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Month: August 2024
US crossword fan creates puzzles celebrating Black heritage
NEW YORK — It started a couple of years ago when Juliana Pache was doing a crossword puzzle and got stuck.
She was unfamiliar with the reference that the clue made. It made her think about what a crossword puzzle would look like if the clues and answers included more of some subjects that she was familiar with, thanks to her own identity and interests — Black history and Black popular culture.
When she couldn’t find such a thing, Pache decided to do it herself. In January 2023, she created blackcrossword.com, a site that offers a free mini-crossword puzzle every day. And Tuesday marked the release of her first book, Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora.
It’s a good moment for it, nearly 111 years after the first crossword appeared in a New York newspaper. Recent years have seen an increasing amount of conversation around representation in crossword puzzles, from who’s constructing them to what words can be used for answers and how the clues are framed. There’s been a push to expand the idea of the kinds of “common knowledge” players would have to fill them out.
“I had never made a crossword puzzle before,” Pache, 32, said with a laugh. “But I was like, ‘I can figure it out.’”
And she did.
Made ‘with Black people in mind’
Each puzzle on Pache’s site includes at least a few clues and answers connecting to Black culture. The tagline on the site: “If you know, you know.”
The book is brimming with the kinds of puzzles that she estimates about 2,200 people play daily on her site — squares made up of five lines, each with five spaces. She aims for at least three of the clues to be references to aspects of Black cultures from around the world.
Pache, a native of the New York City borough of Queens with family ties to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, had a couple of goals in mind when she started. Primarily, she wanted to create something that Black people would enjoy.
“I’m making it with Black people in mind,” she said. “And then if anyone else enjoys it, they learn things from it, that’s a bonus but it’s not my focus.”
She’s also trying to show the diversity in Black communities and cultures with the clues and words she uses, and to encourage people from different parts of the African diaspora to learn about each other.
“I also want to make it challenging, not just for people who might be interested in Black culture, but people within Black culture who might be interested in other regions,” she said. “Part of my mission with this is to highlight Black people from all over, Black culture from all over. And I think … that keeps us learning about each other.”
What, really, is ‘general knowledge’?
While on the surface if might just seem like a game, the knowledge base required for crosswords does say something about what kind of knowledge is considered “general” and “universal” and what isn’t, said Michelle Pera-McGhee, a data journalist at The Pudding, a site that focuses on data-driven stories.
In 2020, Pera-McGhee undertook a data project analyzing crossword puzzles through the decades from a handful of the most well-known media outlets. The project assessed clues and answers that used the names of real people to determine a breakdown along gender and race categories.
Unsurprisingly, the data indicated that for the most part, men were disproportionately more likely than women to be featured, as well as white people compared to racial and ethnic minorities.
It’s “interesting because it’s supposed to be easy,” Pera-McGhee said. “You want … ideally to reference things that people, everybody knows about because everyone learns about them in school or whatever. … What are the things that we decide we all should know?”
There are efforts to make crosswords more accessible and representative, including the recently started fellowship for puzzle constructors from underrepresented groups at The New York Times, among the most high-profile crossword puzzles around. Puzzle creators have made puzzles aimed at LGBTQ+ communities, at women, using a wider array of references as Pache is doing.
Bottom line, “it is really cool to see our culture reflected in this medium,” Pache said.
And, Pera-McGhee said, it can be cool to learn new things.
“It’s kind of enriching to have things in the puzzle that you don’t know about,” she said. “It’s not that the experience of not knowing is bad. It’s just that it should maybe be spread out along with the experience of knowing. Both are kind of good in the crossword-solving experience.”
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CEO of Telegram messaging app arrested in France, say French media
paris — Pavel Durov, billionaire founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV and BFM TV said, citing unnamed sources.
Telegram, particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union, is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat. It aims to hit 1 billion users in the next year.
Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded by Russian-born Durov. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.
Durov was traveling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The French Interior Ministry and police had no comment.
App becomes popular during wartime
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Telegram has become the main source of unfiltered — and sometimes graphic and misleading — content from both sides about the war and the politics surrounding the conflict.
The app has become preferred means of communications for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his officials. The Kremlin and the Russian government also use it to disseminate their news. It has also become one of the few places where Russians can access news about the war.
TF1 said Durov had been traveling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 18:00 GMT.
Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app, which has now 900 million active users, should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics.”
The Russia Embassy in France told the Russian state TASS news agency that it was not contacted by Durov’s team after the reports of the arrest, but it was taking “immediate” steps to clarify the situation.
Bloggers encourage protesting French embassies
Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, and several other Russian politicians were quick to accuse France of acting as a dictatorship.
