Month: August 2024
WASHINGTON — Movie ticket sales in China have generated more than $1.5 billion so far this summer, a little more than half of last year’s record total of $2.89 billion, according to China’s Film Data Information Network, an institution directly under the Central Propaganda Department.
Summer is usually one of three lucrative periods for China’s movie industry, but industry analysts, observers and customers say a slower economy and a lack of creative domestic films are to blame for the decline.
Some would-be moviegoers explained why they are staying home this summer.
One posted on social media: “The impact from last year’s economic downturn officially appeared this year. Everyone thinks 40-80 yuan ($5-$11) per ticket is expensive.”
“Many movies in theaters in July are on streaming services in August,” another posted. “We’d rather watch them at home than go to the theater.”
A moviegoer in Beijing who identified herself as Ms. Yu, told VOA that this year’s film market is sluggish because the themes are plain, and streaming services allow everyone to watch movies at home without spending money.
“Everyone’s life is already miserable,” she said, “so we don’t want to watch sad movies.”
Although the streaming services have become theaters’ biggest competitors, the economic downturn may be the main reason for the ticket sales plunge, said Shenzhen-based film director Zhang, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“The spending power of young people and parents has decreased,” Zhang told VOA. “One [reason] is that young people don’t date, and parents whose income has been reduced are under great pressure to raise children, so they naturally cut the consumption activities except eating and drinking, not just movies.”
China’s economy has been struggling to stabilize since the pandemic, according to the World Bank, with growth falling to 3% in 2022 before a moderate recovery to 5.2% in 2023. The global lender expects China’s growth rate to drop back below 5% this year, while youth unemployment has surged.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics removed students from its unemployment calculation after China hit a record high 21.3% youth unemployment rate in June 2023, prompting authorities to temporarily suspend publication of the statistic.
Darson Chiu, director-general of the Confederation of Asia-Pacific Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Taiwan, told VOA that China’s controls on film and creativity have also contributed to the lackluster box office figures.
“China has a very strict censorship system,” Chiu said. “Cultural activities need creativity, and it must be bottom-up. But it is obviously a top-down [censorship] mechanism, so it [the Chinese film industry] is not as creative as it is in other more open and free economies.”
Lee Cheng-liang, an assistant professor of communications at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, said Chinese cinemas in the summer mainly show domestic movies, which are struggling to find investors.
“The economy is declining; investors are more cautious to minimize risks. So they diversify the movie themes they invest in,” Lee told VOA. “If you focus on the Chinese market, you will not necessarily make money unless you are at the top of the pyramid.”
Director Zhang said the Chinese summer comedies “Successor,” which critiques the Chinese social education system, and “Upstream,” which portrays package deliverers, are movies that do not “empathize with the general public.”
Commercial movies are often condescending, he said, with hypocritically fabricated plots to show the suffering of people at the bottom. “It is actually a very deformed route,” Zhang added.
Other film critics, however, find “Upstream” a great work with increasing favorable audience feedback, which uncovers China’s immense economic problems and the struggle of its army of gig workers.
China’s state Xinhua News agency said “Successor,” grossing nearly 3.2 billion yuan as of Aug 20, accounted for almost 30% of China’s summer box office sales.
Zhang said the more depressed the social and historical period is, the more popular comedy is because the audience wants to feel “dreamy and painless.”
Despite the poor summer box office showing, not all critics are negative about China’s film industry.
“The ticket sales are not good this summer, but it does not mean that their [China’s] movies are bad,” Michael Mai, a film critic based in Taipei, told VOA. “Their audience is hard to please. Why? Because their appetite is too big. They have all kinds of movies.”
Mai noted that there are three major periods in the Chinese movie market: the Lunar New Year, in January and February; the summer season, from June to August; and the weeklong National Day season from Oct. 1.
Movie ticket sales always have seasonal ups and downs, Mai said, so people should be focusing more on long-term trends.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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FRESNO, Calif. — The second elephant calf in two weeks has been born at a California zoo.
