In 1973, William Friedkin made one of the most iconic horror movies of all time – The Exorcist. Forty-five years later, he brings us the story of real exorcisms. Azra Dolberry from VOA’s Bosian Service reports.
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Day: May 27, 2018
Space X recently launched another rocket from California carrying satellites into space – accelerating interest by more businesses and research facilities that now view space as an opportunity. At this year’s Milken Institute Global Conference, those in the space business describe why orbiting the Earth is so exciting. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has details from Los Angeles.
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Another person has died in Congo of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities to 12, said the country’s Health Ministry.
The new death happened in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province, said the Health Ministry statement released Sunday. There are also four new suspected cases in the province, said the statement.
Congo now has 35 confirmed Ebola cases.
Health workers have identified people who have been in contact with confirmed Ebola cases in three areas in Equateur province, the rural areas of Bikoro and Iboko and Mdbandaka, the provincial capital of 1.2 million that is a transport hub on the Congo River.
Congo’s health minister Saturday flew by helicopter to Bikoro and Iboko to see the deployment of health workers who will be tracing those who have been in contact with Ebola cases and inoculating them with a new experimental vaccine. Health minister Oly Ilunga was accompanied by representatives of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The vaccination campaign in those rural is to begin Monday.
The vaccination campaign is already under way in Mbandaka, where four Ebola cases have been confirmed. About 100 health workers have been vaccinated there as front-line workers face high risk from the virus, which is spread via contact with the bodily fluids of those infected, including the dead.
The next few weeks are crucial in determining whether the outbreak can be brought under control, according to the World Health Organization. Complicating factors include its spread to a major city, the fact that health workers have been infected and the existence of three or four “separate epicenters” that make finding and monitoring contacts of infected people more difficult.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting in Geneva on Saturday that ”I am personally committed to ensuring that we do everything we can to stop this outbreak as soon as possible.”
WHO is using a “ring vaccination” approach, targeting the contacts of people infected or suspected of infection and then the contacts of those people. More than 600 contacts have been identified.
WHO also is accelerating efforts with nine neighboring countries to try to prevent the Ebola outbreak from spreading there, saying the regional risk is high. It has warned against international travel and trade restrictions.
This is Congo’s ninth Ebola outbreak since 1976, when the hemorrhagic fever was first identified.
There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
New shops appear in New York City every day, but Phluid Project, which recently opened its doors on Broadway, is different. One of the first gender-fluid boutiques in the world, Phluid Project sells clothing for men, women and everyone in between. Both the clothes and the mannequins here are gender-neutral, and as an added selling point, its store owners say the prices are more than affordable. Elena Wolf visited the one-of-a-kind store, where no one feels out of place.
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Streams flowing in the south of England may hold clues to the search for life on Mars. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Smog, industrial waste and contaminated water are just a few of the environmental problems facing many of the biggest cities today. But there is another type of pollution that’s becoming increasingly prevalent in our cities: noise pollution. Medical experts say people exposed to constant noise can suffer from a variety of psychological and physical ailments. As Saleem Shayan reports, it’s a particularly serious problem in megacities like Karachi in Pakistan where noise is a constant companion.
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Russian state gas giant Gazprom said Saturday it had signed a protocol with the Turkish government on a planned gas pipeline and agreed with Turkish firm Botas to end an arbitration dispute over the terms of gas supplies.
The protocol concerned the land-based part of the transit leg of the TurkStream gas pipeline, which Gazprom said meant that work to implement it could now begin.
Turkey had delayed issuing a permit for the Russian company to start building the land-based parts of the pipeline, which, if completed, would allow Moscow to reduce its reliance on Ukraine as a transit route for its gas supplies to Europe.
A source said in February the permit problem might be related to talks between Gazprom and Botas about a possible discount for Russian gas.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said earlier Saturday that Turkey and Russia had reached a retroactive agreement for a 10.25 percent discount on the natural gas Ankara buys from Moscow.
Gazprom said in the Saturday statement, without elaborating, that the dispute with Botas would be settled out of court.