“Some naive persons still don’t understand that if they play [a] more or less visible role in [the] international information space it is not safe for them to visit countries which move towards much more totalitarian societies,” Ulyanov wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Several Russian bloggers called for protests at French embassies throughout the world at noon Sunday.
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Cholera poses new risks for millions of Sudan’s displaced
GENEVA — U.N. agencies are scaling up cholera prevention and treatment programs to get on top of a new, deadly cholera outbreak in Sudan that threatens to further destabilize communities suffering from hunger and the ill effects of more than 16 months of conflict.
The recent cholera outbreak has resurged after several weeks of heavy rainfall and resulting flooding,” Kristine Hambrouck, UNHCR representative in Sudan, told journalists Friday in Geneva.
Speaking on a video-link from Port Sudan, she warned, “Risks are compounded by the continuing conflict and dire humanitarian conditions, including overcrowding in camps and gathering sites for refugees and Sudanese displaced by the war, as well as limited medical supplies and health workers.”
She expressed particular concern about the spread of the deadly disease in areas hosting refugees, mainly in Kassala, Gedaref and al-Jazirah states.
“In addition to hosting refugees from other countries, these states are also sheltering thousands of displaced Sudanese who have sought safety from ongoing hostilities,” she said.
The United Nations describes Sudan as the largest displacement crisis in the world. Latest figures put the number of people displaced inside Sudan at more than 10.7 million, with an additional 2 million who have fled to neighboring countries as refugees.
Additionally, the UNHCR says Sudan continues to host tens of thousands of refugees from countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Sudan’s health ministry officially declared a cholera outbreak on August 12. In the one month since the first suspected cases were reported, the World Health Organization says 658 cholera cases and 28 deaths have been reported by five states, “with a high case-fatality ratio of 4.3%.”
Kassala has reported the highest number of cholera cases at 473, followed by Gedaref with 110 cases, and al-Jazairah with 51 cases. Two other states, Khartoum and River Nile, have reported fewer numbers.
“These cases are not linked to the previous cholera outbreak, which had been declared in September 2023,” said Dr. Shible Sahbani, the WHO representative to Sudan, noting that the outbreak “technically ended” in May 2024 after no cases were reported for two consecutive incubation periods.
Speaking from Port Sudan, Sahbani described the situation in Kassala as very worrisome. He said the state’s health system already was under stress because of the large number of displaced people and refugees living there. “So, the health system is not able to cope with the additional influx of refugees and IDPs [internally displaced persons].”
“But in addition to that, it puts a big burden on the WASH system — the water, sanitation, and hygiene system. So, this makes the situation more complicated in favor of the spread of cholera,” he said.
Besides the dangers posed by cholera, UNICEF representative Hambrouck also warns of an increasing number of cases of waterborne diseases, including malaria and diarrhea, which also need to be brought under control.
“Constraints in humanitarian access are also impacting response efforts. Violence, insecurity and persistent rainfall are hampering the transportation of humanitarian aid,” she said.
She noted that more than 7.4 million refugees and internally displaced Sudanese living in White Nile, Darfur and Kordofan states are having to do without “critical medicines and relief supplies” because of delays in delivery.
The WHO and UNHCR are working closely with Sudan’s Ministry of Health to coordinate the cholera outbreak response. Among its many initiatives, UNHCR says it is working with health partners to strengthen surveillance, early warning systems and contact tracing in affected locations.
“Disease surveillance and testing are ongoing, and awareness-raising and training on cholera case management for health staff are also being conducted,” said Hambrouck.
For its part, Sahbani said the WHO has prepositioned cholera kits and other essential medical supplies “in high-risk states in anticipation of the risks associated with the rainy season.”
He said the WHO was spearheading a cholera vaccination campaign, noting that “a three-day oral cholera vaccination campaign in two localities of Kassala state concluded Thursday.”
He said the campaign already has used 51,000 doses and “the good news is that we got the approval of an additional 155,000 doses of cholera vaccine. So, this is the good news in the middle of this horrible crisis.”
One dose of the vaccine, he said, would protect the population against cholera for six months, while two doses would provide protection for up to three years.
“So, this is really good news because this will help us to contain the outbreak,” he said. Without more funding, however, he warned the good news will quickly evaporate, noting that the WHO has received just one-third of its $85.6 million appeal.
“This will indeed limit our capacity to launch a robust response to reach a larger segment of the people in need,” he said.
His UNHCR colleague, Hambrouck, echoed the sentiments.
“With the humanitarian situation and funding level already precarious prior to this latest cholera outbreak, funds are desperately needed to support the provision of health care and other life-saving aid,” she said.
