Aid workers say deep poverty and harsh living conditions lead to hopelessness among Idlib’s youth
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Corts
WHO: People Exposed To or At Risk of Monkeypox Should Be Vaccinated
The World Health Organization is urging people who may have been exposed to or at risk of monkeypox to get vaccinated against the disease as a preventive measure.
Since it declared monkeypox a global health threat last week, the WHO says the disease has continued to spread around the world, with cases topping 16,000 in at least 75 countries.
The WHO says the outbreak is mainly concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners. It warns against stigmatizing a whole group of people, as this could cause the outbreak to accelerate exponentially by driving the disease underground.
The WHO technical leader on monkeypox, Rosamund Lewis, says the outbreak can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups. She says mass vaccination is not required, but the WHO recommends vaccination for those who have been exposed or are at risk.
“When someone is vaccinated, it takes several weeks for the immune response to be generated by the body. So, it is not something you can be vaccinated one day and be protected the next. You need to give it some time,” Lewis said. “So, the folks we are recommending to be vaccinated right now are anyone who has exposure, a contact with someone who may have been confirmed to have monkeypox. And so, that could be family members. It could be other close contacts.”
She says even children are not immune from getting the disease. Between 80 and 90 cases of monkeypox in children have been reported in several countries, mostly in households where someone was infected.
The monkeypox virus is spread from person to person through close bodily contact. It can cause a range of symptoms, including painful sores. Those at higher risk for the disease or complications include women who are pregnant, children and people who are immunocompromised.
European countries have the highest number of confirmed cases. Although monkeypox is endemic in Africa, where it has been present since 1970, the reported caseload is relatively low. For example, Nigeria reports 101 cases, and the Democratic Republic of Congo has confirmed 163 cases out of more than 2,000 suspected cases.
Lewis says the number of suspected cases in the DRC is high because the country’s ability to confirm cases through laboratory testing is limited. She says testing needs to be supported and ramped up.
“Suspected cases may be other things. They may even be measles. They may be chickenpox. There is no vaccine for chickenpox being used in that environment. So, it is critically important to support countries to access testing. That is one of the most important things that WHO is trying to do right now,” she said. “At the same time, in the global reports, what we are reporting are confirmed and probable cases.”
For now, no travel-related monkeypox restrictions are in place. However, the WHO recommends anyone with signs or symptoms compatible with the monkeypox virus should avoid travel and isolate for the duration of the illness.
your ads here!Russia Pulling Out of International Space Station
Russia said Tuesday it will pull out of the International Space Station after 2024 to build its own orbiting outpost. The country’s space chief made the announcement during a meeting with President Vladmir Putin.
Yuri Borisov, CEO of state space agency Roscosmos, said during the meeting that Russia plans to fulfill a promise to its partners before fully stepping away.
“Of course, we will comply with all our commitments to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said during the meeting. “I think we will have started work on the Russian space station by that time.”
Moscow has made it clear that creating a Russian space station is one of its main priorities.
The U.S. space agency has not been made specifically aware of Russia pulling out of the International Space Station, a senior NASA official told the Reuters news agency.
NASA and the other partners involved in the International Space Station hope to continue their partnership through 2030, but Russia has been unwilling to commit to anything past 2024.
The announcement comes at a time of heightened tensions between the West and Moscow due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also comes just a month after NASA and Roscosmos agreed to continue using Russian rockets to deliver astronauts to the space station.
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US Expands Monkeypox Response After WHO Declares Emergency
White House ramping up monkeypox testing, treatment and vaccines
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‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Law & Order’ Actor Paul Sorvino Dies at 83
Paul Sorvino, an imposing actor who specialized in playing crooks and cops like Paulie Cicero in “Goodfellas” and the NYPD sergeant Phil Cerretta on “Law & Order,” has died. He was 83.
His publicist Roger Neal said he died Monday morning in Indiana of natural causes.
“Our hearts are broken, there will never be another Paul Sorvino, he was the love of my life, and one of the greatest performers to ever grace the screen and stage,” his wife, Dee Dee Sorvino, said in a statement.
In over 50 years in the entertainment business, Sorvino was a mainstay in films and television, playing an Italian American communist in Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” Henry Kissinger in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” and mob boss Eddie Valentine in “The Rocketeer.” He would often say that while he might be best known for playing gangsters, his real passions were poetry, painting and opera.
Born in Brooklyn in 1939 to a mother who taught piano and father who was a foreman at a robe factory, Sorvino was musically inclined from a young age and attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York where he fell for the theater. He made his Broadway debut in 1964 in “Bajour” and his film debut in Carl Reiner’s “Where’s Poppa?” in 1970.
With his 6-foot-4-inch stature, Sorvino made an impactful presence no matter the medium. In the 1970s, he acted alongside Al Pacino in “The Panic in Needle Park” and with James Caan in “The Gambler,” reteamed with Reiner in “Oh, God!” and was among the ensemble in William Friedkin’s bank robbery comedy “The Brink’s Job.” In John G. Avildsen’s “Rocky” follow-up “Slow Dancing in the Big City,” Sorvino got to play a romantic lead and use his dance training opposite professional ballerina Anne Ditchburn.
He was especially prolific in the 1990s, kicking off the decade playing Lips in Beatty’s “Dick Tracy” and Paul Cicero in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” who was based on the real-life mobster Paul Vario, and 31 episodes on Dick Wolf’s “Law & Order.” He followed those with roles in “The Rocketeer,” “The Firm,” “Nixon,” which got him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” as Juliet’s father, Fulgencio Capulet.
