Six percent of all maternal deaths around the world are caused by obstructed labor, according to the World Health Organization. That’s when a baby can’t move through the birth canal. It can also lead to obstetric fistula, a condition that can have a long-term impact on a woman’s health, especially in developing countries. Reporter Idd Uwesu has more from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in this report narrated by Omary Kaseko. Video:
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Corts
What Peanuts Dancing in Beer Teaches Us About the Earth’s Crust
When peanuts are dropped into a pint of beer, they sink to the bottom before floating up and “dancing” in the glass.
Scientists have dug deep to investigate this phenomenon in a study published on Wednesday, saying it has implications for understanding mineral extraction or bubbling magma in the Earth’s crust.
Brazilian researcher Luiz Pereira, the study’s lead author, told AFP he first had the idea when passing through Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires to learn Spanish.
It was a “bartender thing” in the city to take a few peanuts and pop them into beers, Pereira said.
Because the peanuts are denser than the beer, they first sink down to the bottom of the glass.
Then each peanut becomes what is called a “nucleation site.” Hundreds of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide form on their surface, acting as buoys to drag them upward.
“The bubbles prefer to form on the peanuts rather than on the glass walls,” said Pereira, a researcher at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
When the bubbles reach the surface, they burst.
The peanuts sink again before being propelled up anew by freshly formed bubbles, in a dance that continues until the carbon dioxide runs out, or someone interrupts it by drinking the beer.
In a series of experiments, the team of researchers in Germany, Britain and France examined how roasted, shelled peanuts fared in a lager-style beer.
‘Beer-gas-peanut system’
The study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, describes two key factors in what the researchers dubbed the “beer-gas-peanut system.”
They found that the larger the “contact angle” between the curve of an individual bubble and the surface of the peanut was, the more likely it was to form and grow.
But it cannot grow too much — a radius of less than 1.3 millimeters is ideal, the study said.
Pereira said he hoped that “by deeply researching this simple system, which everyone can grasp, we can understand a system” that would be useful for industry or explaining natural phenomena.
For example, he said the floatation process was similar to the one used to separate iron from ore.
Air is injected, in a controlled way, into a mixture in which a mineral, such as iron, “will rise because bubbles attach themselves more easily to it, while other (minerals) sink to the bottom,” he said.
The same process could also explain why volcanologists find that the mineral magnetite rises to higher layers in the crystalized magma of the Earth’s crust than would be expected.
Like peanuts, magnetite is denser, so should sit at the bottom. But because of a high contact angle, the researchers theorize, the mineral rises through the magma with help from gas bubbles.
Of course, science is never settled, particularly when beer is involved.
Hoping to create a better model of the dancing peanut phenomenon, Pereira said the scientists will continue to “play with the characteristics of different peanuts and different beers.”
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Cormac McCarthy, Author of ‘The Road,’ ‘No Country for Old Men,’ Dies at 89
Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as The Road, Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, died Tuesday. He was 89.
McCarthy died of natural causes in Santa Fe, New Mexico, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said.
McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his Old Testament style and rural settings. McCarthy’s themes, like Faulkner’s, often were bleak and violent and dramatized how the past overwhelmed the present. Across stark and forbidding landscapes and rundown border communities, he placed drifters, thieves, prostitutes and old, broken men, all unable to escape fates determined for them well before they were born.
McCarthy’s own story was one of belated, and continuing, achievement and popularity.
Little known to the public at age 60, he would become one of the country’s most honored and successful writers despite rarely talking to the press. He broke through commercially in 1992 with All the Pretty Horses and over the next 15 years won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer, was a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show and saw his novel No Country for Old Men adapted by the Coen brothers into an Oscar-winning movie.
The Road, his stark tale of a father and son who roam a ravaged post-apocalyptic landscape, brought him his widest audience and highest acclaim. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was selected by Winfrey for her book club. In his Winfrey interview, McCarthy said that while typically he didn’t know what generates the ideas for his books, he could trace The Road to a trip he took with his young son to El Paso, Texas, early in the decade. Standing out of the window of a hotel in the middle of the night as his son slept nearby, he started to imagine what El Paso might look like 50 or 100 years in the future.
“I just had this image of these fires up on the hill … and I thought a lot about my little boy,” he said.
He told Winfrey he didn’t care how many people read The Road.
“You would like for the people that would appreciate the book to read it. But, as far as many, many people reading it, so what?” he said.
McCarthy dedicated the book to his son, John Francis, and said having a child as an older man “forces the world on you, and I think it’s a good thing.”
In 2022, Knopf made the startling announcement that it would release McCarthy’s first work in more than 15 years, a pair of connected novels he had referred to in the past: The Passenger and Stella Maris, narratives on a pair of mutually obsessed siblings and the legacy of their father, a physicist who had worked on atomic technology. Stella Maris was notable, in part, because it centered on a female character, an acknowledged weakness of McCarthy’s.
“I don’t pretend to understand women,” he told Winfrey.
His first novel, The Orchard Keeper — written in Chicago while he was working as an auto mechanic — was published by Random House in 1965. His editor was Albert Erskine, Faulkner’s longtime editor.
Other novels include Outer Dark, published in 1968; Child of God in 1973; and Suttree in 1979. The violent Blood Meridian, about a group of bounty hunters along the Texas-Mexico border murdering Indians for their scalps, was published in 1985. His Border Trilogy books were set in the Southwest along the border with Mexico: All the Pretty Horses (1992) — a National Book Award winner that was turned into a feature film — The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998).
McCarthy said he was always lucky. He recalled living in a shack in Tennessee and running out of toothpaste, then going out and finding a toothpaste sample in the mailbox.
“That’s the way my life has been. Just when things were really, really bleak, something would happen,” said McCarthy, who won a MacArthur Fellowship — one of the so-called “genius grants” — in 1981.
McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee for a year before joining the Air Force in 1953. He returned to the school from 1957 to 1959 but left before graduating. As an adult, he lived around the Great Smoky Mountains before moving West in the late 1970s, eventually settling in Santa Fe.
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Hong Kong’s Film Industry Quietly Blooming Again, Despite Censorship
A young actress drags a suitcase despondently up a tree-shaded street, as a crew shoots a scene in a film about director Norris Wong’s unachieved dream of becoming a Cantopop lyricist.
The movie “The Lyricist Wannabe” is the latest from Wong and part of an unprecedented trend in Hong Kong’s moviemaking history — the growth of its indie films.
Hong Kong films used to be made by big production companies. They were exported around the world in the industry’s heyday from the 1970s to early ’90s when Hong Kong was considered the Hollywood of Asia, turning out stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat and recent Oscar Best Actress winner Michelle Yeoh.
But the industry has declined in recent decades. Hollywood blockbusters flooded in and companies switched to making movies that appealed to China’s bigger and more lucrative market, according to industry players.
“The Hong Kong market had totally collapsed. Very experienced directors all went to the mainland. They make $10 million films there, so they won’t make $1 million films here,” said Mani Man, vice president of mm2, a company that supports indie films. “It’s like the parents have all left, we’re like orphans creating a new world.”
Now, Hong Kong may be starting to see a revival in its film industry. In the five years before COVID-19 hit, 275 locally produced movies were made, more than the 256 in the previous five years, including independent films by new directors, according to the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association.
Fewer films were made during the pandemic, but several enjoyed great success, breaking box office records.
What has helped drive this trend are Hong Kong’s tough COVID-19 travel restrictions, which kept directors and audiences at home, giving the former a chance to make local films and the latter the time to watch them.
The government has also provided $50 million in funding to revive the industry in the past 15 years, including $30 million in just the past six years, enabling many small- and medium-budget films and new directors’ first feature to be made, according to statistics from the Film Development Council.
