A former Afghan refugee turned doctor in the United Kingdom is using technology and the web to save lives in war-torn and low income countries. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo has more on what the doctor has dubbed “Teleheal,” the charitable organization he recently founded.
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Month: September 2018
Plastic in World’s Oceans Killing Young Sea Turtles
Plastic pollution floating in our seas is creating huge environmental hazards, polluting our oceans and killing animals like seabirds and marine life. But a new study shows young turtles, in particular, are at a higher risk of dying from eating ocean-borne plastic because it doesn’t take a lot of plastic to kill them. VOA’s Deborah Block more.
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What Does the USDA Organic Seal Really Mean?
What makes food organic and what does the “USDA organic” label really mean? VOA’s Mariia Prus visited a certified organic farm in southern Maryland to find out more and spoke to some consumers about why they prefer organically grown products. Joy Wagner narrates for VOA reporter Mariia Prus in Saint Mary’s County.
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Comcast Outbids Fox With $40B Offer for Sky
Comcast beat Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox in the battle for Sky after offering 30.6 billion pounds ($40 billion) for the British broadcaster, in a dramatic auction to decide the fate of the pay-television group.
U.S. cable giant Comcast bid 17.28 pounds a share for control of London-listed Sky, bettering a 15.67 offer by Fox, the Takeover Panel said in a statement shortly after final bids were made Saturday.
Comcast’s final offer was significantly higher than its bid going into the auction of 14.75 pounds, and compares with Sky’s closing share price of 15.85 pounds on Friday.
Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive of Comcast, coveted Sky to expand its international presence as growth slows in its core U.S. market.
Owning Sky will make Comcast the world’s largest pay-TV operator with around 52 million customers.
“This is a great day for Comcast,” Roberts said on Saturday. “This acquisition will allow us to quickly, efficiently and meaningfully increase our customer base and expand internationally.”
Comcast, which also owns the NBC network and movie studio Universal Pictures, encouraged Sky shareholders to accept its offer. It said it wanted to complete the deal by the end of October.
Comcast, which requires 50 percent plus one share of Sky’s equity to win control, said it was also seeking to buy Sky shares in the market.
A spokesman for Fox, which has a 39 percent holding in Sky, declined to comment.
The quick-fire auction marked a dramatic climax to a protracted transatlantic bidding battle waged since February, when Comcast gate-crashed Fox’s takeover of Sky.
It is a blow to media mogul Murdoch, 87, and the U.S. media and entertainment group that he controls, which had been trying to take full ownership of Sky since December 2016.
It is also a setback for U.S. entertainment giant Walt Disney, which agreed on a separate $71 billion deal to buy the bulk of Fox’s film and TV assets, including the Sky stake, in June and would have taken ownership of the British broadcaster following a successful Fox takeover.
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UK PM’s Team Makes Plans for Snap Election
British Prime Minister Theresa May’s aides have begun contingency planning for a snap election in November to save both Brexit and her job, the Sunday Times reported.
The newspaper said that two senior members of May’s Downing Street political team began “war-gaming” an autumn vote to win public backing for a new plan, after her Brexit proposals were criticized at a summit in Salzburg last week.
Downing Street was not immediately available to comment on the report.
Meanwhile, opposition Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said Saturday that his party would challenge May on any Brexit deal she could strike with Brussels, and he said there should be a national election if the deal fell short.
The British government said Saturday that it would not “capitulate” to European Union demands in Brexit talks and again urged the bloc to engage with its proposals after May said Brexit talks with the EU had hit an impasse.
“We will challenge this government on whatever deal it brings back on our six tests, on jobs, on living standards, on environmental protections,” Corbyn told a rally in Liverpool, northern England, on the eve of Labor’s annual conference.
“And if this government can’t deliver, then I simply say to Theresa May the best way to settle this is by having a general election.”
Labor’s six tests consist of whether a pact would provide for fair migration, a collaborative relationship with the EU, national security and cross-border crime safeguards, even treatment for all U.K. regions, protection of workers’ rights, and maintenance of single-market benefits.
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US-China Tensions Rise as Beijing Summons US Ambassador
Tensions between China and the United States escalated Saturday as China’s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to issue a harsh protest against U.S. sanctions set for the purchase of Russian fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles.
The move came hours after China canceled trade talks with the U.S. following Washington’s imposition of new tariffs on Chinese goods.
