Day: December 6, 2020

A Unique Recipe for Healing: Bill Murray and the Book of Job

Against the backdrop of a pandemic’s blight and wounds from an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors on Sunday will gather online for a reading of a religious text with remarkable relevance to the current moment: the Book of Job.Audience members may be drawn to the production by the casting of Bill Murray as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children, but the real star is the format. Staged on Zoom, it’s aimed at Republican-leaning Knox County, Ohio, with participation from locals including people of faith, and designed to spark meaningful conversations across spiritual and political divides.After the performance, a half-dozen people from the area will be asked to share their perspective on the ancient story in a virtual discussion. It’s then thrown open to others, and ultimately to some of the tens of thousands of people signed in, no matter their location.  The structure of a dramatic reading followed by open-ended dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, the company behind the event. Artistic director Bryan Doerries is an alumnus of Kenyon College in Knox County and chose the area to focus on bridging rifts opened by the election and sharing the pain of a pandemic that’s tied to more than 281,000 U.S. deaths.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The performance is headlined by Murray and features other noted actors such as Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. The cast includes Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox County town of Mount Vernon, who will play Job’s accuser. He said the timing is perfect for the moment the country is going through, given the pandemic, the heated election and racial justice protests.  His hope is that the event and the dialogue afterward lead to less shouting and more listening. And a good story like that of Job can do so more effectively than a new law or a new directive, by changing people’s hearts, said Starr, a Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump who founded an independent film company before going into politics.”God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen, but He does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope, for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox County, a largely rural community of about 62,000 residents including a medium-size Amish population, lies about an hour east of the state capital, Columbus. Despite its numerous farms, most people in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs at several local factories.The county, which is 97% white, is a conservative stronghold that voted for Trump by a nearly 3-1 margin in November and went overwhelmingly for him in 2016.An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school perched on a hill a few miles outside of Mount Vernon. Voters in the precincts comprising the college and the village of Gambier voted 8-1 for President-elect Joe Biden.To help prompt more locals to engage in the post-reading conversation, Doerries worked with leaders from multiple faith traditions. Among them is Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, who said he hopes the experience can help people who share bigger values look beyond their differences.Bragin, administrator of a project backed by the nonprofit Interfaith Youth Core that partners Kenyon students with counterparts at nearby Mount Vernon Nazarene University, said he’s hopeful they will attend the discussion and take away an important lesson: “Surround yourself with people who aren’t like you,” he said, “and you can have such a bigger impact on your community, your world.”Pastor LJ Harry, who has also been recruiting people for the virtual conversation, does not believe Knox County is as divided as other places in the country. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Christian Church in Mount Vernon said most in the area are united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement, with protests after the death of George Floyd spirited but peaceful.Harry said the community’s biggest point of contention is over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He likened Knox County’s need for healing to that of a hospital patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit, and said he hopes the performance will drive home God’s central role in Job’s story.”That’s the message I’m hoping our church family, our community, hears,” Harry said. “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control.”In the biblical tale, God allows for Job’s massive losses as a means to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken from him, plus more.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 people there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts to evoke deeper dialogues about an array of issues.Doerries acknowledged that his company’s readings always have the potential to fall flat if a genuine back-and-forth doesn’t develop. Still, he’s betting that Sunday’s event will create space for people from different backgrounds, in Ohio and beyond, to engage with each other.  “Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing, or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity…what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves,” Doerries said.
 

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Turning Straw to Fuel to Save Senegal’s Forests

Wood and charcoal burning account for 50% of household energy consumption in Senegal, contributing to air pollution and deforestation. To reduce ecological damage, an association called Nebeday, which means “tree” in Wolof, the predominant local language in Senegal , hires villagers to produce biochar. Estelle Ndjandjo reports from Dakar.Camera: Estelle Ndjandjo

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Turning Straw to Fuel to Save Senegal’s Forests 

