Month: September 2024

Vietnam aims for 1 semiconductor fab plant, 10 packaging plants by 2030

Posted on by SeeEA

HANOI, VIETNAM — Vietnam aims to have at least one semiconductor fabrication plant and 10 packaging plants by 2030, and will launch a fund to help foreign investors mitigate the impacts of the global minimum business tax, the government said on the weekend.

The country’s semiconductor industry is targeting revenue of $25 billion by 2030, the government said in a statement after the release of its semiconductor industry development strategy on Saturday.

The Southeast Asian country, a regional manufacturing hub, is seeking to move to high-tech industries from labor-intensive ones. As part of its drive, the country aims to have 50,000 semiconductor engineers by 2030, the government said.

Several global electronics and semiconductor firms including Intel, Samsung, Amkor Technology, Qualcomm and Marvell Technology have facilities in the country.

Beyond the initial 2030 target, the government said it plans to have at least three semiconductor fabrication plants and 20 packaging plants, with annual revenues of $100 billion, by 2050.

In July, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said it was finalizing a draft plan to set up a fund to help attract foreign investment into high-tech industries and maintain the country’s competitiveness.
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Micro dramas shake up China’s film industry, aim for Hollywood

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ZHENGZHOU, China — On a film set that resembles the medieval castle of a Chinese lord, Zhu Jian is busy disrupting the world’s second-largest movie industry.

The 69-year-old actor is playing the patriarch of a wealthy family celebrating his birthday with a lavish banquet. But unbeknownst to either of them, the servant in the scene is his biological granddaughter.

A second twist: Zhu is not filming for cinema screens.

“Grandma’s Moon” is a micro drama, composed of vertically shot, minute-long episodes featuring frequent plot turns designed to keep millions of viewers hooked to their cellphone screens — and paying for more.

“They don’t go to the cinema anymore,” said Zhu of his audience, which he described as largely composed of middle-aged workers and pensioners. “It’s so convenient to hold a mobile phone and watch something anytime you want.”

China’s $5 billion a year micro drama industry is booming, according to Reuters’ interviews with 10 people in the sector and four scholars and media analysts.

The short-format videos are an increasingly potent competitor to China’s film industry, some experts say, which is second in size only to Hollywood and dominated by state-owned China Film Group. And the trend is already spreading to the United States, in a rare instance of Chinese cultural exports finding traction in the West.

Three major China-backed, micro-drama apps were downloaded 30 million times across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2024, grossing $71 million internationally, according to analytics company Appfigures.

“The audience only has that much attention. So obviously, the more time they spend in short videos, the less time they have for TV or other longer-format shows,” said Ashley Dudarenok, founder of a Hong Kong-based marketing consultancy.

The leader in the space is Kuaishou, an app that accounted for 60% of the top 50 Chinese micro dramas last year, according to media analytics consultancy Endata.

Kuaishou vice president Chen Yiyi said at a media conference in January that the app featured 68 titles that notched more than 300 million views last year, with four of them watched over a billion times.

Some 94 million people — more than the population of Germany — watched more than 10 episodes a day on Kuaishou, she said. Reuters was not able to independently verify the data.

Initial episodes on such apps are often free, but to complete a micro drama like “Grandma’s Moon,” which has 64 clips, audiences may pay tens of yuan.

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok that is owned by internet technology firm Bytedance, is also popular with micro drama fans.

Alongside other major Chinese social media apps like Instagram-like Xiaohongshu and YouTube competitor Bilibili, it has announced plans to make more.

In the United States, micro drama platform ReelShort, whose parent company is backed by Chinese tech giants Tencent and Baidu, has recently outranked Netflix in terms of downloads on Apple’s U.S. app store, according to market researcher Sensor Tower.

“China discovered this audience first,” said Layla Cao, a Chinese producer based in Los Angeles. “Hollywood hasn’t realized that yet, but all the China-based companies are already feeding the content.”

‘Low-brow and vulgar’

Many popular micro dramas, including “Grandma’s Moon,” have narratives that revolve around revenge or Cinderella-like rags-to-riches journeys.

Tales of how circumstances at birth are deterministic and can only be changed by near-miracles have struck a chord with viewers at a time when upward mobility in China is low and youth unemployment high.

The micro dramas often “show people who one day are lower class and the next day become upper class — you get so rich that you get to humiliate those who used to humiliate you,” said a 26-year-old screenwriter known by her pen name of Camille Rao.

Rao recently left her poorly paid job as a junior producer in the traditional film industry for what she described as the more dynamic and less hierarchical world of micro dramas. She now writes and adapts scripts for the U.S. market.

“Social mobility is actually very difficult now. Many people perceive this as a social reality,” said Xu Ting, associate professor of Chinese language and literature at Jiangnan University.

This has fueled interest in stories about billionaires and wealthy families, she added: “Everyone desires power and wealth, so it is normal for these type of stories to be popular.”

In the U.S. market, by contrast, fantasy stories about werewolves and vampires are particularly popular, several creators told Reuters.

The boom in micro dramas in China has brought scrutiny from the Communist Party.

Between late 2022 and early 2023, the National Radio and Television Administration regulator said it organized a “special rectification campaign” during which it removed 25,300 micro dramas, totaling close to 1.4 million episodes, due to their “pornographic, bloody, violent, low-brow and vulgar content.”

As Chinese leader Xi Jinping promotes values such as loyalty to the Communist Party and heteronormative marriages, the state-owned China Women’s News outlet in April complained that some micro dramas “portray unequal and twisted marriage and family relationships as a common phenomenon” and “deviate from mainstream social values.”

In June, the government began requiring some creators to register micro dramas with NRTA. The regulator didn’t respond to Reuters’ questions for this story.

Key to the commercial success of these films are plot twists that keep people paying as they scroll while commuting or in line at a grocery store. Episodes often end with a hook — such as a boyfriend walking in on his partner with another man — and viewers have to pay for the next episode to find out what happened.

“The plot of these micro dramas is exaggerated,” said Zhu, the actor. “It has plot reversals, it’s nonsensical, so it catches people’s attention and a large audience wants to see them.”

Zhu is a lover of cinema and an avid fan of Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Like many of his colleagues in micro dramas, he thinks the genre has limited artistic value. “I see it as fast food: a longer drama is a kind of sumptuous meal, and a micro drama is fast food.”

But its dedicated viewers disagree. Huang Siyi, a 28-year-old customer service agent, said she enjoyed watching romantic micro dramas because “the acting is good and the male and female leads are good-looking.”

“It’s easy to be obsessed with micro dramas,” she said.

Explosive growth

Vertical filming and distribution through social media apps mean micro dramas can be made with small overhead costs. Budgets for such films range from between $28,000 and $280,000, according to market researcher iResearch.

In the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, “Grandma’s Moon” is being made with a compressed budget and timeline. When Reuters visited the set in July, the filming day stretched until 2 a.m. The crew then moved to a new location and began shooting again at 7 a.m.

The show was shot in just six days, and Zhu, a muscular man with a wide smile and boundless energy, says he plays table tennis after hours to keep up with the young crew on set.

“We’d need to take two to three years to distribute one traditional TV series of film, but we only need three months to distribute a micro drama, saving us a lot of time,” said Zhou Yi, a showrunner at Chinese gaming giant NetEase, which also makes micro dramas.

As micro dramas gain in popularity, actors’ salaries have also grown. Leading roles used to pay $280 a day, said Zhu, adding that main actors in big productions can now make more than double the rate, though extras earn as little as $17 daily.

A retired railway employee who started acting in the 1970s in a theater troupe attached to the unit where he worked, Zhu now lives off his pension and occasional acting gigs.

Many Chinese micro drama producers have their eye on Western markets, where cultural exports from China have often struggled. NetEase last year started making productions for the U.S. that it distributes via an app called LoveShots; the made-for-export films aren’t typically available in China.

