Day: March 28, 2021

It can take hundreds of years for plastic containers to break down, if ever at all. Their presence reshapes entire ecosystems, and experts in Bolivia are calling for action to protect their communities. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.Producer: Arash Arabasadi
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Facebook has frozen Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s page, according to a spokesperson for the social media giant, because the page contained misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.Maduro violated Facebook policy when he posted a video without any medical evidence, promoting Carvativir, a drink made with the herb thyme, as a cure for the coronavirus, a company spokesperson told Reuters. He described the drink as a “miracle” medication capable of neutralizing the coronavirus without any side effects.“We follow guidance from the WHO [World Health Organization] that says there is currently no medication to cure the virus,” Facebook’s spokesperson told Reuters.The company said it is taking action to limit use of Maduro’s Facebook page. “Due to repeated violations of our rules, we are also freezing the page for 30 days,” the company spokesperson said, “during which it will be read-only.”Brazil is averaging nearly 2,400 deaths a day from COVID-19, about one-fourth of the world’s daily tally, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The South American nation is on pace to reach 4,000 deaths a day, six experts told The Associated Press, a level that would rival the worst seen in the U.S., which has about one-third more people. The U.S. set a record of 4,477 deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.“Four thousand deaths a day seems to be right around the corner,” Dr. José Antônio Curiati, a supervisor at Sao Paulo’s Hospital das Clinicas, the biggest hospital complex in Latin America, told the AP.President Jair Bolsonaro remains unconvinced that restrictions on activity are needed. At this point, they may be too late.Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University who advised several Brazilian governors and mayors on pandemic control, anticipates the total death toll reaching 500,000 by July and exceeding that of the U.S. by year-end, according to the AP.“We have surpassed levels never imagined for a country with a public health care system, a history of efficient immunization campaigns and health workers who are second to none in the world,” Nicolelis said. “The next stage is the health system collapse.”Spain tests mass-gathering limitsIn Spain, an experiment is under way to find a pandemic-safe way to hold mass events indoors. The setting is an arena in Barcelona filled with 5,000 fans Saturday night for a live concert.The morning of the show, those looking to attend came to one of three field hospitals set up in closed nightclubs. They were given COVID-19 and antigen tests, tests introduced to the body to induce an immune response. If they tested negative, they received a pass to the show and were told to wear a surgical mask. The arena was equipped with a ventilation system.“Over the next 14 days we will look at how many of the audience test positive for COVID and will report back,” Josep Maria Llibre, a doctor at the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital just north of Barcelona, told Agence France-Presse.The aim is “to discover a way in which we can coexist with COVID and hold concerts which are completely safe,” Ventura Barba, executive director of Barcelona’s Sonar festival, one of the organizers, told AFP.WHO seeks COVAX donationsThe head of the World Health Organization on Friday urged the global community to donate COVID-19 vaccines to lower-income countries, citing the urgent need for 10 million doses for a WHO-backed vaccine distribution program.“COVAX is ready to deliver but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual news conference in Geneva.COVAX, an abbreviation for the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access initiative, aims to provide equitable access to vaccines worldwide to low- and middle-income countries.“Bilateral deals, export bans, and vaccine nationalism have caused distortions in the market with gross inequities in supply and demand,” Tedros said. “Ten million doses are not much, and it’s not nearly enough.”Tedros’ appeal comes after India, a key supplier to the agency’s COVAX vaccine-sharing program, said it was prioritizing local needs.The WHO chief said India’s move was “understandable” given the rising number of infections in India. He said talks were in progress with India to find a balance between local and international needs.India said Friday it set a record with a tally of more than 59,000 new cases from the previous 24-hour period.UN demands fair vaccine accessAt the United Nations in New York, 181 nations signed onto a political declaration that calls for COVID-19 vaccinations to be treated as a global public good, ensuring affordable, equitable and fair access to vaccines for all.“We can see the end of the crisis, but to reach it, we need to work together with a deeper sense of collaboration,” part of the declaration states.Among the appeals are calls on nations to fully fund the COVAX facility to distribute vaccines to low-income and developing countries, scale up vaccine production through the distribution of technology and licenses and launch public information campaigns on the importance and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.COVAX has so far distributed more than 31 million doses of vaccines to 57 countries.“There is a race everywhere between the vaccines and the pandemic,” said Lebanon’s Ambassador Amal Mudallali, on behalf of the countries that drafted the document. “This race will be won before the start by the ‘haves,’ if there is no equitable, affordable sharing of vaccines.”The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday there are more 126 million global COVID-19 infections. The research center updates its data constantly and provides expert input.The United States has more cases than any other country, with more than 30.2 million infections, followed by Brazil, with 12.5 million, and India, with almost 12 million, according to the center.