Wood and charcoal burning account for 50% of Senegal’s household energy consumption, contributing to air pollution and deforestation. To reduce ecological damage, an association called Nebeday, which means “tree” in Wolof, the predominant local language in Senegal, hires villagers to produce an innovative energy alternative.
Half of Senegal’s households rely on wood or wood charcoal. To combat air pollution and deforestation, a cooperative of women produce biochar, an energy source made from straw. They burn it and mix the charred straw with clay and water. The end result is a carbon-neutral organic charcoal that does not involve chopping down trees. The mixture is pressed and stored, resulting in about 150 pallets of biochar per day. The initiative is diversifying the economy of a rural region where many eke out a living from livestock and fishing. Mariama Camara is head of the local women’s cooperative. She used to chop trees in the forest, but now biochar production provides her a sustainable job. She says that first of all, this biochar protects the forest, it protects their homes, it protects their supplies, it protects women, it protects the forest that no longer burns, it protects their lives. “It is healthy, and thanks God for this,” she said. Biochar production has been launched in 18 villages in the region by the Nebeday ecological association, a name that means “tree” in the Wolof language. To fight deforestation, the group also plants trees in big cities and small villages alike. Since the beginning of the year, they have planted more than a million trees throughout the country. Nebeday director Jean Geopp says that putting straw to good use has an added advantage. “Straw, which is the raw material of our biochar, in fact creates thousands of bushfires across the country in the dry season. So reducing this straw reduces bush fires and, therefore, saves young trees in the forests,” he said. “By consuming one kilogram of straw charcoal, we save the forest twice.” The benefits can be seen in Senegal’s Djilor Forest, patrolled by ranger Biram Gning, who was born nearby. Gning cannot arrest those he catches cutting down trees, rather, he reports infractions to a local village chief. Gning says rising delta waters have salted the land, posing an additional environmental challenge. “Deforestation is caused by, one, the harmful cutting down of trees, illegal cutting by the population,” he said. “Two, there are bush fires, which can ravage miles of forest. Three, the advance of salt from the sea to the forests.” The African Union’s Great Green Wall initiative is focusing on the Sahel among other regions to prevent desertification. The biochar project and efforts to combat deforestation are a vital piece of the puzzle.  

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Japanese Space Officials Eager to Analyze Asteroid Samples 

Japanese space officials said they are excited about the return of a capsule that safely landed in Australian Outback on Sunday while carrying soil samples from a distant asteroid so they can start analyzing what they say are treasures inside.The capsule’s delivery by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft completes its six-year sample-return mission and opens the door for research into finding clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth.”We were able to land the treasure box” onto the sparsely populated Australian desert of Woomera as planned, said Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa2 project manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, adding that the capsule was in perfect shape. “I really look forward to opening it and looking inside.”The capsule will be packed in a container as soon as its preliminary treatment at an Australian lab is finished and brought back to Japan this week, Satoru Nakazawa, a project sub-manager, said during an online news conference from Woomera.Hayabusa2 left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth, a year ago. After it released the capsule on Saturday, it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.Scientists say they believe the samples, especially ones taken from under the asteroid’s surface, contain valuable data unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in organic materials in the samples to find out how the materials are distributed in the solar system and related to life on Earth.”We have high expectations that the sample analysis will lead to further research into the origin of the solar system and how water was transported to Earth,” said JAXA president Hiroshi Yamakawa.The return of the capsule with the world’s first asteroid subsurface samples comes weeks after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a successful touch-and-go grab of surface samples from the asteroid Bennu. China, meanwhile, announced recently that its lunar lander collected underground samples and sealed them within the spacecraft for return to Earth, as space developing nations compete in their missions.JAXA officials said the Ryugu samples will be handled in clean chambers to avoid any impact on the samples. Initial research is planned in the first six months, and the samples will be distributed to NASA and other key international research groups, with about 40% stored for future technological advancement to resolve unanswered questions.More than 70 JAXA staff had been working in Woomera to prepare for the sample return. They set up satellite dishes at several locations in the target area inside the Australian Air Force test field to receive the signals.The pan-shaped capsule, about 40 centimeters (15 inches) in diameter, was found inside the planned landing area and retrieved by a helicopter team from JAXA.Hayabusa2 released the capsule on Saturday from 220,000 kilometers (136,700 miles) away in space, sending it toward Earth. About 12 hours after the release, the capsule reentered the atmosphere at 120 kilometers (75 miles) away from Earth, seen as a fireball cutting across the night sky.For Hayabusa2, it’s not the end of the mission. It is now heading to a small asteroid called 1998KY26 on a journey slated to take 11 years one way, for possible research into planetary defense, such as finding ways to prevent meteorites from hitting Earth.Since its Dec. 3, 2014, launch, the Hayabusa2 mission has been fully successful. It touched down twice on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s extremely rocky surface, and successfully collected data and samples during the 1½ years it spent near Ryugu after arriving there in June 2018.In its first touchdown in February 2019, it collected surface dust samples. In a more challenging mission in July that year, it collected underground samples from the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater that it created earlier by blasting the asteroid’s surface.Asteroids, which orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets, are among the oldest objects in the solar system and therefore may help explain how Earth evolved.Ryugu in Japanese means “Dragon Palace,” the name of a sea-bottom castle in a Japanese folk tale. 

