Australia Says Ports Operator Cyber Incident ‘Serious’
The Australian government on Sunday described as “serious and ongoing” a cybersecurity incident that forced ports operator DP World Australia to suspend operations at ports in several states since Friday.
DP World Australia, which manages nearly half of the goods that flow in and out of the country, said it was looking into possible data breaches as well as testing systems “crucial for the resumption of normal operations and regular freight movement.”
The breach halted operations at container terminals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Western Australia’s Fremantle since Friday.
“The cyber incident at DP World is serious and ongoing,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
A DP World spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on when normal operations would resume. The company, part of Dubai’s state-owned DP World, is one of a handful of stevedore industry players in the country.
The Australian Federal Police said they were investigating the incident but declined to elaborate.
Late Saturday, National Cyber Security Coordinator Darren Goldie, appointed this year in response to several major data breaches, said the “interruption” was “likely to continue for a number of days and will impact the movement of goods into and out of the country.”
In the Asia-Pacific region, DP World says it employs more than 7,000 people and has ports and terminals in 18 locations.
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Indians Set World Record Celebrating Diwali as Worries About Air Pollution Rise
Millions of Indians celebrated Diwali on Sunday with a new Guinness World Record number of bright earthen oil lamps as concerns about air pollution soared in the South Asian country.
Across the country, dazzling multicolored lights decked homes and streets as devotees celebrated the annual Hindu festival of light symbolizing the victory of light over darkness.
But the spectacular and much-awaited massive lighting of the oil lamps took place — as usual —at Saryu River, in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state, the birthplace of their most revered deity, the god Ram.
At dusk on Saturday, devotees lit over 2.22 million lamps and kept them burning for 45 minutes as Hindu religious hymns filled the air at the banks of the river, setting a new world Record. Last year, over 1.5 million earthen lamps were lit.
After counting the lamps, Guinness Book of World Records representatives presented a record certificate to the state’s top elected official Yogi Adityanath.
Over 24,000 volunteers, mostly college students, helped prepare for the new record, said Pratibha Goyal, vice chancellor of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, in Ayodhya.
Diwali, a national holiday across India, is celebrated by socializing and exchanging gifts with family and friends. Many light earthen oil lamps or candles, and fireworks are set off as part of the celebrations. In the evening, a special prayer is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, who is believed to bring luck and prosperity.
Over the weekend, authorities ran extra trains to accommodate the huge numbers trying to reach their hometowns to join family celebrations. The festival came as worries about air quality in India rose. A “hazardous” 400-500 level was recorded on the air quality index last week, more than 10 times the global safety threshold, which can cause acute and chronic bronchitis and asthma attacks.
But on Saturday, unexpected rain and a strong wind improved the levels to 220, according to the government-run Central Pollution Control Board.
Air pollution levels are expected to soar again after the celebrations end Sunday night because of the fireworks used.
Last week, officials in New Delhi shut down primary schools and banned polluting vehicles and construction work in an attempt to reduce the worst haze and smog of the season, which has posed respiratory problems for people and enveloped monuments and high-rise buildings in and around India’s capital.
Authorities deployed water sprinklers and anti-smog guns to control the haze and many people used masks to escape the air pollution.
New Delhi tops the list almost every year among the many Indian cities with poor air quality, particularly in the winter, when the burning of crop residues in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap deadly smoke.
Some Indian states have banned the sale of fireworks and imposed other restrictions to stem the pollution. Authorities have also urged residents to light “green crackers” that emit less pollutants than normal firecrackers. But similar bans have often been disregarded in the past.
The Diwali celebrations this year were marked as authorities prepared to inaugurate in January an under-construction and long-awaited temple of the Hindu god Ram at the site of a demolished 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya city in Uttar Pradesh state.
The Babri Masjid mosque was destroyed by a Hindu mob with pickaxes and crowbars in December 1992, sparking massive Hindu-Muslim violence that left some 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims. The Supreme Court’s verdict in 2019 allowed a temple to be built in place of the demolished mosque.
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World’s Population Has Passed 8 Billion, US Census Says
The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.
The bureau estimates the global population exceeded the threshold Sept. 26, a precise date the agency said to take with a grain of salt.
The United Nations estimated the number was passed 10 months earlier, having declared Nov. 22, 2022, the “Day of 8 Billion,” the Census Bureau pointed out in a statement.
The discrepancy is due to countries counting people differently — or not at all. Many lack systems to record births and deaths. Some of the most populous countries, such as India and Nigeria, haven’t conducted censuses in over a decade, according to the bureau.
While world population growth remains brisk, growing from 6 billion to 8 billion since the turn of the millennium, the rate has slowed since doubling between 1960 and 2000.
People living to older ages account for much of the recent increase. The global median age, now 32, has been rising in a trend expected to continue toward 39 in 2060.
Countries such as Canada have been aging with declining older-age mortality, while countries such as Nigeria have seen dramatic declines in deaths of children under 5.
Fertility rates, or the rate of births per woman of childbearing age, are meanwhile declining, falling below replacement level in much of the world and contributing to a more than 50-year trend, on average, of slimmer increases in population growth.
The minimum number of such births necessary to replace both the father and mother for neutral world population is 2.1, demographers say. Almost three-quarters of people now live in countries with fertility rates around or below that level.
Countries with fertility rates around replacement level include India, Tunisia and Argentina.
About 15% of people live in places with fertility rates below replacement level. Countries with low fertility rates include Brazil, Mexico, the U.S. and Sweden, while those with very low fertility rates include China, South Korea and Spain.
Israel, Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea rank among countries with higher-than-replacement fertility rates of up to 5. Such countries have almost one-quarter of the world’s population.
Only about 4% of the world’s population lives in countries with fertility rates above 5. All are in Africa.
Global fertility rates are projected to decline at least through 2060, with no country projected to have a rate higher than 4 by then, according to the bureau.
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Iceland Evacuates Town, Raises Aviation Alert Amid Fears of Volcanic Eruption
Residents of a fishing town in southwestern Iceland left their homes Saturday after increasing concern about a potential volcanic eruption caused civil defense authorities to declare a state of emergency in the region.