African elephant Amahle gave birth early Monday morning, according to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. The event came 10 days after Amahle’s mother, Nolwazi, gave birth to another male calf.
The new additions are the first elephants born at the zoo, about 240 kilometers southeast of San Francisco, which has embarked on a program to breed elephants in the hope that they can be seen by zoogoers in years to come.
“To have two healthy calves is a historic milestone,” Jon Forrest Dohlin, the zoo’s chief executive, said in a statement Tuesday. “We cannot wait for the public to see the new additions to our herd and share in our excitement.”
The elephants and their calves will continue to be monitored behind the scenes for now, Dohlin said. While the zoo expanded its exhibit in anticipation of growing its herd, some animal activists have opposed the breeding program, saying elephants shouldn’t be in zoos because of their complex needs.
In 2022, the zoo brought in male elephant Mabu hoping he’d breed with the two females. The future of elephants — which have relatively few offspring and a 22-month gestation period — in zoos hinges largely on breeding.
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ISLAMABAD — Slow internet speeds that have frustrated Pakistanis for several weeks may persist more than a month while repairs to a faulty submarine internet cable continue, the country’s telecom regulator announced Wednesday.
Internet speed and connectivity have been spotty across much of Pakistan since at least July, with users increasingly struggling to access popular messaging and social media apps.
On Wednesday, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, or PTA, announced that repairs to the faulty cable will likely be completed by early October. The cable in question, SMW-4, is one of two that authorities say needed repairs.
“The fault in SMW-4 submarine cable is likely to be repaired by early October 2024. Whereas submarine cable AAE-1 has been repaired which may improve internet experience,” the brief statement said.
Pakistan relies on seven undersea cables for internet service. The regulator reported problems with the SMW-4 cable in mid-June.
Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Ltd., or PTCL, is the landing party for most of the seven international internet cables, including the two that have experienced technical issues. The Pakistani government holds a majority share in the national telecom carrier.
Conflicting statements
With public anger mounting, officials have issued a variety of statements to explain the slump in services.
Earlier in August, the state minister for information technology, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, blamed increased use of VPNs by Pakistanis for the slowdown nationwide. She rejected the notion that the government was deliberately throttling internet speed.
“I can say it under oath that the government of Pakistan did not block the internet or slow it down,” Khawaja said at a press briefing in Islamabad on August 18.
Later in the month, the PTA chief told lawmakers the faulty submarine cable was to blame, saying it would be repaired by August 28.
Meanwhile, the secretary for the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication told a Seate committee hearing the problem with accessing certain app functions was on the end of mobile data providers.
Although Wednesday’s statement by the PTA referenced two damaged cables, a PTA lawyer told the Islamabad high court this week that a third cable may also be damaged.
‘Firewall’
Business community and internet service providers blamed the slump in services on the government’s efforts to implement a “firewall.”
Speaking to VOA in late July, Khawaja confirmed that a firewall was being installed. However, the IT minister claimed the tool was meant to strengthen cybersecurity and not to control free speech.
Still, after a Senate committee hearing in mid-August, Khawaja told the news media the government was simply upgrading an older “web management system.”
The junior minister, currently the top IT official, has repeatedly accused the media of blowing the “firewall” issue “out of proportion.”
According to a source familiar with the implementation of the “firewall,” the tool, acquired from China and under installation by the Ministry of Defense since May, is deployed at cable landing stations in Pakistan, the place where the undersea internet data cable meets a country’s internet system.
The “firewall,” also being installed on the servers of major internet providers, has the capability to detect and slow digital communication between individual users.
In a statement condemning the “grave consequences of the hastily implemented firewall,” the Pakistan Software Houses Association, an industry group of software developers, gaming and IT companies, said slow internet speed has cost the country’s fledgling IT industry more than $300 million in losses.
