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"Little Amal," a 9-year-old Syrian refugee girl, has big, expressive eyes and loves jumping in puddles as she travels on foot to the UK in search of a new home. But Amal isn't just any girl – she's a giant puppet more than 11 ft. tall. She's the centerpiece of The Walk, a traveling arts festival. It's the latest project by London-based theater company Good Chance, in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company. For the past three months, Amal and the crew have travelled from the Syrian-Turkish border to the UK in an effort to bring hope to the plight of refugees. Today, they reached Manchester, England, completing a 5,000-mile journey through more than 65 cities, towns and villages. Through accompanying events along the route, like installations and performances, it was important that the walk recognize the range of Amal's experiences – not just one of hardship, but resilience too, Zuabi says. "I don't want anybody to feel sad for refugees. I want people to see themselves when they see a refugee. And that's why puppets are gorgeous. Because a puppet doesn't exist until you give it life. You need to go 'she is a refugee' and the minute you treat a refugee like this, you go 'he is me. They are us.'" Even Amal's size at 11 ft. – or 3.5 meters – is deliberate. To Zuabi, visibility is the first step towards empathy. He says "to see that people are moved by a small gesture she does in the middle of a street, and suddenly you look around and people are wiping their tears – that's very, very beautiful to see," Zuabi says.
Merck has granted a royalty-free license for its promising Covid-19 pill to a United Nations-backed nonprofit in a deal that would allow the drug to be manufactured and sold cheaply in the poorest nations, where vaccines for the coronavirus are in devastatingly short supply. The agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool, an organization that works to make medical treatment and technologies globally accessible, will allow companies in 105 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, to sublicense the formulation for the antiviral pill, called molnupiravir, and begin making it. Merck reported this month that the drug halved the rate of hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk Covid patients who took it soon after infection in a large clinical trial. Affluent nations, including the United States, have rushed to negotiate deals to buy the drug, tying up large portions of the supply even before it has been approved by regulators and raising concerns that poor countries could be shut out of access to the medicine, much as they have been for vaccines. Generic drug makers in developing countries are expected to market the drug for as little as $20 per treatment (a 5-day course), compared to the $712 per course that the U.S. government has agreed to pay for its initial purchase. "The Merck license is a very good and meaningful protection for people living in countries where more than half of the world's population lives," said James Love, who leads Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit research organization.
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The San Francisco Unified School District has introduced mindfulness meditation as part of its curriculum this year. Susi Brennan instructed first graders on Wednesday at Daniel Webster Elementary School in Potrero Hill. Mindfulness focuses on slow and deliberate breathing, and Brennan's students sat on the floor as they listened to her calming voice. "When we're focusing on our breath, we can use it as an anchor," Brennan told the students. "So if our mind starts to wander away, we just gently bring it right back and notice our breathing." Over 57,000 students attend school in the district, and each of them will learn about mindfulness this year. The district said it introduced the technique into every grades' curriculum for the 2021-22 school year. Dr. Vincent Matthews, the district's superintendent, joined in on Wednesday's lesson. He took deep breaths alongside a class of 6-year-olds, participating in a social and emotional learning technique Matthews said is focused on the whole student. Brennan said teachers and staff also benefit from this calming technique. "It's an opportunity for them to also sit with their thoughts, and also for them to notice sounds and their breath," she told KCBS Radio. "It's a moment of pause for the teachers as well." You can learn more about the mindfulness meditations practiced in the San Francisco Unified School district by clicking here.
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Isaac Oduro will never forget the day he was doing deliveries and received a $100 tip. It was so different than what Isaac experienced back in Africa. Isaac moved to Canada alone and worked for years to support his wife and sons in Ghana before they could join him. Two years ago, he returned to his hometown. "I feel so sad when I went back," Isaac says of the old elementary school he last attended 30 years ago. "(It) was in a deplorable state." Issac says the problems ranged from a roof filled with holes to classrooms empty of books. "I wasn't happy about what I saw, so I decided I'm going to do something." Isaac immediately bought seven whiteboards for the school, before making a commitment to do even more later. "I'm going to go back to Canada," Isaac says, after posing for pictures in the school with the new boards. "And in two years I'm going to come back and build a library." When Issac isn't working two jobs (10 hours a day, seven days a week) to earn funds for the renovations, he's requesting book donations from local companies. "Right now, I have 3,000 books," Isaac says. Isaac has packed up most of the books and arranged for them to be shipped to Ghana, along with bags of new school supplies. The library is slowly but surely being transformed, with a new roof, floor, paint and fans. It's on schedule for Isaac's return this fall to help finish the project and fill the school with with hope again. "(I hope) to keep them reading, to keep them learning," Isaac says.