Beatty would turn to Sorvino often, enlisting him again for his political satire “Bulworth,” which came out in 1998, and his 2016 Hollywood love letter “Rules Don’t Apply.” He also appeared in James Gray’s “The Immigrant.”
Sorvino had three children from his first marriage, including Academy Award-winning actor Mira Sorvino. He also directed and starred in a film written by his daughter Amanda Sorvino and featuring his son Michael Sorvino.
When he learned that Mira Sorvino had been among the women allegedly sexually harassed and blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein in the midst of the #MeToo reckoning, Sorvino told TMZ that if he had known, Weinstein “would not be walking. He’d be in a wheelchair.”
He was proud of his daughter and cried when she won the best supporting actress Oscar for “Mighty Aphrodite” in 1996. He told the Los Angeles Times that night that he didn’t have the words to express how he felt.
“They don’t exist in any language that I’ve ever heard — well, maybe Italian,” he said.
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Communities in Ethiopia’s Afar Region Struggle With Access to Medical Services
Regional authorities, medical professionals and residents of Ethiopia’s Afar region say they are in dire need of medical aid with hundreds of hospitals and health centers destroyed by conflict. The World Health Organization says it is struggling to fulfill the country’s needs as crises around the world intensify. Henry Wilkins reports from Berhale, Ethiopia.
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Britain to Host 2023 Eurovision Song Contest on Ukraine’s Behalf
Britain will host next year’s Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of winners Ukraine due to the ongoing conflict there, the competition’s organizers said on Monday.
While decades-long tradition dictates that the winner of the contest gets to host it the following year, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) had said safety and security reasons meant runners-up Britain were instead invited to host.
The BBC will now stage the event, which normally draws a television audience of close to 200 million and was last held in Britain in 1998. Ukraine will automatically qualify to the grand final of the competition, the EBU said.
“It is a matter of great regret that our colleagues and friends in Ukraine are not able to host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest,” BBC Director-General Tim Davie said in a statement.
“The BBC is committed to making the event a true reflection of Ukrainian culture alongside showcasing the diversity of British music and creativity.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last month he believed Ukraine could and should host the 2023 competition.
Johnson said on Twitter he had agreed last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “wherever Eurovision 2023 is held, it must celebrate the country and people of Ukraine.”
“As we are now hosts, the UK will honor that pledge directly — and put on a fantastic contest on behalf of our Ukrainian friends,” Johnson, who has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine, added.
Britain’s entry to this year’s Eurovision contest in Italy in May came second behind Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra, which rode a wave of public support to claim an emotional victory.
The BBC said it would now begin the process of finding a city to host the event.
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Reports: Refugees in Rwanda Suffering from ‘Urban’ Disease
A report Monday in the British newspaper The Guardian said a growing number of people in the Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda are registering in health centers for non-communicable diseases, or NCDs, that are usually seen in older people and in urban areas.
Examples cited in the paper included a hypertensive 6-year-old, a 2-year-old with respiratory problems, a 40-year-old woman with kidney failure who became hypertensive during a pregnancy, and a 20-year-old woman, diagnosed with diabetes after falling into a coma.
The report says while the number of people with NCDs at Mahama is at 5% of the total caseload, the figures are rising every month. Mahama houses 58,000 of the country’s 127,000 refugees, The Guardian reported.
Dieudonne Yiweza, senior regional public health officer for East and Horn of Africa at the U.N. refugee agency told the publication, “Before, we said NCDs affect urban settings. Now, they are attacking refugee settings . . . Now, they are affecting children and young people. For refugees, this is a challenging situation.”
Yiweza said it is not uncommon to encounter children as young as 10 or 15 who have suffered strokes.
Contributing factors to the NCDs in young people, Yiweza said, include poor housing, a limited diet that often lacks protein, and trauma.
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Diana Kennedy, Food Writer Devoted to Mexico, Dies at 99
Diana Kennedy, a tart-tongued British food writer devoted to Mexican cuisine, died Sunday. She was 99.
Kennedy spent much of her life learning and preserving the traditional cooking and ingredients of her adopted home, a mission that even in her 80s had her driving hundreds of miles across her Mexico in a rattling truck as she searched remote villages for elusive recipes.
Her nearly dozen cookbooks, including Oaxaca al Gusto, which won the 2011 James Beard Award for cookbook of the year, reflect a lifetime of groundbreaking culinary contributions and her effort to collect vanishing culinary traditions, a mission that began long before the rest of the culinary world was giving Mexican cooking the respect that she felt it was due.
Her long-time friend Concepción Guadalupe Garza Rodríguez said that Kennedy died peacefully shortly before dawn Sunday at her home in Zitacuaro, about 160 kilometers west of Mexico City.
“Mexico is very grateful for her,” Garza Rodríguez said. Kennedy had had lunch at a local hotel on March 3 for her birthday, but during the past five weeks had mostly stayed in her room. Garza Rodríguez visited Kennedy last week and said she cried when they parted.
Mexico’s Culture Ministry said via Twitter Sunday that Kennedy’s “life was dedicated to discovering, compiling and preserving the richness of Mexican cuisine.”
“Diana understood, as few do, that the conservation of nature is key to continue obtaining the ingredients that make it possible to keep creating the delicious dishes that characterize our cuisine,” the ministry said.
Her first cookbook, “The Cuisines of Mexico,” was written during long hours with home cooks across Mexico. It established Kennedy as the foremost authority on traditional Mexican cooking and remains the seminal work on the subject even four decades later. She described it as a gastronomy that humbled her, and she credited those — usually women — who shared their recipes with her.
