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Month: December 2023
Wars, Hunger, Climate Shocks: Is UN Up to the Challenge?
New wars and growing hunger and poverty on a warming planet — and little the United Nations can do to fix it. VOA correspondent Margaret Besheer looks at the U.N.’s future in a world where its impact is shrinking.
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Can Maui Get Tourists Without Compounding Wildfire Trauma?
LAHAINA, Hawaii — The restaurant where Katie Austin was a server burned in the wildfire that devastated Hawaii’s historic town of Lahaina this summer.
Two months later, as travelers began to trickle back to nearby beach resorts, she went to work at a different eatery. But she soon quit, worn down by constant questions from diners: Was she affected by the fire? Did she know anyone who died?
“You’re at work for eight hours and every 15 minutes you have a new stranger ask you about the most traumatic day of your life,” Austin said. “It was soul-sucking.”
Hawaii’s governor and mayor invited tourists back to the west side of Maui months after the August 8 fire killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings. They wanted the economic boost tourists would bring, particularly heading into the year-end holidays.
But some residents are struggling with the return of an industry requiring workers to be attentive and hospitable even though they are trying to care for themselves after losing their loved ones, friends, homes and community.
Maui is a large island. Many parts, like the ritzy resorts in Wailea, 48 kilometers south of Lahaina — where the first season of the HBO hit The White Lotus was filmed — are eagerly welcoming travelers and their dollars.
Things are more complicated in west Maui. Lahaina is still a mess of charred rubble. Efforts to clean up toxic debris are painstakingly slow. It’s off-limits to everyone except residents.
Tensions are peaking over the lack of long-term, affordable housing for wildfire evacuees, many of whom work in tourism. Dozens have been camping out in protest around the clock on a popular tourist beach at Kaanapali, a few miles north of Lahaina. Last week, hundreds marched between two large hotels waving signs reading, “We need housing now!” and “Short-term rentals gotta go!”
Hotels at Kaanapali are still housing about 6,000 fire evacuees unable to find long-term shelter in Maui’s tight and expensive housing market. But some have started to bring back tourists, and owners of timeshare condos have returned. At a shopping mall, visitors stroll past shops and dine at open-air oceanfront restaurants.
Austin took a job at a restaurant in Kaanapali after the fire but quit after five weeks. It was a strain to serve mai tais to people staying in a hotel or vacation rental while her friends were leaving the island because they lacked housing, she said.
Servers and many others in the tourism industry often work for tips, which puts them in a difficult position when a customer prods them with questions they don’t want to answer. Even after Austin’s restaurant posted a sign asking customers to respect employees’ privacy, the queries continued.
“I started telling people, ‘Unless you’re a therapist, I don’t want to talk to you about it,'” she said.
Austin now plans to work for a nonprofit organization that advocates for housing.
Erin Kelley didn’t lose her home or workplace but has been laid off as a bartender at Sheraton Maui Resort since the fire. The hotel reopened to visitors in late December, but she doesn’t expect to get called back to work until business picks up.
She has mixed feelings. Workers should have a place to live before tourists are welcome in west Maui, she said, but residents are so dependent on the industry that many will remain jobless without those same visitors.
“I’m really sad for friends and empathetic towards their situation,” she said. “But we also need to make money.”
When she does return to work, Kelley said she won’t want to “talk about anything that happened for the past few months.”
More travel destinations will likely have to navigate these dilemmas as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
There is no manual for doing so, said Chekitan Dev, a tourism professor at Cornell University. Handling disasters — natural and manmade — will have to be part of their business planning.
Andreas Neef, a development professor and tourism researcher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, suggested one solution might be to promote organized “voluntourism.” Instead of sunbathing, tourists could visit part of west Maui that didn’t burn and enlist in an effort to help the community.
“Bringing tourists for relaxation back is just at this time a little bit unrealistic,” Neef said. “I couldn’t imagine relaxing in a place where you still feel the trauma that has affected the place overall.”
Many travelers have been canceling holiday trips to Maui out of respect, said Lisa Paulson, the executive director of the Maui Hotel and Lodging Association. Visitation is down about 20% from December of 2022, according to state data.
Cancellations are affecting hotels all over the island, not just in west Maui.
Paulson attributes some of this to confusing messages in national and social media about whether visitors should come. Many people don’t understand the island’s geography or that there are places people can visit outside west Maui, she said.
One way visitors can help is to remember they’re traveling to a place that recently experienced significant trauma, said Amory Mowrey, the executive director of Maui Recovery, a mental health and substance abuse residential treatment center.
“Am I being driven by compassion and empathy or am I just here to take, take, take?” he said.