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ER Visits, Long Waits Climb for US Kids in Mental Health Crisis

When children and teens are overwhelmed with anxiety, depression or thoughts of self-harm, they often wait days in emergency rooms because there aren’t enough psychiatric beds in the U.S.The problem has only grown worse during the pandemic, reports from parents and professionals suggest.With schools closed, routines disrupted and parents anxious over lost income or uncertain futures, children are shouldering new burdens many are unequipped to bear.And with surging numbers of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, bed space is even scarcer.By early fall, many ERs in the northeastern state of Massachusetts were seeing about four times more children and teens in psychiatric crisis than usual, said Ralph Buonopane, a mental health program director at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Boston.”I’ve been director of this program for 21 years and worked in child psychiatric services since the 1980s, and it is very much unprecedented,” Buonopane said. His hospital receives ER transfers from around the state.While ER visits for many health reasons other than COVID-19 declined early in the pandemic as people avoided hospitals, the share that were for kids’ mental health-related visits climbed steadily from mid-April through October, according to a recent federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Of the kids who showed up, more were for mental health than in the same period last year, although that might reflect that others stayed away, the authors cautioned.Claire Brennan Tillberg’s 11-year-old daughter was one of those kids who sought care. The Massachusetts girl has autism, depression and anxiety, and has been hospitalized twice in recent months after revealing that she’d had suicidal thoughts. The second time, in September, she waited a week in an ER before being transferred to a different hospital. The first time, in July, the wait was four days.She’d been hospitalized before, but Tillberg said things worsened when the pandemic hit and her new school and therapy sessions went online. Suddenly the structure and rituals that many children with autism thrive on were gone.“She’d never met the teacher, never met the kids,” said Tillberg, a psychotherapist. “She felt more isolated, more and more like things aren’t getting better. Without the distraction of getting up and going to school or to camp … sitting at home with her own thoughts all day with a computer has allowed that to worsen.’’’You can’t give up, because it’s your kid’Studies and surveys in Asia, Australia, the U.S., Canada, China and Europe have shown overall worsening mental health in children and teens since the pandemic began. In a World Health Organization survey of 130 countries published in October, more than 60% reported disruptions to mental health services for vulnerable people including children and teens.Emergency rooms are often the first place kids facing a mental health breakdown go for help. Some are stabilized there and sent home. Some need inpatient care, but many hospitals don’t offer psychiatric treatment for kids and transfer these children elsewhere.Some treatment centers won’t take kids without proof they don’t have COVID-19, “which is hard because you can’t always find a rapid test,” said Ellie Rounds Bloom. Her 12-year-old son has “significant mental health issues,” including trauma, and has experienced several crises since the pandemic began. The Boston-area boy has been hospitalized since October, after spending 17 days in ER.Many mental health advocates consider these waits unacceptable. For parents and their kids, they are that, and more.“There have been moments of frustration and moments of sheer pulling your hair out,” Rounds Bloom said.State health insurance covers her son’s treatment but not all providers accept it. Deficiencies in the U.S. health care system can leave families feeling helpless, she said.“You can’t give up, because it’s your kid,” Rounds Bloom said.There are no national studies on kids’ ER waits for mental health treatment, a practice called “boarding,” according to a recent review published in the journal Pediatrics. The review included small studies showing that between 23% and almost 60% of U.S. kids who need inpatient care have to wait in ERs to receive it. They are kept stable but often receive little or no mental health care during those waits.Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital in the northeastern state of Connecticut has started offering teletherapy to kids waiting in its emergency room for mental health care, said Dr. Marc Auerbach, a pediatric ER physician.One in 6 U.S. children have a diagnosed mental, behavioral or developmental disorder, according to the CDC. Data show problems like depression become more prevalent in teen years; 1 in 13 high school students have attempted suicide and at least half of kids with mental illness don’t get treatment.