“Cooking teaches you that you’re not always in control,” she had said. “Cooking is life’s biggest comeuppance. Ingredients can fool you.”
She received the equivalent of knighthood in Mexico with the Congressional Order of the Aztec Eagle award for documenting and preserving regional Mexican cuisines. The United Kingdom also has honored her, awarding her a Member of the British Empire award for furthering cultural relations with Mexico.
‘Good food, whole food’
Kennedy was born with an instinctive curiosity and love of food. She grew up in the United Kingdom eating what she called “good food, whole food,” if not a lot of food. During World War II, she was assigned to the Women Timber Corps, where food was simple and sometimes sparse — homemade bread, fresh cream, scones and berries on good days, nettle soup or buttered green beans when rations were lean.
These meals awakened in Kennedy an appreciation of flavor and texture that would last a lifetime.
She met her husband, Paul Kennedy, a New York Times correspondent in Haiti. He was on assignment in Haiti, she was traveling there. They fell in love and in 1957 she joined him in Mexico, where he was assigned.
‘New, exciting, and exotic’
A series of Mexican maids, as well as aunts, mothers and grandmothers of her new friends, gave Diana Kennedy her first Mexican cooking lessons — grinding corn for tamales, cooking rabbit in adobo. While her husband wrote about insurrections and revolutions, Kennedy explored a land that was, for her, “new, exciting and exotic,” sampling unique fruits, vegetables and herbs of various regions.
The couple moved to New York in 1966 when Paul Kennedy was dying of cancer.
Two years later, at the urging of New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne, she taught her first Mexican cooking class, hunting out ingredients in the Northeast to reproduce the bursting flavors of Mexico. Soon she was spending more of her time back in Mexico, establishing a retreat there that still serves as her home in the country.
She was known for her sharp-tongued commentary, even as her pioneering work helped turn Mexico into a culinary mecca for foodies and the world’s top chefs, and transformed a cuisine long dismissed as tortillas suffocated in heavy sauces, cheeses and sour cream.
She once told Jose Andres, James Beard Award winning chef and proprietor of an acclaimed Mexican restaurant, that his tamales were “bloody awful.”
She worried that famous chefs, who flocked to Mexico in recent years to study and experiment with the purity of the flora, fauna and flavors, were mixing the wrong ingredients.
“Many of them are using it as a novelty and do not know the things that go together,” she said. “If you are going to play around with ingredients, exotic ingredients, you’ve got to know how to treat them.”
Kennedy was fiercely private and guarded about who she let into her sustainable Mexican retreat near the city of Zitacuaro in the conflicted western state of Michoacan. No one was welcome unannounced. Cell phones were turned off and computers were kept in a writing studio. Her companions were her paid staff, who treated her like a dear friend, and several beloved — if somewhat fierce — dogs.
In 2019, the documentary “Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy,” showed a still feisty Kennedy relishing in the production of her garden and driving the bumpy roads of Zitacuaro.
In her later years, Kennedy had said she wanted to slow down, but couldn’t.
“There are so many more recipes out there, handed down mother to daughter that are going to be lost. There are seeds and herbs and roots that could disappear. There is absolutely so much more that needs to be done!” she said
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Explainer -What Is Behind Heat Waves Affecting United States?
Virtually all the contiguous United States experienced above normal temperatures in the past week, with more dangerously hot weather forecast.
The U.S. heat wave followed record heat that killed hundreds if not thousands of people and sparked wildfires in Europe.
Following is an explanation of what is causing the heat waves, according to scientists.
What is a heat wave?
A heat wave has no single scientific definition. Depending on the climate of a region, it can be determined by a certain number of days above a specific temperature or percentile of the norm.
Arctic warming and jet stream migration
The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the globe as a whole, meaning there is ever less difference between northern temperatures and those closer to the equator.
That is resulting in swings in the North Atlantic jet stream, which in turn leads to extreme weather events like heat waves and floods, according to Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Heat domes
Warmer oceans contribute to heat domes, which trap heat over large geographical areas. This weekend the heat dome is stretching from the southern plains of the Oklahoma/Arkansas area all the way to the eastern seaboard, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.
Scientists have found the main cause of heat domes is a strong change in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the preceding winter.
“As prevailing winds move the hot air east, the northern shifts of the jet stream trap the air and move it toward land, where it sinks, resulting in heat waves,” the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says on its website.
El Niño and La Niña
Every few years, the climate patterns known as El Niño and, less frequently, La Niña occur. El Niño brings warm water from the equatorial Pacific Ocean up to the western coast of North America, and La Niña brings colder water.
At present, La Niña is in effect. Because summer temperatures trend lower during La Niña, climate scientists are concerned about what a serious heat wave would look like during the next El Niño, when even hotter summer weather could be expected.
Human-influenced climate change
Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is a global phenomenon that is certainly playing a role in what the United States is experiencing, scientists say.
“Climate change is making extreme and unprecedented heat events both more intense and more common, pretty much universally throughout the world,” said Daniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA.
“Heat waves are probably the most underestimated type of potential disaster because they routinely kill a lot of people. And we just don’t hear about it because it doesn’t kill them in, to put it bluntly, sufficiently dramatic ways. There aren’t bodies on the street.”
Francis, of the Woodwell Center, said with climate change the world is seeing changing wind patterns and weather systems “in ways that make these heat waves, like we’re seeing right now, more intense, more persistent, and cover areas that just aren’t used to having heat waves.”
Alex Ruane, researcher at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said as the world warms, “it takes less of a natural anomaly to push us into the extreme heat categories. Because we’re closer to those thresholds, it’s more likely that you’ll get more than one heat wave at the same time. We’re seeing this in the United States.”
