Authorities in Nairobi are trying to tackle the Kenyan capital’s chronic and worsening air pollution. With help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, authorities are placing sensors that can monitor air quality around the densely populated city. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo
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Month: September 2024
Osaka, Japan — Japan celebrated on Monday the record-breaking Emmy Awards triumph of “Shogun”, although many confessed not having watched the series about the country’s warring dynasties in the feudal era.
“Shogun” smashed all-time records at the television awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, taking home an astounding 18 statuettes and becoming the first non-English-language winner of the highly coveted award for best drama series.
Lead Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Lord Toranaga, became the first Japanese actor to win an Emmy, while Anna Sawai achieved the same for her performance as Lady Mariko.
“As a Japanese, I’m happy Sanada won,” Kiyoko Kanda, a 70-year-old pensioner, told AFP in Tokyo.
“He worked so hard since he moved to Los Angeles,” she said.
“In ‘Last Samurai’, Tom Cruise was the lead, but it’s exciting Sanada is the main character in ‘Shogun’,” Kanda added.
But she admitted that she only watched the trailer.
The series is available only on Disney’s streaming platform, which is relatively new in Japan.
“I want to watch it. I’m curious to know how Japan is portrayed,” Kanda said.
Otsuka, who declined to give her first name, said she, too, has not watched the show.
“But I saw the news and I’m happy he won.” Sanada, now 63, began his acting career at the age of five in Tokyo and moved to LA after appearing in “Last Samurai” in 2003.
The words “historic achievements” and “Hiroyuki Sanada” were trending on X in Japanese, while Sanada’s speech at the awards racked up tens of thousands of views.
Yusuke Takizawa, 41, also only watched a trailer but he said he was amazed by the quality of the show.
“I was impressed by the high-spirited acting, the attention to detail and the film technology,” Takizawa told AFP outside Osaka Castle, a major historical location for the series.
“I think many young people will want to try their hand in Hollywood after watching Sanada,” he said.
Tourists at the castle also welcomed the record Emmy win.
“I think was the best TV show that I’ve seen this year,” said Zara Ferjani, a visitor from London.
“I thought it was amazing… The direction was beautiful, and I really enjoyed watching something that wasn’t in English as well,” the 33-year-old said.
She said she had planned to watch “Shogun” after returning home from Japan.
“But one of my friends strongly advised me to watch it beforehand, just to appreciate the culture more and definitely Osaka Castle more,” she added.
Breaking from cliches
Many in the Japanese film industry were also jubilant.
“He won after many years of trying hard in Hollywood. It’s too cool,” wrote Shinichiro Ueda, director of the hit low-budget film “One Cut of the Dead”, on X.
Video game creator and movie fan Hideo Kojima, who has described the show as “Game of Thrones in 17th-century Japan”, reposted a news story on the win.
The drama, adapted from a popular novel by James Clavell and filmed in Canada, tells the tale of Lord Toranaga, who fights for his life against his enemies alongside Mariko and British sailor John Blackthorne.
A previous TV adaptation made in 1980 was centered on Blackthorne’s perspective.
But the new “Shogun” breaks away from decades of cliched and often bungled depictions of Japan in Western cinema, with Japanese spoken throughout most of the show.
Sanada, who also co-produced the drama, is credited with bringing a new level of cultural and historical authenticity to “Shogun.”
An army of experts, including several wig technicians from Japan, worked behind the scenes to make the series realistic, poring over sets, costumes and the actors’ movements.
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LOS ANGELES — “Hacks” won the comedy series at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, topping “The Bear,” which took home several of the night’s honors.
“Shogun” won the best drama series win, collecting a whopping 18 Emmys for its first season, just one of several historic wins.
Hiroyuki Sanada won best actor in a drama for “Shogun” on Sunday night at the Emmy Awards, and Anna Sawai won best actress as they became the first two Japanese actors to win Emmys.
Their wins gave the FX series momentum going into one of the night’s top awards, where “Shogun” won best drama series.
“The Bear” came back for seconds in a big way at the ceremony four times including best actor, best supporting actor and best supporting actress in a comedy, while British upstart “Baby Reindeer” won four of its own, including best limited series.
The star of FX’s “The Bear” Jeremy Allen White won best actor in a comedy for the second straight year, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach repeated as best supporting actor.
A surprise came when Liza Colón-Zayas won best supporting actor over major competition.
“How could I have thought it would be possible to be in the presence of Meryl Streep and Carol Burnett,” Colón-Zayas said as tears welled in her eyes as she accepted the award on the stage of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
She is the first Latina to win in the category.
“To all the Latinas who are looking at me,” she said, “keep believing and vote.”
Netflix’s darkly quirky “Baby Reindeer” won best actor and best writing for the show’s creator and star Richard Gadd and best supporting actress for Jessica Gunning, who plays his tormentor.
Accepting the best limited series award, Gadd urged the makers of television to take chances.
“The only constant across any success in television is good storytelling,” he said. “Good storytelling that speaks to our times. So take risks, push boundaries. Explore the uncomfortable. Dare to fail in order to achieve.”