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Virus Cases Continue Climbing in US During Holiday Season

Coronavirus infections across the U.S. continue to rise as the country moves deeper into a holiday season when eagerly anticipated gatherings of family and friends could push the numbers even higher and overwhelm hospitals.Vast swaths of southern and inland California imposed new restrictions on businesses and activities Saturday as hospitals in the nation’s most populous state face a dire shortage of beds. Restaurants must stop onsite dining, and theaters, hair salons and many other businesses must close in the sprawling reaches of San Diego and Los Angeles, along with part of the Central Valley.Five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area were set to impose their own lockdowns Sunday.A new daily high of nearly 228,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases was reported nationwide Friday, eclipsing the previous high mark of 217,000 cases set the day before, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.The seven-day rolling average of deaths attributable to COVID-19 in the U.S. passed 2,000 for the first time since spring, rising to 2,011. Two weeks ago, the seven-day average was 1,448. There were 2,607 deaths reported in the U.S. on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins.Johns Hopkins had previously reported Wednesday daily COVID-19 deaths at 3,157. That was later updated to 2,804 because of a change in numbers from Nevada, a spokesperson said Saturday.The U.S. set a new record Thursday with 2,879 COVID-19 deaths, according to the university’s coronavirus resource center.Much of the nation saw surging numbers in the week after Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans disregarded warnings to stay home and celebrate only with members of their household.Arizona’s top public health official took on a blunt tone as she reported the state’s latest case numbers, a near-record of nearly 6,800 new infections, telling people to wear masks around anyone outside their household, “even those you know and trust.”Volunteers from the Baltimore Hunger Project pass out food to people in need outside of Padonia International Elementary school on Dec. 4, 2020, in Cockeysville, Maryland. More children are going hungry in the US as it weathers the coronavirus.”We must act as though anyone we are around may be infected,” Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote on Twitter. Arizona’s intensive care units are experiencing caseloads not seen since the summer, when the state had one of the worst outbreaks in the world. Just 8% of ICU beds and 10% of all inpatient beds were unoccupied Friday, according to state data.Hospital officials issued bleak warnings about the potential for severe overcrowding, fearing that Thanksgiving gatherings seeded new outbreaks that are not yet showing in daily case counts. It takes several days after someone is exposed to develop symptoms, and several more to get test results. Eventually, more severe cases will require hospitalization.”In less than a week, we went from exceeding 5,000 new cases reported in one day to exceeding 6,000,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, North Carolina’s health secretary. “This is very worrisome.”In St. Louis, two children’s hospitals opened their doors to adult patients without COVID-19 as medical centers in the region fill up, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Mayor Lyda Krewson said the city has reopened a temporary morgue. Area hospitals are at 82% capacity for in-patient beds and 81% capacity for ICU beds.In Idaho, the National Guard helped direct people and traffic at a Boise urgent care and family practice clinic converted to a facility for people with coronavirus symptoms. Health officials say Idaho’s attempt to hold the coronavirus in check is failing.Hospitals are struggling not only with the increase in patients but with their own staff as health workers contract COVID-19 themselves or quit under the pressure of caring for so many infectious patients.”We continue to be concerned about the potential implications of the travel we have seen in the past week with Thanksgiving, as well as social gathering related to the holidays,” said Dr. Adnan Munkarah, executive vice president and chief clinical officer for Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.The health system currently has 576 employees out because they have tested positive, have pending tests or are quarantined because of close contact, up from 378 a week ago, Munkarah said.

