A space policy expert says that despite the unfolding Russian invasion in Ukraine, the International Space Station should remain at peace. Plus, a delivery of science experiments to the ISS, and a piece of Earth art bound for the moon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Month: February 2022
With the global vaccine supply exceeding distribution capacity, the Biden administration is acknowledging a need to adjust its pandemic response strategy to address hurdles faced by lower-income countries to vaccinate their citizens.
“It is clear that supply is outstripping demand and the area of focus really needs to be that ‘shots in arms’ work,” said Hilary Marston, White House senior policy adviser for global COVID, to VOA. “That’s something that we are laser-focused on for 2022.”
Marston said that the administration has helped boost global vaccine supply through donations, expanding global manufacturing capacity and support for COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing mechanism supported by the United Nations and health organizations Gavi and CEPI.
Following supply setbacks in 2021, COVAX’s supply is no longer a limiting factor, a Gavi spokesperson told VOA. He said COVAX now has the flexibility to “focus on supporting the nuances of countries’ strategies, capacity, and demand.”
However, the pivot from boosting vaccine supply to increasing delivery capacity depends on whether the administration can secure funding from Congress, including funds for the U.S. government’s Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or Global VAX, a program launched in December by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Global VAX is billed as a whole-of-government effort to turn vaccines in vials into vaccinations in arms around the world. It includes bolstering cold chain supply and logistics, service delivery, vaccine confidence and demand, human resources, data and analytics, local planning, and vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Four-hundred-million dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act has been put aside for this initiative, on top of the $1.3 billion for global vaccine readiness the administration has committed. Activists say this is not nearly enough, but USAID says it’s a good first step.
“The U.S. government will surge support for an initial subset of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have demonstrated the potential for rapid acceleration of vaccine uptake with intensive financial, technical, and diplomatic support,” a USAID spokesperson told VOA.
Those countries include Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Critical bottleneck
In January, COVAX had 436 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to allocate to lower-income countries, according to a document published in mid-February. Those countries, however, only asked for 100 million doses to be distributed by the end of May – the first time in 14 allocation rounds that supply has outstripped demand, the document from the COVAX Independent Allocation of Vaccines Group said.
“We’ve seen now 11 billion plus doses of vaccine being manufactured,” said Krishna Udayakumar to VOA. “We’re estimating 14- to 16- plus billion doses of vaccine being available in 2022,” added Udayakumar, who is founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center and leads a team that tracks global vaccine production and distribution.
But rather than fulfilment of vaccination targets, the oversupply highlights a weakness in global distribution capacity, which Udayakumar said is becoming “the critical bottlenecks.”
Only 12% percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to country data compiled by Our World in Data. Many countries still face massive hurdles to get those shots in arms, including gaps in cold-chain storage, and lack of funding to support distribution networks.
Global COVID funding
As the administration prepares to pivot its global pandemic response, humanitarian organizations are criticizing it for requesting insufficient funding from Congress.
“After two devastating years of this pandemic, U.S. leaders are dropping the ball on fighting COVID-19. Today we learned the Biden administration briefed Congress on the need for $5 billion in funding from Congress to fight COVID-19,” said Tom Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, in a statement to VOA last week. “What the world needs, though, is a formal request for $17 billion.”
Hart argued the $5 billion funding would be insufficient to provide critical resources needed to deliver vaccines, tests, and life-saving treatments to low-income countries, and achieve the administration’s goal of 70% global vaccination by September – a goal that is already far below pace.
The White House said the number is not final. “I don’t have any specific numbers; we’re still in conversation with the Hill (Congress) at this point about funding and funding needs, both domestically and internationally,” press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA on Wednesday.
In a statement to VOA, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, said they are still reviewing the funding request. “I will work with my colleagues to meet these important public health needs at home and around the world,” she said.
Meanwhile, Gavi, a COVAX co-sponsor, said it has only raised $195 million out of the $5.2 billion it asked for this quarter. The Gavi spokesperson told VOA the call to donors only went out in January and typically campaigns such as this require extensive rounds of consultation.
“The reason we launched a campaign to raise US $5.2 billion in additional funding is to ensure countries are able to roll out vaccines rapidly and at scale and have the resources on hand to be able to immediately step in as and when countries’ needs change,” the spokesperson said. “We need resources available now to prevent lower income countries once again finding themselves at the back of the queue. This is the only way we will break this pandemic.”
TRIPS waiver
Humanitarian organization Oxfam also argues that $5 billion dollars is not enough.
“We need to do much more to vaccinate the world, including investing in local manufacturing and most importantly, sharing the vaccine recipe,” Robbie Silverman, Oxfam’s senior advocacy manager told VOA.
Sharing vaccine recipes essentially means implementing a temporary TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver at the World Trade Organization to allow the generic production of current vaccines, as proposed by South Africa and India in October 2021. The proposal is supported by the Biden administration but rejected by the European Union.
Following a summit between European Union and African Union leaders last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered a compromise and said that the EU and AU will work together to deliver a solution within the next few months.
