Month: September 2024
Venice, Italy — Hollywood heavyweights George Clooney and Brad Pitt admit they are disappointed their latest comedy “Wolfs” is not getting a broad cinema release and instead heading almost straight onto Apple TV.
“It is a bummer,” Clooney said on Sunday, adding that television streamers, such as Apple AAPL.O, were nevertheless vital to the future of filmmaking, presenting actors with opportunities and generating bigger audiences for their work.
“Streaming, we need it, our industry needs this,” he said.
Written and directed by Jon Watts, “Wolfs” is an old-fashioned crime caper with Clooney and Pitt playing lone-wolf professional fixers who are forced to work together with comically unfortunate consequences.
Apple originally signaled it would place the film in a large number of cinemas before the TV release, but instead opted to show it briefly in a restricted number of U.S. movie theatres and then run it on its global TV service.
“We’ll always be romantic about the theatrical experience. At the same time, I love the existence of the streamers because we get to see more story, we get to see more talent, it gets more eyes,” said Pitt. “It’s a delicate balance right now and it’ll right itself.”
Asked what it meant if two of the biggest names in the business could not get a broad cinema release, as they had requested, Clooney quipped: “Clearly we’re declining.”
Sixteen years after last appearing together in 2008’s Coen brothers’ comedy “Burn After Reading,” Pitt and Clooney said they jumped at the chance to reunite when they read Watts’ script for “Wolfs.”
“I got to say, just as I get older, just working with the people that I just really enjoy spending time with has really become important to me,” said Pitt, who turned 60 last year.
In a news conference full of light-hearted banter, Clooney, said Pitt, was fortunate still to be offered parts. “He’s 74 years-old and he’s very lucky at this age to still be working.”
On a more serious note, he denied a New York Times story in August that said both he and Pitt had been paid more than $35 million each to appear in the film.
“I’m only saying that because I think it’s bad for our industry if that’s what people think is the standard bearer for salaries. I think that’s a terrible thing. It will make it impossible to make a film,” he said.
“Wolfs” is showing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, which runs until Sept. 7.
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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian health authorities and United Nations agencies on Sunday began a large-scale campaign of vaccinations against polio in the Gaza Strip, hoping to prevent an outbreak in the territory that has been ravaged by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Authorities plan to vaccinate children in central Gaza until Wednesday before moving on to the more devastated northern and southern parts of the strip. The campaign began with a small number of vaccinations on Saturday and aims to reach about 640,000 children.
The World Health Organization said Thursday that Israel has agreed to limited pauses in the fighting to facilitate the campaign. There were initial reports of Israeli strikes in central Gaza early Sunday, but it was not immediately known if anyone was killed or wounded.
Hospitals in Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat confirmed that the campaign had begun early Sunday. Israel said Saturday that the vaccination program would continue through September 9 and last eight hours a day.
Gaza recently reported its first polio case in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.
Most people who have polio do not experience symptoms, and those who do usually recover in a week or so. But there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects breathing muscles, the disease can be fatal.
The vaccination campaign faces a host of challenges, from ongoing fighting to devastated roads and hospitals shut down by the war. Around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, with hundreds of thousands crammed into squalid tent camps.
Health officials have expressed alarm about disease outbreaks as uncollected garbage has piled up and the bombing of critical infrastructure has sent putrid water flowing through the streets. Widespread hunger has left people even more vulnerable to illness.
“We escaped death with our children, and fled from place to place for the sake of our children, and now we have these diseases,” said Wafaa Obaid, who brought her three children to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah to get the vaccinations.
Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for the U.N. children’s agency, said it hopes both parties adhere to a temporary truce in designated areas to enable families to reach health facilities.
“This is a first step,” he told The Associated Press. “But there is no alternative to a cease-fire because it’s not only polio that threatens children in Gaza, but also other factors, including malnutrition and the inhuman conditions they are living in.”
The vaccinations will be administered at roughly 160 sites across the territory, including medical centers and schools. Children under 10 will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second to be administered four weeks after the first.
Israel allowed around 1.3 million doses to be brought into the territory last month, which are now being held in refrigerated storage in a warehouse in Deir al-Balah. Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.
