South Korea Deploys Military, Public Doctors to Strike-hit Hospitals
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea will start deploying military physicians and doctors from public health centers to strike-hit hospitals on Monday to help care for patients affected by the walkout of nearly 12,000 trainee doctors from 100 hospitals over government reform plans.
Twenty military surgeons along with 138 public health doctors will be assigned to 20 hospitals for four weeks, Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said at a meeting on Sunday.
The number of military physicians called on to help so far was only a small fraction of the roughly 2,400 military doctors, according to a defense ministry briefing.
The government has denied the walkout which started on Feb. 20 has caused a full-blown health crisis, but some hospitals have had to turn away patients and delay medical procedures.
As of Friday morning, nearly 12,000 protesting doctors at 100 hospitals had left their posts in a dispute over a government plan to increase medical school admissions, health ministry data showed, defying pressure from authorities to return to work.
South Korean authorities have been trying to coax the doctors to return to work by warning them that their medical licenses could be suspended but so far appear to have had little success with the tactic.
The health ministry said notices had been sent to more than 4,900 doctors as of Friday to instruct them that authorities could start suspending licenses if they did not explain their action.
Doctors who returned to work before the administrative measure to suspend licenses was complete would be “given leniency,” Cho told KBS Radio on Monday.
The government has the power to order doctors back to work if it deems there is a serious risk to lives and public health.
The government has said the plan to increase annual medical school admissions by 2,000 starting from 2025 is vital to remedy a shortage of doctors in one of the world’s fastest-ageing societies.
The striking doctors argue that simply adding medical students will not address pay and work conditions, and could possibly exacerbate the problems.
Critics of the policy also accuse President Yoon Suk Yeol of picking a fight over medical reforms to benefit his party ahead of parliamentary elections in April.
A survey published last week by the Yonhap news agency found 84% of respondents supported adding more doctors, while 43% said striking physicians should be sternly punished.
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‘Sacred Job’ Iraq Kurds Digitize Books to Save Threatened Culture
Dohuk, Iraq — Huddled in the back of a van, Rebin Pishtiwan carefully scans one yellowed page after another, as part of his mission to digitize historic Kurdish books at risk of disappearing.
Seen as the world’s largest stateless people, the Kurds are an ethnic group of between 25 million and 35 million mostly spread across modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
In Iraq, the Kurds are a sizeable minority who have been persecuted, with thousands killed under the rule of late dictator Saddam Hussein and many of their historic documents lost or destroyed.
“Preserving the culture and history of Kurdistan is a sacred job,” said Pishtiwan, perusing volumes and manuscripts from Dohuk city’s public library in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region.
“We aim to digitize old books that are rare and vulnerable, so they don’t vanish,” the 23-year-old added, a torn memoir of a Kurdish teacher published in 1960 in hand.
In Iraq, the Kurdish language was mostly marginalized until the Kurds’ autonomous region in the north won greater freedom after Saddam Hussein’s defeat in the 1990-1991 Gulf War.
After the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 toppled the dictator, remaining documents were scattered among libraries and universities or held in private collections.
Once a week, Pishtiwan and his two colleagues journey in their small white van from the regional capital Irbil to other Kurdish towns and cities to find “rare and old” books.
They seek texts that offer insights into Kurdish life, spanning centuries and dialects.
In Dohuk’s library, the archiving team scours the wooden bookshelves for hidden gems.
With the help of the library’s manager, they carefully gather an assortment of more than 35 books of poetry, politics, language and history, written in several Kurdish dialects and some in Arabic.
Pishtiwan holds up a book of old Kurdish folk stories named after 16th-century Kurdish princess Xanzad, before gently flipping through the fragile pages of another religious volume, tracing the calligraphy with his fingers.
Back in the van, equipped with two devices connected to a screen, the small team starts the hourslong scanning process before returning the books to the library.
In the absence of an online archive, the Kurdistan Center for Arts and Culture, a nonprofit founded by the nephew of regional President Nechirvan Barzani, launched the digitization project in July.
