Month: September 2024
MIP Africa — an event that matches African film and TV creatives to the people and countries that produce their work, wrapped up last week [Sept. 4] with several signed deals. Industry members and legislators from film meccas worldwide attended the event, part of the larger Fame Week Africa conference for creative professionals. Reporter Vicky Stark has the story from Cape Town, South Africa.
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Beirut — At a shop nestled in a busy, crowded Beirut district, Hasan El-Makary is weighing out containers of warm, fragrant mufataka, a traditional sweet in the Lebanese capital that is rarely found in stores.
“I’ve been in this shop for 50 years, but we started specializing in mufataka 30 years ago,” Makary said from the humble shop with its aging decor and low ceiling.
A kind of rice pudding made with turmeric, tahini sesame paste, sugar and pine nuts, mufataka is traditional in Beirut but less known even outside the city.
Makary, 73, said he used to sell other sweets but as demand grew for mufataka, he abandoned the rest and now he and his cousin – who is also his business partner – just make the yellow pudding.
“At the beginning you add turmeric, that’s the main thing, then tahini, sugar and rice … we cook it slowly on fire,” he said.
The rice must be soaked overnight, and Makary said he comes to the shop at 5:00 a.m. to make the dish, which takes around four hours and requires regular stirring.
He said his father started making mufataka despite initially believing people would not pay money for a dish that is normally prepared at home.
Plastic containers of the pudding, which is eaten with a spoon, dotted trays and tables across the shop, waiting for customers who peered through a window to place their order from the busy street outside.
Customer Iman Chehab, 55, was picking up mufataka for her mother, who used to make it herself.
“She is elderly now and she can’t stir … it takes a lot of work,” said Chehab, who works in human resources management.
The dish is “something traditional for us who are from Beirut,” she told AFP.
Places like Makary’s shop “are the old face of Beirut that we love and always want to remember,” she added.
‘Heritage’
A few bustling neighborhoods away, Samir Makari, 35, is carrying on the family tradition.
At a gleaming shop also selling Arabic sweets like baklava, Makari attends to a huge copper pot of mufataka behind the counter, stirring it with a long, wooden-handled implement.
He weighs out and mixes the sugar, tahini paste and pine nuts in a second pot, later combining it all.
Mufataka used to be made just once a year on the last Wednesday in April, with families gathering by the sea at Beirut’s public beach, father and son said.
The occasion was “Job’s Wednesday,” a reference to the biblical figure also mentioned in the Koran and who is renowned for his patience, the younger Makari said, noting the virtue is also required for making mufataka.
On the wall of his shop, which he runs with his brother, were photos of his father and his grandfather at work.
He said he sometimes makes mufataka twice a day depending on demand, with some customers taking it outside Beirut to introduce it to those who do not know the dish.
At the original store, the elder Makary said he was happy his children had kept up the tradition.
Mufataka is part of “my heritage,” he said, and the family has “taken it from generation to generation.”
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KAJIADO, Kenya — The blood, milk and meat of cattle have long been staple foods for Maasai pastoralists in Kenya, perhaps the country’s most recognizable community. But climate change is forcing the Maasai to contemplate a very different dish: fish.
A recent yearslong drought in Kenya killed millions of livestock. While Maasai elders hope the troubles are temporary and they will be able to resume traditional lives as herders, some are adjusting to a kind of food they had never learned to enjoy.
Fish were long viewed as part of the snake family due to their shape, and thus inedible. Their smell had been unpleasant and odd to the Maasai, who call semi-arid areas home.
“We never used to live near lakes and oceans, so fish was very foreign for us,” said Maasai Council of Elders chair Kelena ole Nchoi. “We grew up seeing our elders eat cows and goats.”
Among the Maasai and other pastoralists in Kenya and wider East Africa — like the Samburu, Somali and Borana — cattle are also a status symbol, a source of wealth and part of key cultural events like marriages as part of dowries.
