Thursday, June 30, 2022

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'We cannot pause our lives': Ukrainians begin rebuilding

Posted: 29 Jun 2022 11:56 PM PDT

ON THE outskirts of a Ukrainian village stand the remnants of a small school that was partially destroyed in the early weeks of the Russian invasion.Surrounded by tall pine trees, the school's broken windows offer glimpses of abandoned classrooms that are unlikely to see students again anytime soon. It is just one of many buildings in Yahidne that were shattered by the war.But this village and others are gradually returning to life a few months after Russian troops retreated from the northern Chernihiv region. Now people are repairing homes, and the sound of construction tools fills the air. Volunteers from all over Ukraine, and from other countries, are coming to help because there is so much to do before another winter approaches.Among the workers are a copywriter and a cameraman who have been repairing the roof of the apartment block in front of the school for several days under a scorching sun.Denys Ovcharenko, 31, and Denys Huschyk, 43, came from the capital, Kyiv. They joined a volunteer building organization called Dobrobat, a name that combines "dobro," or kindness, with "bat" for battalion.The men and 22 other volunteers help their compatriots return to their homes as soon as possible."While the guys are protecting us, we work here," Huschyk said, referring to troops at the front.No one in the village yet plans to rebuild the school, which was used by the Russians as a base. Villagers prefer not to mention the place at all.Most of Yahidne's residents — almost 400 people — spent a month in the school's basement, where they were held around the clock as human shields to protect against an attack by the Ukrainian army.Only occasionally did the Russian troops allow villagers to climb upstairs and enter the yard. But that was not enough. Ten people died in the dark, crowded basement. Survivors blame the lack of fresh air.The Russians left the village at the end of March.The Dobrobat group plans to repair the roofs of 21 houses in the coming weeks. The volunteers include teachers, athletes and programmers. About 80% of them have no experience in construction.Yahidne is just one of the villages in northern Ukraine that suffered from Russia's aggression. And Dobrobat is just one of the groups responding, sometimes drawing volunteers from beyond Ukraine.A father and son from the Czech Republic decided to spend their annual family trip in Ukraine this year. Michal and Daniel Kahle see each other for only a few weeks each summer, as the son studies in the United States."We wanted to do something meaningful instead of just being tourists," said Daniel, 21.That's how they came to the town of Makariv in the Kyiv region. Many buildings there were destroyed or damaged in the first weeks of the war.Father and son joined the youth volunteer movement Building Ukraine Together, which since 2014 has helped restore damaged buildings in eastern Ukraine. For several days, together with young people from different parts of Ukraine, they worked to rebuild the Makariv fire department, which was hit by an artillery shell on March 12."It's a long game. We cannot pause our lives, sit at home and wait for the war to end," said Tetyana Symkovych, the volunteer group's coordinator in Makariv.Many Ukrainians volunteer because they want to be helpful. But that is not the only reason Yulia Kapustienko comes to the fire department every morning to putty the walls. At the end of April, the young woman left Mariupol after spending two months in the besieged port city."I saw dead bodies and burned houses. Still, when I see a normal house, I automatically imagine what will happen to it after the rocket hits," she said. "It is impossible to erase this from your mind. But at the same time, I try not to get stuck in the past, so it is important for me to do something, to take responsibility."The 23-year-old is originally from Horlivka in the eastern Donetsk region. Her first experience of armed occupation was in 2014. After that, she cried for three years, unable to endure the loss of her hometown.This time, she chose a different strategy."I know now that you need to do something," Kapustienko said. "I don't care what to rebuild. The main thing is for it to be in Ukraine." (AP)

