A new type of malaria vaccine is showing promise in FILE – A worker sprays insecticide for mosquitoes at a village in Bangkok, Thailand, Dec. 12, 2017.”Malaria has been a really tricky infection to make a vaccine against,” said Alexis Kaushansky, a malaria researcher at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute who was not involved in the new study. “I think this vaccine is really exciting and promising.” ‘A game changer’ Earlier studies have shown that people can develop immunity to malaria, but it requires exposure to many more parasites than mosquito bites deliver. The new vaccine, developed by biotechnology company Sanaria, involves directly injecting large doses of parasites and administering antimalarial drugs to prevent patients from getting sick. Mass producing enough parasites for a vaccine is a challenge, however. Over many years, Sanaria developed a process to grow, feed and extract parasites from large numbers of mosquitoes at its facility. Sanaria’s manufacturing process has made it possible to test this type of vaccine made of live, purified parasites, said Patrick Duffy, an internal medicine physician at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a co-author of the study. “That’s been a game changer.” FILE – A woman carrying a baby holds a treated mosquito net during a malaria prevention action at Ajah in Eti Osa East district of Lagos, Nigeria, April 21, 2016.In the latest clinical trial on a small number of volunteers, at least 77.8% of the participants who received the vaccine with chloroquine or pyrimethamine were protected against infections three months later. “We were pretty amazed at the protection,” Duffy said. The vaccine also protected participants from both the African strain of the parasite used to make the vaccine and a different South American strain. These results mean that the vaccine could potentially provide broad protection beyond just a single strain or even similar strains of malaria parasites, according to the authors. “That’s really different than what previous trials have shown, so that’s super encouraging,” added Kaushansky. Other vaccines Another malaria vaccine known as RTS,S, or Mosquirix, is undergoing a large-scale pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Previous clinical trials showed that RTS,S prevented about 39% of cases of malaria in young children in several sub-Saharan African countries over four years. Another vaccine by the University of Oxford, R21, is also starting larger-scale trials after early studies showed the vaccine to be up to 77% effective. Both RTS,S and R21 rely on administering a protein that’s part of the parasite to build up a person’s immunity rather than the whole, live parasites that the Sanaria vaccine in this study uses. The Sanaria vaccine has started the second of three stages of clinical trials in Mali, where malaria is the leading cause of disease and death. While she is hopeful, Kaushansky said that the process of harvesting parasites from mosquitoes may encounter hurdles when scaling up manufacturing. Malaria vaccines also often run into challenges when switching from early, carefully controlled trials with participants who have never had malaria before to populations that have already experienced high rates of malaria. “I think we’re all excited to see how the next round of trials play out and to see if it will protect people who are highest at risk,” Kaushansky said.
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Day: July 9, 2021
In less than two weeks, more than 11,000 of the world’s best athletes will descend on Tokyo to compete at the most unusual Olympic Games in decades. Athletes will compete in empty stadiums after Olympics organizers reversed course Thursday and barred spectators in response to a major coronavirus resurgence. The decision came after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared a state of emergency in Tokyo, citing the rising rates of COVID-19. “Taking into consideration the impact of the delta strain, and in order to prevent the resurgence of infections from spreading across the country, we need to step up virus prevention measures,” Suga said. Anti-Olympics protesters hold up signs and banner outside the event venue of the Tokyo 2020 Torch Relay, in Tokyo, Japan, July 9, 2021.The news that virtually no one would be allowed into the games was met with frustration from ticket holders and athletes but relief from many Japanese citizens, who have been protesting the games for months. A national survey conducted in May found that 83% of voters wanted to postpone or cancel the Olympics.Tennis player Nick Kyrgios announced his withdrawal from the games on Thursday via Twitter, citing the lack of fans and a leg injury. Ever since COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on the globe last year, the Toyko 2020 Olympic Games have been plagued by delays, mushrooming costs, health concerns and myriad other issues. The official cost of the games is about $15.4 billion, but a government audit conducted last December estimated the real cost to be closer to $28 billion. Roughly 7.8 million tickets were expected to be made available for the games, which would have brought in an estimated $800 million in revenue. A woman walks past the Olympic rings lit up at dusk in the rain, on the Odaiba waterfront in Tokyo, July 9, 2021.Despite the rising costs and coronavirus concerns, more than 200 countries are still set to come together for peaceful competition from July 23 to August 8. According to entertainment data company Gracenote, the U.S. is expected to win the most medals overall by a wide margin. “This would mark the seventh successive Summer Games during which the American team would have come out on top of the medal count competition,” Gracenote wrote. China and Russia are predicted to place second and third in total medals, respectively. However, Russia isn’t officially competing as a country because of a two-year ban issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency for systematic doping of Russian athletes, a practice that is banned in international sports. Instead, 335 Russian athletes will compete as neutral athletes under the name “Russian Olympic Committee” and are barred from using the Russian flag or national anthem. Canada, Australia and North Korea have withdrawn from the Tokyo Olympics entirely because of the pandemic.