They hope to make the texts available to the public for free on the KCAC’s new website in April.
More than 950 items have been archived so far, including a collection of manuscripts from the Kurdish Baban principality in today’s Sulaimaniyah region that dates back to the 1800s.
“The aim is to provide primary sources for Kurdish readers and researchers,” KCAC executive director Mohammed Fatih said. “This archive will be the property of all Kurds to use and to help advance our understanding of ourselves.”
Dohuk library manager Masoud Khalid gave the KCAC team access to the manuscripts and documents gathering dust on its shelves, but the team was unable to secure permission from the owners of some of the documents to digitize them immediately.
“We have books that were printed a long time ago — their owners or writers passed away — and publishing houses will not reprint them,” Khalid said.
Digitizing the collection means that “if we want to open an electronic library, our books will be ready,” the 55-year-old added.
Hana Kaki Hirane, imam at a mosque in the town of Hiran, unveiled a treasure to the KCAC team — several generations-old manuscripts from a religious school established in the 1700s.
Since its founding, the school has collected manuscripts, but many were destroyed during the first war pitting the Kurds against the Iraqi state between 1961 and 1970, said Hirane.
“Only 20 manuscripts remain today,” including centuries-old poems, said the imam.
He is now waiting for the KCAC website launch in April to refer people to view the manuscripts.
“It is time to take them out and make them available for everyone,” he said.
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Malawi Activists Lobby for Abortion Law Reforms
In Malawi, 35,000 backstreet abortions were carried out in 2022 and 2023, according to its Ministry of Health. These unsafe procedures are just one reason support for abortion rights has increased in recent years. Chimwemwe Padatha has more from Lilongwe.
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Zambia Rolls Out New HIV Prevention Medicine
Zambia has received the first shipment of a new medicine to prevent HIV infection. The delivery makes Zambia only the second country in the world after the United States to offer the injectable preventative outside of a research setting. Kathy Short reports from Lusaka, Zambia. Camera and video editing by Richard Kille.
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China Tightens Grip Over Internet During Key Political Meeting
Beijing, China — China has intensified efforts to block software that enables internet users to access banned websites during a top political meeting this week, a leading provider of firewall-leaping software told AFP.
Beijing operates some of the world’s most extensive censorship over the internet, with web users in mainland China unable to access everything from Google to news websites without using a virtual private network (VPN).
And as thousands of delegates gather in Beijing this week for the annual “Two Sessions” meeting, VPN software has increasingly struggled to circumvent the censorship while outages have become much more frequent, even when compared to previous sensitive political events.
“Currently, there is increased censorship due to political meetings in China,” a representative of the Liechtenstein-based service Astrill — one of the most popular VPN services for foreigners in China — confirmed to AFP.
“Unfortunately, not all VPN protocols are functioning at this time,” they said. “We are working intensively on bringing all services back to normal, but currently have no ETA.”
The use of a VPN without government authorization is illegal in China, as is using the software to access blocked websites.
State media workers and diplomats, however, are allowed to access prohibited websites such as X, formerly Twitter.
Security has tightened across Beijing throughout the Two Sessions, with security officers patrolling streets with sniffer dogs and elderly volunteers in red armbands monitoring pedestrians for suspicious behavior.
Chinese social media giant Weibo has also been quick to block sensitive topics.
All hashtags discussing Beijing’s decision to call off a traditional news conference by the country’s premier were quickly removed from search results.
And another, a reference to China’s economic woes declaring “middle class children have no future” was also removed.
China’s domestic media is state-controlled and widespread censorship of social media is often used to suppress negative stories or critical coverage.
Regulators have previously urged investors to avoid reading foreign news reports about China.
In a speech last year, President Xi Jinping said the ruling Communist Party’s control of the internet had been “strengthened,” and that it was crucial that the state “govern cyberspace.”