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Wildfires have plagued California to an unusual extent in recent years. Imagine a device that could suppress these fires before they blossomed out of control, actively fighting them and preventing them from spreading. Such a device could act as an important stopgap measure for homes and businesses and proactively address fires at their source. Enter high school student Arul Mathur, a New Jersey transplant who moved to California and witnessed firsthand the devastation of the fires, with his family nearly having to evacuate their own home in 2019. As Mathur says, that made it "personal." Inspired to come up with some sort of solution, Mather designed "F.A.C.E.," or the Fire Activated Canister Extinguisher. A new type of firefighting equipment, F.A.C.E. is a completely self-contained device; i.e. no human is necessary to operate it. It's also heat-activated, akin to a fire alarm, albeit activated with a rise in temperature instead of the presence of smoke. Think of it as a fire alarm version 2.0: easily portable, easily installable, and containing its own fire suppression materials like a super-charged sprinkler. However, it's not water that comes from F.A.C.E. when it's activated, its an eco-friendly fire retardant called Cold Fire that sprays the surrounding area (in a 5-6 foot radius) with the help of a built-in a sprinkler. The only human element involved in F.A.C.E. is its simple installation along a home or business' outdoor wall or fence, and the easy refilling of the fire retardant (if necessary).
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Outside of a library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an over-80-year-old copper beech tree is making music. As the tree photosynthesizes and absorbs and evaporates water, a solar-powered sensor attached to a leaf measures the micro voltage of all that invisible activity. Sound designer and musician Skooby Laposky assigned a key and note range to those changes in this electric activity, turning the tree's everyday biological processes into an ethereal song. That music is available on Hidden Life Radio, an art project by Laposky. Hidden Life Radio also features the musical sounds of two other Cambridge trees: a honey locust and a red oak. After he read the book The Hidden Life of Trees ... Laposky thought to tune into the music trees could be making. The name Hidden Life Radio was inspired by that book, written by German forester Peter Wohlleben, which details the social networks and "sentient" capabilities of trees. "Most people probably love trees and [still] don't consider them all the time," Laposky says, noting a condition called "plant blindness," in which people fail to notice the flora in their own environment. "In cities, the trees are there, but unless they're providing shade or you're picking apples from them, I feel like people don't necessarily consider trees and their importance." Tree canopies are crucial to cities, providing shade that can lower summer temperatures significantly, reducing air pollution, sequestering carbon, and providing a mental health benefit.
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In an effort to help decrease the growing student debt nationwide, Walmart announced Tuesday that the company will begin offering free college tuition and books to its 1.5 million U.S. employees, effective Aug. 16. The retail giant said it will drop its existing $1-per-day fee for associates who participate in its Live Better U education program. As a result, approximately 1.5 million part-time and full-time Walmart and Sam's Club associates in the U.S. will be able to earn college degrees or learn trade skills without the burden of accumulating college debt. The Live Better U education program was created three years ago in order to help employees grow and advance within the company. Employees can choose from a variety of institutions, including: Johnson & Wales University, the University of Arizona, the University of Denver and Pathstream – complementing its existing "academic partners": Brandman University, Penn Foster, Purdue University Global, Southern New Hampshire University, Wilmington University and Voxy EnGen. Since the program started in 2018, more than 52,000 associates have participated in the program to date and 8,000 have already graduated, Walmart said. "As the company making one of the nation's largest investments in education for America's workforce, Walmart is setting a new standard for what it looks like to prepare workers for the jobs of the future," said Rachel Carlson, CEO & co-founder of Guild Education.