The U.S. is by far the biggest vaccine donor. The administration is sending 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Zambia and Uganda this week, bringing the total shipped globally to 470 million doses out of 1.2 billion doses pledged.
Hong Kong rolled out vaccine passports on Thursday requiring people aged 12 and above to have at least one COVID-19 jab, and paved the way for mainland China manpower to help bring a worsening outbreak under control.
Residents will have to show their vaccine record to access venues including supermarkets, shopping malls and restaurants, a major inconvenience in a city where malls link train stations to residences and office buildings.
Separately, city leader Carrie Lam used emergency powers granted under British colonial-era laws to exempt mainland Chinese staff and projects from any licensing or other legal requirements to operate in Hong Kong.
City authorities have asked their mainland Chinese counterparts for help to build additional isolation, treatment and testing facilities, and boost the workforce as Hong Kong’s health system is increasingly overwhelmed.
“Hong Kong’s healthcare system, manpower, anti-epidemic facilities and resources … will soon be insufficient to handle the huge number of newly confirmed cases detected every day,” the government said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Hong Kong reported a record 8,674 new COVID-19 infections as the global financial hub prepares for compulsory testing of its 7.4 million people – part of its “dynamic zero COVID” strategy similar to mainland China.
Allowing mainland doctors to practice in Hong Kong has been a controversial issue in the global financial hub, which for decades had some of the toughest licensing standards as a way to preserve excellence in its public health system.
The city last year passed a law allowing overseas-trained doctors to practice without taking a local licensing exam, in a move contested by many local doctors.
Hong Kong’s medical front lines have been weakened sharply by the latest outbreak, with some 1,200 medical staff infected as of Wednesday.
Authorities also tightened restrictions from Thursday in a city that already has some of the most stringent rules in the world. Residents will have to wear masks for all outdoor exercise and will not be allowed to remove them to eat or drink on public transport.
With bars, gyms and other businesses already closed and shopping malls deserted while many residents work from home, the government said on Tuesday schools would break early for summer and resume the new year in August.
Many in the city are growing fatigued with the situation, as most other major cities learn to live with the virus.
As the urgency grows, construction work has started on a facility on Lantau Island to build about 10,000 isolation units, while private hospitals will take in patients from public hospitals.
With the city’s testing, treatment and isolation capacity already stretched to the maximum, University of Hong Kong researchers predicted new infections could peak at 180,000 a day next month.
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Tensions in eastern Ukraine and heightened Western fears of a Russian invasion should not have a significant impact on the International Space Station or U.S.-Russia cooperation in space, the former head of the National Space Council told The Associated Press.
Four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut are currently on the space station.
Scott Pace, who served as executive secretary of the space council under President Donald Trump and is now the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said the space station “has been largely isolated” from political events.
“It’s possible to imagine a break with Russia that would endanger the space station, but that would be at the level of a dropping diplomatic relations,” said Pace. “That would be something that would be an utterly last resort so I don’t really see that happening unless there is a wider military confrontation.”
The space station, an international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries, including Canada, several countries in Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States, launched in 1998 and morphed into a complex that’s almost as long as a football field, with eight miles of electrical wiring, an acre of solar panels and three high-tech labs.
It marked two decades of people continuously living and working in orbit in 2020.
The first crew — American Bill Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko — blasted off from Kazakhstan on Oct. 31, 2000. Two days later, they swung open the space station doors, and clasped their hands in unity.
The three astronauts got along fine but tension sometimes bubbled up with the two mission controls, in Houston and outside Moscow.
Shepherd, during a NASA panel discussion with his crewmates, said he got so frustrated with the “conflicting marching orders” that he insisted they come up with a single plan.
Russia kept station crews coming and going after NASA’s Columbia disaster in 2003 and after the space shuttles retired in 2011.
In 2020, SpaceX ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA and became the first private company to launch Americans to the space station.
“It is a way of undertaking common endeavors, but that power is not infinite and terrestrial conflicts on Earth can still get in the way,” said Pace. “Space is ever more critical to our daily life and it’s something everybody should be aware of.”
Earlier this year, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who chaired a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels, said he was keen to discuss ways to prevent dangerous military incidents or accidents involving Russia and the Western allies, reducing space and cyber threats, as well as setting limits on missile deployments and other arms control initiatives.
There have been concerns raised in Congress about the impact that conflict over Ukraine could have on the International Space Station.
Lawmakers have specifically exempted space cooperation from previous sanctions and can be expected to make similar arguments against targeting it as the administration considers its next steps over Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Russia began evacuating its embassy in Kyiv, and Ukraine urged its citizens to leave Russia.
Russian lawmakers authorized President Vladimir Putin to use military force outside his country and President Joe Biden and European leaders responded by slapping sanctions on Russian oligarchs and banks.
Both leaders signaled that an even bigger confrontation could lie ahead.
Putin has yet to unleash the force of the 150,000 troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, while Biden held back on the toughest sanctions that could cause economic turmoil for Russia but said they would go ahead if there is further aggression.