But the prolonged drought in much of East Africa left carcasses of emaciated cattle strewn across vast dry lands. In early 2023, the Kenya National Drought Management Authority said 2.6 million livestock had died, with an estimated value of 226 billion Kenya shillings ($1.75 billion).
Meanwhile, increasing urbanization and a growing population have reduced available grazing land, forcing pastoralists to adopt new ways to survive.
In Kajiado county near Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, the local government is supporting fish farming projects for pastoralists — and encouraging them to eat fish, too.
Like many other Maasai women, Charity Oltinki previously engaged in beadwork, and her husband was in charge of the family’s herd. But the drought killed almost 100 of their cows, and only 50 sheep of their 300-strong flock survived.
“The lands were left bare, with nothing for the cows to graze on,” Oltinki said. “So, I decided to set aside a piece of land to rear fish and monitor how they would perform.”
The county government supplied her with pond liners, tilapia fish fingerlings and some feed. Using her savings from membership in a cooperative society, Oltinki secured a loan and had a well dug to ease the challenge of water scarcity.
After six months, the first batch of hundreds of fish was harvested, with the largest selling for up to 300 Kenyan shillings each ($2.30).
Another member of the Maasai community in Kajiado, Philipa Leiyan, started farming fish in addition to keeping livestock.
“When the county government introduced us to this fish farming project, we gladly received it because we considered it as an alternative source of livelihood,” Leiyan said.
The Kajiado government’s initiative started in 2014 and currently works with 600 pastoralists to help diversify their incomes and provide a buffer against the effects of climate change. There was initial reluctance, but the number of participants has grown from about 250 before the drought began in 2022.
“The program has seen some importance,” said Benson Siangot, director of fisheries in Kajiado county, adding that it also addresses issues of food insecurity and malnutrition.
The Maasai share their love for cattle with the Samburu, an ethnic group that lives in arid and semi-arid areas of northern Kenya and speaks a dialect of the Maa language that the Maasai speak.
The recent drought has forced the Samburu to look beyond cattle, too — to camels.
In Lekiji village, Abdulahi Mohamud now looks after 20 camels. The 65-year-old father of 15 lost his 30 cattle during the drought and decided to try an animal more suited to long dry spells.
“Camels are easier to rear as they primarily feed on shrubs and can survive in harsher conditions,” he said. “When the pasture dries out, all the cattle die.”
According to Mohamud, a small camel can be bought for 80,000 to 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($600 to $770) while the price of a cow ranges from 20,000 to 40,000 ($154 to $300).
He saw the camel’s resilience as worth the investment.
In a vast grazing area near Mohamud, 26-year-old Musalia Piti looked after his father’s 60 camels. The family lost 50 cattle during the drought and decided to invest in camels that they can sell whenever they need cattle for traditional ceremonies. Cows among the Samburu are used for dowries.
“You have to do whatever it takes to find cattle for wedding ceremonies, even though our herds may be smaller nowadays,” said Lesian Ole Sempere, a 59-year-old Samburu elder. Offering a cow as a gift to a prospective bride’s parents encourages them to declare their daughter as “your official wife,” he said.
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ISLAMABAD — Millions of people in Pakistan continue to live along the path of floodwaters, showing neither people nor the government have learned lessons from the 2022 devastating floods that killed 1,737 people, experts said Thursday, as an aid group said half of the 300 victims killed by rains since July are children.
Heavy rainfall is drenching those areas that were badly hit by the deluges two years ago.
The charity Save the Children said in a statement that floods and heavy rains have killed more than 150 children in Pakistan since the start of the monsoon season, making up more than half of all deaths in rain-affected areas.
The group said that 200 children have also been injured in Pakistan because of rains, which have also displaced thousands of people. Save the Children also said that people affected by floods were living in a relief camp in Sanghar, a district in the southern Sindh province, which was massively hit by floods two years ago.
“The rains and floods have destroyed 80% of cotton crops in Sanghar, the primary source of income for farmers, and killed hundreds of livestock,” the charity said, and added that it’s supporting the affected people with help from a local partner.
