense Department last July on behalf of DJI, urging the removal of her client from the Pentagon’s Chinese military companies list.
In her letter, Lynch cited the importance and urgency of such a move because of the wide use of and dependence on DJI products by a variety of U.S. stakeholders.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned in January that Chinese-made drones posed “significant risk” to U.S. national security and critical infrastructure.
“[T]he PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law compels Chinese companies to cooperate with state intelligence services, including providing access to data collected within China and around the world,” CISA said in its cybersecurity guidance on Chinese manufactured drones or unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
However, DJI’s spokesperson told VOA that DJI “is not a Chinese military company.”
According to DJI, the company remains one of the few drone companies that clearly “denounce and actively discourage” the use of drones in combat.
“We do not pursue business opportunities for combat use or operations. Our distributors, resellers and other business partners globally have also committed to following this policy when they sell and use our products,” DJI spokesperson said.
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Malawi Testing Genetically Modified Maize to Fight Hunger, Agricultural Pests
Malawi has embarked on trials of genetically modified maize aimed to curb recurrent hunger and pests like fall armyworms and caterpillars. The trials come amid concerns about the possible effects genetically modified organisms have on health and the environment. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
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Spacex Hoping to Launch Starship Farther in 3rd Test Flight
BOCA CHICA, Texas — SpaceX’s Starship, a futuristic vehicle designed to eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, was poised for a third uncrewed test launch Thursday that Elon Musk’s company hopes will carry it farther than before, even if it ends up exploding once again in flight.
The spacecraft, mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, was due for liftoff as early as 8 a.m. EDT from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica, Texas.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration just granted a license for the test flight on Wednesday afternoon.
Unlike the first two test flights last year, aimed mainly at demonstrating that the spacecraft’s two stages can separate after launch, the third test flight will involve an attempt to open Starship’s payload door and reignite one of its engines in space.
Each of the previous flights were routed toward a planned crash landing near the Hawaiian islands in the Pacific, while the latest flight is targeting a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean.
Even if it achieves more of its test objectives than before, SpaceX acknowledges a high probability that Starship’s latest flight will end up like the first two, with the vehicle blowing itself to bits before its intended trajectory is complete.
Regardless of how well it performs on Thursday, all indications are that Starship remains a considerable distance from becoming fully operational.
Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire founder and CEO, has said the rocket should fly hundreds of uncrewed missions before carrying its first humans. And several other ambitious milestones overseen by NASA are needed before the craft can execute a moon landing with American astronauts.
Still, Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade, and ultimately flying to Mars.
Closer to home, Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in company’s commercial launch business that already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit.
For Thursday, SpaceX is aiming to at least exceed Starship’s performance with its Super Heavy booster during their inaugural test launch together last April, when the spacecraft exploded over the Gulf less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight.
That flight went awry from the start. Some of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and the lower-stage rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship, leading to termination of the flight.
The second test flight in November made it farther than the first, and managed to properly achieve stage separation, but the spacecraft exploded about eight minutes after launch.
SpaceX’s engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry’s more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.
NASA, SpaceX’s biggest customer, has a lot riding in the success of Starship, which the U.S. space agency is giving a central role in its Artemis program, successor to the Apollo missions that put astronauts on the moon for the first time more than 50 years ago.
While NASA Administrator chief Bill Nelson has embraced Musk’s frequent flight-testing approach, agency officials in recent months have made clear their desire to see greater progress with Starship’s development as the U.S. races with China to the lunar surface.
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US House Passes Bill Forcing TikTok to Separate From Chinese Parent Company
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would force short-video app TikTok, used by about 170 million Americans, to separate from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson says the Senate may not approve the bill.
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‘Man in Iron Lung’ Dead at 78
Washington — A polio survivor known as the “man in the iron lung” has died aged 78, according to his family and a fundraising website.
Paul Alexander of Dallas, Texas contracted polio at the age of six, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and reliant on a mechanical respirator to breathe for much of the time.