The sanctions underscored the urgency felt by Western nations to blunt the conflict.
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The use of wind to generate electricity for the United States was thrust forward Wednesday with the largest-ever offering by the federal government of offshore development rights.
Bidding for the 197,000 hectares of the New York Bight — an area of shallow waters between the coasts of Long Island (in New York state) and the state of New Jersey — attracted record-setting prices, according to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
“This auction today is a testament to how attractive the U.S. market is,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance.
Europe is much further along than North America in developing lease areas for offshore wind farms.
There are two small offshore wind facilities in the United States off the coasts of the states of Rhode Island and Virginia. Two more commercial-scale projects were recently approved for development.
“We’re really just at the beginning of a process here. We hope to apply the lessons learned from Europe and take advantage of the cost savings achieved in Europe,” Zalcman told VOA.
Officials say turbines erected in the set of six leases that went up for bidding Wednesday, the first auction conducted during the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, could eventually provide power for nearly 2 million residences.
Wednesday’s top bids totaled more than $1.5 billion. The largest single lease area offered — totaling nearly 51,000 hectares and located about 50 kilometers off the New Jersey coast — had attracted a record-busting $410 million, with bidding to resume Thursday morning.
The previous auction was held in 2018 during the administration of former President Donald Trump. It was considered a success, with three leases off the coast of the state of Massachusetts bringing in a collective record-breaking $405 million for rights to develop 158,000 hectares south of Martha’s Vineyard, with a potential generating capacity of more than 4.1 gigawatts, enough to supply power to about 1.5 million homes.
Trump, a Republican, repeatedly expressed, at best, skepticism toward wind as a viable renewable source to supply America’s energy needs. He derided “windmills,” saying he had been told the noise from their blades “causes cancer” and “it’s like a graveyard for birds.”
Biden, a Democrat, has veered in a different direction, embracing wind as part of his clean energy ambitions and setting a goal of 30 gigawatts of capacity in the United States by the year 2030.
In his first week in office in 2021, Biden signed an executive order to expand opportunities for the offshore wind industry, predicting, according to the White House, the projects “will create good-paying union jobs” and “spawn new supply chains that stretch into America’s heartland.”
The area included in the ongoing auction, which began with 25 qualified bidders, was cut back by about one-fourth from what was initially proposed last year due to concerns about the potential impact on commercial fishing and military interests.
State and federal officials, according to Zalcman, have been addressing concerns of other ocean users, including recreational and commercial fishers, navigators and the shipping industry, and taking into consideration visual impacts to coastal communities, and concerns of environmental groups about migratory species, such as the North Atlantic right whale.
A group of residents of the New Jersey summer colony of Long Beach last month sued BOEM over the New York Bight leasing plans, contending the massive wind farm would permanently mar their beautiful view from the beach, hurt the area’s tourism economy and harm property values.
Bob Stern, the president of Save Long Beach Island, told VOA on Wednesday that the organization “is not opposed to offshore wind energy but believes that the federal government’s process of selecting ocean areas for turbine placement is flawed.”
Stern explained that the group’s lawsuit challenges the federal government agency’s selection of “wind energy areas” for offshore wind turbines which “should have been preceded and supported by a structured regional environmental impact statement process with full disclosure of impacts and public input.”
The Sierra Club is terming the New York Bight auction a historic major stride forward for clean energy.
“This lease sale is the first to include stipulations setting out responsibilities for project developers to report on their engagement with stakeholders to minimize conflicting uses, negotiation of project labor agreements, and the development of offshore wind-related manufacturing and supply chain services,” said Allison Considine, a senior campaign representative of the national environmental organization.
A preeminent concern is ensuring that these projects are done responsibly, said Zalcman of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, of which the Sierra Club is a member.
How developers configure the wind farms will be subject to another rigorous round of environmental review before they are able to erect the huge structures.
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During February, a special ritual takes place backstage at The Lion King musical on Broadway.
On show days, the four young actors who play the lion cubs Simba and Nala seek out fellow actor Bonita J. Hamilton in the moments before the curtain goes up at the Minskoff Theatre.
The youngsters have learned their lines and choreography, of course, but during Black History Month, they also tell Hamilton what they’ve learned about a Black historical figure. It might include a birthdate, the figure’s biggest achievements and some facts about their lives.
“February is my favorite month because the children — the cubs — get to teach me about Black history,” said Hamilton, who plays the hyena leader Shenzi onstage and offstage looks after the cubs with warmth and respect. “Every day in the month of February, they bring me a Black history fact.”
Hamilton has led the voluntary ritual for 17 years and the children seem to enjoy the challenge. “Telling Miss Bonita my fact is just really fun to do,” said Sydney Elise Russell, 10, who plays young Nala.
This month, the kids have honored Aretha Franklin, Shirley Chisholm, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Michael Jordan, George Washington Carver, Angela Davis, Ethel Waters, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, Dorothy Height and Mabel Fairbanks, among others.
