Day: June 1, 2024

WHO extends talks to reach pandemic accord

Geneva, Switzerland — The World Health Organization annual assembly on Saturday gave member countries another year to agree on a landmark accord to combat future pandemics. 

Three years of effort to reach a deal ended last month in failure. But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed what he called historic decisions taken to make a new bid for an accord. 

The WHO agreed in 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic eased to launch talks on an accord to counter any new global health crisis. Millions died from COVID-19 which brought health systems in many countries to their knees. 

The talks hit multiple obstacles however with many developing countries accusing rich nations of monopolizing available COVID-19 vaccines. 

They have sought assurances that any new accord will make provision of medicines and the sharing of research more equitable.  

The WHO annual assembly “made concrete commitments to completing negotiations on a global pandemic agreement within a year, at the latest,” said a statement released at the end of the Geneva meeting. 

The assembly also agreed on amendments to an international framework of binding health rules. The changes introduce the notion of a “pandemic emergency,” which calls on member states to take rapid, coordinated action, the statement said. 

“The historic decisions taken today demonstrate a common desire by member states to protect their own people, and the world’s, from the shared risk of public health emergencies and future pandemics,” Tedros said. 

He said the change to health rules “will bolster countries’ ability to detect and respond to future outbreaks and pandemics by strengthening their own national capacities, and [through] coordination between fellow states, on disease surveillance, information sharing and response.” 

Tedros added: “The decision to conclude the pandemic agreement within the next year demonstrates how strongly and urgently countries want it, because the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if.” 

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Panama prepares to evacuate first island in face of rising sea levels

GARDI SUGDUB, Panama — On a tiny island off Panama’s Caribbean coast, about 300 families are packing their belongings in preparation for a dramatic change. Generations of Gunas who have grown up on Gardi Sugdub in a life dedicated to the sea and tourism will trade that next week for the mainland’s solid ground.

They go voluntarily — sort of.

The Gunas of Gardi Sugdub are the first of 63 communities along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts that government officials and scientists expect to be forced to relocate by rising sea levels in the coming decades.

On a recent day, the island’s Indigenous residents rowed or sputtered off with outboard motors to fish. Children, some in uniforms and others in the colorful local textiles called “molas,” chattered as they hustled through the warren of narrow dirt streets on their way to school.

“We’re a little sad, because we’re going to leave behind the homes we’ve known all our lives, the relationship with the sea, where we fish, where we bathe and where the tourists come, but the sea is sinking the island little by little,” said Nadin Morales, 24, who prepared to move with her mother, uncle and boyfriend.

An official with Panama’s Ministry of Housing said that some people have decided to stay on the island until it’s no longer safe, without revealing a specific number.

Authorities won’t force them to leave, the official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue.

Gardi Sugdub is one of about 50 populated islands in the archipelago of the Guna Yala territory. It is only about 366 meters (1,200 feet) long and 137 meters (450 feet) wide. From above, it’s roughly a prickly oval surrounded by dozens of short docks where residents tie up their boats.

Every year, especially when the strong winds whip up the sea in November and December, water fills the streets and enters the homes. Climate change isn’t only leading to a rise in sea levels, but it’s also warming oceans and thereby powering stronger storms.

The Gunas have tried to reinforce the island’s edge with rocks, pilings and coral, but seawater keeps coming.

“Lately, I’ve seen that climate change has had a major impact,” Morales said. “Now the tide comes to a level it didn’t before, and the heat is unbearable.”

The Guna’s autonomous government decided two decades ago that they needed to think about leaving the island, but at that time it was because the island was getting too crowded. The effects of climate change accelerated that thinking, said Evelio Lopez, a 61-year-old teacher on the island.

He plans to move with relatives to the new site on the mainland that the government developed at a cost of $12 million. The concrete houses sit on a grid of paved streets carved out of the lush tropical jungle just over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the port, where an eight-minute boat ride carries them to Gardi Sugdub.

Leaving the island is “a great challenge, because more than 200 years of our culture is from the sea, so leaving this island means a lot of things,” Lopez said. “Leaving the sea, the economic activities that we have there on the island, and now we’re going to be on solid ground, in the forest. We’re going to see what the result is in the long run.”

Steven Paton, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s physical monitoring program in Panama, said that the upcoming move “is a direct consequence of climate change through the increase in sea level.”

“The islands on average are only a half-meter above sea level, and as that level rises, sooner or later the Gunas are going to have to abandon all of the islands, almost surely by the end of the century or earlier,” he said.

“All of the world’s coasts are being affected by this at different speeds,” Paton said.

Residents of a small coastal community in Mexico moved inland last year after storms continued to take away their homes. Governments are being forced to take action, from the Italian lagoon city of Venice to the coastal communities of New Zealand.

A recent study by Panama’s Environmental Ministry’s Climate Change directorate, with support from universities in Panama and Spain, estimated that by 2050, Panama would lose about 2.01% of its coastal territory to increases in sea levels.

Panama estimates that it will cost about $1.2 billion to relocate the 38,000 or so inhabitants who will face rising sea levels in the short- and medium-term, said Ligia Castro, climate change director for the Environmental Ministry.