Micro dramas designed for the West are often made by production and acting crews in Los Angeles and shot on location. The scripts, which are in English, may also revolve around themes of wealth, cheating partners and miracles.

One of the latest micro dramas on LoveShots is about a woman who, after years of being paralyzed, miraculously regains her ability to move — and walks in on her husband cheating on her.
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Long-forbidden French anti-riot force sent to Martinique as thousands defy bans on protests

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Mexico City — France has sent a group of special anti-riot police that’s been banned for 65 years to the French Caribbean island of Martinique, where protesters have gathered despite the government barring demonstrations in parts of the island. 

The force arrived this weekend after the local representative of France’s central government in its overseas territory said in a statement that protests were forbidden in the municipalities of Fort-de-France, Le Lamentin, Ducos and Le Robert until Monday. The government also issued a curfew. 

The restrictions came after violent protests broke out on the island last week over the high cost of living, with gunfire injuring at least six police officers and one civilian. Police launched tear gas and government officials said several stores were also looted. 

Officials said the bans were meant “to put an end to the violence and damage committed at gatherings, as well as to the numerous obstacles to daily life and freedom of movement that penalize the entire population, particularly at weekends.” 

But the measure was met by defiance by many on the island, with massive peaceful protests breaking out Saturday night. Videos from local media show crowds of thousands peacefully walking along highways overnight banging on drums and waiving flags. 

As protests wound on without violence, the force of French anti-riot police arrived on the island and were staying at a hotel in Fort-de-France on Sunday. It wasn’t immediately clear how many were sent. 

The elite riot police, known as the Companies for Republican Security, were banned in the French territory following bloody riots in December 1959. The unit had been accused of using disproportionate force against protesters, ending in the deaths of a number of young demonstrators. The force is rarely deployed in French territories in the Caribbean but was called on during riots and strikes in Guadeloupe in 2009. 

Martinique’s leaders requested the forces amid the recent protests in an historic shift for the island, and one met with a sharp rejection by some in the territory. 

Beatrice Bellay, a representative of the socialist party on the island, blasted the move, saying: “Martinique is not in a civil war, it is a social war.” She called for an “open and transparent dialogue” between protesters and the government. 

“This measure … only serves to aggravate tensions and distract attention from the legitimate demands of the people of Martinique,” she wrote in a statement Sunday. 
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California governor signs law banning all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores

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Sacramento, California — “Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans all plastic shopping bags.

California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.

The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don’t bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill’s supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 3.6 kilograms per year in 2004 to 5 kilograms per year in 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn’t reduce the overall use of plastic.

“We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste,” she said in February.

The environmental nonprofit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the bill and “safeguarding California’s coastline, marine life, and communities from single-use plastic grocery bags.”

Christy Leavitt, Oceana’s plastics campaign director, said Sunday that the new ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts “solidifies California as a leader in tackling the global plastic pollution crisis.”

Twelve states, including California, already have some type of statewide plastic bag ban in place, according to the environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center. Hundreds of cities across 28 states also have their own plastic bag bans in place.

The California Legislature passed its statewide ban on plastic bags in 2014. The law was later affirmed by voters in a 2016 referendum.

The California Public Interest Research Group said Sunday that the new law finally meets the intent of the original bag ban.

“Plastic bags create pollution in our environment and break into microplastics that contaminate our drinking water and threaten our health,” said the group’s director Jenn Engstrom. “Californians voted to ban plastic grocery bags in our state almost a decade ago, but the law clearly needed a redo. With the governor’s signature, California has finally banned plastic bags in grocery checkout lanes once and for all.”

As San Francisco’s mayor in 2007, Newsom signed the nation’s first plastic bag ban.
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In Switzerland, voters reject plan to better protect country’s biodiversity

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Geneva — Switzerland, known for natural beauty like pristine lakes and majestic Alpine peaks, ranks among the world’s richest countries whose plant and animal life is under the greatest threat. Environmentalists were seeking better protections for the country’s biodiversity in a nationwide vote that culminated Sunday.

Final official results showed more than 63% of voters casting ballots had rejected the initiative that aimed to boost public funding to encourage farmers and others to set aside lands and waterways to let the wild develop more, and increase the total area allocated for green spaces that must remain untouched by human development.

The contest was decided by mail-in ballots followed by a morning of in-person voting Sunday.

Factors behind the weakening biodiversity in the country of rivers, lakes, valleys and mountains include intensified agriculture, soil alteration, a fragmentation of the landscape — such as the building of roads and housing that cut through wildlife habitats — and pollution and climate change, proponents of the measure said.

The federal government — parliament and the executive branch — opposed the plan, as did many rural voters and the country’s main right-wing party, according to polls. They called it too costly, saying 600 million Swiss francs (over $700 million) is already spent on biodiversity protection each year, and fear economic development will suffer.

Passage was estimated to cost at least another 400 million francs for national and local governments, the Federal Council estimates. The initiative would also, for example, prohibit the construction of new railway lines through protected dry meadows — even if such meadow is set aside and developed elsewhere, it says.

“Passage of the biodiversity initiative would severely limit (sustainable) energy and food production, restrict the use of forests and rural areas for tourism, and make construction more expensive,” argued the campaign for a “no” vote on its website. “YES to biodiversity, but NO to the extreme biodiversity initiative.”

Proponents, meanwhile, pointed to dwindling natural resources in Switzerland and threats to bees, frogs, birds, mosses and other wildlife. They argued that protected green spaces are “the main capital for tourism” and more of them would support local economies.

“Diversified nature guarantees air purity, drinkable water, pollination, fertility of the soil, and our food supply,” said a committee that backed the idea. “But in Switzerland, biodiversity is suffering. One-third of all our plant and animal species are threatened or have already disappeared.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a think tank that counts 38 mostly rich countries as members, has produced a comparative look at threats to plant and animal life. Switzerland ranks among the top four countries with the highest rates of threatened species in all eight categories of wildlife.

The voting was part of the latest Swiss referendums, which take place four times a year to give voters a direct say in policymaking in the country of around 9 million people. The only other nationwide issue up for consideration this time was a pension reform plan backed by the government.

More than two-thirds of voters turned down the pension reform plan, the final results showed.
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Spending deal averts possible US federal shutdown, funds government into December

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Washington — Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.

Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

But Johnson could not get all Republicans on board even as the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, insisted on that package. Trump said Republican lawmakers should not support a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement, but the bill went down to defeat anyway, with 14 Republicans opposing it.

Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.

In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”

Rep. Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, had said on Friday that talks were going well.

“So far, nothing has come up that we can’t deal with,” said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want that to interfere with the election. So nobody is like, ‘I’ve got to have this or we’re walking.’ It’s just not that way.”

Johnson’s earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.

The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown.

Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure over the finish line. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but some additional money was included to bolster the Secret Service, replenish a disaster relief fund and aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
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US to propose ban on Chinese software, hardware in connected vehicles, sources say

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Washington — The U.S. Commerce Department is expected on Monday to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads due to national security concerns, two sources told Reuters.

The Biden administration has raised serious concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on U.S. drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the internet and navigation systems.

The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the decision had not been publicly disclosed.

The move is a significant escalation in the United States’ ongoing restrictions on Chinese vehicles, software and components. Last week, the Biden administration locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles as well as new hikes on EV batteries and key minerals.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in May the risks of Chinese software or hardware in connected U.S. vehicles were significant.

“You can imagine the most catastrophic outcome theoretically if you had a couple million cars on the road and the software were disabled,” she said.

President Joe Biden in February ordered an investigation into whether Chinese vehicle imports pose national security risks over connected-car technology — and if that software and hardware should be banned in all vehicles on U.S. roads.