“They’re learning, I’m learning. Because I say, ‘You’re teaching me something,'” said Hamilton, a graduate of Alabama State University and Brandeis University. “You’ve got to know whose shoulders you’re standing on.”
Last Friday night, Vince Ermita, 12, who plays Simba for four performances a week, sought out Hamilton to recite what he’d lately learned online about music icon Louis Armstrong.
“Louis Armstrong was born on Aug. 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was a jazz trumpeter and vocalist, and one of the most iconic people he performed with was Ella Fitzgerald,” Vince said, without notes.
“His improvisation changed the landscape of jazz, and some of his most famous songs were What a Wonderful World, West End Blues and Hello, Dolly! And he passed away on July 6, 1971.”
Vince had clearly nailed the assignment, and Hamilton beamed. But she had a follow-up question: What was Armstrong’s nickname?
“Satchmo?” he answered.
“All right!” Hamilton exclaimed, giving him a hand slap.
The other young actors also offered their facts. Alayna Martus, 12, picked gymnast Dominique Dawes — nicknamed Awesome Dawesome — and Sydney picked writer and poet Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose most famous poem is On Being Brought from Africa to America.
Hamilton also had a question when Sydney was done: “Do you know the name of Peters’ first published book?” Sydney did not but promised to return with the answer.
“Circle back, good job. Good job, guys. Thank you. I learned something today,” said Hamilton.
The backstage February ceremonies have had a lasting impact on generations of actors who have cycled in and out of the show, under Hamilton’s charismatic leadership. This year, several former child alumni of The Lion King — led by Caleb McLaughlin of the Netflix series Stranger Things — got together to make a video for Hamilton — each submitting their Black History figures for February.
Hamilton, from Montgomery, Alabama, the home of the civil rights movement which her family aided, started the tradition after coming to The Lion King and asking her then-young co-stars about the meaning of February.
“One day, just so casually, I said, ‘It’s Black History Month, guys. Let’s talk about it. What do you know about Black History Month?’ And they said, ‘Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks,'” she recalls, shaking her head. “There’s so much more to our history.”
Hamilton mixed it up a bit this year, kicking off the month by picking the names of several Black heroes from South Africa and putting them into a cup for the cubs to pick: Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele and Tsietsi Mashinini, among them. The Lion King is set in South Africa, after all.
“They make me very proud. It’s like a game. It’s not anything that’s homework. Learning can be fun,” she said.
It’s a fitting ritual for a show in which Africa is celebrated and there are six Indigenous languages sung and spoken: Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and Congolese.
“The Lion King is steeped in ritual tradition, tribal things. Even the fabrics that we wear in the show have tribal markings, the mask, the makeup — all of it is tribal,” said Hamilton.
The ceremony clearly honors a legacy of greatness — updated, naturally, as the inclusion of gymnast Simone Biles can attest — but also teaches the children to respect how they got here.
“They have to know that there was a time when we weren’t allowed to perform on stage or, if we were, we couldn’t walk into the front door of the theater,” said Hamilton.
“It is a privilege to be able to share your gifts on the world’s largest stage. And that’s what I try to instill in them because we weren’t always able to do it.”
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Aid groups warned Wednesday that a spike in COVID-19 infections and an alarming measles outbreak have compounded the health emergencies in Afghanistan, stretching the impoverished, war-torn country’s fragile health care system.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement that urgent global support, including health and testing services, as well as vaccinations, was needed to slow the spread of the coronavirus that is surging across Afghanistan.
“A new wave is hitting Afghanistan hard. Testing is inadequate, and the World Health Organization reports that almost half of tested samples are coming back positive, indicating an alarming spread of the virus,” the statement added.
It said the underfunded and understaffed national health system was struggling to cope with the surge in cases. Dozens of COVID-19 health facilities have closed because they didn’t have enough medicines, essential medical supplies and funds to pay the utilities and health workers’ salaries.
The aid group said that fewer than 10 of the country’s 37 public COVID-19 health facilities remained functional, and that they were unable to keep up with demand. Only 10% of the country’s estimated population of 40 million is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Mawlawi Mutiul Haq Khales, the acting president of Afghan Red Crescent, stressed the need for increasing the number of functional health facilities so that pressure can be eased on the few functioning hospitals.
“As the number of COVID-19 infections increases from cities to remote corners of the country, the international community needs to open up the doors to support critical health care, testing and other essential services before it’s too late for the people of Afghanistan,” Khales said.
The Taliban takeover of the country in August prompted international donors to suspend foreign aid, impose financial sanctions and freeze billions of dollars in Afghan foreign cash reserves, mostly held in the United States. The restrictions triggered economic upheavals, worsening an already bad humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan that stems from years of war and a persistent drought.
The U.N. World Food Program estimates nearly 23 million people, or 55% of the country’s population, suffer from severe hunger, saying around 9 million of them are a step away from famine. More than 3 million children suffer from severe malnutrition.
The IFRC noted in its statement that the measles outbreak has infected thousands and killed dozens of people in the last month in Afghanistan.
