During Ramadan, communal iftars, or breaking of fasts for Muslims in mosques, are the norm in the United States, but since the coronavirus pandemic began, drive-through food distributions have become popular. VOA’s Faiza Bukhari takes us behind the scenes at one of Virginia’s Islamic centers, where a daily drive-through iftar for roughly 800 people is organized. Camera and video editing by Qazafi Babar.
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Month: April 2022
In advance of World Malaria Day, the World Health Organization recommends the expanded use of the first malaria vaccine, calling it a potential game changer in the fight against malaria.
Malaria is a preventable, treatable disease. Yet, every year, malaria sickens more than 200 million people and kills more than 600,000. Most of these deaths, nearly half a million, are among young children in Africa. That means every 60 seconds a child dies of malaria.
Despite this bleak news, the outlook for malaria control is promising, thanks to the development of the world’s first malaria vaccine. The World Health Organization calls the achievement a historic breakthrough for science.
A pilot program was started in 2019 in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. Since then, the World Health Organization reports more than a million children in the three countries have received the malaria vaccine.
Mary Hamel is Head of WHOs Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program. She said the two-year pilot program has shown the vaccine is safe, feasible to deliver and reduces deadly severe malaria.
“We saw a 30% drop in children being brought to the hospitals with deadly, severe malaria. And we also saw almost a 10% reduction in all caused child mortality. If the vaccine is widely deployed, it is estimated that it could save an additional 40 to 80,000 child lives each year,” she said.
WHO reports Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance will provide more than $155 million to support expanded introduction of the malaria vaccine for Gavi-eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The vaccine against malaria was under development before the COVID-19 vaccine was produced. Hamel said WHO has learned a lot of lessons from that effort, which could be used in the development of future malaria vaccines.
“We know there have been new platforms that came forward since the COVID vaccine, including the mRNA platform and now the developers of one of the mRNA vaccines is looking forward to developing a malaria vaccine using that same platform,” she said.
Last July, BioNTech, manufacturer of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, announced it wants to build on that success by developing a malaria vaccine using mRNA technology. The pharmaceutical company says it aims to start clinical trials by the end of this year.
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Climate change and habitat loss from big agriculture are combining to swat down global insect populations, with each problem making the other worse, a new study finds.
While insects may bug people at times, they also are key in pollinating plants to feed people, making soil more fertile and they include beautiful butterflies and fireflies. Scientists have noticed a dramatic drop both in total bug numbers and diversity of insect species, calling it a slow-motion death by 1,000 cuts. Those cuts include pesticides and light pollution.
Big single-crop agriculture that leaves less habitat and leafy food for bugs plus higher temperatures from climate change are huge problems for insects, but a new study in the journal Nature Wednesday based on more than 750,000 samples of 18,000 different species of insects says it’s not just those two threats acting on their own. It’s how habitat loss and climate change interact that really smashes bug populations.
In about half the cases where numbers of insects had plummeted, researchers found climate change and habitat loss from agriculture magnifying each other. In more than a quarter of the cases of biodiversity loss, meaning fewer species, the same dynamic was at work.
“We know insects are under threat. We’re now getting a much bigger handle on what they are threatened by and how much,” said study author Charlotte Outhwaite, an ecologist at the University College of London.
“In this case, the habitat loss and climate change can often be worse than if they were acting on their own, as one can make the impact of the other worse and vice versa,” Outhwaite said. “We’re missing part of the picture if we are only looking at these things individually.”
For example, monoculture agriculture often reduces tree shading, making it hotter in a given spot. On top of that comes climate change, she said. Then insects that need heat relief or need to move north for cooler climates can run into problems with lack of proper habitat from large farms.
It’s especially a problem in countries like Indonesia and Brazil, where forests are being cleared and temperatures are heating up higher than other parts of the globe, Outhwaite said.
That’s hard on insects like the pesky midge.
“Cocoa is pollinated primarily by midges and people don’t like midges. You know they’re the annoying ones that bite you, they pester you at picnics,” Outhwaite said. “But if you like chocolate you should be appreciative because without them we would have a lot less cocoa.”
The same can be said about bees, which are having a hard time with warming from climate change and single-crop farming, Outhwaite said.
Insect pollinators are responsible for about one-third of the human diet, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And 2 out of 5 species of invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are on the path toward extinction, a 2016 United Nations science report said.