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Hannah Kumari has been an English soccer fan since childhood, but she never wanted to fly an England flag. Until now.Kumari is one of millions of fans ecstatic that England’s men’s team has reached the final of a major tournament for the first time since it won the World Cup in 1966. But like many British people of color, she’s had an ambivalent relationship with symbols of Englishness.Yet embracing them has come more easily thanks to the young, multi-ethnic squad that is on the cusp of triumph in the European Championship. After beating Denmark 2-1 in a semifinal on Wednesday that was watched by half the country’s population, England faces Italy in the final at London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday.”When I woke up this morning I thought, ‘I’m going to buy a St. George’s flag to hang out the window for Sunday,'” Kumari, who was born and raised in England to an Indian mother and Scottish father, said the day after the Denmark game.”I’ve never owned an England shirt,” the actor-writer said.”Something has definitely changed,” she said. “I feel almost like that team has given me permission to feel like I can wear an England shirt.”England’s Raheem Sterling celebrates a goal during the Euro 2020 soccer championship semifinal match between England and Denmark at Wembley stadium in London, July 7, 2021.Ready for hopeThe last few years have been hard on England and the rest of the United Kingdom. Britain’s exit from the European Union — a decision driven in part by a backlash against immigration — left the country scratchy and divided. More than 128,000 people have died in the U.K. during the coronavirus pandemic, the highest toll in Western Europe.Euro 2020 — the name is a year out of date thanks to the pandemic — has provided a much-needed jolt of excitement and fun. Millions weary of lockdowns and bad news are backing a team whose members speak out against racism, take a knee before games, support LGBT pride, campaign against poverty and, crucially, win games.For decades, supporting England has been synonymous with dashed hopes. The lyrics of the country’s most popular soccer anthem, “Three Lions,” originally released in 1996, evokes England’s 1966 triumph and the long drought that followed: “Thirty years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming.”Those 30 years have become 55, but once again England is dreaming.Very different squadThe country’s hopes rest on a team very different from the all-white squad of 1966. A poster created by the Museum of Migration showed what the England team would look like without the players who had a parent or grandparent born abroad: Just three of the 11 starting players remained. Missing were stars who included team captain Harry Kane, whose father is Irish; Marcus Rashford, whose mother is from Saint Kitts; Jamaica-born Raheem Sterling; and Buyako Saka, a Londoner with Nigerian parents.The team is known less for wild off-the-pitch antics than for social responsibility, epitomized by 23-year-old Rashford’s campaign against child poverty, which persuaded the government to restore free lunches for thousands of poor children.Last week, Kane, 27, wore a rainbow armband to support LGBT pride during England’s match against Germany.The players may be young multimillionaires, but they celebrate their local as well as international roots. Rashford’s childhood in a working-class Manchester community inspires his anti-poverty work; Kalvin Phillips is a proud son of the northern city of Leeds; Sterling calls himself the “boy from Brent,” after the London borough where he grew up.English flags fly from balconies near Wembley stadium in London, July 9, 2021.A shift in EnglishnessFor some, their success is helping to make Englishness a source of pride rather than awkwardness.The English make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 67 million inhabitants, but English patriotism and the country’s red-and-white St. George flag were long shunned by liberal-minded Britons, associated with football hooligans and narrow-minded “Little Englanders.” Britishness was regarded as a more welcoming identity by many U.K.-born and foreign-born citizens alike.England’s rugby, cricket and soccer teams have done much to strip the English flag of its negative associations in recent years. The increasing prominence of Scottish and Welsh flags and symbols as those countries gained more political autonomy over the last two decades has also made many people reflect on what English identity means.”There has been an enormous intergenerational shift towards a civic and inclusive English identity that crosses ethnic and faith grounds,” said Sunder Katwala, director of the equality think-tank British Future. “Most migrants to Britain haven’t identified as English, but interestingly, their children have.”Katwala said sports teams and tournaments don’t drive social change but “ratify that shift that has been happening in society.””When I was a teenager we associated football with all of the negative aspects of English identity: With violence, with racism, with hooliganism,” Katwala said.He said the modern, multicultural England team is part of a “culture shift” that has “changed the public conversation about what is English.”Some critics, some boosNot everyone thinks the national soccer team represents all that is best about England. Some conservative commentators have derided the players as uncomfortably “woke.” Team members have been booed by some fans while taking a knee against racism before games. Home Secretary Priti Patel has criticized the kneeling, calling it “gesture politics,” and declined to condemn the booing.Victory has silenced much of the criticism, at least temporarily. Politicians have jumped on the England bandwagon. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has often criticized protests over racism and Britain’s imperial past, attended Wednesday’s game, awkwardly wearing an England jersey over his dress shirt. He’s under pressure to declare a national holiday if England wins the final on Sunday.Some have compared Britain’s political leaders unfavorably to the national team’s understated manager, Gareth Southgate, who forged his young players into England’s most cohesive squad in many years.England manager Gareth Southgate celebrates after the victory over Denmark on July 7, 2021.School of SouthgateIf the tournament has been therapeutic for England, it is also redemptive for the 50-year-old Southgate. He played for England in the 1990s, and his failed penalty kick during the Euros semi-final in 1996 handed victory to Germany.Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Thangam Debbonaire urged Johnson to study at “the Gareth Southgate school of leadership.””The British people will be asking themselves who they want to lead them. Do they want someone who works hard and has a relentless focus on embodying British values, or do they want the current prime minister?” Debbonaire said in the House of Commons.Southgate addressed the team’s critics in an open letter at the start of the tournament, saying his players would not “stick to football” and keep quiet about social issues.”I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players,” he wrote. “It’s clear to me that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden said he discussed recent ransomware attacks on the U.S. from Russia in a phone call Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Biden said he told Putin, “I made it very clear to him that the United States expects when a ransomware operation is coming from his soil, even though it’s not sponsored by the state, we expect them to act if we give them enough information to act on who that is.”He told reporters at a White House signing ceremony Friday that the call “went well. I’m optimistic.”When asked if there would be consequences if Russia did not take action against ransonware criminals, he answered, “Yes.”Biden also said the two leaders “set up a means of communication now on a regular basis” to discuss such issues.Russia denies responsibilityRecent ransomware attacks have been linked to groups based in Russia. The Kremlin has denied any responsibility for the attacks.The White House said in a statement after the call that “President Biden underscored the need for Russia to take action to disrupt ransomware groups operating in Russia.”It said, “President Biden reiterated that the United States will take any necessary action to defend its people and its critical infrastructure in the face of this continuing challenge.”The Kremlin said that the two leaders agreed to cooperate on issues of cybersecurity and that the collaboration “must be permanent, professional and nonpoliticized and should be conducted via special communication channels … and with respect to international law.”The call came more than three weeks after the two leaders met in Geneva on June 16, when Biden appealed to Putin to crack down on cyber hackers in Russia.Some information for this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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As Indonesia deals with a surge in COVID-19 cases, the Biden administration is sending three million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine to the country on July 9, a senior administration official tells VOA. The shipment is one of the largest batches the U.S. has donated, the official said. In total, the U.S. has allocated four million doses for Indonesia, with the remaining one million doses to be shipped “soon.”The administration is also sending 500,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Moldova, the first batch of U.S. vaccine shared with Europe. A woman receives a shot of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine during a mass vaccination at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 26, 2021.Indonesia surge Indonesia is battling a record-breaking surge in new cases and deaths, due to the highly contagious delta variant. “We recognize the difficult situation Indonesia currently finds itself in with a surge of COVID-19 cases,” said the Biden administration official. “Our thoughts are with all those in Indonesia affected by this surge. We support the Indonesian people as they fight this surge and are doing everything we can to help them in this time of need.” During a Friday press conference, Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi confirmed the shipment.