“The measles outbreak is alarming since Afghanistan is in the middle of one of the worst droughts and food crises in decades, leaving children malnourished and far more vulnerable to the highly contagious disease,” said Necephor Mghendi, IFRC’s country head.
Doctors Without Borders, an international charity known by its French acronym MSF, said in a separate statement that most of its programs, including those in southern Helmand and western Herat provinces, have seen high numbers of patients. It described the malnutrition rates as concerning.
“MSF is treating a high number of patients with measles in our projects in Helmand and Herat. Our teams are concerned about how the situation will progress unless more children are vaccinated against the disease,” the charity said.
The ripple effect of long-running sanctions on the Taliban and the financial measures against the new rulers in Afghanistan are being felt nationwide, according to MSF.
“The country faces near economic and institutional collapse, and tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and are struggling to find work,” it said.
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The Biden administration announced on Tuesday actions taken by the federal government and private industry that it says will bolster the supply chain of rare earths and other critical minerals used in technologies from household appliances and electronics to defense systems. They say these steps will reduce the nation’s dependence on China, a major producer of these elements. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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A report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says climate change will fuel an increase in wildfires in coming decades. The report warns that if preventive measures are not taken, the fires will damage environments, human health, and economies.
The report, released Wednesday ahead of the 5th session of the United Nations Environment Assembly to be held in Nairobi next week, says climate change and how people use land are expected to increase wildfires globally by 50 percent by 2100.
“Most regions experience weather conditions that are conducive to the outbreak of a wildfire at some point in the year,” said Andrew Sullivan, a bushfire researcher at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
“Uncontrollable and devastating wildfires are becoming an expected part of the seasonal calendars in many parts of the world. The risk that wildfire poses to people and the environment is changing due to numerous factors, including but not limited to climate change. Other factors include land-use changes and demographic changes.”
Research analysis shows the risk of wildfires has become more frequent in some areas and there is more risk in areas that have been unaffected by fires.
A recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet said more than 30,000 people in 43 countries have died due to exposure to wildfire smoke.
Glynis Humphrey of the Plant conservation unit at the University of Cape Town says fire affects U.N. development goals intended to reduce poverty, improve health and spur economic development.
“It affects food systems,” she said. “If a large fire wipes out crops or it impacts on an urban area, it still affects food resources and typically it impacts the poorest of the poor. Fire interacts closely with climate in terms of carbon emissions and rainfall patterns and it impacts human and ecosystem health and it impacts people’s jobs and the economic situation that people find them in. So it’s essential that fire is actually incorporated and acknowledged within the sustainable development goals and put on the agenda.”
Sullivan says the world needs to learn to manage and mitigate the risks of wildfires.
“Eliminating the risk of wildfires is not possible, but much can be done to manage and reduce the risks that they pose,” he saiad. “When it comes to fighting wildfires, we know that technology has very clear limitations, particularly when the wildfire behavior is extreme. Managing the available fuel before a wildfire breaks out through a plant, that is prescribed for hazard reduction burning or other hazard mitigation actions, can reduce the intensity and thus the likely impact of a wildfire. Fuel management will increase the window of effectiveness of suppression actions and also increase firefighters’ safety.”
Environmental experts are calling for the use of data and science-based monitoring systems with indigenous knowledge to achieve robust regional and international cooperation.
The report also calls for international safety standards and asks countries to work on policies and laws that encourage good land and fire use.
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The psycho-social wellbeing of an entire generation of Ukrainian children is at risk from war in the country’s eastern Donbas region, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund. With legions of Russian troops pouring in, the situation is only worse, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Aggressive marketing practices by formula milk companies undermine women’s confidence, discouraging them from breastfeeding their babies, a World Health Organization-U.N. Children’s Fund study reports.
Some 8,500 parents and pregnant women and 300 health workers in cities across eight countries were surveyed over a three-year period. The report reveals six of the world’s leading manufacturers of baby formula products engaged in systematic and unethical marketing strategies. All are in breach of international standards on infant feeding practices.
World Health Organization scientist and a lead author of the report, Nigel Rollins, said more than half of parents and pregnant women report being bombarded with messages about the benefits of formula milk. He told VOA industry claims are largely misleading and of dubious scientific veracity.
“There are many, many examples of how, for example, they see scientific terms being used,” he said. “Where there are scientific claims in terms of packaging, claims that it will improve brain development, that it will improve growth, that it will improve immunity. Even during the time of COVID.”
Rollins said there is no evidence to substantiate those assertions, but new parents may have difficulty judging the truthfulness of marketing claims. He said they want the best for their babies and are vulnerable to messages that promise solutions to day-to-day problems.
The survey was conducted in Bangladesh, China, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Britain and Vietnam. In those countries, between 49 percent and 98 percent of women surveyed expressed a strong desire to breastfeed their babies exclusively. However, the report says misleading marketing messages reinforce the difficulties of nursing, undermining women’s confidence in their ability to breastfeed successfully.
The WHO/UNICEF study notes global breastfeeding rates have increased very little in the past two decades. During the same period, sales of formula milk have more than doubled.