Also, the 2019 social and political unrest in Hong Kong and Beijing’s passage of a national security law in response to it have made some worry about changes to their way of life. Industry experts say there is a yearning among audiences in the city for films that reflect their lives.
“Because of all these uncertainties in Hong Kong society, it inspired some local movies which try to tell the stories about Hong Kong people,” said Dorothy Lau, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Film. “People are trying to pursue their own identity, stories that belong to themselves.”
For example, the highest recent local earner, “A Guilty Conscience,” a film about a lawyer trying to find evidence to get his innocent client acquitted, dealt with the issue of justice — a theme that resonated with moviegoers as they see pro-democracy activists, a newspaper publisher and protesters tried under the new law.
“In the mind of many local residents, they look for justice but feel disappointed when they see reality. When they watch ‘A Guilty Conscience,’ they feel somebody is speaking their mind to inspire them to stay hopeful in what they see as the bleak reality,” Lau said.
The government has said the law has restored peace after disruptive and sometimes violent anti-government protests in 2019.
The film, which raked in $15 million, setting a record for a Hong Kong film, is among three that made it onto the list of Hong Kong box office hits over the past year, a list previously dominated by Hollywood blockbusters.
Low-budget movies also made profits or broke even, while winning local and regional awards as they took on subjects that big studios neglected. Some of those include the struggles of blue-collar workers (“The Narrow Road”), the repressed love of closeted elderly gay men (“Twilight’s Kiss”), and homelessness (“Drifting”).
“It’s important for Hong Kong to have its own movies and stories to be told on the big screens because cinema has always been a very good medium that preserves local culture,” said the 36-year-old Wong, who cobbled together $294,000 for her latest movie, with a loan from a director friend and earnings from her debut film “My Prince Edward,” which is about a woman who learns to assert herself.
Still, there are limits to the kinds of topics that can be featured. The national security law and subsequent amendments to film censorship guidelines make subjects with political content untouchable.
Several documentaries about the 2019 pro-democracy protests have been banned, according to media reports. Some content deemed sensitive has been deleted from films, including three being screened at a local film festival this month.
In response to questions from VOA, the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration issued a statement saying the amendments “did not change the fact that the public and the film industry continue to enjoy freedom of creation and freedom of speech under the premise of abiding by the law and protecting national security.”
It said that since the amended guidelines took effect in 2021, it has approved all but six of the more than 4,100 applications for film classification and public screening.
Directors meanwhile continue to make films about Hong Kong, with some showing them overseas or switching to less sensitive topics. At the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival, which runs from June to July, filmmakers highlighted censorship by replacing deleted scenes with black images and muted sound.
Independent film and documentary maker Lam Sum’s 2021 film “May You Stay Forever Young” — about the 2019 protests — was not approved. But he went on to be nominated for Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards this year for “The Narrow Road.”
“I didn’t think about giving up because I really like to make films. To me, this is a challenge for creators — how to tell stories in this space,” said Lam, 37.
Despite the concerns about censorship, funding, and fewer audiences with the lifting of travel restrictions, directors believe now is as good a time as any to make films.
“I’m quite optimistic. … We no longer need to have big production companies’ support to make a film,” Wong said. “It will bring about more Hong Kong homegrown films.”
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Hong Kong Film Industry Undergoing Revival
In its heyday, Hong Kong was the Hollywood of Asia, turning out stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat and recent Best Actress Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. While the industry has seen a decline over the past two decades, Hong Kong is experiencing what some say is a film revival, despite stricter controls and censorship. For VOA, Cindy Sui reports from Hong Kong.
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Cameroon Officials Campaign Against Taboos to Encourage People to Donate Blood
Blood banks in Cameroon are usually close to empty due to widely held taboos against blood donation. Officials in the central African country are trying to convince people to move past those beliefs amid an increased demand for blood and blood products in hospitals and on the front lines where soldiers are fighting separatists and Islamist militants. The effort comes ahead of World Blood Donor Day, observed on June 14.
Illustrating the shortages is the story of a woman who told nurses at the Yaounde military hospital that she has not found anyone to donate blood to save the life of her two-year-old son.
Hospital workers said the 34-year-old fruit seller’s blood was infected and that it could not be transfused to her son.
Medical staff members have requested blood from government hospitals to save the child’s life, the hospital said, adding that the blood bank at the military hospital is empty.
Celestin Ayangma, head of the laboratory that is in charge of the hospital’s blood bank, said that since January of this year, the Yaounde military hospital had been able to provide only six of the 20 units of blood it needs every day. Ayangma added that patients eventually die if they do not have relatives, friends or other donors to give the blood that the patients need.
By midday on Tuesday, the baby was still waiting for blood.
Cameroon’s public health ministry reported that in 2022, hospitals in the country were able to collect a little more than 120,000 pints of blood from voluntary donors, family members and friends of sick patients.
But each year, Cameroon needs at least 600,000 pints of blood for both private and government-owned hospitals.
The government says blood donation needs in Cameroon are increasing due to the separatist conflict in the country’s western regions and fighting with Boko Haram militants on the northern border with Nigeria.
This year, government officials, health workers and aid agencies took to the streets ahead of World Blood Donor Day, trying to convince people to donate blood and save lives.
Ruth Abeng of the Cameroon Medical Council, an association of Cameroonian doctors, took part in the campaign. She sayid there are very few voluntary blood donors in Cameroon as some people are compelled to donate blood only when they see their sick relatives and friends in need of blood and dying. She said it is disheartening to see patients dying because some of their relatives believe that a blood donation is mystical.
Some Cameroonians believe that if they give blood, the recipient will receive any good luck and success they’ve had in life. Others say God will punish them if they donate blood to an evil person.
The government says such beliefs are unfounded and people should not be afraid to donate blood.
The Ministry of Health also says donated blood is not sold as some people erroneously believe. Blood that is donated is stored in banks and transfused to people in need, the government says.
Hospitals say patients pay a fee of about $50 for the hospital to test donated blood and make sure it is safe to use.
The government gives donors about $10 in a bid to encourage more donations.
Cameroon says it expects to raise about 20,000 pints of blood by June 14.
Hospitals say the amount will not be enough to meet the country’s needs but that it will reduce suffering and prevent some people from dying.
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McCartney: ‘Final Beatles Record’ Out This Year Aided by AI
A “final Beatles record”, created with the help of artificial intelligence, will be released later this year, Paul McCartney told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.
“It was a demo that John (Lennon) had, and that we worked on, and we just finished it up,” said McCartney, who turns 81 next week.
The Beatles — Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — split in 1970, with each going on to have solo careers, but they never reunited.
Lennon was shot dead in New York in 1980 aged 40 while Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001, aged 58.
McCartney did not name the song that has been recorded but according to the BBC it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called “Now And Then”.
The track — one of several on a cassette that Lennon had recorded for McCartney a year before his death — was given to him by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono in 1994.
Two of the songs, “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love”, were cleaned up by the producer Jeff Lynne, and released in 1995 and 1996.
An attempt was made to do the same with “Now And Then” but the project was abandoned because of background noise on the demo.
McCartney, who has previously talked about wanting to finish the song, said AI had given him a new chance to do so.
‘Now and Then’
Working with Peter Jackson, the film director behind the 2021 documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back”, AI was used to separate Lennon’s voice and a piano.
“They tell the machine, ‘That’s the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar’,” he explained.
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles’ record, it was a demo that John had (and) we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI.
“Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”
McCartney performed a two-hour set at last year’s Glastonbury festival in England, playing Beatles’ classics to the 100,000-strong crowd.
The set included a virtual duet with Lennon of the song “I’ve Got a Feeling”, from the Beatles’ last album “Let It Be”.