“China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security,” Biden said earlier. “I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”

The Commerce Department plans to give the public 30 days to comment before any finalization of the rules, the sources said. Nearly all newer vehicles on U.S. roads are considered “connected.” Such vehicles have onboard network hardware that allows internet access, allowing them to share data with devices both inside and outside the vehicle.

The department also plans to propose making the prohibitions on software effective in the 2027 model year and the ban on hardware would take effect in January 2029 or the 2030 model year. The prohibitions in question would include vehicles with certain Bluetooth, satellite and wireless features as well as highly autonomous vehicles that could operate without a driver behind the wheel.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers in November raised alarm about Chinese auto and tech companies collecting and handling sensitive data while testing autonomous vehicles in the United States.

The prohibitions would extend to other foreign U.S. adversaries, including Russia, the sources said.

A trade group representing major automakers including General Motors, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Hyundai and others had warned that changing hardware and software would take time.

The carmakers noted their systems “undergo extensive pre-production engineering, testing, and validation processes and, in general, cannot be easily swapped with systems or components from a different supplier.”

The Commerce Department declined to comment on Saturday. Reuters first reported, in early August, details of a plan that would have the effect of barring the testing of autonomous vehicles by Chinese automakers on U.S. roads. There are relatively few Chinese-made light-duty vehicles imported into the United States.

The White House on Thursday signed off on the final proposal, according to a government website. The rule is aimed at ensuring the security of the supply chain for U.S. connected vehicles. It will apply to all vehicles on U.S. roads, but not for agriculture or mining vehicles, the sources said.

Biden noted that most cars are connected like smartphones on wheels, linked to phones, navigation systems, critical infrastructure and to the companies that made them.
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Angry French cognac makers see red over Chinese tariffs threat

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Cognac, France — Frustrated cognac producers in southwestern France are growing increasingly anxious over the looming threat of Chinese tariffs on European brandy, a move industry representatives worry could force French liquor from the Chinese market.

Some 800 protesters riding on tractors and carrying signs gathered in France’s southwestern town of Cognac this week demanding a delay to an upcoming European Union vote to impose duties on Chinese electric vehicles.

This protest — the first since 1998 — comes after Beijing refused to rule out future tariffs following an anti-dumping investigation into brandy imported from the European Union.

The probe was launched months after the EU undertook an investigation into Chinese electric vehicle (EV) subsidies.

And with the EU set to vote next week on introducing tariffs on Chinese EVs, France’s brandy makers are worried about the consequences that vote could have on their livelihood.  

“The situation is urgent,” said Anthony Brun, the union head for Cognac’s brandy makers, adding that a decision to levy tariffs on Chinese EVs “will jeopardize the entire industry.”

Cognac’s interprofessional association BNIC said it was recently notified that China intends to impose tariffs of around 35% on European brandy, a move seen as targeting France.

This comes despite repeated assurances from Beijing it would not implement provisional tariffs after it found European brandy had been dumped into China, threatening the country’s domestic industry with “substantial damage.”  

“For a year now, we have been warning French and European authorities about this risk and the need to stop this downward spiral,” wrote Brun in a letter addressed to new French Prime Minister Michel Barnier about the tariff threat.

“We are the victims without being in any way responsible. … We have not been listened to,” Brun said, writing on behalf of the cognac union.

In May, French President Emmanuel Macron thanked his Chinese counterpart for not imposing customs duties on French cognac amid the probe, presenting Xi Jinping with bottles of the expensive drink.

But cooperating with Chinese authorities has produced “no results” and incurred millions in costs, said Florent Morillon, head of BNIC.

Tariffs could force French brandy to “disappear from the Chinese market,” which accounts for a quarter of exports, added Morillon.

The threat of losing the Chinese market could be existential for some brandy makers, who count on overseas consumers for up to 60% of their profits.

China imported more brandy than any other spirit in 2022, with most of it coming from France, according to a report by research group Daxue Consulting.

Cognac producers are calling on the EU to postpone its September 25 vote on imposing tariffs on EVs imported from China, fearing China will respond with customs duties on European brandy.

“We have no way out,” said Rodolphe Texier, a member of a farmers’ union in France’s western Charente region.

“If Europe doesn’t follow us, we’re dead,” said Texier, adding he is concerned about widespread repercussions throughout the industry which could impact everyone from distillers to barrel makers to truck drivers.

With more than 4,400 farms and some 85,000 jobs, France’s cognac industry is already in trouble after it saw a 22% drop in sales in 2023 and dramatically reduced new vine planting zones.

France’s brandy makers are not the only ones under pressure, as Beijing launched a probe into EU subsidiaries on some dairy products in August.

Even though a meeting is set “in principle” between BNIC and the prime minister’s office, Florent Morillon told AFP there is a feeling of being “taken hostage” by Paris and Brussels.

“The French and European authorities have decided to sacrifice us,” wrote union head Anthony Brun.

“Never mind our jobs, our weight in the local economy, our contribution to trade, and to France’s image,” he added.
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DR Congo woman creates jobs recycling plastics

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In Goma, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a woman-led recycling company is tackling plastic pollution, and creating jobs for some of the country’s millions of internally displaced people. Zanem Nety Zaidi takes us inside this entrepreneur’s business.
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Kyiv-born entrepreneur in US helps Ukrainian children get online education

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A business owner in Baltimore, Maryland, who was born in Kyiv has started a charity to help Ukrainian children affected by war.  Andriy Borys has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Viacheslav Filiushkin.
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Some US lawmakers urge cooling of heated presidential campaign rhetoric

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U.S. lawmakers from both major political parties have called for cooling the nation’s heated political rhetoric six weeks before the November 5th presidential election. This follows a second apparent assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. And his claims of immigrants eating people’s pets that has an Ohio Haitan community on edge. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
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More shelter beds and a crackdown on tents mean fewer homeless encampments in San Francisco 

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SAN FRANCISCO — Sidewalks once teeming with tents, tarps and people passed out next to heaps of trash have largely disappeared from great swaths of San Francisco, a city widely known for its visible homeless population.

The number of people sleeping outdoors dropped to under 3,000 in January, the lowest the city has recorded in a decade, according to a federal count.

And that figure has likely dropped even lower since Mayor London Breed — a Democrat in a difficult reelection fight this November — started ramping up enforcement of anti-camping laws in August following a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Homelessness in no way has gone away, and in fact grew 7%, to 8,300 in January, according to the same federal count.

But the problem is now notably out of the public eye, raising the question of where people have gone and whether the change marks a turning point in a crisis long associated with San Francisco.

“We’re seeing much cleaner sidewalks,” said Terry Asten Bennett, owner of Cliff’s Variety store in the city’s historically gay Castro neighborhood, adding that she hates to see homeless people shuffled around.

“But also, as a business owner, I need clean, inviting streets to encourage people to come and shop and visit our city,” she said.

Advocates for homeless people say encampment sweeps that force people off the streets are an easy way to hide homelessness from public view.

“Shelter should always be transitional,” said Lukas Illa, an organizer with San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness. “We shouldn’t have folks be in there as the long-lasting solution.”

Other California cities have also reported a drop in visible homelessness, thanks to improved outreach and more temporary housing. The beach city of Santa Cruz reported a 49% decline in people sleeping unsheltered this year, while Los Angeles recorded a 10% drop.

San Francisco has increased the number of shelter beds and permanent supportive housing units by more than 50% over the past six years. At the same time, city officials are on track to eclipse the nearly 500 sweeps conducted last year, with Breed prioritizing bus tickets out of the city for homeless people and authorizing police to do more to stamp out tents.

San Francisco police have issued at least 150 citations for illegal lodging since Aug. 1, surpassing the 60 citations over the entire previous three years. City crews also have removed more than 1,200 tents and structures.

Tracking homeless people is extremely difficult and where all the people once living on San Francisco’s streets have gone is impossible to know.