That’s the approach honeymooners Jordan and Carter Prechel of Phoenix adopted. They kept their reservations in Kihei, about 40 kilometers south of Lahaina, vowing to be respectful and to support local businesses.
“Don’t bombard them with questions,” Jordan said recently while eating an afternoon snack in Kaanapali with her husband. “Be conscious of what they’ve gone through.”
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US Military’s Secretive Spaceplane Launched on Possible Higher-Orbit Mission
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The U.S. military’s secretive X-37B robot spaceplane blasted off from Florida on Thursday night on its seventh mission, the first launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket capable of delivering it to a higher orbit than previous missions.
The Falcon Heavy, composed of three rocket cores strapped together, roared off its launch pad from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in a spectacular nighttime liftoff carried live on a SpaceX webcast.
The launch followed more than two weeks of false starts and delays. Three earlier countdowns were aborted due to poor weather and unspecified technical issues, leading ground crews to roll the spacecraft back to its hangar before proceeding with Thursday’s fight.
It came two weeks after China launched its own robot spaceplane, known as the Shenlong, or “Divine Dragon,” on its third mission to orbit since 2020, adding a new twist to the growing U.S.-Sino rivalry in space.
The Pentagon has disclosed few details about the X-37B mission, which is conducted by the U.S. Space Force under the military’s National Security Space Launch program.
The Boeing-built vehicle, roughly the size of a small bus and resembling a miniature space shuttle, is built to deploy various payloads and conduct technology experiments on long-duration orbital flights. At the end of its mission, the craft descends back through the atmosphere to land on a runway much like an airplane.
It has flown six previous missions since 2010, the first five of them carried to orbit by Atlas V rockets from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and most recently, in May 2020, atop a Falcon 9 booster furnished by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Thursday’s mission marked the first launched aboard SpaceX’s more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, capable of carrying payloads even heavier than the X-37B farther into space, possibly into geosynchronous orbit, more than 35,000 kilometers above the Earth.
The X-37B, also called the Orbital Test Vehicle, has previously been confined to flights in low-Earth orbit, at altitudes below 2,000 kilometers.
New orbital regimes
The Pentagon has not said how high the spaceplane will fly this time out. But in a statement last month, the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office said mission No. 7 would involve tests of “new orbital regimes, experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies.”
The X-37B also is carrying a NASA experiment to study how plant seeds are affected by prolonged exposure to the harsh environment of radiation in space. The ability to cultivate crops in space has major implications for keeping astronauts nourished during future long-term missions to the moon and Mars.
China’s equally secretive Shenlong was carried to space on December 14 by a Long March 2F rocket, a launch system less powerful than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and believed to be limited to delivering payloads to low-Earth orbit.
Still, Space Force General B. Chance Saltzman told reporters at an industry conference earlier this month he expected China to launch Shenlong around the same time as the X-37B flight in what he suggested was a competitive move.
“It’s no surprise that the Chinese are extremely interested in our spaceplane. We’re extremely interested in theirs,” Saltzman said, according to remarks published in Air & Space Forces Magazine, a U.S. aerospace journal.
“These are two of the most watched objects on orbit while they’re on orbit. It’s probably no coincidence that they’re trying to match us in timing and sequence of this,” he said.
The planned duration of the latest X-37B mission has not been made public, but it will presumably run until June 2026 or later, given the prevailing pattern of successively longer flights.
Its last mission remained in orbit for well over two years before a return landing in November 2022.
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Congo Rules Out Election Repeat as Observers Flag Irregularities
KINSHASA, Congo — The government of Congo on Thursday refused opposition calls for a rerun of disputed elections, as the main observer mission reported “numerous irregularities” that could undermine some results.
Provisional results issued so far from the December 20 general election show President Felix Tshisekedi with a commanding lead, but his opponents have demanded they be annulled, citing widespread issues with the roll-out and tabulation of the vote.
The dispute threatens to further destabilize Congo, which is already grappling with a security crisis in eastern areas. Congo is the world’s top producer of cobalt and other industrial minerals and metals.
Mission documented ‘irregularities’
In a new report on the presidential and legislative elections based on feedback from thousands of observers, the independent joint vote-monitoring mission of Congo’s powerful Catholic Church and its Protestant Church, said it had received 5,402 reports of incidents at polling stations, over 60% of which interrupted voting.
The mission “documented numerous irregularities likely to affect the integrity of the results,” it said.
In particular, it questioned the legality of the CENI election commission’s decision to extend some voting beyond December 20 and reported that voting was not wrapped up fully until December 27.
