February 27, 2022

Malawi Restocks Depleted AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

Malawi has received nearly 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine under COVAX, the global initiative founded to foster equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. This is the first vaccine donation this year, after the country’s stocks were depleted in December. The donation from Japan Saturday is part of about 2 million doses of AstraZeneca Japan is prepared to send to Malawi.

Health authorities in Malawi say the donation is the first COVID-19 vaccine consignment from Japan to a country in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malawi’s health minister, Khumbize Kandodo-Chiponda, says Malawi feels honored to receive the vaccine donation when it is needed most.

“This is so timely because we have over about 700,000 Malawians who have already received the first dose of AstraZeneca. You are aware that we had our last consignment in December. By 31 December, we finished all the doses of the AstraZeneca which we had. So we haven’t had AstraZeneca from 1 January,” said Kandodo-Chiponda.

So far, Malawi administers three types of COVID-19 vaccine: Johnson &Johnson, Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

However, the country has so far vaccinated only about 7% of the population amid continued vaccine hesitancy largely stemming from misconceptions and doubts over its efficacy.

However, the frequency of shipment of the 1.9 million doses Japan is keeping for Malawi will depend on Malawi’s commitment in increasing vaccine use.

Kandodo-Chiponda said the condition is in line with the government’s new arrangement.

“You remember that last year, in March, we had over 20,000 doses expiring on us. So, what we have agreed with COVAX is that we should be getting them in parts. Otherwise, as government, we have already made procurement of over 2 million doses but we are saying ‘we don’t want anything to expire on us, our consumption rate is still very, very low,” she said.

Maziko Matemba, Malawi’s national ambassador on health, says the condition on the forthcoming vaccine donations should be a wakeup call to the Malawi government to make sure it does not lose vaccine donations from other countries.

“This is the first time the donor has put a condition on the COVID vaccines which Malawi received as a donation. And this just shows that our partners who are supporting us with these vaccines, they have noted that maybe we are not doing much in terms of demand creation but also uptake,” he said.

The World Health Organization has called for each country to vaccinate at least 70% of their population by June.

Malawi announced last month that it has set itself a target of vaccinating 50% by June.

“As a country, we are behind our projections because we would have loved that at least by this time, we would have been taking about at least 15% of the eligible people to have been vaccinated. But we are way behind. This is mainly [because of] vaccine hesitancy. It is still there, some people still not yet convinced that they need to get the vaccine. So, it is work in progress,” said Kandodo-Chiponda.

A recent U.N. report says although the COVAX facility has helped increase vaccine supplies in Africa, the continent is struggling to expand rollout, with only 11% of the population fully vaccinated so far.

But Kandodo-Chiponda said the Malawi government is devising a plan to increase its vaccine uptake which includes increasing an ongoing door-to-door vaccination campaign.

Source: Voice of America

February 27, 2022

EU to Finance Weapons Purchases For Ukraine, Ban Russian Media

The European Union plans to take the unprecedented step of funding weapons purchases for Ukraine, EU officials said on Feb. 27 as the bloc announced a raft of new sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The EU’s plan to fund weapons purchases will use millions of euros to help buy air-defense systems, anti-tank weapons, ammunition and other military equipment for Ukraine’s armed forces. It would also supply things like fuel, protective gear, helmets and first-aid kits.

“For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said of the weapons purchases, calling it a “watershed moment.”

Von der Leyen expects the measure to be endorsed by EU leaders along with other significant moves — a ban on pro-Kremlin media outlets RT and Sputnik, the closure of EU airspace to Russian planes, and sanctions against Belarus.

She said RT and Sputnik are part of the “Kremlin’s media machine,” and the EU is “developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe,” von der Leyen said.

They will “no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union,” von der Leyen said.

The closure of the EU’s airspace comes after many individual European countries along with Britain and Canada announced they would ban Russian planes. The EU airspace ban will prohibit flights into or over the EU by “every Russian plane — and that includes the private jets of oligarchs,” von der Leyen said.

The EU also will hit Russian ally Belarus with sanctions for facilitating the invasion. The regime of Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka had been “complicit in the vicious attack against Ukraine,” von der Leyen said.

New restrictive measures will hit Belarus’s most important sectors, including tobacco, wood, cement, iron and steel.

The measures come on top of EU sanctions announced Feb. 26, including cutting some Russian banks from the SWIFT interbank messaging network, banning all transactions with Russia’s central bank, and added restrictions on Russian oligarchs.

The measures also follow Germany’s decision to commit 100 billion euros ($113 billion) to a special armed forces fund and to keep its defense spending above 2% of GDP from now on.

Source: Voice of America

February 27, 2022

With Cinemas Closed, Ghana’s Hand-Painted Movie Posters Find Homes Abroad

With a flick of his brush, Ghanaian painter Daniel Anum Jasper armed actor Paul Newman with a pair of revolvers. Unfinished paintings of a bell-bottomed John Travolta and nunchuck-spinning Bruce Lee adorned the walls of his crammed Accra studio.

Jasper, a veteran movie poster designer, was finishing up one of the 1969 classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” commissioned by a foreign collector who had reached out over Instagram.

From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Ghana developed a tradition of advertising films with vibrant hand-painted posters. Local cinemas were flourishing in the West African country, and artists competed over who could entice the largest audience with their often gory, imaginative and eye-popping displays.

Jasper was a pioneer of the tradition and has been painting movie posters on repurposed flour sacks for the last 30 years. But the market for his work, which once had people clamoring for theater seats, has changed.

“People are no longer interested in going out to watch a movie when it can be watched from the comfort of their phones,” Jasper said.

