Day: May 11, 2024
MALMO, Sweden — The Netherlands’ contestant in the Eurovision Song Contest was dramatically expelled from competition hours before Saturday’s final of the pan-continental pop competition, which has been rattled by protests over the participation of Israel.
Competition organizer European Broadcasting Union said Swedish police were investigating “a complaint made by a female member of the production crew” against Dutch performer Joost Klein. The organizer said it wouldn’t be appropriate for Klein to participate at the event in Malmo while the legal process was underway.
Although Eurovision’s motto is “united by music,” this year’s event has proven exceptionally divisive. Israel’s participation has attracted large pro-Palestinian demonstrations, with protesters saying the country should be excluded because of its conduct in the war in the Gaza Strip.
Klein, a 26-year-old Dutch singer and rapper, had been a favorite of bookmakers and fans with his song “Europapa.”
He failed to perform at two dress rehearsals on Friday, and the EBU had said it was investigating an “incident.” Although rumors had been flying that the incident was connected to Israel’s delegation, organizers said that it “did not involve any other performer or delegation member.”
Dutch broadcaster AVROTOS, one of dozens of public broadcasters that collectively fund and broadcast the contest, said that it “finds the disqualification disproportionate and is shocked by the decision.”
“We deeply regret this and will come back to this later,” AVROTOS said in a statement.
It all makes for a messy climax to an event that draws both adoration and derision with its campy, kitschy ethos and passion for pop.
Thousands of people gathered in central Malmo on Saturday to march for the second time this week through Sweden’s third-largest city, which has a large Muslim population, to demand a boycott of Israel and a cease-fire in the seven-month war.
In Finland, a group of about 40 protesters stormed the headquarters of public broadcaster YLE on Saturday morning, demanding it withdraw from the song contest because of Israel’s participation.
Several kilometers from the city center at the Malmo Arena, 25 acts — narrowed from 37 entrants by two semifinal runoffs — are scheduled to perform three-minute songs in front of a live audience of thousands and an estimated 180 million viewers around the world.
Tensions and nerves were palpable in the hours before the final. Several artists were absent from the Olympics-style artists’ entrance at the start of the final dress rehearsal, although all but Ireland’s Bambie Thug went on to perform.
The Irish performer issued a statement saying the absence was due to a situation “which I felt needed urgent attention from the EBU” and telling fans: “I hope to see you on the stage later.”
French singer Slimane cut short his song “Mon Amour” at the dress rehearsal to give a speech urging people to be “united by music, yes — but with love, for peace.”
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GENEVA — As Brazil’s heavily flooded southern state of Rio Grande do Sul braces for a weekend of intense rain, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is calling for greater support to help tens of thousands of refugees, who are among the most vulnerable people affected by the disaster.
“Those affected include some 41,000 refugees and others in need of international protection, including many Venezuelans and Haitians who live in the affected areas — some of [whom] can only be reached by boat,” William Spindler, UNHCR spokesperson, told journalists Friday in Geneva.
According to local authorities, at least 126 people have died in the floods, 141 are missing, about 2 million people are adversely affected, and more than 400,000 are homeless.
Spindler said the UNHCR, in coordination with local authorities, is distributing relief items such as blankets and mattresses, noting that additional relief items such as emergency shelters, kitchen sets, solar lamps and hygiene kits are being sent to Brazil.
“In the coming days, UNHCR will be supporting the issuance of documentation, where it has been lost or damaged, to guarantee refugees and asylum-seekers continue to access social benefits and public services,” he said.
Spindler noted that refugees do not live in camps separated from the population, but that they live with the host communities, under the same conditions in which the local inhabitants live.
“So, it is the host communities that is the focus of our support. … We need to strengthen their capacity, so they can continue to host refugees. That means strengthening social services, access to education, to health, and so on for the local people, as well as the refugees,” he said.
The UNHCR estimates $3.21 million is needed to support the most urgent needs, including direct financial assistance to flood-affected people and the provision of essential relief items.
Brazil is a country prone to natural disasters. It has been subject to more frequent and devastating extreme weather events in recent years, including droughts in the Amazon region and severe rains in Bahia and Acre states.