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Babe Ruth’s ‘called shot’ jersey could auction for $30 million
DALLAS, Texas — Nearly a century after Babe Ruth called his shot during the 1932 World Series, the jersey worn by the New York Yankees slugger when he hit the home run to center field could sell at auction for as much as $30 million.
Heritage Auctions is offering up the jersey Saturday night in Dallas.
Ruth’s famed, debated and often imitated “called shot” came as the Yankees and Chicago Cubs faced off in Game 3 of the World Series at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on October 1, 1932. In the fifth inning, Ruth made a pointing gesture while at bat and then hit a home run off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root.
The Yankees won the game 7-5 and swept the Cubs the next day to win the series.
That was Ruth’s last World Series, and the “called shot” was his last home run in a World Series, said Mike Provenzale, the production manager for Heritage’s sports department.
“When you can tie an item like that to an important figure and their most important moment, that’s what collectors are really looking for,” Provenzale said.
Heritage said Ruth gave the road jersey to one of his golfing buddies in Florida around 1940 and it remained in that family for decades. Then, in the early 1990s, that man’s daughter sold it to a collector. It was then sold at auction in 2005 for $940,000, and that buyer consigned it to Heritage this year.
In 2019, one of Ruth’s road jerseys dating to 1928-30 sold for $5.64 million in an auction conducted at Yankee Stadium. That jersey was part of a collection of items that Ruth’s family had put up for sale.
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‘Overtourism’ brings some chaos to summer of 2024
SINTRA, Portugal — The doorbell to Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a literal bell on the roof that lets him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion that his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.
There’s precious little of that for Pimentel during this summer of “overtourism.”
Travelers idling in standstill traffic outside the sunwashed walls of Casa do Cipreste in Cintra sometimes spot the bell and pull the string “because it’s funny,” he says. With the windows open, he can smell the car exhaust and hear the “tuk-tuk” of outsized scooters named for the sound they make. And he can sense the frustration of 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house on the crawl up single-lane switchbacks to Pena Palace, the onetime retreat of King Ferdinand II.
“Now I’m more isolated than during COVID,” the soft-spoken Pimentel, who lives alone, said during an interview this month on the veranda. “Now I try to (not) go out. What I feel is: angry.”
This is a story of what it means to be visited in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to set records since the coronavirus pandemic brought much of life on Earth to a halt. Wandering is surging, rather than leveling off, driven by lingering revenge travel, digital nomad campaigns and so-called golden visas blamed in part for skyrocketing housing prices.
Cue the violins, you might grouse, for people like Pimentel who are well-off enough to live in places worth visiting. But it’s more than a problem for rich people.
“Not to be able to get an ambulance or to not be able to get my groceries is a rich people problem?” said Matthew Bedell, another resident of Sintra, which has no pharmacy or grocery store in the center of the UNESCO-designated district. “Those don’t feel like rich people problems to me.”
Overtourism generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.
Look a little deeper and you’ll find knottier issues for locals and their leaders, none more universal than housing prices driven up by short-term rentals like Airbnb, from Spain to South Africa.
The summer of 2023 was defined by the chaos of the journey itself — airports and airlines overwhelmed, passports a nightmare for travelers from the US. Yet by the end of the year, signs abounded that the COVID-19 rush of revenge travel was accelerating.
In January, the United Nations’ tourism agency predicted that worldwide tourism would exceed the records set in 2019 by 2%. By the end of March, the agency reported, more than 285 million tourists had travelled internationally, about 20% more than the first quarter of 2023. The World Travel & Tourism Council projected in April that 142 of 185 countries it analyzed would set records for tourism, set to generate $11.1 trillion globally and account for 330 million jobs.
Aside from the money, there’s been trouble in paradise this year, with Spain playing a starring role in everything from water management problems to skyrocketing housing prices and drunken tourist drama.
Protests erupted across the country as early as March, with thousands of people demonstrating in Spain’s Canary Islands against visitors and construction that was overwhelming water services and jacking up housing prices.
Japan set records for tourist arrivals. In Fujikawaguchiko, a town that offers some of the best views of Mount Fuji, leaders erected a large black screen in a parking lot to deter tourists from overcrowding the site. The tourists apparently struck back by cutting holes in the screen at eye level.
Air travel, meanwhile, only got more miserable, the U.S. government reported in July.
Tourism is surging and shifting so quickly, in fact, that some experts say the very term “overtourism” is outdated.
Michael O’Regan, a lecturer on tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” doesn’t reflect the fact that the experience depends largely on the success or failure of crowd management.