“These disruptions are not mere inconveniences but a direct and aggressive assault on the industry viability,” the statement released earlier in August said.
Another organization, Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, said users are leaving smaller internet service providers because of poor internet speed.
Internet disruptions and implementation of the firewall have been challenged in high courts in Lahore and Islamabad.
Prominent Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir filed a petition requesting that the Islamabad High Court seek details of the firewall’s scope and purpose. He said access to the internet is a fundamental right for the purpose of livelihood.
Expressing frustration with authorities’ “conflicting responses” this week, the court’s top judge demanded a detailed report on the reasons for connectivity disruptions. The next hearing is scheduled for September 3.
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Washington — Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev says he saw no reason to be suspicious when he received what appeared to be an email from former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a trusted contact with whom he communicates periodically.
“This letter was visually no different from his other letters. I believed that it was his letter because it was visually no different from his other letters,” Ponomarev told VOA Russian in a Zoom interview.
But this email from several months ago turned out to be one of numerous “phishing attacks” targeting U.S. diplomats and others that have been identified as the work of two cyber-espionage outfits linked to the Russian government. And the fact that it accurately mimicked McFaul’s previous messages indicated the attackers had already seen those earlier messages.
“The letter contained a reference to a report on Ukraine that McFaul supposedly intended to deliver in China, and also a request to check whether he had mixed something up,” Ponomarev said. McFaul did in fact deliver a lecture to Chinese students in April.
McFaul has confirmed to VOA that he was the target of a hacker attack but did not elaborate. The details of the attack were revealed in a recent joint report from the digital rights group Access Now and the Canadian research nonprofit Citizen Lab.
The report says the attacks were conducted between October 2022 and August 2024 by two “threat actors close to the Russian regime” known as ColdRiver and ColdWastrel.
According to The Washington Post, “multiple governments” have said that ColdRiver works for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, while ColdWastrel is believed to be “working for another Russian agency.”
Among their targets were exiled Russian opposition figures, employees of U.S. think tanks, former U.S. ambassadors to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, political figures and academics, employees of American and European non-profit organizations, and media organizations.
VOA has spoken with several of those named as victims, including former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, a Russian journalist and a Russian human rights activist, as well as Ponomarev and McFaul.
The goal of phishing attacks is to try to get a user to click on a malicious link or enter their data – login and password – on a fake website. If the attack is successful, hackers gain access to the victim’s confidential information, including correspondence, contact lists and, in some cases, financial information.
Hackers conducting phishing campaigns employ a technique called “social engineering,” which a leading American cyber security software and services company described as using “psychological manipulation” designed to trick users into divulging sensitive information.
Herbst, who is currently director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told VOA that he has been facing attacks from Russian hackers for the past 10 years.
The Kremlin “didn’t like from the beginning what I was doing because I was pointing out that they’re conducting an illegal invasion of Ukraine, I guess going back to 2014,” he said.
Herbst said that Russian hackers target people who take a public position aimed at countering Moscow’s aggressive foreign policy: “So, it’s not surprising that people like Steve Pifer or Michael McFaul, or myself have received attention from the FSB, the GRU [Russian military intelligence] and others.”
Herbst added: “I don’t want to overstate the attention they give to us. You know, we are pretty much tertiary or even less than tertiary players on the international political scene, but they know they have such a massive security apparatus that they give some low-level guy the job of following people like me.”
“The stuff that linked me with Mike McFaul or Steve Pifer … was a fishing expedition, right? [To] see if they could get one of them to say something in confidence to me, which would be embarrassing.”
Steven Pifer did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the details of the hacker attack.
Ponomarev said that he responded to the fake McFaul email, but did not have time to download the malicious file attached to it since he was on a plane when he opened the email, and it was inconvenient to download the file from a phone.
“When I opened it on my computer, I noticed that the address he sent it to me from was not his usual Stanford University address, it was something completely different,” Ponomarev told VOA.