There are still people sleeping on sidewalks, some with just a blanket, and tents continue to crop up under freeway overpasses and more isolated corners of the city. But tents that once sprouted outside libraries and subway stations, and went on endlessly for blocks in the Mission, downtown and South of Market districts, are gone. Even the troubled Tenderloin district has seen progress.

Steven Burcell, who became homeless a year ago after a shoulder injury cost him his job, moved into one of 60 new, tiny cabins in May after the car he was living in caught fire.

Mission Cabins is a new type of emergency shelter that offers privacy and allows pets. But like all shelters, it has rules. No drugs, weapons or outside guests are allowed. Residents must consent to their rooms being searched.

“At the beginning, it was rough, you know, going in and just getting adjusted to being searched and having them look through your bags,” acknowledged Burcell, 51.

His tidy 65-square-foot (6-square-meter) room contains a twin bed, pairs of shoes lined by a door that locks and opens onto a sunny courtyard that, on a recent morning, was filled with the voices of children playing at the elementary school next door.

“To have your own space inside here and close the door, not sharing anything with anybody,” he said, “it’s huge.”

But Burcell opposes encampment sweeps. He said two friends rejected beds because they thought — inaccurately, he said — the shelter would be infested with rodents. That did not stop crews from taking their tent and everything inside it.

“Now they have nothing. They don’t have any shelter at all,” he said. “They just kind of wander around and take buses, like a lot of people do.”

Since 2018, San Francisco has added 1,800 emergency shelter beds and nearly 5,000 permanent supportive housing units, where people pay 30% of their income toward rent and the rest is subsidized, bringing the total to more than 4,200 beds and 14,000 units.

Breed, who first won office in June 2018, can claim credit for the expansion, although some plans were in place before she became mayor and her administration had huge financial help.

The money came from the federal government battling the pandemic and a California governor — and onetime San Francisco mayor — who made fighting homelessness and tent encampments his priority. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pumped at least $24 billion into the effort since taking office in 2019, including a program to turn hotels into housing.

San Francisco also benefited from a controversial 2018 wealth tax on the city’s tech titans that Breed opposed, saying companies would leave. There was no exodus and the pandemic overshadowed any fallout.

The funds have helped get people off the streets and tripled the annual budget of the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing from nearly $300 million in 2018 to $850 million this year.

But the department’s budget is expected to dip below $700 million next year, and that worries experts who say more is needed in a city where the median price of a home is $1.4 million.

“We still have a housing market that is way too expensive for way too many people. And as long as that continues to be the case, we’re going to see folks falling into homelessness,” said Alex Visotzky, a policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Advocates for the homeless say that’s why city officials need to invest in more affordable housing.

One such place is 835 Turk Street, a former hotel the city purchased and reopened two years ago as supportive housing. It’s home to David Labogin, who lost his housing after his mother died.

“Of course, things could be a whole lot better,” he said, sitting on a single bed, “but from where I came from, I got no complaints.”

But housing takes longer to build, and converting old properties is not cheap. The city purchased 835 Turk for $25 million and spent $18 million — twice the estimated amount — rehabilitating it.

Until then, shelters are adapting, accommodating couples and people with pets.

It takes new residents about two weeks to adjust to the rules at Mission Cabins, said Steve Good, CEO of operator Five Keys. “A few rules to keep them safe is better than living on the street, where there aren’t any rules,” he said.

“Amen,” said Patrick Richardson, 54, who stopped by to watch as Good was interviewed. He was on his way to a two-year college in Oakland where he is studying to be an X-ray technician.

Richardson had been sleeping on couches and pavement when an outreach worker offered him a cabin.

His new home, he said, “rescued me.
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Russian strike on Ukraine’s Kharkiv wounds 21 

Posted on by SeeEU

Kharkiv, Ukraine — A Russian strike on a residential neighborhood in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv wounded 21 people including three minors, the regional governor said Sunday. 

 

Oleg Synegubov posted on Telegram that eight of the victims were hospitalized, two in critical condition, after the strike late Saturday, when dozens of people were asleep in the two multistory buildings that were hit. 

 

Russia has repeatedly targeted Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, near the Russian border in the country’s east that counted 1.4 million inhabitants before Moscow launched its war in February 2022. 

 

Rescue workers used torches to search through the rubble, while one girl shook with sobs and held fast to a corridor wall, too scared to descend the stairs, and calling for her mother, an AFP reporter saw at the scene. 

 

A rescuer took her by the hand, saying, “Everything is OK,” and guided her down to her mother, Oleksandra. 

 

“It has just blown up. It’s terrible in there, the place is a wreck,” she said. 

 

The city’s mayor, Igor Terekhov, said at the site that “As you can see, there are no military here.” 

 

“Every day and every night Kharkiv suffers the hits,” he said. 

 

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the attack showed why his forces needed to use weapons supplied by Western allies to strike deeper into Russian territory, which, so far, they have refused. 

 

“We must reinforce our capabilities to better protect lives and ensure our security,” he said in a statement ahead of a U.S. trip this week, where he will address the U.N. General Assembly and hold talks in Washington.
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Alabama shooting leaves 4 dead, police say

Posted on by SeeUS

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Four people have died and more than 20 were wounded in a shooting in a nightlife area in the U.S. state of Alabama, according to police and news reports.

There were multiple people shot in Birmingham, the Birmingham Police Department said in a social media post.

Birmingham Officer Truman Fitzgerald said the shooting, with up to 21 people wounded, happened shortly after 11 p.m., AL.COM reported.

Fitzgerald said there were “dozens of gunshot victims” and at least four had “life-threatening” injuries, AL.COM reported.

Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced the three victims dead on the scene and a fourth person was pronounced dead at University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, AL.COM reported.

Police said the victims found dead at the scene included two men and a woman, WBMA-TV reported.

Other victims were transported to hospitals in private vehicles, police told WBMA.

The Birmingham police did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking additional information.

The Five Points South area of Birmingham has numerous entertainment venues, restaurants and bars and often is crowded on Saturday nights.

Police said there were no immediate arrests.

“We will do everything we possibly can to make sure we uncover, identify and hunt down whoever is responsible for preying on our people this morning,” Fitzgerald told WBMA. 
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Japan cracks down on bad-faith buyers as temple, shrine sales surge

Posted on by SeeEA

SANBAGAWA, Japan — Benmou Suzuki’s dilapidated 420-year-old temple, located deep in the forest near a tiny Japanese mountain village, hardly looks like prized real estate.

Yet the monk was recently approached by two men, who said they were real estate brokers and wanted to know if he was interested in selling.

He suspects they weren’t really interested in the ornate building at the trailhead of a sacred mountain, but the special tax status that comes with running a religious property.

“There are people out there who want a temple, even a mountain temple like this. In fact, considering the value of the religious corporation status, this temple could fetch quite a lot of money,” said 52-year-old Suzuki.

As Japan’s population falls and interest in religion declines, there are fewer people to contribute to the upkeep of the country’s numerous temples and shrines. Suzuki’s Mikaboyama temple, for example, is located in Sanbagawa — an area a three-hour drive from Tokyo with only 500 residents and which also has three other Buddhist temples, one Shinto shrine and a church.

A surge in religious properties coming up for sale has Japanese authorities worried that prospective buyers are not interested in them for heavenly purposes. Rather they fear many are out to dodge taxes or possibly even launder money.

“It’s already a sense of crisis for us and the religious community,” said an official at Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, which oversees religious sites.

Cases of temple or shrine properties being extensively repurposed have triggered public outrage. In Osaka, a temple sold in 2020 was later razed and dozens of graves were relocated to make way for a property development. In Kyoto, a case about a temple that was demolished and turned into a parking lot made headlines this year.

Owning a temple, shrine or church recognized as a religious corporation in Japan can confer sizeable tax benefits. Businesses under such corporations that offer religious services such as funerals do not have to pay taxes while other non-religious businesses also enjoy preferential tax rates. A wide range of undertakings are allowed from restaurants to hair salons to hotels.