“This is the first shipment through the COVAX mechanism,” Marsudi said, referring to the United Nations vaccine sharing mechanism.Indonesia relies heavily on Chinese vaccines, with only about 5% of its population fully vaccinated. The country has procured 108.5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine but is seeing rising infections among medical workers fully vaccinated with it.After several fully inoculated medical personnel died from COVID-19, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Friday the government would give 1.47 million health workers an extra shot using the Moderna vaccine.”The third jab will only be given to health workers, because health workers are the ones who are exposed to high levels of virus every day,” he told a press conference. “They must be protected at all costs.”The Indonesian government authorized the Moderna vaccine for emergency use last week.People line up to get vaccinated with the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine during a mass vaccination at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 26, 2021.Broader COVID-19 response efforts The senior White House official said that in addition to vaccines, the administration is moving forward on plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts. “To date, we have provided more than $14.5 million in direct COVID-19 relief to Indonesia, including $3.5 million to help vaccinate Indonesians quickly and safely,” the official said. The official added that support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, has also provided Jakarta with public health education, trained thousands of health workers, funded a national COVID-19 information website that has reached more than 36 million people, and donated COVID-19 testing equipment, 1,000 ventilators, and nearly 2,000 handwashing stations.The four-million-dose vaccine shipment to Indonesia is part of the 80 million doses the U.S. has allocated to help countries in need, on top of the 500 million doses it has committed to COVAX. Activists say it is not enough. “We need far more from the United States and other countries that have surpluses to share,” said Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE Campaign, a nonprofit group that fights global poverty and disease. According to CDC data, most U.S. states have administered at least 75 percent of their first vaccine dose. Hart pointed out that in some countries, less than one percent of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine. “We have locked up in the United States and the G-7 and other EU countries, the global supply of the very thing to end this pandemic,” said Hart. “And so far, not sharing at nearly the pace or scale that we need to reach what’s the global herd immunity that will make all of us safe.”Eva Mazrieva contributed to this report, which includes some information from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Authorities in India’s southern Kerala region have issued a statewide alert after a case of the Zika virus was confirmed, officials said Friday.
A further 13 suspected cases were being investigated, state health minister Veena George said.
A 24-year-old pregnant woman was found to be infected with the mosquito-borne disease and was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram city.
Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable and can transmit the infection to their newborns, which can result in life-altering conditions such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare auto-immune disease.
Samples from the 13 suspected cases have been sent for further investigation to a lab in Pune, the minister added.
Zika is mostly spread through the bite of the Aedes mosquito but can also be sexually transmitted, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The virus was first discovered in monkeys in Uganda’s Zika forest in 1947 and has caused several outbreaks across the world in recent decades.
No vaccines or anti-viral drugs are available as prevention or cure.
Symptoms include fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis and muscle and joint pain, but fatalities are rare.
Officials said the infected woman had showed symptoms including fever, headache and rashes before being admitted to a hospital, where she safely delivered a baby on Wednesday.
Health teams have been assigned to the area to monitor for any further cases.
India also saw Zika outbreaks in 2017 and 2018, with hundreds of cases reported in western Gujarat and Rajasthan as well as central Madhya Pradesh state, but the latest infection is the first in Kerala.
The state is currently a battling a surge in COVID-19 cases, with more than 13,000 infections recorded on Friday, the highest number of any Indian state.