The team of Moise Katumbi, one of Tshisekedi’s main challengers, has ruled out using legal channels to contest results, asserting that state institutions were committed to tipping the vote in the president’s favor. The CENI denies this.
Katumbi and other opposition heavyweights have called for a rerun, but government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya said on Thursday the opposition should wait until full results are published and challenge them in the courts if necessary.
He said the government was committed to a fair and transparent election process and dismissed Katumbi’s threat to hold further protests across the country, after police forcibly broke up a banned election march on Wednesday.
“The contesting of results does not take place in the streets. And we as a government will take steps to ensure that public order is maintained,” Muyaya said.
Vote-count questions
The CENI is due to release further provisional presidential results ahead of a December 31 deadline. The latest showed Tshisekedi well ahead of his 18 challengers, with just over 76% of around 12.5 million votes counted so far.
The CENI has not yet said how many of Congo’s 44 million registered voters participated. It has so far processed the results of 46,422 polling stations out of 75,969, according to its latest tally.
In addition to the election day issues, the opposition and independent observers say the CENI is failing to follow correct procedure for the tabulation and publishing of results.
The CENI did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Symocel, a local civil society observer mission, wrote a letter to the CENI on December 26 to flag reports from several provinces of CENI agents mishandling sensitive election materials and conducting election operations outside official centers.
“The rate of this phenomenon … is so high and could irreversibly distort the results of the elections that your institution is gradually announcing,” it said.
Symocel’s coordinator Luc Lutala confirmed the letter’s authenticity on Wednesday and told Reuters “there are as many problems with the election’s roll-out as with the counting of the vote.”
In its report, the CENCO-ECC mission urged the CENI to publish only results based on correctly consolidated tallies from local centers.
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Stigma Against Gay Men Could Worsen Congo’s Biggest Mpox Outbreak, Scientists Warn
Kinshasa, Congo — As Congo copes with its biggest outbreak of mpox, scientists warn discrimination against gay and bisexual men on the continent could make it worse.
In November, the World Health Organization reported that mpox, also known as monkeypox, was being spread via sex in Congo for the first time.
That is a significant departure from previous flare-ups, where the virus mainly sickened people in contact with diseased animals.
Mpox has been in parts of central and west Africa for decades, but it was not until 2022 that it was documented to spread via sex; most of the 91,00 people infected in approximately 100 countries that year were gay or bisexual men.
In Africa, unwillingness to report symptoms could drive the outbreak underground, said Dimie Ogoina, an infectious diseases specialist at the Niger Delta University in Nigeria.
“It could be that because homosexuality is prohibited by law in most parts of Africa, many people do not come forward if they think they have been infected with mpox,” Ogoina said.
WHO officials said they identified the first sexually transmitted cases of the more severe type of mpox in Congo last spring, shortly after a resident of Belgium who “identified himself as a man who has sexual relations with other men” arrived in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. The U.N. health agency said five other people who had sexual contact with the man later became infected with mpox.
“We have been underestimating the potential of sexual transmission of mpox in Africa for years,” said Ogoina, who with his colleagues, first reported in 2019 that mpox might be spreading via sex.
Gaps in monitoring make it a challenge to estimate how many mpox cases are linked to sex, he said. Still, most cases of mpox in Nigeria involve people with no known contact with animals, he noted.
In Congo, there have been about 13,350 suspected cases of mpox, including 607 deaths through the end of November with only about 10% of cases confirmed by laboratories. But how many infections were spread through sex isn’t clear. WHO said about 70% of cases are in children under 15.
During a recent trip to Congo to assess the outbreak, WHO officials found there was “no awareness” among health workers that mpox could be spread sexually, resulting in missed cases.
WHO said health authorities had confirmed sexual transmission of mpox “between male partners and simultaneously through heterosexual transmission” in different parts of the country.
Mpox typically causes symptoms including a fever, skin rash, lesions and muscle soreness for up to one month. It is spread via close contact and most people recover without needing medical treatment.
During the 2022 major international outbreak, mass vaccination programs were undertaken in some countries, including Canada, Britain and the U.S., and targeted those at highest risk — gay and bisexual men. But experts say that’s not likely to work in Africa for several reasons, including the stigma against gay communities.
“I don’t think we’ll see the same clamoring for vaccines in Africa that we saw in the West last year,” said Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an assistant professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
She said that the gay and bisexual men most at risk of mpox might be fearful of coming forward in a broad immunization program. Countries should work on ways to give the shots — if available — in a way that wouldn’t stigmatize them, she said.
Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyemba, general director of Congo’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, said two provinces in Congo had reported clusters of mpox spread through sex, a concerning development.