Police decided to evacuate Grindavik after recent seismic activity in the area moved south toward the town and monitoring indicated that a corridor of magma, or semi-molten rock, now extends under the community, Iceland’s Meteorological Office said. The town of 3,400 is on the Reykjanes Peninsula, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.
“At this stage, it is not possible to determine exactly whether and where magma might reach the surface,” the Meteorological Office said.
Authorities also raised their aviation alert to orange, indicating an increased risk of a volcanic eruption. Volcanic eruptions pose a serious hazard to aviation because they can spew highly abrasive ash high into the atmosphere, where it can cause jet engines to fail, damage flight control systems and reduce visibility.
A major eruption in Iceland in 2010 caused widespread disruption to air travel between Europe and North America, costing airlines an estimated $3 billion as they canceled more than 100,000 flights.
The evacuation comes after the region was shaken by hundreds of small earthquakes every day for more than two weeks as scientists monitor a buildup of magma some 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) underground.
Concern about a possible eruption increased in the early hours Thursday when a magnitude 4.8 earthquake hit the area, forcing the internationally known Blue Lagoon geothermal resort to close temporarily.
The seismic activity started in an area north of Grindavik where there is a network of 2,000-year-old craters, geology professor Pall Einarrson, told Iceland’s RUV. The magma corridor is about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) long and spreading, he said.
“The biggest earthquakes originated there, under this old series of craters, but since then it [the magma corridor] has been getting longer, went under the urban area in Grindavík and is heading even further and towards the sea,” he said.
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Pope Forcibly Removes Leading US Conservative, Texas Bishop Strickland
Pope Francis on Saturday forcibly removed from office the bishop of Tyler, Texas, a conservative active on social media who has been a fierce critic of the pontiff and some of his priorities.
A one-line statement from the Vatican said Francis had “relieved” Bishop Joseph Strickland of the pastoral governance of Tyler and appointed the bishop of Austin as the temporary administrator.
Strickland, 65, has emerged as a critic of Francis, accusing him in a tweet earlier this year of “undermining the deposit of faith.” He has been particularly critical of Francis’ recent meeting on the future of the Catholic Church during which hot-button issues were discussed, including ways to better welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics.
The Vatican earlier this year sent in investigators to investigate his governance of the diocese, amid reports he was making doctrinally unorthodox claims.
The Vatican has not released the findings of the investigation, and Strickland had insisted he wouldn’t resign voluntarily. He had said in media interviews that he was given a mandate to serve by the late Pope Benedict XVI and couldn’t abdicate that responsibility, and he had complained that he hadn’t been told what the pope’s investigators were looking into.
It is rare for the pope to forcibly remove a bishop from office. Bishops are required to offer to resign when they reach 75. When the Vatican uncovers issues with governance or other problems that require a bishop to leave office before then, the Vatican usually seeks to pressure him to resign for the good of his diocese and the church.
That was the case when another U.S. bishop was forced out earlier this year following a Vatican investigation. Knoxville, Tennessee, Bishop Richard Stika resigned voluntarily, albeit under pressure, following allegations he mishandled sex abuse allegations and his priests complained about his leadership and behavior.
But with Strickland, the Vatican statement made clear that he had not offered to resign, and that Francis had instead “relieved” him of his job.
Most recently, Strickland had criticized Francis’ monthlong closed-door debate on making the church more welcoming and responsive to the needs of Catholics today. The meeting debated a host of previously taboo issues, including women in governance roles and welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics, but in the end, its final document didn’t veer from established doctrine.
Ahead of the meeting, Strickland said it was a “travesty” that such things were even on the table for discussion.
”Regrettably, it may be that some will label as schismatics those who disagree with the changes being proposed,” Strickland wrote in a public letter in August. “Instead, those who would propose changes to that which cannot be changed seek to commandeer Christ’s Church, and they are indeed the true schismatics.”
There was no immediate comment from the diocese, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops merely posted an English translation of the Vatican statement with data about the size of the diocese.
In a social media post sent a few hours before the Vatican’s noon announcement, Strickland wrote a prayer about Christ being the “way, the truth and the life, yesterday, today and forever.”
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Hundreds Of Activists Demand Action on Plastics in Kenya
Hundreds of environmental activists marched in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Saturday demanding drastic curbs on plastic production, ahead of a meeting to negotiate a global plastics treaty.
Representatives of more than 170 nations will meet in Nairobi Monday to negotiate what concrete measures should be included in a binding worldwide treaty to end plastic pollution.
Marchers waved placards reading “Plastic crisis = climate crisis” and “End multigenerational toxic exposure.”
They chanted “let polluters pay the price” as they walked slowly behind a ceremonial band from central Nairobi to a park in the west of the capital.
Nations agreed last year to finalize by 2024 a world-first U.N. treaty to address the scourge of plastics found everywhere from mountain tops to ocean depths and within human blood and breast milk.
Negotiators have met twice already but Nairobi is the first opportunity to debate a draft treaty published in September that outlines the many pathways to tackling the plastic problem.
The Nov. 13-19 meeting is the third of five sessions in a fast-tracked process aiming to conclude negotiations next year so the treaty can be adopted by mid-2025.
At the last talks in Paris, campaigners accused large plastic-producing nations of deliberately stalling after two days were lost debating procedural points.
This time around, the sessions have been extended by two days but there are still concerns a weaker treaty could emerge if time for detailed discussion is swallowed up going in circles.
Global plastic production has more than doubled since the start of the century to reach 460 million tons and it could triple by 2060 if nothing is done. Only nine percent is currently recycled.
Microplastics have been found everywhere from clouds to the deepest sea trenches, as well as throughout the human body.
The effects of plastics on human health remain poorly understood but there is growing concern among scientists.
Plastic also contributes to global warming, accounting for 3.4% of global emissions in 2019, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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US Childhood Vaccination Exemptions at Highest Level Ever
The proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements has hit its highest level ever, 3%, U.S. health officials said Thursday.
