A community of breastfeeding women in Uganda is helping mothers who are struggling not to just feed their newborn babies, but to keep them alive. Halima Athumani and Mukasa Francis report from Uganda’s capital Kampala.
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Business
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With $97M in 2nd weekend, ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ sets record
New York — After 10 days in theaters, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is already the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, not accounting for inflation.
In its second weekend, the Marvel Studios blockbuster starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman continued to steamroll through movie theaters, collecting $97 million according to studio estimates Sunday. That raised its two-week total to $395.6 million, pushing it past the long-reigning top R-rated feature, “The Passion of the Christ,” which held that mark for 20 years with $370 million domestic.
Worldwide, the Shawn Levy-directed “Deadpool & Wolverine” has quickly amassed $824.1 million in ticket sales, a total that already surpasses the global hauls of the first two “Deadpool” films. The 2016 original grossed $782.6 million worldwide; the 2018 sequel collected $734.5 million.
The weekend’s primary challengers both struggled.
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, “Trap,” managed a modest opening of $15.6 million at 3,181 theaters for Warner Bros. The film, starring Josh Hartnett as a serial killer hunted by police at a pop concert, didn’t screen for critics before opening day and scored lower in reviews (48% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) than Shyamalan’s films typically do. Audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore.
With a budget of about $35 million that Shyamalan largely finances himself, “Trap” didn’t need a huge opening. But it may struggle to break even.
“This is a soft opening for an M. Night Shyamalan suspense crime thriller,” wrote David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment. “The writer/director’s movies out-earn other original thrillers by a wide margin, and that’s true here, but this start is not on the level of recent Shyamalan films.”
The live action “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” adapted from the classic kids’ book, also didn’t make much of a mark in theaters. The Sony Pictures release debuted with $6 million. It, too, got dinged by critics (28% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), though audiences (an A- CinemaScore) liked it more. “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” which stars Zachary Levi, cost about $40 million to make.
“Twisters,” the Universal Pictures disaster film, continues to kick up a storm at the box office. It held in second place with $22.7 million in its third weekend. Lee Isaac Chung’s sequel to the 1996 original, starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos, has racked up $195.6 million domestically. While it has made less of an impression overseas, “Twisters” is holding particularly well in North American theaters, down just 35% from the week prior.
Hollywood closed July with its best month in a year and its first $1 billion month since July 2023. While comparisons to last year aren’t favorable — July was when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched — a pair of Walt Disney Co. releases in “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” (the two top films of the year) powered a banner month for the movie industry.
There will still be reminders, though, of harder times in cinemas earlier in the spring and early summer, when a sparse release calendar and a few notable flops put the box office at a deficit. On Friday, AMC Theatres, the largest North American chain, posted a $32.8 million loss for the second quarter of 2024.
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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“Deadpool & Wolverine,” $97 million.
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“Twisters,” $22.7 million.
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“Trap,” $15.6 million.
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“Despicable Me 2,” $11.3 million.
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“Inside Out 2,” $6.7 million.
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“Harold and the Purple Crayon,” $6 million.
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“Longlegs,” $4.1 million.
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“A Quiet Place: Day One,” $1.4 million.
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“Daaru Na Peenda Hove,” $615,782.
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“Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” $600,000.
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Olympic and faith leaders seek reset after opening ceremony outcry, while chaplains welcome athletes
PARIS — Faith leaders gathered with Olympic officials Sunday morning in front of Notre Dame Cathedral to celebrate how “faith and sport can complement each other,” in the words of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.
The 2024 Paris Games got off to a rocky start with many religious groups around the world, including the Vatican. They criticized a scene in the opening ceremony seen as mocking Christianity by evoking “The Last Supper” and featuring drag queens, though the performers and the ceremony’s artistic director denied being inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s painting.
“We wanted to show that the most important thing is peace,” Catholic Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard said at the gathering. It was modeled after the first such interfaith meeting, organized by modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin in the 1924 Paris Games.
Far from the controversy, in an inconspicuous tent-like structure tucked away at the end of the athletes’ village in Paris, ordained and lay representatives from the five major global religions have taken up that mantle, providing spiritual comfort to Olympians.
Representatives of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism worked for months to set up a shared hall where the more than 10,500 athletes and their staff can find information about worship and speak with a chaplain.
For the first half of the Games, many seem to have found their way there to have a quiet moment away from the overwhelming pressure of competition.
“Some of the athletes who come to pray, I think they came to give up their pressure, to take some time to get out of their own heads,” said the Rev. Jason Nioka, a former judo champion who’s in charge of the largest contingent of Olympic chaplains, about 40 Catholic priests, nuns and lay faithful.
Each religion got 50 square meters (538 square feet) of the structure provided by the Paris Games organizing committee, with instructions to comply with France’s secularism laws that strictly prescribe the role of religion in public spaces.
What the faith leaders have done with the space is itself a wordless message of dialogue, tolerance and welcome — beginning with redistributing the size of the different rooms based on the expected number of faithful.
The door between the small Jewish room and the Muslim space, about twice its size but equally sparingly adorned, is often kept open.
“Here it’s very symbolic,” said Rabbi Moshe Lewin, vice president of the Conference of European Rabbis and one of the Jewish chaplains. “The conviviality, that’s the image that we should transmit.”
“People smile when they see an imam and a rabbi together,” added Najat Benali, president of the Coordination of Muslim Associations of Paris, who leads the Muslim chaplaincy. “We do ‘geo-fraternity,’ not geopolitics.”
The Hindu space also welcomes visitors with blessings by a small water fountain as chanting resounds from a volunteer’s cellphone. It’s the most exuberantly decorated space, with statues from India and a recreated temple structure in painted polyester foam.
In the middle is the Christian area, where Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox share an altar with a large Bible flanked by a cross and icons. Next to it hangs a poster with a quote about faith by U.S. star gymnast Simone Biles.
Last week, three athletics competitors from Australia, Finland and Jamaica walked in to pray, and faith leaders asked if they could join them.
“It was like a little Pentecost,” said Anne Schweitzer, who’s coordinating about three dozen Protestant chaplains.
She discovered one of the three athletes, a silver medalist, is also quoted in the Gospel edition called “More Precious than Gold,” created for the Games and available to visitors there and at churches across Olympic host cities.
Some Catholics, as well as volunteers in the village, have gone next door to meditate in the Buddhist space, said Luc Charles, a Zen monk with the Buddhist Union of France.
“It’s the occasion to get to know each other better,” he added.
