11/28/2018 | Page 2 of 2

New Cases of HIV Rise in Eastern Europe, Decline in the West

By Uponsci | 11/28/2018 | No Comments | Science

More than 130,000 people were newly diagnosed with HIV last year in Eastern Europe, the highest rate ever for the region, while the number of new cases in Western Europe declined, global public health experts said on Wednesday.

European Union and European Economic Area countries saw a reduction in 2017 rates, mainly driven by a 20 percent drop since 2015 among men who have sex with men. That left Europe’s overall increasing trend less steep than previously.

All told, almost 160,000 people were diagnosed in Europe with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional office for Europe.

“It’s hard to talk about good news in the face of another year of unacceptably high numbers of people infected with HIV,” said Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the WHO regional office.

Calling on governments and health officials to recognize the seriousness of the situation, she urged them: “Scale up your response now.”

The United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS warned in July that complacency was starting to stall the fight against the global epidemic, with the pace of progress not matching what is needed.

Some 37 million people worldwide are infected with HIV.

The WHO’s European Region is made up of 53 countries with a combined population of nearly 900 million. Around 508 million of those live in the 28 member states of the European Union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The joint report said one reason for the persistence of HIV in Europe is that many people infected with the virus are diagnosed late, meaning they are more likely to have already passed it on and are also at an advanced stage of infection.

It also found that in the European region, men suffer disproportionately from HIV, with 70 percent of new HIV cases diagnosed in 2017 occurring in men.

Since the start of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, more than 77 million people worldwide have become infected with HIV.

Almost half of them – 35.4 million – have died of AIDS.
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‘The Rider’ Tops Gotham Awards, Kicking Off Awards Season

By Uponent | 11/28/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

In the first major soiree of Hollywood’s awards season, Chloe Zhao’s elegiac, lyrical Western “The Rider” took best feature film at the 28th annual Gotham Awards.

It was a surprising, but far from baffling conclusion to the Gothams, the New York-based gala for independent film, held Monday night at Cipriani’s Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. The awards were generally spread around, including a pair of prizes for Bo Burnham’s coming-of-age directing debut “Eighth Grade” and Paul Schrader’s impassioned Catholic drama “First Reformed.”

But the night’s final honor went to “The Rider,” the second feature by the Chinese-born Zhao, despite no previous awards on the night and only one other nomination: an audience award nod alongside 14 other films. Some may have forgotten it was eligible. Having first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, “The Rider” was nominated by the Gotham’s West Coast corollary, the Independent Film Spirit Awards, in February as one of last year’s best.

Zhao, too, wasn’t in attendance (she is prepping her next film). And few looked more surprised than the producers — Bert Hamelinck and Mollye Asher — who accepted the award. “This is going to be the worst acceptance speech,” stuttered Hamelinck.

Yet “The Rider,” filmed with Lakota cowboys on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, persevered over a few Oscar favorites, including Yorgos Lanthimos’ period romp “The Favourite” and Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

“The Favourite” still went home with two honorary awards: an award for its acting ensemble, led by Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz; and a tribute to Weisz. Jenkins applauded the choice of “The Rider’’ with a standing ovation and a retweet of his earlier praise of the film, in which he called it “ravishing, sublime imagery paired with deeply earnest storytelling.”

Unpredictability pervaded the ceremony, especially for the winners, themselves. When the Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” won the Gothams’ audience award (not typically a category for documentaries but “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” proved a modest summer blockbuster), its director Morgan Neville was stunned, partially since he had already lost best documentary to RaMell Ross’ “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”

“To say this was a surprise would be an extreme understatement,” Neville said. “Since I didn’t know we were nominated.”

As an Oscar bellwether, the Gothams, presented by the not-for-profit Independent Film Project , are of little value. Their nominees are chosen by small juries of filmmakers and film critics before some of the fall’s films have been seen.

But in the early going, any momentum helps an underdog Oscar campaign, and that seemed especially true of “First Reformed” and “Eighth Grade” — both releases from A24, the indie distributor of “Moonlight” and “Lady Bird.”

“First Reformed” star Ethan Hawke took best actor and its 72-year-old writer-director Schrader (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull”) won best screenplay.

“Fourteen years. Best attendance. Sunday school,” said Schrader, who chose filmmaking over the seminary but remained gripped by his Calvinist upbringing. “I earned this award.”

Burnham’s “Eighth Grade,” starring 15-year-old Elsie Fisher, won for both breakthrough director and breakthrough actor.

“I’m pretty sure this was a glitch in the system or something,” began Fisher, who said she had been considering giving up on acting before Burnham cast her. “Me from two years ago would be really proud of me right now.”