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Local radio personality Ray "Ramblin' Ray" Stevens was driving when he passed 20-year-old Braxton Mayes multiple times, and noticed Mayes was walking for a long period of time. When Stevens reportedly stopped to offer him a ride, he soon learned the story of the former high school football player. Mayes told Stevens that his 2006 GMC truck recently broke down and, in the meantime, he was walking to work each day, a 12-mile journey (24 total) that took three hours each way. Mayes explained to the DJ that he would leave for work at 4 a.m. in order to arrive on time at 7 a.m. "This guy checks all the boxes," Stevens [said]. "He's a good, solid human being. People are having a hard time finding people to work and here's a guy walking three hours one way just because his truck broke down." After hearing his story, Stevens created a GoFundMe page in order to raise funds to fix Mayes' truck. The fundraiser has already earned over $8,000. According to Stevens, any additional money raised past the amount needed to repair the truck will be donated to local Chicago food banks. Mayes [said] that because he was raised with a strong work ethic, he was perfectly fine walking each day, but is grateful for the donations and support he's received. "It brought me to tears," Mayes said. "I didn't know when I would come up with the money to fix it or how many times I would have to walk." Repairs to Mayes' truck will likely be finished soon – and until then, his employer will give him a ride.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared China malaria-free, after a 70-year effort to wipe it out. China used to report 30 million cases a year during the 1940s. Since then, eradication efforts have driven down case numbers. The country used various methods to break the cycle of transmission of the parasite via mosquitos. The WHO said the country had now gone four years without registering a case, giving it malaria-free certification. China's success was hard-earned, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and came only after decades of targeted and sustained action. Although preventable and mostly curable if diagnosed and treated promptly, the World Health Organization estimates there were 229 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2019 and 409,000 deaths. Around 94% of all infections were reported in Africa. China's government has brought malaria cases down by using anti-malarial drugs, spraying mosquito breeding grounds, and distributing insecticide-treated nets. Countries can apply to the WHO for certification as malaria-free after they report four consecutive years of no indigenous cases. They must then present evidence of this, and demonstration their ability to prevent any future outbreak. According to the WHO, China has become the 40th country to be declared malaria-free.
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Last week, the European Parliament made its stance on animal welfare clear by calling for a ban on caged animal farming, after voting overwhelmingly in favor to end the practice. The non-binding resolution hopes to change animal agriculture and reinvent the food supply chain across Europe by removing cages. The Parliament vote – passed by an overwhelming majority voting in favor of the ban, with 558 members in favor to 37 votes against – sought to implement a ban on caged farming across the European Union. The vote followed a European Citizens' Initiative that started three years ago, and which gathered 1.4 million signatures in at least 18 member states in support of animal welfare. Olga Kikou, Head of Compassion in World Farming EU and one of the citizens leading the â€End the Cage Age' petition told Euronews that some animals never leave their cages during their lifetime: "We have estimated, and this is a very conservative number, that over 300 million animals, farmed animals, spend most of their life or their entire life in cages in Europe, every year." Following the committee's debate regarding the â€End the Cage Age' petition, the parliament decided in favor of the ban that aims to completely dismantle caged animal farming by 2027.
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Tasmanian devils have been born in the wild in mainland Australia, more than 3,000 years after they died out in the country. Seven baby Tasmanian devils - known as joeys - were born at the 988-acre Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary in New South Wales, Australian NGO Aussie Ark said. Tasmanian devils died out on the mainland after the arrival of dingoes - a species of wild dog - and were restricted to the island of Tasmania. However, their numbers suffered another blow from a contagious form of cancer known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), which has killed around 90% of the population since it was discovered in 1996. Last September, Aussie Ark introduced 11 of the creatures back into the wild in mainland Australia, following an earlier trial involving 15 of the marsupials, bringing the total of Tasmanian devils on the mainland to 26. And now, just months after their release, the creatures have successfully reproduced - and conservationists have identified the tiny marsupials, which they say are the size of shelled peanuts, inside the pouches of the mothers. Female Tasmanian devils give birth to between 20 and 40 joeys at once, according to Tourism Australia. The joeys race to the mother's pouch, which only has four teats. Those that make it to the pouch carry on living there for around three months. Tasmanian devils are the world's largest carnivorous marsupials. Their reintroduction will help control populations of feral cats and foxes that hunt other endangered species.
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Earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres joined virtual visitors to Berlin at the 12th Annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue, where the German government hoped to further negotiate technical details of the Paris Agreement. During the event, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged governments to continue investing into our shared climate despite budgetary shortfalls related to the COVID-19 crisis. Germany has walked that walk. Over the past two decades, it has embarked on a remarkable, expensive transition from coal and nuclear energy, to renewable energy sources. The set of policies to encourage this rise of green energy is known as energiewende–or "energy transition." Energiewende has its roots in the foundation of Germany's Green Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s and enjoys broad public support. It is one of the most ambitious green energy proposals in the global North, and represents a fundamental paradigm shift from the fossil fuel-obsessed status quo. Massive fossil fuel subsidies and planned expansions of natural gas means the United States has failed to embrace the same spirit of energiewende. But that doesn't mean it never can. One good way to start would be with a central component of German energiewende: a feed-in-tariff to promote less developed renewable technologies. It works through phase-out subsidies that provide a fixed price for every kilowatt hour for a specific period following a renewable plant's construction.