“Baby Reindeer” is based on a one man-stage show in which Gadd describes being sexually abused along with other emotional struggles.
Accepting that award, he said, “no matter how bad it gets, it always gets better.”
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Gadd has.
Jodie Foster won her first Emmy to go with her two Oscars when she took best actress in a limited series for “True Detective: Night Country.”
The creator of “The Bear” was also a repeat winner. Christopher Storer took his second straight Emmy for directing, an award handed out by reunited “Happy Days” co-stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler.
White said backstage that he was watching in the wings as Colón-Zayas won and “that was just the greatest.”
He also shouted out two acting wins the show had already scored at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, when Jamie Lee Curtis won best guest actress in a comedy for playing his mother, and Jon Bernthal won best guest actor for playing his big brother.
“The Bear” won six times including most of the top comedy categories at the strike-delayed Emmys in January.
While the third season of FX’s “The Bear” has already dropped, the trio won their second Emmys for its second, in which White’s chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto attempts to turn his family’s grungy Chicago sandwich shop into an elite restaurant. It could still win more Sunday night including best comedy series.
The father-son hosting duo of Eugene and Dan Levy in their monologue at the top of the show mocked the very dramatic “The Bear” being in the comedy category.
“In honor of ‘The Bear’ we will be making no jokes,” Eugene Levy said, to laughs.
Jean Smart won best actress in a comedy for “Hacks.” She has won for all three seasons of “Hacks,” and has six Emmys overall.
She beat nominees including Ayo Edebiri, who as co-star of “The Bear” moved from supporting actress, which she won in January, to lead actress.
Coming into the show the big story was “Shogun,” which had already taken the most Emmys for a show in a single season with 14 at the Creative Arts ceremony.
The FX series about lordly politicking in feudal Japan can still win best drama series.
If “Shogun” faces competition for the best drama prize, it could come for the sixth and final season of “The Crown,” the only show among the nominees that has won before in a category recently dominated by the retired “Succession.”
Elizabeth Debicki took best supporting actress in a drama for playing Princess Diana at the end of her life in the sixth and final season of the show.
“Playing this part, based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege,” Debicki said. “It’s been a gift.”
Billy Crudup won best actor in a drama for “The Morning Show.”
Streep wasn’t the only Oscar winner trumped by a little-known name. Robert Downey Jr., the reigning best supporting actor winner for “Oppenheimer,” was considered the favorite to win best supporting actor in a limited series for “The Sympathizer,” but that award went to Lamorne Morris for “Fargo.”
“Robert Downey Jr. I have a poster of you in my house!” Morris said from the stage as he accepted his first Emmy.
Several awards were presented by themed teams from TV history, including sitcom dads George Lopez, Damon Wayans and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and TV moms Meredith Baxter, Connie Britton, and Susan Kelechi Watson.
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LOS ANGELES — The 76th annual Emmy Awards were handed out Sunday at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
“Shogun” set a single season record for most wins with 18. “Shogun” won best drama series, and Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai won acting awards for their roles.
“Hacks’’ won the award for best comedy series. ”Baby Reindeer” and “The Bear’’ won four awards apiece.
Early winners included Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jeremy Allen White and Liza Colón-Zayas, who won awards for their work in the comedy series “The Bear.”
Stars presenting Emmys to their peers included: Billy Crystal, Viola Davis, Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, Maya Rudolph and Martin Sheen.
Several actors and shows, including Rudolph, won last week. Rudolph won her sixth Emmy Award at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys for her voice work on “Big Mouth.” Jamie Lee Curtis also picked up a supporting actress Emmy last weekend for her appearance on “The Bear.”
Here’s a list of winners at Sunday’s Emmys:
Supporting actor in a comedy series
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear”
Supporting actor in a drama series
Billy Crudup, “The Morning Show”
Actor in a comedy series
Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”
Supporting actress in a comedy series
Liza Colón-Zayas, “The Bear”
Supporting actress in a drama series
Elizabeth Debicki, “The Crown”
Actress in a comedy series
Jean Smart, “Hacks”
Reality competition program
“The Traitors,” Peacock
Supporting actress limited
Jessica Gunning, “Baby Reindeer”
Scripted variety series
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” HBO/Max
Writing for a variety special
Alex Edelman, “Just for Us”
Directing for a limited or anthology series
Steven Zaillian, “Ripley”
Writing for a comedy series
Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, “Hacks”
Talk series
“The Daily Show,” Comedy Central
Supporting actor in a limited or anthology series
Lamorne Morris, “Fargo”
Writing for a drama series
Will Smith, “Slow Horses”
Writing for a limited series, anthology or movie
Richard Gadd, “Baby Reindeer”
Directing for a comedy series
Christopher Storer, “The Bear”
Governors award
Greg Berlanti
Directing for a drama series
Frederick E.O. Toye, “Shogun”
Actor in a limited, anthology series or movie
Richard Gadd, “Baby Reindeer”
Actress in a limited, anthology series or movie
Jodie Foster, “True Detective: Night Country”
Limited, anthology series or movie
“Baby Reindeer”
Actor in a drama series
Hiroyuki Sanada, “Shogun”
Actress in a drama series
Anna Sawai, “Shogun”
Drama series
“Shogun”
Comedy series
“Hacks”
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What is Art? It’s an age-old question: is it paint on canvas, ceramics or sculpture? The fun part is – art can be anything – and can even be created with a chainsaw. That’s the medium of one artist from the U.S. state of Virginia. Maxim Adams has the story. (Camera: Andrey Degtyarev; Produced by: Andrey Degtyarev, Anna Rice)
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.