What makes this study important is that it’s the first to link climate change and industrialized agriculture together in explaining harm to insects, said University of Connecticut entomologist David Wagner, who wasn’t part of the study. Because the study used so many different samples and species and looked around the world, that gives its findings more credibility, Wagner said.
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The 2022 Asian Games in China will go ahead, the Olympic Council of Malaysia said Saturday, denying claims that it was facing the possibility of being postponed.
The Olympic-sized event is scheduled to be held in September in Hangzhou, a major metropolitan area less than 200 kilometers southwest of Shanghai.
Shanghai is currently grappling with a major coronavirus emergency, with its roughly 25 million residents currently in a weeks-long lockdown as authorities try to curb an omicron-fueled wave.
An official working with governing body the Olympic Council of Asia, who did not want to be named, had told AFP on Thursday that no decision had been made but there was a possibility of postponement.
However, Olympic Council of Malaysia president Norza Zakaria disputed that.
“The Asian Games 2022 in China is going ahead,” he told AFP Saturday. “We have checked with OCA (the Olympic Council of Asia) and the organizing committee.”
Most international sports events have been on hold in China since the COVID-19 pandemic, although Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics in a strict bio-bubble in February.
Right after the Olympics ended, Shanghai — China’s biggest city — witnessed the country’s worst COVID outbreak in two years, and its residents have largely been confined to their homes since early April.
All 56 competition venues for the Games in Hangzhou have already been completed, Chinese organizers said this month, promising to publish a virus control plan that takes its cue from the Winter Olympics.
Hangzhou is scheduled to hold the Games from Sept. 10-25, becoming the third Chinese host after Beijing in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010.
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The World Health Organization said on Saturday that at least one child death had been reported following an increase of acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children, and that at least 169 cases had been reported in children in 12 countries.
The WHO issued the figures as health authorities around the world investigate a mysterious increase in severe cases of hepatitis — inflammation of the liver — in young children.
The WHO said that as of April 21 acute cases of hepatitis of unknown origin had been reported in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Israel, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, France, Romania and Belgium. It said 114 of the 169 cases were in the United Kingdom alone.
The cases reported were in children aged from 1 month to 16 years, and 17 had required liver transplantation, it said. It gave no details of the death that it said had been reported and did not say where it occurred.
The WHO said a common cold virus known as an adenovirus had been detected in at least 74 cases. COVID-19 infection was identified in 20 of those tested and 19 cases were detected with a COVID-19 and adenovirus co-infection, it said.
The WHO said it was closely monitoring the situation and working with British health authorities, other member states and partners.
U.S. health officials have sent out a nationwide alert warning doctors to be on the lookout for symptoms of pediatric hepatitis, possibly linked with a cold virus, as part of a wider probe into unexplained cases of severe liver inflammation in young children.
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Maggie Mulligan said her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home in northeast New Mexico.
“We don’t know what’s next,” she said. “We don’t know if we can go back to the horses.”
Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly packed up and evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous Western wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.
Over a dozen sizable fires were burning in Arizona and New Mexico, destroying dozens of homes and as of Saturday burning more than 451 square kilometers.
Winds that howled Friday remained a concern Saturday in northern New Mexico where two fires merged and quadrupled in size to a combined 171 square kilometers in the mountains and grassland northwest of Las Vegas.
The merged fires burned some structures, but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. “They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we weren’t able to defend.”
Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. “All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings — that’s what they’re dealing in.”
An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.
Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions.
In Arizona, a Flagstaff-area fire burned 30 homes and numerous other buildings when the flames blew through rural neighborhoods Tuesday.
A shift in wind had crews working Saturday to keep the fire from moving up mountain slopes or toward homes in rural neighborhoods near areas that burned Tuesday, fire information officer Dick Fleishman said. “It has got us a little concerned.”
In northern New Mexico, winds Friday gusted up to 120 kph, shrouding the Rio Grande Valley with dust and pushing flames through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the north.
A wall of smoke stretched from the wilderness just east of Santa Fe about 80 kilometers to the northeast where ranchers and other rural inhabitants were abruptly told to leave by law enforcement.
Mulligan, 68, of Ledoux, a dog breeder, said her dog Liam “was a nervous wreck” when a sheriff came to their house Friday afternoon and told them they had to leave.
They packed nine dogs and five puppies into an SUV and an old blue Cadillac. They considered dropping the horses off at a local fairgrounds, but they decided it was in the same path of the burning fire as their home and more likely to burn.
“There’s water in their pasture, and there’s hay. So we’ll see what happens,” Mulligan said.
Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the nearby Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as winds kicked up. She said most people were taking the threat seriously.
“As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, it’s in God’s hands,” she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where evacuees were gathering.
The town of Cimarron and the headquarters of the Philmont Scout Ranch, owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, were preparing to flee if necessary. The scout ranch attracts thousands of summer visitors, but officials said no scouts were on the property.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed emergency declarations for four counties over the fires.
Near the Flagstaff-area fire, Kelly Morgan was among neighbors at the edge of the evacuation zone who did not leave. She and her husband have lived through wildfires before, she said, and they are prepared if winds shift and flames race toward the home they moved into three years ago.
“Unfortunately, it’s not something new to us … but I hate seeing it when people are affected the way they are right now,” she said. “It’s sad. It’s a very sad time. But as a community, we’ve really come together.”
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The number of women in Lebanon dying from pregnancy-related complications has nearly tripled amid a crushing three-year economic crisis that has seen doctors and midwives leave the country, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said Wednesday.
The crisis is also affecting children, especially among Syrian refugees who have fled over the border into Lebanon.
UNICEF said a third of children could not access health care by October 2021, and the number of children who die within the first four weeks after birth “increased dramatically among refugees in four provinces assessed, from 65 neonatal deaths in the first quarter of 2020 to 137 in the third quarter.”
Lebanon hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees, making up about a quarter of the population, according to official estimates.
“Repeatedly, anguished parents and families are unable to access basic health care for their children“ as many dedicated health workers struggle to keep operations running during the crisis,” said Ettie Higgins, UNICEF Lebanon representative.
Some 40% of doctors, including those that work specifically with children and women, have left the country, as well as some 30% of midwives, UNICEF said, diminishing the quality of services in a country formerly seen as a regional health care hub.
“Lebanon had achieved remarkable success in reducing maternal deaths, but numbers rose again between 2019 and 2021, from 13.7 to 37 deaths per 100,000 live births,” the agency said in a report. It did not give the raw numbers.
Faysal al-Kak, coordinator of Lebanon’s National Committee on Safe Motherhood, said the number of maternal deaths had spiked largely due to the coronavirus delta variant in 2021 but said the crisis was also a factor.
“The Lebanese crisis is a strong variable — maybe the mom is not visiting enough, afraid of going to the doctor because it costs money. It gave women a sense that ‘I can’t go to the doctor,'” he told Reuters.
“Delta and the low vaccination rate — in addition to the compounded crisis that we live in — could have affected indirectly the accessibility, cost, and transportation.”
The rising cost of transportation and services due to the collapse of the country’s currency and the removal of most subsidies on fuel and medicine has left healthcare out of reach for many, UNICEF said.
Childhood vaccination rates have declined, leaving hundreds of thousands of children vulnerable to preventable diseases such as measles and pneumonia.
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Authorities in Pakistan have confirmed the first case of wild polio virus in more than a year, dealing a setback to the country’s progress against the highly infectious disease.
A 15-month-old boy was paralyzed by the virus in the turbulent North Waziristan district, which borders Afghanistan, according to an official announcement Friday.
“This is, of course, a tragedy for the child and his family and it is also very unfortunate both for Pakistan and polio eradication efforts all over the world,” said Aamir Ashraf, a top health ministry official in Islamabad. “We are disappointed but not deterred.”
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio continues to paralyze children, although case numbers in recent years have significantly dropped on both sides of the border.
The last time a child was paralyzed in Pakistan was in January 2021. There is one wild polio virus infection reported in Afghanistan this year and four in 2021.
Ashraf said health officials are conducting a thorough investigation into the detection of the polio case, and emergency immunization campaigns are underway to prevent further spread of the virus in the country of about 220 million people.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said he will chair an emergency meeting Monday of a national task force for polio eradication to review eradication efforts.
Polio crippled approximately 20,000 Pakistani children a year in the early 1990s.
The latest case in Pakistan has raised to three the global number of polio infections in 2022, including one in Malawi, according to data from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).
The GPEI confirmed in February that Malawi had detected a case of type 1 wild poliovirus (WPV1) in a 3-year-old child suffering from paralysis in Lilongwe. It noted that the virus was “genetically linked to WPV1 that was detected in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province in 2019.
The detection does not affect the World Health Organization African Region’s wild poliovirus-free certification status officially marked in August 2020, according to the GPEI.
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The World Health Organization warns the health system in eastern Ukraine has all but collapsed, putting the lives of thousands of people trapped in Mariupol and other besieged areas at risk.