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A New Hampshire woman who lost her 13-year-old daughter to a brain tumor in 2016 has now given birth to a son — at age 57.Barbara Higgins also had a brain tumor of her own while trying to get pregnant and had it removed.Higgins and her husband, Kenny Banzhoff, of Concord, have been grieving for their late daughter, Molly.In recent years, the couple, who also have an older daughter, thought about having another child. They found an in vitro fertilization clinic in Boston that worked with them.Higgins gave birth to a healthy boy named Jack on Saturday. He weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces.”Yes, I’m scared and I’m anxious, but I’m so excited,” Higgins told the Concord Monitor for a story published Friday.Higgins, an avid runner who has been a high school track coach, said she did weight training until the day she went into labor.In addition to Higgins’ struggles with her brain tumor, Banzhoff, 65, had been living with kidney disease and underwent a transplant.According to Guinness World Records, the oldest woman to give birth was 66-year-old Maria del Carmen Bousada Lara, who had twins in Spain in 2006.  
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A year ago, Giordana Grego’s parents spent Passover at home in Israel, alone but grateful that they had escaped the worst of the pandemic in Italy. This year, the whole family will get together to mark the Jewish feast of liberation and deliverance from the pandemic.Israel has vaccinated over half its population of 9.3 million, and as coronavirus infections have plummeted, authorities have allowed restaurants, hotels, museums and theaters to reopen. Up to 20 people can now gather indoors.It’s a stark turnaround from last year, when Israel was in the first of three nationwide lockdowns, with businesses shuttered, checkpoints set up on empty roads and people confined to their homes. Many could only see their elderly relatives on video calls.”For us in Israel, really celebrating the festivity of freedom definitely has a whole different meaning this year after what we experienced,” said Grego, who immigrated to Israel from Italy. “It’s amazing that this year we’re able to celebrate together, also considering that in Italy, everybody is still under lockdown.”Passover is the Jewish holiday celebrating the biblical Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt after a series of divine plagues. The week-long springtime festival starts Saturday night with the highly ritualized Seder meal, when the Exodus story is retold. It’s a Thanksgiving-like atmosphere with family, friends, feasting and four cups of wine.An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man dips cooking utensils in boiling water to remove remains of leaven in preparation for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover in Jerusalem, March 26, 2021.Throughout the week, observant Jews abstain from the consumption of bread and other leavened foods to commemorate the hardships of the flight from Egypt. Instead, they eat unleavened matzah.Holiday preparations involve spring cleaning to the extreme to remove even the tiniest crumbs of leavened bread from homes and offices. Cauldrons of boiling water are set up on street corners to boil kitchenware, and many burn their discarded bread, known as chametz. Supermarkets cordon off aisles with leavened goods, wrapping shelves in black plastic.Most Israeli Jews — religious and secular alike — spend the Seder with extended family. Last year’s Passover was a major break in tradition.Government-imposed restrictions forced the closure of synagogues and limited movement and assembly to slow the virus’ spread. Some conducted the ritual meal with their nuclear family, others over videoconference, while an unfortunate few held the Seder in solitude.Another lockdown was imposed over the Jewish High Holidays in September, again preventing family gatherings, and a third came earlier this year with the emergence of more contagious variants of the virus.By the third lockdown, Israel had launched one of the most successful inoculation campaigns in the world after the government secured millions of doses from Pfizer and Moderna. Israel has now vaccinated more than 80% of its adult population.It’s too early to say that Israel’s coronavirus crisis is over, as new variants could emerge that are resistant to the vaccines.The vaccination campaign in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza has been slow to get off the ground, with Israel facing criticism for not sharing more of its supplies. Israel has vaccinated over 100,000 Palestinian laborers who work in Israel and West Bank settlements, and has sent a couple thousand doses to the Palestinian Authority.The Palestinians have imported more than 130,000 doses on their own, but it could be several months before shots are available for the vast majority of the nearly 5 million Palestinians in the territories. Experts say that could pose a risk to Israel’s own public health efforts.  