There’s no licensed vaccine in Congo, and it would be hard to get enough shots for any large-scale program, Muyemba said. The country is trying to get a Japanese mpox vaccine, but regulatory issues are complicating the situation, he said.
Globally, only one vaccine has been authorized against mpox, made by Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic. Supplies are very limited and even if they were available, they would have to be approved by the African countries using them or by WHO. To date, the vaccine has only been available in Congo through research.
Without greater efforts to stop the outbreaks in Africa, Ogoina predicted that mpox would continue to infect new populations, warning that the disease could also spark outbreaks in other countries, similar to the global emergency WHO declared last year.
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French Departure From Niger Underscores Fading Influence
PARIS — France closes 2023 with a diminished presence in Africa’s restive Sahel region, after withdrawing troops from three once-staunch allied countries collectively fighting an Islamist insurgency, and seeing its influence increasingly replaced by other powers, including Russia.
The last French soldiers left Niger earlier this month, with Paris taking the unusual step of closing its embassy in Niamey as well. The troop withdrawal follows a pullout from Burkina Faso earlier this year and from Mali in 2022 — following coups in all three countries condemned by France, the former colonial power — and amid rising anti-French sentiment.
A five-country alliance, the G-5 Sahel, that partnered with France to fight terrorism across a swathe of desolate territory south of the Sahara, has all but collapsed. The remaining members, Chad and Mauritania, suggest its dissolution is near.
And on Sunday, Nigerien authorities announced they were suspending all cooperation with the Paris-based International Organization of Francophone Nations, aimed to promote the French language.
Now, as other countries and entities soften stances toward coup leaders they once condemned, Paris appears increasingly isolated in bucking the trend — a stance some observers believe must change.
“It’s time that France shows certain pragmatism,” the influential Le Monde newspaper wrote in a September editorial, as Paris remained locked in a standoff with coup leaders in Niger. “Although the reality of our institutional ties with the African continent is multiform, it’s not healthy that French influence appears almost completely within a military dimension.”
Bakery Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute-African Center for Peace, offered a similar take.
“France’s retreat from Niger signals a new era,” he said. “It underscores a broader trend of needing to rethink security cooperation — and of cooperation overall.”
Filling the void
France’s reduced influence in the Sahel contrasts sharply with a decade ago, when Paris launched its Barkhane counterinsurgency operation, aimed at working alongside the five most affected countries in pushing back jihadist threats. At its height, some 5,500 French troops were stationed in the region.
The cascade of coups, first in Mali, then in Burkina Faso last year and finally in Niger in July — all three countries at the heart of the Sahel insurgency — has sharply shrunk those numbers. Just 1,000 French troops now remain in Chad, where France currently bases its anti-jihadist operation in the region.
When coup generals toppled Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum in July, France remained staunchly behind the democratically elected leader. It initially refused the generals’ request to repatriate French Ambassador Sylvain Itte or to withdraw French forces.
While other nations and institutions adopted a similar tough approach, their positions have since softened. The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, which once threatened a military intervention, has shelved its insistence that Bazoum be reinstated. It now calls for a short power transition and other conditions in return for lifting sanctions.
The United States, which dispatched a new ambassador to Niger in August, said this month it was willing to resume cooperation with Niger, if Niamey promised to swiftly restore civilian rule. In sharp contrast to its position on France, Niger’s new government has not called for the departure of the roughly 1,000 U.S. troops stationed on its territory.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who visited Niger earlier in the month, said Berlin was interested in resuming projects with the ruling military. Germany has a small military contingency in Niger.
“Germany is trying to fill a void left by France in the Sahel,” said analyst Sambe, summing up a broader European concern. “There needs to be a champion in the region.”
A new generation of Africans also views the U.S. favorably, Sambe said; it does not have the baggage carried by France as a former colonial power, and, it has adopted a low-key presence in the region.
“Africans want to diversify their partnerships with other countries,” he said. “There’s a new generation without the complexes of previous ones that demands respect.”
A broader Sahel vision
A succession of French leaders has promised to reboot French ties to Africa. That includes President Emmanuel Macron, who earlier this year also promised a sharply reduced and revamped military presence on the continent, even as he seeks new ties beyond France’s former colonial empire.
But a November report by France’s National Assembly calls for bigger changes: from creating more Africa specialists within the foreign ministry and appointing ambassadors with roots in the African diaspora, to rehauling French development aid and adopting a more transparent and pragmatic Africa policy.
“The deterioration of our ties to Africa is such that our relationship with the continent must be prioritized in order to renew it,” the report’s co-author, Bernard Fuchs, told Le Monde.
Meanwhile, the military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso have moved away from France and the West to strengthen ties with Russia and its Wagner paramilitary group. Early in December, Niger annulled two security deals with the European Union and held talks with Russian officials to strengthen security cooperation.