U.N. health officials say it is critical they be granted immediate access to Mariupol and other areas hardest hit by fighting in eastern Ukraine. They say they have received reports that nearly all health facilities and hospitals in areas like the Luhansk region either are damaged or destroyed.
The WHO is appealing for access to affected areas to assess health needs and to provide critical medical supplies to the sick and injured. Speaking from Lviv in western Ukraine, WHO spokesman Bhanu Bhatnagar said the WHO so far has not been able to enter Mariupol and does not know the health status of the besieged population.
Mariupol has been subjected to relentless bombing and shelling by Russian forces for the past two months. The city has been razed to the ground. Tens of thousands of people reportedly are living in underground bunkers, with limited food, water, and medical supplies.
Bhatnagar said the WHO is moving supplies it thinks are needed in Mariupol closer to the city. But he added it is essential that a safe passage is created quickly.
“We need a cessation of fighting for at least two days in order to move vital supplies in, but also assess the health needs,” he said. “We anticipate the worst. A health system that has collapsed completely and that brings with it all kinds of knock-on effects. Of course, there are people with conflict-related injuries that need help.”
Bhatnagar noted there also are people with chronic conditions and other health care needs that do not have access to vital medicine. He said the findings of a new WHO survey of 1,000 households across Ukraine show the devastating impact this war is having on access to health care.
“Two out of five households have at least one member with a chronic illness, like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease,” he said. “Of those, one in three is struggling to access healthcare for those chronic conditions. Our survey also finds that the war is affecting people’s health-seeking behavior, with less than a third of households saying they sought out health services recently.”
Bhatnagar added that 39% of people say the security situation inhibits them from seeking care for their illness, while 27% say no health care services are available in their area.
The WHO has confirmed 162 attacks on health care facilities and personnel, with at least 73 people known to have been killed.
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For the first time in the 127-year history of the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest and most important contemporary art fair features a majority of female and gender non-conforming artists, under the curatorial direction of Cecilia Alemani.
The result is a Biennale that puts the spotlight on artists who have been long overlooked despite prolific careers, while also investigating themes including gender norms, colonialism and climate change.
Alemani’s main show, titled The Milk of Dreams, alongside 80 national pavilions opens Saturday after a one-year pandemic delay. The art fair runs through Nov. 27. It is only the fourth of the Biennale’s 59 editions under female curation.
The predominance of women among the more than 200 artists that Alemani chose for the main show “was not a choice, but a process,” Alemani, a New York-based Italian curator, said this week.
“I think some of the best artists today are women artists,” she told The Associated Press. “But also, let’s not forget, that in the long history of the Venice Biennale, the preponderance of male artists in previous editions has been astonishing.”
“Unfortunately, we still have not solved many issues that pertain to gender,” Alemani said.
Conceived during the coronavirus pandemic and opening as war rages in Europe, Alemani acknowledged that art in such times may seem “superficial.” But she also asserted the Biennale’s role over the decades as a “sort of seismographer of history … to absorb and record also the traumas and the crises that go well beyond the contemporary art world.”
In a potent reminder, the Russian pavilion remains locked this year, after the artists withdrew following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Nearby, sandbags have been erected in the center of the Giardini by the curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion, and surrounded by stylized posters of fresh artwork by Ukrainian artists representing the horrors of the 2-month-old war.
Among the women getting long-overdue recognition this Biennale is U.S. sculptor Simone Leigh, who in mid-career is both headlining the U.S. pavilion and setting the tone at the main exhibit with a towering bust of a Black woman that Alemani originally commissioned for the High Line urban park in New York City.
Fusun Onur, a pioneer of conceptual art in Turkey, at age 85 has filled the Turkish pavilion with wiry cats and mice set up in storyboard tableaus that confront modern-day threats like the pandemic and climate change. While proud of her role representing Turkey and the work she produced during the pandemic in her home overlooking the Bosphorus, she acknowledged that the honor was late in coming.
“Why it is so I don’t know,” Fusan said by phone from Istanbul. “Women artists are working hard, but they are not always recognized. It is always men first.”
New Zealand is represented by third gender artist Yuki Kihara, whose installation Paradise Camp, tells the story of Samoa’s Fa’afafine community of people who don’t accept the gender they were assigned at birth.
The exhibition features photos of the Fa’afafine mimicking paintings of Pacific islanders by post-impressionist French artist Paul Gaugin, reclaiming the images in a process the artist refers to as “upcycling.”