“There’s been backlash against the business models on which modern tourism has been built and the lack of response by politicians,” he said in an interview. Tourism “came back quicker than we expected,” he allows, but tourists aren’t the problem. “So what happens when we get too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”
Virpi Makela can describe exactly what happens in her corner of Sintra. Incoming guests at Casa do Valle, her hillside bed-and-breakfast near the village center, call Makela in anguish because they cannot figure out how to find her property amid Sintra’s “disorganized” traffic rules that seem to change without notice.
“There’s a pillar in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because you ruin your car. So you have to somehow come down but you can’t turn around, so you have to back down the road,” says Makela, a resident of Portugal for 36 years. “And then people get so frustrated they come to our road, which also has a sign that says `authorized vehicles only.’ And they block everything.”
A 40-minute train ride to the west, Sintra’s municipality has invested in more parking lots outside town and youth housing at lower prices near the center, the mayor’s office said.
More than 3 million people every year visit the mountains and castles of Sintra, long one of Portugal’s wealthiest regions for its cool microclimate and scenery. Sintra City Hall also said via email that fewer tickets are now sold to the nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, began this year to permit less than half the 12,000 tickets per day sold there in the past.
It’s not enough, say local residents, who have organized into QSintra, an association that’s challenging City Hall to “put residents first” with better communication, to start. They also want to know the government’s plan for managing guests at a new hotel being constructed to increase the number of overnight stays, and more limits on the number of cars and visitors allowed.
“We’re not against tourists,” reads the group’s manifesto. “We’re against the pandemonium that (local leaders) cannot resolve.”
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Chinese entities turn to Amazon cloud, rivals to access US chips, AI
BEIJING/SINGAPORE/NEW YORK — State-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services provided by Amazon or its rivals to access advanced U.S. chips and artificial intelligence capabilities that they cannot acquire otherwise, recent public tender documents showed.
The U.S. government has restricted the export of high-end AI chips to China over the past two years, citing the need to limit the Chinese military’s capabilities.
Providing access to such chips or advanced AI models through the cloud, however, is not a violation of U.S. regulations since only exports or transfers of a commodity, software or technology are regulated.
A Reuters review of more than 50 tender documents posted over the past year on publicly available Chinese databases showed that at least 11 Chinese entities have sought access to restricted U.S. technologies or cloud services.
Among those, four explicitly named Amazon Web Services, or AWS, as a cloud service provider, although they accessed the services through Chinese intermediary companies rather than from AWS directly.
The tender documents, which Reuters is the first to report on, show the breadth of strategies Chinese entities are employing to secure advanced computing power and access generative AI models. They also underscore how U.S. companies are capitalizing on China’s growing demand for computing power.
“AWS complies with all applicable U.S. laws, including trade laws, regarding the provision of AWS services inside and outside of China,” a spokesperson for Amazon’s cloud business said.
AWS controls nearly a third of the global cloud infrastructure market, according to research firm Canalys. In China, AWS is the sixth-largest cloud service provider, according to research firm IDC.
Shenzhen University spent $27,996 (200,000 yuan) on an AWS account to gain access to cloud servers powered by Nvidia A100 and H100 chips for an unspecified project, according to a March tender document. It got this service via an intermediary, Yunda Technology Ltd Co, the document showed.
Exports to China of the two Nvidia chips that are used to power large-language models, or LLM, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are banned by the United States.
Shenzhen University and Yunda Technology did not respond to requests for comment. Nvidia declined to comment on Shenzhen University’s spending or on any of the other Chinese entities’ deals.
Zhejiang Lab, a research institute developing its own LLM, called GeoGPT, said in a tender document in April that it intended to spend 184,000 yuan to purchase AWS cloud computing services as its AI model could not get enough computing power from homegrown Alibaba.
A spokesperson for Zhejiang Lab said that it did not follow through with the purchase but did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind this decision or how it met its LLM’s computing power requirements. Alibaba’s cloud unit, Alicloud, did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters could not establish whether the purchase went ahead.
Moving to tighten access
The U.S. government is now trying to tighten regulations to restrict access through the cloud.
“This loophole has been a concern of mine for years, and we are long overdue to address it,” Michael McCaul, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told Reuters in a statement, referring to the remote access of advanced U.S. computing through the cloud by foreign entities.
Legislation was introduced in Congress in April to empower the Commerce Department to regulate remote access of U.S. technology, but it is not clear if and when it will be passed.
A department spokesperson said it was working closely with Congress and “seeking additional resources to strengthen our existing controls that restrict PRC companies from accessing advanced AI chips through remote access to cloud computing capability.”