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As mpox cases surge in Africa, few treatments and vaccines available
BANGUI, Central African Republic — African health officials said mpox cases have spiked by 160% so far this year, warning the risk of further spread is high given the lack of effective treatments or vaccines on the continent.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Wednesday that mpox, also known as monkeypox, has now been detected in 10 African countries this year including Congo, which has more than 96% of all cases and deaths.
Officials said nearly 70% of cases in Congo are in children younger than 15, who also accounted for 85% of deaths.
There have been an estimated 14,250 cases so far this year, nearly as many as all of last year. Compared to the first seven months of 2023, the Africa CDC said cases are up 160% and deaths are up 19%, to 456.
Burundi and Rwanda both reported the virus for the first time this week.
New outbreaks were also declared this week in Kenya and Central African Republic, with cases extending to its densely populated capital, Bangui.
“We are very concerned about the cases of monkeypox, which is ravaging (the capital region),” the Central African Republic’s public health minister, Pierre Somsé, said Monday.
On Wednesday, Kenya’s Health Ministry said it found mpox in a passenger traveling from Uganda to Rwanda at a border crossing in southern Kenya. In a statement, the ministry said that a single mpox case was enough to warrant an outbreak declaration.
The Africa CDC said the mpox death rate this year, at about 3%, “has been much higher on the African continent compared to the rest of the world.” During the global mpox emergency in 2022, fewer than 1% of people infected with the virus died.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of the deadlier version of mpox, which can kill up 10% of people, in a Congolese mining town that they feared might spread more easily among people. Mpox spreads via close contact with infected people, including via sex.
An analysis of patients hospitalized from October to January in eastern Congo suggested that recent genetic mutations in the virus were the result of the ongoing spread in people.
Unlike in previous mpox outbreaks, where lesions were mostly seen on the chest, hands and feet, the new form of mpox causes milder symptoms and lesions mostly on the genitals, making it harder to spot.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders called the expanding mpox outbreak “worrying,” noting the disease had also been seen in camps for displaced people in Congo’s North Kivu region, which shares a border with Rwanda.
“There is a real risk of explosion, given the huge population movements in and out,” said Dr. Louis Massing, the group’s medical director for Congo.
Mpox outbreaks in the West have mostly been shut down with the help of vaccines and treatments, but barely any have been available in African countries including Congo.
“We can only plead … for vaccines to arrive in the country and as quickly as possible so that we can protect the populations in the areas most affected,” Massing said in a statement.
In May, WHO said that despite the ongoing outbreak in Africa and the potential for the disease to spread internationally, not a single donor dollar had been invested in containing mpox.
Earlier this week, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations announced it was starting a study in Congo and other African countries next month to see if giving people an mpox shot after they had been exposed to the disease could help prevent severe illness and death.
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Aerosmith ends touring, citing permanent damage to singer’s voice
LOS ANGELES — Aerosmith says Steven Tyler’s voice has been permanently damaged by a vocal cord injury last year and the band will no longer tour.
The iconic band behind hits such as “Love in an Elevator” and “Livin’ on the Edge” posted a statement Friday announcing the cancellation of remaining dates on its tour and provided an update on Tyler’s voice.
“He has spent months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before his injury. We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side. Sadly, it is clear that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible,” the statement said. “We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision — as a band of brothers — to retire from the touring stage.”
Tyler announced he injured his vocal cords in September during a show on the band’s Peace Out: The Farewell Tour. Tyler said in an Instagram statement at the time that the injury caused bleeding but that he hoped the band would be back after postponing a few shows.
Tyler’s soaring vocals have powered Aerosmith’s massive catalog of hits since its formation in 1970, including “Dream On,” “Walk This Way” and “Sweet Emotion.” They were near the start of a 40-date farewell tour when Tyler was injured.
“We’ve always wanted to blow your mind when performing. As you know, Steven’s voice is an instrument like no other,” the band said in Friday’s statement to fans.
“It has been the honor of our lives to have our music become part of yours,” the band said. “In every club, on every massive tour and at moments grand and private you have given us a place in the soundtrack of your lives.”
Aerosmith is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a four-time Grammy-winning band. In addition to Tyler, its members are Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer.
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Heat deaths of people without air conditioning underscore inequity
PHOENIX, ARIZONA — Mexican farm worker Avelino Vazquez Navarro didn’t have air conditioning in the motor home where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures surged into the triple digits.
For the last dozen years, the 61-year-old spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, and traveling back every Christmas.
Now, the family is raising money to bring his remains home.
“If this motor home would have had AC and it was running, then it most likely would have helped,” said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who determined Vazquez Navarro’s death was heat-related, with alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause.
Most heat-related deaths involve homeless people living outdoors. But those who die inside without sufficient cooling also are vulnerable. They are typically older than 60, living alone and with a limited income.
Underscoring the inequities around energy and access to air conditioning as summers grow hotter, many victims are Black, Indigenous or Latino, such as Vazquez Navarro.
“Air conditioning is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. “It’s a public health issue, and it’s an affordability issue.”
The most vulnerable
People living in mobile homes or in aging trailers and RVs are especially likely to lack proper cooling. Nearly a quarter of the indoor heat deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County last year were in those kinds of dwellings, which are transformed into a broiling tin can by the blazing desert sun.
“Mobile homes can really heat up because they don’t always have the best insulation and are often made of metal,” said Dana Kennedy, AARP director in Arizona, where many heat-related deaths occur.
Research shows mobile home dwellers are particularly at risk in blistering hot Phoenix, where 45-degree Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) weather is forecast for this weekend.
“People are exposed to the elements more than in other housing,” said Patricia Solís, executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University, who worked on mapping hot weather impacts on mobile home parks for a state preparedness plan.
Worse, some parks bar residents from making modifications that could cool their homes, citing esthetic concerns. A new Arizona law required parks for the first time this summer to let residents install cooling methods such as window units, shade awnings and shutters.
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, 156 of 645 heat-related deaths last year occurred indoors in uncooled environments. In most cases, a unit was present but was not working, was without electricity or turned off, public health officials said.
One victim was Shirley Marie Kouplen, who died after being overcome by high temperatures inside her Phoenix mobile home amid a heat wave when the extension cord providing her electricity was unplugged.
Emergency responders recorded the 70-year-old widow’s body temperature at 41.7 C (107.1 F). Kouplen, who was diabetic and had high blood pressure, was rushed to a hospital, where she died.