Khuram Gondal, the country director for Save the Children in Pakistan, said that children were always the most affected in a disaster.
“We need to ensure that the immediate impacts of the floods and heavy rains do not become long-term problems. In Sindh province alone, more than 72,000 children have seen their education disrupted,” he said.
Another charity, U.K.-based Islamic Relief, also said weeks of torrential rains in Pakistan have again triggered displacement and suffering among communities that were already devastated by the 2022 floods and are still in the process of rebuilding their lives and livelihoods.
Asif Sherazi, the group’s country director, said his organization is reaching out to flood-affected people.
There was no immediate response from the country’s ministry of climate change and national disaster management authority.
Pakistan has yet to undertake major reconstruction work because the government didn’t receive most of the funds out of the $9 billion that were pledged by the international community at last year’s donors’ conference in Geneva.
“We learned no lessons from that 2022 floods. Millions of people have built mud-brick homes on the paths of rivers, which usually remain dry,” said Mohsin Leghari, who served as irrigation minister years ago.
Leghari said that less rain is predicted for Pakistan for monsoon season compared with 2022, when climate-induced floods caused $30 billion in damage to the country’s economy.
“But the floodwater has inundated several villages in my own Dera Ghazi Khan district in the Punjab province,” Leghari said. “Floods have affected farmers, and my own land has once again come under the floodwater.”
Wasim Ehsan, an architect, said Pakistan was still not prepared to handle any 2022-like situation mainly because people ignore construction laws while building homes and even hotels in urban and rural areas.
He said the floods in 2022 caused damage in the northwest because people had built homes and hotels after slightly diverting a river. “This is reason that a hotel was destroyed by the Swat River in 2022,” he said.
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NEW YORK — Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka beat American sixth seed Jessica Pegula 7-5, 7-5 in the U.S. Open women’s final on Saturday.
Sabalenka blocked out the wild cheers of the home crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium to break Pegula in the final game and win her first title at Flushing Meadows.
A year after coming up short in the final, the second seed fought back from a break down in both sets to claim victory and fell to the court in her moment of triumph.
The 30-year-old Pegula had waited a long time to reach her first major final but could not match her opponent’s raw power despite the noisy backing of the New York crowd.
The roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium was closed because of heavy rain, and the players traded breaks twice as they settled into the stormy affair in front of a celebrity-packed house.
Sabalenka held her serve through a four-deuce 11th game and fought through a spine-tingling 12th, mixing precision at the net with her usual power from the baseline before breaking her opponent on the fifth set point.
Pegula struggled with her rackets throughout the match, complaining to her coaches as she seemed unable to find the right tension on her strings, and it looked as though she would not put up a fight in the second set when Sabalenka went 3-0 up.
But the American found another level and brought the fans to their feet when she won the next five games in a furious fight back.
Sabalenka leveled when she sent over a forehand winner that just kissed the line on break point in the 10th game and sought to bring a swift end to the contest, holding serve and then applying pressure from the baseline in the final game.
The tears flowed immediately for Sabalenka as she claimed her third Grand Slam title after winning the Australian Open twice, and she high-fived fans as she ran up the stands to share a joyful celebration with her team.
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VENICE, ITALY — Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language movie “The Room Next Door,” which tackles the hefty themes of euthanasia and climate change, won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.
Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, the film received an 18-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice earlier in the week — one of the longest in recent memory.
Almodovar is a darling of the festival circuit and was awarded a lifetime achievement award at Venice in 2019 for his bold, irreverent and often funny Spanish-language features.
He also won an Oscar in the best foreign language category for his 1999 film “All About My Mother.”
Now aged 74, he has decided to try his hand at English, focusing his lens on questions of life, death and friendship. Speaking after collecting his prize, he said euthanasia should not be blocked by politics or religion.
“I believe that saying goodbye to this world cleanly and with dignity is a fundamental right of every human being,” he said, speaking in Spanish.
He also thanked his two female stars for their performances.
“This award really belongs to them, it’s a film about two women and the two women are Julianne and Tilda,” he said.