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‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Opens No. 1 at Box Office, ‘Dune: Part Two’ Lingers
Los Angeles — As Universal Pictures prepared for a big night at the Academy Awards with “Oppenheimer,” the studio also celebrated the No. 1 debut of “Kung Fu Panda 4,” which collected $58.3 million in domestic theaters over the weekend, according to estimates Sunday.
“Kung Fu Panda 4,” the first film in the DreamWorks Animation franchise since the third installment in 2016, got off to a better start than all but the 2008 original. That “Kung Fu Panda,” which began the mystical adventures of Jack Black’s panda warrior Po, launched with $60.2 million.
Working in favor of “Kung Fu Panda 4”: It’s the first big family movie since “Migration” and “Wonka” hit theaters in December. “Kung Fu Panda 4” added $22 million internationally.
The news was just as good for last week’s top film, “Dune: Part Two.” Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic sequel held strongly in its second week, dropping a modest 44%. It grossed $46 million in its second week, bringing its domestic cumulative total to $157 million for Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.
Riding strong reviews, great word-of-mouth and plenty of sandworms, “Dune: Part Two” appears well set up for a long theatrical run. Most of Sunday’s Oscar nominees have already moved on to home viewing platforms, but “Dune” could wind up at next year’s Academy Awards.
Opening in third place was the Lionsgate, Blumhouse horror release “Imaginary,” about a sinister teddy bear. It debuted with $10 million.
Following it was “Cabrini,” a portrait of the 19th century Catholic missionary Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (played by Cristiana Dell’Anna). The film, released by the Christian-based company Angel Studios, the studio behind the 2023 surprise hit “Sound of Freedom,” collected $7.5 million.
A24 also debuted the critically acclaimed neo-noir “Love Lies Bleeding,” starring Kristen Stewart, on five screens in New York and Los Angeles. It grossed $167,463 for a good per-screen average of $33,493.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Kung Fu Panda 4,” $58.3 million.
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“Dune: Part Two,” $46 million.
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“Imaginary,” $10 million.
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“Cabrini,” $7.6 million.
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“Bob Marley: One Love,” $4.1 million.
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“Ordinary Angels,” $2 million.
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“Madame Web,” $1.1 million.
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“Migration,” $1.1 million.
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“YOLO,” $840,000
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MET Opera: “La Forza del Destino,” $768,000.
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Hollywood Heads to the Oscars With ‘Oppenheimer’ the Odds-on Favorite
Los Angeles — Hollywood’s glitterati gather on Sunday to celebrate the best performances in film at the annual Academy Awards, a ceremony expected to turn into a toast to blockbuster atomic bomb drama “Oppenheimer.”
Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel returns for the fourth time to emcee the film industry’s highest honors from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
“Oppenheimer,” the three-hour drama directed by Christopher Nolan, leads the field with 13 nominations. The movie is the frontrunner to win the prestigious best picture prize, capping its sweep of other major awards this year.
“If the best picture isn’t ‘Oppenheimer,’ it will be one of the biggest upsets, if not the biggest upset, in the history of the Oscars,” said Scott Feinberg, executive editor for awards at The Hollywood Reporter.
After 2023 was marred by actors and writers strikes, the Oscars give Hollywood a chance to celebrate two global hits. “Oppenheimer” and feminist doll adventure “Barbie,” another best picture nominee, brought in a combined $2.4 billion in a summer box office battle dubbed “Barbenheimer.”
Oscar producers said they have planned unannounced cameos and other surprises to entertain audiences at home.
“My biggest hope is that they go through a range of emotions with us, that they feel happiness and joy, that we maybe make them shed a tear,” Executive Producer Raj Kapoor said. “And then they somehow feel connected and inspired to also live their dreams.”
Supporting actor nominee Ryan Gosling will sing the ’80s-style rock anthem “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie.” Members of the Osage Nation will perform the nominated “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Cillian Murphy, the Irish actor who played physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he led the race to build the first atomic bomb, is considered the favorite for best actor. Murphy’s main competition, according to awards pundits, is “The Holdovers” star Paul Giamatti.