“Being an IT guy, I looked at the IP address of the file in the email and was convinced that it was phishing. After that, I passed the information on to the competent authorities so that they could look into the matter further.”
Ponomarev added that the fact the email ostensibly sent by McFaul came from a Proton service mailbox did not initially arouse any particular suspicions.
“I also have an address on Proton, for some kind of confidential correspondence,” he said, noting that attackers can forge addresses on Proton by changing one letter, so that visually it still looks like a regular mailing address.
“They use it because it’s completely anonymous,” Ponomarev added. “You can’t trace an IP address to Proton, so when you use Proton, it’s a dead end, you can’t excavate it any further.”
Polina Machold, publisher of Proekt, an independent Russian media outlet specializing in investigative journalism, told VOA that in the phishing attack targeting her, which took place last November, the hackers also employed social engineering and the Proton mail service.
“I received a letter from a ‘colleague’ from another media outlet, with whom we had previously done a joint project, asking to look at a new potential project or something like that,” Machold told VOA.
“We corresponded for some time, and when it came to opening the file, I discovered that something very suspicious was going on, because the link in the file supposedly led to Proton Drive, but the domain was something completely different.”
Machold said she called a colleague who confirmed that the attacker was pretending to be him. The information was passed on to Citizen Lab, which determined that hackers likely associated with the FSB were behind the attack.
Dmitry Zair-Bek, who heads First Department, a Russian rights group, said that a member of his group was among the first targets of a hacker attack “because we defend people in cases of treason and espionage.”
“One of our employees received an email from an address that mimicked the address of one of our partners,” he said. “The email contained a link that led to a phishing site.”
Zair-Bek added that the ColdWastrel group carried out the attack targeting First Department.
“They are the ‘C’ students of the hacker world,” Zair-Bek said of ColdWastrel. “The idea is the same as the ColdRiver group, they just paid less attention to some small details.
“The fact that they are ‘C’ students does not mean that they are less effective. They choose a person who from their point of view, on the one hand, has the largest amount of information that interests them and, on the other hand, is the most vulnerable.”
Even someone well-versed in digital security issues can fall for the bait of hackers, says Natalia Krapiva, an expert at Access Now, which co-authored the report on the Russian hacker attacks.
“The ColdRiver and ColdWastrel groups use quite sophisticated social engineering, a very good understanding of the context,” she told VOA.
“They know how the organization is structured in general, which people are responsible for finance, HR, politics, and so on. That is, they know which employee to send this [phishing] email to. They also understand with whom these organizations interact and on what issues.”
“We have seen examples of exploiting existing relationships between a Russian and an American human rights organization,” Krapiva added, noting that hackers knew that one of the organizations was waiting for a grant application and sent a malicious PDF file to the employee who was waiting for it.
This suggests that hackers already have a certain amount of information at the time they attempt to attack their victims, she said.
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Paris — The Opening Ceremony of the Paris Paralympics got underway Wednesday in the center of the French capital, firing the starting gun on 11 days of intense competition.
Just as for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics on the River Seine in July, it took place away from the main stadium for the first time at a Paralympics.
In balmy weather — in contrast to the heavy rain that blighted the opening of the Olympics on July 26 — the Games opened in Place de la Concorde, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron.
The ceremony culminates with the lighting of the cauldron, which has already become a highly popular point of interest in the city since its debut at the Olympics.
When the sporting action begins on Thursday, a new generation of Paralympians will join seasoned veterans competing in many of the same venues that hosted Olympic sports.
Eighteen of the 35 Olympic venues will be used for the Paralympics, which run until September 8, including the Grand Palais, which scored rave reviews for its hosting of fencing and taekwondo under an ornate roof.
The La Defense Arena will again host the swimming events, and track and field will take place on the purple track of the Stade de France.
Sluggish ticket sales have picked up since the Olympics, and more than 2 million of the 2.5 million available have been sold, with several venues sold out.