More parents are questioning routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect of the political schism that emerged during the pandemic around COVID-19 vaccines, experts say.
Even though more kids were given exemptions, the national vaccination rate held steady: 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year, the same as the year before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Thursday. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The bad news is that it’s gone down since the pandemic and still hasn’t rebounded,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist. “The good news is that the vast majority of parents are still vaccinating their kids according to the recommended schedule.”
All U.S. states and territories require that children attending child care centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including, measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.
All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevents them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.
In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has inched up, lifting the overall exemption rate from 1.6% in the 2011-12 school year to 3% last year.
Last year, more than 115,000 kindergartners were exempt from at least one vaccine, the CDC estimated.
The rates vary across the country.
Ten states — all in the West or Midwest — reported that more than 5% of kindergartners were exempted from at least one kind of required vaccine. Idaho had the highest percentage, with 12% of kindergartners receiving at least one exemption. In contrast, 0.1% had exemptions in New York.
The rates can be influenced by state laws or policies can make it harder or easier to obtain exemptions, and by local attitudes among families and doctors about the need to get children vaccinated.
“Sometimes these jumps in exemptions can be very local, and it may not reflect a whole state,” said O’Leary, who chairs an American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases.
Hawaii saw the largest jump, with the exemption rate rising to 6.4%, nearly double the year before.
Officials there said it’s not due to any law or policy change. Rather, “we have observed that there has been misinformation/disinformation impacting people’s decision to vaccinate or not via social media platforms,” officials at the state’s health department said in a statement.
Connecticut and Maine saw significant declines, which CDC officials attributed to recent policy changes that made it harder to get exemptions.
Health officials say attaining 95% vaccination coverage is important to prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases, especially of measles, which is extremely contagious.
The U.S. has seen measles outbreaks begin when travelers infected elsewhere came to communities with low vaccination rates. That happened in 2019 when about 1,300 measles cases were reported — the most in the U.S. in nearly 30 years. Most of the cases were in were in Orthodox Jewish communities with low vaccination rates.
One apparent paradox in the report: The national vaccination rate held steady even as exemptions increased. How could that be?
CDC officials say it’s because there are actually three groups of children in the vaccination statistics. One is those who get all the shots. A second is those who get exemptions. The third are children who didn’t seek exemptions but also didn’t get all their shots and paperwork completed at the time the data was collected.
“Last year, those kids in that third group probably decreased,” offsetting the increase in the exemption group, the CDC’s Shannon Stokley said.
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Hollywood Actors Union Board Approves Strike-Ending Deal
Board members from Hollywood’s actors union voted Friday to approve the deal with studios that ended their strike after nearly four months, with the union’s leadership touting the gains made in weeks of methodical negotiations.
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ executive director and chief negotiator, announced at a Friday news conference that the tentative agreement was approved with 86% of the vote.
The three-year contract agreement next goes to a vote from the union’s members, who are now learning what they earned through spending the summer and early fall on picket lines instead of on film and television sets. That vote begins Tuesday and continues into December.
Crabtree-Ireland said the deal “will keep the motion picture industry sustainable as a profession for working-class performers.”
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said the studios believed they could outlast actors by waiting more than two months before initiating talks.
“What were they doing? Were they trying to smoke us out?” she said. “Well honey, I quit smoking a long time ago.”
Crabtree-Ireland and Drescher would not give specifics on who disapproved of the deal, and why. The board vote was weighted, so it’s not immediately clear how many people voted against approval.
Overall, the happy scene at SAG-AFTRA’s Los Angeles headquarters was as different as can be from the defiant, angry tone of a news conference in the same room in July, when guild leaders announced that actors would join writers in a historic strike that shook the industry.
The successful vote by the board, whose members include actors Billy Porter, Jennifer Beals, Sean Astin and Sharon Stone, was expected, as many of the same people were on the committee that negotiated the deal. And it was in some ways drained of its drama by union leaders declaring the strike over as soon as the tentative deal was reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Wednesday, rather than waiting for the approval.
But it was still an essential step in returning to business as usual in Hollywood, if there is any such thing.
Actors need not wait for the ratification to start acting again — “in fact some of them already have,” Crabtree-Ireland said.
Contract provisions surrounding the control of artificial intelligence were among the last sticking points in the agreement.
“AI was a dealbreaker,” Drescher said. “If we didn’t get that package, then what are we doing to protect our members?”
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Tuberculosis Remains One of World’s Deadliest Diseases, but Vaccine Hopes Rise
Global cases of tuberculosis continued to rise last year, as disruption to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic set back efforts to fight the disease, according to the latest annual report from the World Health Organization. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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Beatles Top Charts Again as ‘Now And Then’ Breaks Records
The Beatles returned to the top of the U.K. music charts Friday with the record-breaking track “Now And Then,” making history as the act with the longest gap between its first and last No. 1 single.
Billed as the last Beatles song, “Now And Then” features the voice of the late John Lennon and was developed using artificial intelligence. It also features parts recorded by surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr as well as the late George Harrison.
The group’s 18th U.K. No. 1 hit, it brings the Beatles back to the top of the Official Singles Chart 60 years after the group’s first No. 1 single, “From Me to You.” The feat also extends the Beatles’ record as the British act with the most U.K. No. 1 singles in Official Charts history.
“It’s mind-boggling. It’s blown my socks off,” McCartney said in a statement. “It’s also a very emotional moment for me. I love it!”
The song is the fastest-selling single of the year to date in Britain with 48,600 physical and download sales based on its first seven days, the Official Charts Company said.
It is also the fastest-selling vinyl single of the century so far in Britain with more than 19,400 copies sold on vinyl, and the most-streamed Beatles track in one week, with 5.03 million streams, it added.
The group is also the act with the longest gap between No. 1 singles — 54 years — and the oldest band to score a U.K. No. 1 single, the Official Charts Company said. McCartney is 81 while Starr is 83.
“Beatlemania has returned this week,” Official Charts Company Chief Executive Officer Martin Talbot said.