Japan had about 180,000 religious sites with corporation status as end-2023, according to the agency’s data. The number of so-called inactive corporations — such as those with no religious events for more than a year — jumped by a third to more than 4,400.

When monks or priests die without a successor, the overseeing religious group will usually appoint someone to take over or voluntarily relinquish the site’s corporation status.

However, there are around 7,000 religious sites that operate independently of these groups and are considered easy to acquire, according to the agency and specialist brokers.

The cultural affairs agency said it has stepped up efforts to dissolve the corporation status of inactive religious sites to stop them from being targeted by dubious buyers.

And when big earthquakes hit, often damaging temples and shrines, agency officials visit religious groups in those areas, warning them about falling prey to such buyers.

Last year, 17 religious corporations were voluntarily dissolved and six were ordered to dissolve. The agency said the number would increase this year and next year as it ratchets up scrutiny.

It might seem easier for Japan to change its laws to more strictly control the criteria for purchasing religious sites. But the agency said the government is wary about amending laws related to religion as that could be seen as impinging on religious freedom which is guaranteed by Japan’s constitution.

Reuters checks of six websites specializing in brokering the sale of religious properties showed hundreds on the market. Most are only obliquely described online with brokers saying sellers prefer to conduct sales as privately as possible.

Osaka-based broker Takao Yamamoto told Reuters interest is surging. A religious corporation license alone can fetch 30 million yen ($210,000), he adds. Some religious sites, especially those with profitable graveyards, are advertised for millions of dollars.

“Anyone can buy independent sites as long as you have money…even foreigners can buy them. Recently, a lot of Chinese people are trying to buy them,” Yamamoto said.

For his part, Suzuki says he has no intention to sell Mikaboyama temple and is working on ideas to raise funds to maintain it. “Temples are places for local people to gather and forge connections. We just can’t get rid of them,” he said. 
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Kenyan church cult massacre that killed hundreds haunts survivors

Posted on by SeeAF

MALINDI, Kenya — Shukran Karisa Mangi always showed up drunk at work, where he dug up the bodies of doomsday cult members buried in shallow graves. But the alcohol couldn’t numb his shock the morning he found the body of a close friend, whose neck had been twisted so severely that his head and torso faced opposite directions.

This violent death upset Mangi, who had already unearthed children’s bodies. The number of bodies kept rising in this community off Kenya’s coastline where extremist evangelical leader Paul Mackenzie is accused of instructing his followers to starve to death for the opportunity to meet Jesus.

While he sometimes sees the remains of others when he tries to sleep, Mangi said recently, the recurring image of his friend’s mutilated body torments him when he’s awake.

“He died in a very cruel manner,” said Mangi, one of several gravediggers whose work was suspended earlier in the year as bodies piled up in the morgue. “Most of the time, I still think about how he died.”

In one of the deadliest cult-related massacres ever, at least 436 bodies have been recovered since police raided Good News International Church in a forest some 70 kilometers inland from the coastal town of Malindi. Seventeen months later, many in the area are still shaken by what happened despite repeated warnings about the church’s leader.

Mackenzie pleaded not guilty to charges in the murders of 191 children, multiple counts of manslaughter and other crimes. If convicted, he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Some in Malindi who spoke to The Associated Press said Mackenzie’s confidence while in custody showed the wide-ranging power some evangelists project even as their teachings undermine government authority, break the law, or harm followers desperate for healing and other miracles.

It’s not only Mackenzie, said Thomas Kakala, a self-described bishop with the Malindi-based Jesus Cares Ministry International, referring to questionable pastors he knew in the capital, Nairobi.

“You look at them. If you are sober and you want to hear the word of God, you wouldn’t go to their church,” he said. “But the place is packed.”

A man like Mackenzie, who refused to join the fellowship of pastors in Malindi and rarely quoted Scripture, could thrive in a country like Kenya, said Kakala. Six detectives have been suspended for ignoring multiple warnings about Mackenzie’s illegal activities.

Kenya, like much of East Africa, is dominated by Christians. While many are Anglican or Catholic, evangelical Christianity has spread widely since the 1980s. Many pastors style their ministries in the manner of successful American televangelists, investing in broadcasting and advertising.

Many of Africa’s evangelical churches are run like sole proprietorships, without the guidance of trustee boards or laity. Pastors are often unaccountable, deriving authority from their perceived ability to perform miracles or make prophecies. Some, like Mackenzie, can seem all-powerful.

Mackenzie, a former street vendor and cab driver with a high school education, apprenticed with a Malindi preacher in the late 1990s. There, in the laid-back tourist town, he opened his own church in 2003.

A charismatic preacher, he was said to perform miracles and exorcisms, and he could be generous with his money. His followers included teachers and police officers. They came to Malindi from across Kenya, giving Mackenzie national prominence that spread the pain of the deaths across the country.

The first complaints against Mackenzie concerned his opposition to formal schooling and vaccination. He was briefly detained in 2019 for opposing the government’s efforts to assign national identification numbers to Kenyans, saying the numbers were satanic.

He closed his Malindi church premises later that year and urged his congregation to follow him to Shakahola, where he leased 800 acres of forest inhabited by elephants and big cats.

Church members paid small sums to own plots in Shakahola, and were required to build houses and live in villages with biblical names like Nazareth, according to survivors. Mackenzie grew more demanding, with people from different villages forbidden from communicating or gathering, said former church member Salama Masha.

“What made me (realize) Mackenzie was not a good person was when he said that the children should fast to die,” said Masha, who escaped after witnessing the starvation deaths of two children. “That’s when I knew that it’s not something I can do.”

Mbatha Mackenzie, a mason who lives with his family and goats in a tin shack in Malindi, said that while Mackenzie was generous to his followers, he never treated his extended family with similar kindness.

“My brother — he seemed like a politician,” he said. “They have a sweet tongue, and when he talks something to the people, people believe him.”

A former church member who escaped Shakahola said she lost faith in Mackenzie when she saw how his men handled people on the verge of dying from starvation. She said Mackenzie’s bodyguards would take the starving person away, never to be seen again.

The woman said it was “like a routine” for the bodyguards to rape women in the villages. She says she, too, was sexually assaulted by four men while she was pregnant with her fourth child. The Associated Press does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault unless they choose to publicly identify themselves.

Those who tried to the leave the forest without Mackenzie’s permission faced beatings, as did those who were caught breaking fast, according to former church members.

Autopsies on more than 100 bodies showed deaths from starvation, strangulation, suffocation, and injuries from blunt objects. Mangi, the gravedigger, said he believed more mass graves were yet to be discovered in Shakahola. At least 600 people are reported missing, according to the Kenya Red Cross.
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This US city is hailed as a vaccination success. Can it be sustained?

Posted on by SeeUS

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — On his first day of school at Newcomer Academy, Maikel Tejeda was whisked to the school library. The 7th grader didn’t know why.

He soon got the point: He was being given make-up vaccinations. Five of them.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” said the 12-year-old, who moved from Cuba early this year.

Across the library, a group of city, state and federal officials gathered to celebrate the school clinic, and the city. With U.S. childhood vaccination rates below their goals, Louisville and the state were being praised as success stories: Kentucky’s vaccination rate for kindergarteners rose 2 percentage points in the 2022-23 school year compared with the year before. The rate for Jefferson County — which is Louisville — was up 4 percentage points.

“Progress is success,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But that progress didn’t last. Kentucky’s school entry vaccination rate slipped last year. Jefferson County’s rate slid, too. And the rates for both the county and state remain well below the target thresholds.

It raises the question: If this is what success looks like, what does it say about the nation’s ability to stop imported infections from turning into community outbreaks?

