The important thing to rock climber Alex Honnold is that the movie screen be big. IMAX, whatever. But big.

It’s shortly before the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Free Solo, the documentary that chronicles Honnold’s legendary, ropeless ascent up Yosemite’s El Capitan, a 3,000-foot wall of sheer granite and possibly the world’s most fabled rock face. Honnold has just come from free soloing — climbing without safety gear — a 69-story luxury apartment building in Jersey City, New Jersey.

From a hotel window he scans the Toronto skyline but doesn’t see anything much appealing. “It has to be inspiring aesthetically,” he says.

Honnold, 33, is widely acknowledged as the greatest free-solo climber in the world. And in a sport that demands absolute perfection from its strivers — death is the only alternative — Honnold’s feat on El Cap is his masterpiece. An almost unfathomable climbing achievement, the four-hour climb is still spoken of in hushed reverence. The New York Times called it “one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind, ever.”

But whether scaling El Cap was Honnold’s greatest challenge is an open question. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Free Solo, in theaters Friday, not only chronicles Honnold’s famed ascent, and the months of preparation and anguish leading up to it, but also an arguably steeper challenge for the 33-year-old Honnold: moving out of his van and maintaining a long-term relationship.

“Anybody, if you took two years of their life, you would see some growth, hopefully,” Honnold says. “But it’s easy to see growth when you’re starting at zero.”

After settling whether Free Solo would screen on IMAX (it wouldn’t), Honnold was joined by Sanni McCandless, his girlfriend of several years. Just as Chin and Vasarhelyi, the filmmaking couple of the celebrated Meru, were beginning their film three years ago, McCandless slipped Honnold her number at a book signing. The exceptionally dedicated but goofy and boyish Honnold (in the film, he sums up the fearsome specter of El Cap with the phase “I mean, dude”) is at first almost comically inept at making room for someone else in his life.

“When we started he was online dating, or on-phone dating, on his book tour. And then he met her. We were not expecting that,” says Vasarhelyi.

‘Extremely painful’

The two make an appealing and revealing match. McCandless, articulate and assertive, pushes back against the less mature, bluntly honest Honnold, long a bachelor adventurer. Vasarhelyi shakes her head. “It’s painful at times,” she says, smiling. “Extremely painful.”

Case in point: When Honnold, shortly after meeting Sanni, is shown saying that she will come and go like previous girlfriends. Later, they buy a place in Las Vegas and are seen refrigerator shopping.

“How do you feel about that line, Sanni?” Honnold asks.

“How do YOU feel about that line?” she retorts. 

“That’s just one of many lines in the film I’m slightly horrified to hear back,” says Honnold. “That’s kind of the nature of two years of filming. They just have so much material of me saying terrible things.”

What makes Free Solo so fascinating is how these developments influence Honnold just as he preparing to take his biggest risk as a climber. Just the slightest distractions can be potentially lethal for a free soloist, making both the onset of love and the presence of film cameras unpredictable factors in a zero-sum game.

“Soloing always come from some kind of particular mental space. And it has taken some effort to cultivate the right space for a relationship, the right space to still climb at a high level and just try to balance it,” says Honnold.

‘Glorious’ climb

The high stakes also transferred to the film crew. Chin, himself an expert climber, estimates that he and the team of veteran climbers spent more than 30 days rigging and shooting on El Cap. The danger is very real. Many renowned solo climbers have died; just in June, two experienced climbers, Jason Wells and Tim Klein, fell to their death while “simul-climbing” El Cap with ropes.

“You’re a pro, but when you have that much exposure and you’re moving that much equipment and you’re filming on top of it and thinking about your friend, it’s a tremendous amount of physical and mental exertion,” says Chin. “The crew was tortured by the idea that maybe you’ll be filming your friend’s death.”

Vasarhelyi says the tension was highest when Honnold made his first, aborted soloing attempt of El Cap despite a recent injury. She felt he wasn’t prepared.

“But I don’t think our role as filmmakers was to tell him not do it,” she says. “And that’s weird, right? Especially when there’s a life on the line.”

McCandless has also had to come to terms with Honnold’s obsessive pursuits.  

“I don’t think I ever wished that he wouldn’t do it. I wanted him to not want it, but I never wanted him to not to do it,” she says. “Knowing that he does want it, you realize he’s going to be so bummed if he never brings it to fruition.”

Free Solo in some ways demystifies soloing which, to some, can sound like lunacy. Honnold’s preparation is extreme. He doesn’t go until he’s thoroughly mapped out every foot hold of a climb. Also worth noting: A brain scan revealed that Honnold barely registers fear.

“It’s a crazy-seeming thing. I get that,” he says. “I just think: Why does anybody seek out anything challenging? Humans do so many interesting and difficult things.”