SpaceX’s capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 740 kilometers above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 1,408 kilometers following Tuesday’s liftoff.
Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts.
“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team. Within an hour, all four were out of their spacecraft, pumping their fists with joy as they emerged onto the ship’s deck.
It was the first time SpaceX aimed for a splashdown near the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands 113 kilometers west of Key West. To celebrate the new location, SpaceX employees brought a big, green turtle balloon to Mission Control at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The company usually targets closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of poor weather forecasts prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere.
During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch was open barely a half-hour. Isaacman emerged only up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s brand-new spacesuit followed by Gillis, who was knee-high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also held a performance in orbit earlier in the week.
The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurize the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits.
SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.
This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
For the just completed so-called Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of the Shift4 credit card-processing company shared the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman won’t divulge how much he spent.
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MEJICANOS, El Salvador — From the window of her tin-sided shop outside El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, Esmeralda Quintanilla watches artists get to work in her neighborhood on walls still pockmarked by bullet holes from the country’s civil war and gang conflict.
Armed with brushes, paint and spray cans, muralists and graffiti artists have already covered the walls of several of the 40 five-story units in a housing complex in the Zacamil neighborhood of the Mejicanos district.
“With the murals, everything looks really nice,” said Quintanilla, a 55-year-old seamstress who has lived in the neighborhood nearly half her life. “You start to see all this, and it gives the place a different image. I feel really happy, proud.”
The dozen murals already completed include a Mesoamerican pyramid, pixelated depictions of the Virgin Mary and works straight out of the artists’ imaginations.
The initiative in the once-violent neighborhood is led by a Salvadoran foundation that seeks to fill communities with art. Its aim in Zacamil is to create stories-high murals over the next two years on nearly every wall of the complex, which houses around 4,000 residents.
Zacamil got a break from decades of violence two years ago when President Nayib Bukele launched a nationwide crackdown on gangs. The state of emergency — which human rights groups have said Bukele must end amid reports of abuses — has put almost 82,000 alleged gang members in prison.
Even with the murals improving the neighborhood’s appearance, chronic infrastructure issues remain, with garbage piled up in the streets and storm drains clogged. TV antennas, power cables and clothes strewn out windows across clotheslines also dot the neighborhood.
Many Zacamil residents fled in 1989 when fighting between the Salvadoran army and the former leftist guerrilla group, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, nearly destroyed the Mejicanos district.
When they returned, many found homes damaged by two earthquakes in 2001 or invaded by gang members.
“There are always problems, but this is a facelift,” said a 70-year-old resident who declined to give his name.
El Salvador’s 12-year civil war from late 1979 to January 1992 killed more than 75,000 people.
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JOHANNESBURG — Thethiwe Mahlangu woke early on a chilly morning and walked through her busy South African township, where minibuses hooted to pick up commuters and smoke from sidewalk breakfast stalls hung in the air.
Her eyes had been troubling her. But instead of going to her nearby health clinic, Mahlangu was headed to the train station for an unusual form of care.
A passenger train known as Phelophepa — or “good, clean, health” in the Sesotho language — had been transformed into a mobile health facility. It circulates throughout South Africa for much of the year, providing medical attention to the sick, young and old who often struggle to receive the care they need at crowded local clinics.
For the past 30 years — ever since South Africa’s break with the former racist system of apartheid — the train has carried doctors, nurses and optometrists on an annual journey that touches even the most rural villages, delivering primary health care to about 375,000 people a year.
The free care it delivers is in contrast to South Africa’s overstretched public health care system on which about 84% of people rely.
Health care reflects the deep inequality of the country at large. Just 16% of South Africans are covered by health insurance plans that are beyond the financial reach of many in a nation with unemployment of over 32%.
Earlier this year, the government began to address that gap. President Cyril Ramaphosa in May signed into law the National Health Insurance Act, which aims to provide funding so that millions of South Africans without health insurance can receive care from the better-provisioned private sector.
But the law has been divisive. The government has not said how much it will cost and where the money will come from. Economists say the government will have to raise taxes. Critics say the country can’t afford it and warn that the system — yet to be implemented — will be open to abuse by corrupt officials and businessmen. They say the government should fix the public health care system instead.
For Mahlangu and others who look to the train for a rare source of free treatment, the situation at local health clinics is one of despair.
Long lines, shortages of medicines and rude nurses are some of the challenges at the clinics that cater for thousands of patients a day in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg.