Rollins said the health consequences for infants and babies who are not fed with mothers’ milk are serious, especially in low-income countries.
“But, in fact, breastfeeding has a protective effect against mortality even in high-income settings,” he said. “But the impact on lifelong health — so, if you think about things like child obesity and child development and maternal health, risk of cancer — those are true for both children and mothers in every setting.”
The report says the baby feeding industry uses promotional gifts, commissions from sales and other inducements to entice health workers in all countries to persuade new mothers to buy their products.
The baby formula industry did not respond in advance of the report, which mentions no company by name. VOA will seek comment from the industry as soon as possible.
The WHO, UNICEF and partners are calling on governments to adopt legislation to end exploitative marketing practices. In addition, they said these laws must be enforced to ensure that the $55 billion industry abides by the landmark 1981 International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
Less than 10% of the plastic used around the world is recycled, the OECD said Tuesday, calling for “coordinated and global solutions” ahead of expected talks on an international plastics treaty.
A new report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report found that 460 million metric tons of plastics were used in 2019, the number that nearly doubled since 2000.
The amount of plastic waste has also more than doubled during that same time to 353 million metric tons, the Paris-based OECD said.
“After taking into account losses during recycling, only 9% of plastic waste was ultimately recycled, while 19% was incinerated and almost 50% went to sanitary landfills,” it said in its Global Plastics Outlook.
“The remaining 22% was disposed of in uncontrolled dumpsites, burned in open pits or leaked into the environment,” the report added.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw the use of plastics drop by 2.2% in 2020 compared with the previous year. However single-use plastics rose and overall use is “projected to pick up again” as the economy rebounds.
Plastics contributed 3.4% of the global greenhouse emissions in 2019, 90% of it from “production and conversion from fossil fuels,” the report said.
In the face of rampant global warming and pollution, it is “crucial that countries respond to the challenge with coordinated and global solutions,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in the report.
The OECD proposed a series of levers to address the issue, including developing the market for recycled plastics, which only represents 6% of the total, largely because they are more expensive.
It added that new technologies related to decreasing the environmental footprint of plastic represented only 1.2% of all innovation concerning the product.
While calling for “a more circular plastics lifecycle,” the OECD said that policies must also restrain overall consumption.
It also called for “major investments in basic waste management infrastructure,” including 25 billion euros ($28 billion) a year to go toward efforts in low and middle-income countries.
Plastic treaty talks
The report comes less than a week before the U.N. Environment Assembly begins on February 28 in Nairobi, Kenya, where formal talks are expected to begin on a future international plastics treaty, the scope of which will be discussed.
Shardul Agrawala, the head of the OECD’s environment and economy integration division, said Tuesday’s report “further accentuates the need for countries to come together to start looking towards a global agreement to address this very important problem.”
Asked about the priorities of the treaty to be discussed in Nairobi, she said “there is an urgent waste management problem which is responsible for the bulk of the leakage to the environment.”
“But we should not limit our focus just to the end-of-pipe solutions, there is a greater need in the long term to forge international cooperation and agreement towards alignment of standards,” she told an online press briefing Monday.
In a survey published Tuesday by polling firm Ipsos for the World Wildlife Fund, 88% of respondents stressed the importance of an international treaty to combat plastic pollution.
In the 28 countries surveyed, 23% of the respondents said such a treaty was “fairly important,” 31% said it was “very important” and 34% found it “essential.”
U.S. women soccer players reached a landmark agreement with the sport’s American governing body to end a six-year legal battle over equal pay, a deal in which they are promised $24 million plus bonuses that match those of the men.
The U.S. Soccer Federation and the women announced a deal Tuesday that will have players split $22 million, about one-third of what they had sought in damages. The USSF also agreed to establish a fund with $2 million to benefit the players in their post-soccer careers and charitable efforts aimed at growing the sport for women.
The USSF committed to providing an equal rate of pay for the women’s and men’s national teams — including World Cup bonuses — subject to collective bargaining agreements with the unions that separately represent the women and men.
“For our generation, knowing that we’re going to leave the game in an exponentially better place than when we found it is everything,” 36-year-old midfielder Megan Rapinoe said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “That’s what it’s all about because, to be honest, there is no justice in all of this if we don’t make sure it never happens again.”
The settlement was a victory for the players, who sparked fans to chant “Equal Pay!” when they won their second straight title in France in 2019. And it was a success for USSF President Cindy Parlow Cone, a former player who became head of the federation in March 2020.
Cone replaced Carlos Cordeiro, who quit after the federation made a legal filing that claimed women had less physical ability and responsibility than male counterparts.
“This is just one step towards rebuilding the relationship with the women’s team. I think this is a great accomplishment and I’m excited about the future and working together with them,” Cone said. “Now we can shift the focus to other things, most importantly, growing the game at all levels and increasing opportunities for girls and women.”
U.S. women have won four World Cups since the program’s start in 1985, while the men haven’t reached a semifinal since 1930.