Local officials believe they can get to herd immunity thresholds, but they acknowledge challenges that includes tight funding, misinformation and well-intended bureaucratic rules that can discourage doctors from giving kids shots.

“We’re closing the gap,” said Eva Stone, who has managed the county school system’s health services since 2018. “We’re not closing the gap very quickly.”

Falling vaccination rates

Public health experts focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and the launching pad for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to mandates that required key vaccinations as a condition of school attendance.

But they have slid in recent years. When COVID-19 started hitting the U.S. hard in 2020, schools were closed, visits to pediatricians declined and vaccination record-keeping fell off. Meanwhile, more parents questioned routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect that experts attribute to misinformation and the political schism that emerged around COVID-19 vaccines.

A Gallup survey released last month found that 40% of Americans said it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019. Meanwhile, a recent University of Pennsylvania survey of 1,500 people found that about 1 in 4 U.S. adults think the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism — despite no medical evidence for it.

All that has led more parents to seek exemptions to school entry vaccinations. The CDC has not yet reported national data for the 2023-24 school year, but the proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements the year before hit a record 3%.

Overall, 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-23 school year. The rate was 95% in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Officials worry slipping vaccination rates will lead to disease outbreaks.

The roughly 250 U.S. measles cases reported so far this year are the most since 2019, and Oregon is seeing its largest outbreak in more than 30 years.

Kentucky has been experiencing its worst outbreak of whooping cough — another vaccine-preventable disease — since 2017. Nationally, nearly 14,000 cases have been reported this year, the most since 2019.

Persuading parents

The whooping cough surge is a warning sign but also an opportunity, said Kim Tolley, a California-based historian who wrote a book last year on the vaccination of American schoolchildren. She called for a public relations campaign to “get everybody behind” improving immunizations.

Much of the discussion about raising vaccination rates centers on campaigns designed to educate parents about the importance of vaccinating children — especially those on the fence about getting shots for their kids.

But experts are still hashing out what kind of messaging work best: Is it better, for example, to say “vaccinate” or “immunize”?

A lot of the messaging is influenced by feedback from small focus groups. One takeaway is some people have less trust in health officials and even their own doctors than they once did. Another is that they strongly trust their own feelings about vaccines and what they’ve seen in Internet searches or heard from other sources.

“Their overconfidence is hard to shake. It’s hard to poke holes in it,” said Mike Perry, who ran focus groups on behalf of a group called the Public Health Communications Collaborative.

But many people seem more trusting of older vaccines. And they do seem to be at least curious about information they didn’t know, including the history of research behind vaccines and the dangers of the diseases they were created to fight, he said.

Improving access

Dolores Albarracin has studied vaccination improvement strategies in 17 countries, and repeatedly found that the most effective strategy is to make it easier for kids to get vaccinated.

“In practice, most people are not vaccinating simply because they don’t have money to take the bus” or have other troubles getting to appointments, said Albarracin, director of the communication science division within Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

That’s a problem in Louisville, where officials say few doctors were providing vaccinations to children enrolled in Medicaid and fewer still were providing shots to kids without any health insurance. An analysis a few years ago indicated 1 in 5 children — about 20,000 kids — were not current on their vaccinations, and most of them were poor, said Stone, the county school health manager.

A 30-year-old federal program called Vaccines for Children pays for vaccinations for children who Medicaid-eligible or lack the insurance to cover it.

But in a meeting with the CDC director last month, Louisville health officials lamented that most local doctors don’t participate in the program because of paperwork and other administrative headaches. And it can be tough for patients to get the time and transportation to get to those few dozen Louisville providers who do take part.

The school system has tried to fill the gap. In 2019, it applied to become a VFC provider, and gradually established vaccine clinics.

Last year, it held clinics at nearly all 160 schools, and it’s doing the same thing this year. The first was at Newcomer Academy, where many immigrant students behind on their vaccinations are started in the school system.

It’s been challenging, Stone said. Funding is very limited. There are bureaucratic obstacles, and a growing influx of children from other countries who need shots. It takes multiple trips to a doctor or clinic to complete some vaccine series. And then there’s the opposition — vaccination clinic announcements tend to draw hateful social media comments. 
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Fortified bouillon cubes are seen as way to curb malnutrition in Africa

Posted on by SeeAF

IBADAN, Nigeria — In her cramped, dimly lit kitchen, Idowu Bello leans over a gas cooker while stirring a pot of eba, the thick, starchy West African staple made from cassava root. Kidney problems and chronic exhaustion forced the 56-year-old Nigerian woman to retire from teaching, and she switches between cooking with gas or over a wood fire depending on the fuel she can afford.

Financial constraints also limit the food Bello has on hand even though doctors have recommended a nutrient-rich diet both to improve her weakening health and to help her teenage daughter, Fatima, grow. Along with eba, on the menu today is melon soup with ponmo, an inexpensive condiment made from dried cowhide.

“Fish, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables and even milk are costly these days,” Bello, 56, said, her lean face etched with worry.

If public health advocates and the Nigerian government have their way, malnourished households in the West African nation soon will have a simple ingredient available to improve their intake of key vitamins and minerals. Government regulators on Tuesday are launching a code of standards for adding iron, zinc, folic acid and vitamin B12 to bouillon cubes at minimum levels recommended by experts.

While the standards will be voluntary for manufacturers for now, their adoption could help accelerate progress against diets deficient in essential micronutrients, or what is known in nutrition and public health circles as “hidden hunger.” Fortified bouillon cubes could avert up to 16.6 million cases of anemia and up to 11,000 deaths from neural tube defects in Nigeria, according to a new report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Regardless of economic situation or income level, everyone uses seasoning cubes,” Bello said as she unwrapped and dropped one in her melon soup.

A growing and multipronged problem

Making do with smaller portions and less nutritious foods is common among many Nigerian households, according to a recent government survey on dietary intake and micronutrients. The survey estimated that 79% of Nigerian households are food insecure.

The climate crisis, which has seen extreme heat and unpredictable rainfall patterns hobble agriculture in Africa’s troubled Sahel region, will worsen the problem, with several million children expected to experience growth problems due to malnutrition between now and 2050, according to the Gates Foundation report released Tuesday.

“Farmlands are destroyed, you have a shortage of food, the system is strained, leading to inflation making it difficult for the people to access foods, including animal-based proteins,” Augustine Okoruwa, a regional program manager at Helen Keller Intl, said, highlighting the link between malnutrition and climate change.

Dietary deficiencies of the micronutrients the government wants added to bouillon cubes already have caused a public health crisis in Nigeria, including a high prevalence of anemia in women of child-bearing age, neural tube defects in newborn babies and stunted growth among children, according to Okoruwa.

Helen Keller Intl, a New York-based nonprofit that works to address the causes of blindness and malnutrition, has partnered with the Gates Foundation and businesses and government agencies in Africa to promote food fortification.

In Nigeria, recent economic policies such as the cancellation of gasoline subsidies are driving the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations, further deepening food hardship for the low-income earners who form the majority of the country’s working population.

Globally, nearly 3 billion people are unable to access healthy diets, 71% of them in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization.

The large-scale production of fortified foods would unlock a new way to “increase micronutrients in the food staples of low-income countries to create resilience for vulnerable families,” the Gates Foundation said.

Bouillon cubes as the vehicle

Bouillon cubes — those small blocks of evaporated meat or vegetable extracts and seasonings that typically are used to flavor soups and stews — are widely consumed in many African countries, nearing 100% household penetration in countries like Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon, according to a study by Helen Keller Intl.

That makes the cubes the “most cost-effective way” to add minerals and vitamins to the diets of millions of people, Okoruwa said.
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Dedicated artists keep Japan’s ancient craft of temari alive

Posted on by SeeEA

KAWARAMACHI, Japan — Time seems to stop here. 

Women sit in a small circle, quietly, painstakingly stitching patterns on balls the size of an orange, a stitch at a time. 