Despite Russia’s growing influence, insecurity in the Sahel has grown, analysts and officials say. Russia has also been accused of rights violations.
For his part, the Timbuktu Institute’s Sambe said he does not believe the Sahel’s new generation is necessarily moving toward Russia but rather away from France.
To offer an attractive alternative, he believes Paris and other Western governments need to consider policies that emphasize development along with security and consider coastal West African nations that are increasingly at risk of jihadist attacks.
“There has to be a vision of a broader Sahel,” he said, “that addresses the region’s weaknesses and especially fights against disinformation.”
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Syrian Immigrants Win $1M for Selling $1.75B Lottery Ticket
Two Syrian immigrant brothers in California will share $1 million in 2024. It’s a bonus from the state lottery for selling the ticket that won the second-biggest Powerball jackpot ever. Genia Dulot has our winning story.
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Vietnam Wary of China’s ‘Swift, Large-Scale’ Investment
WASHINGTON — An influx of Chinese investors in Vietnamese supporting industries could cause domestic businesses to suffer from the competition, the president of the Vietnam Association for Supporting Industries warned.
Phan Dang Tuat’s statement came a week after Vietnam and China agreed to expand their trade cooperation during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s mid-December visit, during which the two countries signed 36 cooperation documents. Vietnam and China pledged to strengthen their cooperation in economic zones, investment, trade and other areas, said a joint statement issued on December 13.
According to economic experts, the agreements will open opportunities for Vietnam to attract high-quality direct investment from China.
But Tuat said the wave of Chinese supporting-industry firms arriving in the Southeast Asian country is concerning.
Supporting industries supply raw materials and components to manufacturers.
Tuat voiced his concern at the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s year-end conference on December 20, questioning the rapid and large-scale entry of Chinese firms into the market, according VN Express International, a Vietnamese newspaper.
Chinese supporting industry companies are flocking to Vietnam, swiftly forming large-scale components and parts production chains to export to Europe and North America, Tuat said.
“This is a huge concern for domestic supporting industry enterprises,” Tuat said, according to VN Express International.
China-U.S. trade war
Since then-U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, many Chinese products have been found to be disguised or labeled as “Made in Vietnam” to avoid U.S. tariffs on goods imported from China, according to reports by Reuters.
The trade war has also encouraged Chinese firms to move their production to other countries, including Vietnam, to bypass U.S. tariffs.
Meanwhile, Tuat told the ministry’s conference that because of a lack of economies of scale, Vietnam’s domestic firms are grappling with expensive capital and high manufacturing expenses, making it difficult to compete with Chinese firms, according to Vietnam-based Tuoi Tre.
Vietnamese companies in 2023 saw a 40% drop in revenue partly because of fewer orders from major markets, such as Europe, according to Tuat.
He also said that Vietnam’s unusually high lending rates have undermined the nation’s supporting industry enterprises, which number about 1,500 companies. (Whereas Vietnamese firms are required to borrow from Vietnamese banks at rates of 10% to 12%, foreign investors can borrow abroad at significantly lower rates, according to reports by Tuoi Tre.)
Ha Hoang Hop, an associate senior fellow at Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told VOA: “This should serve as a wake-up call for Vietnam to speed up its supporting industries in order to catch up with Chinese competitors who are way ahead.”
There is reason for concern, Pham Chi Lan, former general secretary of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told VOA.
“But we need to face that fact and learn from the lesson in the past where foreign investors chose Chinese suppliers instead of Vietnamese for their production in Vietnam,” he said.
Semiconductors a potential boon
The U.S.-China trade war has led semiconductor investors to shift their focus to Vietnam, a potential boon for the Southeast Asian nation, according to Hop and Lan.
“The U.S. has included Vietnam in its ‘friendshoring’ network, and Vietnam should make the most out of this,” said Hop, referring to the practice of focusing supply chain networks in countries regarded as U.S. political and economic allies.
Experts said Vietnam is well-positioned to draw U.S. investors seeking to de-risk supply chain investments in China.
“The competition between the U.S. and China is getting intense when the U.S. is banning the export of some equipment and technology to China, and this is a great opportunity for Vietnam to be able to secure some deals,” said Hop, referring to the U.S. export ban on chipmaking equipment and rare-earth technologies.
Lan, who was an adviser to the late Vietnamese Prime Ministers Vo Van Kiet and Phan Van Khai, agreed with Hop.
“The U.S., Japan and European countries want Vietnam to be strong for their benefits instead of being weak and dependent on China,” Lan said.