“Paradise Camp is really about imagining a Fa’afafine utopia, where it shutters colonial hetero-normality to make way for an Indigenous world view that is inclusive and sensitive to the changes in the environment,” Kihara said.
The image of a hyper-realistic sculpture of a futuristic female satyr giving birth opposite her satyr partner, who has hung himself, sets a grim post-apocalyptic tone at the Danish Pavilion, created by Uffe Isolotto.
The Nordic Pavilion offers a more hopeful path out of the apocalypse, with artwork and performances depicting the struggle against colonialism by the Sami people, who inhabit a broad swath of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland into the Murmansk Oblast of Russia, while also celebrating their traditions.
“We have in a way discovered how to live within the apocalyptic world and do it while, you know, maintaining our spirits and our beliefs and systems of value,″ said co-curator Liisa-Ravna Finbog.
This year’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement awards go to German artist Katherina Fritsch, whose life-like Elephant sculpture stands in the rotunda of the main exhibit building in the Giardini, and Chilean poet, artist and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuna, whose portrait of her mother’s eyes graces the Biennale catalog cover.
Vicuna painted the portrait while the family was in exile after the violent military coup in Chile against President Salvador Allende. Now 97, her mother accompanied her to the Biennale.
“You see that her spirit is still present, so in a way that painting is like a triumph of love against dictatorship, against repression, against hatred,” Vicuna said.
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Devastating floods in South Africa this week, as well as other extreme weather events across the continent linked to human-caused climate change, are putting marine and terrestrial wildlife species at risk, according to biodiversity experts.
Africa has already faced several climate-related woes in the past year: the ongoing fatal floods follow unrelenting cyclones in the south, extreme temperatures in western and northern regions, and a debilitating drought which is currently afflicting eastern, central and the Horn of Africa.
Conservation and wildlife groups say it’s critical to protect species from these climate change-related weather events.
“Climate change is disrupting ecosystems and affecting the survival and suitability of species to live in their usual habitats,” said Shyla Raghav, who heads the climate change division at Conservation International. “Massive disruption to ecological stability will occur if adequate adaptation and mitigation measures are not implemented. There is need to incorporate climate proofing of our protected areas. That way we boost nature’s ability for resilience.”
Multiple species, including Africa’s famed “big-five” land animals and other terrestrial and marine life, are vulnerable to significant population loss. Ornithologist Paul Matiku, who heads the biodiversity watch group Nature Kenya, says shifting rainfall patterns and increased temperatures are having serious consequences for bird populations.
“Climate change causes seasonal variability in rainfall, temperature and food for birds. As such breeding aborts and bird populations automatically reduce over time,” Matiku said. “Wetland birds are affected by reducing water levels due to droughts. The Sahara Desert gets hotter, and some migratory birds die along their migratory routes due to high temperatures and dehydration.” He added that some birds are so weak from taxing migratory journeys that they are no longer breeding.
Ecosystems that thrive along Africa’s popular white sandy beaches are also particularly vulnerable, according to Ibidun Adelekan, a geography professor at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. Africa’s coasts are at risk of coral reef ecosystem collapse due to bleaching, potential saltwater intrusion on freshwater aquifers, and more intense tropical cyclones.
Adelekan warned that greater damage to Africa’s coastal biodiversity will also have considerable consequences for populations in towns and cities along its shores. “Persistent deprivation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems by human actions is leading to increased vulnerability of coastal and island communities to climate impacts,” she told the Associated Press.
Her concerns are echoed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who earlier this year cautioned that African coasts with “high proportion of informal settlements and small island states are exposed and highly vulnerable to climate change.”
But scientists are hopeful that improved coastal management of marine protected areas and better restrictions on the fishing industry will curb impacts on marine biodiversity.
“Our research indicates that the future of coral reefs will be much better if fisheries restrictions and protected areas are applied effectively throughout the region,” said Tim McClanahan, a senior conservation zoologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who studied over 100 locations in the western Indian Ocean.
“While climate change may be outside of local control, the bad outcomes will be reduced if fisheries manage to reduce detrimental impacts on the coral reefs.”
Verdant landscapes, stylized portraits of peasant women, curved sculptures — an exhibition in Baghdad is allowing art aficionados to rediscover the pioneers of contemporary Iraqi art.
Around 100 items are on display in the capital, returned and restored nearly two decades after they were looted.