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The Human Library is, in the true sense of the word, a library of people. Against the backdrop of a rise in curiosity and the thirst for authenticity, the idea of learning and being transported by a person telling their story rather than reading it from a book, is growing in popularity. The human "books" in these cases are volunteers. Those with a story to tell. And the way they are dispersed is tailored to each individual's own biases and prejudices. In other words, they're tackling diversity and inclusion, one person ("book"), at a time. The original event was open eight hours a day for four days straight and featured over fifty different titles. The broad selection of books provided readers with ample choice to challenge their stereotypes and so more than a thousand readers took advantage leaving books, librarians, organisers and readers stunned at the reception and impact of the Human Library. One such volunteer, Bill Carney's book title is "Black Activist". He told Forbes magazine his motivation for getting involved. "It's easy to hate a group of people, but it's harder to hate an individual, particularly if that person is trying to be friendly and open and accommodating and totally non-threatening." "I'm not pompous enough to believe that a 25-minute conversation with me is going to change anybody," he [said]. "What I am pompous enough to believe is that if I can just instill the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance, then their brain will do the rest for me. And it will at least force them to ask questions."
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Yeva Klingbeil, a senior at Shenendehowa High School who was diagnosed with cancer in November 2019, had help from a few of her teammates in crossing the finish line at a meet on Monday. "What a great moment to see Senior Yeva Klingbeil at today's girls track & field meet," the school's athletic department wrote, posting the video on Twitter. "Yeva's teammates help her across the line in the 4X1 relay," the post continued. "Yeva continues her fight with cancer and we continue to be amazed by her spirit!!" The video has been viewed more than 180,000 times and counting, showing Klingbeil walk arm-in-arm with three of her teammates as they helped her finish the race. The rest of the team and runners from other schools rushed to congratulate her after, chanting her name in unison. Klingbeil was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer that affects muscle tissue, mostly in adolescents. She began chemotherapy in 2019 for a cancerous mass around her jaw, followed by radiation treatments, which damaged her brainstem. After weeks in the ICU and work with several specialists, she's regained some of her function, and the tumor has shrunk to half of its original size. "Yeva and her family pray her brain will continue healing and she'll be able to breathe, walk, and eat once again," her coach Rob Cloutier [said]. "While Yeva has gone through all of this and more, she has never stopped caring about her friends and family and has never given up hope of recovery."
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For decades, Nepal's endangered rhino population has dwindled to near extinction. But recently, thanks in part to travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, the population has soared. The nation's count of endangered one-horned rhinoceros has increased by more than 100 over the past six years. Officials are hailing the rise a "conservation milestone." The rhino population across four national parks in the southern plains rose to 752 – up from 645 in 2015, according to the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. That's the highest it's been in decades. The area was once dominated by thousands of one-horned rhinos, but rampant poaching and habitat loss reduced their numbers. In the 1960s, there were only about 100 left. Nepal has conducted a rhino census every five years since 1994 in an effort to conserve the species after it was listed as vulnerable. That year, the Himalayan nation recorded 466 rhinos. Ever since, the government has stepped up its anti-poaching and conservation initiatives. But this year, the lack of tourists in the country left the habitats undisturbed, allowing for even more growth. "Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the tourist pressure was reduced drastically that resulted in the undisturbed habitat of rhinos," [information officer Haribhadra] Acharya told CBS News. "In that scenario, the wildlife recovery might have taken momentum." Last month, hundreds of enumerators, soldiers and veterinarians worked for about three weeks to count this year's rhino population.
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A new documentary called Writing With Fire ... profiles Khabar Lahariya (Waves of News), India's only major news outlet run by women from marginalized communities. It focuses on rural reporting through a feminist lens and is led by chief reporter Meera Devi. Khabar Lahariya began as a small Hindi language newspaper in 2002 in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Many of its reporters are Dalits, formally called "untouchables" – people at the very bottom of India's ancient 4-level caste system, that are considered by higher castes to be so impure, they should not be touched. The Indian constitution bans discrimination on the basis of caste but it still persists. Two-thirds of rural women and about half of rural men practice untouchability. That could mean they refuse to eat with lower caste people or don't let them enter their kitchen. Untouchability is more common in rural India, where Meera and her colleagues live and report. The documentary ... follows Meera and two other colleagues as they find workarounds to challenges like power outages while reporting, interviewing unyielding, patronizing elected officials. And all the while, many of the reporters' families are pressuring them to marry because that is what is expected for many women in India. Meera says, "When future generations ask us, 'What were you doing when the country was changing and the media was being silenced?' Khabar Lahariya will be able to say proudly that we were holding the powerful to account."