“There we are not treated well,” Mahlangu said. “We are made to sit in the sun for long periods. You can sit there from 7 a.m. until around 4 p.m. when the clinic closes. When you ask, they say we must go ask the president to build us a bigger hospital.”
The health train has grown from a single three-carriage operation over the years to two 16-carriage trains. They are run by the Transnet Foundation, a social responsibility arm of Transnet, the state-owned railway company.
When the train began in 1994, many Black people in South Africa still lived in rural villages with little access to health facilities. It was a period of change in the country. The train began as an eye clinic, but it soon became clear that needs were greater than that.
Now both trains address the booming population of South Africa’s capital of Pretoria and nearby Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub. One would spend two weeks in Tembisa alone.
“The major metros are really struggling,” said Shemona Kendiah, the train’s manager.
But the traveling clinic is far from the solution to South Africa’s health care problems.
Public health expert Alex van den Heever said there have been substantial increases in the health care budget and the public sector employment of nurses and doctors since the country’s first democratic government in 1994. The health department’s budget in Gauteng province, which includes Pretoria and Johannesburg, has grown from 6 billion rand ($336 million) in 2000 to 65 billion ($3.6 billion) rand now.
But van den Heever accused the African National Congress, the ruling party since the end of apartheid, of allowing widespread corruption to undermine the public sector, including the health care system.
“This has led to a rapid deterioration of performance,” he said.
For South Africans who have witnessed the decline firsthand, it can be a relief when the health train pulls into town.
Mahlangu — with her new pair of glasses — was among hundreds who walked away satisfied with its services and already longing for the train’s return next year.
Another patient, Jane Mabuza, got a full health checkup along with dental services. She said she hoped the train would reach many other people.
“Here on the train, you never hear that anything has been finished,” she said.
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tokyo — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom.
The robot’s trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris.
Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins.
What is the fuel debris?
Nuclear fuel in the reactor cores melted after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s cooling systems to fail. The melted fuel dripped down from the cores and mixed with internal reactor materials such as zirconium, stainless steel, electrical cables, broken grates and concrete around the supporting structure and at the bottom of the primary containment vessels.
The reactor meltdowns caused the highly radioactive, lava-like material to spatter in all directions, greatly complicating the cleanup. The condition of the debris also differs in each reactor.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, which manages the plant, says an estimated 880 tons of molten fuel debris remains in the three reactors, but some experts say the amount could be larger.
What is the robot’s mission?
Workers will use five 1.5-meter-long pipes connected in sequence to maneuver the robot through an entry point in the Unit 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel. The robot itself can extend about 6 meters inside the vessel. Once inside, it will be maneuvered remotely by operators at another building at the plant because of the fatally high radiation emitted by the melted debris.
The front of the robot, equipped with tongs, a light and a camera, will be lowered by a cable to a mound of melted fuel debris. It will then snip off and collect a bit of the debris — less than 3 grams). The small amount is meant to minimize radiation dangers.
The robot will then back out to the place it entered the reactor, a roundtrip journey that will take about two weeks.
The mission takes that long because the robot must make extremely precise maneuvers to avoid hitting obstacles or getting stuck in passageways. That has happened to earlier robots.
TEPCO is also limiting daily operations to two hours to minimize the radiation risk for workers in the reactor building. Eight six-member teams will take turns, with each group allowed to stay maximum of about 15 minutes.
What do officials hope to learn?
Sampling the melted fuel debris is “an important first step,” said Lake Barrett, who led the cleanup after the 1979 disaster at the U.S. Three Mile Island nuclear plant for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is now a paid adviser for TEPCO’s Fukushima decommissioning.
While the melted fuel debris has been kept cool and has stabilized, the aging of the reactors poses potential safety risks, and the melted fuel needs to be removed and relocated to a safer place for long-term storage as soon as possible, experts say.
An understanding of the melted fuel debris is essential to determine how best to remove it, store it and dispose of it, according to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
Experts expect the sample will also provide more clues about how exactly the meltdown 13 years ago played out, some of which is still a mystery.
The melted fuel sample will be kept in secure canisters and sent to multiple laboratories for more detailed analysis. If the radiation level exceeds a set limit, the robot will take the sample back into the reactor.
“It’s the start of a process. It’s a long, long road ahead,” Barrett said in an online interview. “The goal is to remove the highly radioactive material, put it into engineered canisters … and put those in storage.”
For this mission, the robot’s small tong can only reach the upper surface of the debris. The pace of the work is expected to pick up in the future as more experience is gained and robots with additional capabilities are developed.
What’s next?
TEPCO will have to “probe down into the debris pile, which is over a meter thick, so you have to go down and see what’s inside,” Barrett said, noting that at Three Mile Island, the debris on the surface was very different from the material deeper inside. He said multiple samples from different locations must be collected and analyzed to better understand the melted debris and develop necessary equipment, such as stronger robots for future larger-scale removal.