At the center of the circle is Eiko Araki, a master of the Sanuki Kagari Temari, a Japanese traditional craft passed down for more than 1,000 years on the southwestern island of Shikoku. 

Each ball — known as a “temari” ball — is a work of art, with colorful geometric patterns carrying poetic names like “firefly flowers” and “layered stars.” A temari ball takes weeks or months to finish. Some cost hundreds of dollars (tens of thousands of yen), although others are much cheaper. 

These kaleidoscopic balls aren’t for throwing or kicking around. They’re destined to be heirlooms, carrying prayers for health and goodness. They might be treasured like a painting or piece of sculpture in a Western home. 

The concept behind temari is an elegant otherworldliness, an impractical beauty that is also very labor-intensive to create. 

“Out of nothing, something this beautiful is born, bringing joy,” said Araki. “I want it to be remembered there are beautiful things in this world that can only be made by hand.” 

Natural materials 

The region where temari originated was good for growing cotton, warm with little rainfall, and the spherical creations continue to be made out of the humble material. 

At Araki’s studio, which also serves as head office for temari’s preservation society, there are 140 hues of cotton thread, including delicate pinks and blues, as well as more vivid colors and all the subtle gradations in between. 

The women dye them by hand, using plants, flowers and other natural ingredients, including cochineal, which is a bug living in cacti that produces a red dye. The deeper shade of indigo is dyed again and again to turn just about black. Yellow and blue are combined to form gorgeous greens. Soy juice is added to deepen the tints, a dash of organic protein. 

Outside the studio, loops of cotton thread, in various tones of yellow today, hang outside in the shade to dry. 

Creating and embroidering the balls 

The arduous process starts with making the basic ball mold on which the stitching is done. Rice husks that are cooked then dried are placed in a piece of cotton, then wound with thread, over and over, until, almost magically, a ball appears in your hands. 

Then the stitching begins. 

The balls are surprisingly hard, so each stitch requires a concentrated, almost painful, push. The motifs must be precise and even. 

Each ball has lines to guide the stitching — one that goes around it like the equator, and others that zigzag to the top and bottom. 

Appealing to a new generation 

These days, temari is getting some new recognition, among Japanese and foreigners as well. Caroline Kennedy took lessons in the ball-making when she was United States ambassador to Japan a decade ago. 

Yoshie Nakamura, who promotes Japanese handcrafted art in her duty-free shop at Tokyo’s Haneda airport, says she features temari there because of its intricate and delicate designs. 

“Temari that might have been everyday in a faraway era is now being used for interior decoration,” she said. 

“I really feel each Sanuki Kagari Temari speaks of a special, one-and-only existence in the world.” 

Araki has come up with newer designs that feel both modern and historical. She is trying to make the balls more accessible to everyday life — for instance, as Christmas tree ornaments. A strap with a dangling miniature ball, though quite hard to make because of its size, is affordable at about 1,500 yen ($10) each. 

Another of Araki’s inventions is a cluster of pastel balls that opens and closes with tiny magnets. Fill it with sweet-smelling herbs for a kind of aromatic diffuser. 

A tradition passed down through generations 

Araki, a graceful woman who talks very slowly, her head cocked to one side as though always in thought, often travels to Tokyo to teach. But mostly she works and gives lessons in her studio, an abandoned kindergarten with faded blue paint and big windows with tired wooden frames. 

She started out as a metalwork artist. Her husband’s parents were temari masters who worked hard to resurrect the artform when it was declining in the modern age, at risk of dying out. 

They were stoic people, rarely bestowing praise and instead always scolding her, she remembers. It’s a tough-love approach that’s common in the handing down of many Japanese traditional arts, from Kabuki acting to hogaku music, that demand lifetimes of selfless devotion. 

Today, only several dozen people, all women, can make the temari balls to traditional standards. 

“The most challenging aspect is nurturing successors. It typically takes over 10 years to train them, so you need people who are willing to continue the craft for a very long time,” Araki said. 

“When people start to feel joy along with the hardship that comes with making temari, they tend to keep going.” 
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Germany’s far-right AfD on track for another state election win

Posted on by SeeEU

berlin — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is predicted to come first in an election in Brandenburg on Sunday, seeking to build on gains in other eastern states this month and beat Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats in a traditional stronghold.

The AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election in Germany since World War II, in Thuringia, on September 1 and just missed first place in Saxony.

It is one of several far-right groups in Europe capitalizing on worries over an economic slowdown, immigration and the Ukraine war — concerns that are particularly strong in formerly Communist-run eastern Germany.

The party, which is unlikely to be able to govern because it is polling short of a majority and other parties would refuse to work with it, is also seeking to gain from discontent over infighting in Scholz’s three-party federal coalition.

“We urgently need a thorough course correction so the country does not go to the dogs,” the AfD’s lead candidate in Brandenburg, Hans-Christoph Berndt, said at a campaign event earlier this month.

An AfD victory in the state election would be a particular embarrassment for the Social Democrats (SPD), which has won elections in Brandenburg and governed the state of 2.5 million people since reunification in 1990.

It would also raise further questions about the suitability of Scholz, the least popular German chancellor on record, to lead the party into next year’s election.

Brandenburg’s popular SPD premier Dietmar Woidke has mostly shunned campaigning with Scholz, who lives in the state’s capital, Potsdam. In an unusual move, Woidke has also criticized the behavior and policies of the ruling coalition.

Instead, he has sought to highlight economic success stories during the five years since the last state election such as the opening of a TeslaTSLA.O factory and Brandenburg airport — which serves Berlin and is now Germany’s third most important aviation hub.

Narrow the gap

In recent weeks, the SPD has managed to narrow the gap with the AfD, opinion polls have shown.

A poll published by pollster Forschungsgruppe Wahlen on Thursday put the AfD on 28% in Brandenburg with the SPD just one point behind on 27%, followed by the conservatives on 14% and the new leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on 13%.

“My greatest challenge in this legislative period … to not allow right-wing extremists to have anything to say in this country ever again,” Woidke said at a campaign event on Tuesday.

He has threatened to resign if his party comes in behind the AfD. AfD party leader Tino Chrupalla said Scholz should do the same.

“It is high time this government suffer the consequences after this state election,” Chrupalla said.

Both of Scholz’s junior coalition partners, the Free Democrats and the Greens, look set to struggle to win the 5% needed to enter the state parliament, polls show.

At a national level, the three parties in Scholz’s coalition are now collectively polling less than the opposition conservatives although political analysts say much could change before the federal election due in September 2025. 
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‘Quad’ leaders move to create ‘free and secure’ Indo-Pacific at summit

Posted on by SeeUS

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE/WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday hosted the leaders of Australia, India and Japan at his private home in the U.S. state of Delaware for his final convening of the Quad, a strategic security grouping focused on the Indo-Pacific.

But it was Biden’s comments, unintentionally heard by the press, that illuminated the main topic at this unusually private meeting — and that topic was China.

Biden said his administration reads Beijing’s recent actions, including flexing its territorial muscles, as a “change in tactic, not a change in strategy.”

“We believe [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimize the turbulence in China’s diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interests,” Biden told the other three leaders in what he said were prepared remarks.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing this all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits. It’s true across the scope of our relationship, including in economic and technology issues,” he added.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, including territory claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It also claims territories in the East China Sea contested by Japan and Taiwan. It views democratically governed Taiwan as part of China.

Publicly, Biden’s message was shorter, simpler – “The Quad is here to stay.”

Those six words were also the final sentence of a lengthy joint statement from Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The group issued their nearly 5,700-word missive after a day of meetings so cloistered that the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association called the lack of access “unacceptable.”

In their statement, the quartet announced moves they say will boost cooperation among the four democracies and address concerns beyond their borders in the massive region, home to more than half of the world’s population and two-thirds of its economy. While they used the word “China” sparingly – only three times, and all three times in reference to the South China Sea – they made very clear how their stance differs from Beijing’s.

