Day: June 19, 2023

As the world mark Sickle Cell Day on Monday, Nigeria accounts for about 33% of the 300,000 children diagnosed every year with the disease.

The World Health Organization and Nigeria’s Health Ministry say 25% of the country’s total population are carriers of mutant genes that give rise to the genetic disorder. In 2011, Nigeria’s Health Ministry initiated mandatory screening for newborns to help detect the condition early, but many Nigerian hospitals have yet to comply with the directive.

Anna Ochigbo of Nigeria has lost two siblings to sickle cell anemia. In May 2022, Ochigbo launched the nonprofit Hoplites Sickle Cell Foundation in memory of her siblings. 

“We don’t just create awareness on the importance of genotype testing before marriage,” she said. “We go as far as conducting free genotype testing in certain communities, and we also try as much as possible to educate young people.”

About 50 million people are estimated to be living with sickle cell disease globally, but Nigeria has the highest burden. Every year, an estimated 100,000 kids are diagnosed with the condition in Nigeria, according to the Health Ministry, and up to 80% die before they turn five. 

Hoplites Foundation holds periodic hangouts for sickle cell warriors to meet and share their experiences.

“The participation has been really, really massive,” Ochigbo said. “A lot of sickle cell warriors are coming out now. They want to connect. They want to network. They want to go to a place where they feel loved and appreciated.”

Nigerian authorities in 2011 initiated universal screening for newborns at hospitals to help detect the condition early. However, the Health Ministry’s sickle cell program manager, Alayo Sopekan, said many health centers have yet to adopt the measure.

“Every single child born in Nigeria should be screened at birth. Now, we have a much more refined technology. We have started training health workers,” Sopekan said.

Experts say apart from screening newborns, authorities need to intensify community genotype testing to help create awareness about the disease, and to dispel myths and misinformation about the condition, including that the disease is a spiritual attack on the body.

Nigerian musician Excel Praiseworth has been living with sickle cell disease for 29 years. 

Last year, he started a nonprofit called The Sickle Sound, where he uses his music to debunk misinformation about the condition.

“We’ve been writing songs. We have the sickle sound, which has gone far and wide, and it’s beautiful to know that warriors can listen to these songs and have solace,” Praiseworth said. “Nigeria and the world at large should just get rid of unnecessary stereotypes.”

In 2021, Nigerian lawmakers introduced a bill to screen couples before they get married, but the bill was suspended due to rights issues.

As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark World Sickle Cell Day, advocates are urging authorities to take interventions about the condition more seriously in order for the negative trend to improve. 
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Members of the United Nations adopted the first-ever treaty to protect marine life in the high seas on Monday, with the U.N.’s chief hailing the historic agreement as giving the ocean “a fighting chance.”

Delegates from the 193 member nations burst into applause and then stood up in a sustained standing ovation when Singapore’s ambassador on ocean issues, Rena Lee, who presided over the negotiations, banged her gavel after hearing no objections to the treaty’s approval.

The treaty to protect biodiversity in waters outside national boundaries, known as the high seas, covering nearly half of earth’s surface, had been under discussion for more than 20 years as efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. But in March delegates to an intergovernmental conference established by the U.N. General Assembly in December 2017 agreed on a treaty.

The new treaty is under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. It will be opened for signatures on Sept. 20, during the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly, and it will take effect once it is ratified by 60 countries.

The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. It also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told delegates that the adoption of the treaty comes at a critical time, with the oceans under threat on many fronts.

Climate change is disrupting weather patterns and ocean currents, raising sea temperatures, “and altering marine ecosystems and the species living there,” he said, and marine biodiversity “is under attack from overfishing, over-exploitation and ocean acidification.”

“Over one-third of fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels,” the U.N. chief said. “And we are polluting our coastal waters with chemicals, plastics and human waste.”

Guterres said the treaty is vital to address these threats and he urged all countries to spare no efforts to ensure that it is signed and ratified as soon as possible, stressing that “this is critical to addressing the threats facing the ocean.”

 
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A submarine on a tourism expedition to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has gone missing off the coast of southeastern Canada, according to the private company that operates the vessel.

OceanGate Expeditions said in a brief statement on Monday that it was “mobilizing all options” to rescue those on board the vessel. It was not immediately clear how many people were missing.

The U.S. Coast Guard did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Media reports said the Coast Guard has launched search-and-rescue operations.

“We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible,” OceanGate said in a statement.

The company is currently operating its fifth Titanic “mission” of 2023, according to its website, which was scheduled to start last week and finish on Thursday.

The expedition, which costs $250,000 per person, starts in St. John’s, Newfoundland, before heading out approximately 400 miles into the Atlantic to the wreckage site, according to OceanGate’s website.

In order to visit the wreck, passengers climb inside Titan, a five-person submersible, which takes about two hours to descend to the Titanic.

The British passenger ship famously sunk in 1912 on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people. The story has been immortalized in non-fiction and fiction books as well as the 1997 blockbuster movie “Titanic.”

 
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The Dutch government is soon to join the United States and Japan in rolling out new semiconductor export control measures aimed at keeping sensitive technology away from China due to concern for potential misuse, the country’s economic affairs minister told reporters on a visit to Washington.

The measures are likely to further restrict sales to China by Netherlands-based ASML, maker of the world’s most advanced chip-printing machines, which last year disclosed the “unauthorized misappropriation of data” by a now former employee in China.

