Day: December 16, 2022

The World Health Organization says climate change is behind an unprecedented surge in the number of cholera outbreaks around the world this year.

At least 30 countries have reported outbreaks of the deadly disease this year, about a third higher than normally seen.

Philippe Barboza, WHO’s team leader for cholera and epidemic diarrheal diseases, said most of the large cholera outbreaks have coincided with adverse climate events and have been visibly and directly affected by them.

“Very severe droughts like, for example, in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel but also in other parts of the world,” he said. “Major floods, unprecedented monsoons, succession of cyclones. So, most again, most of these outbreaks appear to be fueled by the result of the climate change.”

No quick reprieve is in sight. The World Meteorological Organization predicts the so-called La Nina climate phenomenon will last through the end of this year. The pattern, which cools the surface of ocean waters, is expected to continue well into 2023. That will result in prolonged droughts and flooding and increased cyclones.

Consequently, health officials warn large cholera outbreaks are likely to continue and spread to wider areas over the next six months. Barboza said preventing disease outbreaks will be a challenge.

He said a global shortage of vaccine has forced the WHO to temporarily suspend its two-dose strategy and switch to a single dose approach. That allows many more people to be vaccinated against cholera. However, he said it shortens the period of immunity against infection.

“So, the situation will continue to prevail for the months to come,” he said. “There is no silver bullet, magic solution and the producers are at the maximum production. … So, there is no hope that the situation will improve in the coming weeks or months.”

Barboza said lack of data makes it impossible to accurately determine the number of global cholera cases and deaths. However, he noted information from at least 14 countries indicates the average fatality rate is above 1%. He said the cholera fatality rate in heavily affected Haiti is around 2%.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease caused by consuming contaminated food or water. Treatments include oral rehydration. People with severe cases need rapid intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Cholera can kill within hours if left untreated.
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VOA Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman was among several journalists to be suspended from Twitter late Thursday.

Followers of the former White House bureau chief’s Twitter account were greeted with a blank screen and message saying, “Account suspended.”

Accounts for journalists from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as some independent journalists, showed similar messages.

It was not immediately clear why those accounts were suspended. VOA’s email requesting comment from the media contact listed on Twitter’s company website was returned with a “delivery failure” message.

Many of the reporters have written articles or posted about changes made to Twitter by its new owner, Elon Musk.

In replies to tweets late Thursday, Musk said on the platform: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

Musk added: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” a reference to Twitter rules banning sharing of personal information, called doxxing.

Reuters reported that Twitter earlier suspended @elonjet, an account tracking Musk’s private jet in real time, a month after he said his commitment to free speech extended to not banning the account.

While some of those banned had reported on the incident, none had shared location information or content that could be described as doxxing, CNN’s “Reliable Sources” said in a newsletter.

Herman last reported for VOA News about the Twitter platform in September. On Thursday he was tweeting about the @elonjet case.

“I had been tweeting quite a bit on Thursday evening about this building drama, which had started out with the suspension of a so-called bot account that tweets the location of Elon Musk’s private jet,” Herman told VOA.

In his last tweet, Herman posted a link to a Post article and wrote, “More reaction to the Thursday night massacre of journalists on Twitter.”

Shortly afterward, his account was suspended. Herman said he could no longer send direct messages or like other users’ posts.

VOA in a statement late Thursday confirmed Herman’s account had been suspended and called on the social media platform to reinstate it.

“Mr. Herman is a seasoned reporter who upholds the highest journalistic standards and uses the social media platform as a news gathering and networking tool. Mr. Herman has received no information from Twitter as to why his account was suspended,” VOA spokesperson Nigel Gibbs said in an email.

“As Chief National Correspondent, Mr. Herman covers international and national news stories and this suspension impedes his ability to perform his duties as a journalist.”

A spokesperson for the Times said: “Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate. Neither the Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

CNN in a statement described the suspensions as “impulsive and unjustified” and said it had asked Twitter for an explanation. The broadcaster said it would reevaluate its relationship with the platform based on that response.

Twitter is more heavily using automation to moderate content, over manual reviews, its new head of trust and safety, Ella Iwin, told Reuters this month.

At the time of Herman’s suspension, the veteran broadcast journalist had about 112,000 followers.

Herman told VOA late Thursday that he’d received a notice informing him the account was permanently suspended. The notice included a link for users wanting to appeal the decision. But when he clicked it, a message read: “No results. Please try searching for something else.”

The changes at Twitter are of interest to global audiences, Herman said.

“It is obviously a growing free press story and people are interested in that because it’s involving this huge social media platform, a man who is, I guess now, the second-richest person in the world,” he said. “And this is all happening in America, with our Constitution, First Amendment and democracy.”  