Why captions are suddenly everywhere and how they got there

Posted: 29 Jun 2022 01:13 AM PDT

PEOPLE with hearing loss have a new ally in their efforts to navigate the world: Captions that aren't limited to their television screens and streaming services.The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted daily life for people everywhere, but many of those with hearing loss took the resulting isolation especially hard. "When everyone wears a mask they are completely unintelligible to me," said Pat Olken of Sharon, Massachusetts, whose hearing aids were insufficient. (A new cochlear implant has helped her a lot.)So when her grandson's bar mitzvah was streamed on Zoom early in the pandemic, well before the service offered captions, Olken turned to Otter, an app created to transcribe business meetings. Reading along with the ceremony's speakers made the app "a tremendous resource," she said.People with hearing loss, a group estimated at roughly 40 million U.S. adults, have long adopted technologies to help them make their way in the hearing world, from Victorian-era ear trumpets to modern digital hearing aids and cochlear implants.But today's hearing aids can cost upward of $5,000, often aren't covered by insurance and don't work for everyone. The devices also don't snap audible sound into focus the way glasses immediately correct vision. Instead, hearing aids and cochlear implants require the brain to interpret sound in a new way."The solutions out there are clearly not a one-size-fits-all model and do not meet the needs of a lot of people based on cost, access, a lot of different things," said Frank Lin, director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. That's not just a communication problem; researchers have found correlations between untreated hearing loss and higher risks of dementia.Cheaper over-the-counter hearing devices are on the way. But for now, only about 20% of those who could benefit from hearing aids use one.Captions, by contrast, are usually a lot easier to access. They've long been available on modern television sets and are cropping up more frequently in videoconferencing apps like Zoom, streaming services like Netflix, social media video on TikTok and YouTube, movie theaters and live arts venues.In recent years, smartphone apps like Otter; Google's Live Transcribe; Ava; InnoCaption, for phone calls; and GalaPro, for live theater performances, have emerged. Some are aimed at people with hearing loss and use human reviewers to make sure captions are accurate.Others, like Otter and Live Transcribe, instead rely on what's called automatic speech recognition, which uses artificial intelligence to learn and capture speech. ASR has issues with accuracy and lags in transcribing the spoken word; built-in biases can also make transcriptions less accurate for the voices of women, people of color and deaf people, said Christian Volger, a professor at Gallaudet University who specializes in accessible technology.Jargon and slang can also be a stumbling block. But users and experts say that ASR has improved a lot.While welcome, none of these solutions are perfect. Toni Iacolucci of New York says her book club could be draining even when she was using Otter to transcribe the conversation. The captions weren't always accurate and didn't identify individual speakers, which could make it hard to keep up, she said."It worked a little bit," said Iacolucci, who lost her hearing nearly two decades ago. After coming home, she would be so tired from trying to follow the conversation that she had to lie down. "It just takes so much energy." She got a cochlear implant a year ago that has significantly improved her ability to hear, to the point where she can now have one-on-one conversations without captions. They still help in group discussions, she said.Otter said in a statement that it welcomes feedback from the deaf and hard of hearing community and noted that it now provides a paid software assistant that can join virtual meetings and transcribe them automatically.Transcription lag can present other problems -- among them, a worry that conversation partners might grow impatient with delays. "Sometimes you say, 'I'm sorry, I just need to look at my captions in order to hear,'" said Richard Einhorn, a musician and composer in New York. "That doesn't mean I'm not aware sometimes it's a hassle for other people."Other issues crop up. When Chelle Wyatt of Salt Lake City went to her doctor's office, the Wi-Fi there wasn't strong enough for the transcription app to work. "It was gestures and writing things down and making sure I got a written report afterward so I knew what was said," she said.Movie theaters provide devices that amplify sound, as well as glasses and individual screens that show captions to go with the movie. But those aren't always comfortable and sometimes aren't well-maintained or just don't work. Many people with hearing loss want more films to run captions on the big screen, just like you'd have in the comfort of your own home.A new law that took effect In New York City on May 15 requires movie theaters to offer captions on the screen for up to four showtimes per movie each week, including during the most popular hours to go to the movies — Friday nights and weekends. Hawaii passed a state law in 2015 that required two screenings a week of each movie with captions on the screen. AMC, the big movie chain, also says it screens some movies with captions at about a third of its U.S. theaters.Captions are more available now for live performances, too. Several Broadway theaters promote a smartphone app that captions live performances; there are also handheld individual devices that show captions. Theaters also have a few performances with "open captions" everyone can see.During the pandemic, the shift to online meetings and school meant videoconferencing services became a tool of survival — but captions came only after a big push. Zoom added live transcription to its free service only in October 2021, but the meeting's host has to enable them. Google Meet was quicker to make captions available to everyone for free in May 2020; Microsoft Teams, a workplace messaging app, did so that June."We need captioning everywhere and we need people to be more sensitive," Olken said. "The more I advocate the more other people benefit." (AP)