Kouplen apparently was struggling financially, if the shabby condition of her mobile home was any indication. It still sits on Lot 60, surrounded by a chain-link fence with a locked gate and a dirt driveway overgrown with weeds.
It’s unclear how the cord got unplugged, if Kouplen had an electricity account or how she got her power.
“Losing your air conditioning is now a life-threatening event,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who grew up in hot, humid Houston in the 1970s. “You didn’t want to lose your air conditioning, but it wasn’t going to kill you. And now it is.”
Arizona’s regulated utilities have been banned since 2022 from cutting off power during the summer, following the 2018 death of a 72-year-old woman after Arizona Public Service disconnected her electricity over a $51 debt.
Ann Porter, spokesperson for Arizona Public Service, which provides electricity to homes in the park where Kouplen lived, said “due to privacy concerns” the company could not say if she had an account at the time of her death or in the past. Porter said the utility does not cut power from June 1 to Oct. 15.
Cutoffs can occur after those dates if mounting debts are not paid.
Arizona is among 19 states with shut-off protections, leaving about half of the U.S. population without safeguards against losing electricity during the summer, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a new study.
Almost 20% of very-low-income families have no air conditioning at all, especially in places such as Washington state, where they weren’t commonly installed before climate-fueled heat waves grew increasingly stronger, more frequent and longer lasting.
Not only in the Southwest
In the Pacific Northwest, several hundred people died during a 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to launch a program to provide portable cooling units to vulnerable, low-income people.
Chicago, better known for its cold winters, saw a heat wave kill 739 mostly older people over five days in 1995. Amid high humidity and temperatures over 37.7 C (100 F), most victims had no air conditioning or couldn’t afford to turn on their units.
In 2022, Chicago adopted a cooling ordinance after three women died in their apartments in a building for older adults on an unusually warm spring day. Certain residential buildings must now have at least one air-conditioned common area for cooling when the heat index exceeds 26.6 C (80 F) and cooling is unavailable in individual units.
Nonprofits in historically hotter areas such as Arizona also are trying to better address the inequities low-income people face during the sweltering summers. The Phoenix-based community agency Wildfire recently raised money to buy over $2 million worth of air conditioning equipment to help 150 households statewide over three years, Executive Director Kelly McGowan said.
Laws protect renters in some places. Phoenix landlords must ensure that air conditioning units cool to 28 C (82 F) or below and that evaporative coolers lower the temperature to 30C (86 F).
Palm Springs, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada, both desert cities, have ordinances requiring landlords to offer air conditioning in rental dwellings. Dallas, where temperatures can pass 43.3 C (110 F) in the summer, has a similar law.
But most renters pay their own electricity costs, leaving them to agonize whether they can afford to even turn on the cooling or how high to set the thermostat.
A new report estimates the average cost for U.S. families to keep cool from June to September will grow nationwide by 7.9% this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.
Wolf noted the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which grants money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling, is underfunded, with 80% going to heat homes in winter.
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Vitriol about female boxer fuels concern of backlash against LGBTQ+, women athletes
PARIS — LGBTQ+ athletes, officials and observers have warned that a deluge of hateful comments misidentifying female boxer Imane Khelif in the Paris Olympics as transgender or a man could pose dangers for the LGBTQ+ community and female athletes.
The concerns come as famous figures — from former U.S. President Donald Trump to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling — have railed against the Algerian boxer after her Italian competitor Angela Carini quit their bout Thursday. They and other social media comments falsely claimed Khelif was a man fighting a woman.
The comments have rippled across social media, pulling Khelif and Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting into the larger social contention about women in sports.
International Olympic Committee spokesperson Mark Adams said Friday that Khelif “was born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport.”
He warned “not turn it into some kind of witch hunt.”
Some athletes and LGBTQ+ observers worry that hateful comments from critics — and the IOC failing to address a larger global conversation before the Olympics — have already started to vilify transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ people at an event championing inclusion. It comes as expanding interpretations of gender identity have spurred a larger political tug-of-war, often centered around sports.
While the Paris Olympics has pushed an agenda of openness and a record 193 openly LGBTQ+ athletes are competing, a performance by drag queens during the opening ceremony faced intense backlash from religious conservatives and others contending that it mocked the Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Some performers and the opening ceremony’s artistic director say they have received threats.
Nikki Hiltz, one of the world’s top middle-distance runners competing in the women’s category for the U.S. Olympic team, has faced such hateful comments firsthand. Assigned female at birth, Hiltz identifies as nonbinary.
“Transphobia is going crazy at these Olympics,” Hiltz wrote on a post on Instagram responding to the boxing debate. “Anti-trans rhetoric is anti-woman. These people aren’t ‘protecting women’s sport,’ they are enforcing rigid gender norms, and anyone who doesn’t fit into those norms is targeted and vilified.”
The controversy is rooted in claims by the International Boxing Association that Khelif and Lin failed unspecified and untransparent eligibility tests for women’s competition, which the IOC called “a sudden and arbitrary decision” from a governing body it has banned from the Olympics since 2019.
While some sports have detailed guidelines about transgender athletes and hormone levels in competitions, boxing is relying on rules dating to the 2016 Olympics that say the threshold for eligibility is what appears on an athlete’s passport amid a larger rift between the IBA and the IOC.
“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision (by the IBA), which was taken without any proper procedure,” said Adams of the IOC. “These dangerous, misogynistic and baseless attacks can lead to misinformation.”
Athletes have faced “quite a few cases of online aggression,” said Adams of the IOC. He said it is the responsibility of the Olympic body to “look after” the athletes and “make sure that they’re safe.”
Though some like Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports, a site that tracks LGBTQ+ participation in the Olympics, say failures by the IOC to provide clarity before the Games has hurt both female athletes and LGBTQ+ competitors, both of whom have long fought for recognition.
“The issue is not the athlete trying to compete, it’s whoever is making the policy,” Zeigler said. “The awful part of this is the vitriol over the last two days has been aimed at these athletes.”
Zeigler said the backlash is likely to stifle LGBTQ+ public participation in the Games in the future despite activists saying the Olympics have taken major strides in recent years.
“By trying to bury the issue they knew was coming, transphobic (people) begin to direct the conversation,” Zeigler said. “We can have conversations about the inclusion of trans athletes. There are thoughtful conversations to have. It is the vitriol, the nasty, horrible, graphic, ghastly language that gets used around this that eats at me.”
Former athletes like Belgium’s Charline Van Snick, 33, a former judo medalist in the 2012 Games, said the testing and comments about Khelif and Hamori’s bodies are undoing years of work by female athletes to push back against stigma.
