Ryan Coogler’s superhero film “Black Panther,” based on the Marvel comic, is about a king of a technologically advanced African country. His superb fighting skills are enhanced by his mystical powers and Vibranium-crafted Black Panther suit. The film has created a buzz worldwide for its cinematography, special effects, great cast and especially its homage to African culture. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
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Month: February 2018
You may not be familiar with the name Kam Mak, but you’ve probably seen his work. In 2008, the Chinese-American artist was selected by the U.S. Postal Service to create an annual stamp through 2019 for its Celebrating Lunar New Year series.
The Year of the Dog stamp is his latest, and Mak says it highlights some of the holiday’s traditions.
“In the Year of the Dog stamp I decided to use three stalks of lucky bamboo. In Chinese tradition, three lucky bamboo symbolize first, blessing and luck, second is long life, and third is wealth. I also included the pasting of the Fu character, and that means blessing and luck.”
The Lunar New Year stamps date back to the 1980’s, when the Organization of Chinese Americans, now known as OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, began urging the postal service to issue a stamp honoring the contributions of Chinese Americans in the U.S.
Mak explains that Jean Chen, one of their members, led the way after she came across a book about the history of the Transcontinental Railroad with a photo showing only Caucasian workers celebrating the completion of the railroad in 1869.
“She was incensed to not see one Chinese American in any of those photos. And she felt that is not right. And she came up with the idea of lobbying the U.S. Postal Service to have some kind of stamp to pay honor to these Chinese Americans who helped build the railroad. That railroad transformed America and a lot of Chinese people gave their lives building that.”
The first Lunar New Year stamp, issued in 1992, was designed by Hawaii graphic artist, Clarence Lee. Due to its popularity, the U.S. Postal Service commissioned Lee to design a series depicting all 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. Mak’s series, which celebrates some of the holiday customs and traditions that have endured throughout time, incorporates Lee’s paper-cut designs.
His favorite, he says, features narcissus flowers, issued in 2010 for the Year of the Tiger. “It comes with lots of memory, because it was something that my grandmother would cultivate right before the lunar new year and as a little boy I always watched her doing it …And the fragrance from the flower always reminds me lunar new year is coming and always brings back, really fond memory being with my grandma.
Mak, who was born in Hong Kong, immigrated to America with his family in 1971, and grew up in New York City’s Chinatown. There, the 10-year-old faced language barriers and the challenge of adjusting to a new life.
“My Dad was a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant and he worked six days a week,” he said. “And my Mom was working in a sweatshop, six days a week, 12 hours a day. They struggled, because the pay’s really low … they struggled just to take care of us.”
Mak recalls during that time, gangs were rampant in Chinatown and trying to recruit new members. His friend joined a gang. “One day I heard that my friend got shot in a Chinese Theater,” Mak said. “And the whole scenario, really scared me straight. And I realized, ‘Oh boy, I want to make sure that I don’t end up being in that situation.’ And think from then on, I really started taking school very seriously. Because I think that was really my way out.”
Mak was not a good student, but he was good at making pictures. Before long, he got involved with the City Art Workshop, which allowed inner-city youth, like him, to explore the arts. Today, in his 50s, Mak is a professor at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, where he teaches painting. He’s also illustrated numerous books, including a retelling of an old Chinese folktale, The Dragon Prince, by renowned author Laurence Yep.
Eventually, Mak illustrated and wrote his own picture book called My Chinatown: One Year In Poems. It’s about a little boy growing up in Chinatown. Through an organization called Behind the Book, he shares his immigrant experience with New York City students.
“[They] are mostly Latinos and African American kids (from the) inner city. So besides reading them the book, I take them out to Chinatown and have them experience all the things that I experienced growing up … I just want to stir their imaginations and want them to learn about other cultures, besides what they only know in their own neighborhood.”
And he wants the people he meets to be proud of who they are, and not feel ashamed if they’re different. He recalled a talk at a public school in Chinatown.
“And so after my presentation to these group of kids, a bunch of Chinese kids came to me very emotionally (and said), ‘Kam, I’m so happy there’s a book that is about me.’ I say, ‘Yes, this book is about all our experiences, our similar experiences.’ So at that moment, I felt really emotional because, wow, the book itself had moved other kids, and they would not feel that they are isolated, that there’s actually a book that actually plays a very positive light about how they grew up and it’s something they can relate to. And so I think that’s a very positive thing.”
For Kam Mak, carrying on the legacy of the Lunar New Year stamps, and Chinese culture and heritage, is not only a huge responsibility, but a personal mission, as well.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) warns healthy pregnant women are undergoing unnecessary medical interventions at an alarming rate. Given the trend, WHO is launching new recommendations aimed at reducing potentially harmful interventions.