Honnold calls his El Cap solo the best climbing experience of his life. “Glorious,” he says. For all their months of anxiety, witnessing the climb left the filmmakers mesmerized.

 “I remember standing in the meadow being totally terrified, trying to get myself under control,” says Vasarhelyi. “Then there was a certain moment where I was like: This is absolutely beautiful. It’s exquisite.”
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From: MeNeedIt

An experimental GlaxoSmithKline vaccine could prevent tuberculosis developing in half of those who receive it, making it potentially the first new shot against the global killer in a century, researchers said on Tuesday.

Given the failure of other candidates in recent years, it marks a milestone in the fight against TB, although the 54 percent efficacy rate achieved in adults in a mid-stage clinical trial is low compared to immunizations for other diseases.

The current vaccine called Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) was developed in 1921 and is given routinely to babies in countries with high rates of TB to prevent severe disease.

However, BCG protection wears off in just a few years and it does nothing to protect against the most common form of TB that invades the lungs of adults and adolescents, and can be transmitted through coughing and sneezing.

A more effective vaccine is viewed by experts as key to controlling TB and fighting the growing scourge of drug-resistant infection. With TB a major focus for global health, the United Nations is holding its first ever high-level meeting on the disease in New York on Wednesday.

GSK’s vaccine is designed to stop latent TB from becoming active and causing sickness. An estimated 1.7 billion people – one quarter of the global population – have latent TB infection, putting them at risk of a disease that killed 1.6 million people last year.

Results of an ongoing Phase IIb trial of the vaccine – known as M72/AS01 and developed by GSK in conjunction with Aeras, a nonprofit TB group backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

After a mean follow-up of 2.3 years, 10 of the 1,786 adults vaccinated twice developed active pulmonary TB compared with 22 of the 1,787 given two placebo injections. The study was conducted in Kenya, Zambia and South Africa.

The vaccine did produce more side effects than placebo, with two-thirds of participants reporting at least one adverse event, typically injection-site reactions or flu-like symptoms.

Most of the volunteers had received the BCG vaccine and all were HIV negative. People with HIV are more vulnerable to TB because their immune systems are weakened.

Areas Chief Executive Jacqui Shea said the results were “ground-breaking” and showed that more effective TB vaccines were achievable.

GSK is confident it can do better in future, with larger trials set to refine the vaccine’s dosing schedule and potentially target specific groups of patients who are most likely to benefit.

“It’s the first time we really tested the biological potential of our vaccine and we think that there is a lot of additional improvement now that we can bring,” the company’s head of vaccines research, Emmanuel Hanon, told Reuters.

TB is a particularly tricky disease to vaccinate against because the bacteria that cause it can hide from the body’s immune system and scientists lack protective markers in the blood to predict whether a vaccine will work.

As a result, TB vaccines must be tested in big clinical trials, a large and costly gamble.

Mike Turner, head of infection and immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust medial charity, said the encouraging results represented a “landmark moment” and M72/AS01 now needed to be tested in much larger numbers of people.
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From: MeNeedIt

The number of babies born infected with syphilis in the United States has more than doubled since 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a report released Tuesday, the CDC said the number of cases of congenital syphilis, in which the disease is passed from the mother to the baby, increased 153 percent — from 362 in 2013 to 918 in 2017.

“When a baby gets syphilis, it means the system has failed that mother repeatedly, both before and during her pregnancy,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

“If STD prevention programs had anywhere near the support they need, no new mom would ever have to cope with this devastating diagnosis,” he said.

Syphilis is easily treatable with antibiotics. But when untreated in the mother, it increases the risk of miscarriage and newborn death. Children born with the disease can suffer severe health consequences, including deformed bones, blindness or deafness.

About 70 percent of the cases of congenital syphilis in the U.S. over the span studied were found in California, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas. 

Harvey said women should be tested before becoming pregnant, soon after becoming pregnant, and throughout the pregnancy. 

One-third of the mothers who gave birth to babies with congenital syphilis had been tested. But the tests were performed too late in their pregnancies to prevent the infection of the fetuses, or the women became infected after being tested. 

“That we have any cases of syphilis among newborns, let alone an increasing number, is a failure of the health care system,” Harvey said. 

Congenital syphilis is only a part of the nation’s growing STD crisis. According to the CDC, the three most easily treatable sexually transmitted diseases — chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis — rose nearly 10 percent in 2017 to an all-time high of nearly 2.3 million cases. That eclipsed the previous record total from 2016 by more than 200,000 cases.
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From: MeNeedIt

More than 11,000 people in Sudan’s eastern state of Kassala have been infected over the past month by Chikungunya, a debilitating mosquito-borne viral disease, but no deaths have been reported, a Sudanese official said Tuesday.