While many say they have seen major progress in recent years, Ilona Maher, a star of the U.S. women’s rugby team, broke out in tears in a social media post before the Olympics following comments claiming she was a man.
“There are some women with more testosterone, or different kinds of body,” Van Snick said. “In judo, you are fighting, and you have to stay a woman, what is accepted of a woman. If you look too much like a man, they say, ‘Oh, she’s a man.’ But I’m a woman” who could beat a man in the sport.
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Mexico City’s women water harvesters help make up for drought
MEXICO CITY — Gliding above her neighborhood in a cable car on a recent morning, Sonia Estefanía Palacios Díaz scanned a sea of blue and black water tanks, tubes and cables looking for rain harvesting systems.
“There’s one!” she said, pointing out a black tank hooked up to a smaller blue unit with connecting tubes snaking up to the roof where water is collected.
“I’m always looking for different rainwater harvesting systems,” she said, smiling. “I’m also always looking for places to install one.”
Driven by prolonged drought and inconsistent public water delivery, many Mexico City residents are turning to rainwater. Pioneering company Isla Urbana, which does both nonprofit and for-profit work, has installed more than 40,000 rain catchment systems across Mexico since the company was founded 15 years ago. And Mexico City’s government has invested in the installation of 70,000 systems since 2019, still a drop in the bucket for the sprawling metropolis of around 9 million.
But there’s little education and limited resources to maintain the systems after installation, leading the systems to fall into disuse or for residents to sell off the parts.
Enter Palacios Díaz and a group of other women who make up the cooperative Pixcatl, which means harvest of water in the Indigenous Nahuatl language.
In lower-income areas like Iztapalapa — Mexico City’s most populous borough — the group tries to keep systems functioning while also educating residents on how to maintain them. That includes brainstorming their own designs and providing residents with low-cost options for additional materials.
Palacios Díaz has lived with water scarcity in Iztapalapa as far back as she can remember. “Here, people will get in line starting at 3 in the morning to get water (from distribution trucks) up until 2 in the afternoon,” she said from her mother’s home. “There was a time in which we went for more than a month without a regular supply of water.”
Earlier this year, the reservoirs that supply the capital were perilously low. Authorities reduced the amount of water being released and neighborhoods not accustomed to water scarcity faced a new reality.
Entering the rainy season, most of Mexico was in moderate to severe drought. Mexico’s reservoirs are beginning to approach half their capacity, but they haven’t filled by much, according to recent reports by the National Water Commission.
The country depends on the rains — which normally peter out in October — to fill the reservoirs, but the drought has taken them so low that that might take years.
That’s encouraged many Mexicans like Palacios Díaz to turn to rainwater harvesting.
At the height of the pandemic, she taught classes on urban farming and water harvesting at a local community space. It wasn’t until her students said they wanted to learn how to install and understand their own systems that she seriously considered taking a government course. After enrolling in a training program in 2022 to become an installer, she met other young women from the city interested in water harvesting systems and they formed the cooperative.
Near the skirt of a volcano on the fringes of Iztapalapa, Lizbeth Esther Pineda Castro, another member of the cooperative, and Palacios Díaz adjusted a ladder to reach the roof of a small house. The two-story home inherited by Sara Huitzil Morales and her niece sits in Iztapalapa’s Buenavista neighborhood.
Huitzil’s mother had qualified for a free water harvesting system from Mexico City’s government in 2021. After the installation, Huitzil requested Pixcatl’s maintenance since she wasn’t sure how to take care of the system.
Sporting their navy polos with the Pixcatl logo, Pineda and Palacios Díaz cleared debris off the roof so the system only collects fresh rain.
“We also add a little bit of soap and chlorine to clean the pipes,” said Palacios Díaz as she swept the liquid down a connecting tube that leads to the harvesting system.
Downstairs, they joined the other members of the cooperative in a courtyard to look at the giant 2,500-liter water tank, enough to serve Huitzil’s needs for several months when filled. The colossal container stood nearly as tall as Palacios Díaz. Another cooperative member cleared a filter of leaves and dirt.
Last, Palacios Díaz plopped in a couple of chlorine pills to clean and disinfect the water. The frequency of the entire maintenance process depends on several factors, including how much water is in the tank, how much has been used, and whether it has rained.
Huitzil said before the harvesting system, she endured water shortages and rationing. The publicly available water was consistently dirty and “dark like chocolate.” She often used the water that remained from doing laundry to clean the courtyard. Sometimes when dirty water would arrive, she would put it in buckets and wait for the dirt to settle to the bottom, using the cleanest for showering.
The system has transformed her daily use of water, and she doesn’t have to think twice about whether it’s safe. The system initially uses six filters, plus three more if the water is to be used for drinking.
“The water is good, it’s so good!” said Huitzil. “My clothes come out very clean and the water is sweet. You can even harvest it to be cleaner to drink.”
With more than 1.8 million residents, Iztapalapa has been one of the primary beneficiaries of Mexico City’s harvesting system program. But after two years, the city stopped giving away free systems when many residents, facing economic hardship and sometimes struggling to maintain the systems, sold off their parts.
“It should be easy to maintain, but it’s tedious,” Palacios Diaz said. “Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a scenario in which we not only have environmental problems, but economic problems.”
Loreta Castro Reguera, an architecture professor at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, focuses much of her work on water and urban design. She said rainwater harvesting is a great solution because during Mexico’s rainy season residents can use rainwater instead of water from the Cutzamala system — a reservoir that provides water to Mexico City and the State of Mexico.
Palacios Díaz dreams of rainwater systems in markets, malls, and other community spaces. The cooperative is also working on designs personalized for their clients’ needs — whether for a low-cost system or to fulfill a greater demand for water.
As women, she and the other members of Pixcatl want to set an example for those who want to get involved in water harvesting.
“I think it’s really beautiful we can inspire young girls and show women in another context,” said another member, Abigail López Durán, “that we can also use tools and aren’t afraid to get hurt.”
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China’s proposal to create a cyber ID system faces criticism
Taipei, Taiwan — Concern is rising among China’s more than 1 billion internet users over a government proposal portrayed as a step to protect their personal information and fight against fraud. Many fear the plan would do the opposite.
China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration issued the draft “Measures for the Administration of National Network Identity Authentication Public Services” on July 26.
According to the proposal, Chinese netizens would be able to apply for virtual IDs on a voluntary basis to “minimize the excessive collection and retention of citizens’ personal information by online platforms” and “protect personal information.”