US officials announce more steps against monkeypox outbreak

Posted: 28 Jun 2022 05:12 PM PDT

NEW YORK — Reacting to a surprising and growing monkeypox outbreak, U.S. health officials on Tuesday expanded the group of people recommended to get vaccinated against the monkeypox virus.They also said they are providing more monkeypox vaccine, working to expand testing, and taking other steps to try to get ahead of the outbreak."We will continue to take aggressive action against this virus," said Dr. Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, who has also been playing a role in how the government deals with monkeypox.The administration said it was expanding the pool of people who are advised to get vaccinated to include those who may realize on their own that they could have been infected. That includes men who who have recently had sex with men at parties or in other gatherings in cities where monkeypox cases have been identified.Most monkeypox patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body.The disease is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people.Last month, cases began emerging in Europe and the United States. Many — but not all — of those who contracted the virus had traveled internationally. Most were men who have sex with men, but health officials stress that anyone can get monkeypox.Case counts have continued to grow. As of Tuesday, the U.S. had identified 306 cases in 27 states and the District of Columbia. More than 4,700 cases have been found in more than 40 other countries outside the areas of Africa where the virus is endemic.There have been no U.S. deaths and officials say the risk to the American public is low. But they are taking steps to assure people that medical measures are in place to deal with the growing problem.One of the steps was to expand who is recommended to get vaccinated. Vaccines customarily are given to build immunity in people before they are ever infected. But if given within days or even a few weeks of first becoming infected, some vaccines can reduce severity of symptoms.A two-dose vaccine, Jynneos, is approved for monkeypox in the U.S. The government has many more doses of an older smallpox vaccine — ACAM2000 — that they say could also be used, but that vaccine is considered to have a greater risk of side effects and is not recommended for people who have HIV. So it's the Jynneos vaccine that officials have been trying to use as a primary weapon against the monkeypox outbreak.So far, the government has deployed over 9,000 doses of vaccine. U.S. officials on Tuesday said said they are increasing the amount of Jynneos vaccine they are making available, allocating 56,000 doses immediately and about 240,000 more over the coming weeks. They promised more than 1 million more over the coming months.Another change: Until now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised that vaccines be given after exposure to people whom health officials identify as close personal contacts of cases. But on Tuesday, CDC officials say they are expanding the recommendation to people who were never identified but may realize on their own that they may have been infected.That can include men who have sex with men who have recently had multiple sex partners in a venue where there was known to be monkeypox or in an area where monkeypox is spreading."It's almost like we're expanding the definition of who a contact might be," said the CDC's Jennifer McQuiston. If people have been to a party or other place where monkeypox has been known to spread "we recommend they come in for a vaccine," she said.The CDC's expansion follows similar steps taken in New York City and the District of Columbia.The District of Columbia has identified 19 cases, but case-tracking investigations revealed that some of the infected men had been in gatherings where they were hugging, kissing or in other forms of close intimate contact with people they didn't know, said Anil Mangla of the D.C. health department.It was clear that "we were missing something here," and needed to start offering services to others, said Mangla, an epidemiologist.Last Thursday, New York City's health department — armed with 1,000 of doses of Jynneos from the federal government — announced it was opening a temporary clinic to offer the vaccine to all gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men who have had multiple or anonymous sex partners in the previous two weeks.But all the appointments quickly filled up that day, and the last round of appointments was Monday. "Until we receive more supply we are unable to release additional vaccination appointments," said Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for the city's health department, in an email.On Monday, the District of Columbia's health department took a similar step. The department started taking appointments at 1 p.m. Monday but had to stop after 20 minutes, Mangla said.The department only had 200 doses of Jynneos, and it was clear at the point that it the department didn't have the vaccine supply or staffing to continue to sign up new people, he said. (AP)