While “The Room Next Door” had been widely tipped to win, the runner-up Silver Lion award was a surprise, going to Italian director Maura Delpero for her slow-paced drama set in the Italian Alps during World War Two — “Vermiglio.”
Australia’s Nicole Kidman won the best actress award for her risqué role in the erotic “Babygirl,” where she plays a hard-nosed CEO, who jeopardizes both her career and her family by having a toxic affair with a young, manipulative intern.
Kidman was in Venice on Saturday, but did not attend the awards ceremony after learning that her mother had died unexpectedly.
France’s Vincent Lindon was named best actor for “The Quiet Son,” a topical, French-language drama about a family torn apart by extreme-right radicalism.
Road to Oscars
The best director award went to American Brady Corbet for his 3-1/2 hour-long movie “The Brutalist,” which was shot on 70mm celluloid and recounts the epic tale of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor played by Adrien Brody, who seeks to rebuild his life in the United States.
“We have the power to support each other and tell the Goliath corporations that try and push us around: ‘No, it’s three-and-a-half hours long and it’s on 70mm,” he told the auditorium Saturday.
The festival marks the start of the awards season and regularly throws up big favorites for the Oscars, with eight of the past 12 best director awards at the Oscars going to films that debuted at Venice.
The prize for best screenplay went to Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega for “I’m Still Here,” a film about Brazil’s military dictatorship, while the special jury award went to the abortion drama “April,” by Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili.
Among the movies that left Venice’s Lido island empty-handed were Todd Phillips’s “Joker: Folie à Deux,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, the sequel to his original “The Joker” which claimed the top prize here in 2019.
Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” with Daniel Craig playing a gay drug addict, and Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic “Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie as the celebrated Greek soprano, also won plaudits from the critics but did not get any awards.
The Venice jury this year was headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert.
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Six years after Jifeng Bookstore was forced to close its doors in Shanghai, the shop has reopened in Washington to bring debate and literature to a new audience. Liam Scott has the story for VOA News. Videographer: Yi Ruokun
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WASHINGTON — Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner made its long-awaited return to Earth on Saturday without the astronauts who rode it up to the International Space Station, after NASA ruled the trip back too risky.
After years of delays, Starliner launched in June for what was meant to be a roughly weeklong test mission — a final shakedown before it could be certified to rotate crew to and from the orbital laboratory.
But unexpected thruster malfunctions and helium leaks en route to the ISS derailed those plans, and NASA ultimately decided it was safer to bring crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back on a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon — though they’ll have to wait until February 2025.
The gumdrop-shaped Boeing capsule touched down softly at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier.
As it streaked red-hot across the night sky, ground teams reported hearing sonic booms. The spacecraft endured temperatures of 1,650 degrees Celsius during atmospheric reentry.
NASA lavished praise on Boeing during a post-flight press conference where representatives from the company were conspicuously absent.
“It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.”
Still, he acknowledged that certain new issues had come to light, including the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system.
He added it was too early to talk about whether Starliner’s next flight, scheduled for August next year, would be crewed, instead stressing NASA needed time to analyze the data they had gathered and assess what changes were required to both the design of the ship and the way it is flown.
Ahead of the return leg, Boeing carried out extensive ground testing to address the technical hitches encountered during Starliner’s ascent, then promised — both publicly and behind closed doors — that it could safely bring the astronauts home. In the end, NASA disagreed.
Asked whether he stood by that decision, NASA’s Stich said: “It’s always hard to have that retrospective look. We made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time and based on our knowledge of the thrusters and based on the modeling that we had.”
History of setbacks
Even without crew aboard, the stakes were high for Boeing, a century-old aerospace giant.
With its reputation already battered by safety concerns surrounding its commercial jets, its long-term prospects for crewed space missions hung in the balance.
Shortly after undocking, Starliner executed a powerful “breakout burn” to swiftly clear it from the station and prevent any risk of collision — a maneuver that would have been unnecessary if crew were aboard to take manual control if needed.