The organization reports most of the estimated 140 million annual births occur without complications. Yet, it says over the past 20 years there has been a significant rise in medical interventions previously used to avoid risks. These include oxytocin infusion to speed up labor and caesarean sections.
WHO says health providers tend to intervene medically when the rate of labor appears to be slower than what is considered normal. This is based on a long-held benchmark for cervical dilation to occur at a rate of one centimeter per hour.
Olufemi Oladapo, a medical officer in WHO’s department of Reproductive Health and Research, says every labor and childbirth is unique, and it is perfectly normal for some women to be slower than the prescribed rate of cervical dilation.
He says WHO has set another boundary for cervical dilation of up to five centimeters per hour during the first stage of labor until the woman is ready to push out the baby.
“It should not be longer than 12 hours in first-time mothers. And it should not be longer than 10 hours in subsequent labors…. So, as long as a woman is making some progress within that time frame, and the condition of the mother as well as the baby are reassuring, then there should be no reason for intervening,” Oladapo said.
WHO warns unnecessary labor and potentially harmful routine medical interventions are rampant in all parts of the world – in poor and rich countries alike. WHO’s new guidelines include 56 evidence-based recommendations on best care for mother and baby during labor and immediately after.
These include permitting a woman to have a companion of choice present during labor and childbirth; ensuring good communication between women and health providers; and allowing women to make decisions about their pain management, labor and birth positions.
The European Commission says social media giants Facebook and Twitter have only partially responded to its demands to bring their practices into line with EU consumer law.
The Commission asked the two companies a year ago to change their terms of service following complaints from people targeted by fraud or scams on social media websites.
The EU’s executive arm said Thursday that the firms only partly addressed “issues about their liability and about how users are informed of possible content removal or contract termination.”
It said changes proposed by Google+ appear to be in line with demands.
Europe’s consumer affairs commissioner, Vera Jourova, said “it is unacceptable that this is still not complete and it is taking so much time.” She called for those flouting consumer rules to face sanctions.
Shares in European plane maker Airbus flew higher on Thursday after the company reported improved earnings and was more upbeat about the future following problems to several of its key aircraft programs.
The company said that it surged to a net profit of 1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in the fourth quarter, from a loss of 816 million euros a year earlier, while revenue was stable around 23.8 billion euros. Airbus delivered a record 718 aircraft last year and expects that figure to rise further in 2018, to 800.
CEO Tom Enders credited “very good operational performance, especially in the last quarter.”
Shares in the company jumped about 10 percent on Thursday in Paris. Investors seem optimistic that the company is putting behind it the worst of its troubles with three airplane production programs.
Airbus, which is based in Toulouse, France, said it took another charge of 1.3 billion euros on its A400 military plane, which has had cost overruns for years. It said, however, that it had reached a deal with the governments that are buying the planes on a new delivery schedule that should rein in any new charges on the program.
The company also acknowledged that it had had more struggles with engines supplied by Pratt & Whitney for the A320neo, a narrow-body plane that’s popular with regional airlines. The supplier had had problems with the engines last year, which it fixed, but reported a new issue more recently that could affect 2018 deliveries, Airbus said.
Another of Airbus’ troubled plane models, the A380 superjumbo jet, now has a more stable outlook after the company reached a deal with Emirates airline that will cover the cost of production for years.
The various problems with these production programs risked overshadowing what was otherwise a strong year for Airbus in terms of earnings, as global demand for commercial aircraft grows. Airbus raised its dividend by 11 percent and said it expects one of its key earnings metrics — earnings before interest and tax — to rise 20 percent in 2018.
Lerone Bennett Jr., an African-American history author and former editor of Ebony magazine, has died at age 89.
A.A. Rayner and Sons Funeral Home in Chicago said Thursday that Bennett died Tuesday. Ebony magazine tells the Chicago Sun-Times that Bennett had vascular dementia.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Thursday called Bennett an “activist historian” and said “a global force for justice he was, a mighty pen he had.”
Bennett grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and worked on his high school newspaper and edited the student newspaper at Morehouse College, where he went to school with Martin Luther King Jr. Bennett went on to work at the Atlanta Daily World before joining Jet and then Ebony. He worked at Ebony for about 50 years.
“He was the guiding light for the editorial vision of Ebony,” Ebony CEO Linda Johnson Rice said Wednesday. “Lerone was not just essential in the formation of Ebony’s historic trajectory, he was a pillar in the black community.”