Some information for this article came from Reuters.
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China is spending $143 billion to combat U.S. moves to cut off its supply of semiconductor technology. 

The funds will be used to provide financial subsidies and incentives to help China’s chipmakers develop and acquire semiconductor technology to withstand the U.S. move. 

This is one of three measures, analysts say, taken by Beijing to protect semiconductor companies supporting its vast electronics, automotive and military hardware industries.  

“China views semiconductors as a strategic resource. Therefore, it wants to become self-sufficient in all aspects of advanced chip design and manufacturing,” said Lourdes S. Casanova, director of the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell University. “These funds are meant to build China’s capabilities towards this goal.”

Washington issued an order in October barring U.S. companies from supplying semiconductor chips, chipmaking devices, and updates for past sales to Chinese companies. It also prohibited American citizens from working for Chinese semiconductor firms.  

The U.S. government Thursday broadened its crackdown on China’s chip industry by adding memory chipmaker YMTC and 21 “major” Chinese players in the artificial intelligence chip sector to a Commerce Department trade blacklist. YMTC’s suppliers will now be prevented from shipping U.S. goods to it without a license.  

The U.S. move is likely to hit not just China’s semiconductor industry, but dozens of other businesses as well, such as electronics, artificial intelligence, and automobile manufacturing that depend on U.S.-made chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD. The stakes are high. For instance, Chinese electrical vehicle makers controlled 56% of the global market in the first half of 2022. Such vehicles depend heavily on semiconductor chips. 

Analysts said the U.S. order may also force non-U.S. companies using American technology to cut off support for China’s leading factories and chip designers.  

China has initiated the process of challenging the U.S. order at the World Trade Organization.  Its Commerce Ministry has accused the United States of “generalizing the concept of national security and abusing export control measures, which hinders the normal international trade in chips and other products.” 

Non-US support 

The U.S. move would be much less effective if chipmakers in other countries, particularly in Japan and the Netherlands, take advantage of the market vacuum and step up their supplies to China. This is possible because the new $143 billion package will make it possible for Chinese firms to offer higher prices. The United States is lobbying both these countries to refuse Chinese purchase orders. 

China is likely to raise this issue during the expected visit of Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi to China later this month. This will be the first visit by the Japanese foreign minister to China.  

“Beijing will very likely discuss the issue. It will make it clear that stopping the supply of semiconductor technology would damage China-Japan relations,” said Dexter Roberts, author, and principal of Cold Mountain, an investment management company. 

Casanova said the Netherlands and other European countries will likely follow U.S. policy. “However, other countries have been more reluctant. For instance, both Mexico and Brazil did not ban Huawei as a possible supplier of telecom equipment in the 5G auctions in both countries,” she said.  

It is difficult to predict Japan’s response to the U.S. request, she said. China is Japan’s No. 1 trade partner, with 22%, followed by the U.S. with 18.5%. 

There are no reports of the United States trying to restrict Taiwan, its close ally, from dealing with the Chinese semiconductor industry. TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor company, is based in Taiwan.   

“China is the world’s largest importer of semiconductors since 2005 and China’s semiconductor industry relies mainly on imports from the Taiwanese TSMC,” Casanova said. 

Decoupling China’s semiconductor industry from the global supply chain may hurt U.S. consumers, besides taking away business from American companies that supply chips to Chinese firms.  

“As the U.S. continues to ratchet up efforts to slow the development of China’s advanced chips sector, there will be an impact on global and U.S. consumers who will inevitably pay higher prices. There may be supply shortages of the many products that use chips, from autos to mobile phones and electronic devices,” Roberts said. 

At the same time, the United States has realized that starving China of semiconductor technology will not be easy unless it is backed by other countries. In October, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, a Washington-based economic research organization, said semiconductor-producing countries are closely linked to each other in a supply chain. 

“Each of the five major global semiconductor producers—China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States—is also a large chip importer. Not all chips are equal, and no producer specializes in every chip category, leaving even the largest exporters reliant on imports,” it said.  

Despite the odds, the Biden administration has shown it is determined to delink the Chinese semiconductor industry from the global supply zone. The trade war in the chip industry is set to intensify because chips are central to China’s security and industrial growth plans, analysts said. 
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Russian and NASA engineers were assessing a coolant leak on Thursday from a Soyuz crew capsule docked with the International Space Station that could have been caused by a micrometeorite strike.

Dramatic NASA TV images showed white particles resembling snowflakes streaming out of the rear of the vessel for hours.

