Turkey’s state-run development agency donated seeds and agriculture equipment to farmers in South Sudan on Wednesday.

The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) donated 500 kilograms (over 1,100 pounds) each of peanut, sorghum, maize, tomato, onion, okra, and sesame seeds.

Equipment, including rakes, axes, sickles, and hoes, were also handed over to some 500 farmers at a ceremony organized in collaboration with South Sudan’s Agriculture and Food Security Ministry and the South Sudan Farmers Union.

“Turkey is working closely with the government of South Sudan and all relevant authorities for the benefit of the people of this country,” Turkish Ambassador Tugrul Biltekin said at the event.

He said this was not the first such initiative by Turkey, with three similar projects in 2019 reaching some 1,000 farmers in South Sudan.

“Turkey will continue to help South Sudan not just in the agriculture sector, but also in health, education, and other development sectors,” the envoy added.

Turgut Gazigil, the deputy coordinator of TIKA’s office in South Sudan’s capital Juba, was also present on the occasion.

TIKA has completed 18 development projects in South Sudan this year with the cooperation of the country’s authorities, the agency said in a statement./aa

BOGOTA, Colombia

At least 37 people were killed and more than a dozen injured Wednesday when a bus and a truck collided in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, according to a preliminary investigation by the Military Police of Sao Paulo. 

The bus, which had an upper floor, was carrying employees of a textile company from the western region of the state of Sao Paulo. Police are working on identifying the victims.

“There are people being treated in hospitals in the region and others are still trapped on the bus," said police spokesman Alexandre Guedes.

The town of Taguaí declared three days of mourning as a gesture of solidarity with victims and their families.

Police have not yet confirmed the cause of the accident./aa

ANKARA

Turkey ranks among the top five countries in Europe with its large-scale production plants for wind turbine equipment, the country's industry and technology minister said Wednesday.

Turkey hopes to make its domestic industry more competitive in producing both onshore and offshore wind turbine equipment, Mustafa Varank said at a virtual session of the Turkish Wind Energy Congress.

"We’ll take the necessary steps to manufacture equipment that has not yet been produced in our country," said Varank.

Noting that the ministry had issued nearly 7,000 incentives for renewable energy investments in the last eight years, Varank said these investments, worth 124 billion Turkish liras ($34 billion), had since created jobs for over 19,000 people./aa

I was sitting out on the balcony of my downtown Los Angeles apartment when a parade of armored vehicles began rolling down Figueroa Street in the middle of the afternoon. It was June 1. George Floyd died in police custody on May 25. During the week in between, the streets were engulfed with protests, vandalism, looting and violence.

Or rather—more violence.

It’s ridiculous to watch an officer with his knee on an unconscious man’s neck and then suggest the violence in the streets began after the fact. But then we’ve never been willing to have honest conversations about race relations in this country, have we? It’s messy and a bit uncomfortable. We’d rather frame the hostility toward undocumented migrant workers as “economic anxiety” because “racism” makes people feel icky. When videos like George Floyd’s go viral, there’s a rush to publicize every crime the deceased has been accused of in an effort to justify the crime we all witnessed.

But this is what we do, is it not?

We create space for “the Civil War was about state’s rights” argument so Confederate flag bearers can avoid thinking about slavery. We greet Christopher Columbus’ atrocities with talk of the proverbial slippery slope. We tell Native Americans the Tomahawk chop is about their favorite team and has nothing to do with them.

It’s been six months since George Floyd was killed and while there are certainly areas of improvement we can point to, I can’t overlook the fact President Donald Trump tried to scare white people with the threat of minorities living in the suburbs next to them, gave a white supremacy group a shoutout on the debate stage and the country rewarded him for this behavior with the second most votes in election history. I am happy to see the NFL make strides in terms of using its platform to address inequities, but Colin Kaepernick still hasn’t been called for a tryout despite the rash of injured quarterbacks. I am disappointed to see the only officer charged with a crime in the death of Breonna Taylor got into hot water for missing when he fired his gun.