The Commerce Department also proposed a rule in January that would require U.S. cloud computing services to verify large AI model users and report to regulators when they use U.S. cloud computing services to train large AI models capable of “malicious cyber-enabled activity.”
The rule, which has not been finalized, would also enable the Commerce secretary to impose prohibitions on customers.
“We are aware the Commerce Department is considering new regulations, and we comply with all applicable laws in the countries in which we operate,” the AWS spokesperson said.
Cloud demand in China
The Chinese entities are also seeking access to Microsoft’s cloud services.
In April, Sichuan University said in a tender document it was building a generative AI platform and purchasing 40 million Microsoft Azure OpenAI tokens to support the delivery of this project. The university’s procurement document in May showed that Sichuan Province Xuedong Technology Co Ltd supplied the tokens.
Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment. Sichuan University and Sichuan Province Xuedong Technology did not respond to requests for comment on the purchase.
OpenAI said in a statement that its own services are not supported in China and that Azure OpenAI operates under Microsoft’s policies. It did not comment on the tenders.
The University of Science and Technology of China’s Suzhou Institute of Advanced Research said in a tender document in March that it wanted to rent 500 cloud servers, each powered by eight Nvidia A100 chips, for an unspecified purpose.
The tender was fulfilled by Hefei Advanced Computing Center Operation Management Co Ltd, a procurement document showed in April, but the document did not name the cloud service provider. Reuters could not determine its identity.
The University of Science and Technology of China, or USTC, was added to a U.S. export control list known as the “Entity List” in May for acquiring U.S. technology for quantum computing that could help China’s military, and for involvement in its nuclear program development.
USTC and Hefei Advanced Computing Center did not respond to requests for comment.
Beyond restricted AI chips
Amazon has offered Chinese organizations access not only to advanced AI chips but also to advanced AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude, which they cannot otherwise access, according to public posts, tenders and marketing materials reviewed by Reuters.
“Bedrock provides a selection of leading LLMs, including prominent closed-source models such as Anthropic’s Claude 3,” Chu Ruisong, president of AWS Greater China, told a generative AI-themed conference in Shanghai in May, referring to its cloud platform.
In various Chinese-language posts for AWS developers and clients, Amazon highlighted the opportunity to try out “world-class AI models” and mentioned Chinese gaming firm Source Technology as one of its clients using Claude.
Amazon has dedicated sales teams serving Chinese clients domestically and overseas, according to two former company executives.
After Reuters contacted Amazon for comment, it updated dozens of posts on its Chinese-language channels with a note to say some of its services were not available in its China cloud regions. It also removed several promotional posts, including the one about Source Technology. Amazon did not give a reason for removing the posts and did not answer a Reuters query about that.
“Amazon Bedrock customers are subject to Anthropic’s end user license agreement, which prohibits access to Claude in China both via Amazon’s Bedrock API [application programming interface] and via Anthropic’s own API,” the AWS spokesperson said.
Anthropic said it does not support or allow customers or end-users within China to access Claude.
“However, subsidiaries or product divisions of Chinese-headquartered companies may use Claude if the subsidiary itself is located in a supported region outside of China,” an Anthropic spokesperson said.
Source Technology did not respond to a request for comment.
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Cholera spreads as Sudan grapples with rains and displacement
Port Sudan — For the second consecutive year Sudan is in the grip of a cholera outbreak that has left at least 28 people dead in the last month as rains fall in areas crammed with those fleeing the country’s 16-month-old war, officials said.
Since July 22, when the current wave began, 658 cases of cholera have been recorded across five states, World Health Organization (WHO) country director Shible Sahbani told Reuters in Port Sudan.
With much of the country’s health infrastructure collapsed or destroyed and staffing thinned by displacement, 4.3% of cases have resulted in deaths, a high rate compared to other outbreaks, Sahbani said.
Some 200,000 are at high risk of falling ill, he said.
The war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises and displaced more than 10 million people inside Sudan and beyond its borders.
The country is dealing with a total of five concurrent disease outbreaks include dengue fever and measles.
The RSF has advanced across swathes of Sudan, where people have been cut off from aid as the army has withheld access and RSF soldiers loot supplies and hospitals. Efforts to deliver aid to the western region of Darfur have been complicated by rains.
International experts have determined that there is a famine in Darfur’s Zamzam camp, an area flooded in the rains and highly susceptible to cholera.
About 12,000 cases and more than 350 deaths were registered in the previous cholera wave between October 2023 and May 2024, health minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said, adding that there had been no major outbreak in the nine years before the war.
The current outbreak is centered in Kassala and Gedaref states, which host 1.2 million displaced people.