“The return of John, Paul, George and Ringo with the last ever Beatles single … has cemented their legend by breaking a catalog of records — and in doing so underlined the extraordinary scope of their enduring appeal, across all the generations.”
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Quakes Rock Southwestern Iceland as Volcanic Eruption Looms
Iceland declared a state of emergency on Friday after a series of powerful earthquakes rocked the country’s southwestern Reykjanes peninsula in what could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption.
“The National police chief … declares a state of emergency for civil defense due to the intense earthquake (activity) at Sundhnjukagigar, north of Grindavik,” the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement.
“Earthquakes can become larger than those that have occurred, and this series of events could lead to an eruption,” the administration warned.
The Icelandic Met Office (IMO) said an eruption could take place “in several days.”
The village of Grindavik, home to around 4,000 people, is located some three kilometers (1.86 miles) southwest of the area where Friday’s earthquake swarm was registered.
It has evacuation plans in place in case of an eruption.
Thousands of tremors since October
Around 1730 GMT, two strong earthquakes were felt as far away as the capital Reykjavik some 40 kilometers away, and along much of the country’s southern coast, rattling windows and household objects.
According to preliminary IMO figures, the biggest tremor had a magnitude of 5.2, north of Grindavik.
Police closed a road running north-south to Grindavik on Friday after it was damaged by the tremors.
Some 24,000 tremors have been registered on the peninsula since late October, according to the IMO, with “a dense swarm” of nearly 800 quakes registered between midnight and 1400 GMT Friday.
The IMO noted an accumulation of magma underground at a depth of about five kilometers (3.1 miles). Should it start moving towards the surface, it could lead to a volcanic eruption.
“The most likely scenario is that it will take several days rather than hours for magma to reach the surface,” it said. “If a fissure were to appear where the seismic activity is at its highest now, lava would flow to the southeast and to the west, but not towards Grindavik.”
Nonetheless, the Department of Civil Protection said it was sending the patrol vessel Thor to Grindavik “for security purposes.”
Emergency shelters and help centers were to open in Grindavik later Friday, as well as three other locations in southern Iceland, for information purposes and to assist people on the move.
On Thursday, the Blue Lagoon, a popular tourist destination located near Grindavik famed for its geothermal spas and luxury hotels, closed as a precaution following another earthquake swarm.
Also nearby is the Svartsengi geothermal plant, the main supplier of electricity and water to 30,000 residents on the Reykjanes peninsula.
The plant has contingency plans in place to protect the plant and its workers in the event of an eruption.
Since 2021, three eruptions have taken place on the Reykjanes peninsula, in March 2021, August 2022 and July 2023.
Those three were located far from any infrastructure or populated areas.
Cycle could could last decades, centuries
Iceland has 33 active volcanic systems, the highest number in Europe.
The North Atlantic island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack in the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
Prior to the March 2021 eruption in an uninhabited area around Mount Fagradalsfjall, the Reykjanes volcanic system had remained dormant for eight centuries.
Volcanologists believe the new cycle of increased activity could last for several decades or centuries.
An April 2010 massive eruption at another Iceland volcano, the Eyjafjallajokull in the south of the island, forced the cancellation of some 100,000 flights, leaving more than 10 million travelers stranded.
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Tuberculosis Remains One of World’s Deadliest Diseases, But Hope for Vaccine Rises
Global cases of tuberculosis — also known as TB — continued to rise last year as disruption to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic set back efforts to fight the disease, according to the latest report from the World Health Organization.
Tuberculosis, an infectious disease that usually attacks the lungs, is both preventable and curable. It caused an estimated 1.3 million deaths in 2022 — a 19% drop from the year before, said the annual WHO report published last week.
However, there was a small increase in the number of global TB cases to an estimated 10.6 million. Some 40% of people living with TB are undiagnosed and untreated.
The disease is just behind COVID-19 as the world’s deadliest infectious illness, with India, Indonesia and the Philippines particularly affected.
COVID disruption
The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, saw health services overwhelmed in many parts of the world. TB diagnosis and treatment levels plummeted, said Dr. Lucica Ditiu, the executive director of the Geneva-based Stop TB Partnership.
“Unfortunately, the incidence of TB is growing. We used to have a decline of 2% per year. And then due to COVID, we have now an increase for the last two years — 2021 and 2022 — of almost 4%,” she told VOA.
The World Health Organization estimates COVID-related disruptions resulted in almost half a million excess deaths from TB in the three years from 2020 to 2022.
Childhood TB
The report also reveals a concerning lack of progress in some areas, according to Ditiu.
“We see … a pretty difficult situation for people with drug-resistant TB as well as childhood TB. So [with] drug-resistant TB, just short of 200,000 were diagnosed and put in treatment,” she said. “And exactly as the WHO said, two out of five people with drug-resistant TB had access to drug-resistant TB treatment. It’s actually the access to diagnosis which is limiting that.”
Ditiu said there are an estimated 1.3 million children with TB, about 12% of the world total. Children make up 16% of those who die from TB, she said.
Improved diagnosis
However, the focus on fighting tuberculosis appears to be getting back on track. The total number of cases diagnosed globally last year was 7.5 million, the highest ever recorded.
“This shows that the countries buckled up to recover after COVID – and even jump above the level before COVID,” Ditiu said.
Vaccine hopes
A promising TB vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline, known as M72, is currently in the final stage of trials. Sixteen other vaccines are undergoing earlier stages of testing.
“We need a vaccine. So that will be the game changer,” said Ditiu.
The 19% fall in deaths from TB from 2018 to 2022 is still far short of the World Health Organization’s target of a 75% reduction by 2025.
Funding also fell short, reaching less than half of the WHO target of at least $13 billion on TB diagnosis, treatment and prevention services in 2022.
Governments committed to spending $22 billion a year on TB by 2027 at a special U.N. meeting in September.
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US Hit by 25 Reported Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters in 2023
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration — NOAA — reports the U.S. has seen 25 separate weather or climate “disasters” — events causing damage or losses exceeding $1 billion — so far this year, the highest number since the agency began tracking such events 43 years ago.