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Vietnam enacted on Friday a two-week lockdown on movement in Ho Chi Minh City to battle a growing outbreak of the coronavirus.Hanoi also announced plans to vaccinate 50% of the population age 18 and older by the end of the year and set a goal of 70% of its population vaccinated by next March.”Vaccination against COVID-19 is a necessary and important measure to contain the disease and ensure socio-economic development,” the Health Ministry said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse.The country of 100 million had registered fewer than 3,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, as of April. As of Friday, Vietnam had 24,810 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 104 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center.Vietnam has administered about 4 million vaccine doses, with about 240,000 people fully vaccinated – 0.25% of the population, according to Johns Hopkins’ Vaccine Tracker.The 9 million residents of Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s economic hub, are barred from gathering in groups larger than two people and are allowed to leave their homes for the next two weeks only in cases of emergency or to buy food or medicine.Meanwhile, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said the South Pacific nation would make it compulsory for residents to become vaccinated against the coronavirus.”No jabs, no job — that is what the science tells us is safest and that is now the policy of the government and enforced through law,” Bainimarama said in a national address late Thursday, according to an AFP report.Fiji, which has a population of about 900,000, has been battling an outbreak of the delta variant of the coronavirus since April.Until April, Fiji had recorded no confirmed cases of the virus in a year, AFP reported. As of Friday, the country had recorded 8,661 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 48 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.The prime minister said all public servants would be forced to take leave if they failed to receive their first vaccination by Aug. 15 and would be dismissed if they failed to receive their second dose by Nov. 1. Private sector employees would need to have a first vaccination by Aug. 1 or face hefty fines and companies were threatened with being shuttered, the AFP report said.People wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus wait to receive the second dose of the vaccine as an elderly woman pleads with a policeman to let her ahead of others at a public health center in Hyderabad, India, July 9, 2021.So far, the nation has administered nearly 380,000 vaccinations, according to Johns Hopkins’ Vaccine Tracker.On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced the Olympic Games would continue under a coronavirus state of emergency that bans spectators from all Tokyo-based venues. The arenas in surrounding Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba would also be inaccessible to fans.“Taking into consideration the impact of the delta strain, and in order to prevent the resurgence of infections from spreading across the country, we need to step up virus prevention measures,” Suga said.The Olympics run from July 23 to Aug. 8, and the capital’s state of emergency is scheduled for July 23 to Aug. 22, lifting before the Paralympic Games open on August 24. Olympic and Tokyo officials said spectator capacity for the Paralympics would depend on future nationwide infection rates.This ban deals a significant blow to Olympic organizers expecting $800 million in ticket sales, and to the Japanese government, which spent $15.4 billion on the games.Meanwhile, the SEA Games Federation announced Thursday this year’s Southeast Asian Games has been postponed due to an increase of new infections in Vietnam, the host country. The regional games were scheduled to be held in the capital, Hanoi, and 11 other locations from Nov. 21 to Dec. 2.As the world surpassed 4 million coronavirus-related deaths earlier this week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that millions more remain at risk “if the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire.”The head of the global body said in a written statement that most of the world is “still in the shadows” due to the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccine between the world’s richest and poorest nations and the rapid global spread of the more contagious delta variant of COVID-19.Guterres called for the creation of an emergency task force, composed of vaccine-producing nations, the World Health Organization and global financial institutions, to implement a global vaccine plan that will at least double production of COVID-19 shots and ensure equitable distribution through the COVAX global vaccine sharing initiative.“Vaccine equity is the greatest immediate moral test of our times,” Guterres said, which he also called a “practical necessity.”“Until everyone is vaccinated, everyone is under threat,” he added.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on Thursday reported 4,005,889 COVID-19 deaths out of 185.3 million total confirmed cases.The World Health Organization is urging nations to proceed with “extreme caution” as they ease or altogether end lockdowns and other restrictions in the face of a steady rise of new infections due to the delta variant.This report includes information from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Coronavirus infections are rising in Australia, despite a two-week-old lockdown intended to stop their spread. Officials are now focusing on how to enforce compliance with COVID-19 lockdown rules, particularly where such restrictions appear to be mostly ignored.Authorities have said that strict stay-at-home orders in some of Australia’s most ethnically diverse areas in Sydney have been widely flouted, although charities have said community health messages for some migrant groups have been inadequate.A major police operation is underway in parts of Sydney to ensure the rules are followed. Officers on horseback are expected to patrol main shopping areas.Senior commanders have denied the crackdown is targeting multicultural areas.Australian Prime Minister Prime Minister Scott Morrison said too many people have broken the rules.“We haven’t seen the compliance that has been necessary. It is important to get that compliance in place,” he said. “The virus does not move on its own. It moves by people moving the virus around, and that is why it is so important that the restrictions that have been put in place that are appropriate just need to be complied with.”Under Sydney’s lockdown, which is due to end on July 16, residents can only leave home to work, study, buy groceries, care for a relative or other dependent, or receive a COVID-19 vaccination.Starting Friday, people will only be able to exercise in groups of two and do so within 10 kilometers of their homes.The New South Wales chief health officer, Dr. Kerry Chant, urged residents to stay home.“People are looking at countries overseas where they are seeing people going about their work and pleasure in a sort of seminormal way, and I think that is really important to highlight. That is because those countries have got vaccination coverages for their adult population, and in some cases down in the childhood population, that is very different from our situation. We have only got 9% vaccination coverage.”Health officials have estimated there are 513 active coronavirus infections in Australia. Ninety–two patients are in the hospital.New South Wales, including the state capital, Sydney, recorded another 44 new infections Friday.Australia has recorded almost 31,000 COVID-19 cases and 910 deaths since the pandemic began.Its international borders remain closed to most foreign nationals.