In Gedaref, a Reuters reporter filmed pools of water attracting insects and large ponds of stagnant rain water mixing with refuse. A local official said that the vast majority of diseases were caused by insects, poor water quality, and sewage.
Many people fleeing raids by the RSF shelter in crowded, makeshift displacement centers, where lavatories have overflowed as heavier-than-usual rains continue to fall. Cholera is transmitted from food and water contaminated with infected feces and thrives in such conditions.
Sahbani said that states like Khartoum and Gezira, largely controlled by the RSF, had also seen cholera cases, while states in the Kordofan and Darfur regions could likely see outbreaks.
“The challenge is getting supplies to the areas we need them. Due to the rainy season many roads are not usable now, but also there are security constraints and bureaucratic constraints,” he said.
On Friday, he told reporters in a virtual briefing that the International Coordinated Group for vaccine allocation (ICG) had approved delivery of 455,000 cholera vaccine doses to Sudan, some “good news in the middle of this horrible crisis.”
Ibrahim said the army-aligned government had used “unorthodox measures” including air drops to try to get vaccines and supplies into those RSF-controlled areas as well as isolated army-controlled areas.
Both officials emphasized that the need in Sudan far outweighed the aid effort, particularly as the U.N.’s humanitarian appeal for Sudan is only about one-third funded.
your ads here!Second set of giant panda cubs born in Berlin
BERLIN — The Berlin Zoo announced Friday that longtime resident giant panda Meng Meng has given birth to twins — for a second time.
The cubs were born on Thursday, the zoo said in a statement. They were born only 11 days after ultrasound scans showed that Meng Meng, 11, was pregnant. Their sex has not yet been determined “with certainty.”
“Now it’s time to keep your fingers crossed for the critical first few days,” the zoo said. The cubs are tiny, weighing just 169 grams and 136 grams respectively, and are about 14 centimeters long.
As with other large bears, giant pandas are born deaf, blind and pink. Their black-and-white panda markings only develop later.
“I am relieved that the two were born healthy,” zoo director Andreas Knieriem said. “The little ones make a lively impression and mom Meng Meng takes great care of her offspring.”
The zoo said that giant pandas usually only raise one cub when they give birth to twins, so it will “actively support” Meng Meng’s cub care in cooperation with two experts from China’s Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding who are in the German capital.
“With around 20 births a year, they have much more experience and are better able to assess development,” panda curator Florian Sicks said.
The cubs will alternate being with their mother every two to three hours to drink milk and are otherwise being cared for in an incubator donated by a Berlin hospital.
Meng Meng and male panda Jiao Qing arrived in Berlin in 2017. In August 2019, Meng Meng gave birth to male twins Pit and Paule, also known by the Chinese names Meng Xiang and Meng Yuan, the first giant pandas born in Germany.
The twins were a star attraction in Berlin, but they were flown to China in December — a trip that was contractually agreed from the start but delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. China gifted friendly nations with its unofficial mascot for decades as part of a “panda diplomacy” policy. The country now loans pandas to zoos on commercial terms.
Giant pandas have difficulty breeding and births are particularly welcomed. There are about 1,800 pandas living in the wild in China and a few hundred in captivity worldwide.
Meng Meng was artificially inseminated on March 26. Female pandas are fertile only for a few days per year at the most.
The new arrivals and their mother won’t be on show to the public for the time being — but visitors can still see Jiao Qing, 14, as male pandas don’t get involved in rearing cubs.
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Volcano in Iceland erupts for sixth time since December
COPENHAGEN, denmark — A volcano in southwestern Iceland erupted on Thursday, the meteorological office said, spraying red-hot lava and smoke in its sixth outbreak since December.
“An eruption has begun. Work is under way to find out the location of the recordings,” the Icelandic Met Office, which is tasked with monitoring volcanoes, said in a statement.
The total length of the fissure was about 3.9 kilometers (2.42 miles) and had extended by 1.5 kilometers (.93 mile) in about 40 minutes, it said.
Livestreams from the volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula showed glowing hot lava shooting from the ground.
Studies had shown magma accumulating underground, prompting warnings of new volcanic activity in the area just south of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.
The most recent eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula, home to 30,000 people or nearly 8% of the country’s total population, ended on June 22 after spewing fountains of molten rock for 24 days.
The eruptions show the challenge faced by the island nation of nearly 400,000 people as scientists warn that the Reykjanes peninsula could face repeated outbreaks for decades or even centuries.
Since 2021, there have been nine eruptions on the peninsula, following the reactivation of geological systems that had been dormant for 800 years.
In response, authorities have constructed barriers to redirect lava flows away from critical infrastructure, including the Svartsengi power plant, the Blue Lagoon outdoor spa and the town of Grindavik.