Chikungunya is spread by two mosquito species and can cause severe symptoms, which develop three to seven days after a person is bitten by an infected mosquito. They include high fever, headache, muscle pain, back pain and rash. In rare cases, it is fatal. There are no dedicated treatments or vaccines for Chikungunya.

“So far official statistics say that about 11,000 people were infected, and there haven’t been any documented cases of death because of the Chikungunya fever,” said Magzoub Abou Moussa, a spokesman for the Kassala state administration.

Heavy rains

The outbreak began in recent weeks when heavy rains pummeled the area, which led to the flooding of a major river in Kassala.

Abou Moussa said his state had received health and technical aid from Sudan’s health ministry, but expressed concern over the spread of the virus and called for further help.

Eyewitnesses said they had seen planes on Monday sweeping over the state, spraying mosquito pesticides.

Sudanese opposition parties have accused the government of failing to deal with the situation in Kassala and called for international organizations’ help.

“We hold the government fully responsible for the spread of the epidemic,” said a statement from the National Umma Party, the largest opposition party. “We call on civil society organizations and the World Health Organization to help the people of Kassala.”

Activists on social media said the number of people infected by the disease was much higher than the government’s figure and that there had been deaths not documented by the government.
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From: MeNeedIt

At least 14 civilians were killed on Saturday in a six-hour attack by rebels on the town of Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local officials told Reuters, warning the unrest may hamper efforts to quash an Ebola epidemic in the area.

The latest outbreak of the deadly disease has been focused in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which have been a tinder box of armed rebellion and ethnic killing since two civil wars in the late 1990s.

Militants believed to belong to the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan Islamist group active in eastern Congo, clashed with Congolese troops in Beni, a town of several hundred thousand people, local civil society leader Kizito Bin Hangi said by telephone.

“Beni is ungovernable this morning. Several protests have been declared in the town where the people express their anger with consternation,” he said.

In addition to the known fatalities, dozens of civilians were wounded as they fled the violence, which broke out in the early hours of Saturday evening and lasted until midnight, Bin Hangi added.

A spokesman for the army declined immediate comment.

The attack underscores the challenges the government and health organizations face in tackling Ebola in an area where years of instability has undermined locals’ confidence in the authorities.

The violence “will have a considerable impact on the whole response to Ebola,” a local public health official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

“The general hospital which houses one of the Ebola treatment centers was the focus of angry protests this morning.

This is a normal reaction for a community that is bereaved for the umpteenth time,” the official said.

The latest Ebola outbreak, which causes hemorrhagic fever, vomiting and diarrhea, is believed to have killed 99 people since July and infected another 48.
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From: MeNeedIt

Inside a hidden vault in Los Angeles, California, is a treasure trove of cars from around the world. It’s the collection of the Petersen Automotive Museum, and it is now open to the public. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, visiting the vault is like traveling back in time, exploring the history of auto-making. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

A former Afghan refugee turned doctor in the United Kingdom is using technology and the web to save lives in war-torn and low income countries. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo has more on what the doctor has dubbed “Teleheal,” the charitable organization he recently founded.
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From: MeNeedIt

The consequences of Afghanistan’s increasingly deadly war are weighing heaviest on the nation’s civilians, with women bearing the brunt of the violence. The Taliban banned music and girls education, and restricted outdoor activities of women when the group was controlling most of Afghanistan.

But violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to “heal wounds” and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society.

The ensemble, known as Zohra, was founded in 2014 as part of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul, where suicide bombings lately have become routine.

​Hope and music

Students and trainers are not losing hope and regularly come to the city’s only institute to rehearse and learn new lessons, says Ahmed Naser Sarmast, the director of ANIM and the founder of the orchestra. Zohra is the name of a music goddess in Persian literature, he explained.

The musicologist spoke to VOA while visiting neighboring Pakistan earlier this month with the young ensemble to perform in Islamabad as part of celebrations marking the 99th anniversary of Afghanistan’s Independence Day. Kabul’s embassy in Islamabad organized and arranged for the orchestra’s first visit to Pakistan.

Despite the many challenges in Afghanistan, Sarmast said, student enrollment has consistently grown and more parents are bringing their children to the institute to study music. Around 300 students are studying not only music at the institute but other subjects, including the Quran, he said.

​Advances for women

Negin Khpolwak, the orchestra’s first woman conductor, says Afghanistan has made significant advances in terms of promoting women’s rights in the past 17 years. She says there is a need to sustain the momentum irrespective of rising violence.