“As four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific, we unequivocally stand for the maintenance of peace and stability across this dynamic region, as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity,” they said.

“We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion. We condemn recent illicit missile launches in the region that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions. We express serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain. We seek a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated — one where all countries are free from coercion and can exercise their agency to determine their futures.”

China has previously called out the Quad for its thinly veiled criticisms of China, with a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson in July comparing the grouping to “exclusive clubs that undermine trust and cooperation among regional countries.”

Biden spoke briefly to tout the major steps, including one that aims to strengthen maritime security, and that will inevitably affect China’s maritime presence in others’ waters.

“We’re announcing a series of initiatives to deliver real, positive impact for the Indo-Pacific that includes providing new maritime technologies to our regional partners, so they know what’s happening in their waters, launching cooperation between coast guards for the first time, and expanding the Quad fellowship to include students from Southeast Asia,” Biden said.

That includes, the leaders’ statement said, a 2025 joint mission by the four nations’ coast guards. That step is also something that Japanese officials presented as a big summit takeaway when briefing reporters earlier in the day. Earlier in the week, when a top U.S. officials previewed the summit, he said the aim is to counter illegal fishing – adding, tellingly, that the vast majority of illegal fishing vessels are Chinese.

VOA asked the Japanese officials about a point of contention between Washington and Tokyo: Biden’s opposition, on national security grounds, to a proposed takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel. Biden administration officials appeared to play down the matter, noting that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States recently extended its review into the deal, pushing any decision past November.

“The president will obviously allow that process to run its course because that’s what’s required from the law, and then we will see what happens,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters Saturday.

The American steel company is headquartered in Pennsylvania, an electorally critical state in the fast-approaching U.S. presidential election.

VOA asked the Japanese government to share Toyko’s position on the politically sensitive merger. Japanese officials would not say whether Biden and Kishida even planned to speak on this topic in any of their meetings.

“As a government we refrain from commenting on that,” replied a Foreign Affairs Ministry official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. The official quickly added that Japan is the No. 1 investor in the U.S., and that Tokyo hopes the countries’ cooperation will continue.

Australia’s leader said it matters that the four “like-minded countries,” all democracies, work together.

“We assert the view that national sovereignty is important, that security and stability is something that we strive for, as well as shared prosperity in our region,” Albanese said.

Analysts had predicted China discussion would dominate behind the scenes, but the leaders would refrain from publicly poking Beijing.

“That doesn’t show up in the readouts,” Rafiq Dossani, a longtime Asia scholar, told VOA ahead of the summit.

The four leaders began to meet yearly, in person, under Biden’s presidency. Much of their effort, said analyst Kathryn Paik of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is directed at bread-and-butter governance issues such as health, infrastructure, maritime security and resources, and people-to-people ties.

“This is certainly not a Contain-China club,” she told VOA.

But, said Dossani, who is a senior economist at the Rand research corporation and a professor of policy analysis, there is room for the Quad to evolve.

“The question is as the competition, or the rivalry, between China and the U.S. evolves, how will that at that time affect the deliberations?” he said. “As the Chinese economy recovers and they become more assertive, then you’ll see a different context for the dialogue.”

In the present, though, Biden sees this dialogue among the four leaders as important to his legacy, Paik said.

“It was a central piece to the Indo-Pacific strategy, and elevating the Quad to the leader level has been a significant piece of that strategy,” she said. “Just the fact that the Quad has met annually at the leader level every year of Biden’s administration is quite significant.”

VOA’s Celia Mendoza in Wilmington, Delaware, and Paris Huang and Kim Lewis, in Washington, contributed to this report. 
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Biden tells Quad leaders Beijing is testing region at turbulent time for Chinese economy

Posted on by SeeEA

CLAYMONT, Delaware — President Joe Biden told Indo-Pacific allies on Saturday that he believes China’s increasing military assertiveness is an effort to test the region at a turbulent moment for Beijing.

Biden’s comments were caught by a hot mic after he and fellow leaders of the so-called Quad delivered opening remarks before the press at a summit he’s hosting near his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. He said his administration sees Beijing’s actions as a “change in tactic, not a change in strategy.”

China is struggling to pull up an economy pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic and has seen an extended slowdown in industrial activity and real estate prices as Beijing faces pressure to ramp up spending to stimulate demand.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits,” Biden told Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

“At least from our perspective, we believe (Chinese President) Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimize the turbulence in China’s diplomatic relationships, and he’s also looking to buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interest,” Biden added.

Starting with a trade war that dates back to 2018, China and the United States have grown at odds over a range of issues, from global security, such as China’s claims over the South China Sea, to industrial policy on electric vehicle and solar panel manufacturing.

The administration has repeatedly voiced concerns about Chinese aggression toward Taiwan and more recently on the frequent clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels in disputed areas of the South China Sea.

At the summit, the leaders agreed to expand the partnership among the coast guards of the Quad nations to improve interoperability and capabilities, with Indian, Japanese and Australian personnel sailing on U.S. ships in the region. But U.S. officials would not say if those transits would include the contested South China Sea.

China also has longtime territorial disputes involving other claimants including Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. U.S. officials worry about China’s long-stated goals of unifying Taiwan with China’s mainland and the possibility of war over Taiwan. The self-ruled island democracy is claimed by Beijing as part of its territory.

The leaders in a joint declaration issued following their talks expressed “serious concern about the militarization … and coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea.”

Biden last month dispatched his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to Beijing for three days of talks with Chinese officials. Sullivan during that visit also met with Xi.

Both governments are eager to keep relations on an even keel ahead of a change in the U.S. presidency in January. And both sides have said they remain committed to managing the relationship, following up on a meeting between Xi and Biden in San Francisco last November.

The concerns about China were raised as Biden showed off a slice of his Delaware hometown to the leaders of Australia, Japan and India.

When Biden began his presidency, he looked to elevate the Quad to a leader-level partnership as he tried to pivot U.S. foreign policy away from conflicts in the Middle East and toward threats and opportunities in the Indo-Pacific. This weekend’s summit is the fourth in-person and sixth overall gathering of the leaders since 2021.

“It will survive way beyond November,” Biden told the leaders.

The president, who has admitted to an uneven track record as a scholar, also seemed tickled to get to host a gathering with three world leaders at the school he attended more than 60 years ago. He welcomed each of the leaders individually for one-on-one talks at his nearby home before they gathered at the school for talks and a formal dinner.

“I don’t think the headmaster of this school thought I’d be presiding over a meeting like this,” Biden joked to fellow leaders.

Albanese, Modi and Kishida came for the summit before their appearances at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week.

“This place could not be better suited for my final visit as prime minister,” said Kishida, who like Biden, is set to soon leave office.

Earlier, the president warmly greeted Kishida when he arrived at the residence on Saturday morning and gave the prime minister a tour of the property before they settled into talks.

White House officials said holding the talks at the president’s house, which sits near a pond in a wooded area several miles west of downtown, was intended to give the meetings a more relaxed feel.

Sullivan described the vibe of Biden’s one-on-one meeting with Albanese, who stopped by the house on Friday, as “two guys — one at the other guy’s home — talking in broad strokes about where they see the state of the world.” He said Biden and Albanese also swapped stories about their political careers.

The Australian leader remarked that the visit had given him “insight into what in my view makes you such an extraordinary world leader.”

Modi also stopped by the house on Saturday to meet with Biden before the leaders gathered for their joint talks.

“There cannot be a better place than President Biden’s hometown of Wilmington to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Quad,” Modi said.

Biden and Modi discussed Modi’s recent visits to Russia and Ukraine as well as economic and security concerns about China. Modi is the most prominent leader from a nation that maintains a neutral position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 
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