Bennett chronicled the civil rights movement. Among his books was “What Manner of Man, a Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” along with “Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America” and “The Shaping of Black America.”
Bennett took on national roles, including as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and as an early adviser to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. His footprints are in pavement at the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame in Atlanta.
Bennett’s wife, Gloria, was a Jet journalist. She died in 2009. He is survived by three children.
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After finishing her fourth Winter Games in Sochi, Kikkan Randall decided: It was time to have a baby. But the cross-country skiing champion wasn’t ready to give up her Olympic goals.
So, at 32, she looked at the calendar and plotted her window: 2016, a gap year. No World Cup circuit and no Olympics. If things worked out as planned, Randall could get pregnant, give birth and be back in competition and qualify for Pyeongchang.
It’s the kind of calculation many ambitious career women are forced to make. For the three-time World Cup Sprint Champion regarded as a pioneer of American women’s skiing, there was one more challenge ahead before retirement: Pushing herself to a fifth and final Olympics after having a child.
“I’d worked really hard to get the pinnacle of skiing … I knew I couldn’t wait another four years to start a family,” said Randall, now 35, whose record-setting resume has earned her the nickname “Kikkanimal.”
“I’d had an amazing career up to that point,” Randall said. “I just felt like, in a sport like cross-country, where it takes so many years to develop to your top potential, I didn’t want to have to make the choice of career or family. I had a feeling I would be able to come back to skiing stronger, but it was definitely an unknown. If I had to pick one season to miss, it was a good one.”
Randall did get pregnant in 2015. Her son, Breck, was born the following spring . She is the only mother on the U.S. Olympic Team, which also has 20 fathers this year.
When Randall returned to competition in 2016, she wasn’t the only new mom on skis. Randall and her friend and competitor, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen of Finland, gave birth within two weeks of each other. Marit Bjoergen of Norway — regarded as the best woman in the sport — had her child four months earlier. French skiers Aurora Jean, Anouk Faivre-Picon and Caroline Hugue, and Slovenia’s Katja Visnar had new babies, too.
Most are competing in Pyeongchang, and have had to balance the challenges of parenthood and career with the help of fellow athletes, friends and family — and not always with the support of their workplace.
“It’s a sport that requires so much time,” said Randall’s husband, former Canadian race skier Jeff Ellis . “It’s impressive what they’ve done as moms.”
For Randall, skiing has often come first. When she married in 2008, there was training season to consider — along with the Alaska spring. She and Ellis wed at the beginning of May, shortly after both seasons began. One of her coaches officiated the ceremony.
After a couple of tries, Randall conceived in August 2015. She trained throughout her pregnancy, sticking to a shortened version of her twice-a-day routine, including running through her seventh month, interval training to keep her heart rate up, and weight training — which got her some funny looks in the gym as her belly grew.
Randall delivered Breck in April and , like many moms, was back at work after six weeks, missing only a month of the training season. She would pump breast milk between workouts, time feedings around her training, and bring Breck along in a baby jogger for hikes and runs. Easing the transition was a supportive husband, who works only in the winter, and Randall’s parents, who live close by in Anchorage.
“In today’s world it’s kind of the only way you can do it,” said her father, Ronn Randall, 68. “This is just a little bit on steroids here. But when she discussed it with us, I thought it was a completely natural thing to do. I knew it could have an impact on her career, but you don’t want a career to have an impact on your life, either.”
When Randall returned to the World Cup circuit in 2016, Breck was also in tow, along with both sets of grandparents. With several moms competing, race organizers set up a baby room at venues for breastfeeding or changing diapers. Extra credentials were made available for caretakers, who were also able to take advantage of the team rate for accommodations.
“It was the first time they’d ever done something like that,” Randall said.
There was also a new camaraderie among the ski moms, who set up a Facebook group for support and updates.
Randall had hoped to bring Breck to Pyeongchang for her final Games, but the cost of family housing proved too expensive. The 22-month old is with her husband’s parents in Canada.
Randall said she sees an opportunity for the International Olympic Committee to do more to support athletes who are also parents.
“I haven’t experienced it from the men’s side, but there are unique challenges when you’re a mother,” she said. “We’re not talking about 500 athletes here; we’re talking about maybe 10 mothers, more if we include fathers, and not everyone’s going to take advantage of it. It allows families to be close.”
IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said assistance for athletes is typically provided by their national Olympic committees.
Still, Ellis said after watching his wife over the past two years, it’s doable.
“You don’t have to choose one or the other,” he said. “If anything, she’s a more balanced athlete than she was prior to [having Breck].”