Following an historic U.S.-Vietnam business summit in September that bolstered ties between the countries, Vietnam then elevated Japan into its circle of comprehensive strategic partners, on par with China, in November. Washington and Tokyo sought to upgrade ties with Hanoi to offset Beijing’s expansion of power in the region and reduce its dependence on Chinese supply chains, according to experts who spoke with VOA.
Announcing its new partnership with Vietnam, the U.S. State Department described it as a way “to explore opportunities to grow and diversify the global semiconductor ecosystem” that “will help create more resilient, secure and sustainable global semiconductor value chain.”
Vietnam is poised to expand into chip-designing and possibly chip-making as trade tensions between the United States and China create opportunities for the country, according to Lan and Hop.
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Mbongeni Ngema, South African Playwright, Dies in Crash at 68
JOHANNESBURG — Renowned South African playwright, producer and composer Mbongeni Ngema, the creator of the Broadway hit “Sarafina!”, has died in a car crash at the age of 68, his family said.
Ngema was killed in a head-on accident while returning from a funeral in a rural town in Eastern Cape province, the family said in a statement Wednesday. The celebrated playwright was a passenger in the vehicle.
He was best known for writing “Sarafina!”, which premiered on Broadway in 1988. It was adapted into a musical drama starring Whoopi Goldberg in 1992 and became an international success that was nominated for Tony and Grammy awards.
“Sarafina!” told the story of a student and how she inspired her peers to fight against racial segregation in apartheid South Africa after her favorite teacher, played by Goldberg, was jailed for protesting against the system.
The story was based on the events of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa, when thousands of students took part in protests against the apartheid government.
Apartheid was an institutionalized system that discriminated against non-whites and ensured South Africa was ruled by the minority white population from 1948 until the first all-race democratic elections in 1994.
Ngema’s body of work also included the lauded theater production “Woza Albert,” which premiered in 1981 and won more than 20 awards around the world. The political satire explored the second coming of Jesus Christ as a black man in South Africa during apartheid.
Tributes to Ngema poured in, including from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“The many productions he created or to which he contributed inspired resilience and pride among us as fellow South Africans and took South Africa and our continent into the theaters, homes and consciousness of millions of people around the world,” Ramaphosa said in a statement.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party and one of its biggest rivals, the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters, both conveyed their condolences.
The ANC said in a statement: “He was a globally acclaimed playwright, composer and producer. We have lost a true legend, a doyen, and a genuine ambassador of theater.”
The Economic Freedom Fighters party described him as “more than just an artist; he was a cultural icon and a beacon of hope during some of our darkest times.”
Zizi Kodwa, South Africa’s minister of sports, arts and culture, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Ngema’s work “touched and moved audiences around the world and made an important contribution in telling the South African story.”
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Ukraine Aid Vote in US Senate Will Not Happen in 2023
U.S. lawmakers broke for the holidays without reaching a deal on border security funding in return for Republican votes to send almost $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, negotiations are expected to continue into the new year.
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Texas, Yelp Feud Over Pregnancy Resource Centers
Women seeking abortions in the U.S. state of Texas face conflicting legal opinions about who qualifies for medical exceptions to abortion laws and some confusion about which clinics provide what services. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling that guaranteed abortion rights, Texas enacted a near-total abortion ban. Deana Mitchell has our story from the Texas capital, Austin
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Rivers Remain High in Parts of Northern and Central Europe After Heavy Rain
BERLIN — Parts of northern and central Europe continued to grapple with flooding on Thursday after heavy rain. A barrier near the German city of Magdeburg was opened for the first time in a decade to ease pressure from the Elbe River, and some animals were removed from their enclosures at a safari park in northern Germany.
This week’s floods have prompted evacuations of dozens or hundreds of people in parts of northern and central Germany, but largely dry weather was forecast on Thursday. Still, water levels on some rivers caused concern, and they have continued to rise in parts of Lower Saxony state in the northwest.
The Elbe was nearly 4 meters (13 feet) above its normal level in Dresden, German news agency dpa reported. Downstream, the Pretziener Wehr, a flood barrier built in the 1870s on a branch of the river and renovated in 2010, was opened for the first time since large-scale floods in 2013.
The aim was to divert about a third of the river’s water into a 21-kilometer (13-mile) channel that bypasses the town of Schoenebeck and Saxony-Anhalt’s state capital, Magdeburg.
In Lower Saxony, the Serengeti-Park on the swollen Meisse River in the town of Hodenhagen faced flooding that began to affect some animal enclosures. Lemurs, prairie dogs and meerkats were moved to other parts of the grounds. Temporary dikes were put up to protect other enclosures.