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Cities around the world were turning off their lights Saturday for Earth Hour, with this year’s event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases such as COVID-19.In London, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye Ferris wheel, Shard skyscraper and neon signs of Piccadilly Circus were among the landmarks flicking the switches for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. local time.“It’s fantastic news that Parliament once again is taking part in Earth Hour, joining landmarks across the country and the world to raise awareness of climate change,” said Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the House of Commons.“It shows our commitment to improving sustainability … and that we’re playing our part in reducing energy consumption,” he said.In Paris, the three stages of the Eiffel Tower progressively went dark, but there were few people to watch with the whole country under a 7 p.m. COVID-19 curfew.The giant metal tower has been shut to the public since October 30 because of the pandemic.The ancient Parthenon is pictured just before the lights on the Acropolis hill shut down for Earth Hour in Athens, Greece, March 27, 2021.In Rome, the lights went out at Rome’s 2,000-year-old Colosseum, while police enforcing Italy’s coronavirus movement restrictions checked the papers of a small crowd of onlookers.Harmful human activityAsia kicked off the event after night fell with the skylines of metropolises from Singapore to Hong Kong going dark, as did landmarks including Sydney Opera House.The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and Moscow’s Kremlin on Red Square also joined the annual initiative that calls for action on climate change and the environment.After Europe, Earth Hour moved west to the Americas with the Empire State Building in New York, the Obelisk of Buenos Aires and Rio’s Museum of Tomorrow among venues dimming the lights.For this year, organizers said they wanted to highlight the link between the destruction of the natural world and the increasing incidence of diseases, such as COVID-19, making the leap from animals to humans.Experts believe human activity such as widespread deforestation, destruction of animals’ habitats and climate change are spurring this increase and warn that more pandemics could occur if nothing is done.A view of the Kronborg Castle before the lights are switched off for Earth Hour, in Elsinore, Denmark, March 27, 2021.”Whether it is a decline in pollinators, fewer fish in the ocean and rivers, disappearing forests or the wider loss of biodiversity, the evidence is mounting that nature is in free fall,” said Marco Lambertini, director general of the WWF, which organizes Earth Hour.”And this is because of the way we live our lives and run our economies. Protecting nature is our moral responsibility, but losing it also increases our vulnerability to pandemics, accelerates climate change and threatens our food security,” he added.’Impact on environment’Earth Hour is about “more than just saving energy, it’s more like remembering our impact on the environment,” Ian Tan, 18, told AFP in Singapore.But he was not convinced the event, which has been running since 2007, made much of a difference.”One hour is not enough for us to remember that climate change is actually a problem,” he said.In Hong Kong, people at viewing points above the city watched as lights were dimmed on hordes of closely packed skyscrapers, while in the South Korean capital, Seoul, the historic Namdaemun gate went dark.In Thailand, Bangkok’s ultra-popular CentralWorld mall counted down to 8:30 p.m. before its exterior glass displays went dark for an hour. But inside, shopping appeared to continue as usual. 
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