While she is hopeful for her Olympic prospects this year, as she heads into retirement, Randall said she already considers her decision “a really successful experiment.” She wants to encourage other women athletes who may also find themselves at this point.
“I’m blending the two most important things in my life: My family and my skiing,” Randall said. “It’s great to have another thing turn out so well.”
Until recently, Javier, a 60-year-old line cook, couldn’t afford a smartphone.
Now, thanks to a Silicon Valley company, Javier has a Galaxy S8, one of Samsung’s high-end smartphones. Javier said he relies on it for everything.
Once a month, he walks into a mobile phone store near San Francisco and makes a cash payment. If he didn’t, the phone would be remotely locked. No YouTube, no Skype calls, no Facebook. He has never missed a payment.
WATCH: Pay-As-You-Go Smartphone Gives the Poor Access to Better Technology
Smartphones out of many people’s reach
Around the world, people rely more and more on their smartphones for connecting to the internet, and yet for many, the device is still cost prohibitive. For the roughly 1 in 10 American consumers without financial identities — no banking history or credit scores — it is difficult to get smartphones on one of the low-cost payment plans offered by the major carriers.
Javier, who declined to give his last name because he is an undocumented immigrant, is on his third phone from PayJoy, a company founded by former Google employees. PayJoy offers a pay-as-you-go model for the smartphone market aimed particularly at customers with little or bad credit histories.
“We work with immigrants from all over the world coming to the U.S., and we work with Americans who are just outside the financial system,” said Doug Ricket, PayJoy’s chief executive, who worked in the pay-as-you-go solar industry in Africa. “They can afford $10 a week, and they can get a great smartphone. And for PayJoy, we say, ‘Welcome to the 21st century and get all the modern apps.’”
A new way to figure out a person’s credit risk
PayJoy figures out a person’s risk differently than most companies. A customer provides a Facebook profile, a phone number and some sort of official government ID. PayJoy decides the person’s risk level before offering him or her credit for a phone. Then, a customer picks a payment plan and makes a down payment. PayJoy’s research has found that a Facebook profile can be useful in establishing a person’s identity.
“We’re starting from this pool of people who have no traditional credit score and we’re saying for most of them, we can actually find something that the credit agencies are not finding,” Ricket said.
No payment means no YouTube
If a customer doesn’t pay by 5 p.m. the day payment is due, PayJoy remotely locks the phone. A customer can only make emergency calls or call PayJoy’s customer service. The customer can see that friends are texting or messaging on Facebook, but cannot open the phone to read the messages.
“Now, when we look internationally, we see more people going from a flip phone to smartphones, and people upgrading from a really basic level to one that can handle Facebook, maps and Instagram,” Ricket said.
If customers stop paying, they can return the phone without penalty. But if they do pay off the phone, they can qualify for an even better one. PayJoy makes its money by charging monthly interest — as high as 50 percent in some cases — on the retail price of the phone.
Expanding into Africa, Asia and India
The company is operating in the United States and Mexico and has plans to expand into Kenya, Tanzania, southeast Asia and India. So far, PayJoy offers only smartphones running Android, the operating system created by Google, but Ricket hopes to offer iPhones one day.
PayJoy’s vision is to be not just a smartphone firm, but a financing company, offering customers a way to use their phones as collateral to pay off televisions and other household goods.
“Once the customer gets the smartphone, they can potentially use that smartphone either by buying the smartphone with PayJoy or just collateralize an existing smartphone to finance a TV or a sofa,” Ricket said.
If PayJoy takes off, people in emerging markets may be able to upgrade their phone choices, and have a new way to finance their purchases.
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In the U.S. and around the world, many poor people don’t have access to smartphones. But a Silicon Valley company is offering phones to customers in the U.S. and Mexico who pay in installments. If they don’t pay, the phone is turned off remotely. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
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High gas prices and poor fuel economy led to the decline of sport utility vehicle sales in the United States in the mid-2000s, a time when customers preferred smaller, more affordable cars, some with new electric motor technology. But now, SUV’s have made a comeback, as VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports on the floor of the Nation’s Largest Auto Show in Chicago.
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American skier Mikaela Shiffrin won the gold medal in the women’s giant slalom event Thursday at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea.
Shiffrin beat Norway’s Ragnhild Mowinckel by nearly four-tenths of a second on her final run to win her second career Olympic gold medal, following her triumph in the slalom in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Italy’s Federica Brignone finished third to win the bronze medal.
Thursday’s women’s giant slalom was staged after high winds and frigid temperatures forced officials to postpone the event earlier this week.