To the south in Germany’s Thuringia region, several hundred inhabitants of the village of Windehausen who evacuated earlier this week were cleared to return home after power was restored.
In the neighboring Netherlands, the Rhine peaked far above normal levels early Thursday at Lobith village on the German border but was expected to drop significantly over the next week, authorities said. Other branches of the Rhine around the low-lying country were expected to peak Thursday as the high waters move toward the sea.
Emergency workers in the Dutch town of Deventer, forecast to be the hardest hit, heaped sandbags along the Ijssel River and closed roads to prepare for flooding. Several flood plains were underwater in the eastern Netherlands as rivers surged in recent days.
In Hungary, the Danube spilled over its banks in Budapest and was expected to peak in the capital on Thursday. Heavy rain has compounded the effects of melting snow.
While some smaller rivers in western Hungary have started to recede, water levels on the Danube are predicted to fall slowly, with the peak downstream in southern Hungary coming only on New Year’s Eve on Sunday.
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Syrian Immigrant Shopkeepers $1.75B Lottery Ticket
Syrian immigrant brothers in California will be sharing one million dollars in 2024. It’s a bonus from the state lottery for selling the ticket that won the second-biggest Powerball jackpot ever. Genia Dulot has our winning story.
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Central Africa Blames Fuel Shortage on Supply Disruptions, Smuggling
YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Central Africa has, for months, been plagued with acute fuel shortages that have stifled regional economic growth, disrupted local businesses, and contributed to rising food prices and social unrest. The shortages are partly blamed on increased demand coupled with disruptions in supply, and on illegal trade in conflict zones.
Officials in several central African states say vehicle owners, truck drivers and motorcyclists in major cities wait for several hours, sometimes days, to fill their tanks as pumps have been regularly running dry since fuel shortages started several months ago.
Cameroonian officials partly blame ongoing disruptions to stormy weather off the Atlantic coast, stranding cargo ships at the regional hub port of Lome, Togo.
The landlocked Central African Republic, which receives fuel supplies through Cameroon’s Douala seaport, also reports disruptions. Aid agencies in the country, which has been hit by sectarian violence, say if nothing is done to stop the fuel crisis, delivery of needed humanitarian aid will be affected.
A severe fuel crisis is also stirring social unrest in Chad. Officials there report protests in the capital, N’djamena, and in towns including Bongor, Moundou, Faya-Largeau and Abeche, where the military this week said it dispersed protesters with tear gas.
Chad’s military government said this week that its troops seized hundreds of containers of fuel illegally transported to the border with Sudan. Chad says contraband fuel trade increased on its border with Sudan since ferocious fighting broke out in Sudan’s civil war in April.
Amina Ehemir Torna, director General of Chad’s Downstream Sector Regularization Authority, which is responsible for the regulation, control and monitoring of standards of petroleum operations there, said merchants should immediately stop illegal exports to neighboring countries that are also facing severe fuel shortages. Torna said gasoline and diesel fuel are highly combustible and should not be stored in jerry cans and buckets at home with the hope of selling to illegal vendors at exorbitant rates should the ongoing fuel shortage persist.
Sudan’s fighting shut down businesses and forced civilians and fuel merchants to flee the northeastern African state. Chadian officials say Sudanese civilians who brave the fighting, as well as troops of Sudan’s national army and a rival national paramilitary force, rush to Chad’s porous 1,400-kilometer border for fuel regularly.
Salisu Yunissa, president of Chad’s Consumers Union in Adré, a town in Ouaddai province that is home to about 210,000 Sudanese refugees, said the shortage has plunged host communities and refugees into deeper poverty and is causing unprecedented increases in the prices of rice, onions, corn, millet and sorghum. He said a 30-kilogram bag of onions that sold at $40 had tripled in price to about $120 within the past two months.
Yunissa said the price hikes, environmental disasters, and armed conflicts make living very difficult for a majority of civilians who are not sure of a meal each day.
There is some hope the situation will change soon in the region. Chad, Cameroon and the CAR this month regulated fuel sales to 20 liters per motorist with the aim of stabilizing supply and demand. Chad says its shortage will improve when a refinery in N’Djamena that closed in April for maintenance reopens, although it did not say when that would happen.
Cameroon says besides the liberalization of petroleum products imports, it is importing what it calls enough quantities to meet the country’s increasing demand for fuel.
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Chain-Reaction Motorway Crash Kills at Least 10, Injures 57 in Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey — A chain-reaction crash Thursday involving seven vehicles on a motorway in northwest Turkey killed at least 10 people and injured 57 others, officials said.
The pileup occurred in dense fog and low visibility on the Northern Marmara Highway in Sakarya province, some 150 kilometers from Istanbul.