Compared to collecting a tiny sample for analysis, it will be a more difficult challenge to develop and operate robots that can cut larger chunks of melted debris into pieces and put that material into canisters for safe storage.
There are also two other damaged reactors, Unit 1 and Unit 3, which are in worse condition and will take even longer to deal with. TEPCO plans to deploy a set of small drones in Unit 1 for a probe later this year and is developing even smaller “micro” drones for Unit 3, which is filled with a larger amount of water.
Separately, hundreds of spent fuel rods remain in unenclosed cooling pools on the top floor of both Unit 1 and 2. This is a potential safety risk if there’s another major quake. Removal of spent fuel rods has been completed at Unit 3.
When will the decommissioning be finished?
Removal of the melted fuel was initially planned to start in late 2021 but has been delayed by technical issues, underscoring the difficulty of the process. The government says decommissioning is expected to take 30-40 years, while some experts say it could take as long as 100 years.
Others are pushing for an entombment of the plant, as at Chernobyl after its 1986 explosion, to reduce radiation levels and risks for plant workers.
That won’t work at the seaside Fukushima plant, Barrett says.
“You’re in a high seismic area, you’re in a high-water area, and there are a lot of unknowns in those (reactor) buildings,” he said. “I don’t think you can just entomb it and wait.”
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rio de janeiro — Rio de Janeiro’s main beaches bustle with commotion on sunny weekends. But activity ground to a near standstill on one stretch of sand. People held up their phones to record athletic feats they’d never before witnessed, or even imagined.
The game? Footvolley, a combination of soccer and beach volleyball. The athlete? A 3-year-old border collie named Floki.
Floki sparks wonder among bystanders because he hangs tough in a game that even humans struggle to get a handle on. Footvolley rules are essentially the same as beach volleyball, but with a slightly lower net and, like soccer, players are forbidden from using hands and arms. Floki springs up from the sand to drive the ball with his snout. He has become something of an internet sensation in Brazil, with hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok.
Floki’s owner, Gustavo Rodrigues, is a footvolley coach, but swears he didn’t plan this. He had wanted an American Bully, a decidedly less sprightly breed. Floki came into Rodrigues’ life instead and quickly revealed his potential when, at just 2 months old, he started jumping after birthday balloons.
Rodrigues started Floki out on what’s called “altinha,” where a group standing in a circle juggles a soccer ball for as long as possible. In 2023, Floki made his debut in the much more complex, competitive game of footvolley — a hobby enjoyed by some Brazilian soccer stars after they retire, including World Cup winners Ronaldinho and Romario.
Footvolley players need poise, agility, coordination, timing, finesse. Covering one side of the court between just two people means quick sprints back and forth on soft sand under the baking sun. It’s no mean feat, but Floki was a natural. A star was born.
“He does things that even some professionals don’t — like positioning on the court,” said Rodrigues, 26. “Sometimes the ball goes from one side (of the court) to the other, and he doesn’t keep his back turned to it. He turns toward the ball to always hit it straight on.”
It’s clear this high-energy pup lives for this game. Even resting under the shade of the beach’s caipirinha bar, he was laser-focused on the action of the adjacent court’s match.
When playing, he barks at Rodrigues to pass him the ball and seems to at least understand the basic rules. At times, rather than passing back to Rodrigues for the third and final touch their opponents expect, he sneaks the ball over the net himself to score a point. Then he jumps into Rodrigues’ arms to celebrate.
One of the awestruck onlookers Sunday was Luiza Chioli, who had traveled to Rio from Sao Paulo. She already knew the famous Floki from TikTok, but hadn’t expected front-row seats to watch him while sipping her gin and tonic.
“Seeing social media, we had thought it was just cuts, that they used the best takes,” said Chioli, 21. “But we saw he played, performed the whole time, did really well. It’s really cool.”
As Floki’s follower count has grown, partnerships and endorsement deals have come rolling in. Rodrigues and Floki live in the inland capital Brasilia, but often travel to Rio — footvolley’s mecca — and other Brazilian states to show off his skills, do marketing appearances and create monetized social media content.
Floki’s Sunday began with almost an hour playing beside former footvolley champion Natalia Guitler, who’s been called Queen of the Beach. Between attempts to film her doing a trick pass to him, he scampered for drinks of water or to dip in the ocean. By the end, both she and Floki were scrambling for shade.
“We’re dead,” she said as she collapsed onto the sand next to a panting Floki. Someone passed her a phone to check out the best clips for her Instagram, where she has almost 3 million followers.
“Me and my bestie @dog_altinha playing footvolley,” she wrote in a later post showing their long rally, and which included her bicycle kicking the ball over the net.
After a rest and another footvolley session, Floki headed to a more remote beach to do a marketing shoot for Farm, a fashion designer that’s become the paragon of Rio’s breezy tropical style, both in Brazil and abroad.
Then Floki was on Instagram hyping a brand of dog popsicles, gnawing a banana-flavored one himself, and giving an altinha demonstration to mall shoppers. His evening stroll along Copacabana’s beachside promenade showed him straining against his leash, still evidently bursting with his boundless energy.