The statement on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website called the imposition of sanctions “a serious violation of the basic principles of international law” and a “hegemonic act.” The ministry also wrote, “Sino-Russian military cooperation is the normal cooperation of the two sovereign states, and the U.S. has no right to interfere.” The U.S. actions, it said, “have seriously damaged the relations” with China.
China had earlier called on the U.S. to withdraw the sanctions, and speaking to reporters Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing had lodged an official protest with the United States.
China’s purchase of the weapons from Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport violated a 2017 U.S. law intended to punish the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin for interfering in U.S. elections and other activities. The U.S. action set in motion a visa ban on China’s Equipment Development Department and director Li Shangfu, forbids transactions with the U.S. financial system, and blocks all property and interests in property involving the country within U.S. jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that China had planned to send Vice Premier Liu He to Washington next week for trade talks, but canceled his trip, along with that of a midlevel delegation that was to precede him.
Earlier Friday, a senior White House official had said the U.S. was optimistic about finding a way forward in trade talks with China.
The official told reporters at the White House that China “must come to the table in a meaningful way” for there to be progress on the trade dispute.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while there was no confirmed meeting between the United States and China, the two countries “remain in touch.”
“The president’s team is all on the same page as to what’s required from China,” according to the official.
The Trump administration has argued that tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States.
It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cybertheft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.
Earlier this week, the United States ordered duties on another $200 billion of Chinese goods to go into effect on Sept. 24. China responded by adding $60 billion of U.S. products to its import tariff list.
The United States already has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount of U.S. goods.
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UNICEF: DRC Ebola Orphans Stigmatized
The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports a growing number of children in eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo orphaned by the Ebola outbreak in the region are at risk of stigmatization and abandonment.
UNICEF reports a number of children have died from the disease. Others, it says, have lost one or both parents to Ebola or have been left to fend for themselves while their parents are confined in Ebola treatment centers.
UNICEF spokesman, Christophe Boulierac, says his and other aid agencies so far have identified 155 children who have been orphaned or separated from their parents with no one to care for them. He says these children are extremely vulnerable.
“Children who lose a parent due to Ebola are at risk of being stigmatized, isolated or abandoned, in addition to the experience of losing a loved one or primary caregiver.”
Boulierac says UNICEF worries about the physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing of these orphaned and separated children. He says his agency is tailoring its assistance programs to meet the specific needs of each individual child.
“For instance, a new-born who has lost his mother has different needs than a school-aged child. Our support to an orphaned or unaccompanied child typically includes psycho-social care, food and material assistance, and support to reintegrate into school,” Boulierac said.
Ebola was declared on August 1 in the DRC’s conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces. This is the 10th outbreak in the DRC since Ebola was first identified in 1976. Latest estimates by the World Health Organization find 147 confirmed and probable cases of Ebola in the eastern part of the country, including 97 deaths.
WHO reports progress is being made in limiting the spread of the deadly virus in some areas. But, it warns the epidemic is far from over and much work to combat the disease lies ahead.
Studies: More Green Space, Less Crime, Depression in Poor Areas
Keith Green has an unusual fascination with vacant lots. Even on vacation.
Out for dinner in Shanghai one recent night, he came across a sight that stopped him short.
“Everyone else is taking pictures of the skyline,” he said. “I’m taking a picture of a vacant lot.”
Scourge of abandoned property
Abandoned properties don’t attract many tourists. In Green’s hometown of Philadelphia, vacant lots attract crime, from dumping trash, tires and broken appliances to stashing weapons and drugs.
Green is leading an effort to rid Philadelphia of these blights in low-income communities.
It’s a massive job. The city has an estimated 40,000 vacant lots.
But Green is witnessing how a little green space can make a big difference in urban areas plagued with poverty and crime.
Recent studies published in major scientific journals have documented how the program Green heads is helping drive substantial reductions in gun violence and depression in some of the poorest parts of Philadelphia.
Before the shooting starts
Gina South co-wrote those studies. She’s an emergency department physician at the University of Pennsylvania. Since her residency on the trauma unit, she has wanted to do more to help the people from these neighborhoods before they came to her on stretchers.
“We took care of a lot of shooting victims and did a great job of treating their physical injuries,” she said, “but did little to nothing to think about what was causing them to come in as shooting victims to us in the first place.”
Several years ago, South became interested in the program Green directs at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, called Philadelphia LandCare.
The program hires local landscapers to clear the trash and weeds from vacant lots, replace them with trees and grass, mow them twice a month, and surround them with fences with openings that invite people in.