Best actress may go to Lily Gladstone of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the real-life story about a murder plot to take over lucrative Osage oil rights in 1920s Oklahoma. If she prevails, Gladstone would be the first Native American actress to win an acting Oscar.
Gladstone’s rivals include previous Oscar winner Emma Stone, nominated this year for playing a woman revived from the dead in the dark and wacky comedy “Poor Things.”
The supporting actor race features “Oppenheimer” star Robert Downey Jr., who played the scientist’s professional nemesis, and Sterling K. Brown from “American Fiction.”
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, praised for her role as a grieving mother in “The Holdovers,” vies for best supporting actress against Danielle Brooks from “The Color Purple” and others.
“Barbie,” last year’s No. 1 film with $1.4 billion in global ticket sales, may be shut out of the top awards. Billie Eilish’s “Barbie” ballad “What Was I Made For?” is likely to win the original song prize, Feinberg said, and could snag the awards for costumes and production design.
For Nolan, the night could bring his first directing Oscar, as well as the award for adapted screenplay. The director of “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception” and other acclaimed films has never had a movie win best picture.
The ceremony may end with “the industry-wide coronation for Christopher Nolan,” Feinberg said. With “Oppenheimer,” “he has he has made his best possible argument yet for why he is worthy of this recognition.”
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Michigan Museum Reveals Complex Heritage of Cambodian Art
New York — Six years ago, Nachiket Chanchani visited Angkor Wat for the first time. Inspired, the architectural historian began thinking about the relationship between the complexities of modern post-genocide Cambodia and the ancient temple complex.
Chanchani, an associate art history professor at the University of Michigan, kept reflecting on Angkor Wat, juxtaposing the temple complex against art created since the Khmer Rouge killed nearly 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
During the pandemic, his thoughts crystallized amid worldwide suffering, anxiety and fear. “I thought that this art, both from the deep past and from more recent times in Cambodia, can teach us lessons of how to kind of stay stable, find some way forward,” he told VOA Khmer Service via Zoom.
The University of Michigan Museum of Art, or UMMA, one of the largest university museums in the United States, is now exhibiting 80 pieces of Cambodian art in a show guest curated by Chanchani in Ann Arbor. Titled “Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia,” it opened February 3 and runs through July 28. Featured artists Vann Nath, Sopheap Pich, Svay Sareth, Amy Lee Sanford and Leang Seckon, who live in Cambodia and the U.S., have pieces in the exhibit.
The Angkor Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, covers more than 400 square kilometers (155 square miles). Once a city of nearly a million people, the site contains some of Cambodia’s most famous structures, including those recognized worldwide after being seen in movies such as “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and In the Mood for Love.”
Playing with the dictionary meanings of “complex” such as “a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts,” “a building or group of buildings housing related units” or “a group of repressed desires and memories that exerts a dominating influence upon the personality,” Chanchani saw how the exhibit could “allow us to think about these different layers, these different kinds of ideas of complexness.”
Today, “Cambodians regard Angkor Wat as a sacred center, a national symbol, and a site of memory,” according to the exhibition guide.
“Like Angkor Wat’s bullet-ridden walls, contemporary artworks from Cambodia and its diaspora bear the scars of a genocide and of related upheavals,” said Chanchani, adding that as a non-Cambodian outsider, he was aware of the exhibition’s sensitive nature. “It’s not as if this is something that happened a thousand years ago that you can just say, it happened,” he said. “The survivors are still there.”
Chanchani hoped bringing Cambodian art to the U.S. would console viewers.
But what could the U.S., one of the biggest economic and military powers learn from Cambodia, a small southeast Asian country, other than how to move on from painful memories and what the exhibition catalog describes as the current interwoven global crises of “public health, economic instability, authoritarian regimes, racial injustice and climate change?”
And how does one nation heal from an event like the Khmer Rouge killing nearly a quarter of the population in its quest to create an agrarian utopia for worker-peasants?