Norwegian makes history
Elsewhere on the slopes, Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway made history twice in winning the gold medal in the men’s downhill: at 35 years old, he is the oldest Alpine skiing champion in the history of the Winter Games, and he is the first Norwegian to win the downhill event. Compatriot Kjetil Jansrud won the sliver medal, while Swiss world champion Beat Feuz finished in third.
In women’s cross-country skiing, Ragnhild Haga took home the gold in the 10,000-kilometer race, with Charlotte Kalla of Sweden taking the silver medal. Norway’s Marit Bjoergen and Krista Parmakoski finished tied for third with identical times of 25 minutes, 32.4 seconds.
On the ice
On the ice rink, Germany’s Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot won the gold in the pairs figure skating event in a brilliant, crowd-pleasing performance. The pair scored 159 points in Thursday’s free skate program, breaking their own world record in a performance that pushed them from fourth place after a shaky short program.
Chinese pair Sui Wenjing and Han Cong took home the silver, while Canadians Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford won bronze to add to the gold medals they earned in the team competition.
France’s Pierre Vaultier won his second consecutive gold medal in the men’s snowboard cross, outdueling silver medalist Jarryd Hughes of Australia and Spain’s Regino Hernandez, who won the bronze.
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As competition day gets closer, Nigeria’s bobsled team members say they are super excited about their Winter Olympic debut in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The team, which is making history as Africa’s first bobsled team to compete in the Winter Games, is led by Nigerian-American Seun Adigun, a hurdler who represented Nigeria in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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The first blood test to help doctors diagnose traumatic brain injuries has won U.S. government approval.
The move means Banyan Biomarkers can commercialize its test, giving the company an early lead in the biotech industry’s race to find a way to diagnose concussions.
The test doesn’t detect concussions and the approval won’t immediately change how patients with suspected concussions or other brain trauma are treated. But Wednesday’s green light by the Food and Drug Administration “is a big deal because then it opens the door and accelerates technology,” said Michael McCrea, a brain injury expert at Medical College of Wisconsin.
The test detects two proteins present in brain cells that can leak into the bloodstream following a blow to the head. Banyan’s research shows the test can detect them up within 12 hours of injury. It’s designed to help doctors quickly determine which patients with suspected concussions may have brain bleeding or other brain injury.
Patients with a positive test would need a CT scan to confirm the results and determine if surgery or other treatment is needed. The test will first be used in emergency rooms, possibly as soon as later this year, but Banyan’s hope is that it will eventually be used on battlefields and football fields.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the test fits with the agency’s goals for delivering new technologies to patients and reducing unnecessary radiation exposure.
The test “sets the stage for a more modernized standard of care for testing of suspected cases,” Gottlieb said in a statement.
Traumatic brain injuries affect an estimated 10 million people globally each year; at least 2 million of them are treated in U.S. emergency rooms. They often get CT scans to detect bleeding or other abnormalities. The scans expose patients to radiation, but in many patients with mild brain injuries including concussions, abnormalities don’t show up on these imaging tests.
With Department of Defense funding, Banyan’s research shows its Brain Trauma Indicator can accurately pick up brain trauma later found on CT scans. It also shows that absence of the two proteins in the test is a good indication that CT scans will be normal. That means patients with negative blood tests can avoid CT scans and unnecessary radiation exposure, said Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, a University of Rochester emergency medicine professor involved in Banyan’s research.
Bazarian called the test “a huge step” toward devising a blood test that can detect brain injuries including concussions.
Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and other brain injury experts say the test isn’t sensitive enough to rule out concussions.
“This may be a beginning. It’s not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Koroshetz said.
That prize would be a test that could detect and guide treatment for concussions and traumatic brain injuries, similar to a blood test that hospitals commonly use to evaluate suspected heart attacks, Koroshetz said.
“That’s what we’d like to have for the brain,” he said.
San Diego-based Banyan has partnered with French firm bioMerieux SA to market the test to hospitals using that company’s’ blood analyzing machines.
Other companies are developing similar blood tests to detect brain injuries. Abbott has licensed both protein biomarkers from Banyan and is developing its own blood tests. BioDirection is developing a test involving one of the proteins in Banyan’s test plus another one and using a portable device that can yield results from a single drop of blood in less than two minutes.
Quanterix is also working to develop a blood test to diagnose concussions and other brain injuries. It has licensed the use of both proteins in Banyan’s test to be used with its own technology.
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A Texas elementary school teacher who died almost a week after getting sick from the flu became a talking point online after her husband said she didn’t immediately fill her prescription for an antiviral drug after deeming the $116 insurance co-pay too high.