Physical, emotional benefits
South said at first she was skeptical that it would do much for residents.
But the more she and her colleagues looked into it, the more positive results they found.
In one study, they found people’s heart rates declined as they walked past cleaned-up lots. That shows their stress levels are coming down, “a physiologic reaction happening in people’s bodies in response to what’s in their neighborhood environment,” she said.
Fighting crime with lawnmowers
The most significant results come from the group’s study of 541 vacant lots scattered across the city. They were divided into three groups. One got the full cleaning and greening treatment. One just got periodic trash pickups. One got nothing.
Around the cleaned and greened lots, crime declined by nearly 10 percent overall. In the poorest neighborhoods, gun crimes fell by 17 percent.
“Those are big effects,” said Northwestern University criminologist Wesley Skogan, who was not involved with the study.
Cleaning and greening vacant lots is “wiping out signs that nobody’s watching, nobody cares, nobody’s in charge,” he added.
It fits in with a concept called the “broken windows” theory. The idea is, disorder in the environment sends a signal that more disorder will be tolerated, including criminal behavior.
The theory became controversial as it evolved into “stop and frisk” policing, in which officers confront anyone they suspect may be up to no good.
Cleaning and greening “is much closer just to fixing the … window,” Skogan said.
South’s group also found that in the lowest-income neighborhoods, nearly 70 percent fewer people said they felt depressed.
It’s good for neighborhood morale, Skogan said. “It’s a sign that someone’s looking out for them. Someone’s paying attention.”
‘I didn’t think it would work’
The program is working better than even Green expected.
He had been doing community gardening with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society as the LandCare program was getting started in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“I was curious about the program. I didn’t think it would work,” he said.
At the time, he was planting flowers and shrubs and surrounding them with cyclone fences “to keep people out,” he said.
“This project was inviting people in. I was like, ‘That’s not going to work. People aren’t going to respect it.’”
“Then I started seeing people put picnic tables on it, putting garden areas in certain spots. They’re not destroying it,” he added. “Then I was like, ‘This can actually work.’ When I had the opportunity, I was all in.”
Green said each lot costs about $1,600 to treat and about $200 per year to maintain.
“It is a bargain,” South said.
However, Skogan would like to see research showing how it compares to other approaches.
“Probably nobody thought it was a bad idea to clean things up and put up fences,” he said. “It’s always a question of whether you do this versus something else. What this (research) says is, it’s not foolish.”
Green said he gets calls from officials across the country and the world asking how a little green space can help revive their neighborhoods.
He said he sees people’s mindsets changing in neighborhoods where he’s working. Kids don’t throw trash in the cleaned-up lots, he said. They pick it up.
That’s been satisfying enough, he said. “But when you start throwing (in) these numbers, like, gun violence is going down, and people’s heart rates are being reduced, people are exercising more in certain sections of Philadelphia, you’re just like, wow.”
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Green Space Cuts Urban Crime, Depression
A little green space can make a big difference in blighted city neighborhoods, according to recent research from Philadelphia. It found that turning vacant lots into mini-parks reduced crime and cut rates of depression, especially in low-income areas. VOA’s Steve Baragona went to have a look.
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Afghan Orchestra Flourishes Despite Violence, Social Pressure
The consequences of Afghanistan’s increasingly deadly war are weighing heaviest on the nation’s civilians, with women bearing the brunt of the violence. The Taliban banned music and girls education, and restricted outdoor activities of women when the group was controlling most of Afghanistan.
But violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to “heal wounds” and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society.
The ensemble, known as Zohra, was founded in 2014 as part of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul, where suicide bombings lately have become routine.
Hope and music
Students and trainers are not losing hope and regularly come to the city’s only institute to rehearse and learn new lessons, says Ahmed Naser Sarmast, the director of ANIM and the founder of the orchestra. Zohra is the name of a music goddess in Persian literature, he explained.
The musicologist spoke to VOA while visiting neighboring Pakistan earlier this month with the young ensemble to perform in Islamabad as part of celebrations marking the 99th anniversary of Afghanistan’s Independence Day. Kabul’s embassy in Islamabad organized and arranged for the orchestra’s first visit to Pakistan.
Despite the many challenges in Afghanistan, Sarmast said, student enrollment has consistently grown and more parents are bringing their children to the institute to study music. Around 300 students are studying not only music at the institute but other subjects, including the Quran, he said.