The Paralympic flame was lit at Stoke Mandeville hospital in England, the birthplace of the Games, and brought to France through the Channel Tunnel before touring French cities.
Theater director Thomas Jolly, who also oversaw the Olympics Opening Ceremony, said there was a deep symbolism in having the Paralympics ceremony in the center of Paris — a city whose Metro system is not adapted to the needs of wheelchair users.
“Putting Paralympic athletes in the heart of the city is already a political marker in the sense that the city is not sufficiently adapted to every handicapped person,” Jolly said earlier this week.
Organizers say wheelchair users can take Paris buses, and they have laid on 1,000 specially adapted taxis as well.
Paralympic powerhouse China will send a strong squad — the Chinese dominated the medals table at the Covid-delayed Games in Tokyo three years ago, winning 96 golds. Britain was second with 41 golds.
Riding the wave of its Olympic team’s success, host nation France will be aiming for a substantial upgrade on the 11 golds it won in 2021, which left it in 14th position. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said she wants France to finish in the top eight of the medals table.
Ukraine, traditionally one of the top medal-winning nations at the Paralympics, have sent a team of 140 athletes spread over 17 sports despite the challenges they face in preparing as the war against Russian forces rages at home.
Russia and Belarus are sending a total of 96 athletes, who will compete under a neutral banner but are barred from the opening and closing ceremonies because of the invasion of Ukraine.
Every Games produces new stars, and in this edition, look to American above-the-knee amputee sprinter/high jumper Ezra Frech to make the headlines.
Away from the track, Iranian sitting volleyball legend Morteza Mehrzad, who stands 8 feet, 1 inch tall, will attempt to take gold again.
International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons told AFP earlier this year he hopes the Paris edition will restore the issues facing disabled people to the top of the list of global priorities.
Parsons believes the Games “will have a big impact in how people with disability are perceived around the world.”
“This is one of the key expectations we have around Paris 2024; we believe that we need people with disability to be put back on the global agenda,” the Brazilian said.
“We do believe people with disability have been left behind. There is very little debate about persons with disability.”
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PARIS — French prosecutors on Wednesday freed Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from police custody after four days of questioning over allegations that the platform is being used for illegal activities.
Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a judicial inquiry opened last month involving 12 alleged criminal violations.
“An investigating judge has ended Pavel Durov’s police custody and will have him brought to court for a first appearance and a possible indictment,” a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Other allegations against Durov, who is a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fraud and abetting organized crime transactions, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.
His arrest in France has caused outrage in Russia, with some government officials calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double standard on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows among Kremlin critics because in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block Telegram but failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.
In Iran, where Telegram is widely used despite being officially banned after years of protests challenging the country’s Shiite theocracy, Durov’s arrest in France prompted comments from the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weighed in with veiled praise for France for being “strict” against those who “violate your governance” of the internet.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Durov’s arrest wasn’t a political move but part of an independent investigation. Macron posted on X that his country “is deeply committed” to freedom of expression but “freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”
In a statement posted on its platform after Durov’s arrest, Telegram said that it abides by EU laws and that its moderation is “within industry standards and constantly improving.”
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” Telegram’s post said. “Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information. We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all.”
Durov is a citizen of Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.
The UAE Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it was “closely following the case” and had asked France to provide Durov “with all the necessary consular services in an urgent manner.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he hoped that Durov “has all the necessary opportunities for his legal defense” and added that Moscow stands “ready to provide all necessary assistance and support” to the Telegram CEO as a Russian citizen.
“But the situation is complicated by the fact that he is also a citizen of France,” Peskov said.
Telegram, which says it has nearly a billion users worldwide, was founded by Durov and his brother after he himself faced pressure from Russian authorities.
In 2013, he sold his stake in VKontakte, a popular Russian social networking site he launched in 2006.