The polio virus that triggered this latest outbreak is a mutated virus from an oral polio vaccine. The oral polio vaccine contains weakened live virus and in very rare cases, that virus is shed by those who are vaccinated and can evolve into a new form capable of starting new epidemics.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 hostages. Around 100 remain in captivity, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say whether those killed were fighters or civilians. The war has caused vast destruction across the territory, with entire neighborhoods wiped out and critical infrastructure heavily damaged.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent months trying to broker a cease-fire and the release of the remaining hostages, but the talks have repeatedly stalled and a number of sticking points remain.
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PATERZELL, Germany — How do you teach a bird how, and where, to fly?
The distinctive northern bald ibis, hunted essentially to extinction by the 17th century, was revived by breeding and rewilding efforts over the last two decades. But the birds — known for their distinctive black-and-iridescent green plumage, bald red head and long curved beak — don’t instinctively know which direction to fly to migrate without the guidance of wild-born elders. So a team of scientists and conservationists stepped in as foster parents and flight instructors.
“We have to teach them the migration route,” said biologist Johannes Fritz.
The northern bald ibis once soared over North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and much of Europe, including southern Germany’s Bavaria. The migratory birds were also considered a delicacy, and the bird, known as the Waldrapp in German, disappeared from Europe, though a few colonies elsewhere survived.
The efforts of Fritz and the Waldrappteam, a conservation and research group based in Austria, brought the Central European population from zero to almost 300 since the start of their project in 2002.
The feat moved the species from a “critically endangered” classification to “endangered” and, Fritz says, is the first attempt to reintroduce a continentally extinct migratory bird species.
But while northern bald ibises still display the natural urge to migrate, they don’t know which direction to fly without the guidance of wild-born elders. The Waldrappteam’s early reintroduction attempts were largely unsuccessful because, without teaching the birds the migration route, most disappeared soon after release. Instead of returning to suitable wintering grounds such as Tuscany, Italy, they flew in different directions and ultimately died.
So the Waldrappteam stepped in as foster parents and flight instructors for the Central European population, which was made up of descendants from multiple zoo colonies and released into the wild in the hopes of creating a migratory group. This year marks the 17th journey with human-led migration guides, and the second time they’ve been forced to pilot a new route to Spain due to climate change.
To prepare them for travel, the chicks are removed from their breeding colonies when they are just a few days old. They are taken to an aviary that’s overseen by the foster parents in the hopes of “imprinting” — when the birds will bond with those humans to ultimately trust them along the migration route.
Barbara Steininger, a Waldrapp team foster mother, said she acts like “their bird mom.”
“We feed them, we clean them, we clean their nests. We take good care of them and see that they are healthy birds,” she said. “But also we interact with them.”
Steininger and the other foster parents sit on the back of a microlight aircraft, waving and shouting encouragement through a bullhorn as it flies through the air.
It’s a bizarre scene: The aircraft looks like a flying go-kart with a giant fan on the back and a yellow parachute keeping it aloft. Still, three dozen birds follow the contraption, piloted by Fritz, as it sails over alpine meadows and foothills.
Fritz was inspired by “Father Goose” Bill Lishman, a naturalist who taught Canadian geese to fly alongside his ultra-light plane beginning in 1988. He later guided endangered whooping cranes through safe routes and founded the nonprofit “Operation Migration.” Lishman’s work prompted the 1996 movie “Fly Away Home” but features a young girl as the geese’s “mother.”
Like Lishman, Fritz and his team’s efforts have worked. The first bird independently migrated back to Bavaria in 2011 from Tuscany. More have flown the route that’s upward of 550 kilometers (342 miles) each year, and the team hopes the Central European population will be more than 350 birds by 2028 and become self-sustaining.
But the effects of climate change mean the Waldrapp are migrating later in the season now, which forces them to cross the Alps in colder, more dangerous weather — without the aid of warm currents of air, known as thermals, that rise upward and help the birds soar without expending extra energy.
In response, the Waldrappteam piloted a new route in 2023, from Bavaria to Andalusia in southern Spain.
This year, the route is roughly 2,800 kilometers (1,740 miles) — some 300 kilometers (186 miles) longer than last year’s path. Earlier this month from an airfield in Paterzell, in upper Bavaria, the team guided 36 birds along one stage through bright blue skies and a tailwind that increased their speed.