Advances for women
Negin Khpolwak, the orchestra’s first woman conductor, says Afghanistan has made significant advances in terms of promoting women’s rights in the past 17 years. She says there is a need to sustain the momentum irrespective of rising violence.
“We need to stand up to protect those gains and we need to open the doors for other Afghan girls,” Khpolwak said when asked whether deadly attacks around the country are reversing the gains women have made.
But violence alone is not the only challenge for women and girls, especially those who want to study music, she said.
“When you are going in the street with your instrument to the school and they are saying bad words to you and if you are giving a concert in public they are telling the bad words to you. But we are not caring about it,” Khpolwak said.
Ethnic groups help each other
Sarmast says that girls and boys in the orchestra come from different Afghan ethnic groups and they help each other when needed.
“It’s hope for the future,” he said.
Ethnic rivalries have been a hallmark of hostilities in Afghanistan and continue to pose a challenge to efforts promoting peace and stability.
“I strongly believe without arts and culture there cannot be security and we are using the soft power of music to make a small contribution to bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan and at the same time using this beautiful, if I can call it a beautiful weapon, to transform our community,” the director said.
Some of the members of the Afghan orchestra were born and brought up in refugee camps in Pakistan, which still hosts around 3 million registered and unregistered Afghan families displaced by years of war, poverty, persecution and drought.
“We are using the healing power of music to look after the wounds of the Afghan people as well as the Pakistani people. We are here with the message of peace, brotherhood and freedom,” Sarmast said.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have experienced years of terrorist attacks, including massive casualties on both sides of their long shared border. Bilateral relations are marred by mistrust and suspicion.
The countries blame each other for supporting terrorist attacks. Afghans allege that sanctuaries in Pakistan have enabled Taliban insurgents to sustain and expand their violent acts inside Afghanistan. Pakistan rejects the charges.
The Islamist insurgency controls or is attempting to control nearly half of Afghanistan.
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Afghan Orchestra Flourishes Despite Violence and Social Pressure
The consequences of Afghanistan’s increasingly deadly war are weighing the heaviest on the nation’s civilians. But violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to “heal wounds” and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society. Ayaz Gul reports from Islamabad.
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Iranian Twin Sisters Win Over the US with Their Emotional Art
The most beautiful art is born where there is pain. This idea became the moving force behind the success of Iranian-born twin sisters Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani. They moved to Boston from Tehran in order to advance their art and show it to the world, and they never regretted the decision. Karina Bafradzhian has the story.
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Rising Oil Prices Haven’t Hurt US Economy
America’s rediscovered prowess in oil production is shaking up old notions about the impact of higher crude prices on the U.S. economy.
It has long been conventional wisdom that rising oil prices hurt the economy by forcing consumers to spend more on gasoline and heating their homes, leaving less for other things.
Presumably that kind of run-up would slow the U.S. economy. Instead, the economy grew at its fastest rate in nearly four years during the April-through-June quarter.
President Donald Trump appears plainly worried about rising oil prices just a few weeks before mid-term elections that will decide which party controls the House and Senate.
“We protect the countries of the Middle East, they would not be safe for very long without us, and yet they continue to push for higher and higher oil prices!” Trump tweeted Thursday. “We will remember. The OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!”
Members of The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, who account for about one-third of global oil supplies, are scheduled to meet this weekend with non-members including Russia.
The gathering isn’t expected to yield any big decisions — those typically come at major OPEC meetings like the one set for December. Oil markets, however, were roiled Friday by a report that attendees were considering a significant increase in production to offset declining output from Iran, where exports have fallen ahead of Trump’s re-imposition of sanctions.
OPEC and Russia have capped production since January 2017 to bolster prices. Output fell even below those targets this year, and in June the same countries agreed to boost the oil supply, although they didn’t give numbers.
Rising oil prices
Oil prices are up roughly 40 percent in the past year. On Friday, benchmark U.S. crude was trading around $71 a barrel, and the international standard, Brent, was closing in on $80.
The national average price for gasoline stood at $2.85 per gallon, up 10 percent from a year ago, according to auto club AAA. That increase likely would be greater were it not for a slump in gasoline demand that is typical for this time of year, when summer vacations are over.
The United States still imports about 6 million barrels of oil a day on average, but that is down from more than 10 million a decade ago. In the same period, U.S. production has doubled to more than 10 million barrels a day, according to government figures.