With their weekend marketing blitz in Rio over, Rodrigues and Floki would head back to Brasilia, where their influencer hustle takes a back seat to the hustle of playing competitive matches. They win about one in every three, Rodrigues said, and their opponents are always desperate to avoid being beaten by a dog.
“It generates talk, and people make fun,” said Rodrigues. “No one likes to lose a point to him, so people play their hearts out against us.”
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Geneva, Switzerland — Limited capacity is keeping mpox testing coverage low in the DR Congo — the epicenter of the international emergency — the World Health Organization said Saturday in its latest situation report.
“Testing coverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains low, due to limited testing capacity,” the United Nations health agency said in its update.
It said the mpox case fatality ratio in the DRC in 2024 was 0.5% among confirmed cases — or 25 deaths from 5,160 cases — and 3.3% among suspected cases, both tested and untested — or 717 deaths among 21,835 cases.
“Due to limited access to laboratory testing in remote areas, only about 40% of all suspected cases have been tested in 2024 (up from 9% in 2023), and among these, around 55% tested positive,” the WHO said.
It said the three countries reporting the most suspected cases in the year up to September 8 were the DRC, followed by Burundi (1,489 suspected cases, no deaths), and Nigeria (935 suspected cases, no deaths).
There are two clades of mpox, each with a and b subclades.
The WHO said the clades and their subclades were circulating in different geographic areas and were affecting different populations — and therefore needed “tailored and locally adapted outbreak responses.”
The WHO declared an international emergency over mpox on August 14, concerned by the surge in cases of the new Clade 1b strain in the DRC that spread to nearby countries.
In the DRC, Clade 1b has been detected chiefly in the eastern South Kivu and North Kivu provinces, with additional cases in the Kinshasa capital province.
Current sequencing capacity in the DRC “is limited, and clade distribution might be broader than what is currently known” the WHO said.
Clade 1b has also been detected in the DRC’s eastern neighbors Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, plus Kenya. Additionally, a single case has been detected in Sweden and another in Thailand.
Looking at global vaccine availability, the WHO said more than 3.6 million doses had been pledged for the global response, including more than 620,000 doses of the MVA-BN vaccine by European countries, the United States and manufacturer Bavarian Nordic.
Meanwhile Japan has pledged 3 million doses of the LC16 vaccine.
To date, 265,000 MVA-BN doses have been delivered to Kinshasa, while 10,000 have gone to Nigeria.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida — Ballet dancer Michaela Mabinty DePrince, who came to the United States from an orphanage in war-ravaged Sierra Leone and performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, has died, her family said in a statement. She was 29.
“Michaela touched so many lives across the world, including ours. She was an unforgettable inspiration to everyone who knew her or heard her story,” her family said in a statement posted Friday on DePrince’s social media accounts. “From her early life in war-torn Africa, to stages and screens across the world, she achieved her dreams and so much more.”
A cause of death was not provided.
DePrince was adopted by an American couple and by age 17 she had been featured in a documentary film and had performed on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars.”
After graduating from high school and the American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, she became a principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She then went to the Netherlands, where she danced with the Dutch National Ballet. She later returned to the U.S. and joined the Boston Ballet in 2021.
“We’re sending our love and support to the family of Michaela Mabinty DePrince at this time of loss,” the Boston Ballet said in a statement to The Associated Press on Saturday. “We were so fortunate to know her; she was a beautiful person, a wonderful dancer, and she will be greatly missed by us all.”
In her memoir, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina, she shared her journey from the orphanage to the stage. She also wrote a children’s book, Ballerina Dreams.
DePrince suffered from a skin pigmentation disorder that had her labeled “the devil’s child” at the orphanage.
“I lost both my parents, so I was there [the orphanage] for about a year, and I wasn’t treated very well because I had vitiligo,” DePrince told the AP in a 2012 interview. “We were ranked as numbers, and number 27 was the least favorite and that was my number, so I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and whatnot.”
She added that she remembered seeing a photo of an American ballet dancer on a magazine page that had blown against the gate of the orphanage during Sierra Leone’s civil war.
“All I remember is she looked really, really happy,” DePrince told the AP, adding that she wished “to become this exact person.”
She said she saw hope in that photo, “and I ripped the page out and I stuck it in my underwear because I didn’t have any place to put it,” she said.
Her passion helped inspire young Black dancers to pursue their dreams, her family said.
“We will miss her and her gorgeous smile forever and we know you will, too,” their statement said.
Her sister, Mia Mabinty DePrince, recalled in the statement that they slept on a shared mat in the orphanage and used to make up their own musical theater plays and ballets.
“When we got adopted, our parents quickly poured into our dreams and arose the beautiful, gracefully strong ballerina that so many of you knew her as today. She was an inspiration,” Mia DePrince wrote. “Whether she was leaping across the stage or getting on a plane and flying to third-world countries to provide orphans and children with dance classes, she was determined to conquer all her dreams in the arts and dance.”
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LONDON — Prince Harry was always something different.