Flights were unaffected, Reykjavik’s Keflavik Airport said on its web page, but the nearby Blue Lagoon luxury geothermal spa and hotel said it had shut down and evacuated its guests.
Volcanic outbreaks in the Reykjanes peninsula are so-called fissure eruptions, which do not usually disrupt air traffic as they do not cause large explosions or significant dispersal of ash into the stratosphere.
Iceland, which is roughly the size of the U.S. state of Kentucky, boasts more than 30 active volcanoes, making the north European island a prime destination for volcano tourism.
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UN agencies help in attempts to contain mpox in south, east Africa
Harare, Zimbabwe — The United Nations said Thursday it is working with governments and health officials in Eastern and Southern Africa to contain the outbreak of mpox there.
UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with local partners, are responding to the spread of the new mpox clade 1b variant, said Etleva Kadilli, UNICEF’s regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa.
Kadilli said in a statement that more than 200 confirmed cases have been detected in five countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.
Dr. Francis Kasolo, director and head of the WHO at the African Union and U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, told a joint WHO-Africa CDC meeting, “Our collaboration has been instrumental in enhancing surveillance, laboratory capacity and effective deployment of technical capacity to countries. Together we are making progress.”
But, he said, there is still much to be done.
It is imperative that we remain vigilant and proactive in our efforts to combat mpox. This means not only addressing it in the immediate needs, but also investing in long-term strategies that will build resilient health systems capable of withstanding future outbreaks and shocks,” Kasolo said.
Last week, the WHO declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern following a surge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a growing number of other African countries.
An earlier emergency was declared in 2022. The U.N. agency said that one was declared over in May 2023.
Botswana and Zimbabwe are now screening for mpox after their neighbor, South Africa, recorded three deaths from the new strain. Zimbabwe is screening for the viral ailment at all ports of entry.
“We have said all those who present [high fever] and rash should be thoroughly investigated — where they are coming from and for how long they have been there and possible contact with people who have monkey pox,” Zimbabwean Health Minister Douglas Mombeshora said, referring to mpox’s previous name.
“We have kits to do tests for monkey pox,” he said. “So yes, we are on a very high alert. … I know there was a scare a few days ago. Some people were reporting on social media that there were people who had presented with some rash. They thought it was monkey pox. We did not take it for granted. The patient was said to have tested negative.”
Dr. Norman Matara of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights said that given the country’s poor health care system, keeping mpox out is better than trying to contain it after cases appear.
“It saves the nation a lot of money because treatment is always expensive,” he said. “It also prevents us from unnecessary lockdown restrictions of movements … like what we saw with COVID-19.”
For now, he said, there is no need to panic.
“At the moment we have not recorded any case of mpox. … We just need to increase our health surveillance so that anyone with symptoms can be isolated and they can be screened and any case can be easily identified and minimize the virus spreading in the country,” Matara said.
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, told VOA this week that the Democratic Republic of Congo was the “epicenter” of mpox. She said front-line health workers in affected areas should be given priority on vaccinations against the ailment.
“The issue of access to vaccines is something which we are working on collectively at the international level,” she said. “This is really a case of negotiating with pharmaceutical companies that are able to produce the vaccine to ensure they scale up their production and increase availability of vaccines.”
Besides a rash, other symptoms of the viral infection can include lesions, muscle aches and swollen lymph glands. Most people fully recover, but some become very ill and die.
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A green revolution is sweeping Pakistan as consumers switch to generating their own solar electricity. But as VOA Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman reports, the move to the increasingly affordable, green option may also cause a crisis for the national grid. Videographer: Wajid Asad
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US official holds talks in Africa on responsible use of military AI
Abuja, Nigeria — A U.S. State Department official was in Nigeria this week to meet with local and regional authorities about the responsible use of artificial intelligence in military applications.
Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability, said her two-day visit with Nigerian officials from the regional bloc ECOWAS was part of the United States’ commitment to deepen security cooperation in Africa.
The U.S. government has been working with 55 nations, including African nations, “to agree upon responsible uses of AI in the military context, using AI in a manner consistent with international laws [and] recognizing inherent human bias,” Stewart told journalists Wednesday.
“We’ve learned the hard way [that there is] inherent human bias built into the AI system … leading to maybe misinformation being provided to the decisionmaker,” she said.
The goal, she continued, “is to hear from as many countries as possible that are at the stage of working in artificial intelligence to their military to see how we can minimize the risks.”
Last year, the Global Terrorism Index report named sub-Saharan Africa an epicenter of terrorism, accounting for nearly 60% of terror-related deaths. It is unclear whether the terror groups are using AI.