Oil price cap could strike Russia’s war chest — if enforced

Posted: 28 Jun 2022 03:33 AM PDT

LEADERS of the world's biggest developed economies are weighing a cap on the price of Russian oil meant to strike at the main pillar of the Kremlin's finances following its invasion of Ukraine—and to limit the havoc that high energy prices are wreaking worldwide.Details haven't been agreed at the Group of Seven summit in Elmau, Germany, but the basic idea would be to tie the price cap to the services that make trading oil possible. For instance, insurers would be barred from dealing with shipments that are above the cap, wherever it winds up being set.Because such service providers are largely based in the European Union and United Kingdom, Russia would be expected to face difficulty finding large-scale workarounds.Limiting the price would reduce the Kremlin's income from oil—at the start of the war, it was about $450 million per day from Europe alone. The cap also would limit the impact of higher oil prices on inflation in consuming countries, with the cost of gasoline and diesel squeezing consumers and businesses.But much would depend on whether Asian countries like India would go along with the price cap. A key question is enforcement, and European officials are also cautious about side effects."We want to go more into the details. ... We want to make sure that the goal is to target Russia and not to make our life more difficult," said Charles Michel, head of the European Union's 27-member council of governments. "We need to have a clear common understanding about what are the direct effects and what could be the collateral consequences."The EU has agreed to phase out the 90 percent of Russian oil that comes by ship by the end of the year but is chagrined that it is still paying into the Kremlin's war chest. EU countries, however, need time to line up new sources of oil and are under pressure from the high price of crude.Governments are facing calls for even tougher action, such as an immediate end to Russian oil and natural gas shipments, a move that many economists say would trigger a recession in Europe.Already, fears that supply from Russia would be lost to the global market has helped send global oil prices sharply higher, along with recovering demand from the Covid-19 pandemic.The OPEC+ alliance of oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, has increased output but too slowly to lower prices. (AP)

Russian missile strike hits crowded shopping mall in Ukraine

Posted: 28 Jun 2022 01:17 AM PDT

RESCUERS searched through charred rubble of a shopping mall Tuesday looking for more victims of a Russian missile strike that killed at least 18 and wounded scores in what Ukraine's president called "one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history."President Volodymyr Zelensky said many of the more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and workers inside the mall in the city of Kremenchuk managed to escape. Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames billowed from the wreckage as emergency crews combed through broken metal and concrete for victims. Drones whirred above, clouds of dark smoke still emanating from the ruins several hours after the fire was extinguished.Casualty figures rose as rescuers sifted through the smoldering rubble. The regional governor, Dmytro Lunin, said at least 18 people were killed and 59 others sought medical assistance, of whom 25 were hospitalized. The region declared a day of mourning Tuesday for the victims of the attack."We are working to dismantle the construction so that it is possible to get machinery in there since the metal elements are very heavy and big, and disassembling them by hand is impossible," said Volodymyr Hychkan, an emergency services official.At Ukraine's request, the U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting in New York on Tuesday to discuss the attack.In the first Russian government comment on the missile strike, the country's first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, alleged multiple inconsistencies that he didn't specify, claiming on Twitter that the incident was a provocation by Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly denied it targets civilian infrastructure, even though Russian attacks have hit other shopping malls, theaters, hospitals, kindergartens and apartment buildings in the four-month war.On Tuesday, Russian forces struck the Black Sea city of Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region, damaging apartment buildings and killing two, including a 6-year-old child. A further six people, four of them children, were wounded. One of them, a 3-month-old baby, is in a coma, according to local officials.The missile strike on Kremenchuk occurred as Western leaders pledged continued support for Ukraine and the world's major economies prepared new sanctions against Russia, including a price cap on oil and higher tariffs on goods. Meanwhile, the U.S. appeared ready to respond to Zelenskyy's call for more air defense systems, and NATO planned to increase the size of its rapid-reaction forces nearly eightfold — to 300,000 troops.Zelenskyy said the mall presented "no threat to the Russian army" and had "no strategic value." He accused Russia of sabotaging "people's attempts to live a normal life, which make the occupiers so angry."In his nightly address, he said it appeared Russian forces had intentionally targeted the shopping center and added, "Today's Russian strike at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk is one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history." He said Russia "has become the largest terrorist organization in the world."Russia has increasingly used long-range bombers in the war. Ukrainian officials said Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers flying over Russia's western Kursk region fired the missiles, one of which hit the shopping center and another that struck a sports arena in Kremenchuk.The Russian strike echoed earlier attacks that caused large numbers of civilian casualties — such as one in March on a Mariupol theater where many civilians had holed up, killing an estimated 600, and another in April on a train station in eastern Kramatorsk that killed at least 59 people."Russia continues to take out its impotence on ordinary civilians. It is useless to hope for decency and humanity on its part," Zelenskyy said.The United Nations called the strike "deplorable," stressing that civilian infrastructure "should never ever be targeted," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Group of Seven leaders condemned the attack in a statement late Monday saying "indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime. Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account."The attack coincided with Russia's all-out assault on the last Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk province, "pouring fire" on the city of Lysychansk from the ground and air, according to the local governor. At least eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded in Lysychansk when Russian rockets hit an area where a crowd gathered to obtain water from a tank, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said.The barrage was part of Russian forces' intensified offensive aimed at wresting the eastern Donbas region from Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Russian military and their local separatist allies forced Ukrainian government troops out of Lysychansk's neighboring city, Sievierodonetsk.To the west of Lysychansk on Monday, the mayor of the city of Sloviansk — potentially the next major battleground — said Russian forces fired cluster munitions, including one that hit a residential neighborhood. Authorities said the number of victims had yet to be confirmed. The Associated Press saw one fatality: A man's body lay hunched over a car door frame, his blood pooling onto the ground from chest and head wounds. The blast blew out most windows in the surrounding apartment blocks and the cars parked below, littering the ground with broken glass."Everything is now destroyed," said resident Valentina Vitkovska, in tears as she spoke about the blast. "We are the only people left living in this part of the building. There is no power. I can't even call to tell others what had happened to us."The Russian forces also pummeled other Ukrainian cities, killing at least five people and wounding 15 others in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city and striking the key southern Black Sea port of Odesa where a missile attack destroyed residential buildings and wounded six people, including a child, according to Ukrainian authorities.In Lysychansk, at least five high-rise buildings and the last road bridge were damaged over the past day, Haidai said. A crucial highway linking the city to government-held territory to the south was rendered impassable. (AP)