True, a number of municipalities have banned chokeholds and the use of tear gas. There are conversations about “defunding the police,” which is about redirecting funds toward areas to support disenfranchised communities such as child care and paying for mental health professionals as opposed to escalating the presence and militarization of law enforcement. No knock warrants— like the one that led to Taylor’s death— are now banned in Lexington, Kentucky. There’s a lot of good that has come since Floyd’s death.

But before we rush to congratulate ourselves, we need the courage to be honest about where we truly are. White elected officials were heard purposely mispronouncing Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ name, a clear attempt to “other” her the way the birther movement tried to paint President Barack Obama as not one of us. It’s hard to wax poetic about the victories over the last six months when Republican leaders talk casually about auditing the votes coming specifically from predominantly Black and brown communities, like a conversation ripped from the pages of the Jim Crow era.

Yes, we have more allies willing to speak out against racial injustice, and that’s fantastic. But there was a part of me that hoped seeing the Floyd or the Jacob Blake video would trigger a universal disdain for injustice. Instead, I see certain political circles having more empathy for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17- year-old charged with killing two protestors with an illegally obtained rifle, than 17-year-old Trayvon Martin who was armed with a bag of Skittles before being killed by George Zimmerman. One gets characterized as a good kid who made a mistake, the other a trouble maker who got kicked out of school for marijuana as if that somehow justifies his murder.

Because of the pandemic, downtown L.A. had already become somewhat of a ghost town when the 5,500 National Guard soldiers began patrolling Los Angeles. County. It felt as if cries for liberation were met with military occupation.

Six months have passed since the world watched a white officer nonchalantly kill a Black man in broad daylight, seemingly unconcerned by the repercussions of his actions. I guess if you’ve been the subject of 18 prior complaints and still have your job, why would you be concerned about repercussions? The reality is not even the existence of video or witnesses is guaranteed to lead to a conviction. A lot of things have changed for the better over the past six months… but that dynamic isn’t one of them.

So forgive me if you were hoping for a feel-good column about the death of racism. I really set out to pen something more positive. It’s just I don’t have the luxury of thinking racism won’t someday kill me. That is just as true today as it was six months ago. A lot of things have changed. A lot has not.

Coronavirus vaccine distribution presents opportunity to ‘get things right’ for neglected communities

What’s happening

A realistic path to ending the coronavirus pandemic came into view with news of promising results from clinical trials of three different vaccines in development. The U.S. public rollout of the first vaccine could begin as early as mid-December, according to the head of the government’s vaccine program.

But the start of vaccinations doesn’t mean things will be returning to normal anytime soon. Producing and distributing hundreds of millions doses for the U.S., let alone the billions needed worldwide, is an enormous logistical challenge. Most experts say Americans shouldn’t expect a vaccine to bring life back to some semblance of normal until at least the late spring or early summer.

With that in mind, public health experts around the world have been debating which groups should be vaccinated first. The strategy that’s chosen for distributing the vaccine could have a profound effect on how long the pandemic lasts and how many lives are lost.

Why there’s debate

Experts broadly agree that the very first vaccine doses should go to health care workers because they face a high risk of infection and play a crucial role in fighting the virus. Most plans also call for prioritizing the most vulnerable, like those with underlying health conditions and residents of elder care facilities. The question of who should be in line after those initial groups is where the debate starts to heat up.

Some of the disagreements center on strategy. Is it better to focus on limiting the number of deaths by vaccinating the elderly or should the vaccine go to the people who are most likely to spread the virus to a high number of people? Should the vaccine be distributed proportionally based on population or should areas experiencing major outbreaks receive a larger supply?

There are also moral questions being debated. Should other public-facing workers — grocery store staff or teachers, perhaps — be at the front of the line, too, given the risks they face? Should people of color be prioritized, given the disproportionate toll the virus has taken on Black and Latino communities?

Global distribution brings up its own set of questions. More than 150 countries have agreed to join an international effort to ensure vaccines are distributed equitably worldwide. The U.S. has not. Some experts fear that countries like the U.S. will hoard vaccine supplies until all their citizens, even those who face little risk, are vaccinated while vulnerable people in developing nations are left unprotected.