While many netizens appear to agree in their posts that companies have too much access to their personal information, others fear the cyber ID proposal, if implemented, will simply allow the government to more easily track them and control what they can say online.
Beijing lawyer Wang Cailiang said on Weibo: “My opinion is short: I am not in favor of this. Please leave a little room for citizens’ privacy.”
Shortly after the proposal was published, Tsinghua University law professor Lao Dongyan posted on her Weibo account, “The cyber IDs are like installing monitors to watch everyone’s online behavior.”
Her post has since disappeared, along with many other negative comments that can only be found on foreign social media platforms like X and Free Weibo, an anonymous and unblocked search engine established in 2012 to capture and save posts censored by China’s Sina Weibo or deleted by users.
A Weibo user under the name “Liu Jiming” said, “The authorities solemnly announced [the proposal] and solicited public opinions while blocking people from expressing their opinions. This clumsy show of democracy is really shocking.”
Beijing employs a vast network of censors to block and remove politically sensitive content, known by critics as the Great Firewall.
Since 2017, China has required internet service and content providers to verify users’ real names through national IDs, allowing authorities to more easily trace and track online activities and posts to the source.
Chinese internet experts say netizens can make that harder by using others’ accounts, providers, IDs and names on various platforms. But critics fear a single cyber ID would close those gaps in the Great Firewall.
Zola, a network engineer and well-known citizen journalist originally from China’s Hunan province, who naturalized in Taiwan, told VOA “The control of the cyber IDs is a superpower because you don’t only know a netizen’s actual name, but also the connection between the netizen and the cybersecurity ID.”
Mr. Li, a Shanghai-based dissident who did not want to disclose his full name because of the issue’s sensitivity, told VOA that the level of surveillance by China’s internet police has long been beyond imagination. He said the new proposal is a way for authorities to tell netizens that the surveillance will be more overt “just to intimidate and warn you to behave.”
Some netizens fear China could soon change the cyber ID system from a voluntary program to a requirement for online access.
A Weibo user under the name “Fang Zhifu” warned that in the future, if “the cyber ID is revoked, it will be like being sentenced to death in the cyber world.”
Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Public Security and Cyberspace Administration say they are soliciting public opinion on the cyber ID plan until August 25.
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Marchand captures 4th Olympic swimming gold
NANTERRE, France — The party for Léon Marchand spread beyond the pool, quickly sweeping across Paris.
At Stade de France, hosting the first night of track and field, an enormous ovation broke out when Marchand won his fourth gold medal of the Olympics. The roar was so loud that the first heat of the 400-meter run in the decathlon was delayed.
At the French Olympic house, nearly 20,000 gathered outside to watch Marchand cap his dominating run at the pool, including 19-year-old Arthur Oursel.
“He’s a hero,” Oursel said. “He’s our hero.”
With French President Emmanuel Macron among the more than 15,000 fans cheering him on in a rugby stadium-turned-natatorium, Marchand soared to another runaway victory in the 200-meter individual medley Friday night.
“I don’t think anything went wrong this week,” Marchand said. “It was just perfect.”
The 22-year-old French phenomenon left no doubt he’ll be remembered as one of the biggest stars of the Summer Games in his home country. He finished in an Olympic record of 1 minute, 54.06 seconds, just missing Ryan Lochte’s 13-year-old world mark.
That was about the only thing he didn’t accomplish in six magical days at La Defense Arena, previously winning the 400 IM, 200 butterfly and 200 backstroke — the latter two about two hours apart in the same session.
Marchand became only the fourth swimmer in Olympic history to win four individual golds at a single Games.
The others? Michael Phelps, who did it in both 2004 and 2008; Mark Spitz in 1972; and East German Kristin Otto in 1988.
Heady company, indeed.
“That’s crazy. Those guys are legends,” Marchand said. “I don’t think I have realized it yet. Maybe I will in a few days.”
The silver went to Britain’s Duncan Scott, a body length behind at 1:55.31. China’s Wang Shun grabbed the bronze in 1:56.00, edging out American Carson Foster for a spot on the podium.
What a night for France
A packed house at La Defense Arena came to cheer on their favorite son one more time. They chanted, sang Sweet Caroline, waved the French tricolor flag and unveiled a huge tifo in the upper deck.
After Marchand touched the wall, he held up four fingers — one for every gold. He climbed from the pool, pumped his fists, then held out his arms as if to say, “What more could you want?”
Not a thing.
He had done it all, more than fulfilling the expectations of his nation and the comparisons to Phelps, who was here to cheer Marchand on. What might have been a burden to some athletes only seemed to push Marchand to even greater heights.
Macron shook Marchand’s hand during Friday’s celebration and sent his congratulations via social media.
“The impossible isn’t French!” Macron wrote in French. “Four home gold medals and a new Olympic record — it’s historic. It’s Leon Marchand.”
Marchand certainly enjoyed his moment, which his American coach Bob Bowman — Phelps’ coach, in an appropriate touch — had encouraged him to do.
He led the fans behind the podium in a cheer before climbing to the top step one more time. The crowd erupted in its most rousing rendition yet of La Marseillaise — though, of course, they’ve had plenty of chances to work on the French national anthem this week.
Chants of “Léon! Léon! Léon!” filled the arena as soon as the anthem was done. Someone held up a sign that simply said “Merci Léon.”
“I’m extremely proud,” Marchand said, “to be French.”
Australian gold for McEvoy, McKeown
Before Marchand’s triumph, Cameron McEvoy and Kaylee McKeown won more gold for Australia.
McEvoy touched first in the 50 freestyle, denying Caeleb Dressel a repeat in swimming’s most frantic event. McKeown followed with a victory in the 200 backstroke to become the first female swimmer to sweep the back at two straight Summer Games.
Asked if she could’ve envisioned such an accomplishment, McKeown said, “Not in a million years.”
McEvoy became the first Australian man to win gold at these games, and McKeown quickly boosted her country’s total to an Olympics-leading seven golds overall — three more than both the U.S. and Marchand, who is essentially a country unto himself.
McKeown noted what an amazing time this is for women’s sports, following in the footsteps of athletes such as Simone Biles and Caitlin Clark in raising the profile of female athletes.
“Not just the Aussie girls, but the whole world and female sports has been unreal this year,” McKeown said.
McEvoy made it from one end of the pool to the other in 21.25, edging Benjamin Proud of Britain by five-hundredths of a second. Florent Manaudou of France gave the home crowd another thrill by taking the bronze in 21.56.