Many of the works, including pieces by renowned artists Jawad Selim and Fayiq Hassan, disappeared in 2003 when museums and other institutions were pillaged in the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion to topple dictator Saddam Hussein.
Thousands of pieces were stolen, and organized criminal networks often sold them outside Iraq.
Tracked down in Switzerland, the U.S., Qatar and neighboring Jordan, sculptures and paintings dating between the 1940s and 1960s have been on display since late March at the Ministry of Culture, in a vast room that used to serve as a restaurant.
“These works are part of the history of contemporary art in Iraq,” ministry official Fakher Mohamed said.
Artistic renaissance
Pictures and sculptures were in 2003 spirited away from the Saddam Arts Centre, one of Baghdad’s most prestigious cultural venues at the time.
While he crushed all political dissent, Saddam cultivated the image of a patron of the arts. The invasion and years of violence that followed ended a flourishing arts scene, particularly in Baghdad.
Now, relative stability has led to a fledgling artistic renaissance, including book fairs and concerts, of which the exhibition organized by the ministry is an example.
It helps recall a golden age when Baghdad was considered one of the Arab world’s cultural capitals.
Among canvases of realist, surrealist or expressionist inspiration, a picturesque scene in shimmering colors shows a boat sailing in front of several “mudhif,” the traditional reed dwellings found in Iraq’s southern marshes.
Other paintings, in dark colors, depict terrified residents surrounded by corpses, fleeing a burning village.
Elsewhere, a woman is shown prostrate in a scene of destruction, kneeling in front of an arm protruding from stones.
There is also a wooden sculpture of a gazelle with undulating curves, and the “maternal statue” — a work by Jawad Selim that represents a woman with a slender neck and raised arms.
The latter, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was rediscovered in a Baghdad district known for its antiques and second-hand goods shops. It was in the possession of a dealer unaware of its true value, according to sculptor Taha Wahib, who bought it for just $200.
‘Priceless works’
Looters in some cases had taken pictures out of their frames, sometimes with cutters, to steal them more easily.
“Some pieces were damaged during the events of 2003 — or they were stored in poor conditions for many years,” Mohamed, the culture ministry official, told AFP.
But “they were restored in record time,” he said.
Other works are being held back for now, with some waiting to be restored — but they will be exhibited once more, Mohamed pledged.
He wants to open more exhibition rooms to show the entire collection of recovered items.
“Museums must be open to the public — these works shouldn’t remain imprisoned in warehouses,” he said.
The 7,000 items stolen in 2003 included “priceless works,” and about 2,300 have been returned to Iraq, according to exhibition curator Lamiaa al-Jawari.
In 2004, she joined a committee of artists committed to retrieving the many stolen national treasures.
“Some have been recovered through official channels” including the Swiss embassy, she said, but individuals also helped.
Authorities coordinate with Interpol and the last restitutions took place in 2021.
The selection on display will be changed from time to time, “to show visitors all this artistic heritage,” Jawari said.
Ali Al-Najar, an 82-year-old artist who has lived in Sweden the past 20 years, has been on holiday in his homeland.
He welcomed the exhibition.
“The pioneers are those who initiated Iraqi art. If we forget them, we lose our foundations” as a society, Najar said.
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Most Americans support a flexible approach to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, with cities reimposing mask mandates when cases surge, even as a growing number are eager to get on with their lives, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Friday found.
The results of the two-day poll illustrate the balancing act facing U.S. officials as they navigate a health crisis that will not go away.
Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults — including 83% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans — said cities and states should impose mask mandates for indoor public places if there is a resurgence of COVID-19 in their area, the poll found.
At the same time, 44% of respondents said that Americans need to get back to normal and get on with their lives, up from 36% in a poll completed in early February.
The tension between the two sentiments was apparent this week in Philadelphia, which on Monday became the first major U.S. city to reimpose a mask mandate in settings including restaurants, schools and businesses following a rise in local COVID-19 cases, only to reverse course days later.
City officials in Philadelphia, which like most big American cities is run by Democrats and overwhelmingly voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, on Thursday said decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts warranted a recommendation that residents wear masks in indoor public spaces, rather than a mandate.
The city is the largest in the state of Pennsylvania, which will be a key battleground in November 8 midterm elections when Democrats will wage an uphill battle to preserve slim majorities in Congress.
More than two years into a public health crisis that has killed nearly 1 million Americans, most U.S. states and localities have eased mask and vaccination requirements.
