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Somalia’s Puntland Moves to Ban Female Genital Mutilation

GAROWE, SOMALIA – Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region has taken a first step toward banning female genital mutilation (FGM) in a country where almost all women and girls are forced to undergo the internationally condemned practice.

Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni and his cabinet this week approved a bill to be submitted to parliament that would criminalize the ancient ritual, a measure anti-FGM campaigners said would boost their efforts to end the practice.

“It will be forbidden to circumcise girls. Girls in Puntland must be left the way they are born. Anyone who performs circumcision in the region will face the full force of the law,” Puntland Justice Minister Awil Sheikh Hamud told reporters.

Justice Ministry officials said the bill includes stiff penalties for those who perform FGM, including hospitals, midwives and traditional circumcisers. No date has yet been set for it to be presented before parliament for a vote.

FGM, which involves the partial or total removal of the female genitalia, is almost universal in Somalia – with 98% of women and girls having been cut, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

There is currently no national law outlawing FGM in the Horn of Africa country.

Both Puntland and the breakaway state of Somaliland have issues fatwas – religious edicts – against the practice in the past, but there is no parliamentary legislation is in place.

FGM affects 200 million girls and women globally and can lead to a host of serious medical problems, according to the World Health Organization.

It can cause long-lasting mental and physical health problems including chronic infections, menstrual problems, infertility, pregnancy and childbirth complications. In some cases, girls can bleed to death or die from infections.

In many communities, girls are married soon after cutting, stifling their progress in education, health and employment. School closures caused by the pandemic could lead to an extra 2 million girls being cut in the next decade, the UNFPA has estimated, hampering global efforts to stamp out the practice by 2030.

In Somalia, where the vaginal opening is also often sewn up – a practice called infibulation – charities have reported a surge in cases as circumcisers offer door-to-door services for girls stuck at home due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Campaigners said legislation banning FGM would boost their fight to end the practice.

Hailing it as a “great milestone,” the UNFPA’s head in Somalia, Anders Thomsen, said the bill would “have a ripple effect in the campaign to end FGM in Puntland” if approved.

“This means girls will be safe from the brutal cut,” he added in a statement.

Somali anti-FGM campaigner Maymun Mahad said she still remembered undergoing the “very painful” practice. “As a young woman, I welcome the move by the cabinet,” she said.

Source: Voice of America

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Mystery Over Claim World’s 1st ‘Decuplets’ Born in S. Africa

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa has been gripped by the mystery of whether a woman has, as has been claimed, actually given birth to 10 babies, in what would then be the world’s first recorded case of decuplets.

Gosiame Thamara Sithole from the Tembisa township near Johannesburg gave birth to the babies on Monday, according to the Pretoria News newspaper which quoted the parents. The babies — seven boys and three girls — have not made a public appearance or been captured on camera, although they were born prematurely, the newspaper reported.

The South African government said it is still trying to verify the claim.

That’s led to South Africans obsessing on social media over whether the story of the “Tembisa 10” is indeed true.

The father, Teboho Tsotetsi, told the paper his wife had given birth in a hospital in the capital Pretoria. He said it was a big surprise for the parents after doctors only detected eight babies in prenatal scans.

“It’s seven boys and three girls. She was seven months and seven days pregnant. I am happy. I am emotional,” the newspaper quoted Tsotetsi as saying.

The couple already have 6-year-old twins, which would make the total an even dozen kids, if the claim is true.

South Africans are eagerly waiting for proof of what would be a world record. Relatives and neighbors of the couple have insisted the news is true.

“For her to receive 10 blessings at one given time, we thank God for that,” Wilson Machaya, a neighbor of the family in Tembisa, told The Associated Press. “And because we are neighbors we will have to assist in any way possible.”

A Malian woman gave birth to nine babies only last month in Morocco, in what was hailed as the world’s first case of nonuplets.

The Department of Social Development in South Africa’s Gauteng province confirmed tracing Sithole and spokesperson Feziwe Ndwayana said they would make an announcement after meeting with the family. Another local government department said earlier this week that it had no record of the babies’ births in any of the province’s hospitals.

The Pretoria News initially broke the story with an interview with Sithole and her husband, Tsotetsi, at their home, which was conducted nearly a month ago and when they thought they were having eight babies. They requested that the story only be published after the babies were born for safety and cultural reasons, the newspaper said.

According to the report, Sithole went on leave earlier than expected from her job as a retail store manager because she could no longer cope. Tsotetsi is unemployed.

One organization has given $70,000 to the couple to help and other South Africans are being encouraged to donate.