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China Launches Second Space Station Module, Wentian
China on Sunday launched the second of three modules to its permanent space station, in one of the final missions needed to complete the orbiting outpost by year’s end.
A live feed on state broadcaster CCTV showed the 23-ton Wentian (“Quest for the Heavens”) laboratory module launching on the back of China’s most powerful rocket, the Long March 5B, at 2:22 p.m. (0622 GMT) from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan.
Space agency staff, seen on the live feed observing the progress of the launch from a control room, cheered and applauded when the Wentian separated from the rocket about 10 minutes after the launch.
The launch was “a complete success”, CCTV reported shortly after.
China began constructing the space station in April 2021 with the launch of the Tianhe module, the main living quarters, in the first of 11 crewed and uncrewed missions in the undertaking.
The Wentian lab module, 17.9 meters long, will be where astronauts can carry out scientific experiments, along with the other lab module yet to be launched – Mengtian (“Dreaming of the Heavens”).
Wentian features an airlock cabin that is to be the main exit-entry point for extravehicular activities when the station is completed.
It will also serve as short-term living quarters for astronauts during crew rotations on the station, designed for long-term accommodation of just three astronauts.
Mengtian is expected to be launched in October and, like Wentian, is to dock with Tianhe, forming a T-shaped structure.
The completion of the structure, about a fifth of the International Space Station (ISS) by mass, is a source of pride among ordinary Chinese people and will cap President Xi Jinping’s 10 years as leader of China’s ruling Communist Party.
On board the space station are Shenzhou-14 mission commander Chen Dong and teammates Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe. They are slated to return to Earth in December with the arrival of the Shenzhou-15 crew.
your ads here!Tomorrow’s ‘Top Gun’ Might Have Drone Wingman, Use AI
Maverick’s next wingman could be a drone.
In the movies, fighter pilots are depicted as highly trained military aviators with the skills and experience to defeat adversaries in thrilling aerial dogfights.
New technologies, though, are set to redefine what it means to be a “Top Gun,” as algorithms, data and machines take on a bigger role in the cockpit — changes hinted at in “Top Gun: Maverick.”
“A lot of people talk about, you know, the way of the future, possibly taking the pilot out of the aircraft,” said 1st Lt. Walker Gall, an F-35 pilot with the U.S. 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath in England. “That’s definitely not something that any of us look forward to.”
“I’d like to keep my job as long as possible, but I mean, it’s hard to argue with newer and newer technology,” he said. “And if that’s the way of the future, that’s what it is. But I’m just here to enjoy it while I can.”
The future for fighter pilots was on display this week at the Farnborough International Airshow near London, one of the world’s biggest aviation, defense and aerospace expos.
Defense contractors outlined how artificial intelligence and other technologies will be used in the newest warplanes as global military delegations browsed mockups of missiles, drones and fighter jets. At stake are many billions of dollars as countries update military fleets or pump up defense procurement budgets amid rising geopolitical tensions.
The original “Top Gun” movie released in 1986 follows Tom Cruise’s hot-shot Navy pilot, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, through fighter weapons training school. In the sequel, an aging Maverick, now a test pilot, learns the top secret hypersonic plane he’s working on is being canceled so the funding can be used for a pilotless drone program.
It’s a debate that’s been playing out for years in the real world. Drones have been used extensively in the war between Russia and Ukraine and other modern conflicts, raising the question of just how much need there is for human pilots to fly expensive fighter jets and other aircraft — or whether unmanned aerial vehicles could do the job.
At the Farnborough show, experts said the future of air warfare is likely to be manned and unmanned aircraft working together.
One day, fighter pilots will “have a drone aircraft that’s flying as a loyal wingman” under their control, said Jon Norman, a vice president at Raytheon Technologies Corp.’s missile and defense business.
Norman, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, said he used to complain about drones controlled from the ground that got in his way when he was flying fighter jets.
The latest communications systems let fighters, drones and other aircraft talk to each other, he said.
Technology has already removed the need for a second person to sit in the backseat to work the radar — a role portrayed in the original “Top Gun” movie by the character Goose.
It will continue to play a bigger role in the cockpit, Raytheon executives said. Artificial intelligence will analyze reams of data from sensors placed on planes, drones, the ground or missiles flying through the air to give pilots in the sky and commanders back at headquarters a better sense of the battlefield.
In future battles, AI might allow a pilot to send an armed drone close to an enemy position “and have them just fire at will,” Norman added.
But it’s too soon to write an epitaph for the pilot.
“If we had had this conversation 20 years ago, almost everyone was certain that some (drones) would be serving in a combat aircraft replacement role. That simply hasn’t happened,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory.
Nowadays, he said, drones mainly support manned military aircraft, which “allows them to get out there with a greater combat aircraft punch.”
There was speculation that the F-35 fighter, which went into operation in 2015, would be the last manned fighter jet, said Gareth Jennings, aviation editor at defense intelligence provider Janes. “But no one says that anymore.”
The F-35, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., is a stealthy fighter part of today’s generation of warplanes. There is a next generation of fighter jets in the concept stages offering even more high-tech advances, including potentially pilotless versions, but they won’t arrive before the next decade at the earliest.
Gall, who recently graduated from fighter pilot training school, said the F-35 is easy to fly and that technology would likely make its successors even easier. But he stressed that the fighter pilot’s role would remain intense.
Even if that role isn’t going away anytime soon, the Pentagon is working on transforming it.