On Gardi Sugdub, women who make the elaborately embroidered molas worn by Guna women hang them outside their homes when finished, trying to catch the eye of visiting tourists.

The island and others along the coast have benefitted for years from year-round tourism.

Braucilio de la Ossa, the deputy secretary of Carti, the port facing Gardi Sugdub, said that he planned to move with his wife, daughter, sister-in-law and mother-in-law. Some of his wife’s relatives will stay on the island.

He said the biggest challenge for those moving would be the lifestyle change of moving from the sea inland, even though the distance is relatively small.

“Now that they will be in the forest, their way of living will be different,” he said.

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Uganda tackles yellow fever with new travel requirement, vaccination campaign

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda has rolled out a nationwide yellow fever vaccination campaign to help safeguard its population against the mosquito-borne disease that has long posed a threat.

By the end of April, Ugandan authorities had vaccinated 12.2 million of the 14 million people targeted, said Dr. Michael Baganizi, an official in charge of immunization at the health ministry.

Uganda will now require everyone traveling to and from the country to have a yellow fever vaccination card as an international health regulation, Baganizi said.

Ugandan authorities hope the requirement will compel more people to get the yellow fever shot amid a general atmosphere of vaccine hesitancy that worries health care providers in the East African nation.

The single-dose vaccine has been offered free of charge to Ugandans between the ages of 1 and 60. Vaccination centers in the capital, Kampala, and elsewhere included schools, universities, hospitals and local government units.

Before this, Ugandans usually paid to get the yellow fever shot at private clinics, for the equivalent of $27.

Uganda, with 45 million people, is one of 27 countries on the African continent classified as at high risk for yellow fever outbreaks. According to the World Health Organization, there are about 200,000 cases and 30,000 deaths globally each year from the disease.

Uganda’s most recent outbreak was reported earlier this year in the central districts of Buikwe and Buvuma.

Yellow fever is caused by a virus transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes. The majority of infections are asymptomatic. Symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, headache, loss of appetite and nausea or vomiting, according to the WHO.

Uganda’s vaccination initiative is part of a global strategy launched in 2017 by the WHO and partners such as the U.N. children’s agency to eliminate yellow fever by 2026. The goal is to protect almost 1  billion people in Africa and the Americas.

A midterm evaluation of that strategy, whose results were published last year, found that 185 million people in high-risk African countries had been vaccinated by August 2022.

In Uganda, most people get the yellow fever shot when they are traveling to countries such as South Africa that demand proof of vaccination on arrival.

James Odite, a nurse working at a private hospital which has been designated as a vaccination center in a suburb of the capital, Kampala, told the AP that hundreds of doses remained unused after the yellow fever vaccination campaign closed. They will be used in a future mass campaign.

Among the issues raised by vaccine-hesitant people was the question of whether “the government wants to give them expired vaccines,” Odite said.

Baganizi, the immunization official, said Uganda’s government has invested in community “sensitization” sessions during which officials tell people that vaccines save lives.

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Chinese artists caught between Beijing, desire for Western success

washington — Chinese artists walk a tightrope when trying to create content acceptable to Beijing’s standards while attempting to seek success among Western audiences. More than one artist who has gained recognition in the West has been punished by Chinese censors, with Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye being the most recent case.

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival featured Lou’s pseudodocumentary “An Unfinished Film” as an Official Selection, and it drew positive reviews. However, the film hardly has any chance to be publicly screened in China.

“An Unfinished Film” is about a film crew’s 2020 experience at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan.

The fictional plot follows the members of a film crew as they attempt to reshoot a movie, then are forced indoors as the city goes on lockdown.

During this time, the wife of an actor, a member of the film crew, was about to give birth. She tried to rush out of the hotel but was beaten by the security guard.

In the movie version, the wife of Jiang Cheng, the main character, was about to give birth. Desperate to be at the hospital with his wife, Jiang tried to break through the blockade but ended up in a huge scuffle with the security guards. Jiang was beaten up and forced to stay in his hotel room until the lockdown ended in Wuhan.

In the end, the actor, the director and other members of the fictional crew had to stay in the Wuhan hotel and could contact each other only by mobile phone.

The film included many real-life video clips that went viral during the lockdown, including a child crying and chasing his mother who was put on a bus to a makeshift hospital, and residents singing in a locked-down community in Wuhan at night.

Reaction to the film

The film stirred strong emotions among some viewers at the Cannes Film Festival.

After the film’s screening, someone in the audience shouted, “Lou Ye, you are the greatest director in China!”

Another person who watched the film posted on the Chinese social media site Weibo under the name Wu Ke Feng Gao, “In the second half, sobbing was heard everywhere in the theater. The audience in the back row said that everyone was crying for themselves. … To me, this is the greatest Chinese film in the past decade.”

But Zhao Liang, a former Chinese film critic living in the United States who requested to use a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from the Chinese government, had a different reaction to Lou’s film.

“This is a suicidal movie,” he told VOA.

“Lou Ye can’t [work in China anymore]; he has killed himself in front of the Chinese government,” Zhao added.

