The number of musk deer in Mongolia has plummeted by some 83 per cent since the 1970s, landing them on the country’s red list of critically endangered species. A UN-supported biodiversity initiative is helping to stop the deer from disappearing altogether.
WASHINGTON DC/SAN DIEGO, Nov 22 (IPS) – The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects across the globe, but the data and evidence show that women have borne the brunt of the crisis. While inequalities in health, economic power, and other areas existed long before the pandemic began, the pandemic has widened these gaps.
The route is increasingly being used by wealthier Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians and Kurds aboard new or nearly new sailboats that can more easily avoid detection by authorities.
The fiancée of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi has urged US pop star Justin Bieber to not be “a pawn” of the Saudi crown prince and to cancel his performance at a Formula One event in Saudi Arabia.
“Do not sing for the murderers of my beloved Jamal,” Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz wrote in an open letter to the entertainer published in The Washington Post.
Cengiz asked Bieber not to be “a pawn” of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom she called a “killer.”
“This year, you released an album that you titled ‘Justice.’ You also released one titled ‘Freedom.’ Saudi Arabia is in dire need of both,” Cengiz wrote. “Your message will be loud and clear: I do not perform for dictators. I choose justice and freedom over money.”
A prominent critic of the Saudi government and a Washington Post columnist, Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018. Riyadh admitted that the journalist was killed by Saudi officials, but denied that the crown prince was involved.
In 2020, a Saudi court handed lengthy prison sentences to eight of the country’s nationals for Khashoggi’s murder.
According to a 2021 report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it was “highly unlikely” that the assassination of Khashoggi was carried out without Mohammed bin Salman’s approval. Nevertheless, the US sanctioned several Saudis for their role in the murder, but not the crown prince.
Bieber is set to perform at the Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2021 in Jeddah on December 5 alongside popular artists such as David Guetta and Jason Derulo.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, as well as some NGOs and people online, earlier urged Bieber to back Palestinian rights and cancel his performance in Israel scheduled for October 2022.
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WASHINGTON DC/SAN DIEGO, Nov 22 (IPS) – The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects across the globe, but the data and evidence show that women have borne the brunt of the crisis. While inequalities in health, economic power, and other areas existed long before the pandemic began, the pandemic has widened these gaps.
An Argentinian woman has become the second-ever HIV-infected person whose immune system helped defeat the virus without requiring additional medical treatment. She was first diagnosed with the AIDS-causing infection in 2013.
Scientists have dubbed the 30-year-old mother the “Esperanza patient,” after her hometown. The word ‘esperanza’ translates to ‘hope’ in English. Publishing their findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal on Monday, the researchers said the discovery boosts hope for a “sterilizing cure” for the estimated 38 million people with the life-long infection.
“I enjoy being healthy,” the Esperanza patient told NBC News over email. “I have a healthy family. I don’t have to medicate, and I live as though nothing has happened. This already is a privilege.”
The study found no intact remnants of the virus in the 1.5 billion blood and tissue cells the researchers analyzed – confirming the discovery first announced in March at an international meeting of HIV experts.
No additional information about the woman has been made public, but she was described at the time as “athletic and beautiful” and revealed to have an HIV-negative boyfriend and newborn baby.
Only one other person, identified in August 2020 as 67-year-old Loreen Willenberg from San Francisco, has been confirmed to have overcome the virus without medical intervention. The two women have been labeled ‘elite controllers’, referring to a rare subset of HIV patients who show no signs of the infection despite not undergoing antiretroviral treatments.
Typically, an HIV-infected person requires constant drug therapy to prevent the virus from attaching to their immune cells’ DNA and replicating. But, in the eight years since she was diagnosed, the Esperanza patient only received medication for six months during pregnancy to ensure her baby would be healthy.
In all, there have been four patients cured of HIV, two of whom – the ‘Berlin patient’ Timothy Ray Brown and the ‘London patient’ Adam Castillejo – were also cancer patients who received risky bone marrow transplants from donors with HIV-resistant genes. However, the success of their procedures is yet to be replicated.
“This is really the miracle of the human immune system that did it,” Dr. Xu Yu, an immunologist at the Ragon Institute in Boston, who co-authored the study, told NBC.