The company came under pressure during the Russian government’s crackdown following mass pro-democracy protests that rocked Moscow at the end of 2011 and 2012.
Durov had said authorities demanded that the site take down online communities of Russian opposition activists, and later that it hand over personal data of users who took part in the 2013-2014 popular uprising in Ukraine, which eventually ousted a pro-Kremlin president.
Durov said in a recent interview that he had turned down these demands and left the country.
The demonstrations prompted Russian authorities to clamp down on the digital space, and Telegram and its pro-privacy rhetoric offered a convenient way for Russians to communicate and share news.
Telegram also continues to be a popular source of news in Ukraine, where media outlets and officials use it to share information on the war and deliver missile and air raid alerts.
Western governments have often criticized Telegram for a lack of content moderation, which experts say opens up the messaging platform for potential use in money laundering, drug trafficking and the sharing of material linked to the sexual exploitation of minors.
In 2022, Germany issued fines of $5 million against Telegram’s operators for failing to establish a lawful way to report illegal content or to name an entity in Germany to receive official communication. Both are required under German laws that regulate large online platforms.
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GENEVA — U.N. agencies warn that refugees and displaced communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries infected with mpox are at particular risk of illness and death because of conditions under which they are forced to live.
The World Health Organization says at least 42 suspected cases of mpox have been identified among the refugee population in DR Congo’s South Kivu Province, one of the regions hardest hit by the disease. Confirmed and suspected cases of the new clade 1b strain also have been recorded among refugee populations in the Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
“Suspected cases are being reported in conflict-impacted provinces that host the majority of the DRC’s 7.3 million internally displaced people,” Dr. Allen Maina, UNHCR public health chief, said Tuesday.
“In these areas, the virus threatens to exacerbate an already impossible situation for a population devastated by decades of conflict, forced displacement, appalling human rights abuses and a lack of international assistance,” the U.N. refugee official said.
He also warned that without additional, urgent international support, the recently declared mpox outbreak “could become devastating” for the DRC and other impacted African countries.
Nearly two weeks ago, the WHO declared mpox to be a public health emergency of international concern following an upsurge in the deadly disease in the DRC and 11 other countries in Africa.
Maina told journalists at a briefing in Geneva that refugees and displaced people are particularly vulnerable to mpox because people fleeing violence “are unable to implement many of the mpox prevention measures” that could keep them healthy and save their lives.
“Displaced families living in crowded schools, shelters and tents, and also in churches, and also in farmers’ fields have no space to isolate when they develop symptoms of the disease. UNHCR staff have found some affected individuals trying diligently to follow preventive measures and protect their communities by sleeping outside,” he said.
So far this year, the WHO reports more than 18,910 cases of mpox and 615 deaths, most in the DRC. “But most of these are suspected cases as they have not yet been laboratory confirmed,” said Dr. Margaret Harris, WHO spokesperson, adding that “We are seeing outbreaks of both clade 1a and clade 1b.”
Clade 1a is primarily transmitted through sexual contact, and there also have been outbreaks resulting from zoonotic spillover; while the new strain of the virus, clade 1b, is exclusively spread by contact between humans.
The WHO says a lot of outbreaks in north and south Kivu provinces are caused by clade 1b. The U.N. health agency has recorded 5,400 suspected cases as of August 23, noting that more than 220 cases of the new strain also have been found in neighboring countries.
Harris says scientists do not have the data to know whether clade 1b is more dangerous than clade 1a.
“Studies are underway to understand the properties of the new strain. The available epidemiological data does not suggest that the clade 1b variant causes more severe cases as yet.” She noted, however, that the disease spreads rapidly, putting refugees and displaced people at particular risk.
“You just heard the descriptions of the conditions under which people are living and have arrived already very stressed, hungry, terrified, displaced,” she said.
These difficult living conditions have led to weaker immune systems, she said, “which makes them more likely to become more ill with anything they get, including mpox.”