The Air Combat Evolution program, run by the Pentagon’s DARPA research agency, is working on incorporating artificial intelligence into warfighting, including designing a plane that can fly itself in a dogfight.
The program has already carried out a live simulation of air combat, pitting a virtual plane piloted by an AI agent against a human pilot. If all goes well, researchers plan to carry out a live dogfight with AI-enabled planes by 2024.
Experts, though, are skeptical pilots will be eliminated from the cockpit in the near future.
“I don’t think we’ll be at the stage of not needing fighter pilots for a few decades yet,” said Jennings, the aviation editor. “Unmanned technology and the public willingness to accept not having a human in the loop are just not there, and won’t be for at least another 30 years or so.”
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Change in Title With Men Working at Disney Dress-Up Shops
When Disney reopens its Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique shops at resorts in Florida and California next month, the workers who help children dress up as their favorite animated characters will have new, more gender inclusive titles.
That is because men are going to work at the shops for the first time.
The workers will be referred to as Fairy Godmother’s Apprentices instead of Fairy Godmothers-in-Training, as they were called before the shops closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The decision to allow men to work at the shops was made before the pandemic but hadn’t been implemented before the closures.
The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique shops at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California are scheduled to reopen at the end of August after being closed for two years, according to a Disney blog post.
Workers at the shops provide hairstyling, makeup, costumes and accessories to help children between ages 3 and 12 transform into their favorite characters.
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Hit Manga Series ‘One Piece’ Celebrates 25th Birthday
A manga series about a treasure-hunting pirate that has captivated millions of fans worldwide celebrates its 25th birthday as the final chapter of the bestselling saga reveals its secrets.
The last instalment of One Piece begins July 25 in Japanese weekly manga magazine Shonen Jump, published by Shueisha, following a one-month pause.
The series has racked up more than 100 volumes and smashed sales records since the first instalment appeared in 1997.
The story revolves around hero Luffy, who hunts for the coveted “One Piece” treasure alongside other pirates.
Author Eiichiro Oda, 47, landed a Guinness World Record for having the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author — with 490 million produced.
His success has made his creation’s 25th birthday a global event, from the United States to France, the second-largest market for manga and Japanese animation.
The 100th volume of the series came out in France last year with 250,000 copies, a number rivalling works that have won the prestigious Prix Goncourt literature prize.
“I’m going to start showing all the secrets of this world that I’ve kept hidden,” Oda said in a handwritten message posted on Twitter. “It will be fun. Please fasten your seatbelt!”
Chedli Ben Hassine, a content creator who specializes in pop culture, told AFP One Piece has become “not only one of the greatest manga series in the world, but one of the greatest cultural works, all sectors included.”
“What makes this manga so special is above all the plot,” said Ryuji Kochi, president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Toei Animation, the Japanese company that has produced the series since 1999.
The One Piece universe includes cultural and geographical references that give it a universal dimension, including ancient Egypt, Venice and medieval Japan.
Engaging characters and modern themes of breakneck industrialization, racism, slavery and geopolitical intrigues add to the appeal of the series.
“By proposing totally different universes, the author never bores the reader,” Benoit Huot, head of manga at publishing company Glenat, told AFP. “You have a fresco, an epic, which lasts an extremely long time and where you can’t say it goes round in circles.”
Although the finale of One Piece promises plenty of twists and turns, the series has not reached a wider audience beyond Japanese comic fans like the global hits Star Wars and Harry Potter.
Japanese culture is far from matching the influence of Western creations backed by a large market and soft power that a cultural machinelike Hollywood can produce on an industrial scale, economist Julien Pillot told AFP.
Producers hope the upcoming release of a Netflix series adapted from the One Piece universe will help it conquer new territory, bringing the story to the global streaming platform’s more than 200 million subscribers.
Pillot said Hollywood has historically struggled to adapt manga series to the big screen, including the aesthetic and commercial flop that was the adaptation of Dragon Ball.
“If Netflix managed to create a product of very high quality, which captures the unique spirit of One Piece, that would be a good start,” he added.
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Monkeypox Declared Global Health Emergency
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used his authority Saturday to declare Monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern. The action comes after an Emergency Committee convened to review the situation was unable to reach consensus.
When the Emergency Committee last met a month ago, more than 3,000 cases of monkeypox in 47 countries had been reported to the WHO. Since then, the outbreak has grown, with more than 16,000 cases reported in 75 countries. Five deaths from the disease also have been reported.
As happened the last time it met, the committee again was unable to reach consensus on whether monkeypox posed a global health threat. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he has evaluated the information under consideration and has determined there is a clear risk of further international spread of the disease.
“So, in short, we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations,” said Tedros. “For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.”
Tedros says the WHO believes monkeypox poses a moderate risk globally and in all regions, except in the European region, where it assesses the risk as high. Although there is a potential for further international spread, he says the danger of interference with international traffic remains low for now.
The monkeypox virus is spread from person to person through close bodily contact. For now, the outbreak is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners.
Since the outbreak is largely contained in one group, Tedros says monkeypox can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.
“It is therefore essential that all countries work closely with communities of men who have sex with men, to design and deliver effective information and services, and to adopt measures that protect the health, human rights, and dignity of affected communities,” he said. “Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus.”
Tedros says the necessary tools for tackling the outbreak are available. However, he adds the world must act together. It must act in coordination and solidarity to bring the monkeypox virus under control and prevent it from gaining a foothold in the countries where it is found.
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WHO: Monkeypox Outbreak Constitutes Global Health Emergency
The rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing Saturday.
The WHO label – a “public health emergency of international concern” – is designed to sound an alarm that a coordinated international response is needed and could unlock funding and global efforts to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments.