In a report issued this week, NOAA said severe thunderstorms moving through Oklahoma and other southern Plains states September 23 and 24 brought high winds and large hail, causing enough damage to rank as the 25th weather disaster so far in 2023.
The agency said disasters through October of this year included 19 severe storms, two flooding events, a winter storm in the northeastern U.S., a drought and heat wave in the central and southern states, one wildfire (on Maui in August), and one tropical cyclone (Hurricane Idalia in Florida).
NOAA said these events took the lives of 464 people and had a severe economic impact on the regions where they occurred. The total cost in damages from these events was more than $73 billion. The year-to-date tally exceeds 2020, which saw 19 disasters through October.
NOAA reports the annual average number of such disaster events between 1980 and 2022 was 8.1 per year. The agency reports the annual average jumped in the most recent five years (2018-2022) to 18 disasters per year.
Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 373 separate weather and climate events resulting in overall damages or costs reaching or exceeding $1 billion, according to NOAA. The total cost of these 373 events exceeds $2.645 trillion.
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Kerry: US and China Have ‘Some Agreement’ on Climate Issues
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said talks this week with his Chinese counterpart resulted in “some agreement” on climate issues that leave him optimistic about the U.N. climate summit scheduled for later this month in Dubai.
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, Kerry said Friday that he met for four days this week with Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in California. He described their talks as “productive” and, without providing details, said they had reached “some agreement on reducing emissions and the direction we have to go.”
Kerry said, “I am hopeful about that,” adding that details of the agreements would be released soon.
The U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, is scheduled for the end of this month. The climate conference seeks to meet and expand on climate goals established during the Paris agreement of 2015, in which some 200 nations agreed to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or about pre-industrial age levels.
Kerry said the goal, as in the previous climate conferences, “is to open up the opportunity to keep 1.5 degrees alive.”
Any agreements between the United States and China — the world’s two largest polluters — would be integral to the success of the conference.
The U.S. climate envoy said the use of fossil fuels — coal in particular — is likely to be a central part of the discussion at the conference. China is the world’s largest user of fossil fuels and relies on coal for most of its energy production.
In comments at the Singapore forum Friday, Kerry said, “It is irresponsible to be funding or building a coal-fired power plant anywhere in the world. And who is allowed to get away with doing that, when it is not the only option for what we could be doing.”
Reuters reports Xie told a diplomatic climate forum in September that phasing out fossil fuels is “unrealistic” for China.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Warmer Ocean Temperatures Bleach Florida Coral
Warmer ocean temperatures are hurting coral reefs off the U.S. state of Florida. For VOA, Genia Dulot took a look at what’s happening underwater.
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Internet Collapses in Yemen Over ‘Maintenance’ After Houthi Attacks Targeting Israel, US
Internet access across the war-torn nation of Yemen collapsed Friday and stayed down for hours, with officials later blaming unannounced “maintenance work” for an outage that followed attacks by the country’s Houthi rebels on both Israel and the U.S.
The outage began early Friday and halted all traffic at YemenNet, the country’s main provider for about 10 million users which is now controlled by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis.
Both NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages, and the internet services company CloudFlare reported the outage. The two did not offer a cause for the outage.
“Data shows that the issue has impacted connectivity at a national level as well,” CloudFlare said.
Several hours later, some service was restored, though access remained troubled.
In a statement to the Houthi-controlled SABA state news agency, Yemen’s Public Telecom Corp. blamed the outage on maintenance.
“Internet service will return after the completion of the maintenance work,” the statement quoted an unidentified official as saying.
An earlier outage occurred in January 2022 when the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in Yemen bombed a telecommunications building in the Red City port city of Hodeida. There was no immediate word of a similar attack.
The undersea FALCON cable carries the internet into Yemen through the Hodeida port along the Red Sea for TeleYemen. The FALCON cable has another landing in Yemen’s far eastern port of Ghaydah as well, but the majority of Yemen’s population lives in its west along the Red Sea.
GCX, the company that operates the cable, did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
The outage came after a series of recent drone and missile attacks by the Houthis targeting Israel during its campaign of airstrikes and a ground offensive targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That includes a claimed strike Thursday targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat on the Red Sea. The Houthis also shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone this week with a surface-to-air missile, part of a wide series of attacks in the Mideast raising concerns about a regional war breaking out.
Yemen’s conflict began in 2014 when the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of the country’s north. The internationally recognized government fled to the south and then into exile in Saudi Arabia.
The Houthi takeover prompted a Saudi-led coalition to intervene months later and the conflict turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the U.S. long involved on the periphery, providing intelligence assistance to the kingdom.
However, international criticism over Saudi airstrikes killing civilians saw the U.S. pull back its support. The U.S. is suspected of still carrying out drone strikes targeting suspected members of Yemen’s local al-Qaida branch.
The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more. A cease-fire that expired last October largely has held in the time since, though the Houthis are believed to be slowly stepping up their attacks as a permanent peace has yet to be reached.
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Indian Capital Gets Breather as Rain Brings Respite from Smog
Rain in New Delhi and its suburbs brought relief Friday morning to the Indian capital, where authorities were mulling seeding clouds to improve the toxic air gripping the city.
New Delhi, which was the most polluted in the world until Thursday, saw its air quality index (AQI) improve to 127 early Friday – a welcome change from the “hazardous” 400-500 level seen during the past week, according to the Swiss group IQAir.
India’s weather department has forecast intermittent rain over the city and adjoining areas until early noon on Friday. Light showers are also expected in neighboring states like Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan.
On Friday morning, New Delhi was the 10th most polluted city in the world, while Kolkata, in India’s east, topped the global chart with an AQI of 303.
Meanwhile, air in the financial capital of Mumbai has markedly improved due to showers in nearby coastal areas.
This year, attention on the worsening air quality has cast a shadow over the cricket World Cup hosted by India.
Scientists and authorities were planning to seed clouds in New Delhi around Nov. 20 to trigger heavy rain, the first such attempt to clean the air.