Mpox is a deadly infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. It is spread through close physical contact, which makes children particularly vulnerable “as the disease spreads easily through skin-to-skin contact,” Harris said, adding that children who have close physical contact with an infected adult relative “cannot fight off the virus because of a weakened immune system.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus launched a six-month global strategic preparedness and response plan Monday to stop human-to-human transmission of mpox through global, regional and national efforts.
“The mpox outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring countries can be controlled, and can be stopped,” Tedros said in a statement.
The WHO followed Monday’s launch with an $87.4 million appeal Tuesday to implement critical activities over the next six months, emphasizing surveillance, research, equitable access to medical countermeasures and community empowerment.
The WHO is calling on donors to urgently fund the mpox response “to prevent further spread and protect those most at risk.”
The UNHCRs public health chief, Maina, has no doubt as to who is most at risk and what must be done.
“International solidarity is urgently needed to expand health services, isolation centers, humanitarian shelters, access to water and soap for those forced to flee,” he said. “In conflict zones, peace is also desperately needed, to ensure a sustainable response to stop the spread of the disease.”
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Tehran, Iran — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday urged the new government to impose controls over the Islamic republic’s cyberspace, which has already been under heavy restrictions in recent years.
“What matters is for the rule of law to be applied in the virtual space,” said Khamenei during his first meeting with the new cabinet of president Masoud Pezeshkian.
“If you don’t have a law (to regulate the internet), set a law, and based on that law, take the control,” he added.
Khamenei’s remarks come despite vows from Pezeshkian during his campaign to ease the long-standing internet restrictions in Iran.
Iran has over the years tightly controlled internet use, restricting popular social media apps such as Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter.
Harsher curbs were enforced following 2019 protests against fuel prices and later demonstrations triggered by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
Messaging apps including WhatsApp, Telegram, as well as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have also been blocked.
Iranians have over the years grown accustomed to using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to evade the restrictions.
During his speech, Khamenei cited the recent arrest in France of Russian-born founder of Telegram Pavel Durov over alleged failings to curb criminality on the app.
“This poor young man is taken by the French… They arrest you, put you in prison, threaten to give you a 20-year sentence, this is because he violated their rule,” said Khamenei.
“Violation of governance is not acceptable.”
Iran has in recent years said WhatsApp and Instagram would only be allowed to operate if they had a legal representative in the country.
But Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it has no plans to set up an office in Iran.
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Before Russia invaded in February 2022, American football was becoming popular in Ukraine. Today, most of the players are on the front lines. A gentler version of the game — flag football — is gaining ground in the meantime among kids and youth. Tetiana Kukurika has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Sergiy Rybchynski
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GENEVA — The U.N. health agency on Monday launched a six-month plan to help stanch outbreaks of mpox transmission, including ramping up staffing in affected countries and boosting surveillance, prevention and response strategies.
The World Health Organization said it expected the plan, running from September through February next year, would require $135 million in funding. The plan would also aim to improve fair access to vaccines, notably in African countries hardest hit by the outbreak.
“The mpox outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring countries can be controlled, and can be stopped,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement.
The agency is “significantly scaling up staff” in affected countries, it said. In mid-August, WHO classified the current mpox outbreak as a global health emergency.
Also Monday, German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said Germany was donating 100,000 doses of mpox vaccine to affected countries from stocks held by its military, German news agency dpa reported.
Last Tuesday, Congo — the hardest-hit country — reported more than 1,000 new mpox cases over the previous week.
In its latest update on the outbreak, the African Centers for Disease Control reported that as of Thursday, more than 21,300 suspected or confirmed cases and 590 deaths have been reported this year in 12 African countries.
Mpox belongs to the same family of viruses as smallpox but typically causes milder symptoms such as fever, chills and body aches. It mostly spreads through close skin-to-skin contact, including sexual intercourse. People with more serious cases can develop lesions on the face, hands, chest and genitals.
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