A report issued this week by the World Meteorological Organization on the state of the climate in Latin America and the Caribbean highlights the vulnerability of the entire region to extreme weather and climate change impacts in 2023.
The authors of the report say it is difficult to know whether conditions this year will be worse. But WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis observes that for those affected by the disastrous floods in Brazil, “2024 is an absolutely record-breaking bad year.”
She emphasized that the flooded area is huge. “It is massive, and it really will undermine the socio-economic development in that entire area for a long time to come.”
She said El Nino, a weather phenomenon that warms ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is playing a major role in the floods in Brazil, as it also is in the floods in Eastern Africa.
“On top of that, you have got climate change. … It is a double whammy of El Nino and climate change. And that is what we are seeing in Brazil right now. Even when El Nino fades, which it will do, the long-term effects of climate change are with us,” she said.
“Our weather is on steroids,” Nullis said, adding that every fraction of a degree of global warming means “our weather will become more extreme.”
The UNHCR’s Spindler noted severe climate events disproportionately affect refugees and other people requesting international protection. Therefore, he said it is important to work on prevention and to focus on populations that are most at risk.
“The impact of climate change affects everybody, but some individuals and communities are in a more vulnerable situation,” he said, noting that refugees and migrants are most imperiled because they are not from the country in which they are living.
“They come from other countries, and that means they do not have the same social networks, family and so on that nationals have.
“Often, they are living in areas that are more exposed to risks. So, they are impacted in a more disproportionate way by these events,” he said, underscoring that not enough funding is available to address the impact of climate change nor “to address the needs of those forcibly displaced, nor the communities hosting them.”
“Without help to prepare for, withstand and recover from climate-related shocks, they face an increased risk of further displacement,” he warned.
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ISLAMABAD — The United Nations and Taliban authorities said Saturday that the death toll from flash floods following heavy seasonal rains in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province had risen to a least 300.
The U.N. World Food Program said the flooding destroyed more than 1,000 houses. It said that “this has been one of many floods over the last few weeks due to unusually heavy rainfall.”
A senior Taliban official said in a social media video message that Friday’s calamity had left at least 150 people dead in a single Baghlan district called Nahreen.
Ghulam Rasool Qani said the death toll might rise and noted that military helicopters had arrived in the area to assist in local rescue efforts.
Authorities said that rescue workers are bringing aid to hardest-hit Baghlan districts. The WFP said it was distributing fortified biscuits to the survivors.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government spokesperson, stated on social media platform X that the flooding had caused devastation in several other northern and western provinces, including Badakhshan, Ghor and Herat.
“Regrettably, hundreds of our fellow citizens have succumbed to these calamitous floods, while a substantial number have sustained injuries,” Mujahid wrote. “Moreover, the deluge has wrought extensive devastation upon residential properties, resulting in significant financial losses.”
Mujahid said the government had directed the Ministry of Disaster Management and other relevant authorities “to mobilize all available resources expeditiously” to rescue victims and bring them to safer areas, evacuate bodies, and provide timely medical treatment to those injured.
“We also urge our fellow citizens to assist the affected victims of this natural disaster to the best of their abilities and collaborate with the flood-stricken individuals,” Mujahid said.
Poverty-stricken Afghanistan also experienced heavy rains and flash floods across 32 of its 34 provinces in mid-April, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people.
According to international aid groups, the flooding destroyed nearly 1,000 homes and about 24,000 hectares (59,800 acres) of agricultural land, along with critical infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, and electricity supplies, which could hinder the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on the Afghan human rights situation, expressed his condolences to the victims’ families.
“Recent floods in Afghanistan, including Baghlan, which claimed many lives, are a stark reminder of Afghanistan’s vulnerability to the climate crisis & both immediate aid and long-term planning by the Taliban & internal actors are needed,” Bennett wrote Saturday on X.
An estimated 80% of the more than 40 million people in Afghanistan depend on agriculture to survive. The war-ravaged South Asian nation is ranked sixth among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which experts say is responsible for the unusually heavy seasonal rains.
Aid workers had warned before Friday’s devastation that any additional flooding would be detrimental for large swathes of the Afghan population, already reeling from an economic collapse, high levels of malnutrition and conflict.