For some Cambodians, it can seem as if, 40 years later, the nation can barely move on or show off a new face when it is still being referred to in the context of the past suffering, especially on the international stage.
Reaksmey Yean, a Cambodian art writer, curator and researcher in Phnom Penh, applauded the Michigan show, but added it is a “cliche” because Angkor Wat and the Khmer Rouge have been overused to identify Cambodia.
“An exhibition about Cambodia, its history and culture is rare in the U.S., so I think it is important to have the exhibition to put Cambodia on the map,” Reaksmey Yean told VOA Khmer Service. “However, it is a cliche for me because it’s been more than 20 years when our civil war completely ended and there are so much in our cultures that can be shown.”
Museum Director Christina Olsen said the audience will have a chance to learn about the “distinct cultural and political [significance] of Cambodia” through the historical and contemporary arts by Cambodian and diasporic artists.
“At the same time, the exhibition invites consideration of today’s broader cultural, social and political happenings and fosters dialogue about the lessons that can be taken from the pain and resilience of the Cambodian people,” she added in the press release.
Svay Sareth is a Cambodian artist whose works in sculpture, installation and durational performance “are made using materials and processes intentionally associated with war — metals, uniforms, camouflage and actions requiring great endurance,” according to the Richard Koh Gallery in Singapore. Sareth’s interest in how Cambodia was affected by war and how its people are moving on has informed his art.
“I want the audience in the U.S. [to] see how the post genocide in Cambodia affect the intergeneration,” Sareth said.
Another work, “Full Circle,” by Khmer American artist Amy Lee Sanford, is comprised of 40 broken clay pots, repaired and installed in a circle. She is known for her “Break Pot” performance pieces where she would drop the clay pot from a height, then glue all the pieces back together, an effort to show how situations can change in seconds and even when repaired, can never be the same again.
Sanford said she hopes the Michigan exhibition will show that Cambodians “have a memory of some of the important architectural and religious structures … and that also that there are contemporary artists now doing things related to history and related to looking forward as well.”
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Ransomware Attacks: Death Threats, Endangered Patients and Millions of Dollars in Damages
your ad hereCzech Republic’s Krystyna Pyszková Crowned Miss World in India
MUMBAI, India — Krystyna Pyszková of the Czech Republic was crowned Miss World at a glittering contest held in India on Saturday night.
Yasmina Zaytoun of Lebanon was the first runner-up among 112 contestants in the competition held in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital.
“Being crowned Miss World is a dream come true. I am deeply honored to represent my country and the values of ‘beauty with a purpose’ on a global platform,” Pyszkova said.
After the reigning Miss World, Karoline Bielawska of Poland, passed the crown to her, Pyszková waved to the large crowd at the Jio World Convention Center and hugged some of the other contestants.
The event showcased the rich tapestry of India’s culture, traditions, heritage, arts and crafts, and textiles to a massive global audience. The participants wore heavily embroidered skirts and blouses and danced to popular Bollywood songs.
The beauty competition returned to India for the first time in 28 years.
India’s Sini Shetty exited after making it to the final eight. Six Indian women have won the title, including Reita Faria (1966), Aishwarya Rai (1994), Diana Hayden (1997), Yukta Mookhey (1999), Priyanka Chopra (2000) and Manushi Chillar (2017).
The 71st Miss World beauty pageant was hosted by Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar and Miss World 2013 Megan Young from the Philippines.
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Russian Hackers Breach Microsoft Core Software Systems
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — Microsoft said Friday it’s still trying to evict the elite Russian government hackers who broke into the email accounts of senior company executives in November and who it said have been trying to breach customer networks with stolen access data.
The hackers from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service used data obtained in the intrusion, which Microsoft disclosed in mid-January, to compromise some source-code repositories and internal systems, the software giant said in a blog and a regulatory filing.
A company spokesperson would not characterize what source code was accessed and what capability the hackers gained to further compromise customer and Microsoft systems. Microsoft said Friday that the hackers stole “secrets” from email communications between the company and unspecified customers — cryptographic secrets such as passwords, certificates and authentication keys — and that it was reaching out to them “to assist in taking mitigating measures.”