Mission teams then conducted thorough checks of the thrusters required for the critical “deorbit burn” that guided the capsule onto its reentry path around 40 minutes before touchdown.
Though it was widely expected that Starliner would stick the landing, as it had on two previous uncrewed tests, Boeing’s program continues to languish behind schedule.
In 2014, NASA awarded both Boeing and SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts to develop spacecraft to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS, after the end of the Space Shuttle program left the US space agency reliant on Russian rockets.
Although initially considered the underdog, Elon Musk’s SpaceX surged ahead of Boeing, and has successfully flown dozens of astronauts since 2020.
The Starliner program, meanwhile, has faced numerous setbacks — from a software glitch that prevented the capsule from rendezvousing with the ISS during its first uncrewed test flight in 2019, to the discovery of flammable tape in the cabin after its second test in 2022, to the current troubles.
With the ISS scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030, the longer Starliner takes to become fully operational, the less time it will have to prove its worth.
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ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria’s difficult victory over polio faces a challenge as the poliovirus type 2 variant reemerges and the nation considers new measures to tackle the outbreak.
Nigeria eradicated wild polio in 2020, but more than 50 cases of the poliovirus type 2 variant were reported between January and May. Authorities and global partners met Wednesday in Abuja with northern traditional leaders to strengthen efforts against the disease, particularly in under-immunized areas.
Bill Gates, a key global funder of Nigeria’s polio fight, said eradicating this strain is a top priority for the Gates Foundation.
“We do have this circulating variant, poliovirus type 2. The acronym is cVDPV2. … Unfortunately, it’s equally bad as the wild poliovirus,” Gates said. “It can paralyze or even kill children, and we still have work to do to get rid of this.”
Efforts focus on improving surveillance and expanding vaccination coverage. The World Health Organization noted setbacks earlier this year, stressing the need for continuing vigilance.
“We are facing the challenge of interrupting transmission of significant variant poliovirus type 2,” said Walter Kazadi Mulombo, WHO country representative to Nigeria. “We nearly got there several months ago but then we experienced some setbacks.”
Reluctance to take the vaccine, driven by religious and traditional beliefs, has hampered polio eradication efforts in Nigeria. However, northern traditional leaders have played a pivotal role in community outreach and health campaigns.
Muyi Aina, executive director of the Nigerian Primary Healthcare Development Agency, said traditional leaders have helped close the immunization gap in remote areas.
“The results we’re getting are due largely to the commitment received from our revered traditional leaders,” Aina said. “For example, we had a 57% reduction in pending noncompliance from the April campaign, and we were able to vaccinate an additional 117,000 zero-plus children [newborns and older] across 14 states with the help of the traditional leaders.”
Nigeria’s routine vaccination efforts, including recent campaigns to immunize against the human papilloma virus have been lauded. However, the resurgence of poliovirus type 2 highlights the need for sustained immunization, especially in vulnerable regions.
Cristian Munduate, the UNICEF country representative, called for more collaboration.
“We need to accelerate with polio, but we also need to accelerate in line with all these effects to link more routine immunization to reach those children,” Munduate said. “To work and strengthen primary health care, we are very committed to at least having one primary health care [worker] fully equipped per ward.”
Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, the sultan of Sokoto, representing northern traditional rulers, reaffirmed their commitment to supporting vaccination efforts while thanking stakeholders.
“We are more concerned in the welfare of our people, so whoever is going to help us to help our people is part and parcel of us and is always welcomed,” Abubakar said.
Despite progress, the resurgence of poliovirus type 2 remains a serious threat. The Abuja meeting concluded with calls for stronger efforts, better surveillance, and continued collaboration between traditional leaders and health officials to ensure eradication.
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Sergio Mendes, the celebrated Brazilian musician whose 1966 hit “Mas Que Nada” made him a global superstar and helped launch a long, Grammy-winning career, has died after months battling the effects of long COVID. He was 83.
The death Thursday of the Brazilian pianist, songwriter and arranger was confirmed in a statement by his family.