“Three years of successive drought and the harshest winter in 15 years have exacerbated Afghanistan’s hunger crisis at a time when international support is falling,” the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee, or IRC, said in its latest assessment, published last week.
The report said that an estimated 15.3 million Afghans, or 35% of the population, continue to suffer from crisis or worse levels of food insecurity. “Nearly half of the population lives in poverty and will continue to experience economic hardship,” the IRC said.
Afghanistan’s economy crashed after the Taliban militarily seized power in 2021 as the then-internationally supported government collapsed and U.S.-led international forces withdrew after 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.
The Taliban takeover led to the termination of foreign development funding for Afghanistan, and its banking system largely remains isolated over terrorism-related concerns, as well as sanctions on Taliban leaders.
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The Vodou faithful sing, their voices rising above the gunfire erupting miles away as frantic drumbeats drown out their troubles.
They pause to swig rum out of small brown bottles, twirling in unison as they sing in Haitian Creole: “We don’t care if they hate us, because they can’t bury us.”
Shunned publicly by politicians and intellectuals for centuries, Vodou is transforming into a more powerful and accepted religion across Haiti, where its believers were once persecuted. Increasingly, they seek solace and protection from violent gangs that have killed, raped and kidnapped thousands in recent years.
The violence has left more than 360,000 people homeless, largely shut down Haiti’s biggest seaport and closed the main international airport two months ago. Basic goods including food and life-saving medication are dwindling; nearly 2 million Haitians are on the verge of famine.
From January to March alone, more than 2,500 Haitians were killed or injured, up more than 50% from the same period last year, according to the U.N.
Amid the spiraling chaos, numerous Haitians are praying more or visiting Vodou priests known as “oungans” for urgent requests ranging from locating loved ones who were kidnapped to finding critical medication needed to keep someone alive.
“The spirits help you. They’re always around,” said Sherly Norzéus, who is initiated to become a “mambo,” or Vodou priestess.
In February, she invoked Papa Ogou, god of war and iron, when 20 armed men surrounded her car as she tried to flee the community of Bon Repos.
Her three children and the two children of her sister, who died during childbirth, sat next to her.
“We are going to burn you alive!” she recalled the gunmen yelling.
Gangs had invaded their neighborhood before dawn, setting fire to homes amid relentless gunfire.
“I prayed to Papa Ogou. He helped me get out of the situation,” Norzéus said.
When she opened her eyes, the gunmen signaled that she was free to leave.
Vodou was at the root of the revolution that led Haiti to become the world’s first free Black republic in 1804, a religion born in West Africa and brought across the Atlantic by enslaved people.
The syncretic religion that melds Catholicism with animist beliefs has no official leader or creeds. It has a single God known as “Bondye,” Creole for “Good God,” and more than 1,000 spirits known as the lwa — some that aren’t always benevolent.
During Vodou ceremonies, lwa are offered treats ranging from papayas and coffee to popcorn, lollipops and cheese puffs. A ceremony is considered successful if a Vodouist is possessed by an lwa.
Some experts consider it a religion of the exploited.
“Vodou is the system that Haitians have developed to deal with the suffering of this life, a system whose object is to minimize pain, avoid disaster, soften losses, and strengthen the survivors as much as the survival instinct,” Haitian sociologist Laennec Hurbon wrote in a recent essay.
Vodou began to take shape in the French colony of Saint-Domingue during funeral rituals for enslaved people and dances called “calendas” that they organized on Sunday evenings. It also was practiced by slaves known as Maroons who escaped to remote mountains and were led by François Mackandal, a Vodou priest.
In August 1791, some 200 slaves gathered at night in Bois-Caiman in northern Haiti for a Vodou ceremony organized by Dutty Boukman, a renowned enslaved leader and Vodou priest. They sacrificed a pig, drank its blood and swore to keep secret an imminent revolt against slavery, according to a surgeon present at the ceremony.
After a 13-year revolution, Haiti became independent, but Vodou remained oppressed.
The country’s new leaders condemned Vodou worship, as did the Catholic Church.
Catholic leaders demanded parishioners take an oath renouncing Vodou in 1941.
Thousands of Vodou followers were lynched and hundreds of symbolic spaces destroyed in what became the most violent attack in Haiti’s history against the religion, according to journalist Herbert Nerette.