There are already effective treatments and vaccines for monkeypox, but they are in short supply. The WHO has also already been providing advice and updates since the outbreak began in early May.
At the first meeting of the expert committee, the group said it would reconsider its position on the emergency declaration if the outbreak escalated.
In Europe and the United States, cases have almost entirely been reported among men who have sex with men, and the committee also said it would reconsider if other groups began to report cases, particularly children or others who have been more vulnerable to the virus in past outbreaks in endemic countries.
On Friday, the United States identified its first two monkeypox cases in children.
Any changes to the virus itself, which spreads through close contact and causes lesions and flu-like symptoms, could also spark a rethink, the committee has said.
The group is now split between those who think an emergency declaration would accelerate efforts to contain the disease, and those who do not think it meets the criteria because it has not yet spread to new groups of people or had a high fatality rate, the sources said.
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2 Children in US Have Monkeypox, Officials Say
Two children have been diagnosed with monkeypox in the U.S., health officials said Friday.
One is a toddler in California and the other an infant who is not a U.S. resident but was tested while in Washington, D.C., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The children were described as being in good health and receiving treatment. How they caught the disease is being investigated, but officials think it was through household transmission.
Other details weren’t immediately disclosed.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, but this year more than 15,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. In the U.S. and Europe, most infections have happened in men who have sex with men, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.
In addition to the two pediatric cases, health officials said they were aware of at least eight women among the more than 2,800 U.S. cases reported so far.
While the virus has mostly been spreading among men who have sex with men, “I don’t think it’s surprising that we are occasionally going to see cases” outside that social network, the CDC’s Jennifer McQuiston told reporters Friday.
Officials have said the virus can spread through close personal contact, and via towels and bedding. That means it can happen in homes, likely through prolonged or intensive contact, said Dr. James Lawler, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“People don’t crawl on each other’s beds unless they are living in the same house or family,” he said.
In Europe, there have been at least six monkeypox cases among kids 17 years old and younger.
This week, doctors in the Netherlands published a report of a boy who was seen at an Amsterdam hospital with about 20 red-brown bumps scattered across his body. It was monkeypox, and doctors said they could not determine how he got it.
In Africa, monkeypox infections in children have been more common, and doctors have noted higher proportions of severe cases and deaths in young children.
One reason may be that many older adults were vaccinated against smallpox as kids, likely giving them some protection against the related monkeypox virus, Lawler said.
Smallpox vaccinations were discontinued when the disease was eradicated about 40 years ago.
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Monkeypox Virus Could Become Entrenched as New STD in US
The spread of monkeypox in the U.S. could represent the dawn of a new sexually transmitted disease, though some health officials say the virus that causes pimple-like bumps might yet be contained before it gets firmly established.
Experts don’t agree on the likely path of the disease, with some fearing that it is becoming so widespread that it is on the verge of becoming an entrenched STD — like gonorrhea, herpes and HIV.
But no one’s really sure, and some say testing and vaccines can still stop the outbreak from taking root.
So far, more than 2,400 U.S. cases have been reported as part of an international outbreak that emerged two months ago.
Health officials are not sure how fast the virus has spread. They have only limited information about people who have been diagnosed, and they don’t know how many infected people might be spreading it unknowingly.
They also don’t know how well vaccines and treatments are working. One impediment: Federal health officials do not have the authority to collect and connect data on who has been infected and who has been vaccinated.
With such huge question marks, predictions about how big the U.S. outbreak will get this summer vary widely, from 13,000 to perhaps more than 10 times that number.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the government’s response is growing stronger every day and vaccine supplies will soon surge.
“I think we still have an opportunity to contain this,” Walensky told The Associated Press.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people.
But this year more than 15,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. In the U.S. and Europe, the vast majority of infections have happened in men who have sex with men, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.
It spreads mainly through skin-to-skin contact, but it can also be transmitted through linens used by someone with monkeypox. Although it’s been moving through the population like a sexually transmitted disease, officials have been watching for other types of spread that could expand the outbreak.
Symptoms include fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and bumps on parts of the body. The illness has been relatively mild in many men, and no one has died in the U.S. But people can be contagious for weeks, and the lesions can be extremely painful.
When monkeypox emerged, there was reason to believe that public health officials could control it.
The tell-tale bumps should have made infections easy to identify. And because the virus spreads through close personal contact, officials thought they could reliably trace its spread by interviewing infected people and asking who they had been intimate with.
It didn’t turn out to be that easy.
With monkeypox so rare in the U.S., many infected men — and their doctors — may have attributed their rashes to some other cause.
Contact tracing was often stymied by infected men who said they did not know the names of all the people they had sex with. Some reported having multiple sexual interactions with strangers.
It didn’t help that local health departments, already burdened with COVID-19 and scores of other diseases, now had to find the resources to do intensive contact-tracing work on monkeypox, too.
Indeed, some local health officials have given up expecting much from contact tracing.
There was another reason to be optimistic: The U.S. government already had a vaccine. The two-dose regimen called Jynneos was licensed in the U.S. in 2019 and recommended last year as a tool against monkeypox.
When the outbreak was first identified in May, U.S. officials had only about 2,000 doses available. The government distributed them but limited the shots to people who were identified through public health investigations as being recently exposed to the virus.
Late last month, as more doses became available, the CDC began recommending that shots be offered to those who realize on their own that they could have been infected.
Demand has exceeded supply, with clinics in some cities rapidly running out of vaccine doses and health officials across the country saying said they don’t have enough.