An investigation has been launched into the accident but Gov. Yasar Karadeniz of Sakarya said it likely occurred when a vehicle hit a truck in poor visibility, triggering other crashes at the rear.
At least three intercity buses were involved in the crash.
Authorities believe some passengers died when they left their vehicles and were struck by another vehicle, Karadeniz told reporters at the scene.
Seven of the injured were in serious condition, the governor said.
Police and emergency personnel were seen clearing the wreckage at the scene.
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Russian Plane Lands on Frozen River
MOSCOW — A Soviet-era Antonov-24 aircraft carrying 30 passengers and 4 crewmembers landed on a frozen river near an airport in Russia’s far east on Thursday because of pilot error, transport prosecutors said.
The Polar Airlines An-24 landed safely on the Kolyma river near Zyryanka in the Yakutia region, the prosecutors said. “According to preliminary information, the cause of the aviation incident was an error by the crew in piloting the aircraft,” a spokesperson for the Eastern Siberian transport prosecutor said in a statement.
Prosecutors published pictures of the aircraft on a frozen river. The Izvestia newspaper published pictures of passengers disembarking.
“The An-24 aircraft landed outside of the runway of the Zyryanka airport,” Polar Airlines said in a short statement.
“There were no casualties,” it said.
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Entrepreneur Recycles Metal and Other Parts of Old Solar Panels
Yuma, Arizona — As the world pivots from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy, a new pollution problem is rearing its head: What to do with old or worn-out solar panels?
Thousands of photovoltaic slabs are being installed across the United States every day, particularly in the sunny west and south of the country, as states like California race to toward greener energy production.
But with an expected lifespan of around 30 years, the first wave of solar installations is now coming to the end of its usefulness, sparking a rush to recycle things that might otherwise end up in the landfill.
“What is about to happen is a tsunami of solar panels coming back into the supply chain,” said Adam Saghei, chief executive of Arizona-based We Recycle Solar.
“One of the challenges with any industry is, there hasn’t been that much planning for a circular economy,” he said. “(Solar) is a sustainable form of energy; there needs to be a plan for the retirement of those assets.”
Saghei’s plan involves, among other things, reusing panels.
Up to 5% of panels either have a minor production defect or get damaged during transport or installation.
These still-working panels can be refurbished and diverted to other markets, often abroad, Saghei said.
But for the panels that no longer function, either because they’re decrepit, or because they were damaged beyond use during installation, or smashed by hailstones, there’s treasure to be found.
“We’re doing what’s called urban mining,” Saghei said, referring to a process that took his engineers three years to perfect.
That mining recovers silver, copper, aluminum, glass and silicone, all commodities that have a value on the open market.
While the uses for the metals might be obvious, what to do with silicone and glass is less so, but nonetheless intriguing.
“You can use it for sand traps on golf courses, you can refine it for sandblast mix, you can also use it for the stones or the glass mix that you get for outdoor fireplaces,” Saghei said.
With the capacity to process up to 7,500 panels every day at the plant in Yuma, a surprisingly small amount goes to waste.
“Depending on the make and model of the panels … we’re able to get up to 99 percent recovery rate,” he said.
Logistics challenges
For Meng Tao, who specializes in sustainable energy infrastructure at Arizona State University, developing an efficient lifecycle for solar panels is a pressing issue.
With the United States among the countries committed to weaning itself off of fossil fuels, solar panel installation looks set to increase and peak two decades from now.
“Once it matures, then the annual installation and the decommissioning will be about the same,” he told AFP.
“But for the next 20 years … at least for the next 10 years … we’ll just have more installations than retirements,” he said.
The problem with recycling, he said, is not just that the value of recovered materials from panels can be relatively low, but also the logistics.
With panels distributed to thousands of sometimes far-flung rooftops, it can cost a lot of money just to get them to a recycling center.
And unlike some jurisdictions, the United States imposes the cost of removal and recycling on the end user, making it more attractive for households just to dump their old units at the local landfill.
“There has to be some policy support” to plug the gap between what consumers will pay and the total lifecycle cost of the panels, Tao said.
Growing market
For Saghei, as for any business leader, profitability is important.
“You don’t see too many getting into the business because recycling has a cost. It’s not free. It’s labor intensive. It’s energy intensive,” he said.
But he does see a way forward.
Recovering materials from old solar panels that can be put back into new solar panels is — he is convinced — a winning proposition.
“These are markets that are growing,” he said.
“Right through this process we are able, once the industry scales to even larger figures, to put those raw commodities back into the supply chain,” he said. “What’s exciting is we’re at the forefront.”
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