A thick layer of smog envelops the city every year ahead of winter as heavy, cold air traps dust, vehicle emissions and smoke from burning crop stubble in Punjab and Haryana.
Friday’s rain comes two days before the Diwali festival, when many people defy a ban on firecrackers, causing a spike in air pollution.
The local government of the city of 20 million people, spread over roughly 1,500 square kilometers, has already closed all schools, stopped construction activities, and said it will impose restrictions on vehicle use to control pollution.
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Man Receives First Eye Transplant in Step Toward One Day Restoring Sight
Surgeons have performed the world’s first transplant of an entire human eye, an extraordinary addition to a face transplant — although it’s far too soon to know if the man will ever see through his new left eye.
An accident with high-voltage power lines destroyed most of Aaron James’ face and one eye. His right eye still works. But surgeons at NYU Langone Health hoped replacing the missing one would yield better cosmetic results for his new face, because it would support the transplanted eye socket and lid.
The NYU team announced Thursday that so far, it’s doing just that. James is recovering well from the dual transplant last May, and the donated eye looks remarkably healthy.
“It feels good. I still don’t have any movement in it yet. My eyelid, I can’t blink yet. But I’m getting sensation now,” James told The Associated Press as doctors examined his progress recently.
“You got to start somewhere, there’s got to be a first person somewhere,” said James, 46, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. “Maybe you’ll learn something from it that will help the next person.”
Today, transplants of the cornea — the clear tissue in front of the eye — are common to treat certain types of vision loss. But transplanting the whole eye — the eyeball, its blood supply and the critical optic nerve that must connect it to the brain — is considered a moonshot in the quest to cure blindness.
Whatever happens next, James’ surgery offers scientists an unprecedented window into how the human eye tries to heal.
“We’re not claiming that we are going to restore sight,” said Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, NYU’s plastic surgery chief, who led the transplant. “But there’s no doubt in my mind we are one step closer.”
Some specialists had feared the eye would quickly shrivel like a raisin. Instead, when Rodriguez propped open James’ left eyelid last month, the donated hazel-colored eye was as plump and full of fluid as his own blue eye. Doctors see good blood flow and no sign of rejection.
Now researchers have begun analyzing scans of James’ brain that detected some puzzling signals from that all-important but injured optic nerve.
One scientist who has long studied how to make eye transplants a reality called the surgery exciting.
“It’s an amazing validation” of animal experiments that have kept transplanted eyes alive, said Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg, chair of ophthalmology at Stanford University.
The hurdle is how to regrow the optic nerve, although animal studies are making strides, Goldberg said. He praised the NYU team’s “audacity” in even aiming for optic nerve repair and said he hopes the transplant will spur more research.
“We’re really on the precipice of being able to do this,” Goldberg said.
James was working for a power line company in June 2021 when he was shocked by a live wire. He nearly died. Ultimately, he lost his left arm, requiring a prosthetic. His damaged left eye was so painful it had to be removed. Multiple reconstructive surgeries couldn’t repair extensive facial injuries including his missing nose and lips.
James pushed through physical therapy until he was strong enough to escort his daughter Allie to a high school homecoming ceremony, wearing a face mask and eye patch. Still, he required breathing and feeding tubes, and he longed to smell, taste and eat solid food again.
“In his mind and his heart, it’s him — so I didn’t care that, you know, he didn’t have a nose. But I did care that it bothered him,” said his wife, Meagan James.
Face transplants remain rare and risky. James’ is only the 19th in the United States, the fifth Rodriguez has performed. The eye experiment added even more complexity. But James figured he’d be no worse off if the donated eye failed.
Three months after James was placed on the national transplant waiting list, a matching donor was found. Kidneys, a liver and pancreas from the donor, a man in his 30s, saved three other people.
During James’ 21-hour operation, surgeons added another experimental twist: When they spliced together the donated optic nerve to what remained of James’ original, they injected special stem cells from the donor in hopes of spurring its repair.
Last month, tingles heralded healing facial nerves. James can’t yet open the eyelid and wears a patch to protect it. But as Rodriguez pushed on the closed eye, James felt a sensation — although on his nose rather than his eyelid, presumably until slow-growing nerves get reoriented. The surgeon also detected subtle movements beginning in muscles around the eye.
Then came a closer look. NYU ophthalmologist Dr. Vaidehi Dedania ran a battery of tests. She found expected damage in the light-sensing retina in the back of the eye. But she said it appears to have enough special cells called photoreceptors to do the job of converting light to electrical signals, one step in creating vision.
Normally, the optic nerve then would send those signals to the brain to be interpreted. James’ optic nerve clearly hasn’t healed. Yet when light was flashed into the donated eye during an MRI, the scan recorded some sort of brain signaling.
That both excited and baffled researchers, although it wasn’t the right type for vision and may simply be a fluke, cautioned Dr. Steven Galetta, NYU’s neurology chair. Only time and more study may tell.
As for James, “we’re just taking it one day at a time,” he said.
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Recent Floods in Kenya Kill 15, Displace Thousands
Recent heavy rain and flooding killed 15 people in Kenya and displaced thousands of others, the Kenya Red Cross Society says.
The heavy rainfall also killed livestock and destroyed businesses and farmland, said Peter Murgor, a disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation manager with the Kenya Red Cross Society.
“Schools [are] being affected … and even hospital facilities in some of the places that have been marooned are also affected,” Murgor told VOA.
The situation could get worse, Murgor said.
In its forecast for this year’s last quarter, the Kenya Meteorological Department had warned the country will experience above-average rainfall, driven by warmer sea surface temperatures over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
“We are informed by the [weather forecaster] that November normally is the peak,” Murgor told VOA. “If November is the peak and we are just at the beginning of November, chances are … the situation is likely to worsen in the month towards the end, probably seeing a bit more people being displaced, probably seeing a bit more loss of livelihoods.”
Nearly half of the 47 counties in Kenya are at risk, he said, with the northeastern part of the country being the most affected.