But Vodou persisted. When François Duvalier became president in 1957, he politicized the religion during his dictatorship, appointing certain oungans as its representatives, Hurbon wrote.
By 2003, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Salesian priest who became Haiti’s first democratically elected president, recognized Vodou as one of Haiti’s official religions.
Despite the formal recognition, Vodou remains shunned by some Haitians.
“When you say you are a Vodouist, they stigmatize you,” said Kadel Bazile, a 42-year-old civil engineer.
Until recently, Bazile was a practicing Catholic. But when he lost his job and his wife left him nearly two years ago, a friend suggested he try Vodou.
“What I find here is spirituality and fraternity. Being here is like being with family,” he said while attending a May 1 ceremony to honor Kouzen Zaka, the lwa of harvest.
He identifies the most with Erzulie Dantor, the divinity of love represented by a Black Madonna with scars on her right cheek.
“That is the spirit who lives in me,” he said. “She is going to protect me.”
As the ceremony started, Bazile smiled and moved to the beat of the drums while dancers twirled nearby, their long earrings swaying to the rhythm.
Vodou is attracting more believers given the surge in gang violence and government inaction, said Cecil Elien Isac, a fourth-generation oungan.
“Whenever the community has a big problem, they come here, because there is no justice in Haiti. You find it in the ancestral spirits,” he said.
When Isac opened his temple years ago in Port-au-Prince, about eight families in the area became members. Now he counts more than 4,000, in Haiti and abroad.
“We have a group of intellectuals who have joined,” he said. “Before, it was people who couldn’t read or write. Now it has more visibility.”
Credited with that turnaround are thinkers like Jean Price-Mars, whose 1928 book, Thus Spoke the Uncle, visualized Vodou as a religion, “without making the Haitian elites blush,” wrote sociologist Lewis Ampidu Clorméus.
“Until the 1920s, Haitian Vodou was generally regarded as a string of superstitions, witchcraft and ritual cannibalism,” Clorméus wrote. “Talking about Vodou constituted a shame for Haitian intellectuals.”
Vodou has since become a key ingredient in Haiti’s rich cultural scene, inspiring music, art, writing and dance.
It’s unknown how many people currently practice Vodou in Haiti, but there’s a popular saying: “Haiti is 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant and 100% Vodou.”
Vodou also has countless lwas, although Ogou Je Wouj — the god of red eyes — has grown more significant to Haitians given the lack of security in the country, said Erol Josué, a singer, oungan and director of Haiti’s National Bureau of Ethnology.
Ogou Je Wouj is a manifestation of the god of war and is believed to wield a machete.
“They want power in their body and in their mind,” Josué said of those who seek the god.
While spirits infuse believers with energy and hope, Vodou priests warn they don’t perform miracles.
“We’re praying, but we’re also taking precautions,” Isac said. “There are a lot of lwas to protect you from kidnapping, but if you walk through certain areas, no lwa is going to protect you.”
On a recent afternoon, hundreds of Haitians gathered on a steep hill and squeezed into a small church to celebrate St. George, a Christian martyr believed to be a Roman soldier revered by Catholics and Vodouists alike.
They offered him money and prayers in hopes they would make it through Haiti’s deepening crisis.
“It’s very important to be here,” said Hervé Hyppolite, a chef who practices Christianity and Vodou. “You find force, courage and also protection.”
Surrounding him was a sea of people clad in khaki and red, the saint’s colors. Some held candles as a handful of women danced nearby.
“St. George!” the priest leading the celebration yelled. The crowd shouted in response, “We need you!”
Josué, the singer and oungan, noted that some young people becoming Vodouists are trying to change traditional prayers or certain practices, but he said oungans and mambos are not embracing the push.
“We make them understand that those spirits are a symbol of resistance of the Haitian nation,” he said. “There’s a lot of substance in Vodou that can lead to a renaissance of Haiti.”
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WASHINGTON — Liam and Olivia have for a fifth year together topped the list of baby names for brand new boys and girls born in the U.S. in 2023. And Mateo joins the top 10 baby names list for the first time.
The Social Security Administration annually tracks the names given to girls and boys in each state, with names dating back to 1880. The agency gathers the names from applications for Social Security cards.