What’s next

U.S.-based drugmaker Pfizer applied for emergency approval for its vaccine last week. The FDA is scheduled to review their application on Dec. 10. If approval is granted, vaccinations could start as quickly as two days later. A second pharmaceutical company, Moderna, is expected to seek U.S. approval for its vaccine by the end of December.

Perspectives

Health care workers and high risks should receive the first doses

“The low-hanging fruit, as it were, is blindingly obvious, but then it gets tricky. You want to protect heath-care workers and residents of care homes, clearly. Then the extremely vulnerable. That’s easy. Then essential workers? That could be a very large group.” — Public health expert Paul Hunter to Washington Post

Health care workers and people in elder care facilities should be in front of the line

“If the greatest risk is for older people in care homes, and care home staff, then they will be at the front of the list. And if health care workers are critically important in maintaining health care services, you want to protect them, too.” — Immunization expert David Salisbury to Marketplace

The focus should be on protecting minority populations

“There really needs to be intentional effort to get it to the communities that need it most. Because we don’t want to see these disparities reinforced in the vaccine distribution effort.” — Health equity advocate Dr. Uché Blackstock to Yahoo News

Essential workers should be prioritized

“Essential workers — health care workers, grocery workers, and many schoolteachers, among others — are at high risk for infection because they cannot socially distance. [One scientific model] finds that deaths, as well as total years of life lost, are dramatically decreased when essential workers are prioritized to receive the vaccine.” — Jill Neimark, Scientific American

Wealthy nations shouldn’t hoard vaccine supplies

“The nations that discover a vaccine — or that can pay those who discover it — get first dibs. All the other nations just have to wait until more doses can be manufactured. This is ‘vaccine nationalism,’ where every nation just looks out for itself, prioritizing its citizens without regard to what happens to the citizens of lower-income countries that can’t afford to buy up doses. It’s a path that most ethicists think is wrong. It’s also the path the United States is on.” — Sigal Samuel, Vox

Teachers should be next in line after health care workers

“If vaccinating teachers allows schools to reopen, the social and economic benefits likely would outweigh reopening any other essential industry.” — Aaron Strong and Jonathan Welburn, Wall Street Journal

A race-based distribution plan may not hold up in court

“With a strong conservative majority, the court might well strike down any racial preference. Structural racism in the United States has resulted in far higher rates of disease and death among people of color. We must find lawful ways to protect disadvantaged people against COVID-19.” — Public health legal expert Larry Gostin to Associated Press

Vaccines should go to people most likely to spread the virus

“Super-spreading makes the virus especially confounding. It explains why some places had huge outbreaks while others were spared. … But it’s also the virus’s weakness: Eliminate the super-spreaders and you end the pandemic.” — Christopher Cox, Wired

It doesn’t matter what the details of the plan are if it’s not carried out effectively

“We cannot let vaccine access become a repeat of the free-for-alls and backdoor dealings that resulted from limited PPE supply, when rich and powerful stakeholders got what they needed while the less well-connected went begging. Before vaccine distribution begins, the government needs to set clear, comprehensive guidelines for who receives the earliest available doses.” — Daniel L. Liebman and Nisarg A. Patel, Los Angeles Times

Logistical hurdles could prevent parts of the country from receiving early vaccine doses

“Distribution will come down to details like which vaccines are available when. Specific storage and handling requirements for different vaccines — like the Pfizer shot’s ultra-cold storage needs — could also impact equitable distribution, especially in hard-to-reach areas.” — Sarah Owermohle, Politico

Poor countries must be given equal access

“Not making the vaccine affordable for these nations would be morally wrong. It would also be short-sighted, because, as infectious-disease researchers often say, an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere.” — Editorial, Nature

Vaccines should be sent to the places that need them most

“Most of the best distribution methods are blatantly unfair. In this context, however, fairness is overrated. Priority should be given to methods that will save more lives and bring back the economy more rapidly. A central yet neglected point is that vaccines should not be sent to each and every part of the U.S. Instead, it would be better to concentrate distribution in a small number of places where the vaccines can have a greater impact.” — Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg. /YN

WASHINGTON — Face coverings, including masks made of cloth, are highly effective in protecting the people who wear them as well as those around them, according to a new study from Linsey Marr, a leading aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech University.