Five American stars led by Morgan and Rapinoe began the challenge with a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2016. Women sued three years later, seeking damages under the federal Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The sides settled the working conditions portion in December 2020, dealing with issues such as charter flights, accommodations and playing surfaces. They were scheduled to argue on March 7 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an attempt to reinstate the equal pay portion thrown out by a U.S. District Court.
“The settlement announced today is an important step in righting the many wrongs of the past,” the union for the women’s team said in a statement.
While a labor contract remains to be reached and ratified to replace the deal that expires March 31, the settlement was an enormous step.
“It’s so gratifying to feel like we can start to mend a relationship with U.S. Soccer that has been severed for so many years because of the discrimination that we faced,” said Morgan, a 32-year-old forward. “To finally get to this moment feels like we can almost sigh a breath of relief.”
Players were able to put off the legal distractions to continue on-field success.
“The additional hours and stress and outside pressures and discriminations we face, I mean sometimes you think why the hell was I born a female?” Morgan posed. “And then sometimes you think how incredible is it to be able to fight for something that you actually believe in and stand alongside these women. … There was something more than stepping on the field and wanting to be a starter or wanting to score goals or wanting to win or wanting to have the glory.”
The $22 million will be split into individual amounts proposed by the players, subject to the District Court’s approval.
Cone said the federation’s method of equalizing World Cup bonuses is yet to be determined. The federation has until now based bonuses on payments from FIFA, which earmarked $400 million for the 2018 men’s tournament, including $38 million to champion France, and $30 million for the 2019 women’s tournament, including $4 million to the champion U.S.
American men have been playing under the terms of a CBA that expired in December 2018.
Rapinoe was critical of both Cordeiro and his predecessor, Sunil Gulati, who headed the USSF from 2006-18. Cordeiro is seeking to regain the job from Cone when the USSF National Council meets on March 5 to vote on a four-year term.
“The thing that Cindy did was acknowledge the wrongdoing and apologize for the wrongdoing,” Rapinoe said. “It was well within Sunil’s ability to not discriminate and to pay us fairly and equally. It was well within Carlos’ ability to do that, and they made choices not to. … I think Cindy has shown a lot of strength in that, and I think the other two, frankly, just showed a ton of weakness and showed really their true colors in allowing this to happen for so long.”
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Chile’s National Museum of Natural History said Monday it will return to Easter Island an enormous stone statue taken from the Rapa Nui people and brought to the mainland 150 years ago.
The monolith is one of hundreds, called Moai, carved by the Rapa Nui in honor of their ancestors and sometimes referred to as the Easter Island heads.
The statues are today the island’s greatest tourist attraction, sculpted from basalt more than 1,000 years ago.
The one being returned, dubbed Moai Tau, is a 715-kilogram (1,500-pound) giant brought by the Chilean navy some 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) across the Pacific in 1870.
Eight years later, it was moved to the natural history museum to be displayed.
The Rapa Nui, for whom the Moai represent the spirits of their ancestors, have been asking for the statue’s return for years — as well as other cultural treasures taken from their island.
“For the Rapa Nui, their ancestors, funerary objects and ceremonial materials may be as alive as members of their communities themselves,” said a museum statement.
The return of the monolith “is profoundly significant as a gesture towards our Indigenous peoples,” said museum curator Cristian Becker.
With delays due to the coronavirus epidemic, the statue will finally depart from the port of Valparaiso next Monday on a trip of about five days to Easter Island, said the museum, “after a complex technical and diagnostic process” to guarantee its structural integrity.
A traditional ceremony was held at the museum Monday to send the statue safely on its way.
“It is essential that the Moai return to my homeland. For them (the community) and for me, this day is very much awaited,” said Veronica Tuqui, a Rapa Nui representative.
Back on Easter Island, the Moai will be exhibited at the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum.
The Rapa Nui community has also asked the British Museum in London to return another Moai, dubbed Hoa Hakananai’a, that was taken in 1868 from Orongo, a ceremonial village on Easter Island.
The Rapa Nui in 2017 gained self-administration over their ancestral lands on Easter Island, a special territory of Chile.
Northern Britain and parts of France and Germany were battered Sunday and Monday by Franklin — the third major storm to strike the region in less than a week. The severe weather has flooded roads, knocked out power and left at least 14 people dead.
Storm Franklin brought heavy rains and high winds that disrupted travel and prompted more than 140 flood warnings across England and Wales as of Monday.
The storm moved through Northern Ireland and northern Britain before moving on to France, where a couple in their 70s died Sunday after their car was swept into the English Channel near a small town in Normandy.
Franklin struck even as crews were attempting to clear fallen trees and restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes hit by storms Dudley and Eunice last week.
Authorities in England issued more than 300 flood warnings and alerts, while insurers in Germany and the Netherlands estimated the damage from those storms to be at more than $1.7 billion. The German Aerospace Center said the storms would likely result in widespread damage to Europe’s already weakened forests.
The AccuWeather news service reports this is the first time three such storms have struck Britain and northern Europe in less than a week since Britain’s Meteorological Office began naming storms in 2015.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
As expected, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday the end of all domestic COVID-19 restrictions as of November 24, even self-isolation for those testing positive for the infection.