The entire journey to Spain could take up to 50 days and end in early October. But Fritz says the effort is bigger than just the northern bald ibises: It’s about paving the way for other threatened migratory species to fly.
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New York — Does American tennis have a pickleball problem?
Even as the U.S. Open opened this week with more than a million fans expected for the sport’s biggest showcase, the game’s leaders are being forced to confront a devastating fact — the nation’s fastest-growing racket sport (or sport of any kind) is not tennis but pickleball, which has seen participation boom 223% in the past three years.
“Quite frankly, it’s obnoxious to hear that pickleball noise,” U.S. Tennis Association President Dr. Brian Hainline grumbled at a recent state-of-the-game news conference, bemoaning the distinctive pock, pock, pock of pickleball points.
Pickleball, an easy-to-play mix of tennis and ping pong using paddles and a wiffleball, has quickly soared from nearly nothing to 13.6 million U.S. players in just a few years, leading tennis purists to fear a day when it could surpass tennis’ 23.8 million players. And most troubling is that pickleball’s rise has often come at the expense of thousands of tennis courts encroached upon or even replaced by smaller pickleball courts.
“When you see an explosion of a sport and it starts potentially eroding into your sport, then, yes, you’re concerned,” Hainline said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That erosion has come in our infrastructure. … A lot of pickleball advocates just came in and said, ‘We need these tennis courts.’ It was a great, organic grassroots movement but it was a little anti-tennis.”
Some tennis governing bodies in other countries have embraced pickleball and other racket sports under the more-the-merrier belief they could lead more players to the mothership of tennis. France’s tennis federation even set up a few pickleball courts at this year’s French Open to give top players and fans a chance to try it out.
But the USTA has taken a decidedly different approach. Nowhere at the U.S. Open’s Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is there any such demonstration court, exhibition match or any other nod to pickleball or its possible crossover appeal.
In fact, the USTA is flipping the script on pickleball with an ambitious launch of more than 400 pilot programs across the country to broaden the reach of an easier-to-play, smaller-court version of tennis called “red ball tennis.” Backers say it’s the ideal way for people of all ages to get into tennis and the best place to try it is (wait for it) on pickleball courts.
“You can begin tennis at any age,” USTA’s Hainline said. “We believe that when you do begin this great sport of tennis, it’s probably best to begin it on a shorter court with a larger, low-compression red ball. What’s an ideal short court? A pickleball court.”
And instead of the plasticky plink of a pickleball against a flat paddle, Hainline said, striking a fuzzy red tennis ball with a stringed racket allows for a greater variety of strokes and “just a beautiful sound.” Players can either stick with red ball tennis or advance through a progression of bouncier balls to full-court tennis.
“Not to put it down,” Hainline said of pickleball, “but compared to tennis … seriously?”
So what does the head of the nation’s pickleball governing body have to say about such comments and big tennis’ plans to plant the seeds of its growth, at least in part, on pickleball courts?
“I don’t like it but there is so much going on with pickleball, so many good things, I’m going to stick to what I can control, harnessing the growth and supporting this game,” said Pickleball USA CEO Mike Nealy.
Among the positive signs, Nealy said, is the continuing construction of new pickleball courts across the country, raising the total to more than 50,000. There’s also growing investment in the game at clubs built in former big-box retail stores, pro leagues with such backers as Tom Brady, LeBron James and Drake, and the emergence of “dink-and-drink” establishments that tap into the social aspect of the game by allowing friends to enjoy pickleball, beer, wine and food under the same roof.
“I don’t think it needs to be one or the other or a competition,” Nealy said of pickleball and tennis. “You’re certainly going to have the inherent frictions in communities when tennis people don’t feel that they’re getting what they want. … They’re different games but I think they are complimentary. There’s plenty of room for both sports to be very successful.”
Top-ranked American tennis player Taylor Fritz agreed. “There are some people in the tennis world that are just absolute pickleball haters, and that’s fine. But for me, I don’t really have an issue with pickleball. I like playing sometimes. … I don’t see any reason why both of them can’t exist.”
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Blantyre, Malawi — A 72-year-old woman has shot to music stardom in Malawi, challenging societal norms in a country where elderly people are often abused, tortured or even killed over false accusations of witchcraft.