Last month, Sting warned that “defending our human capital against AI” would be a major battle for musicians in the coming years.
The use of AI in music is the subject of debate in the industry, with some denouncing copyright abuses and others praising its prowess.
McCartney said the use of the technology was “kind of scary but exciting because it’s the future”, adding: “We’ll just have to see where that leads.”
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BTS Turns 10; Seoul Lights Up Landmarks to Celebrate
Skyscrapers, bridges and other landmarks in South Korea’s capital will be lit up in purple Monday as the country begins celebrating the 10th anniversary of K-pop band BTS, whose global popularity is a source of national pride.
The lights will provide the backdrop for various social media-driven events marking the 2013 debut of the seven-member group, which is now on a temporary hiatus as its singers take turns releasing solo material while the others begin to serve their mandatory military duties.
From Monday evening, numerous Seoul structures, including City Hall, the 123-story Lotte World Tower, several Han River bridges, and the futuristic DDP — a Zaha Hadid-designed aluminum and concrete dome that’s often used for visual art — will be bathed in purple, a color associated with BTS, according to city officials and the group’s management company, Hybe.
Messages congratulating BTS were displayed on digital screens in buildings across Seoul, while postal authorities issued stamps marking the group’s anniversary, which will be available at post offices starting Tuesday.
Seoul officials hope that the celebrations, which will continue for around two weeks, will boost tourism. The city has designated more than a dozen sites associated with BTS, including places where the group held major performances or shot some of their famous videos.
Fireworks are planned at a park Saturday night near the Han River, hours after one of the BTS singers, RM, holds a live talk with fans that will be broadcast online.
Quickly garnering huge followings in Asia following their debut, BTS’ popularity expanded across the globe with their 2020 megahit “Dynamite,” the band’s first all-English song that made it the first K-pop act to top Billboard’s Hot 100. BTS has since performed in sold-out arenas around the world and was invited to speak at United Nations meetings, supported by a legion of global followers who call themselves the “Army.”
BTS’ activities as a full group are currently on hold as the artists begin to serve in the military. Two BTS singers – Jin and J-Hope – have already started their compulsory 18-month service and other members are to follow in the coming months, which likely means the group will reconvene around 2025.
In South Korea, all able-bodied men are required to serve in uniform 18-21 months under a system meant to deter aggression from rival North Korea.
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Are Abortion Laws in Idaho Hurting Maternal Health Care?
In the United States, women’s access to legal abortion depends on where they live. The Western U.S. state of Idaho has some of the toughest laws against abortion, and that may be having an impact on women who are trying to have babies. Deborah Bloom has our story.
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Denver Contemporary Art Gallery Adds 2 Painters from Ghana
The new Modern Art gallery at the Denver Art Museum includes two painters from Ghana. VOA’s Scott Stearns gives us a look.
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Lab-Grown Meat Industry Makes Progress but Faces Supply, Public Acceptance Hurdles
Singapore was the first country in the world to greenlight the sale of lab-grown meat, but even after nearly 2½ years, the fledgling industry is still struggling with supply issues and hurdles such as public acceptance, experts say.
Lab-grown or cultivated meat is meat grown in a lab by extracting cells from animals and growing the muscles to eventually have the texture, nutrition and taste of meat from real-life animals.
The product has long been touted as a potential solution to multiple issues, including burgeoning food insecurity brought by human-caused climate change, degrading soil and biodiversity, and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.
Southeast Asia is at the forefront of the impact of climate change impacts, with recent heatwaves sweeping across the region and food security has become a priority in the region’s agenda. In land-scarce Singapore, the issue is even more acute where its citizens import 90% of the food they consume.
Turning to more sustainable meat is one of the city-state’s food strategies. Its so-called “30 by 30” goal aims to produce 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs locally by 2030, and COVID-19’s impacts on food exports was another wake-up call for the country. Chicken rice is Singapore’s de-facto national dish, but its neighbor, Malaysia, banned its exports of chicken to Singapore last year due to a global feed shortage.
“We [Singapore] had to scramble to try and find chicken supplies from other countries,” Andre Huber, executive director of Huber’s Butchery and Bistro, the only restaurant in Singapore that serves cultivated chicken dishes, told VOA News.
“I think the government’s decision to try and grow some of our own produce … we don’t have land or animals roaming around. I think this [lab-grown chicken] can be grown in high rise buildings.”
Singapore gave its green light to the sale of lab-grown chicken in December 2020 but so far, the product from U.S. cultivated meat provider GOOD Meat is only available in Huber’s and remains in limited supply.
Asked why the supply of cultivated chicken remains limited after over two years of gaining approval, Jun Chong, GOOD Meat’s associate product developer said money has been an issue.
“It was after two years when we have enough fundings and investment of money, and then we started to build our own facility,” Chong said. “It’s slowly getting into place.”
The new facility Chong mentioned is set to become the largest cultivated meat production center in Asia when it opens later this year in Singapore’s Bedok town and will provide “tens of thousands of pounds of meat from cells,” according to a statement from GOOD Meat.
In addition to infrastructure, another controversy connected to cultivated meat is the use of fetal bovine serum, which is often made from killing cows when they are pregnant. A recent study showed that over 2 million bovine fetuses are used globally to produce around 800,000 liters of such serum, sparking ethical debates in the industry. The use of such serum also goes against the feature of lab-grown meat being slaughter-free.
Chong said GOOD Meat has just gained approval to use a new plant-based serum that will be able to replace the fetus bovine serum. He added that the firm will start using the new serum to grow the muscles of chicken meat after the Bedok facility starts operating.
Meanwhile, Alfredo Franco-Obregon, associate professor at the National University of Singapore, found a way to grow cell-based meat with a magnet that can potentially replace fetus bovine serum.
“We found that we are just as good as fetal bovine serum in sustaining muscle growth, which makes sense because these [meat] factors are coming from muscles, either from a fetus or in a dish,” he told VOA News in a video interview.
The muscle growth expert said if lab-grown meat can be scaled up, the inhumane livestock farms can hopefully be wiped out.
“You have to keep the animal alive for two years [before it’s ready to be made into meat], and it would be good if you could do it in a way that’s humane, but a lot of these systems aren’t very humane.”
Franco-Obregon added that while lab-grown meat cannot completely replace real meat, “there’s a way of improving … the livestock industry. It’s more efficient, less greenhouse emissions, higher productivity and cell-based meat will be a supplement. … We are going to run out of food. That’s the honest truth. And like it or not, we’re going to have to find alternatives, otherwise people will start to starve.”
Huang Dejian, deputy head of NUS’ Department of Food Science and Technology, echoed Franco-Obrego’s view. Huang pioneered extraction of plant-based cells to develop edible 3D-printed scaffolds to replace the current plastic scaffolds used in the production process.
“In a decade or two … maybe 50% of all the meat we found in our market is hybrid meat [lab-grown meat with animal cells and plant-based cells],” Huang told VOA.
Asked if lab-grown meat with many tech-heavy processes might involve more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional meat from livestock farms — as suggested by a preprint study at the University of California, Davis — Huang said, “I feel it’s unfair to calculate, you know, the footprint because it [the product] is too early. If you take advantage of technology to a level and the cost of production is lowered, it might also reduce the energy input and efficiency.”
Consumer acceptance of lab-grown meat could be a bigger challenge for the industry, he added, but he remained optimistic about the future of cultivated meat.
“A lot of the groundwork has already been laid. And we can see, I think in the next five years or so, people may be able to have a chance to taste [lab-grown meat]. The future to me is quite bright.”