He said, “He filmed the pandemic, which is very sensitive to the Chinese government and is a subject that cannot be touched. The Chinese government has destroyed all the files related to the pandemic in the hospitals, as if COVID-19 never happened. All the files on the lockdown and all the records at the time, whether in the government, hospitals or neighborhood committees, have been destroyed.”

Lou Ye, the West and Chinese censors

Over the course of Lou’s more than 20-year career, Chinese officials have banned and censored much of his work. Only four of his twelve films have made it to big screens in China.

In 2000, his film “Suzhou River” won the Golden Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands. However, because Lou participated in the foreign film festival without official approval, the Chinese government banned the film in China and punished Lou with a two-year prohibition on filming.

In 2006, the Chinese government placed a five-year filming ban on Lou for entering the film “Summer Palace” in the Cannes Film Festival without approval.  The film was set during the taboo Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations and included explicit sexual content.

In 2019, Lou said in an interview about making the banned film, “A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind,” “Directors should be able to make movies without being threatened by censorship and express themselves freely. This is a right granted by the Constitution. … The censorship system has made the Chinese domestic audience a second-tier audience, a second-rate audience, because they simply cannot see what they should see, what they have the right to see.”

The plight of Chinese artists

Kong Ming, a former Chinese art critic living in the United States who requested to use a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from the Chinese government, told VOA that in an already competitive industry, Chinese artists have very few options to exercise their creativity.

“Chinese artists actually have nowhere to escape,” Kong said. “Even if you give up the Chinese market, you will no longer have the soil for your creations.”

Other artists who have faced Chinese censors include internationally renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his often provocative art. He experienced detention and violence at the hands of Chinese police when living in China.

In 2019, music by contemporary Chinese folk singer Li Zhi disappeared from all music streaming platforms in China. His personal Weibo and other social media accounts were also shut down.

An official reason was never given for the disappearance of Li’s music. 

Many of his works touched on the taboos of the Chinese government, including the suppression of the 1989 student movement at Tiananmen Square. During the COVID-19 White Paper Movement, he also posted photos of himself holding white paper.

In April, although Li toured major cities in Japan, attracting tens of thousands of Chinese fans, Kong said the tour in Japan was just a one-time phenomenon.

“China has tightened up its grip in all aspects. Li’s case has definitely alerted the government. In the future, any musician who wants to hold a concert abroad will need a permit,” said Kong.

It is tough for Chinese artists to find success both in China and the West, analysts said. One rare exception is Liu Cixin, the award-winning science fiction writer of The Three-Body Problem. The popularity of the trilogy has led to television adaptions in China and on Netflix about an alien race’s invasion.

“Some individuals may be able to break through the ban, but it is very rare. How many Chinese artists are there in New York? Whose career is actually growing? Almost none,” Zhao said.

In addition to the threat of censors in China, Chinese artists face challenges if they try to expand their careers overseas, Zhao said.

“First of all, the cultural gap is still severe,” he said. “Lou Ye can only shoot Chinese themes, which are also very limited. Overseas audiences care little about Chinese themes, and it is difficult to integrate. It is very difficult for Chinese artists to be truly recognized in the West.”

He said the creative soil overseas is extremely barren for individual Chinese artists, there is no support structure, and they lack funding.

“There are a few capable people, but they are all very depressed when they arrive in the United States. When they live in the U.S. they don’t interact with each other, and it’s impossible for them to come together,” he said.

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report. 

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Marian Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama, dies at 86

WASHINGTON — Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.

Robinson’s death was announced by Michelle Obama and other family members in a statement that said, “There was and will be only one Marian Robinson. In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.”

She had been a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig Robinson, to help persuade their mother to move.

“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Marian Robinson wrote in the foreword to A Game of Character, a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.

Robinson wrote that her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago but still used a line of reasoning on her that she often used on him and his sister. He asked her to see the move as a chance to grow and try something new. As a compromise, she agreed to move, at least temporarily.

Her granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and 7, respectively, when the White House became home in 2009. In Chicago, Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to the girls during the 2008 presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.

At the White House, Robinson provided a reassuring presence for the girls as their parents settled into their new roles, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.

“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her 2018 memoir, Becoming. “She has always been my rock, allowing me the freedom to be who I am, while never allowing my feet to get too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls, and her willingness to put our needs before her own, gave me the comfort and confidence to venture out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home.”

Robinson gave a few media interviews but never to the White House press. Aides guarded her privacy, and, as result, she enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady. It allowed her to come and go from the White House as often as she pleased on shopping runs around town, to the president’s box at the Kennedy Center, and for trips to Las Vegas or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon.

She attended some White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and National Christmas Tree lighting, and some state dinners.

White House residency also opened up the world to Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor of the White House, one floor above the first family. She had never traveled outside the U.S. until she moved to Washington.

Her first flight out of the country was aboard Air Force One in 2009, when the Obamas visited France. She joined the Obamas on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast. She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president: to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.

Craig Robinson wrote in the memoir that he and his parents doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Barack Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Without explanation, Craig Robinson said his mother gave the relationship six months.

Barack and Michelle Obama were married on October 3, 1992.

One of seven children, Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.

Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department who had multiple sclerosis. He died in 1991.

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