Cloud-computing company Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed on January 24 that it, too, was an SVR hacking victim and that it had been informed of the breach — by whom it would not say — two weeks earlier, coinciding with Microsoft’s discovery it had been hacked.
“The threat actor’s ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination and focus,” Microsoft said Friday, adding that it could be using obtained data “to accumulate a picture of areas to attack and enhance its ability to do so.”
Cybersecurity experts said Microsoft’s admission that the SVR hack had not been contained exposes the perils of the heavy reliance by government and business on the Redmond, Washington, company’s software monoculture — and the fact that so many of its customers are linked through its global cloud network.
“This has tremendous national security implications,” said Tom Kellermann of the cybersecurity firm Contrast Security. “The Russians can now leverage supply chain attacks against Microsoft’s customers.”
Amit Yoran, the CEO of Tenable, also issued a statement, expressing alarm and dismay. He is among security professionals who find Microsoft overly secretive about its vulnerabilities and how it handles hacks.
“We should all be furious that this keeps happening,” Yoran said. “These breaches aren’t isolated from each other, and Microsoft’s shady security practices and misleading statements purposely obfuscate the whole truth.”
Microsoft said it had not yet determined whether the incident is likely to materially affect its finances. It also said the intrusion’s stubbornness “reflects what has become more broadly an unprecedented global threat landscape, especially in terms of sophisticated nation-state attacks.”
The hackers, known as Cozy Bear, are the same hacking team behind the SolarWinds breach.
When it initially announced the hack, Microsoft said the SVR unit broke into its corporate email system and accessed accounts of some senior executives as well as employees on its cybersecurity and legal teams. It would not say how many accounts were compromised.
At the time, Microsoft said it was able to remove the hackers’ access from the compromised accounts on or about January 13. But by then, they clearly had a foothold.
It said they got in by compromising credentials on a “legacy” test account but never elaborated.
Microsoft’s latest disclosure comes three months after a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule took effect that compels publicly traded companies to disclose breaches that could negatively affect their business.
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‘Game of Thrones’ Makers Turn to Iconic Chinese Sci-Fi
Paris — The makers of “Game of Thrones” return with “3 Body Problem,” the adaptation of an iconic Chinese sci-fi trilogy.
It premieres this weekend at the South by Southwest Festival in Texas before launching on Netflix on March 21.
Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, coming off their huge hit with “Game of Thrones,” have liberally translated from the books by Liu Cixin, which has already been adapted for Chinese TV.
The trilogy of books, which began with “The Three-Body Problem” in 2008, jumps between countries, eras and protagonists as Earth confronts an existential threat. It is considered a sci-fi landmark.
“Making ‘Game of Thrones’ was the greatest experience of our lives, but we spent 10 solid years living in that fictional world, so we wanted something that presented a new set of challenges on every level,” Weiss said.
“It’s the story of an impending threat, but it’s tethered by and centered around this core group of characters,” said Benioff.
The cast includes three of the main actors from “Game of Thrones”: John Bradley as an Oxford scientist, Liam Cunningham as the head of an intelligence agency and Jonathan Pryce as an oil tycoon.
The showrunners also brought back key members of the effects and production crew — as well as composer Ramin Djawadi — to try to achieve the same grandiose and polished style.
It was shot to a speedy nine-month schedule across England, Spain, the United Nations headquarters in New York and Cape Canaveral in Florida.
“Between climate change and the pandemic, we’ve gotten a glimpse into how people in the world react differently to a global threat,” said Weiss. “We see a similar spectrum of reactions in ‘3 Body Problem,’ which resonates with so many of us now.”
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Pentagon Study Finds No Sign of Alien Life in Reported UFO Sightings
washington — A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades.
The study from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it.
“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report focused on more recent research will be out later.
U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life.
A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links, but it drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection.
The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects — the same one that released Friday’s report — had received “several hundreds” of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life.