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UN Chief Considering Watchdog Agency for AI
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday that he will appoint a scientific advisory body in the coming days that will include outside experts on artificial intelligence, and said he is open to the idea of creating a new U.N. agency that would focus on AI.
“I would be favorable to the idea that we could have an artificial intelligence agency, I would say, inspired by what the International Atomic Energy Agency is today,” Guterres said of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
He said he does not have the authority to create an IAEA-like agency — that is up to the organization’s 193-member states. But he said it has been discussed and he would see it as a positive development.
“What is the advantage of the IAEA — it is a very solid, knowledge-based institution,” Guterres told reporters. “And at the same time, even if limited, it has some regulatory functions. So, I believe this is a model that could be very interesting.”
The Vienna-based IAEA is the focal point for international nuclear cooperation. It has developed international nuclear safety standards and is both watchdog and advisor on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
There are growing concerns about the power of artificial intelligence and how it can be abused for negative and even deadly purposes, including from Geoffrey Hinton, who is the scientist known as “the godfather of AI.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced last week plans for the UK to host the first major global summit on AI safety in the autumn.
Guterres said in terms of regulating AI, in an industry where things move very quickly, you can establish a set of norms one day, and it can be outdated the next. So, something that is more flexible is necessary.
“We need a process, a constant process of intervention of the different stakeholders, working together to permanently establish a number of soft law mechanisms, a number of — I would say — norms, codes of conduct and others,” he said.
Guterres said the scientific advisory body he will soon create will also include the chief scientists from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is a specialized U.N. agency related to information and telecommunication technology.
He said outside experts, including two from the AI sphere, would be a part of the advisory body.
He also announced plans for a digital compact he says would be a voluntary “code of conduct” that he hopes technology companies and governments will adhere to, with the aim of decreasing the spread of mis- and dis-information and hate speech to billions of people and making the internet a safer space.
“Its proposals are aimed at creating guardrails to help governments come together around guidelines that promote facts, while exposing conspiracies and lies, and safeguarding freedom of expression and information,” he said. “And to help tech companies navigate difficult ethical and legal issues and build business models based on a healthy information ecosystem.”
He said tech companies have done little to prevent their platforms from contributing to hate and violence, and he criticized governments for ignoring human rights and sometimes taking drastic measures, including sweeping internet shutdowns.
Guterres said he hopes to issue the code of conduct after discussions with member states and before the U.N. Summit of the Future, which is planned for September 2024.
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Select List of Winners of 2023 Tony Awards
Best musical: “Kimberly Akimbo”
Best play: “Leopoldstadt”
Best revival of a musical: “Parade”
Best revival of a play: “Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog”
Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical: Victoria Clark, “Kimberly Akimbo”
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play: Sean Hayes, “Good Night, Oscar”
Best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play: Jodie Comer, “Prima Facie”
Best book of a musical: “Kimberly Akimbo,” David Lindsay-Abaire
Best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical: J. Harrison Ghee, “Some Like It Hot”
Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical: Alex Newell, “Shucked.”
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a play: Miriam Silverman, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”
Best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical: Bonnie Milligan, “Kimberly Akimbo”
Best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play: Brandon Uranowitz, “Leopoldstadt”
Best direction of a play: Patrick Marber, “Leopoldstadt”
Best direction of a musical: Michael Arden, “Parade”
Best choreography: Casey Nicholaw, “Some Like It Hot”
Best original score: “Kimberly Akimbo,” Music: Jeanine Tesori, Lyrics: David Lindsay-Abaire
Best orchestrations: Charlie Rosen and Bryan Carter, “Some Like It Hot”
Best costume of a musical: Gregg Barnes, “Some Like It Hot”
Best costume of a play: Brigitte Reiffenstuel, “Leopoldstadt”
Best lighting design of a play: Tim Lutkin, “Life of Pi”
Best lighting design of a musical: Natasha Katz, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
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Tony Awards Make History With Laurels for Nonbinary Actors
The intimate, funny-sad musical “Kimberly Akimbo” nudged aside splashier rivals on Sunday to win the musical crown at the Tony Awards on a night when Broadway flexed its creative muscle amid the Hollywood writers’ strike and made history with laurels for nonbinary actors J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell.
“Kimberly Akimbo,” with songs by Jeanine Tesori and a book by David Lindsay-Abaire, follows a teen with a rare genetic disorder that gives her a life expectancy of 16 navigating a dysfunctional family and a high school romance. Victoria Clark, as the lead in the show, added a second Tony to her trophy case, having previously won one in 2005 for “The Light in the Piazza.”
Producer David Stone credited the musical’s writers for penning a magic trick, calling “Kimberly Akimbo” a “musical comedy about the fragility of life, so healing and so profound and joyous that is almost impossible.” The musical took home a leading six awards.
Earlier, Tony Awards history was made when Newell and Ghee became the first nonbinary people to win Tonys for acting. Last year, composer and writer Toby Marlow of “Six” became the first nonbinary Tony winner.
“Thank you for the humanity. Thank you for my incredible company who raised me up every single day,” said leading actor in a musical winner Ghee, who stars in “Some Like It Hot,” the adaptation of the classic cross-dressing comedy film. The soulful Ghee stunned audiences with their voice and dance skills, playing a musician — on the run from gangsters — who tries on a dress and is transformed.
Newell, who plays Lulu — an independent, don’t-need-no-man whiskey distiller in “Shucked” — has been blowing audiences away with their signature number, “Independently Owned.” They won for best featured actor in a musical.
“Thank you for seeing me, Broadway. I should not be up here as a queer, nonbinary, fat, Black little baby from Massachusetts. And to anyone that thinks that they can’t do it, I’m going to look you dead in your face that you can do anything you put your mind to,” Newell said to an ovation.
Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which explores Jewish identity with an intergenerational story, won best play, also earning wins for director Patrick Marber, featured actor Brandon Uranowitz and Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costumes.
The British-Czech playwright, who now has five best play Tony Awards, joked he won his first in 1968 and noted that playwrights were “getting progressively devalued in the food chain” despite being “the sharp ends of the inverted pyramid.”
Strike leaves show script less
Second-time Tony Awards host Ariana DeBose opened a blank script backstage before dancing and leaping her way to open the main show with a hectic opening number that gave a jolt of electricity to what is usually an upbeat, safe and chummy night. The writers’ strike left the storied awards show honoring the best of musical theater and plays without a script.
Before the pre-show began, DeBose revealed to the audience the only words that would be seen on the teleprompter: “Please wrap up.” Later in the evening, virtually out of breath after her wordless opening performance, she thanked the labor organizers for allowing a compromise.
“I’m live and unscripted. You’re welcome,” she said. “So to anyone who may have thought that last year was a bit unhinged, to them, I say, ‘Darlings, buckle up.'”
Winners demonstrated their support for the striking writers either at the podium or on the red carpet with pins. Miriam Silverman, who won the Tony for best featured actress in a play for “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” ended her speech with: “My parents raised me to believe in the power of labor and workers being compensated and treated fairly. We stand with the WGA in solidarity!”
Jodie Comer, the three-time Emmy nominated star of “Killing Eve” won leading actress in a play for her Broadway debut, the one-woman play “Prima Facie,” which illustrates how current laws fail terribly when it comes to sexual assault cases.
Sean Hayes won lead actor in a play for “Good Night, Oscar,” which dramatizes a long night’s journey into the scarred psyche of pianist Oscar Levant, now obscure but once a TV star.
“This has got to be the first time an Oscar won a Tony,” Hayes cracked.
Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about sibling rivalry, inequality and society’s false promises, won the Tony for best play revival. She thanked director Kenny Leon and stars Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II: “They showed up to be large in a world that often does not much want the likes of us living at all.”