Mixed results
A bipartisan majority of poll respondents, including 53% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans, said the coronavirus pandemic has reached the point at which decisions to wear masks or vaccinate should be left to individuals rather than the government.
At the same time, just over half of respondents in the poll said they were more likely to support candidates in November that support continued rules, including mask requirements, to combat the pandemic.
Sixty-five percent of respondents supported mask requirements on airplanes, trains and public transport, even after a federal court on Monday struck down a federal mask mandate on public transportation and airplanes.
The Biden administration is appealing the court ruling, however, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the measure was still needed.
Only 44% of respondents said Biden has delivered on his 2020 election campaign pledge to try to control the pandemic, and just 35% said he had delivered on his promises to restart the economy hit by the health crisis.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States, gathering responses from 1,005 adults. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points.
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Environmentally, the planet was on a downward slide well before the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution designating April 22 in 2009 as International Mother Earth Day. The aim of this day is to celebrate the wonders of Mother Earth.
The day also is meant to shed light on the issues threatening the health of the world’s ecosystems to ensure their survivability.
Unfortunately, says U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, humans have been poor custodians of our fragile planet, which is facing a triple planetary crisis.
“Climate disruption. Nature and biodiversity loss. Pollution and waste. The triple crisis threatening the well-being and survival of millions of people around the world. The building blocks of happy, healthy lives—clean water, fresh air, a stable and predictable climate—are in disarray, putting the Sustainable Development Goals in Jeopardy.”
Ecosystems support all life on Earth. A healthy ecosystem depends on a healthy planet. Yet, scientists warn the planet is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests every year. They estimate around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.
And, the warming of the planet, they say, could lead to a climate disaster, rendering the planet uninhabitable.
Despite the dire outlook, Guterres says not all is lost. He says there is still
hope of saving Earth if nations act together to tackle the problems that are endangering the well-being of the planet.
He notes much has been accomplished since the global environmental movement started 50 years ago at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden. He says nations have
negotiated agreements which have, among others, succeeded in shrinking the ozone hole.
They have expanded protections for wildlife and ecosystems, and have ended the use of leaded fuel, thus preventing millions of premature deaths.
“But we need to do much more. And much faster. Especially to avert climate catastrophe. We must limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. And we are far off track…At the same time we must invest rapidly in adaptation and resilience, particularly for the poorest and most vulnerable who have contributed least to the crisis.”
In June, Sweden will host a high-level U.N. meeting to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first U.N. conference on the human environment. Guterres says the gathering of world leaders will be a great moment to address the triple planetary emergency.
He says we only have one Mother Earth so everyone must do everything to protect her.
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The Buenos Aires design and architecture firm Estudio Normal is honoring Argentina’s iconic butterfly chair in a towering art installation at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California. From the festival, Genia Dulot has the story.
Camera: Genia Dulot
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U.S. President Joe Biden has chosen Earth Day on Friday to sign an executive order to protect some of the country’s largest and oldest trees.
The order the president is scheduled to sign in Washington State will require the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service to identify threats to older trees, such as wildfire and climate change, and develop policies to safeguard them.
Old trees are an ally in fighting climate change because they absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Scientists say redwood forests are among the world’s most efficient means of removing and storing carbon dioxide. Thousands of U.S. redwoods have been destroyed in recent years.
Biden’s order will require federal land managers to define and count mature and old-growth forests nationwide within a year.
The measure is a safeguard designed to protest U.S. forests that have been decimated by fires, drought, and blight in recent years.
Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.
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Australia’s most populous states will on Friday abolish a raft of coronavirus rules, including compulsory isolation for close contacts. Some vaccine mandates for key workers will also be scrapped. Health officials in New South Wales and Victoria say the overhaul to the rules is a “big step” and is part of a plan to “co-exist with COVID-19.”
The new policy is a major overhaul of coronavirus restrictions for more than half of the Australian population. Those who may have come into close contact with COVID-19 in the states of New South Wales and Victoria will no longer have to isolate for seven days. They must, however, wear a mask indoors and be tested regularly. They also need special permission to visit hospitals, nursing homes or prisons.
Many business leaders said the quarantine measures were too strict because they forced workers who weren’t infected to stay at home.
“We get to put COVID in the rear-view mirror and finally leave the baggage of restrictions, isolations, and check-ins behind us. It means that the maximum available staff will now be with us,” said Paul Guerra, chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce.