The authors of Friday’s report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public’s imagination.
“AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information,” the report said.
“The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population,” it added.
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Activists See India as New Front in Fight Against Female Genital Mutilation
Washington — A U.N. report released Friday about the prevalence of female genital mutilation around the globe is drawing attention to the practice among the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Muslim minority sect based in India.
India is not on the UNICEF list of 31 countries released Friday. But the extent of FGM in India, although small relative to its population and long shrouded in secrecy, is coming into the open.
The ritual is mostly practiced by the Dawoodi Bohras, a subsect of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam with an estimated 1 to 2 million followers around the globe. Recent surveys show that as many as 80% of Bohra girls undergo genital mutilation as a religious right of passage.
“We are still significant, even if our numbers are few,” said Aarefa Johari, a Dawoodi Bohra activist and co-founder of Sahiyo, an anti-FGM advocacy group. “Injustices and harmful practices must be opposed because they are wrong, not because of the number of people they affect.”
Affluent and politically influential, most Dawoodi Bohras live in India’s Gujarat province, with smaller communities thriving in Pakistan, Yemen, East Africa, the Middle East, Australia and North America.
The World Health Organization defines FGM, also known as female genital cutting, as “procedures involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for nonmedical reasons.” The organization says the practice has no health benefits and classifies it as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.
The UNICEF report, released on International Women’s Day, shows that more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, an increase of 30 million compared with data released eight years ago. Africa accounts for over 144 million of the total, followed by Asia with over 80 million, and the Middle East with 6 million.
Shelby Quast, an international human rights lawyer, said India should have been “absolutely” included in the UNICEF report.
Noting that FGM is practiced in at least 92 countries, she said the report captures “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“We can’t eliminate FGM by 2030 if we’re not looking at it in all the countries where it exists,” Quast said in an interview.
The method practiced in the Dawoodi Bohra community involves the cutting of a part of the clitoral hood. The Bohras deny it’s a form of genital mutilation. They prefer the term khatna, or female circumcision, and say it is safe. Although not endorsed by most Muslim scholars, the Dawoodi Bohras see it as a religious duty.
Until recent years, the practice was little-known outside the close-knit community. The issue came to light after a 2011 online campaign launched by survivors. Others came forward with harrowing stories of trauma.
Court cases in Australia and the United States exposed its prevalence among diaspora communities.
In 2016, three Dawoodi Bohras in Australia were sentenced to 15 months in prison for violating the country’s FGM ban.
In 2017, four members of the community in the U.S., including two doctors, were charged with performing FGM on at least six minor girls. A federal judge later dismissed the charges as unconstitutional, but the case put the spotlight on the Dawoodi Bohra community’s practice of FGM.
Spurred by the publicity, community activists and human rights advocates sprang into action to shed light on the problem.
Research by Johari’s group revealed that FGM was also practiced by small communities in India’s Kerala state.
Female genital mutilation was long associated with Africa. But the recent “discovery” of FGM in India and other Asian communities has shown that it’s a global problem, Johari said.
“I believe it has important implications for the global movement to end it,” said Johari, herself a survivor.
Like many Dawoodi Bohra girls, Johari was “cut” at the age of 7. The physical effects of the ritual sometimes extend into adulthood. But Johari considers herself among the fortunate; she was spared the complications.
“What impacted me at a later age, however, was the realization and the understanding of what had been done to me,” Johari said via email from Mumbai. “When you are cut as a young child, you have no way of knowing what your original anatomy was like, how much was cut, and how it will affect your sexual experiences later.
“[FGM] supporters in the community like to claim that our type of ‘mild’ cut makes no difference to sexual life; some even claim it enhances sexual pleasure,” Johari said. “But none of them have a frame of reference, and the uncertainty, the not knowing, leaves me feeling frustrated, helpless and angry.”
The discord has divided the community. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the group’s spiritual leader, has defied calls for a ban.
“Whatever the world says, we should be strong and firm. … It must be done,” he said during a religious sermon in Mumbai in 2016.
