Zimbabwe declares 'state of disaster'

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe on Friday declared a "state of disaster" in many rural areas hit by a severe drought, with 26 percent of the population facing food shortages.

A regional drought worsened by the El Nino weather phenomenon has affected South Africa and Zambia as well as Zimbabwe, leaving tens of thousands of cattle dead, dams depleted and crops written off.

A recent development

Formerly known as the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe has suffered perennial shortages in recent years and has resorted to importing grain from neighbouring countries to meet its needs.

"Initial indications were that 1.5 million people were food insecure with all the 60 rural districts being affected," public works minister Saviour Kasukuwere said in a statement.

"Overall, the food insecure population has since risen to 2.44 million - 26 percent of the population.

"(With) the continued threat of the El Nino-induced drought, His Excellency the President has declared a state of disaster in regard to severely affected areas."

Mugabe has blamed low farm yields on erratic rains due to climate change, as well as sanctions imposed by Western countries over the government's tainted human rights record.

Critics say the food shortages have been partially caused by the president's land reforms enacted since 2000 when the government oversaw the often violent eviction of white farmers.

Many farms are underutilised, and the government has vowed to hold an audit to ensure agriculture land is put to use.

Kasukuwere said at least 16,500 cattle have died countrywide, while as much as 75 percent of crops have been abandoned in the worse-hit areas.

He said the government would take measures to minimise the impact of the drought on both humans and livestock.AFP

Government's version

Mugabe has blamed low farm yields on erratic rains due to climate change, as well as sanctions imposed by Western countries over the government's tainted human rights record.

What critics say?

Critics say the food shortages have been partially caused by the president's land reforms enacted since 2000 when the government oversaw the often violent eviction of white farmers.

How Facebook Is Driving Users To Watch More Sports On TV

As the world gets ready to watch Super Bowl coming Sunday, a new Facebook study has revealed that the volume of Facebook shares and posts from its users 15 minutes prior to Super Bowl kickoff helped increase more first-minute TV viewership.

"We believe that fan engagement and content sharing at this scale, distributed to millions more via friend networks on Facebook, drives awareness and tune-in for live sports broadcasts," Dan Reed, Facebook's head of global sports partnerships, was quoted as saying in a variety.com report.

An increase of one Post within the 15-minute period before the game correlated to nearly 250 additional TV viewers in the first minute while an additional Share correlated to 1,000 viewers in the same time frame, the study noted.

In addition, Facebook shares and posts correlated with subsequent increases in TV viewership.

The findings of the Facebook-funded Nielsen study comes as the social networking giant has launched Sports Stadium -- a dedicated place to experience sports in real time with your friends and the world.

In Facebook Sports Stadium, you can see posts from your friends and their comments on plays as well as enjoy commentary from teams, leagues and journalists with easy access to their Facebook Pages.

You can follow the action as the game unfolds with a live play-by-play, and even like, comment on, and share individual plays.

You can also get up to speed quickly with live scores and the most discussed plays.

"With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world's largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans," wrote Steve Kafka, product manager, in a Facebook Post.

With Facebook Sports Stadium, it may be tough for Sports Twitter to keep up as Twitter has only 320 million monthly users.

"Now we've built a place devoted to sports so you can get the feeling you're watching the game with your friends even when you are not together," Kafka added.

With Facebook Sports Stadium, all the content on Facebook related to the game is at one place and it comes in real time and appears chronologically.

"It's a second-screen experience that we hope makes watching the broadcast even better," Kafka said.

Nielsen has tied up with Facebook to expand Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings to include Facebook's topic data in the new Nielsen Social Content Ratings measuring activity related to TV and over-the-top video content.

According to Facebook, nearly 65 million unique users shared about last year's Super Bowl, making it one of the most-discussed sporting events in 2015 globally. 

 source: Life Hacker

Facebook Launches Initiative To Combat Zika Virus

 
At a time when the world is bracing itself against the growing Zika virus, social networking giant Facebook has partnered with Brazil's non-profit Abrasco Divulga to help combat the disease that has spread to more than 20 countries.

In a Facebook post, its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that as a community, "we can help fight the Zika virus by raising awareness".

"The Zika virus is one of the biggest public health challenges right now. For pregnant women who get the virus, it has been linked to brain damage for their babies," the 31-year-old billionaire posted.