Bonnie Milligan, who won for best featured actress in a musical for “Kimberly Akimbo,” also had a message to the audience: “I want to tell everybody that doesn’t maybe look like what the world is telling you what you should look like — whether you’re not pretty enough, you’re not fit enough, your identity is not right, who you love isn’t right — that doesn’t matter.”
“‘Cause just guess what?” she continued, brandishing her award. “It’s right, and you belong.”
Kander gets lifetime award
Many of the technical awards — for things like costumes, sound, lighting and scenic design — were handed out at a breakneck pace during a pre-show hosted by Skylar Astin and Julianne Hough, allowing winners plenty of airtime for acceptance speeches but little humor.
The pre-show telecast on Pluto featured some awkwardly composed shots and some presenters slipped up on certain words. The tempo was so rapid, it ended more than 10 minutes before the main CBS broadcast was slated to start.
John Kander, the 96-year-old composer behind such landmark shows as “Chicago,” “Cabaret” and “The Scottsboro Boys,” was honored with a special lifetime award. He thanked his parents; his husband, Albert Stephenson; and music, which “has stayed my friend through my entire life and has promised to stick with me until the end.”
Jennifer Grey handed her father, “Cabaret” star Joel Grey, the other lifetime achievement Tony. “Being recognized by the theater community is such a gift because it’s always been, next to my children, my greatest, most enduring love,” the actor said.
Echoing the there of antisemitism, “Parade” — a doomed musical love story set against the real backdrop of a murder and lynching in pre-World War I Georgia that won Tonys as a new musical in 1999 — won for best musical revival, with Michael Arden winning for best musical director.
“‘Parade’ tells the story of a life that was cut short at the hands of the belief that one group of people is more valuable than another and that they might be more deserving of justice,” Arden said. “This is a belief that is the core of antisemitism, white supremacy, homophobia and transphobia and intolerance of any kind. We must come together. We must battle this.”
The telecast featured performances from all the nominated musicals and Will Swenson — starring on Broadway in a Neil Diamond musical — led the audience in a vigorous rendition of “Sweet Caroline.” Lea Michele of “Glee” and now “Funny Girl” fame also performed a soaring version of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”
It all took place at the United Palace Theatre, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan — a new venue for the ceremony, many miles from Times Square and the theater district.
“Thank you all for coming uptown. Never in my wildest dreams, truly,” Lin-Manuel Miranda joked onstage. He, of course, wrote the musical “In the Heights,” set in Washington Heights.
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UK Hobbyist Stuns Math World With ‘Amazing’ New Shapes
David Smith, a retired print technician from the north of England, was pursuing his hobby of looking for interesting shapes when he stumbled onto one unlike any other in November.
When Smith shared his shape with the world in March, excited fans printed it onto T-shirts, sewed it into quilts, crafted cookie cutters or used it to replace the hexagons on a soccer ball — some even made plans for tattoos.
The 13-sided polygon, which 64-year-old Smith called “the hat,” is the first single shape ever found that can completely cover an infinitely large flat surface without ever repeating the same pattern.
That makes it the first “einstein” — named after the German for “one stone” (ein stein), not the famed physicist — and solves a problem posed 60 years ago that some mathematicians had thought impossible.
After stunning the mathematics world, Smith — a hobbyist with no training who told AFP that he wasn’t great at math in school — then did it again.
While all agreed “the hat” was the first einstein, its mirror image was required one in seven times to ensure that a pattern never repeated.
But in a preprint study published online late last month, Smith and the three mathematicians who helped him confirm the discovery revealed a new shape — “the specter.”
It requires no mirror image, making it an even purer einstein.
‘It can be that easy’
Craig Kaplan, a computer scientist at Canada’s Waterloo University, told AFP that it was “an amusing and almost ridiculous story — but wonderful.”
He said that Smith, a retired print technician who lives in Yorkshire’s East Riding, emailed him “out of the blue” in November.
Smith had found something “which did not play by his normal expectations for how shapes behave,” Kaplan said.
If you slotted a bunch of these cardboard shapes together on a table, you could keep building outwards without them ever settling into a regular pattern.
Using computer programs, Kaplan and two other mathematicians showed that the shape continued to do this across an infinite plane, making it the first einstein, or “aperiodic monotile.”
When they published their first preprint in March, among those inspired was Yoshiaki Araki. The Japanese tiling enthusiast made art using the hat and another aperiodic shape created by the team called “the turtle,” sometimes using flipped versions.
Smith was inspired back and started playing around with ways to avoid needing to flip his hat.
Less than a week after their first paper came out, Smith emailed Kaplan a new shape.
Kaplan refused to believe it at first. “There’s no way it can be that easy,” he said.
But analysis confirmed that Tile (1,1) was a “non-reflective einstein,” Kaplan said.
Something still bugged them — while this tile could go on forever without repeating a pattern, this required an “artificial prohibition” against using a flipped shape, he said.
So, they added little notches or curves to the edges, ensuring that only the non-flipped version could be used, creating “the spectre.”
‘Hatfest’
Kaplan said both their papers had been submitted to peer-reviewed journals. But the world of mathematics did not wait to express its astonishment.
Marjorie Senechal, a mathematician at Smith College in the United States, told AFP the discoveries were “exciting, surprising and amazing.”
She said she expects the spectre and its relatives “will lead to a deeper understanding of order in nature and the nature of order.”
Doris Schattschneider, a mathematician at Moravian College in the U.S., said both shapes were “stunning.”
Even Nobel-winning mathematician Roger Penrose, whose previous best effort had narrowed the number of aperiodic tiles down to two in the 1970s, had not been sure such a thing was possible, Schattschneider said.
Penrose, 91, will be among those celebrating the new shapes during the two-day “Hatfest” event at Oxford University next month.
All involved expressed amazement that the breakthrough was achieved by someone without training in math.
“The answer fell out of the sky and into the hands of an amateur — and I mean that in the best possible way, a lover of the subject who explores it outside of professional practice,” Kaplan said.
“This is the kind of thing that ought not to happen, but very happily for the history of science does happen occasionally, where a flash brings us the answer all at once.”
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‘Transformers’ Edge Out ‘Spider-Verse’ to Claim Box Office Lead
It was Miles Morales and the Spider-Verse versus the “Transformers” at the box office this weekend and the bots came out on top.
“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” the seventh entry in the series, took the No. 1 spot in its first weekend in North American theaters with $60.5 million according to studio estimates Sunday. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” wasn’t too far behind, however, with an estimated $55.4 million in its second weekend.
Paramount Pictures released “Rise of the Beasts” in 3,678 locations starting with Thursday previews. Set in 1994, it’s technically a sequel to the 1980s-set “Bumblebee” and a prequel to the other films. With a new cast led by Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback and a new director in Steven Caple Jr., it’s also an attempt to reset and breathe fresh life into the $4.8 billion franchise.
“Rise of the Beasts” also earned $110 million from 68 international markets, giving it a $170.5 million global debut.
Critics didn’t love the movie, but that’s also par for the course for this franchise. Overall, Rotten Tomatoes aggregated a less-than-fresh 52% rating.
“The problem with “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” is the same problem faced by all of the installments — balancing the humanity with the metal,” wrote AP’s Mark Kennedy in his review.
In fact, the only movie that did get a fresh rating was “Bumblebee,” which also made the least money of all of them. Audiences (62% male) were more positive, giving “Rise of the Beasts” an A- CinemaScore. According to PostTrak surveys, general audiences gave it 4.5 stars out of 5.
While a $60.5 million opening might not seem like enough to support a $200 million production budget, “Rise of the Beasts” is a movie that will make most of its money abroad. Since 2011’s “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” international ticket sales have accounted for at least 70% of the global box office total. Two of the seven movies, “Dark of the Moon” and “Age of Extinction,” from 2014, made over $1 billion each.