“Because the U.S. now is producing so much more than it used to, [the rise in oil prices] is not as big an impact as it would have been 20 years ago or 10 years ago,” said Michael Maher, an energy researcher at Rice University and a former Exxon Mobil economist.
The weakening link between oil and the overall economy was seen — in reverse — three years ago. Then, plunging oil prices were expected to boost the economy by leaving more money in consumers’ pocket, yet GDP growth slowed at the same time that lower oil prices took hold during 2015.
Other economists caution against minimizing the disruption caused by energy prices.
“Higher oil prices are unambiguously bad for the U.S. economy,” said Philip Verleger, an economist who has studied energy markets. “They force consumers to divert their income from spending on other items to spending on fuels.”
Since energy amounts to only about 3 percent of consumer spending, a cutback in that other 97 percent “causes losses for those who sell autos, restaurants, airlines, resorts and all parts of the economy,” Verleger said.
Pack leader
The federal Energy Information Administration said this month that the U.S. likely reclaimed the title of world’s biggest oil producer earlier this year by surpassing the output of Saudi Arabia in February and Russia over the summer. If the agency’s estimates are correct, it would mark the first time since 1973 that the U.S. has led the oil-pumping pack.
And that has made the impact of oil prices on the economy a more complicated calculation.
When oil prices tumbled starting in mid-2014, U.S. energy producers cut back on drilling. They cut thousands of jobs and they spent less on rigs, steel pipes and railcars to ship crude to refineries. That softened the bounce that economists expected to see from cheaper oil.
Now, with oil prices rising, energy companies are boosting production, creating an economic stimulus that offsets some of the blow from higher prices on consumers. Oil- and gas-related investment accounted for about 40 percent of the growth in business investment in the April-June quarter this year.
Moody’s Analytics estimates that every penny increase at the pump reduces consumer spending by $1 billion over a year, and gasoline has jumped 24 cents in the past year, according to AAA. That is “a clear-cut negative,” but not deeply damaging, said Ryan Sweet, director of real-time economics at Moody’s.
“Usually with gasoline prices, speed kills — a gradual increase [like the current one], consumers can absorb that,” Sweet said. Consumers have other factors in their favor, he added, including a tight job market, wage growth, better household balance sheets, and the recent tax cut.
Sweet said the boon that higher prices represent to the growing energy sector, which can invest in more wells, equipment and hiring, means that the run-up in crude has probably been “a small but net positive” for the economy.
“That could change if we get up to $3.50, $4,” he said.
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China Cancels Trade Talks with US After New Tariffs
China has canceled trade talks with the United States following Washington’s imposition of new tariffs on Chinese goods.
The Wall Street Journal reports that China had planned to send Vice Premier Liu He to Washington next week for the talks, but has now canceled his trip along with that of a midlevel delegation that was to precede him.
US was optimistic
Earlier Friday, a senior White House official said the U.S. was optimistic about finding a way forward in trade talks with China.
The official told reporters at the White House that China “must come to the table in a meaningful way” for there to be progress on the trade dispute.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said while there was no confirmed meeting between the United States and China, the two countries “remain in touch.”
“The president’s team is all on the same page as to what’s required from China,” according to the official.
Trade imbalance
The Trump administration has argued that tariffs on Chinese goods would force China to trade on more favorable terms with the United States.
It has demanded that China better protect American intellectual property, including ending the practice of cybertheft. The Trump administration has also called on China to allow U.S. companies greater access to Chinese markets and to cut its U.S. trade surplus.
Earlier this week, the United States ordered duties on another $200 billion of Chinese goods to go into effect Sept. 24. China responded by adding $60 billion of U.S. products to its import tariff list.
The United States has imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated on an equal amount of U.S. goods.
Tariffs on all China imports?
Earlier this month, President Trump threatened even more tariffs on Chinese goods — another $267 billion worth of duties that would cover virtually all the goods China imports to the United States.
“That changes the equation,” he told reporters.
China has threatened to retaliate against any potential new tariffs. However, China’s imports from the United States are $200 billion a year less than American imports from China, so it would run out of room to match U.S. sanctions.
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WHO: Progress Made Containing Ebola in Eastern DRC
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports substantial progress is being made in containing the spread of the Ebola virus in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It warns, however, that new hotspots are appearing. The WHO says the number of confirmed and probable cases of Ebola in the DRC stands at 143, including 97 deaths.
WHO officials say they are pleased with the progress being made in limiting the spread of the Ebola virus, but that the outbreak of this fatal disease in Congo’s conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces remains active and vigilance must be maintained.