Dressel, who won five gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics, finished sixth in 21.61.
McKeown rallied again, just as she did in the 100 backstroke, to chase down perennial American runner-up Regan Smith. The winning time was an Olympic record of 2:03.73, breaking the mark that Missy Franklin set at the 2012 London Games.
Another silver for Regan Smith
Smith touched in 2:04.26 for the fifth silver medal of her career, to go along with a single bronze. She has yet to win gold.
The bronze went to Canada’s Kylie Masse in 2:05.57.
Smith insisted that she was satisfied with the result, even though a gold medal remained just out of reach.
“That’s one of my fastest times ever. I think I really gave Kaylee a run for it and I made things really close and exciting. So I’m thrilled with it.”
Dressel comes up short
The American star qualified in two individual events, and he won’t be winning a medal in either of them.
Shortly after his sixth-place showing in the 50 freestyle, he returned to the pool for the semifinals of the 100 butterfly — another of the events he won in Tokyo.
Dressel couldn’t pull off the grueling double, managing only the 13th-fastest time to miss out on the final Saturday night.
He did anchor the U.S. to gold in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay for the eighth gold medal of his career.
It was a disappointing showing for one of the biggest stars of the Tokyo Games, but not all that unexpected given what he’s been through.
A year after the pandemic-delayed 2021 Olympics, Dressel walked away from swimming in the middle of the world championships.
He desperately needed a break to recapture his love of swimming, which is still a bit of a work in progress. Dressel seems much happier now, welcoming his first child about five months ago, but he couldn’t recapture that blazing speed from three years ago.
“Obviously not my best work,” Dressel said. “I’ve had a lot of fun, but this hasn’t been my best week. I don’t think I need to shy away from that.”
He has one more relay to go in Paris, giving him another shot at his ninth career gold.
Dressel would like to go out on a high note, because these Games have been “a little heartbreaking, a little heartbreaking for sure.”
After leaving the pool deck, he broke down in tears.
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Turkey blocks access to Instagram, gives no reason
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s communications authority blocked access to the social media platform Instagram on Friday, the latest instance of a clampdown on websites in the country.
The Information and Communication Technologies Authority, which regulates the internet, announced the block early Friday but did not provide a reason. Sabah newspaper, which is close to the government, said access was blocked in response to Instagram removing posts by Turkish users that expressed condolences over the killing of Hama political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
It came days after Fahrettin Altun, the presidential communications director and aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, criticized the Meta-owned platform for preventing users in Turkey from posting messages of condolences for Haniyeh.
Unlike its Western allies, Turkey does not consider Hamas to be a terror organization. A strong critic of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, Erdogan has described the group as “liberation fighters.”
The country is observing a day of mourning for Haniyeh on Friday, during which flags will be flown at half-staff.
Turkey has a track record of censoring social media and websites. Hundreds of thousands of domains have been blocked since 2022, according to the Freedom of Expression Association, a nonprofit organization regrouping lawyers and human rights activists. The video-sharing platform YouTube was blocked from 2007 to 2010.
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Young fencer shows NY grit on Paris 2024 stage
EAUBONNE, France — Growing up in cutthroat New York gave Lauren Scruggs the competitive mindset needed to claim an unexpected fencing silver medal on her Olympic debut in Paris.
The 21-year-old Queens native shared the podium with fellow American Lee Kiefer, who retained her Olympic title in the women’s individual foil event gold medal bout on Sunday.
“I’ve grown up in New York my whole life. It can be kind of rough sometimes,” Scruggs, the first Black American fencer to win an Olympic medal in a women’s individual event, told Reuters.
“You develop a hard shell, and in terms of how that translates to my fencing, I think it came out, that energy and that toughness.”
When Scruggs found herself neck-and-neck with then world No. 2 Arriana Errigo in the quarterfinals, she managed to score the last touch, knocking out the Italian 15-14.
“I think that was my toughest bout of the day in terms of energy, and going past my limits, and I have definitely New York to thank for that,” said Scruggs, one of the rare Black fencers at the highest level.
“Fencing is predominantly white, I think for a multitude of reasons, it’s just the history of the sport, and the lack of representation and encouragement,” she explained.
“To have this accomplishment is a big deal for me, because when I was younger I only had a few people to look up to in the sport, so to be someone that little kids now can look up to is very special to me.”
They can draw inspiration from her impressive grit, which coach Sean McClain described in the U.S. training venue in Eaubonne, in the outskirts of Paris, saying that since she was eight, Scruggs only cared about winning medals.
“And she’s maintained that distaste for losing her entire career,” he said. “I really think in an event like the Olympics, it’s more about how you compete.”
Expensive sport
Born in the U.S. to Jamaican immigrants, Scruggs grew up in Queens with her mother and grandmother.
“I was in a single-parent household early on, so my family had to basically cut some corners around here and there to support us,” said Scruggs, whose brother was the first to get into fencing and inspired her to take up the sport.
Now a college student at Harvard, where she trains every day, Scruggs had to fight to make it into a “pretty expensive” sport.
“It was not easy growing up, trying to fence while being from where I’m from, just income-wise,” she said.
“If you have the funds, it makes it a lot easier to pursue the sport and feel comfortable asking that from your family.
“But if you’re coming from a lower-income background, it might push you harder. And I think it’s what happened with me. I just wanted it more than my peers.”
On paper, Scruggs did not have a big medal chance, but she showed her mettle at the Grand Palais arena.
“Fencing skill wise, Lauren is on par with the better fencers in the world, but she’s not better than them. What made the difference was that competitiveness,” said McClain, who has also become Scruggs’ stepfather.
“That comes from my wife,” he added. “I knew it was possible, but I didn’t really think Lauren was going to win a medal in her first Olympics. But my wife did. She was like, she’d better win a medal. So that’s where it comes from — that’s the fiery spirit!”
With Kiefer and alongside teammates Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub, Scruggs will represent the U.S. against China on Thursday in the quarterfinals of the women’s foil team event.
Scruggs is aiming for gold this time and is dreaming already of qualifying for the next Games, which will take place in Los Angeles in four years’ time.
“I can’t imagine myself not fencing,” she said. “It’s not even love, it’s just a part of me. It’s connected to who I am,” she said.
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Online misinformation fuels tensions over deadly Southport stabbing attack
LONDON — Within hours of a stabbing attack in northwest England that killed three young girls and wounded several more children, a false name of a supposed suspect was circulating on social media. Hours after that, violent protesters were clashing with police outside a nearby mosque.