“To have a No. 1 debut is impressive given the formidable competition from ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,’ which had a much stronger opening than anyone anticipated and in its second weekend is a really powerful player,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore.
Sony’s “Spider-Verse” sequel fell about 54%. In just two weeks, it’s already surpassed the total domestic box office of the first film with $225.4 million in ticket sales and become the highest grossing Sony Pictures Animation release. With terrific reviews in its arsenal, “Spider-Verse” is likely destined for a longer life at the box office, too.
Third place went to Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” which earned $23 million in its third weekend, where it’s playing in 4,320 locations in the U.S. and Canada. The live-action movie has made $414.2 million globally to date.
Two other Walt Disney Co. releases rounded out the top five, with “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” in fourth with $7 million in its sixth weekend and “The Boogeyman,” in weekend two, in fifth place with $6.9 million.
While many of the films in the top 10 are known brands or IP, one original property, A24’s ” Past Lives,” is making waves in the specialty space. Playing on just 26 screens in its second weekend, Celine Song’s romance made $520,772 for a stunning $20,030 per screen average. It expands nationwide on June 23.
The summer movie season should continue to pick up heat with major new films coming nearly every week. Next weekend family audiences get Pixar’s “Elemental,” while the superhero crowd can catch up with “The Flash.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” $60.5 million.
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“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” $55.4 million.
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“The Little Mermaid,” $22.3 million.
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“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $7 million.
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“The Boogeyman,” $6.9 million.
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“Fast X,” $5.2 million.
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“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” $2.1 million.
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“About My Father,” $845,000.
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“The Machine,” $575,000.
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“Past Lives,” $520,772.
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The Show Must Go On: Putting on a Tony Awards Telecast During a Writers’ Strike
New location? No script? No rehearsal? No sweat.
Welcome to the 2023 Tony Awards, a show with an extra jolt of electricity this time due to the Hollywood writers’ strike.
Unpredictability has been inserted into what is usually an upbeat, safe and chummy night. The strike has left Broadway’s biggest night without a script, in a new venue far from the theater district.
A 1 1/2-hour pre-show on Pluto TV from 6:30-8 p.m. Eastern, hosted by Julianne Hough and Skylar Astin, will then throw to the three-hour main event led by Ariana DeBose on CBS and Paramount+ starting at 8 p.m. Eastern.
A total of 26 Tony Awards will be handed out Sunday for a season that had 40 new productions — 15 musicals, 24 plays and one special engagement during the first post-pandemic full season.
Broadway had some very serious works this season, like the new plays “Cost of Living” and “The Kite Runner” and revivals of “Topdog/Underdog” and “Death of a Salesman,” led by Wendell Pierce. A revival of “Parade,” about the lynching of a Jewish businessman starring Ben Platt, was also well received.
The season also had an element of the fantastical in a puppet-heavy adaptation of the lifeboat book “Life of Pi,” satire in “The Thanksgiving Play” and pure silliness in “Shucked” and “Peter Pan Goes Wrong.”
“Just like the country and the world is resetting, I think our storytelling and how we get our stories out there is resetting as well,” said Kenny Leon, who directed “Topdog/ Underdog” and “Ohio State Murders” this season. “The positive I take away is the variety of the material, from a Black-led ‘Death of a Salesman’ to new plays like ‘KPOP’ and ‘Ain’t No Mo” and ‘Leopoldstadt’ and ‘Prima Facie.’ I felt the diversity in almost every way — racially, generationally.”
“Some Like It Hot,” a musical adaptation of the classic cross-dressing movie comedy that starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, goes into the night with a leading 13 Tony Award nominations. For the top crown, it is pitted against “& Juliet,” which reimagines “Romeo and Juliet” and adds some of the biggest pop hits of the past few decades, “New York, New York,” which combined two generations of Broadway royalty in John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and “Shucked,” a lightweight musical comedy studded with corn puns.
The critical musical darling and intimate, funny-sad “Kimberly Akimbo,” with Victoria Clark playing a teen who ages four times faster than the average human, rounds out the best musical category.
The best new play category is a competition among Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” which explores Jewish identity with an intergenerational story, and “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” set at a Black family’s barbecue in the modern South.
The rest of the category is made up of “Ain’t No Mo,'” the short-lived but critical applauded work by playwright and actor Jordan E. Cooper, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Between Riverside and Crazy” and “Cost of Living,” parallel stories of two caretakers and their respective patients.
The answers to some intriguing questions pend: Can Audra McDonald (“Ohio State Murders”) extend her record as the most awarded actor in Tony Awards history? Will either J. Harrison Ghee (“Some Like It Hot”) or Alex Newell (“Shucked”) become the first nonbinary person to win a Tony for acting? (Last year, “Six” composer and writer Toby Marlow became the first out nonbinary winner.)
Performances are slated from the casts of “Camelot,” “Into the Woods,” “& Juliet,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” “New York, New York,” “Parade,” “Shucked,” “Some Like It Hot” and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
In addition, Joaquina Kalukango — the winner of last year’s Tony for best lead actress in a musical — will sing, as will the casts from “A Beautiful Noise” and “Funny Girl.” That means there’ll be plenty of star power, from Josh Groban to Lea Michele.
It will all take place at the United Palace Theatre, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan — a new venue for the ceremony, many kilometers from Times Square and the theater district.
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Dutch Minister Discusses Health Care in an Age of Longevity
Huge strides in life expectancy worldwide are bringing new challenges that come with increased longevity, the Dutch health minister told VOA this week.
“If you look at it from a global perspective, we’ve seen that over the past 25 years, on average we added more than five years of global life expectancy,” Ernst Kuipers, Dutch minister of health, welfare and sport, noted during a stop in Washington.
Looking at it another way, the former internist continued, “It actually means that for more than 20 years in a row, every week we added more than a day to the life expectancy of our world population. That is huge!”
Kuipers and a Dutch delegation co-led by the country’s minister of economy are in the U.S. to take part in a trade fair focused on international health and life sciences in Boston.
The Dutch are known to be the tallest people in the world and rank high in the world longevity list. Kuipers looked at the global picture when discussing the worldwide jump in life expectancy in the past quarter century.
While clean water supply, improved hygiene, sanitation conditions, access to vaccines, medicines and medical treatments have contributed to rising life expectancy in low-income countries, breakthroughs in many areas of life sciences have helped prolong life in higher-income countries, he pointed out.
“For example, new drugs in cancer treatment, newly developed interventions to treat cardiovascular diseases, and also improvement in public health.”
The good news about longevity aside, the former doctor pointed out some of the challenges that come with longer lifespans.
“We have an aging population [in the Netherlands], like in most places. People tend to get older, but they live longer usually with certain [health] conditions, with reduced mobility, etc., very similar to here,” Kuipers said.
Kuipers said his country is also experiencing a shortage in health care personnel, even as the number of working men and women affiliated with the health care industry takes up an increasing percentage of the workforce.
“If you look at the Netherlands, at the moment, one out of every six people with a job works in health care,” he said. That figure includes not just nurses or physicians, but also those serving the health care industry in human resources, finance and legal matters.
If the current pattern continues, one in five Dutch jobs will be related to health care by the year 2030, and that number will increase to one in four by the year 2040. Kuipers said this pattern will be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to sustain, “simply because we’re also going to need people in other areas of society.”
Given that health care is very labor intensive, Kuipers said governments and societies have no choice but to think of ways to meet the demands in a different, yet still effective way, to successfully cope with changing demographics.
In addition to the shortage of manpower, increased life expectancy also requires more money to care for the elderly, causing each country and government to think harder about budget priorities.