“We need to stand up to protect those gains and we need to open the doors for other Afghan girls,” Khpolwak said when asked whether deadly attacks around the country are reversing the gains women have made.

But violence alone is not the only challenge for women and girls, especially those who want to study music, she said.

“When you are going in the street with your instrument to the school and they are saying bad words to you and if you are giving a concert in public they are telling the bad words to you. But we are not caring about it,” Khpolwak said.

​Ethnic groups help each other

Sarmast says that girls and boys in the orchestra come from different Afghan ethnic groups and they help each other when needed. 

“It’s hope for the future,” he said.

Ethnic rivalries have been a hallmark of hostilities in Afghanistan and continue to pose a challenge to efforts promoting peace and stability.

“I strongly believe without arts and culture there cannot be security and we are using the soft power of music to make a small contribution to bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan and at the same time using this beautiful, if I can call it a beautiful weapon, to transform our community,” the director said.

Some of the members of the Afghan orchestra were born and brought up in refugee camps in Pakistan, which still hosts around 3 million registered and unregistered Afghan families displaced by years of war, poverty, persecution and drought.

“We are using the healing power of music to look after the wounds of the Afghan people as well as the Pakistani people. We are here with the message of peace, brotherhood and freedom,” Sarmast said.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have experienced years of terrorist attacks, including massive casualties on both sides of their long shared border. Bilateral relations are marred by mistrust and suspicion.

The countries blame each other for supporting terrorist attacks. Afghans allege that sanctuaries in Pakistan have enabled Taliban insurgents to sustain and expand their violent acts inside Afghanistan. Pakistan rejects the charges.

The Islamist insurgency controls or is attempting to control nearly half of Afghanistan.
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From: MeNeedIt

The consequences of Afghanistan’s increasingly deadly war are weighing the heaviest on the nation’s civilians. But violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to “heal wounds” and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society. Ayaz Gul reports from Islamabad.
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From: MeNeedIt

The most beautiful art is born where there is pain. This idea became the moving force behind the success of Iranian-born twin sisters Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani. They moved to Boston from Tehran in order to advance their art and show it to the world, and they never regretted the decision. Karina Bafradzhian has the story.
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From: MeNeedIt

A film festival in Kenya this month highlighted a group not often seen on the big screen: refugees. The festival, organized by the nonprofit group FilmAid in collaboration with Amnesty International, screened a selection of short films about exile and identity, some produced by refugees themselves.

One of the films showcased is “The Other Dadaab,” a five-minute documentary by Abdirisack Jama Shire on realities of the Dadaab refugee camp in northwestern Kenya.

The camp, near the Kenya-Somalia border, is the world’s largest refugee settlement with a population of close to 500,000 refugees.

The documentary showcases Dadaab as a virtual city with its own socio-economic dynamics as opposed to a transient settlement.

Mark Maina, the creator of another showcased film, “Neophobia,” was present for the screening of “The Other Dadaab.”

“I am really glad for FilmAid that they have closely shown us how it is, for those in the camps, the kind of lives they live, the suffering that they go through,” Maina said.

Understanding through film

FilmAid International is a nonprofit humanitarian group that uses movies and media to raise awareness of social issues.

It holds annual film festivals in Kenya to empower, inform and inspire refugees and other marginalized populations. This year’s screenings took place in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in addition to Nairobi.

Stella Suge is FilmAid’s country director.

“There are various things that we hope to achieve,” she said. One is that people can actually see the faces of refugees, which is largely presented as a statistic, so to encounter those faces and get a sense of who they are, their faces and their humanity and to share that. Secondly, we want to start to be in dialogue with Kenyan nationals who have actually been hosting refugees for a long time without a clear understanding of what it means … and basically take a journey of starting to include refugees in our day-to-day life to give them a more humane, more normal and dignified life.”

‘We are all human’

Wambui Mumbi attended the screening at IMAX Cinema in Nairobi.

“The main lesson that I have picked [up] is that we should not segregate refugees,” Mumbi said. “We should not treat them like they are a different species because at the end of the day we are all humans. The struggles they go through are the same that we go through, are like the same things we go through.”

Pereshian Beth also attended the screening.

“It was educative, we got to learn more on how the refugees are living in Kakuma and in Daadab. They are doing something good for themselves … we need to empower them … their story is their voice,” Beth said.

More films like “The Other Dadaab” may be on the way, as FilmAid programs train more than 50 refugees annually on filmmaking.
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From: MeNeedIt

Self-driving technology is making online shopping a more convenient, more cost-effective experience. One new startup in San Jose, California, is launching a fully driverless delivery service, which many predict is something customers will be seeing a lot more of in the future. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at how these driverless cars are making people’s lives easier, in this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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From: MeNeedIt