From the moment he first appeared in public, snuggled in Princess Diana’s arms outside the London hospital where he was born in 1984, Harry was the ginger-haired scamp who stuck his tongue out at photographers. He grew to be a boisterous adolescent who was roundly criticized for wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party, and then a young man who gave up the trappings of royal life and moved to Southern California with his American wife.
Through it all, there was a sense that Harry was rebelling against an accident of birth that made him, in the harsh calculus of the House of Windsor, just “the spare.” As the second son of the man who is now King Charles III, he was raised as a prince but wouldn’t inherit the throne unless brother William came to harm.
Now the angry young man is turning 40, the halfway point in many lives, providing a chance to either dwell on the past or look forward to what might still be achieved.
For the past four years, Harry has focused mainly on the past, making millions of dollars by airing his grievances in a wildly successful memoir and a Netflix docu-series. But he faces the likelihood that the royal aura so critical to his image may be fading, said Sally Bedell Smith, author of “Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.”
“He is at a sort of crossroads,’’ Smith told The Associated Press. “And he appears to be struggling with how he wants to proceed.’’
How did we get here?
It wasn’t always this way.
Six years ago, Harry and his wife were among the most popular royals, a glamorous young couple who reflected the multicultural face of modern Britain and were expected to help revitalize the monarchy.
Their wedding on May 19, 2018, united a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II with the former Meghan Markle, a biracial American actress who had starred for seven years in the U.S. television drama “Suits.” George Clooney, Serena Williams and Elton John attended their wedding at Windsor Castle, after which the couple were formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
But the optimism quickly faded amid allegations that Britain’s tabloid media and even members of the royal household treated Meghan unfairly because of racism.
By January 2020, the pressures of life in the gilded cage had become too much, and the couple announced they were giving up royal duties and moving to America, where they hoped to become “financially independent.” They signed lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify as they settled into the wealthy enclave of Montecito, near Santa Barbara, California.
Since then, Harry has missed few opportunities to bare his soul, most famously in his memoir, aptly titled “Spare.”
In the ghostwritten book, Harry recounted his grief at the death of Princess Diana, a fight with Prince William and his unease with life in the royal shadow of his elder brother. From accounts of cocaine use and losing his virginity to raw family rifts, the book was rife with damning allegations about the royal family.
Among the most toxic was Harry’s description of how some family members leaked unflattering information about other royals in exchange for positive coverage of themselves. The prince singled out his father’s second wife, Queen Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate an image tarnished by her role in the breakup of Charles’ marriage to Diana.
The allegations were so venomous that there is little chance of a return to public duty, Smith said.
“He criticized the royal family in such a powerful and damaging way. You can’t un-say those things,” she said. “And you can’t unsee things like Meghan in that Netflix series doing a mock curtsey. It’s such a demeaning gesture to the queen.’’
Harry, who agreed not to use the honorific HRH, or “his royal highness,” after he stepped away from front-line royal duties, is now fifth in line to the British throne, behind his brother and William’s three children.
While he grew up in a palace and is said to be in line to inherit millions of dollars on his 40th birthday from a trust set up by his great-grandmother, applied developmental psychologist Deborah Heiser thinks that, in many ways, Harry is just like the rest of us.
Like anyone turning 40, he is likely to have learned a few lessons and has a good idea of who his real friends are, and that will help him chart the next phase of his life, said Heiser, who writes a blog called “The Right Side of 40” for Psychology Today.
“He has had a very public display of what a lot of people have gone through,” Heiser said. “I mean, most people are not princes, but … they have all kinds of issues within their families. He’s not alone. That’s why he’s so relatable.’’
Harry’s next chapter
Of course, Harry’s story isn’t just about the drama within the House of Windsor.
If he wants to write a new chapter, Harry can build on his 10 years of service in the British Army. Before retiring as a captain in 2015, the prince earned his wings as a helicopter pilot, served two tours in Afghanistan and shed the hard-partying reputation of his youth.
Harry also won accolades for establishing the Invictus Games in 2014, a Paralympic-style competition to inspire and aid in the rehabilitation of sick and wounded servicemembers and veterans.
Harry and Meghan made headlines this year with their two international trips to promote mental health and internet safety. While some in British media criticized them for accepting royal treatment in Nigeria and Colombia, the couple said they visited at the invitation of local officials.
Will Charles see the grandkids?
The prospects of reconciliation are unclear, although Harry did race home to see his father after Charles’ cancer diagnosis. And in what may be seen as a tentative olive branch, the paperback edition of “Spare” slated for October has no additions — so nothing new to stir the pot.
But plainly at this point, Harry is thinking about his family in California. He told the BBC about the importance of his two young children, Archie and Lilibet.
“Being a dad is one of life’s greatest joys and has only made me more driven and more committed to making this world a better place,” the prince said in a statement released by his spokesperson.
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brasilia — In a visit to see the damage caused by drought and fire in the Amazon, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to pave a road that environmentalists and some in his own government say threatens to vastly increase destruction of the world’s largest tropical forest — and contribute to climate change.