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Karmic fortune has arrived to the digital art market, with a kaleidoscopic splash of colors and the face of a revered Thai monk offering portable Buddhist good luck charms to tech-savvy buyers.Sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — virtual images of anything from popular internet memes to original artwork — have swept the art world in recent months, with some fetching millions of dollars at major auction houses.CryptoAmulets is the latest venture to chase the craze, with founder Ekkaphong Khemthong sensing opportunity in Thailand’s widespread practice of collecting talismans blessed by revered monks.”I am an amulet collector and I was thinking about how I could introduce amulets to foreigners and to the world,” he told AFP.Collecting amulets and other small religious trinkets is a popular pastime in Buddhist-majority Thailand, where the capital Bangkok has a market solely dedicated to the traders of these lucky objects.Their value can rise thousands of dollars if blessed by a well-respected monk.Despite being a digital format, Ekkapong wanted CryptoAmulets to have the same traditional ceremony as a physical piece, which is why he approached Luang Pu Heng, a highly regarded abbot from Thailand’s northeast.”I respect this monk and I would love the world to know about him — he is a symbol of good fortune in business,” he said.Luang Pu Heng last month presided over a ceremony to bless physical replicas of the digital amulets, which show a serene image of his face.He splashed holy water onto his own visage as his saffron-robed disciples chanted and scattered yellow petals on the altar where the portraits were mounted.’We just tried to simplify it’One challenge was trying to explain the concept of NFTs to the 95-year-old abbot, who assumed he would be blessing physical amulets.”It’s very hard so we just tried to simplify it,” said Singaporean developer Daye Chan.”We said to him that it’s like blessing the photos.”Transforming amulets into crypto art also means the usual questions of authenticity plaguing a talisman sold in a market are eliminated, he added.”There are so many amulets being mass produced… All the records could be lost and these physical items can be easily counterfeited,” Chan said.NFTs use blockchain technology — an unalterable digital ledger — to record all transactions from the moment of their creation.”For our amulet, even a hundred years later, they can still check back the record to see what the blockchain is,” Chan said.But founder Ekkaphong would not be drawn on the karmic effectiveness of digital amulets, compared to their real-life counterparts.”They are different,” he said.On the CryptoAmulets website online gallery, different inscriptions are written in Thai — “rich,” “lucky” or “fortunate,” for instance — around each of the tokens.They are priced on a tiered system in ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, and are currently selling for between $46 and $1,840.Sales have been slow ahead of Sunday’s purchase deadline, with only 1,500 tokens sold out of the 8,000 available, and with Thais making up most of the buyers.Thai chef Theerapong Lertsongkram said he bought a CryptoAmulet because of his reverence for objects blessed by Luang Pu Heng, which he says have brought him good fortune.”I have had several lucky experiences such as winning small lottery prizes… or being promoted on my job,” said Theerapong, who works in a Stockholm restaurant.”I did not know anything about NFTs before, but I made the decision to buy it as I respect Luang Pu Heng so much,” he told AFP.But fellow collector Wasan Sukjit — who adorns the interior of his taxi with rare amulets — has a harder time with the concept.”Amulets need to be something physical, something people can hold,” he scoffed.”I prefer the ones I can hang on my neck.”