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US Not Extending TikTok Divestiture Deadline; Talks to Continue

The Trump administration has chosen not to extend again an order requiring ByteDance, a Chinese company, to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets, but talks will continue over the video-sharing app’s fate, two sources briefed on the matter said.A Treasury Department representative said late Friday that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was “engaging with ByteDance to complete the divestment and other steps necessary to resolve the national security risks.”Last week, CFIUS granted TikTok parent ByteDance a one-week extension until Friday to shed TikTok’s U.S. assets.President Donald Trump’s August order gave the Justice Department the power to enforce the divestiture order once the deadline expired, but it was unclear when or how the government might seek to compel divestiture.Trump’s decisionTrump personally decided not to approve any additional extensions at a meeting of senior U.S. officials, according to a person briefed on the meeting. The government had previously issued a 15-day and seven-day extension of the initial 90-day deadline, which was November 12, on Trump’s order.The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while the White House did not comment. TikTok declined to comment.The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns because the personal data of U.S. users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has more than 100 million U.S. users, denies the allegation.FILE – Women wearing masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus chat as they pass by the headquarters of ByteDance, owners of TikTok, in Beijing, China, Aug. 7, 2020.Under pressure from the U.S. government, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal with Walmart Inc. and Oracle Corp. to shift TikTok’s U.S. assets into a new entity aimed to satisfy the divestiture order.ByteDance made a new proposal aimed at addressing the U.S. government’s concerns, Reuters reported last week.ByteDance made the proposal after disclosing on November 10 that it submitted four prior proposals, including one in November, that sought to address U.S. concerns by “creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing U.S. investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s U.S. user data and content moderation.”Preliminary dealIn September, TikTok announced it had a preliminary deal for Walmart and Oracle to take stakes in a new company to oversee U.S. operations. Trump said the deal had his blessing.On November 11, ByteDance filed a petition with a U.S. appeals court challenging the divestiture order and said it planned to file a request “to stay enforcement of the divestment order only if discussions reach an impasse and the government indicates an intent to take action to enforce the order.”ByteDance said the Trump order seeks “to compel the wholesale divestment of TikTok, a multibillion-dollar business built on technology developed by” ByteDance, “based on the government’s purported national security review of a 3-year-old transaction that involved a different business.”The Trump administration has been stymied in its efforts to restrict TikTok in the United States.A federal judge in Washington on September 27 blocked a ban on Apple Inc. and Alphabet’s Google offering TikTok for download in U.S. app stores, while another judge on October 30 blocked government restrictions scheduled to take effect November 12 that ByteDance said would have effectively barred TikTok from operating in the United States.A U.S. appeals court will hear arguments on the app store ban on December 14.

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St. Nicholas Tradition Triumphs Over COVID-19 in Prague

Christmas tradition won out over the coronavirus in Prague on Saturday with a COVID-19-compliant, socially distanced St. Nicholas giving out presents to excited children.Under normal circumstances, St. Nicholas, a bearded man accompanied by the devil and an angel, would give children in the Czech Republic presents in exchange for a song or a poem.But with coronavirus measures around the world throwing up obstacles to festive celebrations, Prague-based circus company Cirk La Putyka opted for a drive-through solution.”Over the past nine months we have been looking for different ways to approach the audience,” company director Rosta Novak told AFP.”This is just another way to do that at a time when theaters can’t play and bands cannot perform,” he added.Members of circus company Cirk La Putyka dressed as devils entertain people during their drive-through performance, Dec. 5, 2020, in Prague.In line with tradition, cars first drove through “hell,” with devils performing acrobatic tricks and fire shows.Then they proceeded to “heaven” with angels and finally to St. Nicholas himself.The children received presents at the final stop, many of them sticking their heads out of windows to relish the experience.Driving a van full of children, Ondrej Prachar said they had all been thrilled.”It was absolutely perfect,” he said, adding that it had also been a tad less frightening than the traditional version, when children are sometimes scared by the idea of the devil carrying a bag in which he puts naughty kids.The St. Nicholas tradition dates to the Middle Ages, and St. Nicholas Day is celebrated in many countries.Born in Turkey around 280, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, tradesmen, pilgrims and children, handed out a sizable portion of his wealthy parents’ property to the poor after their death.

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