46 dead after trailer carrying migrants found in San Antonio

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 09:08 PM PDT

FORTY-SIX people were found dead in and near a tractor-trailer and 16 others were taken to hospitals in a presumed migrant smuggling attempt into the United States, officials in San Antonio said.It's among the deadliest tragedies to have claimed thousands of lives of people attempting to cross the U.S. border from Mexico in recent decades. Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck that was parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.South Texas has long been the busiest area for illegal border crossings. Migrants ride in vehicles though Border Patrol checkpoints to San Antonio, the closest major city, from which point they disperse across the United States.A city worker at the scene on a remote back road in southwest San Antonio was alerted to the situation by a cry for help shortly before 6 p.m. Monday, Police Chief William McManus said. Officers arrived to find a body on the ground outside the trailer and a partially opened gate to the trailer, he said.Hours later, body bags lay spread on the ground near the trailer as a grim symbol of the calamity. Bodies still remained inside.Of the 16 taken to hospitals with heat-related illnesses, 12 were adults and four were children, said Fire Chief Charles Hood. The patients were hot to the touch and dehydrated, and no water was found in the trailer, he said."They were suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion," Hood said. "It was a refrigerated tractor-trailer, but there was no visible working AC unit on that rig."San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the 46 who died had "families who were likely trying to find a better life.""This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy," Nirenberg said.Those in the trailer were part of a presumed migrant smuggling attempt into the United States, and the investigation was being led by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, McManus said.Three people were taken into custody, but it was unclear if they were absolutely connected with human trafficking, McManus said.Big rigs emerged as a popular smuggling method in the early 1990s amid a surge in U.S. border enforcement in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, which were then the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.Before that, people paid small fees to mom-and-pop operators to get them across a largely unguarded border. As crossing became exponentially more difficult after the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., migrants were led through more perilous terrain and paid thousands of dollars more.Heat poses a serious danger, particularly when temperatures can rise severely inside vehicles. Weather in the San Antonio area was mostly cloudy Monday, but temperatures approached 100 degrees.Some advocates drew a link to the Biden administration's border policies. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, wrote that he had been dreading such a tragedy for months."With the border shut as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, people have been pushed into more and more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is a way up," he wrote on Twitter.Stephen Miller, a chief architect of former President Donald Trump's immigration policies, said, "Human smugglers and traffickers are wicked and evil" and that the administration's approach to border security rewards their actions.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican running for reelection, was blunt in a tweet about the Democratic president: "These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies."Migrants — largely from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — have been expelled more than 2 million times under a pandemic-era rule in effect since March 2020 that denies them a chance to seek asylum but encourages repeat attempts because there are no legal consequences for getting caught. People from other countries, notably Cuba, Nicaragua and Colombia, are subject to Title 42 authority less frequently due to higher costs of sending them home, strained diplomatic relations and other considerations.U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 557 deaths on the southwest border in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, more than double the 247 deaths reported in the previous year and the highest since it began keeping track in 1998. Most are related to heat exposure.CBP has not published a death tally for this year but said that the Border Patrol performed 14,278 "search-and-rescue missions" in a seven-month period through May, exceeding the 12,833 missions performed during the previous 12-month period and up from 5,071 the year before. (AP)
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