The coolant leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday and could potentially impact a return flight to Earth by three crew members.

Leak posed no danger

Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos and the U.S. space agency said the leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft did not pose any danger to the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station.

“The crew members aboard the space station are safe, and were not in any danger during the leak,” NASA said.

It said ground teams were evaluating “potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.”

“NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action,” NASA said.

The TASS news agency quoted Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who heads the crewed space flight program for Roscosmos, as saying that the leak could have been caused by a tiny meteorite striking Soyuz MS-22.

“The cause of the leak may be a micrometeorite entering the radiator,” TASS quoted Krikalev as saying. “Possible consequences are changes in the temperature regime.”

“No other changes in the telemetric parameters of either the Soyuz spacecraft or the (ISS) station on the Russian or American segments have been detected,” Krikalev said.

NASA later added that the crew on the station “completed normal operations Thursday, including … configuring tools ahead of a planned US spacewalk on Monday.”

Soyuz MS-22 flew Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the space station in September.

It is scheduled to bring them back to Earth in March and another vessel would have to be sent to the space station if Soyuz MS-22 is unavailable.

Prokopyev and Petelin had been making preparations for a spacewalk on Wednesday when the leak was discovered.

“The crew reported the warning device of the ship’s diagnostic system went off, indicating a pressure drop in the cooling system,” Roscosmos said. “At the moment, all systems of the ISS and the ship are operating normally, the crew is safe.”

NASA said the leak had occurred on the “aft end” of Soyuz MS-22, which is secured to the space station.

International collaboration

There are currently four other astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station in addition to Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin.

NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina were flown to the space station in October aboard a SpaceX spacecraft.

Space has been a rare avenue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine in February, and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia that shredded ties between the two countries.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of increased US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.
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The United States is monitoring for new coronavirus variants as it braces for a potential outbreak of COVID-19 infections following Beijing’s easing of strict controls that kept the pandemic at bay in China.

“We have a very robust surveillance program that we use for travelers as people come in, in terms of identifying people who are infected, tracking variants,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus response coordinator, told VOA during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “And if there are new variants that emerge, I’m confident that we will be able to identify them.”

Jha said the monitoring mechanism includes testing wastewater in the U.S. and through partners abroad.

China changes its approach

On Wednesday, Beijing announced major changes to its national pandemic response, moving away from its strict zero-COVID approach, which relied heavily on lockdowns and prompted protests across the country. The new guidelines no longer mandate health QR codes to enter public places and allow patients with mild cases to quarantine at home instead of in crowded government facilities.

A major COVID-19 outbreak in China would have unpredictable effects on the virus, said Xi Chen, Yale University professor of public health.

“The world’s most populous country includes a large number of immunocompromised people who can harbor the virus for months,” he told VOA. 

Those conditions, he said, “may produce variants of concern.”

However, Chen noted there may be a reduced risk of new variants spinning out of a Chinese outbreak.

“China has stuck with zero-COVID so long that its population has, by and large, never encountered omicron subvariants; people’s immune systems remain trained almost exclusively on the original version of the coronavirus, raising only defenses that currently circulating strains can easily get around,” he said. “It’s possible that there will be less pressure for the virus to evolve to evade immunity further.”

The World Health Organization has raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion citizens are not adequately vaccinated, particularly its elderly and vulnerable populations.

Beijing has ramped up its immunization efforts, on average more than 1 million shots each day. But with holiday travel coming and the time needed to build up immunity after vaccinations, the window is narrowing, Chen said.

“Perhaps the coming two weeks will be the last opportunity to avoid accelerated virus transmissions throughout China.”

As it braced for new infections, China began selling Paxlovid, an oral COVID-19 treatment made by American company Pfizer this week.

Jha said that the deal was reached without the administration’s involvement but said that the U.S. offered to help China with vaccinations stands.

“We have been the largest donor of vaccines in the world, almost 700 million doses,” he said. “We stand ready to help any country that needs help.”

Winter preparedness plan

On Thursday, the White House issued what it is calling its COVID-⁠19 Winter Preparedness Plan.

“We don’t want this winter to look like last winter or the winter before,” Jha said.

In a statement, the White House said that while COVID-19 “is not the disruptive force it once was, the virus continues to evolve,” and the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all up in recent days.

The White House said in addition to free testing sites that already exist, beginning Thursday, all U.S. households can order a total of four at-home COVID-19 tests that will be mailed directly to them free. Free at-home tests also will be made available at government-assisted rental housing properties serving seniors and food banks.

The administration also is outlining to all governors the actions they should take to prepare for increased cases and hospitalizations expected during the winter.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
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