That’s changing, Walensky said. As of this week, the government has distributed more than 191,000 doses, and it has 160,000 more ready to send. As many as 780,000 doses will become available as early as next week.
Once current demand is satisfied, the government will look at expanding vaccination efforts.
The CDC believes that 1.5 million U.S. men are considered at high risk for the infection.
Testing has also expanded. More than 70,000 people can be tested each week, far more than current demand, Walensky said. The government has also embarked on a campaign to educate doctors and gay and bisexual men about the disease, she added.
Donal Bisanzio, a researcher at RTI International, believes U.S. health officials will be able to contain the outbreak before it becomes endemic.
But he also said that won’t be the end of it. New bursts of cases will probably emerge as Americans become infected by people in other countries where monkeypox keeps circulating.
Walensky agrees that such a scenario is likely. “If it’s not contained all over the world, we are always at risk of having flare-ups” from travelers, she said.
Shawn Kiernan, of the Fairfax County Health Department in Virginia, said there is reason to be tentatively optimistic because so far the outbreak is concentrated in one group of people — men who have sex with men.
Spread of the virus into heterosexual people would be a “tipping point” that may occur before it’s widely recognized, said Kiernan, chief of the department’s communicable disease section.
Spillover into heterosexuals is just a matter of time, said Dr. Edward Hook III, emeritus professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
If monkeypox becomes an endemic sexually transmitted disease, it will be yet another challenge for health departments and doctors already struggling to keep up with existing STDs.
Such work has long been underfunded and understaffed, and a lot of it was simply put on hold during the pandemic. Kiernan said HIV and syphilis were prioritized, but work on common infections like chlamydia and gonorrhea amounted to “counting cases and that’s about it.”
For years, gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis cases have been rising.
“By and large,” Hook said, doctors “do a crummy job of taking sexual histories, of inquiring about and acknowledging their patients are sexual beings.”
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Cheetahs to Return to India After 70 Years in Deal With Namibia
India and Namibia have signed an agreement to bring cheetahs to the forests of the South Asian country, where the large cat became extinct 70 years ago.
According to the agreement signed Wednesday, eight African cheetahs will be transferred from Namibia to India in August for captive breeding at the Kuno National Park (KNP) wildlife sanctuary, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Indian officials said that as part of the “ambitious” project, 12 more African cheetahs from South Africa are expected to be brought to the park, though a formal agreement between the two countries has not yet been signed.
The KNP wildlife sanctuary is the new Indian home for African cheetahs, complying with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines, including a specific focus on site quality, abundant prey base and vast swaths of grasslands.
“The main goal of cheetah reintroduction project is to establish viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the cheetah to perform its functional role as a top predator,” a statement from the Indian Environment Ministry said.
The arrival of the cheetahs is expected to coincide with India’s 75th Independence Day celebrations on August 15, 2022.
After signing the agreement in New Delhi with Namibia’s Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted: “Completing 75 glorious years of Independence with restoring the fastest terrestrial flagship species, the cheetah, in India, will rekindle the ecological dynamics of the landscape.”
In another tweet, he said, “Cheetah reintroduction in India has a larger goal of re-establishing ecological function in Indian grasslands that was lost due to extinction of Asiatic cheetah. This is in conformity with IUCN guidelines on conservation translocations.”
A statement from the Environment Ministry said the KNP can currently host up to 21 cheetahs, but after the restoration of a wider landscape, its capacity will be increased to about 36.
The cheetah, the fastest land animal, has been rapidly heading toward extinction and is classified as a vulnerable species under the IUCN’s red list of threatened species. An estimated 7,000 cheetahs remain in the wild and almost all of them are in Africa.
The plummeting number of cheetahs across the world is blamed mostly on the depletion of habitats and poaching. Hunting, loss of habitat and food scarcity led to the animal’s extinction in India.
It is believed that more than 10,000 Asiatic cheetahs roamed the wilds of India during the 16th century.
The cheetah population in India dwindled during the 19th century, largely because of bounty hunting by local Indian kings and ruling British officials.
The last three Asiatic cheetahs were hunted down in 1948 by an Indian king in central India. In 1952, the cheetah was declared officially extinct in the country.
Just a dozen or so Asiatic cheetahs are left in the wild right now — all in Iran.
In 2010, India initiated an effort to revive the cheetah population at the KNP wildlife sanctuary by bringing in African cheetahs. But in 2012, an Indian court stalled the project, noting it would come in conflict with a then-ongoing plan to introduce lions in the sanctuary.
In 2020, India’s Supreme Court announced African cheetahs could be introduced in a “carefully chosen location” in India on an experimental basis. Since then, India has been making an effort to ship in the African cheetahs.
Indian officials are hopeful that this time, the plan to introduce African cheetahs in India is going to succeed, and the country will be able to revive its cheetah population.
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Ukrainian Experts Turn to Israel for Mental Trauma Training
Ukrainian therapist Svitlana Kutsenko thought she was making progress with her patients — army veterans recovering from mental trauma suffered during fighting with Russia in 2014. Then, war erupted again.
Now, five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kutsenko says the situation looks bleaker than ever. Many of her patients have returned to the front lines, while ordinary citizens scarred by the horrors of life in wartime are now seeking treatment.
“Sometimes it’s bearable, sometimes it’s not,” Kutsenko, who lives in Kyiv, told The Associated Press. “Some people are suffering from huge fear — fear of death, fear of their relatives’ death and some are pretty angry about what’s going on and they want to somehow take this anger under control.”
Kutsenko was among 20 Ukrainian mental health professionals who spent the past two weeks in Israel receiving training on how to treat trauma cases.