Police say the name was fake, as were rumors that the 17-year-old suspect was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in Britain. Detectives say the suspect charged Thursday with murder and attempted murder was born in the U.K., and British media including the BBC have reported that his parents are from Rwanda.
That information did little to slow the lightning spread of the false name or stop right-wing influencers pinning the blame on immigrants and Muslims.
“There’s a parallel universe where what was claimed by these rumors were the actual facts of the case,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank that looks at issues including integration and national identity. “And that will be a difficult thing to manage.”
Local lawmaker Patrick Hurley said the result was “hundreds of people descending on the town, descending on Southport from outside of the area, intent on causing trouble — either because they believe what they’ve written, or because they are bad faith actors who wrote it in the first place, in the hope of causing community division.”
One of the first outlets to report the false name, Ali Al-Shakati, was Channel 3 Now, an account on the X social media platform that purports to be a news channel. A Facebook page of the same name says it is managed by people in Pakistan and the U.S. A related website on Wednesday showed a mix of possibly AI-generated news and entertainment stories, as well as an apology for “the misleading information” in its article on the Southport stabbings.
By the time the apology was posted, the incorrect identification had been repeated widely on social media.
“Some of the key actors are probably just generating traffic, possibly for monetization,” said Katwala. The misinformation was then spread further by “people committed to the U.K. domestic far right,” he said.
Governments around the world, including Britain’s, are struggling with how to curb toxic material online. U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Tuesday that social media companies “need to take some responsibility” for the content on their sites.
Katwala said that social platforms such as Facebook and X worked to “de-amplify” false information in real time after mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.
Since Elon Musk, a self-styled free-speech champion, bought X, it has gutted teams that once fought misinformation on the platform and restored the accounts of banned conspiracy theories and extremists.
Rumors have swirled in the relative silence of police over the attack. Merseyside Police issued a statement saying the reported name for the suspect was incorrect, but have provided little information about him other than his age and birthplace of Cardiff, Wales.
Under U.K. law, suspects are not publicly named until they have been charged and those under 18 are usually not named at all. That has been seized on by some activists to suggest the police are withholding information about the attacker.
Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right English Defense League, accused police of “gaslighting” the public. Nigel Farage, a veteran anti-immigration politician who was elected to Parliament in this month’s general election, posted a video on X speculating “whether the truth is being withheld from us” about the attack.
Brendan Cox, whose lawmaker wife Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right attacker in 2016, said Farage’s comments showed he was “nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit.”
“It is beyond the pale to use a moment like this to spread your narrative and to spread your hatred, and we saw the results on Southport’s streets last night,” Cox told the BBC.
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Drag queen in Olympic opening ceremony has no regrets, calls it ‘a photograph of France in 2024’
Paris — As a gay youth growing up in central France, Hugo Bardin never felt he lived in a world that represented who he was — a world in which he had a place.
And that is why Bardin, who performs as the drag queen Paloma, felt it was meaningful and important to be part of a Paris Olympics opening ceremony that presented a multifaceted, multiethnic France with people of different ethnicities and orientations.
“It was a really important moment for the French people and the representation of France around the world,” says Paloma, who took part in a single scene that has drawn some furious criticism — including from presidential candidate Donald Trump in the United States, who called it “a disgrace.”
Although the ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, and other participants have repeatedly said the scene wasn’t inspired by “The Last Supper,” critics interpreted that part of the show as a mockery of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles.
Paloma, best known for winning “Drag Race France,” appeared with other drag artists and dancers alongside Barbara Butch, a popular DJ who wore a silver headdress that looked like a halo. Butch has now filed a complaint alleging online abuse and harassment, and Paris police have launched an investigation.
Paloma is not, at this point, planning to take legal action over online harassment, and would prefer to focus on the many “loving messages” that have been pouring in. The performer been getting thousands of messages daily, she told The Associated Press, most of them positive but some that he described as “violent” and even “from the Middle Ages.”
Still, there are no misgivings, despite the backlash. Paloma said she was proud to have been part of a show that did not rely on a series of French cliches — for example, “the Parisian with a baguette under their arm.”
“It could have been a postcard from 1930,” she said of the ceremony. “But instead, it was a photograph of France in 2024.”
Many agreed, and praised the ceremony for its creativity, style and showmanship.
But French Catholic bishops and others were among those who said Christians had been offended, though Paris Olympics organizers have said there was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group” but rather to “celebrate community tolerance.”
Trump was asked on Fox News what he thought of the so-called “Last Supper” scene. “I’m very open-minded,” the former president and current Republican nominee told host Laura Ingraham, “but I thought what they did was a disgrace.”
Of Trump’s comments, Paloma said: “My first reaction is to say that if Donald Trump is not reacting, then we have not done our job.”
The criticism, she said, has been fueled by hate. “Where is the Catholicism, the Christianity in that? It is very hypocritical that their message is not about religion or kindness, it’s about hate towards Jews, fat people, queer people and trans people.”
“We have been accused of trying to impose our vision on the world,” Bardin said. “We are not. … We just want to let people know that we have a place in the world, and we are claiming that place.”
Paloma spoke to the AP in a phone interview and later at her Paris workshop, a studio devoted to her drag performance. Bardin debuted the drag queen persona some five years ago, the Spanish name inspired by the films of Pedro Almodóvar.
Asked if she had any regrets, Paloma replied: “My only regrets is people’s reactions. I’m sorry if people are offended but we did not try to parody, to mock ‘The Last Supper.’ It was not the point. So I can’t regret what I did. I’m sorry for people to only see things in a bad way.”
She added: “Maybe change the perspective. Change the point of view. Try to see the beauty in what we did. Because it was just beauty. It was just only about beauty and reunion, and reparation.”
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Rafah water facility demolition raises health risks in Gaza, UN says
GENEVA — U.N. agencies warn that the demolition of a critical water facility in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip increases the risk of infectious diseases as people are forced to drink unsafe water while sanitary conditions continue to deteriorate.
“Until recently, that reservoir served thousands and thousands of internally displaced people who had sought refuge in Rafah in the area,” James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
“Now without it, vulnerable children and families are likely to be forced again increasingly to resort to unsafe water, so putting them again at all those risks that we see time after time, day after day in Gaza — dehydration, malnutrition, diseases,” he said.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Monday that the troops blew up the central reservoir “on the orders of the brigade commanders” but without receiving permission from the senior level of the Southern Command. It added that the incident was being investigated by Israel’s Military Police as “a suspected violation of international law.”