“Like the U.S., we have many burning issues, whether it’s energy transmission, preparation for climate change, infrastructure, you name it – the question of how to deliver and provide high-quality, good-access care to everyone while also limiting the increase in budget, that is very, very relevant, like it is here,” the Dutch minister said.
The Netherlands has universal health insurance and caps most people’s out of pocket expenses at 385 euros a year, a little more than 400 U.S. dollars a year.
“So far we [the country as a whole] can still afford this,” he said, “but it’s a continuous debate.”
The problem is especially acute in the case of certain very expensive drugs, the cost of which is increasing “very, very rapidly” and putting the “solidarity underlying our system” under pressure, the minister said.
He cited “orphan drugs,” which are needed by only a small number of people but are often a matter of life and death for those patients.
Kuipers and the Dutch delegation are among over 10,000 health science professionals and government officials from around the world who gathered in Boston this week to exchange ideas and find out the latest in health science at a biotech trade fair put together by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
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Ugandan Baseball Player Debuts in America
In the heart of Maryland, the Frederick Keys baseball team introduced its newest player last week, one unlike any other the team has seen in its 35-year history.
Dennis Kasumba, 18-year-old catcher. From Uganda.
Kasuma recently turned what seemed like an impossible dream into a reality, making the leap from the rough fields of his home country to the manicured grass of American professional baseball stadiums. For those following his journey, he stands as a symbol of resilience.
Just three days after flying to the U.S., Kasumba took his first official steps onto an American baseball diamond on June 1 with the Keys. Batting in the ninth inning, he struck out on three pitches, but was able to make contact on the first pitch, fouling it off.
The young player who once honed his skills on muddy streets using old tires and oil drums in Uganda, now finds himself playing high-quality amateur league baseball, one step below the professional minor leagues.
“My first game was very, very good because I faced a pitcher who threw 95 [miles per hour – about 153 kph], yeah. And I hit it,” Kasumba told VOA. “I need to hit because I am here to hit, to show my skill, I am ready to hit. I want to show I can hit. I want to show them I can throw.”
Kasumba’s story extends beyond his on-field skills. His journey from Uganda to the U.S. has captured the imagination of thousands on social media who have marveled at his intense workouts. In one, he practices his catching drills with a tire strapped to his back.
One of these admirers was Joshua Williams, an American attorney and baseball enthusiast who helped make Kasumba’s dream a reality.
“It all just started because I saw a video of him hitting off of a tire, hitting a baseball off of the tire with a Coke bottle,” Williams said. “So, I reached out to him on Facebook, started talking to him. We talked about his dreams and aspirations.”
It took Kasumba almost two years to get a contract with an American team and several attempts at the U.S. Embassy in Uganda to secure a travel visa.
Williams and some friends intensified their efforts after his third visa request was denied.
“We started making our application a lot stronger. Several immigration attorneys at my firm jumped in and they were like, ‘Let’s figure this out,’” Williams told VOA. “And so, we just kind of put our heads together. So, he was denied on Friday. And on Tuesday we got a call from the embassy, and they said, ‘Be there Thursday at 2 o’clock.’”
Kasumba is not the first Ugandan to try his hand at baseball. Last year, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed two Ugandans, Umar Male and Ben Serunkuma, to contracts. Both have played some games in the low minor leagues.
In his debut, Kasumba showed that he too may have a future in baseball, and also underscored his desire to learn.
“When I saw my pitchers throwing in 88, 95, 98. I thought, ‘Can I hit these guys? They are faster.’ But when I got to my first batting, in my heart I said, ‘I can hit, because I believe in myself,’” he said.
For Frederick Keys Manager Rene Rivera, Kasumba is already giving the team a jolt.
“This guy has so much energy, he brings so much to the other guys, you know, he’s hardworking,” Rivera said. “We all saw some of his videos on Instagram, the passion he puts behind him so he can be good. And I think that the players already see that, they come and work.”
Kasumba, who grew up an orphan in Wakiso, Uganda, is determined to make the most of the opportunity.
“There are a lot of kids, uh, people calling my name, my jersey number: Kasumba! Kasumba! Kasumba! This is my first time, to have someone asking me for a signature, photos,” he said. “I was so surprised. It makes me feel very, very good. I think I am blessed.”
The months ahead will bring challenges and opportunities alike for Kasumba. And to face these head-on, the young man has a few people he can count on, starting with his manager.
“We helped him come over here. And now he’s here,” Rivera told VOA. “So, I think that my job is to be his role model, to show him what I know and what I know from many years playing baseball, help him get to the next. I think that’s my main goal right now.”
Catching is baseball’s most complicated and physically arduous position, but Rivera can teach Kasumba a lot – he spent 13 years as a catcher in the major leagues.
As Kasumba steps onto the field, bat in hand, he believes he’s not just playing for the Frederick Keys — he’s playing for his country, his thousands of online supporters around the world and every dreamer who’s ever dared to dream big.
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El Nino Climate Pattern Now Underway, NOAA Reports
El Nino has officially returned and is likely to yield extreme weather later this year, from tropical cyclones spinning toward vulnerable Pacific islands to heavy rainfall in South America to drought in Australia.
After three years of the La Nina climate pattern, which often lowers global temperatures slightly, the hotter El Nino is back in action, according to an advisory issued on Thursday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.
El Nino is born out of unusually warm waters in the Eastern Pacific, near the coast of South America, and often accompanied by a slowing down or reversal of the easterly trade winds.
“In May, weak El Nino conditions emerged as above-average sea surface temperatures strengthened across the equatorial Pacific Ocean,” the advisory said.
The last time an El Nino was in place, in 2016, the world saw its hottest year on record. Coupled with warming from climate change, 2023 or 2024 could reach new highs.
Declaring El Nino
Most experts look to two agencies for confirmation that El Nino has kicked off — NOAA and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). The two agencies use different metrics for declaring El Nino, with the Australian definition slightly stricter.
NOAA calls an El Nino when ocean temperatures in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific have been 0.5 Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) higher than normal for the preceding month, and has lasted or is expected to continue for another five consecutive, overlapping three-month periods. The agency also looks at a weakening of the trade winds and cloud cover.
Australia’s BOM needs things to be hotter, with the key regions of eastern Pacific 0.8C (1.5F) warmer than average.
On Tuesday, Australia issued their own bulletin, noting a 70% chance of El Nino developing this year.
NOAA said there is a 56% chance that when this El Nino peaks in strength — normally during the Northern Hemisphere winter — it will be a strong event, meaning that Eastern Pacific sea surface temperatures are at least 1.5C higher than normal.
This could yield more intense impacts — from droughts to cyclones — across the world.
Still, impacts vary and El Ninos come in “two flavors,” said atmospheric scientist Marybeth Arcodia at Colorado State University.
Those with their warmest waters near the west coast of South America are deemed Eastern Pacific events, such as the strong 1997-98 El Nino. The other arises in the Central Pacific, near the equator around Hawaii, as was the case in the most recent 2015-16 event. Weather anomalies can be more extreme depending on where waters are warmest, making things drier or wetter in certain regions.
Some forecast models predict the 2023-24 winter to be a Central Pacific El Nino.
Agriculture impacts
Early signs of hot, dry weather caused by El Nino are threatening food producers across Asia, while American growers are counting on heavier summer rains from the weather phenomenon to alleviate the impact of severe drought.
The El Nino could lead to winter crop production falling 34% from record highs in Australia, and also impacting palm oil and rice production in Indonesia, Malaysia — which supply 80% of the world’s palm oil — and Thailand.
In India, a country that largely depends on the monsoon rains for its summer crop, impacts from El Nino could be offset by the Indian Ocean Dipole, or the Indian Nino, yet below normal rainfall was expected over north-western parts of the country.