Christina Malaya, now popularly known by her stage name, Jetu, is breaking the internet with her amapiano-style tracks.
Jetu started her music career last year, at the age of 71 — soon after the death of her husband, in central Malawi, where she was staying.
Relatives suggested she go to Blantyre to stay with grandchildren. Those grandchildren were “doing music,” she said, and asked her to join them as a way to overcome her loneliness and boredom.
Under the management of her grandson, musician Blessings Kazembe, popularly known as Emmu Dee, Jetu has released three powerful singles: “Wakalamba Wafuna,” “Chakwaza” and “Simunatchene.”
Her fans and admirers have crowned her the Malawian queen of amapiano — a subgenre of South African house music — which dominates the music scene in Malawi.
Jetu is excited that music has allowed her to go places she never dreamed of visiting, including Johannesburg and Cape Town when she performed in South Africa in June.
Her talent has earned her recognition as an ambassador for elderly people in Malawi, helping to reduce attacks and killings. Older people in Malawi are faced with attacks and killings on suspicion of practicing witchcraft even though Malawi law does not recognize witchcraft.
Andrew Kavala, executive director of the Malawi Network of Older Persons’ Organizations, told VOA that in 2023, his organization recorded 25 killings and 87 cases of violence, including setting fire to homes and assault. That was up from 2022’s 17 deaths.
So far in 2024, he said, 17 elderly people have been killed and 89 have been abused.
Kavala said his organization chose Jetu as an ambassador for elderly Malawians because of her strong appeal to youth, who studies show make 86% of the witchcraft accusations.
“We are trying to explore means through which Jetu can use her platform to convey the message to the youth, ‘Stop bullying, stop abusing elderly persons,’” he said.
Malawi’s youthful and renowned fashion designer Xandria Kawanga, owner of the House of Xandria fashion brand, has started to dress Jetu for events.
“Most people at her age have already given up or they feel they cannot do anything, entertainment or arts, because they are old now,” Kawanga said “So, I thought one of the best ways [to help] is to complement her art and to give her that push.”
Jetu and her grandson/manager, Emmu Dee, are working to promote their new song, which has a video that was was produced this month.
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LOS ANGELES — Engineers who specialize in building NASA spacecraft to explore distant worlds are designing a fleet of underwater robot probes to measure how rapidly climate change is melting vast ice sheets around Antarctica and what that means for rising sea levels.
A prototype of the submersible vehicles, under development by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles, was tested from a U.S. Navy laboratory camp in the Arctic, where it was deployed beneath the frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska in March.
“These robots are a platform to bring science instruments to the hardest-to-reach locations on Earth,” Paul Glick, a JPL Robotics engineer and principal investigator for the IceNode project, said in a summary posted Thursday on NASA’s website.
The probes are aimed at providing more accurate data gauging the rate at which warming ocean water around Antarctica is melting the continent’s coastal ice, allowing scientists to improve computer models to predict future sea level rise.
The fate of the world’s largest ice sheet is a major focus of nearly 1,500 academics and researchers who gathered this week in southern Chile for the 11th Scientific Committee on Antarctica Research conference.
A JPL analysis published in 2022 found that thinning and crumbling away of Antarctica’s ice shelf had reduced its mass by some 12 trillion tons since 1997, double previous estimates.
If melted completely, according to NASA, the loss of the continent’s ice shelf would raise global sea levels by an estimated 60 meters.
Ice shelves, floating slabs of frozen freshwater extending miles from the land into the sea, take thousands of years to form and act like giant buttresses holding back glaciers that would otherwise slide off easily into the surrounding ocean.
Satellite images have shown the outer “calving” off into icebergs at a higher rate than nature can replenish shelf growth.
At the same time, rising ocean temperatures are eroding the shelves from underneath, a phenomenon scientists hope to examine with greater precision with the submersible IceNode probes.
The cylindrical vehicles, about 2.4 meters long and 25 centimeters in diameter, would be released from boreholes in the ice or from vessels at sea.
Although equipped with no form of propulsion, the robot probes would drift in currents, using special software guidance, to reach “grounding zones” where the frozen freshwater shelf meets the ocean saltwater and land. These cavities are impenetrable to even satellite signals.
“The goal is getting data directly at the ice-ocean melting interface,” said Ian Fenty, a JPL climate scientist.