Though often confined to his submarine-like cylinder, he excelled in his studies, earned a law degree, worked in the legal field and wrote a book.
“With a heavy heart I need to say my brother passed last night,” Philip Alexander posted on Facebook early Wednesday. “It was an honor to be part of someone’s life who was as admired as he was.”
Christopher Ulmer, a disability advocate running a fundraiser for Alexander, also confirmed his death in a GoFundMe update posted on Tuesday.
“His story traveled wide and far, positively influencing people around the world. Paul was an incredible role model that will continue to be remembered,” said Ulmer.
A prior update on Alexander’s official TikTok account said he had been rushed to the emergency room after contracting Covid-19.
Iron lungs are sealed chambers fitted with pumps. Raising and lowering the pressure inside the chamber expands and contracts the patient’s lungs.
Invented in the 1920s, their use fell away after the invention of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk, which became widely available in 1955 and helped consign the devastating paralytic illness to history.
Alexander held the official Guinness World Record for time spent in a lung.
According to his Guinness page, he was able to leave the device for periods of time after he learned to “frog breathe” with the help of a physical therapist.
This involved “using his throat muscles to force air into his lungs, gulping down air one mouthful at a time.” Eventually, he only returned to his iron lung at night to sleep.
As a practicing lawyer, he was able to represent clients in court in a special wheelchair that held his paralyzed body upright.
Seventy-five-year-old Martha Lillard of Shawnee, Oklahoma is reportedly the last surviving person in an iron lung.
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Nigerian Filmmakers Optimistic After Box Office Milestone
The Nigerian film industry, often referred to as Nollywood, is the second largest moviemaker in the world in terms of volume, and is making strides both in terms of art and in popularity at the box office. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
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UN: Childhood Deaths at Record Low, but Progress ‘Precarious’
UNITED NATIONS — The number of children worldwide who died before age 5 reached a record low in 2022, the United Nations said in a report published Tuesday, as for the first time fewer than 5 million died.
According to the estimate, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2022, a 51% decrease since 2000 and a 62% drop since 1990, according to the report, which still warned such progress is “precarious” and unequal.
“There is a lot of good news, and the major one is that we have come to a historic level of under-five mortality, which … reached under 5 million for the first time, so it is 4.9 million per year,” Helga Fogstad, director of health at the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told AFP.
According to the report, prepared by UNICEF in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, progress was particularly notable in developing countries such as Malawi, Rwanda and Mongolia, where early childhood mortality has fallen by more than 75% since 2000.
“Behind these numbers lie the stories of midwives and skilled health personnel helping mothers safely deliver their newborns … vaccinating … children against deadly diseases, and [making] home visits to support families,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.
But “this is a precarious achievement,” the report warned. “Progress is at risk of stagnation or reversal unless efforts are taken to neutralize the numerous threats to newborn and child health and survival.”
Researchers pointed to already worrying signs, saying that reduction in under-5 deaths has slowed at the global level and notably in the sub-Saharan Africa region.
In total, 162 million children under the age of 5 have died since 2000, 72 million of whom perished in the first month of life, as complications related to birth are among the main causes of early childhood mortality.
Between the ages of 1 month and 5 years, respiratory infections, malaria and diarrhea become the main killers — ailments that are all preventable, the report points out.
To reach the U.N.’s goal of reducing under-5 deaths to 25 per 1,000 births by 2030, 59 countries will need urgent investment in children’s health, researchers warned. And without adequate funding, 64 countries will miss the goal of limiting first-month deaths to 12 per 1,000 births.
“These are not just numbers on a page; they represent real lives cut short,” the report said.
The numbers also reveal glaring inequalities across the world, as the sub-Saharan Africa region accounted for half of all deaths of children under age 5 in 2022.
Babies born in countries with high early childhood mortality, such as Chad, Nigeria or Somalia, are 80 times more likely to die before their 5th birthday than babies born in countries with low childhood mortality rates, such as Finland, Japan and Singapore.
“Where a child is born should not dictate whether they live or die,” WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
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