"The virus is carried by mosquitoes. There are no medicines to treat or prevent the virus yet, so right now the most important thing is to try to avoid mosquito bites," he added.

Zuckerberg also posted a video link http://www.who.int/csr/disease/zika/ from their campaign that, he hopes, will provide valuable information to expectant mothers.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared an international emergency over the Zika virus.

The mosquito-transmitted Zika virus outbreak in some countries of the Americas, notably Brazil, has been linked to cases of microcephaly, which causes underdeveloped brains in babies.

The casual relation between the Zika infection during pregnancy and microcephaly is strongly suspected.

Over 1.5 million Brazilians are estimated to have been infected by the virus over the past few months.

WhatsApp hits the billion-user mark

WhatsApp competes with messaging apps like LINE, Viber and Hike in India. —file photo

Mobile messaging app WhatsApp on Tuesday said that it has crossed the billion user milestone globally, with an addition of 100 million users in the last five months.

“As of today, one billion people are using WhatsApp. That’s nearly one in seven people on earth who use WhatsApp each month to stay in touch with their loved ones, friends, and family,” WhatsApp said in a blogpost.

“In India, more photos are sent using WhatsApp than in any other country in the world. As one of WhatsApp’s largest countries, it’s not surprising that the second-highest number of groups is here,” the company said.

WhatsApp competes with messaging apps like LINE, Viber and Hike in India.

In February 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by social networking site Facebook for a whopping $19 billion, the social media platform’s biggest buyout till date.

In a post on Facebook, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum said 42 billion messages were sent, 1.6 billion photos and 250 million videos shared every day on the platform., and there were one billion groups on WhatsApp. Recently, the company stopped charging $1 per year subscription fee and is now completely free for its users across the world. It also said it would not introduce any third-party ads for monetisation and is going to experiment with new models to stay ad-free.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg congratulated Mr Koum and his team. “WhatsApp’s community has more than doubled since joining Facebook. We’ve added the ability for you to call loved ones far away. We’ve dropped the subscription fee and made WhatsApp completely free. Next, we’re going to work to connect more people around the world and make it easier to communicate with businesses,” he said. Mr Zuckerberg said there are only a few services that connect more than a billion people and this milestone is an important step towards connecting the entire world.

— PTI

Obama borrows from Bush in first visit to U.S. mosque

President Obama tours the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)

President Obama took office in January 2009 eager to speak to Muslims around the world on behalf of Americans, looking to reset a relationship poisoned by the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Seven years later, Obama makes his first visit to a U.S. mosque on Wednesday, eager to speak to America on behalf of its Muslim citizens, looking to counter what the White House describes as poisonous election-year rhetoric from Republicans.


“We have seen an alarming willingness on the part of some Republicans to try to marginalize law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans, and it is offensive,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday. “We have seen a willingness on the part of leading Republican presidential candidates to try to appeal to people’s fears and anxieties.”

White House aides say Obama won’t call out any Republicans by name during his visit to the Islamic Center of Baltimore mosque. But they privately say that the spark for the president’s visit was Trump’s call to halt Muslim immigration to the United States, a proposal that drew condemnation from some — but not all — of the bombastic billionaire’s rivals to be the Republican standard-bearer in 2016, and won considerable support in Congress. Obama’s advisers also bristle at charges from some in the GOP that Islam is inherently prone to violence. And administration officials worry that coverage overseas of Trump’s remarks could fuel what one called a “false impression that we are at war with Islam.” Republicans have often countered that Obama’s refusal to brand the enemy “Islamic extremists” is a nod to politically correct sensibilities that shows he does not take the threat seriously.

Public opinion polls in late 2015 found that a majority of Republican voters backed Trump’s idea. Democrats overwhelmingly rejected it, and most independents sided with them.

Among the key audiences for Obama’s remarks is America’s Muslim community, which he needs to have as an ally against home-grown extremists, like those who carried out the deadly attack in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

“We will have more success in our efforts to prevent that if we work effectively with the Muslim community to confront that threat as opposed to branding everybody who attends a mosque as a potential enemy of the United States of America,” Earnest said Tuesday.

Seven years ago, Obama’s key audience was Muslims around the world, a constituency he described as vital to allied efforts to stamp out the kind of violent extremism that plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Back then, the centerpiece of his outreach was a June 2009 speech at Cairo University in which he pleaded for “a new beginning,” acknowledged “civilization’s debt to Islam” and highlighted the contributions of American Muslims.