Heavy rains also have affected neighboring Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia, where the government declared a state of emergency after 29 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced as a result of the extreme weather.
Meanwhile, in Kenya, Murgor said flash floods would likely cause more problems.
“We are likely to see a rise in disease outbreak as a secondary impact of the flooding,” he said. “But from the Kenya Red Cross prospect, we are working together with the ministry of health, with the government, with stakeholders, trying to see how to mitigate against the effect, how to anticipate and then try to act early [and] work with farmers to do post-harvest loss management.”
He also said that in cases in which early warnings are possible, communities would be alerted about possible floods so people can move to safer ground.
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DC Exhibit by Black Artist Highlights Feminism, Gender Equality, Racial Justice
An exhibition featuring the work of Simone Leigh — one of America’s most influential contemporary female artists — is now on display at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. Leigh, known for her focus on feminism, gender equality and racial justice, became the first Black artist in history to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 2022, where she was awarded the coveted Golden Lion. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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Picasso’s ‘Woman with a Watch’ Fetches $139M at Auction
One of Pablo Picasso’s masterpieces, Woman with a Watch, was sold at auction Wednesday night for $139.3 million by Sotheby’s in New York, the second-highest price ever achieved for the artist.
In a jam-packed room at the venerable auction house, it only took a few minutes of telephone bidding for the 1932 painting depicting one of the Spanish artist’s companions and muses, the French painter Marie-Therese Walter, to be sold.
Femme a la montre had been valued at over $120 million before going on the block, according to Sotheby’s.
It was part of the house’s special sale this week of the collection of New York arts patron Emily Fisher Landau, who died this year at age 102.
Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of impressionist and modern art, called the Picasso canvas — which hung in Landau’s living room — “a masterpiece by every measure.”
“Painted in 1932 — Picasso’s ‘annus mirabilis’ — it is full of joyful, passionate abandon yet at the same time it is utterly considered and resolved,” he said.
Walter was regarded as Picasso’s “golden muse,” and features in another of his works going under the hammer on Thursday at Christie’s: Femme endormie, or Sleeping Woman, estimated to sell for $25 million-$35 million.
She also featured in Femme assise pres d’une fenetre (Marie-Therese), or Woman Sitting Near a Window, which was sold in 2021 for $103.4 million.
Walter met Picasso in Paris in 1927, when she was just 17 and the Spanish artist was still married to Russian-Ukrainian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova. The couple had a daughter, who died last year.
Another Picasso from 1932 was sold for $106 million in 2010.
The record sale for one of his works was of The Women of Algiers (Version O), a 1955 oil painting which sold for $179.4 million.
When it went under the hammer at Christie’s New York in 2015, it was also the record for any work of art sold at auction.
It was dethroned in November 2017 by the sale of Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which went for $450 million and holds the record to this day.
Hot market
Fifty years after his death in 1973 at age 91, Picasso remains one of the most influential artists of the modern world, often hailed as a dynamic and creative genius.
But following the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault, his reputation has been tarnished by accusations he exerted a violent hold over the women who shared his life and inspired his art.
Sotheby’s has already netted $406 million in sales from Landau’s collection, which also includes works by Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.
Flags by the 93-year-old Johns sold for $41 million, while Securing the Last Letter (Boss) by painter and photographer Ed Ruscha sold for $39.4 million.
Auction houses are enjoying a healthy art and luxury goods market, driven by China and showing no signs of a slowdown, said Kelsey Reed Leonard, head of contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s.
Against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as worldwide inflation, the two titans of the sector — Sotheby’s and Christie’s — will be moving a host of big-ticket lots in the autumn sales, though they may still have a hard time topping last year, when total sales hit a record $16 billion.
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Worker at South Korea Vegetable Packing Plant Crushed to Death by Industrial Robot
An industrial robot grabbed and crushed a worker to death at a vegetable packaging plant in South Korea, police said Thursday, as they investigated whether the machine was defective or improperly designed.
Police said early evidence suggests that human error was more likely to blame rather than problems with the machine itself. But the incident still triggered public concern about the safety of industrial robots and the false sense of security they may give to humans working nearby in a country that increasingly relies on such machines to automate its industries.
Police in the southern county of Goseong said the man died of head and chest injuries Tuesday evening after he was snatched and pressed against a conveyor belt by the machine’s robotic arms.
Police did not identify the man but said he was an employee of a company that installs industrial robots and was sent to the plant to examine whether the machine was working properly.
South Korea has had other accidents involving industrial robots in recent years. In March, a manufacturing robot crushed and seriously injured a worker who was examining it at an auto parts factory in Gunsan. Last year, a robot installed near a conveyor belt fatally crushed a worker at a milk factory in Pyeongtaek.
The machine that caused the death on Tuesday was one of two pick-and-place robots used at the facility, which packages bell peppers and other vegetables exported to other Asian countries, police said. Such machines are common in South Korea’s agricultural communities, which are struggling with a declining and aging workforce.
“It wasn’t an advanced, artificial intelligence-powered robot, but a machine that simply picks up boxes and puts them on pallets,” said Kang Jin-gi, who heads the investigations department at Gosong Police Station. He said police were working with related agencies to determine whether the machine had technical defects or safety issues.
Another police official, who did not want to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters, said police were also looking into the possibility of human error. The robot’s sensors are designed to identify boxes, and security video indicated the man had moved near the robot with a box in his hands which likely triggered the machine’s reaction, the official said.
“It’s clearly not a case where a robot confused a human with a box -– this wasn’t a very sophisticated machine,” he said.
According to data from the International Federation of Robotics, South Korea had 1,000 industrial robots per 10,000 employees in 2021, the highest density in the world and more than three times the number in China that year. Many of South Korea’s industrial robots are used in major manufacturing plants such as electronics and auto-making.
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‘Like Breathing Poison’: Delhi Children Hardest Hit by Smog
Crying in a hospital bed with a nebulizer mask on his tiny face, 1-month-old Ayansh Tiwari has a thick, hacking cough. His doctors blame the acrid air that blights New Delhi every year.