Israel, which has gone through several wars with its Arab neighbors and has a large population of Holocaust survivors, has deep experience in treating psychological or mental trauma.
But in Ukraine, awareness for recognizing and treating mental trauma remains relatively low. And despite a conflict with Russia that has been ongoing since 2014, the country is not equipped to deal with the numbers of people affected by the Russian invasion.
Kutsenko said that there is a great difference between treating patients struggling to come to terms with events from the past and helping people who are under fire cope with grief and fear in real time.
“Right now, in Ukraine, it’s not just, you know, shooting and people” being killed by missiles and bombs, Kutsenko said, adding that torture, rape and other terrible acts are also happening.
The course’s instructor, Danny Brom, says treating mental trauma in Israel has taught him how to provide therapy to victims who are both post-trauma and still in immediate danger. These lessons, he said, have helped him relate to mental health professionals from conflict zones across the world and especially Ukraine.
“They understand that we Israelis know what we are talking about. This … has happened to us in the different wars, so there’s a very special connection between them and us. They really feel that we understand what we are talking about,” said Brom, a clinical psychologist who is director of Metiv, an Israeli nonprofit that trains mental health professionals to treat trauma victims.
The group included 20 psychologists from across Ukraine, including some who have been displaced throughout the war. The course included training in cognitive behavior therapy techniques, or CBT, which are commonly used to treat depression and anxiety.
Larysa Zasiekina is a psychologist from western Ukraine, where internally displaced people have flocked to seek refuge from the fighting.
Before the war, she treated adults, but now she sees mothers and children who have had to suddenly leave everything behind as their husbands and fathers head off to battle.
Zasiekina says the course has given her new methods to cope with this new reality, especially when it comes to working with young people.
“We used a lot of imaginary exercises, and I think these exercises are very good for children because actually they have a lot of imagination,” says Zasiekina. “They want to play.”
Throughout the course, the participants were never far from having to deal with horrific news from back home.
During her time in Jerusalem, Kutseno got word that the building across from her family home in Vinnytsia, where her parents still live, had been bombed. Her parents weren’t harmed in the barrage, which killed 23 people that day, but it was a terrifying reminder.
“Even being here, feeling safe, war is still (in) the background of everything I do here,” Kutseno said.
“It’s not like I will get back to something that will have changed,” she added. “What I will find there is war.”
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Biden Positive for COVID-19, ‘Fully Carrying Out His Duties’
The White House says President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The president’s diagnosis comes amid another wave of the coronavirus in the United States, driven this time by the BA.5 variant. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Why Aren’t More Americans Getting COVID-19 Booster Shots?
New cases of COVID-19 have been sweeping across the United States in recent weeks. On Thursday, President Joe Biden tested positive. His symptoms of tiredness, a runny nose and dry cough are considered mild.
The highly infectious and transmittable BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus’s omicron variant is making up nearly 80% of new cases, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker.
Although the initial vaccinations are effective at preventing hospitalization and death, their immunity weakens over time.
“So, more people, even those who might have protection from past infection or vaccination, have gotten COVID-19,” according to the CDC.
That’s why the CDC is recommending that immunized adults and children 5 years and older follow up with a vaccination booster in five months, and those 50 and older get a second booster shot for renewed protection. But so far, the CDC reports that only about half of adults have gotten a booster and just 28% of those age 50 and older have received a second dose, which provides even further protection from the illness.
This leaves millions of people more vulnerable to the most recent variants of omicron.
“It’s very concerning that many individuals who are eligible for boosters are choosing not to get them,” David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, told VOA. “There’s really strong research suggesting the protective effects of these boosters against COVID.”
The White House issued a warning this week about the spike in BA.5 subvariant cases and urged Americans over the age of 50 to get the booster shots.
“It could save your life,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the administration’s COVID response coordinator.
Many health advocates are alarmed that public momentum over COVID-19 has waned.
Some people “don’t feel a sense of urgency to get booster shots even though they are available in most parts of the country,” Grabowski said.
Part of the reason may be a lack of communication by public health officials that is confusing to the public, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
“Public health officials have not communicated clearly when you should get a booster and that it is an important step,” Grabowski told VOA.
Dr. David Aronoff, chair of the Department of Medicine at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, explained that in some instances, “people may have had a booster shot and not have realized they were eligible for another in several months.”
There is also the idea that since the symptoms from BA.5 are usually mild for people who are vaccinated, then why bother getting a booster, said Tina Runyan, a professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. With a highly contagious strain going around, some people think they will get COVID anyway, so getting a booster won’t protect them that much, she said.
But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that’s not true.
“If you are not vaccinated to the fullest, namely, you have not gotten boosters according to what the recommendations are, then you’re putting yourself at an increased risk that you could mitigate against by getting vaccinated,” he said during a July 12 press briefing with the White House COVID-19 response team and public health officials.
Despite that warning, health experts say COVID-19 fatigue is causing a lack of response.
“People are ready to put COVID behind them and they just want to return to a more normal way of life,” explained Schaffner.
Going back to normal may be fleeting as new subvariants continue to pop up.
“We have to start thinking about the booster as something we might do annually to protect ourselves and others,” said Keri Althoff, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.
Meanwhile, new vaccines are in the works to target omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.
“Getting vaccinated now will not preclude you from getting a variant-specific vaccine later this fall or winter,” said Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator.
“We’re hoping we get new vaccines in the future that will target particular variants as they come up,” Aronoff said, but the currently available vaccines, which include boosters, “are keeping people out of hospitals and from dying from COVID.”
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