Health authorities in Australia say a recent omicron wave has peaked and that many restrictions can be lifted because more than 95% of the population has received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccination.
However, Nancy Baxter, a clinical epidemiologist at Melbourne University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that it is too soon to end mandatory isolation for close contacts.
“Politically, it is expedient for all of these things to be relaxed because it signals that COVID is over,” she said. “But, you know, the problem is COVID hasn’t gotten the memo that COVID is over and what we are seeing in Australia right now is we are seeing one of the world’s highest rate of new cases of COVID per day.”
In other parts of the country, including Western Australia and Queensland, quarantine rules remain in place for those who have come into close contact with confirmed coronavirus cases.
Australia has had some of the world’s toughest coronavirus restrictions, including strict lockdowns. For more than two years its international borders were closed to most foreign nationals.
According to government data, about 5.3 million infections and almost 7,000 deaths have been recorded in Australia since the pandemic began.
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Every year on Earth Day — April 22 — people come together to raise awareness about environmental problems. And this year they will focus on accelerating the transition to a prosperous green economy.
During the event, also known as International Mother Earth Day, some 1 billion people in 190 countries take part in activities that often include planting trees, removing litter from land and water sites, and educating others about the environment.
As curtailing climate change remains at the forefront of the global environmental agenda, Earth Day this year focuses on a business aspect of that goal: investing in our planet.
More businesses need to be pulled into the effort to safeguard the planet, especially to fight climate change, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Earthday.org.
According to the Earthday.org website, “Smart companies are discovering that they no longer have the choice between going green and growing long term profits — sustainability is the path to prosperity.”
“If you want to solve climate change, follow the money, because the money is overwhelmingly moving into technological solutions, research and development, all of which are green,” Earthday.org President Kathleen Rogers told VOA in an interview.
Oil and gas companies that rely on fossil fuels are feeling the pressure.
Companies that don’t go green face a “giant risk,” Rogers cautioned, because the outcry to curb fossil fuels continues to grow.
Climate scientist Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University agreed, saying that “the transition towards clean energy is already happening.”
“The great revolution of this century is clean energy, and those energy companies that embrace clean renewable energy are going to prosper in the long term,” he told VOA.
Rogers noted, however, that while some companies “may not be extracting oil for carbon,” they are using fossil fuels to make plastic, another environmental hazard.
Most plastic — bags, bottles, containers, etc. — is not recycled, Rogers said. Instead, it ends up taking space in landfills or floating in the oceans.
“There are devastating impacts from the use of plastic,” Rogers said. Wildlife sometimes mistake it for food, and research has shown that tiny plastic particles have been found in human blood, she added.
“Today we are as aware of the dangers of plastic as we are of climate change,” Rogers said, so it is important to find a substitute for plastic.
Earth Day comes on the heels of a United Nations climate panel report, released earlier this month, that said worldwide carbon emissions increased by 12% over the past decade. Despite that gloomy picture, it’s possible to curtail climate change if governments act now, the report said.
But many people wonder when that will happen, as many governments have stalled on the issue.
“Stop placing the burden on individuals to solve the problem, and put more of the burden where it belongs, on governments and companies,” Rogers said.
And that includes Africa, which suffers from environmental problems such as air pollution, water scarcity and the loss of biodiversity.
“Every country is facing the effects of the climate crisis” even though the continent’s global emissions only range between 2 to 3 percent, explained Derrick Mugisha, an environmental scientist and regional director in Africa for Earthday.org. African leaders must step up and “minimize excuses to reverse the trends of environmental degradation.”
“In Asia, increased global warming due to climate change can no longer be ignored,” noted Karuna Singh, Earth Day’s regional director for Asia. The changing weather patterns can cause food insecurity and loss of biodiversity and compel people to become “environmental refugees,” she said.
India, with its dependence on fossil fuels, creates some of the worst air pollution in the world, she said. And the Indian government has recognized the gloomy findings and initiated a process to have experts suggest strategies that will accelerate solutions.
For Mann, Earth Day is also a reminder that polluters who deny climate change are no longer credible.
There has been a carefully orchestrated “deflection campaign by polluters to convince us that it’s all on us,” he said. But “70% of carbon pollution comes from just 100 polluters like fossil fuel companies and oil companies,” he added.
Denis Hayes, the organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, told VOA the event is just as viable today as it was 52 years ago.
“It’s not just about picking up litter, but finding various remedies to combat climate change, including more efficient renewable power and greener transportation methods. It’s about building a world that is livable for our children.”