Upon arrival at their targets, the submersibles would drop their ballast and float upwards to affix themselves to the underside of the ice shelf by releasing three-pronged “landing gear” sprung from one end of the vehicle.
The IceNodes would then continuously record data from beneath the ice for up to a year, including seasonal fluctuations, before releasing themselves to drift back to the open seas and transmit readings via satellite.
Previously, thinning of the ice shelf was documented by satellite altimeters measuring the changing height of the ice from above.
During the March field test, an IceNode prototype descended 100 meters into the ocean to gather salinity, temperature and flow data. Previous tests were conducted in California’s Monterey Bay and below the frozen winter surface of Lake Superior, off Michigan’s upper peninsula.
Ultimately, scientists believe 10 probes would be ideal to gather data from a single ice shelf cavity, but “we have more development and testing to go” before devising a timeline for full-scale deployment, Glick said.
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MANILA, Philippines — A Vietnamese doctor who has helped seek justice for victims of the powerful defoliant dioxin “Agent Orange” used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War is among this year’s winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards — regarded as Asia’s version of the Nobel Prizes.
Other winners announced on Saturday were a group of doctors who struggled to secure adequate health care for Thailand’s rural poor, an Indonesian environmental defender, a Japanese animator who tackles complex issues for children, and a Bhutanese academician promoting his country’s cultural heritage to help current predicaments.
First given in 1958, the annual awards are named after a Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash, and honor “greatness of spirit” in selfless service to people across Asia.
“The award has celebrated those who challenge the status quo with integrity by courageously confronting systemic injustices, transform critical sectors through groundbreaking solutions that drive societal progress, and address pressing global issues with unwavering resilience,” said Susanna B. Afan, president of the award foundation.
Vietnamese doctor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong carried out extensive research into the devastating and long-term effects of Agent Orange. She said she first encountered it in the late 1960s as a medical intern when she helped deliver babies with severe birth defects as a result of the lingering effect of highly toxic chemical, according to the awards body.
“Her work serves as a dire warning for the world to avoid war at all costs as its tragic repercussions can reach far into the future,” the Magsaysay foundation said. “She offers proof that it can never be too late to right the wrongs of war and gain justice and relief for its hapless victims.”
American forces used Agent Orange during the Vietnam War to defoliate Vietnamese jungles and destroy crops for the Vietnamese Communists, or Viet Cong, who fought against South Vietnam and the United States.
Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed roughly 11 million gallons of the chemical agent dioxin used in Agent Orange across large swaths of southern Vietnam. Dioxin stays in the soil and in the sediment of lakes and rivers for generations. It can enter the food supply through the fat of fish and other animals.
Vietnam says as many as 4 million citizens were exposed to the herbicide and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses from it, including the children of people exposed during the war.
Indonesian Farwiza Farhan won the award for helping lead a group to protect the Leuser Ecosystem, a 2.6-million-hectare forest on Sumatra Island in his country’s Aceh province where some of the world’s most highly endangered species have managed to survive, the foundation said.
Her group helped win a court verdict that led to $26 million in fines against a palm oil company that burned forests and stopped a hydroelectric dam that would have threatened the elephant’s habitat, the foundation said.
Miyazaki Hayao, a popular animator in Japan, was cited by the awards body as a co-founder in 1985 of Studio Ghibli, a leading proponent of animated films for children. Three Ghibli productions were among Japan’s 10 top-grossing films.
“He tackles complicated issues, using his art to make them comprehensible to children, whether it be about protecting the environment, advocating for peace or championing the rights and roles of women in society,” the foundation said.
The Rural Doctors Movement, a group of Thai physicians, won the award for their “decades of struggle … to secure adequate and affordable health care for their people, especially the rural poor,” the foundation said.
“By championing the rural poor, the movement made sure to leave no one behind as the nation marches forward to greater economic prosperity and modernization,” it said.
Karma Phuntsho from Bhutan, a former Buddhist monk and an Oxford-educated scholar, was cited by the awards body for his academic works in the field of Buddhism and Bhutan’s rich history and cultural heritage that were being harnessed to address current and future problems in his country, including unemployment and access to high-quality education.
The winners will be presented with their awards and a cash prize on November 16 at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila.
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