Based on cultural and population trends, the list shows how names can rise and fall in popularity. The latest was released Friday.
Liam has reigned supreme seven years in a row while Olivia has topped the girls’ list for five, after unseating Emma, previously No. 1 for five years.
After Liam, the most common names for boys are, in order: Noah, Oliver, James, Elijah, Mateo, Theodore, Henry, Lucas, and William.
And after Olivia, the most common names for girls are Emma, Charlotte, Amelia, Sophia, Mia, Isabella, Ava, Evelyn and Luna.
The Social Security Administration’s latest data show that 3.58 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2023. That’s a slight decrease from last year’s 3.66 million babies, representing an overall decline in the American birthrate.
Social media stars and popular television shows are having some impact on the rising popularity of certain names, Social Security says. The fastest rising name for boys is Izael while the second fastest rising, Chozen, shot up to number 813 in 2023.
The character Chozen was a protagonist in the last season of the Netflix show Cobra Kai.
For girls, one of the fastest rising baby names is Kaeli, which rose 1,692 spots. “Parents must have really smashed the ‘like’ button for YouTube and TikTok star Kaeli McEwen, also known as Kaeli Mae, who routinely promotes a clean, tidy, and neutral-aesthetic lifestyle,” Social Security said in a news release.
The complete, searchable list of baby names is on the Social Security website.
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Washington — The most powerful solar storm in more than two decades struck Earth on Friday, triggering spectacular celestial light shows in skies from Tasmania to Britain — and threatening possible disruptions to satellites and power grids as it persists into the weekend.
The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun — came just after 1600 GMT, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged power infrastructure in South Africa. More CMEs are expected to pummel the planet in the coming days.
Social media lit up with people posting pictures of auroras from northern Europe and Australasia.
“We’ve just woken the kids to go watch the Northern Lights in the back garden! Clearly visible with the naked eye,” Iain Mansfield of Hertford, Britain, told AFP.
“Absolutely biblical skies in Tasmania at 4am this morning. I’m leaving today and knew I could not pass up this opportunity,” photographer Sean O’ Riordan posted on X alongside a photo.
Authorities notified satellite operators, airlines and the power grid to take precautionary steps for potential disruptions caused by changes to Earth’s magnetic field.
Unlike solar flares, which travel at the speed of light and reach Earth in about eight minutes, CMEs travel at a more sedate pace, with officials putting the current average at 800 kilometers per second.
They emanated from a massive sunspot cluster that is 17 times wider than Earth. The sun is approaching the peak of an 11-year cycle that brings heightened activity.
‘Go outside tonight and look’
Mathew Owens, a professor of space physics at the University of Reading, told AFP that while the effects would be largely felt over the planet’s northern and southern latitudes, how far they would extend would depend on the storm’s final strength.
“Go outside tonight and look would be my advice because if you see the aurora, it’s quite a spectacular thing,” he added. If people have eclipse glasses, they can also look for the sunspot cluster during the day.
In the United States, this could include places such as Northern California and Alabama, officials said.
NOAA’s Brent Gordon encouraged the public to try to capture the night sky with phone cameras even if they can’t see auroras with their naked eyes.
“Just go out your back door and take a picture with the newer cell phones and you’d be amazed at what you see in that picture versus what you see with your eyes.”
Spacecraft and pigeons
Fluctuating magnetic fields associated with geomagnetic storms induce currents in long wires, including power lines, which can potentially lead to blackouts. Long pipelines can also become electrified, leading to engineering problems.
Spacecraft are also at risk from high doses of radiation, though the atmosphere prevents this from reaching Earth.
NASA has a dedicated team looking into astronaut safety and can ask astronauts on the International Space Station to move to places within the outpost that are better shielded.
Pigeons and other species that have internal biological compasses could also be affected. Pigeon handlers have noted a reduction in birds coming home during geomagnetic storms, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Officials said people should have the normal backup plans in place for power outages, such as having flashlights, batteries and radios at hand.
The most powerful geomagnetic storm in recorded history, known as the Carrington Event, occurred in September 1859, named after British astronomer Richard Carrington.
Excess currents on telegraph lines at that time caused electrical shocks to technicians and even set some telegraph equipment ablaze.
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