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Some won’t ever remember the parents they lost because they were too young when COVID-19 struck. Others are trying to keep the memory alive by doing the things they used to do together: making pancakes or playing guitar. Others still are clutching onto what remains, a pillow or a photo, as they adapt to lives with aunts, uncles and siblings stepping in to fill the void.The 4 million people who have died so far in the coronavirus pandemic left behind parents, friends and spouses — but also young children who are navigating life now as orphans or with just one parent, who is also mourning the loss.It’s a trauma that is playing out in big cities and small villages across the globe, from Assam state in northeast India to New Jersey and points in between.And even as vaccination rates tick up, the losses and generational impact show no sign of easing in many places where the virus and its variants continue to kill. As the official COVID-19 death toll reached its latest grim milestone this week, South Korea reported its biggest single-day jump in infections and Indonesia counted its deadliest day of the pandemic so far.Victoria Elizabeth Soto didn’t notice the milestone. She was born three months ago after her mother, Elisabeth Soto, checked into the hospital in Lomas de Zamora, Argentina, eight months pregnant and suffering symptoms of COVID-19.Soto, 38, had tried for three years to get pregnant and gave birth to baby Victoria on April 13. The mother died six days later of complications from the virus. Victoria wasn’t infected.Her father, Diego Roman, says he is coping little by little with the loss, but fears for his baby girl, who one day will learn she has no mother.”I want her to learn to say ‘Mom’ by showing her a picture of her,” Roman said. “I want her to know that her mother gave her life for her. Her dream was to be a mom, and she was.”Tshimologo Bonolo, just 8, lost her father to COVID-19 in July 2020 and spent the year adjusting to life in Soweto, South Africa, without him.The hardest thing has been her new daily routine: Bonolo’s father, Manaila Mothapo, used to drive her to school every day, and now she has to take public transport.”I used to cook, play and read books with my papa,” Bonolo said. “What I miss most is jumping on my papa’s belly.”In northwest London, Niva Thakrar, 13, cuts the grass and washes the family car — things her dad used to do. As a way to remember him, she takes the same walks and watches the movies they used to watch together before he died in March after a two-month hospital stay.Kian Navales poses at home in Quezon city, Philippines, on July 6, 2021, holding a pillow with a photo on it of his late father, Arthur, who died from the coronavirus.”I still try to do what we used to do before, but it’s not the same,” Thakrar said.Jeshmi Narzary lost both parents in two weeks in May in Kokrajhar, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam.The 10-year-old went on to live with an aunt and two cousins but could only move in after she underwent 14 days of quarantine herself during India’s springtime surge that made the country second only to the U.S. in the number of confirmed cases.Narzary hasn’t processed the deaths of her parents. But she is scrupulous about wearing face masks and washing her hands, especially before she eats. She does so, she said, because she knows “that coronavirus is a disease which kills humans.”Kehity Collantes, age 6, also knows what the virus can do. It killed her mother, a hospital worker in Santiago, Chile, and now she has to make pancakes by herself.It also means this: “My papa is now also my mama,” she said.Siblings Zavion and Jazzmyn Guzman lost both parents to COVID-19, and their older sisters now care for them. Their mother, Lunisol Guzman, adopted them as babies but died last year along with her partner at the start of the violent first wave of the pandemic in the U.S. Northeast.Katherine and Jennifer Guzman immediately sought guardianship of the kids — Zavion is 5 and Jazzymn 3 — and are raising them in Belleville, New Jersey.”I lost my mother, but now I’m a mother figure,” said Jennifer Guzman, 29.Tshimologo Bonolo, 8, poses for a photograph at her house in Soweto, South Africa, June 26, 2021. She lost her father to COVID-19 in July 2020.The losses of the Navales family in Quezon City, Philippines, are piling up. After Arthur Navales, 38, died on April 2, the family experienced some shunning from the community.His widow, Analyn B. Navales, fears she might not be able to afford the new home they planned to move into, since her salary alone won’t cover it. Another question is whether she can afford the kids’ taekwondo classes.Ten-year-old Kian Navales, who also had the virus, misses going out for noodles with his dad. He clutches onto one of the pillows his mother had made for him and his sister with a photo of their father on one side.”Our house became quiet and sad. We don’t laugh much since papa left,” said Kian’s 12-year-old sister, Yael.Maggie Catalano, 13, is keeping the memory of her father alive through music.A musician himself, Brian Catalano taught Maggie some guitar chords before he got sick. He presented her with her own acoustic guitar for Christmas on Dec. 26, the day he came home from the hospital after a nine-day stay.Still positive and weak, he remained quarantined in a bedroom but could hear Maggie play through the walls of their Riverside County, California, home.”He texted me and said, ‘You sounded great, sweetie,'” Maggie recalled.The family thought he had beaten the disease — but four days later, he died alone at home while they were out.Devastated, Maggie turned to writing songs and performed one she composed at his funeral in May.”I wish he could see me play it now,” she said. “I wish that he could see how much I have improved.”