The BR-319 roadway is a mostly dirt road through the rainforest that connects the states of Amazonas and Roraima to the rest of the country. It ends in Manaus, the Amazon’s largest city with over 2 million people, and runs parallel to the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira is at its lowest recorded level, disrupting cargo navigation, with most of its riverbed now endless sand dunes under a sky thick with smoke.
“We are aware that, while the river was navigable and full, the highway didn’t have the importance it has now, while the Madeira River was alive. We can’t leave two capitals isolated. But we will do it with the utmost responsibility,” Lula said Tuesday during a visit to an Indigenous community in Manaquiri, in Amazonas state. He didn’t specify what steps the government would take to try to prevent deforestation from increasing after paving.
Hours later, he oversaw the signing of a contract to pave 52 kilometers (32 miles) of the road, and promised to begin work before his term ends in 2026 on the most controversial section of the road — a 400-kilometer (249-mile) stretch through old-growth forest.
A permit for the longer stretch was issued under Lula’s far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who favored development in the Amazon and weakened environmental protections. In July, a federal court suspended the permit in a lawsuit brought by the Climate Observatory, a network of 119 environmental, civil society and academic groups.
Lula’s government had appealed the suspension, but it wasn’t until his visit on Tuesday that Lula made clear his plan to move ahead with paving. The Climate Observatory lamented the move.
“Without the forest, there is no water, it’s interconnected,” said Suely Araujo, a public policy coordinator with the group. “The paving of the middle section of BR-319, without ensuring environmental governance and the presence of the government in the region, will lead to historic deforestation, as pointed out by many specialists and by Brazil’s federal environmental agency in the licensing process.”
Lula has sought to portray himself as an environmental protector, and deforestation has slowed significantly since he took over for Bolsonaro. But he has also struck out at times against pressure from richer nations on preserving the Amazon, an invaluable resource for the planet in storing the carbon driving atmospheric warming, and did so again on Tuesday.
“The world that buys our food is demanding that we preserve the Amazon,” he said. “And why? Because they want us to take care of the air they breathe. They didn’t preserve their own lands in the last century during the Industrial Revolution.”
Brazil is enduring its worst drought ever recorded, with 59% of the country under stress — an area about half the size of the U.S. In the Amazon, rivers’ low levels have stranded hundreds of riverine communities, with shortage of potable water and food. Lula announced a wide distribution of water filters and other measures during his visit to the region.
Meanwhile, most of Brazil has been under a thick layer of smoke from wildfires in the Amazon, affecting millions of people in faraway cities such as Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Curitiba and reaching as far south as Argentina and Paraguay. At Lula’s event, Environment Minister Marina Silva blamed the extreme drought brought by climate change for the widespread fires in a rainforest usually resistant to fire, calling it “a phenomenon we don’t even know how to handle.”
Silva has been more cautious than Lula about paving the roadway. At a congressional hearing earlier, she called the Bolsonaro era’s permit a “sham” and praised the judicial ruling that suspended it.
Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, contributing nearly 3% of global emissions, according to Climate Watch, an online platform managed by the World Resources Institute. Almost half these emissions stem from destruction of trees in the Amazon rainforest.
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil formally received on Thursday the return from Denmark of an Indigenous cloak made with 4,000 red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird, a sacred mantle that was taken by Europeans during the 17th century colonial era.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended the ceremony outside Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, marking the importance that Brazil gives to the item’s repatriation.
The cloak, a feathered ceremonial cape used in religious rituals of the Tupinamba people of Bahia in northeastern Brazil, was removed during the Dutch occupation of the area.
Its first mention comes in a Danish inventory in 1689, although it is thought to have been taken from Brazil some 50 years before.
By the 21st century it was held in the ethnographic collection of Denmark’s National Museum, the Nationalmuseet. In 2000, the museum lent the cloak out for an exhibition in Sao Paulo.
A Tupinamba leader saw it there and demanded its return. Last year, after lengthy diplomatic negotiations, the Danish museum announced it would donate the cloak to Brazil’s National Museum, and it was repatriated in July.
Some 170 Tupinamba traveled from southern Bahia to Rio to celebrate its return.
“It is crucial they return what isn’t theirs and rightfully belongs to us. Our heritage strengthens our identity,” said cacique, or chief, Jamopoty Tupinamba to Agencia Brasil on Wednesday.
From the first Portuguese voyages to Brazil in the early 16th century, Indigenous cultural items were taken to Europe as evidence of the “discovery” of new territories and then entered museums or private collections.
A fresco painted in 1674 on the ceiling of the Apollo Salon at the Palace of Versailles, the king’s throne room, depicts newly found America as a woman wearing a Tupinamba cloak as if it were a headdress.
According to cultural heritage activist Gliceria Tupinamba, there are another 10 such cloaks in Europe, held in museums and libraries in Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Denmark, where the National Museum still has one large and three partial ones.
“It took more than 20 years to get the cloak back. Its return is a symbol of the protection of our cultural and land rights that are under threat today in Brazil,” she said.
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