The spartan emergency room of the government-run Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya hospital in the Indian capital is crowded with children struggling to breathe — many with asthma and pneumonia, which spike as air pollution peaks each winter in the megacity of 30 million people.
Delhi regularly ranks among the most polluted major cities on the planet, with a melange of factory and vehicle emissions exacerbated by seasonal agricultural fires.
“Wherever you see there is poisonous smog,” said Ayansh’s mother Julie Tiwari, 26, as she rocked the baby on her lap, attempting to calm him.
“I try to keep the doors and windows closed as much as possible. But it’s like breathing poison all the time. I feel so helpless,” she told AFP, fighting back tears.
On Thursday, the level of PM2.5 particles — the smallest and most harmful, which can enter the bloodstream — topped 390 micrograms per cubic meter, according to monitoring firm IQAir, more than 25 times the daily maximum recommended by the World Health Organization.
Government efforts have so far failed to solve the country’s air quality problem, and a study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world’s most populous country in 2019.
‘Maddening rush’
“It’s a maddening rush in our emergency room during this time,” said Dhulika Dhingra, a pediatric pulmonologist at the hospital, which serves poor neighborhoods in one of Delhi’s most polluted areas.
The foul air severely impacts children, with devastating effects on their health and development.
Scientific evidence shows children who breathe polluted air are at higher risk of developing acute respiratory infections, a UNICEF report said last year.
A study published in the Lung India journal in 2021 found nearly one out of every three schoolchildren in Delhi had asthma and airflow obstruction.
Children are more vulnerable to air pollution than adults because they breathe more quickly and their brains, lungs and other organs are not fully developed.
“They can’t sit in one place, they keep running and with that, the respiratory rate increases even more. That is why they are more prone to the effects of pollution,” said Dhingra.
“This season is very difficult for them because they can hardly breathe.”
Vegetable vendor Imtiaz Qureshi’s 11-month-old son, Mohammad Arsalan, was admitted to the hospital overnight with breathing issues.
“We have to live day in and day out in this air,” said the distraught 40-year-old, who pulls his cart through the streets every day.
“If I go out, the air will kill me. If I don’t, poverty will kill me.”
‘Toxic environment’
The hospital provides treatment and medicine free of cost — none of its patients can afford private health care, and many cannot buy even a single air purifier for their one-room homes in the city’s sprawling slums.
Pediatrician Seema Kapoor, the hospital’s director, said patient inflows had risen steadily since the weather cooled, trapping pollutants closer to the ground.
“About 30-40% of the total attendance is primarily because of respiratory illnesses,” she said.
Pulmonologist Dhingra said the only advice they can offer parents is to restrict their children’s outdoor activities as much as possible.
“Imagine telling a parent not to let the child go out and play in this toxic environment.”
The Delhi government has announced emergency school closures, stopped construction and banned diesel vehicles from entering the city in a bid to bring down pollution levels.
But stubble burning by farmers in the neighboring agrarian states, which contributes significantly to Delhi’s pollution, continues unabated, drawing a rebuke from the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Delhi’s choked air is resulting in the “complete murder of our young people,” said the court.
Housewife Arshi Wasim, 28, brought her 18-month-old younger daughter Nida Wasim to the hospital with pneumonia.
“She coughs non-stop,” she said. “She doesn’t take milk or even water because her lungs are choked. Sometimes we have to give her oxygen and rush her to the doctor two or three times a day.
“Every year it’s the same story.”
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Striking Actors Reach Tentative Deal With Hollywood Studios
The SAG-AFTRA actors’ union reached a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios to resolve the second of two strikes that rocked the entertainment industry as workers demanded higher pay in the streaming TV era, the union said Wednesday.
The 118-day strike will end officially just after midnight, SAG-AFTRA said in a statement. The group’s national board will consider the deal on Friday, and the union said it would release further details after that meeting.
Members of SAG-AFTRA walked off the job in mid-July asking for an increase in minimum salaries, a share of streaming service revenue and protection from being replaced by “digital replicas” generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
The union said negotiators had reached a preliminary deal on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Walt Disney DIS.N, Netflix NFLX.O and other media companies.
An AMPTP representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The breakthrough means Hollywood can ramp up to full production for the first time since May, once union members vote to ratify the deal in the coming weeks.
“I’m relieved,” actor Fanny Grande said in an interview. “It’s been really difficult for most people in the industry, especially people of color. As it is, we don’t have as many opportunities. We aren’t big celebrities that have money in the bank for months. I just really hope that it’s a fair deal.”
Actors had similar concerns to film and television writers, who argued that compensation for working-class cast members had dwindled as streaming took hold, making it hard to earn a living wage in cities such as Los Angeles and New York. TV series on streaming did not offer the same residual payments that actors enjoyed during the heyday of broadcast TV.
Performers also became alarmed by recent advances in artificial intelligence, which they feared could lead to studios manipulating their likenesses without permission or replacing human actors with digital images.
George Clooney and other A-list stars voiced solidarity with lower-level actors and had urged union leadership, including SAG-AFTRA President and The Nanny actor Fran Drescher, to reach a resolution.
Many film and TV sets shut down when the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called a strike in the spring. While WGA members returned to writing scripts in late September, the ongoing SAG-AFTRA work stoppage left many productions dark.
The disruptions cost California more than $6 billion in lost output, according to a Milken Institute estimate.
With little work available, many prop masters, costume designers and other crew members struggled to make ends meet. FilmLA, the group that approves filming permits, reported scripted production during the week of Oct. 29 had fallen 77% from the same time a year earlier.
The Hollywood strikes came during a year of other high-profile job actions. The United Auto Workers recently ended six weeks of walkouts at Detroit carmakers. Teachers, nurses and healthcare workers also walked off the job.
Hollywood’s work stoppages forced broadcast networks to fill their fall lineups with re-runs, games shows and reality shows. It also led movie studios to delay big releases such as Dune: Part 2 because striking actors could not promote them.
Other major films, including the latest installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise and Disney’s live-action remake of animated classic Snow White, were postponed until 2025.
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