Speaking before Parliament, Johnson said the nation will still encourage those who test positive or experience symptoms to stay home — at least until April 1, when the government will simply encourage people with a positive test or symptoms “to exercise personal responsibility.” On that day, the government will also stop paying for COVID-19 testing.
Johnson announced the scrapping of the restrictions even as he wished Queen Elizabeth I well after she tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. The prime minister said the queen’s positive test is a reminder the pandemic is not over.
Scientists, along with some opposition politicians, have warned that ending all testing and tracking will weaken the ability to track the disease and respond to any new surges of infection.
Jordan
That news comes as a Jordanian government spokesman said Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday while visiting Egypt. They say he has no visible symptoms. The prime minister is in Cairo leading his country’s delegation in cooperation talks with Egyptian officials. He arrived on Thursday.
Jordan’s government spokesman said al-Khasawneh’s meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi was canceled and that the prime minister will be isolated upon his return to Amman.
Australia
Elsewhere, in Australia Monday, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrotte said, “Today we rejoined the world,” as the country opened to nonessential international travelers for the first time in nearly two years after lifting COVID-19 restrictions.
Israel
On Sunday, Israel said it will allow unvaccinated tourists to enter the country beginning March 1. Tourists will be required to pass two PCR tests — one before departure and one upon landing in Israel.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the health and mortality of health care workers around the world. The World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization have published a guide on how to implement stronger occupational health and safety programs for health workers.
James Campbell, director of the WHO Global Health Workforce Aliance, said, “COVID-19 has exposed the cost of this systemic lack of safeguards for the health, safety and well-being of health workers. In the first 18 months of the pandemic, about 115,500 health workers died from COVID-19.”
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday that it has recorded more than 425 million global COVID-19 infections and almost 6 million COVID-19 deaths. The center said more than 10 billion vaccines have been administered.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
Kamau Bell’s four-part documentary “We Need to Talk About Cosby” addresses the rise and fall of African American comedian Bill Cosby from revered ‘America’s Dad’ to an alleged sexual predator. Bell, a comedian himself and a show host, told VOA’s Penelope Poulou that countless people, especially African Americans, were shocked when Cosby, who promoted family values and education, was accused by dozens of women of sexually assaulting them.
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A gemstone, billed as one of the largest gem-quality opals in existence, was sold for $143,750 at auction in Alaska on Sunday.
The opal, dubbed the “Americus Australis,” weighs more than 11,800 carats, according to the auction house Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals. It also has a long history.
Most recently, it was kept in a linen closet in a home in Big Lake, north of Anchorage, by Fred von Brandt, who mines for gold in Alaska and whose family has deep roots in the gem and rock business.
The opal is larger than a brick and is broken into two pieces, which von Brandt said was a practice used decades ago to prove gem quality.
Von Brandt said the stone has been in his family since the late 1950s, when his grandfather bought it from an Australian opal dealer named John Altmann.
Von Brandt said the opal for decades was in the care of his father, Guy von Brandt, who decided it had been “locked up long enough, that it’s time to put it back out in the world and see what interest it can generate.”
“He entrusted me to figure out which direction we wanted to go to part with the stone,” von Brandt told The Associated Press.
The family, with roots in California, exhibited the stone at gem shows for years, until the early 1980s, he said. His father then branched out into furniture and displayed it at his shop. Guy von Brandt eventually moved to Oregon and kept the stone “kind of tucked away” for many years, von Brandt said.
Von Brandt said he brought it with him to Alaska over a year ago as he weighed the best approach to a possible sale. He said he went with Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals because he thought it would get more attention from the newer company than a larger auction house.
Nick Cline, a partner and appraisal specialist with Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals, said the family has documentation surrounding the provenance of the opal. As part of his research, he contacted Fiona Altmann, granddaughter of John Altmann and general manager of Altmann + Cherny in Sydney, Australia.
Altmann said her grandfather, in his business dealings, made regular trips to Europe and the U.S.
Altmann said when Cline emailed her, she was skeptical; the name of the stone, in particular, threw her. But she said she started digging and discovered “something with my grandfather’s handwriting with the picture of the opal with the word ‘Americus Australis.'”
“I with 100% certainty know that their provenance information is 100% accurate” because it lines up with information she has, she said.
The auction house said the stone was discovered in the same field in Australia as the opal known as the “Olympic Australis,” which weighs 17,000 carats and is on permanent display in Altmann’s shop. The Olympic had been among the stones that John Altmann and partner Rudi Cherny acquired in 1956, according to Altmann’s company.
The auction company sought a minimum bid of $125,000 during Sunday’s auction. Cline said it was a “calculated risk,” with the company going with what it sees as a conservative approach in hopes of garnering the most attention.
“We were honored to conduct the auction of this unique, one-of-a-kind specimen,” Cline said after the auction.
The sale included a smaller piece of the opal that von Brandt said his father cut off to be worn or displayed.
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