Infections spreading
Elder said the destruction of the Canada Well reservoir “is yet another grim reminder of the assaults on families who already are in desperate need of water.”
“We have seen spikes in diarrhea, in skin infections — all due to a lack of access to hygiene and a lack of access to water,” he said, noting that people in emergencies require a minimum of 15 liters (almost 4 gallons) of water per person per day.
Now, the range of water availability in Gaza has been reduced to between 2 and 9 liters per person, per day, and some people are getting just a fraction of that, Elder said.
“Somehow, people are holding on, but of course, we are now in that deathly cycle whereby children are very malnourished. There is immense heat. There is [a] lack of water. There is a horrendous lack of sanitation, and that is the cycle,” he said.
The World Health Organization reports a surge in infectious diseases in the Gaza Strip. As of July 7, it has recorded nearly 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections, 577,000 cases of acute watery diarrhea, 107,000 of acute jaundice syndrome and 12,000 of bloody diarrhea. It also has recorded nearly 200,000 cases of scabies, lice, skin rashes, chicken pox and other illnesses.
Polio threat
The recent identification of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 in Gaza’s sewage system is of particular concern. Under prevailing conditions in Gaza, there is a high risk of spread of this paralytic, deadly disease within the Palestinian enclave and across borders.
“Having a vaccine-derived polio virus in the sewage very likely means that it is out there somewhere in people,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said. “It most likely is in the population, but that does not necessarily mean that we see an outbreak of cases.
“But of course, we need to be prepared. We need to be utterly prepared. And we need vaccinations, and we need vaccination campaigns,” he said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebteyesus has announced that the organization will be sending more than 1 million doses of polio vaccine to Gaza to avert the spread of the disease.
“While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected,” he said, adding that infants under 2 are especially vulnerable “because many have not been vaccinated over the nine months of conflict.”
Before Israel began its military offensive in Gaza following a brutal attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, nearly the whole population of Gaza had been immunized against polio.
However, due to the impact of the conflict, “coverage of polio now is around 89%, down from around 99% before the conflict,” UNICEF’s Elder said. “Hence, there is an increased risk for children. Now, if the child gets the full course of the vaccine, then the risk of the child getting paralyzed by polio is negligible.
“This is why it is so critical that all children are immunized. But the mass displacement, the decimation of the health infrastructure, the tremendously insecure operating environment — they all make it much more difficult, hence putting more children at risk,” he said.
Cases of polio have declined by 99% since WHO launched its global polio eradication campaign in 1988.
WHO reports polio now is endemic only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, more than 30 countries, including Egypt and Israel, are subject to outbreaks. The reemergence of polio tends to occur in areas of conflict or instability and within countries with poor health systems.
“We were very, very close to eradicating polio fully,” WHO spokesperson Lindmeier said. “As you know, wartime, unfortunately, creates the situation where it is very difficult to get that last mile. And it has been less than a mile that we needed to go.
“There are a few pockets around the world. Hopefully, Gaza will not become another one,” he said.
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LogOn: Innovative material cools with no energy
A California company is developing a material that can cool things by sending heat into deep space. Matt Dibble has our story in this week’s edition of LogOn.
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Urgent action needed to stop spread of drug-resistant malaria, scientists warn
Bangkok — Millions of lives could be put at risk unless urgent action is taken to curb the spread of drug-resistant malaria in Africa, according to a new paper published in the journal Science.
The paper says the parasite that causes malaria is showing signs of resistance to artemisinin, the main drug used to fight the disease, in several east African countries.
“Mutations indicating artemisinin-resistance have been found in more than 10% of malaria infected individuals in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania,” according to the report.
Artemisinin Combination Therapies, or ACTs, have been the cornerstone of malaria treatment in recent years — but there are worrying signs that they are becoming less effective, says report co-author Lorenz von Seidlein of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok.
“We have increasing reports from eastern Africa saying that they have documented resistance against the first line treatments against malaria,” he says. “The first line treatments are artemisinin combination therapy – that has been used for the last 20 years and has worked excellently well. And it’s now not working quite as well as it used to do.”
It’s estimated that over one thousand children die every day from malaria in Africa. The World Health Organization estimates that the global death toll from malaria in 2022 — the most recent figures available — was 608,000.
Past lessons
Before artemisinin therapies were developed, chloroquine was the medicine most used to treat malaria. The report authors say that in the 1990s and early 2000s, signs that the malaria parasite was developing resistance to chloroquine were widely ignored.
“When chloroquine resistance slowly sneaked into Africa there was a whole wave of childhood mortality followed by it. So really, a large number of children — probably in the millions — died because chloroquine didn’t work as well as it used to do. And now we see these first signs that something similar is happening with the ACTs. And that is of course very worrying,” von Seidlein says.
Urgent action
The report authors urge policymakers and global funding bodies to act now to prevent artemisinin resistance taking hold.
Their recommendations include combining artemisinin drugs with other medicines.
“Combining an artemisinin derivative drug with two partner drugs in triple artemisinin combination therapies [TACTs] is the simplest, most affordable, readily implementable, and sustainable approach to counter artemisinin resistance,” the report says.
The authors also call for the rollout of new, more effective insecticides and mosquito nets; better training of community health workers; the rapid deployment of new malaria vaccines; and better monitoring of parasite mutations.
Southeast Asia
Many of these methods were used to halt the spread of artemisinin resistance in south-east Asia since 2014, notes von Seidlein.
“Ultimately, there was an understanding that this could be a major health emergency globally and so there were a lot of investments from funders for the from high-income countries towards these countries in the Greater Mekong sub-region to stop the spread of artemisinin resistant parasites,” he says.
The report says that sense of urgency must now be applied to tackling artemisinin resistance in Africa.
“We ask funders, specifically the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria [GFATM] and the U.S. Government’s President’s Malaria Initiative, to be visionary and to step up funding for malaria control and elimination programs to contain the spread of artemisinin resistance in Africa — as they have done effectively in Southeast Asia since 2014,” says report co-author Ntuli Kapologwe, the director of preventive services at Tanzania’s Ministry of Health.
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Urgent action needed to stop spread of drug-resistant malaria, scientists warn
The malaria parasite is showing signs of resistance to artemisinin, the main drug used to fight the disease, in parts of Africa. A new report warns of potentially millions more deaths without immediate health policy changes. Henry Ridgwell has more from Bangkok.
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