“His wife and musical partner for the past 54 years, Gracinha Leporace Mendes, was by his side, as were his loving children,” the statement said Friday. “Mendes last performed in November 2023 to sold out and wildly enthusiastic houses in Paris, London and Barcelona.”
Mendes was born in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro’s sister city, and studied classical music at a conservatory before joining jazz groups. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began playing Bossa Nova as the genre was heating up in Rio’s nightclub scene with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto and others.
In 1962, they traveled to New York for a Bossa Nova festival at Carnegie Hall. During the trip, Cannonball Adderley invited Mendes to collaborate on the album “Cannonball Adderley and The Bossa Rio Sextet,” leading to his first American record, “The Swinger from Rio,” after signing with Atlantic Records.
Two years later, Mendes moved to California and formed Brazil ’64, which evolved into Brazil ’66 after he added two female vocalists. The group’s debut album, produced by Herb Alpert, featured “Mas Que Nada.” Sung entirely in Portuguese, “Mas Que Nada” was a mid-tempo Samba number originally released in 1963 by composer Jorge Ben Sor and updated three years later by Mendes, who had been playing the song in clubs and gave it a jazzier, more hard-hitting feel.
“I put a band together called Brasil ’66,” he told The Guardian in 2019. “I’d always had instrumental groups, but when I added the two female singers — Lani Hall and Bibi Vogel — it made a different kind of sound. We recorded the song in Los Angeles, with me, the drums, bass and guitar all performing live.”
Mendes’ version was a worldwide hit that helped perpetuate the Brazilian music boom of the 1960s. In 2006, a modern version of the song topped U.S. charts, as performed by the Black Eyed Peas. It was included in his album “Timeless,” produced by will.i.am and also featuring Stevie Wonder, Justin Timberlake and John Legend, among others.
“Sergio Mendes was my brother from another country,” trumpet player Alpert wrote on Facebook, along with a photo from decades ago, sitting next to Mendes at the piano. “He was a true friend and extremely gifted musician who brought Brazilian music in all its iterations to the entire world with elegance.”
Mendes’ other hits were an eclectic blend ranging from covers of the Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” and “With a Little Help from My Friends,” to his own Brazilian chant, “Magalenha.” Mendes also composed the soundtrack for the film “Pele,” featuring saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, and even produced an album recorded by the great Brazilian soccer player.
Mendes won the 1992 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album for “Brasileiro” and two Latin Grammy Awards. He also received an Oscar nomination in 2012 for Best Original Song for “Real in Rio,” from the animated film “Rio.”
“Brazilian soul was there,” pianist, singer, and songwriter Marcos Valle told GloboNews about Mendes’ music. Valle also noted that it was Mendes who helped open doors for other Brazilian artists of his generation, including himself, to reach foreign audiences.
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Zimbabwe’s heavy reliance on coal-based energy is hurting the health of people in mining regions who continue to be exposed to dirty air from coal burning. Columbus Mavhunga visited the Hwange thermal power station — about 700 kilometers from Harare — and the surrounding area, where residents have complained about the air pollution.
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Music cassette tapes are making a comeback in the U.S, with more than 430,000 sold in 2023 – about five times the number sold just a decade ago. Cassette tapes are especially popular with younger generations who grew up with digital music. Karina Bafradzhian has the story. Videographer: Sergii Dogotar
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For more than a century, dams have blocked fish migration on California’s second-largest river. VOA’s Matt Dibble takes us to the removal of the last of four dams, a victory for Native Americans who depend on the river.
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A trip that should have lasted just over a week spirals into a roughly eight-month adventure. Plus, a pioneering teacher memorialized in bronze. And a robot proves its purpose by picking up pebbles. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Despite global efforts to stop the practice of female genital mutilation, the harmful tradition continues to affect the lives and health of millions of women and girls in Somalia. Reporter Najib Ahmed has this story from the capital, Mogadishu, narrated by Anthony LaBruto. (Camera and Produced by: Abdulkadir Zuber)
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