“Filtration works both ways,” Marr said. “If it works for source control,” she said during a media presentation on Monday — that is, if the mask filters out particles coming from the wearer’s mouth — “it’s going to work pretty well for exposure reduction to protect the wearer also.”

Testing 11 different types of face coverings (nine cloth masks made from coffee filters, cotton and other materials, a surgical mask and a face shield), Marr and co-author Jin Pan found that many of the materials they “challenged” with particles meant to simulate the coronavirus exhibited a 75 percent filtration capacity. A high-quality cloth mask consisting of three layers could allow filtration as high as 90 percent. Crucially, that accounts for incoming particles as well as outgoing ones.

The efficacy of surgical masks had been widely known. Their use was endorsed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottlieb published on Sunday evening. He encouraged people to wear N95 respirators or, failing that, surgical masks. “The level of protection depends on the type of the mask,” he wrote, cautioning people away from bandanas and other loosely-fitting face coverings.

Marr’s study suggests that cloth masks work better than some have claimed, in part because many virus-bearing particles are significantly larger than previously thought. Her study adds crucial new information about the relative benefits of cloth masks, which people find easier to wear — and more stylish — than their light-blue medical counterparts.

In particular, the study noted that a mask that contains an interior filter made from a common vacuum bag “achieved outstanding performance.”

The question of specific materials aside, the study counters the long-held misconception that masks do not protect those who wear them. Last week, some right-wing media outlets seized on a Danish study whose methodology has been criticized as slipshod and whose findings have been deemed inconclusive.

By contrast, Marr’s research involved testing different types of masks by putting them over the faces of mannequins. Those mannequins were then placed inside a plastic bin sprayed with a saline solution. Marr and her team recorded how many of those particles made it through the mask and into the mannequin’s mouth, which was fitted with a sensor.

Marr focused on particles measuring one to two microns in size. That is because the coronavirus tends to attach to larger droplets as they leave a person’s mouth or nasal passage and travel through the air. (People who work in hospitals and could face exposure to sub-micron particles do need to wear N95 respirators, so named for their 95 percent filtration capacity).

Discussing the results of her research on Monday, Marr acknowledged the skepticism about face masks. Among known mask skeptics is the president himself, who contributed to mask wearing becoming a culture war. But with coronavirus infection rates rising across the country, some Republican governors have broken with the president and endorsed mask wearing, albeit with less enthusiasm than public health officials might like.

President-elect Biden is considering implementing a national mask mandate. He has called wearing a mask “a patriotic duty.”

Resistance to masks lingers in part because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention originally advised that people did not need to wear masks when the coronavirus first arrived stateside last February. That errant guidance reflected a misunderstanding of the devastating efficacy with which the coronavirus spreads through the air when people cough, sneeze or even talk loudly.

Later, people were told to wear masks but to protect others, not themselves. Now the growing consensus is that the wearer benefits from masking as well. Had that consensus formed earlier and had it been articulated more clearly, perhaps the resistance to masks would not be quite so intense nearly a year into a pandemic that has killed more than a quarter million Americans.

“One criticism of masks has been, ‘Oh, well, they don’t work,’” Marr said while discussing the study with members of the media on Monday afternoon. Acknowledging the Danish study, Marr said its subjects did not appear to wear masks with the kind of consistency that would have made the results persuasive. She further explained that masks were not a panacea, but rather one of several interventions intended to work in concert, including social distancing and hand washing.

President Trump has also maligned social distancing.

Marr did not include N95 respirators in her latest work. “For practical reasons, having the general public run around in N95s is a challenge because of the shortage,” Marr explained, a reference to supply chain problems that have been ameliorated but, when it comes to certain materials, are not entirely resolved.

“We recommend now based on this study that people use a three-layer mask,” she said, where “the outer two layers are a tightly woven but flexible material that allows the mask to conform to your face.” The middle layer of such a mask is a filter. A two-layer mask could also work, Marr said, provided it had a “good, tight weave.”