Meanwhile, Indian government officials have wavered on the issue, and a push to criminalize FGM has stalled in India’s Supreme Court, according to Lakshmi Anantnarayan, a human rights activist and researcher.
Some officials initially backed a prohibition only to change their position and deny FGM’s existence, Anantnarayan said.
A petition filed in 2017 with India’s Supreme Court demanding an FGM ban has triggered strong pushback from the powerful Bohra community.
The petition calls FGM a discriminatory practice and a gross violation of the rights of women and girls. But Bohra leaders, joined by a group of Bohra women, have defended it as an “essential” religious ritual protected under India’s Constitution.
The Supreme Court has tasked two panels with examining the constitutionality of female genital cutting. A decision in the case is still pending.
The delay “clearly demonstrates the lack of political will amongst legal authorities, policymakers and law enforcement to prioritize protecting girls from FGM in India,” Anantnarayan said in an email. “Like so many other issues of violence against women in India, FGM/C too continues to be practiced with impunity as the country just turns a blind eye to the plight of women and girls.”
The Indian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
India is not the only Asian country without an FGM ban. The ritual persists in at least 10 countries on the continent, all without legal prohibition.
In the face of opposition from the powerful Bohra community, many activists view a ban as unlikely. But they don’t see changing laws as a panacea. Instead, they find hope in shifting mindsets.
Mariya Taher, another co-founder of Sahiyo and herself a survivor, noted that the same survey that revealed an 80% prevalence rate of FGM among the Bohras also found that 81% opposed continuing the tradition.
“The assumption was that everyone thought it was important to continue,” she said in an interview.
She said she learned from talking to fellow Dawoodi Bohras in the U.S. that some mosque leaders have been quietly urging mothers to spare their daughters, despite the group’s official stance.
“I think social change takes a long time, but it’s heartening to see that as this issue gets more attention, we are seeing that attitudes towards it are shifting,” she said.
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Methane-Tracking Satellite Launched Into Space
A new climate satellite takes off. Plus, a fresh crew arrives at the International Space Station, and NASA may want to hire you. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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US-China Science, Tech Pact Is Renewed for Another Six Months
State Department — The United States and China have agreed to extend a science and technology agreement for another six months, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.
“The Department of State on behalf of the U.S. government is negotiating to amend, extend and strengthen protections within the U.S.-PRC Science and Technology Agreement (STA). In February 2024, the United States and PRC agreed to an additional short-term six-month extension of the U.S.-PRC STA,” a spokesperson told VOA.
“The short-term six-month extension keeps the agreement in force while we continue negotiations,” the spokesperson added.
U.S. officials have said the STA provides consistent standards for government-to-government scientific cooperation between the U.S. and China.
While the agreement supports scientific collaboration in areas that benefit the United States, U.S. officials acknowledge the challenges posed by China’s national science and technology strategies and its domestic legal framework.
Critics, including U.S. lawmakers, point out China’s restrictions on data and a lack of transparency in sharing scientific findings. Washington is also concerned about Beijing’s potential military application of shared research.
The STA was originally signed in 1979 by then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter and then-PRC leader Deng Xiaoping.
The agreement has been renewed about every five years since its inception, with the most recent 5-year extension occurring in 2018. Last August, it received a 6-month extension as officials from the two countries undertook negotiations to amend and strengthen the terms.
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Panama Farmers Embrace Butterfly Breeding Eco-Venture
Many ranchers in Panama are making the transition from breeding livestock to much smaller creatures – butterflies. Not only is it good for the planet, but for some, it’s proven to be an economic winner. Oscar Sulbaran reports in this story, narrated by Veronica Villafane.
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NASA, US Navy Prepare Astronauts for Moon Mission
Although NASA has delayed the launch of a crewed mission to orbit the moon until 2025 at the earliest, four selected astronauts are training in preparation for the first such journey in more than 50 years. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh caught up with the crew of Artemis II during training and has more from San Diego.
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