While her husband told the Wall Street Journal that he picked up the prescription the day after she refused it and she then started taking the medication, Heather Holland, 38, died three days later on Feb. 4.
Doctors told The Associated Press that while it’s ideal to start taking antiviral medication as quickly as possible, it’s no guarantee that one’s condition will not drastically worsen.
Antivirals make it “not zero, but less likely” that complications will develop, said Dr. William Schaffner, infectious diseases specialist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, who added, “antivirals are not a magic potion.”
Frank Holland of Willow Park, just west of Fort Worth, told the newspaper that his wife, a second-grade teacher, came home feeling a bit sick Jan. 29. The mother of two went to work in nearby Weatherford on Jan. 30 but by evening had a fever.
She went to the doctor on Jan. 31. Frank Holland said a rapid flu test was positive for influenza B. The doctor wrote her a prescription for oseltamivir phosphate, a generic form of the antiviral medication Tamiflu.
Frank Holland told the Wall Street Journal that they had the money, but she was frugal and didn’t want to fill it.
She went to a Fort Worth hospital on Feb. 2. The following day, blood tests showed she had sepsis, a complication of infections, he said.
Antiviral drugs – when taken within 48 hours after becoming sick – can lessen symptoms, shorten the time one is sick by about one day and reduce complications.
“There are people who are going to do very well, regardless of getting Tamiflu or not. There are people that are going to do very poorly, regardless of getting Tamiflu or not. And then there’s kind of the middle segment of the population where Tamiflu really may push them to the right outcome,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease expert with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston.
Dr. Trish Perl, chief of infectious diseases at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said that “in some cases it may be useful” to give patients an antiviral even after the 48-hour onset.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the flu shot is the best way to prevent seasonal flu. Frank Holland said he couldn’t remember whether she got a flu shot this season. Generally, he said, they’ve both been “pretty healthy.”
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When stockpiles of yellow fever vaccine run low, partial doses are effective, according to a new study.
The report on the vaccine, which currently is in short supply, comes as officials in Brazil attempt to contain an outbreak with what they describe as the largest-ever mass vaccination campaign using partial doses.
Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease found in tropical Africa and South and Central America. Severe cases can cause jaundice and death, but most cases involve fever, muscle pain and vomiting.
Congo outbreak, experiment
During a major outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2016, the government aimed to prevent the disease from spreading in the capital, Kinshasa. Health officials launched a mass vaccination campaign targeting 7.6 million people.
But the outbreak had depleted vaccine stockpiles. Hoping to stretch the available supply, the World Health Organization reviewed the small number of available studies on using reduced doses and recommended using one-fifth of a dose per person.
It seemed to work.
Researchers took blood samples from more than 700 people before and after they received the partial dose. In the new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly all of those vaccinated with the lower dose developed enough antibodies to the virus to prevent infection.
“That was the encouraging thing, that this can be done as a potential way — when there’s supply limitations on the vaccine — to help potentially control an outbreak,” said study co-author Erin Staples at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hundreds infected
More than 350 people have become infected with yellow fever in Brazil since late last year, and health officials have launched a campaign targeting nearly 24 million people with a one-fifth dose of the vaccine.
Staples says the new study is good news for controlling outbreaks like Brazil’s in the short term. But, she notes, “We still need some information about how long immunity will last.”
A full dose of yellow fever vaccine provides lifelong immunity. Researchers will continue to study how long people who received partial doses are protected.
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Human Rights Watch has said world soccer’s governing body must tackle rights abuses in Russia’s Chechnya region now that one of the teams in this year’s World Cup in Russia has chosen Chechnya as the location for its base camp.
Rights groups and Western governments allege that the authorities in Chechnya repress their political opponents, discriminate against women and persecute sexual minorities, all allegations that Chechnya’s leaders deny.
The region is not hosting any World Cup matches, but the world governing body, FIFA, said that the Egyptian national team will use the Chechen capital, Grozny, as their base between matches.
“This suddenly makes Chechnya, which was not on the list of Russia’s World Cup regions, one of the World Cup sites,” Tatyana Lokshina, Russia Program Director for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters Television.
“Chechnya has been run by Ramzan Kadyrov, a ruthless strongman who with the blessing of the Kremlin has been ruling it with an iron fist through brutal repression for over a decade,” said Lokshina.
“FIFA must understand that the situation with human rights in Chechnya is indeed so dire that unless something gets done without delay it’s going to cast an ominous shadow on the World Cup,” she said.
Contacted by Reuters on Wednesday, a spokesman for Kadyrov said the stance adopted by Human Rights Watch was unfounded.