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Eighteen astronauts – nine men and nine women – have been selected to begin training for upcoming Artemis missions to the moon, NASA announced Wednesday. The list includes the as-yet-unnamed next man and first woman who will set foot on the lunar surface later this decade. The announcement came at the end of a meeting of the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence. After reading off the names and welcoming five of the Artemis cadre who were present at the space center for the announcement, Pence said it "really is amazing to think that the next man and the first woman on the moon are among the names that we just read, and they may be standing in the room with us right now." NASA has been working toward a schedule imposed by the Trump administration calling for astronauts to return to the moon by the end of 2024 using the SLS, an Orion capsule and a commercially developed lunar lander that has not yet been built. The 18 astronauts named Wednesday are among the most diverse groups NASA has ever put together: nine men, including four with space flight experience, and nine women, including five space veterans. Nine of the 18 have not yet flown in space. Two astronauts on the list – Kate Rubins and Victor Glover – are currently aboard the International Space Station.
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Nearly two years ago, researchers from X, the experimental "moonshot factory" at Alphabet, sat down with the head of a food bank in Arizona to begin to better understand one of the conundrums of hunger in the U.S.: As much as 40% of the food supply is wasted, but millions of Americans don't have enough to eat. "We probably have two to four times as much food as we need in the world, but we're not doing a very good job of distributing it to people who really need it," says Emily Ma, the leader of the X team, called Project Delta, which announced today that two early tools it developed will be moving to Google to be fully built. The X team built a prototype of a new matching platform that could automatically consider ... the shelf life of donated food, how it's packaged, what transportation is available, and where it's needed and wanted. Another tool uses computer vision and machine learning to identify food as it's being thrown out so that a restaurant or supermarket deli can better plan future buying decisions to reduce waste: If you're throwing out a lot of onions every week, the software will alert you so you can stop buying as many. Eventually, similar technology could also be used to identify surplus food available for donations, so that information doesn't have to entered manually. "What we're looking to do is, in the automating of this, actually make food much more accessible to everyone," says Ma. "I believe that in the next 10 to 30 years, it is possible to actually almost perfectly match supply and demand," she says.
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Linda Tutt High School in Sanger opened up a grocery store inside the school. It's meant to help put extra food on the table for students and their families. But the store doesn't accept money, just good deeds. "How often can a school say they have a grocery store inside their walls?" said principal Anthony Love. With the help of local partners like Texas Health, Albertsons and First Refuge Ministries, the school was able to complete the grocery store in an extra room. Students can shop using a point system. "A lot of our students, they come from low socioeconomic families." Love said. "It's a way for students to earn the ability to shop for their families. Through hard work you can earn points for positive office referrals. You can earn points for doing chores around the building or helping to clean." Paul Juarez, the Executive Director of First Refuge Ministries said he hopes the idea is implemented in other rural areas. "These points were actually given by the students, so we walked through here and decided that a can of green beans was one point," said Juarez. "It gives us a picture of what can be. So if we can do this inside other schools it will do a whole lot to help other small towns." Students will learn about having sales when they have too much product, and of course, what to expect in their own first jobs. The store will also hold food drives weekly for the community and act as a supplement to other food insecurity programs in the area.
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Norway's ability to preserve the fiscal and physical well-being of its residents during the COVID-19 pandemic is just one small example of a decades-long effort to create an equitable economy. What began as a result of the labor and feminist movements in the 1970s now suffuses most parts of society, including how the country responded to the outbreak. On March 12, Norway began its nationwide lockdown, and by April 7, Parliament had adopted a package that Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, a member of Parliament and the leader of the Center Party, told Norwegian Broadcasting was "the largest [monetary] commitment the parliament has ever made." The roughly $480 million relief package included tax relief for businesses experiencing losses, a reduction in the European Economic Community Value Added Tax, and tax deferrals for self-employed individuals such as freelance writers and artists. The package helped maintain stability in the economy while Norwegians did their part to slow the spread of the virus. Norwegian workers pay a roughly 25% income tax rate. That's on par with what the average American family pays in income tax, but in Norway, those taxes pay for generous social welfare programs for almost all Norwegian residents. Norwegian social welfare encompasses comprehensive unemployment benefits, retirement pay, and health care coverage that covers just about everything, from mental health care to ambulance and emergency services to clinical care for transgender residents.
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