Nigerian authorities have been pushing for the integration of artificial intelligence in military operations, while acknowledging that adopting AI will require Africa-specific policies.
Security analyst Kabiru Adamu of Beacon Consulting said the use of AI in military operations has advantages.
“Given the position of the U.S. in terms of its military capacity and technological advancement, it will definitely be in the position to support Nigeria’s desires, especially if it’s able to contextualize some of the peculiarities within the Nigerian security space,” Adamu said. “We can’t isolate ourselves from the international committee of nations. AI is embedded in security, so we have to do it. But we need to be cognizant of the supporting infrastructure for good technology. Power is one of them, culture.”
The founder of Global Sentinel online magazine, Senator Iroegbu, said that while AI has benefits, the technology still needs to be treated with caution.
“It limits casualties in terms of the number of soldiers that will be deployed, so you conserve your boots,” Iroegbu said. “It helps penetrate rough terrains, gather more intelligence. It’s good that there’s growing awareness of the issue of artificial intelligence, but Nigeria needs to first of all try to define its own policy and strategy with regards to artificial intelligence. More sensitization needs to be done, and more policy aspect of it needs to be developed.”
In June, African ministers unanimously endorsed landmark continental AI strategy to advance Africa’s digital future and development aspirations. And last week, the African Union approved the adoption of AI in public and private sectors in member states, including Nigeria.
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Thailand says mpox case recorded in traveler from Africa
BANGKOK — Thailand has detected an mpox case in a European man who arrived from Africa last week and is awaiting test results to determine the strain, a disease control official said on Wednesday.
Thai authorities were treating the case as if it were the Clade 1 form of mpox, as the person, a 66-year-old European man with residency in Thailand, had arrived on Aug. 14 from an African country where it was spreading, Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn, director-general of the Department of Disease Control, told Reuters.
“After he arrives from the flight there is very little time frame where he come into contact with others,” Thongchai said. “He arrives around 6 pm and on the next day, Aug 15, he went to see the doctor at the hospital.”
Thongchai said the man has undergone a test to determine whether the case was a Clade 1 variant, with the result expected by Friday. Authorities are also monitoring 43 people in the country who may come into contact with the patient, he said.
The director-general did not name the African country the man had been in. He said the man had transited in a Middle Eastern country, which he also did not name, before flying on to Thailand.
Thailand has detected 800 cases of mpox Clade 2 since 2022, but so far not detected a case of the Clade 1 or Clade 1b variants.
your ads here!Palestinians appeal to Israeli court about water shortage
Palestinian residents of a Jerusalem neighborhood have appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court demanding they be supplied with more water. The 120,000 residents of the area say they receive water only three hours a week. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Kufr Aqab. Camera: Ricki Rosen.
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Botswana begins mpox screening at entry points
Gaborone, Botswana — Health officials in Botswana have started screening travelers for mpox at the country’s entry points.
Neighboring South Africa has recorded three deaths as a result of the dangerous strain of mpox, and Botswana is anxious to keep out the rapidly spreading disease.
“Although we have not recorded any case of mpox in Botswana, I want to take this opportunity to assure Botswana that we have significantly enhanced our broader surveillance systems,” the country’s minister of health, Dr Edwin Dikoloti, told the media Tuesday. “We are currently intensifying our surveillance at key entry points, which is borders and airports, focusing on high-risk areas.”
South Africa shares a 1,900-kilometer border with Botswana and as of Aug. 5 had recorded three mpox deaths. In Africa, the disease has claimed the lives of more than 500 people since the beginning of the year.
Botswana Public Health Institute Acting Director Dr. Thebeyame Matsheka says travelers will be required to fill out self-assessment forms at border checkpoints.
“There are sometimes where, through just random checks, we might identify someone who appears not to be well, they will take those travelers aside and investigate further,” Matsheka said.
Meanwhile, Dikoloti said Botswana is engaging with international partners for the supply of vaccines.
According to Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the continent has about 200,000 vaccine doses against a requirement of at least 10 million doses.
Medication to be used for the management of mpox is available at health facilities throughout the country.
“Vaccines exist for mpox but they are not widely available,” Dikoloti added.
The World Health Organization country representative, Juliet Bataringaya, says the scale of the mpox vaccination will not be broad because the disease affects countries differently.
“We need to have a good understanding of the epidemiology in each and every country, because it is different and to understand the transmission patterns,” Bataringaya said. “These will then guide on the use of vaccines in a more targeted way to have maximum public health impact.”
She said there won’t be the kind of mass vaccination effort implemented during the COVID pandemic because the modes of transmission are different.
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