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U.S. East Coast Blanketed in Smoke From Canadian Wildfires
Schools across the U.S. East Coast canceled outdoor activities, airline traffic slowed, and millions of Americans were urged to stay indoors Wednesday as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, blanketing cities in thick, yellow haze.
The U.S. National Weather Service issued air quality alerts for virtually the entire Atlantic seaboard. Health officials from Vermont to South Carolina and as far west as Ohio and Kansas warned residents that spending time outdoors could cause respiratory problems due to high levels of fine particulates in the atmosphere.
“It’s critical that Americans experiencing dangerous air pollution, especially those with health conditions, listen to local authorities to protect themselves and their families,” U.S. President Joe Biden said on Twitter.
U.S. private forecasting service AccuWeather said thick haze and soot extending from high elevations to ground level marked the worst outbreak of wildfire smoke to blanket the Northeastern U.S. in more than 20 years.
New York’s famous skyline, usually visible for miles, appeared to vanish in an otherworldly veil of smoke, which some residents said made them feel unwell.
“It makes breathing difficult,” Mohammed Abass said as he walked down Broadway in Manhattan. “I’ve been scheduled for a road test for driving, for my driving license today, and it was canceled.”
The smoky air was especially tough on people toiling outdoors, such as Chris Ricciardi, owner of Neighbor’s Envy Landscaping in Roxbury, New Jersey. He said he and his crew were curtailing work hours and wearing masks they used for heavy pollen.
“We don’t have the luxury to stop working,” he said. “We want to keep our exposure to the smoke to a minimum, but what can you really do about it?”
Angel Emmanuel Ramirez, 29, a fashion stylist at a Givenchy outlet in Manhattan, said he and fellow workers began feeling ill and closed up shop early when they realized the smell of smoke was permeating the store.
“It’s so intense, you would think the wildfire was happening right across the river, not up in Canada,” Ramirez said. New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the situation an “emergency crisis,” saying the air pollution index for parts of her state were eight times above normal.
Reduced visibility from the haze forced the Federal Aviation Administration to slow air traffic into the New York City area and Philadelphia from elsewhere on the East Coast and upper Midwest, with flight delays averaging about a half hour.
Schools up and down the East Coast called off outdoor activities, including sports, field trips and recesses.
A Broadway matinee of “Prima Facie” was halted after 10 minutes when actress Jodie Comer had difficulty breathing due to poor air quality. The show was restarted with understudy Dani Arlington going on for Comer in the role of Tessa, a production spokesperson said in a statement.
Even Major League Baseball was impacted, as the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies both postponed home games scheduled for Wednesday. A National Women’s Soccer League match in Harrison, New Jersey, was also rescheduled, as was a WNBA women’s basketball game in Brooklyn.
‘Unhealthy and ‘hazardous’
In some areas, the air quality index (AQI), which measures major pollutants including particulate matter produced by fires, was well above 400, according to Airnow, which sets 100 as “unhealthy” and 300 as “hazardous.”
At noon (1600 GMT), Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was recording the nation’s worst air quality index, with an AQI reading of 410. Among major cities, New York had the highest AQI in the world on Wednesday afternoon at 342, about double the index for chronically polluted cities such as Dubai (168) and Delhi (164), according to IQAir.
Smoke drifting from Canada
Smoke billowed over the U.S. border from Canada, where hundreds of forest fires have scorched 3.8 million hectares and forced 120,000 people from their homes in an unusually early and intense start to the wildfire season.
The skies above New York and many other North American cities grew progressively hazier through Wednesday, with an eerie yellowish tinge filtering through the smoky canopy. The air smelled like burning wood.
Wildfire smoke has been linked with higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, increases in emergency room visits for asthma and other respiratory conditions, eye irritation, itchy skin and rashes, among other problems.
A Home Depot store in Manhattan sold out of air purifiers and masks. New York Road Runners canceled events intended to mark Global Running Day.
“This is not the day to train for a marathon or to do an outside event with your children,” New York Mayor Eric Adams advised. “If you are older or have heart or breathing problems or an older adult, you should remain inside.”
Pedestrians donned face masks in numbers that brought to mind the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tyrone Sylvester, 66, playing chess in Manhattan’s Union Square as he has on most days for 30 years, but wearing a mask, said he had never seen the city’s air quality so bad.
“When the sun looks like that,” he said, pointing out the bronze-like orb visible through the smoky sky, “we know something’s wrong. This is what global warming looks like.”
Poor air quality is likely to persist into the weekend, with a developing storm system expected to shift the smoke westward across the Great Lakes and deeper south through the Ohio Valley and into the mid-Atlantic region, AccuWeather said.
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Newer Transplant Method Could Boost Number of Donor Hearts By 30%
Most transplanted hearts are from donors who are brain dead, but new research shows a different approach can be just as successful and boost the number of available organs.
It’s called donation after circulatory death, a method long used to recover kidneys and other organs but not more fragile hearts. Duke Health researchers said Wednesday that using those long-shunned hearts could allow possibly thousands more patients a chance at a lifesaving transplant — expanding the number of donor hearts by 30%.
“Honestly if we could snap our fingers and just get people to use this, I think it probably would go up even more than that,” said transplant surgeon Dr. Jacob Schroder of Duke University School of Medicine, who led the research. “This really should be standard of care.”
The usual method of organ donation occurs when doctors, through careful testing, determine someone has no brain function after a catastrophic injury — meaning they’re brain dead. The body is left on a ventilator that keeps the heart beating and organs oxygenated until they’re recovered and put on ice.
In contrast, donation after circulatory death occurs when someone has a nonsurvivable brain injury but, because all brain function hasn’t yet ceased, the family decides to withdraw life support and the heart stops. That means organs go without oxygen for a while before they can be recovered — and surgeons, worried the heart would be damaged, left it behind.
What’s changed: Now doctors can remove those hearts and put them in a machine that “reanimates” them, pumping through blood and nutrients as they’re transported –- and demonstrating if they work OK before the planned transplant.
Wednesday’s study, conducted at multiple hospitals around the country, involved 180 transplant recipients, half who received DCD hearts and half given hearts from brain-dead donors that were transported on ice.
Survival six months later was about the same –- 94% for the recipients of cardiac-death donations and 90% for those who got the usual hearts, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The findings are exciting and show “the potential to increase fairness and equity in heart transplantation, allowing more persons with heart failure to have access to this lifesaving therapy,” transplant cardiologist Dr. Nancy Sweitzer of Washington University in St. Louis, who wasn’t involved with the study, wrote in an accompanying editorial.
Last year, 4,111 heart transplants were performed in the U.S., a record number but not nearly enough to meet the need. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from advanced heart failure but many are never offered a transplant and still others die waiting for one.
Researchers in Australia and the U.K. first began trying DCD heart transplants about seven years ago. Duke pioneered the U.S. experiments in late 2019, one of about 20 U.S. hospitals now offering this method. Last year, there were 345 such heart transplants in the U.S., and 227 so far this year, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
In the Duke-led study, nearly 90% of the DCD hearts recovered wound up being transplanted, signaling that it’s worthwhile for more hospitals to start using the newer method.
Sweitzer noted that many would-be donors have severe brain injuries but don’t meet the criteria for brain death, meaning a lot of potentially usable hearts never get donated. But she also cautioned that there’s still more to learn, noting that the very sickest patients on the waiting list were less likely to receive DCD hearts in the study.
Schroder said most who received DCD hearts already had implanted heart pumps that made the transplant more difficult to perform, even if they weren’t ranked as high on the waiting list.
The study was funded by TransMedics, which makes the heart storage system.
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