“But there is a growing interest in owning these hand-painted posters internationally,” he added. “Now they hang them in private rooms or show them in exhibitions.”

With the rise of the internet, Ghana’s independent cinemas fell into obscurity. But Jasper’s work has gained appeal abroad, including in the United States, where the posters are valued as unique representations of a specific period in African art.

Western action flicks were mainstays of the tradition, as were Bollywood films and Chinese pictures. Many of the posters include paranormal elements and gratuitous violence even if the films had none, and physical features are wildly exaggerated.

Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, a professor in pop culture anthropology at Ghana’s Ashesi University, has several of Jasper’s paintings. He has collected the posters for years and has been known to buy up a closing video store’s entire supply.

He plans to display his posters at the Centre for African Popular Culture opening at the university later this year, and said he hopes people appreciate their historical significance.

“Of course there is an esthetic value to the posters, how crazy it is and all of that, but we use them to have a conversation with students,” he said.

“We tell them not to think about what they’re seeing now… [but] to think of these art forms as symbols of history that can tell their own stories.”

Source: Voice of America

February 27, 2022

BP Exiting Stake in Russian Oil and Gas Company Rosneft

BP said Sunday it is exiting its share in Rosneft, a state-controlled Russian oil and gas company, in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

BP has held a 19.75% stake in Rosneft since 2013. That stake is currently valued at $14 billion.

London-based BP also said its CEO, Bernard Looney, and former BP executive Bob Dudley will immediately resign from Rosneft’s board.

“Like so many, I have been deeply shocked and saddened by the situation unfolding in Ukraine and my heart goes out to everyone affected. It has caused us to fundamentally rethink BP’s position with Rosneft,” Looney said in a statement.

Rosneft said it was informed of BP’s decision Sunday.

“BP has come under unprecedented pressure from both the regulator and its shareholders. BP’s decision was preceded by a Western media campaign full of false reports and conclusions,” Rosneft said in a statement on its website that was translated by The Associated Press. “The decision of the largest minority shareholder of Rosneft destroys the successful, 30-year-long cooperation of the two companies.”

BP Chairman Helge Lund praised the “brilliant Russian colleagues” BP has worked with for decades, but said Russia’s military action “represents a fundamental change.”

“The Rosneft holding is no longer aligned with BP’s business and strategy and it is now the board’s decision to exit BP’s shareholding in Rosneft,” Lund said in a statement.

BP’s action was an abrupt turnaround from earlier this month. During a conference call with investors on Feb. 8, Looney downplayed concerns and said there were no changes to the company’s business in Russia.

“Let’s not worry about things until they happen. And who knows what’s going to happen?” Looney said.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the U.K.’s secretary of state for business and energy, said he welcomed BP’s decision.

“Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine must be a wake up call for British businesses with commercial interests in Putin’s Russia,” Kwarteng said in a tweet.

BP said it will take two non-cash charges in the first quarter to reflect the change, including an $11 billion charge for foreign exchange losses that have accumulated since 2013.

It is not clear exactly how BP will unwind its holdings, or who might step up to buy them.

Rosneft’s partnerships with Western oil and gas companies have been stymied before.

In 2011, Exxon Mobil, led at the time by future U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, signed a deal with Rosneft to potentially drill in the oil-rich Russian Arctic. But Exxon ended that partnership in 2017, citing U.S. and European sanctions against Russia.

Source: Voice of America

February 27, 2022

Glitz Returns on Screen Actors Guild Awards Red Carpet

The 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards will kick off with a “Hamilton” reunion, feature a lifetime achievement award for Helen Mirren and, maybe, supply a preview of the upcoming Academy Awards.

The SAG Awards, taking place at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, begin at 8 p.m. EST Sunday and air on both TNT and TBS. (The show will also be available to stream Monday on HBO Max.) After the January Golden Globes were a non-event, the Screen Actors Guild Awards are Hollywood’s first major, televised, in-person award show — complete with a red carpet and teary-eyed speeches — this year.

While the Academy Awards aren’t mandating vaccination for presenters (just attendees), it’s required for the SAG Awards, which are voted on by the Hollywood actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA. One actor in the cast of the Paramount series “Yellowstone,” Forrie J. Smith, has said he wouldn’t attend because he isn’t vaccinated.

The evening’s first awards, announced before the show began, honored a pair of blockbusters on both the big and small screens. Netflix’s “Squid Game” and the James Bond film “No Time to Die” each won for best stunt ensembles.

“Hamilton” trio Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr. and Daveed Diggs were set to open the ceremony. Kate Winslet is presenting the actors’ lifetime achievement award to Mirren, a five-time SAG Award winner.

A starry group of nominees — including Will Smith, Lady Gaga, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck — will make sure the SAG Award don’t lack for glamour.

Five films are nominated for the SAG Awards’ top honor, best ensemble: Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Sian Heder’s coming-of-age drama “CODA,” Adam McKay’s apocalypse comedy “Don’t Look Up,” Ridley Scott’s high-camp “House of Gucci” and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s family tennis drama “King Richard.”

The leading Oscar nominee, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” failed to land a best ensemble nominations but three of its actors — Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee — are up for individual awards.

Winning best ensemble doesn’t automatically make a movie the Oscar favorite, but actors hold the largest sway because they constitute the largest percentage of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Last year, the actors chose Aaron Sorkin’s 1960s courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” while best picture at the Oscars went to “Nomadland.” The year before, SAG’s pick of “Parasite” presaged the Oscar winner.

In the television categories, Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” comes in with a leading five nominations, closely trailed by HBO’s “Succession,” Apple’s “The Morning Show” and “Squid Game” — all of which are up for four awards.

Source: Voice of America