WHO reports the situation in Mangina, the initial epicenter of the epidemic in North Kivu, is stabilizing. WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told VOA there are no security problems there, so health workers are able to safely access the area and treat those affected by the disease. But there are exceptions.
“Immediately to the east is an inaccessible area. This region is in a security level four, which is one of the highest in the U.N. security phasing system. For example, the road from Beni to Oicha is in the ‘red zone’… So, in some places, we are really able to move to work. In some other places, it is more difficult,” she said.
Chaib said the cities of Beni and Butembo have become the new hotspots, noting that Butembo is in the red zone.
The WHO spokeswoman said there is significant risk that Ebola could spread there, and health workers have to remain on top of the many challenges facing them.
Among the challenges is a growing resistance in some communities to measures used to contain the virus.
For example, Chaib said, some people are reluctant to go to treatment centers for care. Others are unwilling to change traditional burial practices, such as touching the bodies of those who have died from Ebola. WHO warns this is one of the surest ways of spreading the infection. The outbreak in the DRC is the 10th since Ebola was first identified in 1976.
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WHO: Alcohol Responsible for One in 20 Deaths Worldwide
Alcohol kills three million people worldwide each year — more than AIDS, violence and road accidents combined, the World Health Organization said Friday, adding that men are particularly at risk.
The UN health agency’s latest report on alcohol and health pointed out that alcohol causes more than one in 20 deaths globally each year, including drink driving, alcohol-induced violence and abuse and a multitude of diseases and disorders.
Men account for more than three quarters of alcohol-related deaths, the nearly 500-page report found.
“Far too many people, their families and communities suffer the consequences of the harmful use of alcohol through violence, injuries, mental health problems and diseases like cancer and stroke,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
“It’s time to step up action to prevent this serious threat to the development of healthy societies,” he added.
Drinking is linked to more than 200 health conditions, including liver cirrhosis and some cancers.
Alcohol abuse also makes people more susceptible to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV and pneumonia, the report found.
The some three million alcohol-related deaths registered globally in 2016 — the latest available statistics — account for 5.3 percent of all deaths that year.
In comparison, HIV/AIDS was responsible for 1.8 percent of global deaths that year, road injuries for 2.5 percent and violence for 0.8 percent, the study showed.
The latest numbers are lower than those in WHO’s last report on global alcohol consumption, published in 2014.
There are “some positive global trends,” the agency said, pointing to shrinking prevalence of heavy episodic drinking and of alcohol-related deaths since 2010.
But it warned that “the overall burden of disease and injuries caused by the harmful use of alcohol is unacceptably high,” especially in Europe and the Americas.
Globally, an estimated 237 million men and 46 million women suffer from alcohol use disorders, WHO said.
Alcohol abuse affects nearly 15 percent of men and 3.5 percent of women in Europe, and 11.5 percent of men and 5.1 percent of women in the Americas, it pointed out.
Alcohol consumption overall is unevenly distributed around the globe, with well over half of the world’s population over the age of 15 abstaining completely.
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Technology Enhances Food Delivery Experiences
Self-driving technology is making online shopping a more convenient, more cost-effective experience. One new startup in San Jose, California, is launching a fully driverless delivery service, which many predict is something customers will be seeing a lot more of in the future. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at how these driverless cars are making people’s lives easier, in this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Shiite Muslims Mark Holy Day of Ashura With Mourning Rituals
Muslims are observing Ashura, one of the holiest days in Shiite Islam. Ashura is the 10th day of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic calendar. For Shiite Muslims, it is the day of mourning for the sacrifices made in the 7th century Battle of Karbala, especially the death of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. Shiite Muslims mark the day with rituals, including self-flagellation. This year, Ashura began Thursday night and ends Friday evening. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Refugees Get Turn on Big Screen in Kenyan Film Festival
A film festival in Kenya this month highlighted a group not often seen on the big screen: refugees. The festival, organized by the nonprofit group Film Aid in collaboration with Amnesty International, screened a selection of short films about exile and identity, some produced by refugees themselves. Rael Ombuor reports.
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Hurricane Scale Ignores Rain Dangers, Experts Say
Communities along the U.S. southeast coast are drying out after Hurricane Florence. The storm poured more than 80 centimeters of rain in parts of the Southeastern United States, causing catastrophic flooding. Hurricanes are categorized by their wind speeds. But that’s not always what does the most damage. Some experts say we should reconsider the scale. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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