The United States in October 2022 announced its own export control measures affecting advanced computing integrated circuits and certain semiconductor manufacturing items.

The U.S. said the measures were aimed at items that “could provide direct contributions to advancing military decision making” such as “designing and testing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), producing semiconductors for use in advanced military systems, and developing advanced surveillance systems that can be used for military applications and human rights abuses.”

The U.S. subsequently asked allies including Japan and the Netherlands, which play key roles in the semiconductor supply chain, to introduce similar measures.

“The main concern is [the chip-making technology] will be used in military products,” Micky Adriaansens, Netherlands’ minister of economic affairs and climate, told a group of journalists on June 8 at the Dutch Embassy in Washington.

Adriaansens acknowledged that the negotiations with Washington have not been easy.

“To be honest, the conversation has been intense, and is still intense,” she said. “But we agreed already upon the main issues, with a good [mutual] understanding of what is the right thing to do.”

Adriaansens said those understandings still have to be translated into regulations but that her country understands the importance of the measures.

“We realize that we, the U.S., the Netherlands, Japan and Korea, are very strong in the semicon[ductor] value chain, supply chain, and we have a responsibility there,” the minister said, echoing a statement made by Japan’s trade minister in March.

Japan also takes steps

Tokyo announced its own measures on March 31, saying that beginning in July, Japan will restrict 23 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment from being exported to China. “We are fulfilling our responsibility as a technological nation to contribute to international peace and stability,” Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters.

At the center of the Netherlands’ semiconductor export control deliberations is ASML, a Dutch company with its headquarters in Veldhoven, about an hour and a half’s drive southeast of Amsterdam. The company was known as Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography in its early years but is now known as ASML.

Europe’s biggest high-tech firm by market capitalization, ASML is the world’s largest supplier of photolithography machines, which are used to produce computer chips.

Its flagship products are the EUV, or extreme ultraviolet, and DUV, or deep ultraviolet, lithography machines that use advanced light technology to shrink and then print tiny patterns down to the nanometer level on silicon wafers, a critical and essential component of the semiconductor manufacturing process.

Since 2019, ASML’s world-exclusive EUV machines have been on the Netherlands’ export control list, meaning they cannot be sold to China without government approval. In a statement issued in March, the company said it understood that the new export controls could be applied to its less-advanced DUV machines and other products as well.

While Taiwan is its top customer, ASML has more than 1,000 employees working in 12 office buildings in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Last year, sales to China made up 14% of the company’s total net systems sales.

In its 2022 annual report, released on February 15 this year, the company disclosed that it had experienced “unauthorized misappropriation of data relating to proprietary technology by a (now) former employee in China.” The incident may have led to the violation of certain export control regulations, the report said.

The company said a comprehensive internal review has since been launched, but the nature and extent of the data that was misappropriated has not been publicly disclosed.

Report mentions possible leak

Another possible leak of the company’s proprietary information that happened in China was disclosed in the previous year’s annual report.

“Early in 2021, we became aware of reports that a company associated with XTAL, Inc., against which ASML had obtained a damage award for trade secret misappropriation in 2019 in the USA, was actively marketing products in China that could potentially infringe on ASML’s IP rights,” said the 2021 report.

The second company was identified as Beijing-based DongFang JingYuan Electron, which was established in 2014 at about the same time as XTAL and controlled by the same people.

ASML’s annual report said the company had shared its concerns with the Chinese authorities and was monitoring the situation closely.

In its case against XTAL, ASML told the court that a former Chinese employee working at an ASML subsidiary in the United States had stolen 2 million lines of source code for critical software. It said the theft was conducted on behalf of both XTAL and DongFang.

ASML’s representatives told the court that it took XTAL only two years to replicate a technology that ASML had spent $100 million and a decade developing, as first reported by Bloomberg. XTAL, which ASML’s attorneys described in court proceedings as essentially the same as DongFang JingYuan, then tried to sell the technology to South Korea-based Samsung, a longtime client of ASML.

In late March, ASML CEO Peter Wennink met with China’s newly installed minister of commerce in Beijing. China is “firmly committed to high-level openness, willing to create favorable conditions for multinationals such as ASML to do business in China,” Wang Wentao, the newly minted commerce minister, told the visiting CEO.

“We hope ASML will affirm and strengthen its confidence in trading and investing in China and make proactive contributions to Sino-Dutch collaboration in trade and economics,” Wang continued.

It isn’t clear whether the two sides discussed the intellectual property infringement issues described in ASML’s 2021 and 2022 annual reports or if they did, what remedies Beijing may have proposed.

‘Relentless pursuit’

Asked how the company plans to fend off future attempts to steal its trade secrets, a company spokesperson told VOA that ASML is committed to “relentless pursuit of individuals or entities that violate or threaten to violate our [intellectual property] in any way.”

While less well known for semiconductor manufacturing than Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. or U.S.-based Intel, ASML is often viewed as Europe’s most valuable high-tech company, likely key to the Netherlands’ winning the bid to be the seat of NATO’s newly established Innovation Fund.
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Getting vaccinated is an effective way to prevent infection from human papillomavirus, also known as HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer in women and other cancers in men. But the vaccine is neither available nor affordable to many in Venezuela. For Adriana Nunez Rabascall in Caracas, Venezuela, Cristina Caicedo Smit narrates the story. Camera – Jackson Vodopija.
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