“They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building and lit the Olympic Torch,” he said.

Obama is certain to echo that part of his Cairo message on Wednesday as he visits the Islamic Society of Baltimore mosque, holds a round table with key community figures and makes remarks.

Obama has visited mosques in Cairo and Jakarta as president, but never before one on U.S. soil. He has delivered impassioned pleas for religious acceptance before, as recently as his appearance at the House Democrats’ annual retreat and his State of the Union address, and years earlier when he defended plans to build a mosque near ground zero in New York City. He has continued the practice of holding annual dinners at the White House to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Obama officials cite an unlikely model for this latest outreach: George W. Bush. They note with approval Bush’s visit to the Islamic Center of Washington just days after the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes.

Bush had declared a “war on terrorism” not quite 12 hours after the attacks. But he hurried to the Islamic Center of Washington, a mosque and cultural center, less than a week later, quoted the Quran, and warned that Americans unleashing their anger on fellow Americans who follow Islam “represent the worst of humankind.”


“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war,” he said.

Bush worked enormously hard for eight years to tamp down anti-Islam sentiment at home, though policies like the war in Iraq undercut his outreach to Muslims around the world. Aides frequently observed in private that “public diplomacy” messaging efforts to win over Middle Eastern audiences couldn’t compete with the reality of America policies that angered Muslims.

And Bush tried to shape his language to avoid offending followers of Islam overseas. He shied from describing America’s enemies as “Islamic terrorists,” though for a brief time in 2006 he called them “Islamic radicals,” only to drop the expression after Saudi Arabia objected. Early on he dubbed the war on terrorism a “crusade,” a bland term in the West that remains deeply controversial for many Middle Eastern Muslims. Angry with himself over the unnecessary provocation, Bush in June 2004 trimmed Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous D-Day message to leave out a reference to “the great crusade” of defeating Nazi Germany.

Some former Obama aides say this president faces some of the same challenges overseas — that policies like his drone war outweigh earnest diplomatic entreaties for popular support. But many praise Bush’s efforts.

“That was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11, when he basically said, after going to a mosque in Washington, ‘We are not at war with Islam or Muslims,’” former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said at a Democratic debate in November.

At home, it’s unclear what sort of clout Obama’s message will have as his consequential two-term presidency winds down — and with whom. But he’ll avoid picking fights with any Republicans by name on Wednesday, even if his targets are obvious, his spokesman said.

According to Earnest, “I wouldn’t expect any of the candidates tomorrow to enjoy the benefit of being singled out by the president of the United States.”

Candidate Obama inherited the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and promised to end them. But his successor will inherit conflicts in both countries — a sobering reality not lost on anyone at the White House. That Obama started his term with outreach to Muslim audiences in Cairo and ends it reaching out to Muslim audiences in Baltimore shows that the next president will also take up a war of words that began shortly after 9/11.

As Zika virus spreads, United States reports sexually transmitted case

Miami: Texas reported a case of the Zika virus being sexually transmitted Tuesday, fueling fears over the rapid spread of the disease blamed for a surge in the number of brain-damaged babies.

With concern growing that an outbreak sweeping Latin America could spread much farther, health authorities in the southern US state said they had confirmation of the virus being transmitted by sexual contact and not just tropical mosquitoes.

That is a troubling prospect for the United States, Canada and Europe, where Zika had so far only appeared in travelers returning from affected areas.

"The patient was infected with the virus after having sexual contact with an ill individual who returned from a country where Zika virus is present" this year, a Dallas County statement read.

An employee of the Health Secretariat fumigates against the Aedes aegypti mosquito to prevent the spread of the Zika. AFP

The county subsequently tweeted that the virus was contracted from someone who had traveled to Venezuela, and that a second case of Zika imported from Venezuela has also been documented.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the Zika infection but did not investigate how it was transmitted, a spokesman told AFP.

Last month, the CDC said it was aware of one reported case of sexual transmission of Zika and one case of the virus being present in a man's semen after it disappeared from his blood.

Zika, which was first identified in Uganda in 1947, causes relatively mild flu-like symptoms and a rash.

But there is growing alarm over an apparent link between the current outbreak and both a rise in birth defects and a potentially crippling neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, have reported a surge in cases of microcephaly — which causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads — since the Zika outbreak was declared in the region last year.