“These conclusions are not based on anything, they are not grounded in the real situation in the Chechen Republic,” said the spokesman, Alvi Karimov.
“I can state with full responsibility that the Chechen Republic is a more worthy location than all the places where World Cups have been conducted up to his point.”
FIFA said in an emailed statement to Reuters that “there should be no doubt that in line with its Human Rights Policy, FIFA condemns discrimination of any form.”
“When FIFA was confronted with the incidents in Chechnya last year, we strongly condemned them,” it added. FIFA confirmed it had received a letter from Human Rights Watch over the matter and said it would respond shortly.
The Egyptian team manager, Ihab Leheta, said that the choice of Grozny was endorsed by FIFA, and that the city had the right facilities for the squad.
He told Reuters any reservations about Chechnya as a venue should be addressed to FIFA and not to the Egyptian team. “For us the place is good and calm, the people are welcoming us,” Leheta said of the Chechen capital.
According to FIFA, the Egypt squad will stay in a newly built hotel in Grozny and train at the nearby stadium, Akhmat Arena. It is named after Chechnya’s former leader, and Ramzan Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a 2004 bomb attack.
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Ride-hailing giant Uber’s full-year net loss widened to $4.5 billion in 2017 as the company endured a tumultuous year that included multiple scandals, a lawsuit alleging the theft of trade secrets and the replacement of its CEO.
The results also showed that Uber cut its fourth-quarter net loss by 25 percent from the third quarter as new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi moves to make the company profitable ahead of a planned initial public stock offering sometime next year.
The full-year loss grew from $2.8 billion in 2016, a year with results skewed by a gain from the sale of Uber’s unprofitable business in China. Uber also said its U.S. ride-hailing market share fell from 82 percent at the start of last year to 70 percent in the fourth quarter. Uber said the share has now stabilized.
Gross revenue for the year rose 85 percent over 2016, to $37 billion.
For the fourth quarter, Uber’s net loss was $1.1 billion, down from $1.46 billion it lost in the third quarter. Bookings from fares rose 14 percent to just over $11 billion for the quarter.
While the losses are significant, the results still are positive for Uber with revenue rising and losses falling in three of four quarters in 2017, said Rohit Kulkarni, managing director of SharesPost, a research group focused on privately held companies.
The numbers show that Uber under Khosrowshahi is on a path toward profitability and a sustainable economic model, Kulkarni said. “If you draw that out further, a year from now, this could be a significant IPO waiting to happen,” he said.
Uber considers adjusted earnings before taxes as a better indicator of its financial performance rather than net earnings based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which include losses for accounting purposes. On an adjusted basis, excluding stock-based compensation, legal costs, taxes and depreciation, the company lost $2.2 billion for the full year. The fourth-quarter adjusted loss was $475 million, down from $606 million to in the third quarter.
San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc.’s results are difficult to report because only pieces are released. Khosrowshahi detailed them on a conference call with investors Tuesday, and the company made some results public by giving them to a website called The Information.
A person briefed on the results provided some numbers and confirmed the accuracy of The Information’s story to The Associated Press on Wednesday. The person didn’t want to be identified because Uber remains a private company.
Last year was a particularly bad one for Uber with its reputation tarnished by the company’s acknowledgement of rampant sexual harassment within its ranks, a yearlong cover-up of a major computer break-in, and the use of duplicitous software to thwart government regulators.
CEO Travis Kalanick was ousted in June and replaced by Khosrowshahi in August.
Earlier this month Uber ended the autonomous vehicle trade secrets lawsuit filed by Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo for a payment of Uber stock valued by Waymo at $245 million.
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Two babies, born 15 months apart to the same young woman overcoming opioid addiction. Two very different treatments.
Sarah Sherbert’s first child was whisked away to a hospital special-care nursery for two weeks of treatment for withdrawal from doctor-prescribed methadone that her mother continued to use during her pregnancy. Nurses hesitated to let Sherbert hold the girl and hovered nervously when she visited to breast-feed.
Born just 15 months later and 30 miles away at a different South Carolina hospital, Sherbert’s second child was started on medicine even before he showed any withdrawal symptoms and she was allowed to keep him in her room to encourage breast-feeding and bonding. His hospital stay was just a week.
“It was like night and day,” Sherbert said.
The different approaches highlight a sobering fact: The surge has outpaced the science, and no one knows the best way to treat the opioid epidemic’s youngest patients.
Trying to cope with the rising numbers of affected infants, hospitals around the United States are taking a scattershot approach to treating the tremors, hard-to-soothe crying, diarrhea and other hallmark symptoms of newborn abstinence syndrome.