Tributes were also paid to “At Eternity’s Gate” star Willem Dafoe, “22 July” director Paul Greengrass and RadicalMedia founder Jon Kamen. But one of the night’s abiding themes was who wasn’t there. Toni Collette, star of the horror film “Hereditary,” wasn’t on hand to collect her best actress award. And Weisz was the only star of “The Favourite” there for the film’s ensemble award.

Weisz held up cardboard paddles of Colman and Stone’s faces and read statements from each claiming that they were the real standout in Lanthimos’ triangular tale of a power struggle in Queen Anne’s 18th century court.

“Considering that I’m the only one to turn up,” Weisz concluded, “I think I might be the favorite.”
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National Board of Review Names ‘Green Book’ Year’s Best Film

By Uponent | 11/28/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

The feel-good road-trip drama Green Book was named the best film of the year, and its star, Viggo Mortensen, best actor, by the National Board of Review in one of the first in a parade of awards season honors.

The NBR awards, announced Tuesday, gave the Oscar hopes of Universal’s Green Book a jolt. The film, directed by Peter Farrelly (who typically makes broader comedies like There’s Something About Mary with his brother, Bobby) was declared an Oscar favorite after taking the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

But in two weeks of release, it has struggled to latch on at the box office, and some critics have called its portrayal of race relations old-fashioned and criticized it for relying on “white savior” tropes. It stars Mahershala Ali as classical pianist Don Shirley, who tours the Deep South in 1962 with a racist Italian-American driver played by Mortensen.

Bradley Cooper’s lauded remake A Star Is Born also took several top awards, including best director for Cooper, best actress for Lady Gaga and best supporting actor for Sam Elliott.

Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk took prizes for Jenkins’ screenplay and for Regina King’s supporting performance.

Though sometimes called an Oscar harbinger, the National Board of Review, a 109-year-old organization of film enthusiasts, academics and professionals, has typically deviated from eventual best picture winners. It last year chose Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Before that, its top winners were Manchester By the Sea, Mad Max: Fury Road and A Most Violent Year.

On Monday night, the Gotham Awards, which honor independent film, selected Chloe Zhao’s The Rider as its best feature film of the year. Critics groups will soon start weighing in with their picks, starting with the New York Film Critics Circle on Thursday.

Other prizes from the National Board of Review included best ensemble for the cast of the romantic-comedy hit Crazy Rich Asians; best documentary to the popular Ruth Bader Ginsberg chronicle RBG; best screenplay to Paul Schrader’s First Reformed; best animated feature to Incredibles 2; best foreign language film to Cold War.

The awards will be handed out in on January 8 in New York at a gala hosted by Willie Geist.
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UNICEF: Millions of Poor City Children Worse Off Than Rural Peers

By Uponsci | 11/28/2018 | No Comments | Science

Millions of poor urban children are more likely to die before their fifth birthday than those living in rural areas, according to a U.N. study released Tuesday that challenges popular assumptions behind the global urbanization trend.

The UNICEF research found not all children in cities benefited from the so-called urban advantage — the idea that higher incomes, better infrastructure and proximity to services make for better lives.

“For rural parents, at face-value, the reasons to migrate to cities seem obvious: better access to jobs, health care and education opportunities for their children,” said Laurence Chandy, UNICEF director of data, research and policy.

“But not all urban children are benefiting equally; we find evidence of millions of children in urban areas who fare worse than their rural peers.”

Although most urban children benefit from living in cities, the study identified 4.3 million globally who were more likely to die before age five than their rural counterparts, and said 13.4 million were less likely to complete primary school.

“Children should be a focus of urban planning, yet in many cities they are forgotten, with millions of children cut off from social services in urban slums and informal settlements,” said Chandy in a statement.

About 1 billion people are estimated to live in slums globally, hundreds of millions of them children, according to the U.N. children’s agency.

A decade ago, the world officially became majority urban, and two-thirds of the global population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to the United Nations.

“We applaud UNICEF for putting numbers around a problem that will only get more serious as more and more families move to cities,” said Patrin Watanatada of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, which works to promote early childhood development. “Cities can be wonderful places to grow up, rich with opportunities — but they can also pose serious challenges for a child’s healthy development.”

Poor transport links, limited access to health clinics and parks, as well as growing air pollution and stressed caregivers can exacerbate city living for children, said Watanatada.

Improved walking and cycling infrastructure, affordable housing and transportation, and polices targeted at supporting children and those who care for them could help ease life for urban families.

ICLEI, a global network of more than 1,500 cities, towns and regions, said disasters were more likely to impact the most vulnerable in cities, including children.

“Children are disproportionately affected by gaps in urban services, especially when it comes to water, sanitation, air quality, and food security,” said Yunus Arikan, head of global policy and advocacy at ICLEI.
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