The virus is spread primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, whose habitat is concentrated in the tropics — giving temperate countries an apparent reprieve.

But sexual transmission would complicate matters.

"The majority of Zika infections are asymptomatic," said Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at Oxford University.

"Is there a risk of sexual transmission from people who had asymptomatic infection? For how long can sperm be infectious? This highlights our ignorance of this virus."

Global risk

A day after declaring the spike in serious birth defects in South America an international emergency, the World Health Organization said it had created a global Zika response unit to contain the virus.

WHO expert Anthony Costello emphasized the urgency of rapid action, stressing there was no reason to believe the crisis would remain limited to Latin America.

"We know that the mosquitoes that carry Zika virus... are present through most of Africa, parts of southern Europe and many parts of Asia, particularly south Asia," he said.

Underlining Costello's point, Thai officials announced a man had contracted the virus in the country.

Cape Verde and Indonesia have also reported domestic Zika cases.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies joined the WHO in declaring an "emergency," and appealed for 2.4 million Swiss francs ($2.36 million) to support its response in the Americas.

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi meanwhile announced it had begun research into a vaccine for Zika, for which there is currently no specific treatment.

Developing a vaccine could however take years, experts say.

Free abortion pills

In Brazil, which has been hardest hit, Olympics organizers said they are concerned but downplayed fears -- one day after the government warned pregnant women not to attend the Games.

"We are sure we will win this battle and it will not affect the Games," said Rio 2016 organizing committee spokesman Mario Andrada.

The Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro from August 5 to 21, during the southern hemisphere winter, which means there will be fewer mosquitoes, organizers stressed.

A Dutch women's rights group meanwhile offered to send free pills to trigger an abortion to pregnant women in Latin America, a region known for its restrictive abortion laws.

"We are extremely worried that (the outbreak) might cause increasing unsafe abortions," said Rebecca Gomperts, founder and director of Women on Web.

Since October, Brazil has reported 3,670 suspected cases of microcephaly, of which 404 have been confirmed -- up from 147 in 2014.

In all, more than 1.5 million Brazilians are estimated to have been infected with Zika.

Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica and Puerto Rico have all warned women not to get pregnant.

Mexico announced it was creating special brigades to address areas likely to have more mosquitoes.

And Peru performed health checks on all Sao Paulo footballers visiting Trujillo for a Copa Libertadores match. They were all clear of Zika, dengue and chikungyuna.

Some health experts urge condom use, while others say abstinence is the only way to avoid Zika.

"Don't have sex with a virus, it's that simple," said Jill Rabin, co-chief of the division of ambulatory care at Women's Health Programs at Northwell Health in New York.

AFP

Haddington student to teach first aid in Tanzania

 

A UNIVERSITY student will for six weeks swap home comforts for teaching first aid to people living in the towns and villages around Africa’s highest mountain.

Abbie Scott heads out to Tanzania and Mount Kilimanjaro at the start of August as part of a project with First Aid Africa.

The third year adult nursing student at Edinburgh Napier University will be away from home for more than a month.

She said: “It will definitely be a challenge but it will be really good.

“It is something really good to do before I settle down and get a job.”

The 21-year-old will need to raise about £1,500 for the expedition.

To help raise funds, she will host a brunch at Haddington Day Centre, where her mum, Caroline, is the manager, on Saturday.

Hot filled rolls, homemade soup and homemade baking will be for sale on the day between 10am and 1pm, with the chance of winning a homemade cake.

All proceeds from the event will then go towards the trip.

She said: “There was a guy from First Aid Africa who had previously graduated from Napier and did the same course as me.

“He wanted to get Edinburgh Napier students involved with First Aid Africa.

“I went along to a talk at university in September or October and it went from there and I signed up to it.”

Abbie, of Seggarsdean Court, will undergo four training sessions later this year in order to prepare her for the 7,000-mile trip.

She said: “You don’t need to be studying nursing but we will be providing first aid skills to rural communities who have limited access to healthcare and providing them with the skills.”

The charity works to provide, and encourage access to, sustainable first aid equipment and education across sub-Saharan Africa.

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Courses concentrate on providing sustainable training, which does not rely on imported equipment or Western handouts.

A collection will also be held in Haddington’s Tesco store over the weekend of February 20-21 and a special keep fit session will take place in March to help boost funds.