“It’s a national problem,” said Dr. Lori Devlin, a University of Louisville newborn specialist. “There’s no gold-standard treatment.”
With help from $1 million in National Institutes of Health funding, researchers are seeking to change that by identifying the practices that could lead to a national standard for evidence-based treatment. A rigorous multi-center study comparing treatments and outcomes in hard-hit areas could start by the end of this year, said Dr. Matthew Gillman, who is helping lead the effort.
“When there’s so much variability in practice, not everyone can be doing the very best thing,” Gillman said.
Once the umbilical cord is cut, babies born to opioid users are at risk for developing withdrawal symptoms. By some estimates, one infant is born with the condition in the U.S. every 25 minutes. The numbers have tripled since 2008 at a rate that has solid medical research comparing treatments and outcomes struggling to keep pace.
Not all opioid-exposed babies develop the syndrome, but drug use late in a pregnancy increases the chances and can cause dependence in fetuses and newborns. These infants are not born with addiction, which experts consider a disease involving compulsive, harmful drug-seeking behavior. But the sudden withdrawal of opioids from their mothers may cause increased production of neurotransmitters, which can disrupt the nervous system and overstimulate bodily functions. Symptoms can last for months.
The condition can result from a mother’s use of illicit drugs, but it also can stem from mothers being prescribed methadone or other anti-addiction medicine. Doctors believe the benefits of that treatment for the mothers outweigh any risks to their infants.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t routinely track the condition, but the agency’s most recent data — from 2014 — indicates that the syndrome affects nearly 11 in every 1,000 U.S. births. The CDC said it is working with the March of Dimes and several states to get a better picture of the number of affected infants and how they fare developmentally and academically into childhood.
Some studies have suggested possible increased risks for developmental delays and behavior problems, but no research has been able to determine if that’s due to mothers’ drug use during pregnancy, infants’ treatment after birth or something completely unrelated. And there’s no definitive evidence that these children fare worse than unexposed youngsters.
“It’s very, very frustrating” not knowing those answers, Devlin said. “It’s such a difficult population to go back and do research on. They’re people who often don’t trust the system, often people who have had lots of trauma in their lives.”
Treatment aims to reduce or even prevent symptoms. Some hospitals use morphine drops, while others use methadone and sometimes sedatives. Some send the babies straight to newborn intensive care units and some focus on comfort care from moms, allowing them to room-in with their infants. A recently published Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center analysis linked rooming-in with less medication use and shorter hospital stays for infants, but it can be difficult if mothers are still in the throes of addiction.
A Florida hospital is even testing tiny acupuncture needles on affected infants.
Many hospitals use a 40-year-old scoring system to measure 21 symptoms and frame diagnosis and treatment length, but some have created their own scales.
The Government Accountability Office’s health care team has called for federal action to address the issue, saying the current recommendations from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department amount to a half-baked strategy lacking priorities and a timeline for implementation.
The department’s recommendations include education for doctors and nurses to teach them how to manage affected infants, along with an emphasis on non-drug treatment.
Katherine Iritani, director of the GAO’s health care team, said government officials have since indicated that they are convening experts to develop and finalize a plan by March 15.
“We’ll review it and make sure it’s responsive to our recommendations,” she said.
A separate GAO report released last week recommended beefed-up government guidance to help states implement programs that ensure safe care for opioid-affected infants and treatment for parents still struggling with drug use.
Medicaid pays for more than 80 percent of costs for treating affected babies, totaling about $1 billion in 2012, the GAO has found.
At Greenville Memorial Hospital, where Sarah Sherbert’s son was delivered two years ago, babies born to methadone users are given that drug before symptoms start and are sent home with a supply to continue treatment.
Clemson University research has showed that approach could reduce hospital stays by nearly half, to an average of eight days costing $11,000 compared with the state average of 15 days at a cost of $45,000.
“The baby has already been exposed to methadone for nine months so adding four to five weeks and making weaning gentle instead of quitting cold turkey we think won’t have any additional effect on babies’ brain development,” said Dr. Jennifer Hudson, who developed the treatment approach.
Sherbert, 31, said her drug use began eight years ago after she was prescribed opioid painkillers for injuries from a car accident. She was on methadone prescribed by her doctor when her daughter, now 3, was born.
She later lost custody after relapsing and her parents are caring for the children. Sherbert said she has been sober for a year and recently was promoted to supervisor at her job. She said she’s determined to get them back.
“I’ve worked so hard and come such a long way,” she said. “Seeing their little faces — that’s worth every bit of it.”