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Anti-poverty organization Oxfam said Thursday that 11 people die of hunger each minute and that the number facing faminelike conditions around the globe has increased six times over the last year.In a report titled The Hunger Virus Multiplies, Oxfam said that the death toll from famine outpaces that of COVID-19, which kills around seven people per minute.”The statistics are staggering, but we must remember that these figures are made up of individual people facing unimaginable suffering. Even one person is too many,” said Oxfam America’s president and CEO, Abby Maxman.The humanitarian group also said that 155 million people around the world are now living in crisis levels of food insecurity or worse — some 20 million more than last year. Around two-thirds of them face hunger because their country is in military conflict.”Today, unrelenting conflict on top of the COVID-19 economic fallout, and a worsening climate crisis, has pushed more than 520,000 people to the brink of starvation,” Maxman said. “Instead of battling the pandemic, warring parties fought each other, too often landing the last blow to millions already battered by weather disasters and economic shocks.”Despite the pandemic, Oxfam said that global military spending increased by $51 billion during the pandemic — an amount that exceeds by at least six times what the U.N. needs to stop hunger.The report listed a number of countries as “the worst hunger hotspots,” including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen — all embroiled in conflict.”Starvation continues to be used as a weapon of war, depriving civilians of food and water and impeding humanitarian relief. People can’t live safely or find food when their markets are being bombed and crops and livestock are destroyed,” Maxman said.The organization urged governments to stop conflicts from continuing to spawn “catastrophic hunger” and to ensure that relief agencies could operate in conflict zones and reach those in need. It also called on donor countries to “immediately and fully” fund the U.N.’s efforts to alleviate hunger.”We work together with more than 694 partners across 68 countries. Oxfam aims to reach millions of people over the coming months and is urgently seeking funding to support its programs across the world,” the report’s press release said.Meanwhile, global warming and the economic repercussions of the pandemic have caused a 40% increase in global food prices, the highest in over a decade. This surge has contributed significantly to pushing tens of millions more people into hunger, said the report.
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The Olympic flame arrived Friday in Tokyo, but the public will be kept away at a low-key welcoming ceremony because of coronavirus fears, the day after a “heartbreaking” announcement that spectators would be banned from most games events.On a rainy morning exactly two weeks before the opening ceremony of the biggest sporting event since the pandemic began, the flame was brought on stage in a lantern and handed to Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.Tokyo 2020 organizers and government officials announced Thursday night their decision to bar fans from Olympic events in the capital, which will be under a virus emergency throughout the games.It means the pandemic-postponed games will be the first to take place largely behind closed doors. A handful of competitions will take place outside the capital.The torch relay was meant to build excitement for the games, but it has been pulled from public roads in the capital to prevent crowds spreading the virus as infections rise.Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra members perform during the unveiling ceremony of the Olympic flame at the Komazawa Olympic Park General Sports Ground in Tokyo, July 9, 2021.Before the flame arrived, five male trumpet players dressed in suits played a rousing melody under a gazebo to shelter them from the drizzle, in front of only journalists and a handful of officials.The stands stood empty at the Komazawa Olympic Park stadium in the capital’s southeastern suburbs, which was used in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.”I’m glad that we welcome the torch relay, with these legacies we proudly show at home and abroad,” Koike said.But the Tokyo governor, who was recently hospitalized for exhaustion, coughed three times during her brief speech and several more times after that.Hint of what’s to comeFriday’s event gave a taste of the atmosphere that could await athletes at the opening ceremony, to be held at the National Stadium in the city center.The decision to bar fans came after the government said a state of emergency would be imposed in Tokyo throughout the games to curb a rebound in infections and fears over the more infectious delta variant that has led to virus resurgences in many countries.On Thursday night, Koike could not hide her disappointment.”I feel heartbreaking grief about this decision,” she said.When the 2020 Games were postponed last year as the scale of the pandemic became clear, there was talk they would be staged as proof the world had overcome the virus.But that triumphant tone has given way to the harsh reality of new infection surges and more contagious variants.Troubled relayThe nationwide torch relay has been fraught with problems since it began in March, with almost half the legs disrupted in some way.The relay was forced off public roads in famous tourist cities such as Kyoto and Hiroshima over fears that crowds of fans could spread the virus.And it has also met with some public opposition, with a 53-year-old woman arrested on Sunday for squirting liquid from a water pistol toward a runner.
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