Alongside #Tembisa10, the term #NationalBabyShower has been trending on Twitter.

Source: Voice of America

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Food Aid Not Reaching Tigray, People Dying, UN Says

GENEVA – The World Food Program warns the food situation in northern Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region has reached catastrophic proportions and people are beginning to die.

The United Nations warns more than 350,000 people in Tigray are facing near famine-like conditions, and many will not survive without immediate humanitarian assistance.

UNICEF says 30,000 severely malnourished children are among those at risk of death.

Aid agencies are calling for unimpeded access to the region so they can prevent a man-made disaster from happening.

In March, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced humanitarian workers would have unfettered access to northern Ethiopia. However, World Food Program Emergency Coordinator Tommy Thompson says that has not taken place.

Speaking on a video link from Addis Ababa, he says he has come to the Ethiopian capital to persuade authorities to grant agencies the access and protection they need to help the Tigrayan people.

“It is an incredibly dangerous environment for us to all be working in and nine humanitarians have been killed thus far…So, we find ourselves faced often with enormous protection issues of providing assistance to beneficiaries, only to have those beneficiaries robbed violently in the night of the things that had been given to them,” Thompson said. “So, it is a crisis that is going to continue unless there is an absolute sea change in attitude on the part of the government.”

Thompson says the WFP is scaling up its food operation in the region and aims to reach 2.6 million people in the next weeks—provided it can access the area. He says that depends on the Ethiopian government and on the Eritrean government as well.

“The Eritreans are the most egregious perpetrators of denial of access as well as other atrocities committed towards civilians,” Thompson said. “So, that is a huge, huge problem for us. And having the withdrawal of the Eritrean forces would be a major bonus. But we still have acts committed by the Ethiopian Defense Forces as well as the Amhara militia, which are blocking us access to certain areas as well. So, there is plenty of blame to go around in this.”

Beyond the terrible realities on the ground, Thompson says funding also remains a big problem. He says the WFP needs $203 million to implement its humanitarian operations in Tigray this year. Of that amount, he says the WFP has an immediate shortfall of $70 million to expand its response in providing lifesaving food assistance to people in desperate need.

Source: Voice of America

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Les émissions pour enfants très populaires de Moonbug Entertainment arrivent sur la BBC

Des programmes comprenant les succès internationaux CoComelon, Go Buster, Little Baby Bum et plus sont maintenant disponibles

LONDRES, 10 juin 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Moonbug Entertainment Ltd., l’une des plus grandes entreprises de médias numériques au monde, a annoncé aujourd’hui que ses émissions pour enfants amusantes, adaptées et enrichissantes sont désormais disponibles sur la BBC. Tous les épisodes disponibles de titres extrêmement populaires, notamment CoComelon, Digley and Dazey, Little Baby Bum, Go Buster et Playtime with Twinkle peuvent maintenant être regardés par les familles du Royaume-Uni sur iPlayer BBC.

Moonbug x BBC

« Notre collaboration avec la BBC marque le premier partenariat avec un diffuseur de service public. Un véritable label de qualité pour nos équipes créatives, s’est réjoui Nicolas Eglau, directeur général des zones EMEA et APAC, chez Moonbug. La BBC est connue dans le monde entier pour sa programmation attrayante pour les enfants d’âge préscolaire, et Moonbug est heureux de conclure un partenariat avec une organisation d’un tel prestige. »

La programmation de Moonbug introduit des thèmes universels auxquels les enfants peuvent s’identifier par le biais d’animations colorées et de récits captivants. Qu’il s’agisse de manger des légumes ou de se préparer pour le lit, l’animation ludique et les chansons accrocheuses de Moonbug stimulent le développement et l’apprentissage des enfants.

À propos de Moonbug Entertainment

Moonbug Entertainment est une entreprise mondiale de divertissement primée qui propose des programmes éducatifs pour enfants fondés sur des valeurs. Sa gamme populaire pour enfants comprend les productions mondiales CoComelon, Blippi, Little Baby Bum, My Magic Pet Morphle, Supa Strikas, Go Buster, Playtime with Twinkle, Gecko’s Garage, ARPO et bien d’autres, disponibles en 27 langues.

En deux ans seulement, la société est devenue une centrale de programmation pour enfants avec une bibliothèque de plus de 550 heures de contenu, qui est distribuée sur plus de 100 plateformes dans le monde, dont YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Sky, Tencent, Youku et Roku. En mai 2020, Tubular Labs a désigné Moonbug comme l’une des principales entreprises de divertissement numérique pour enfants au monde, sur la base du nombre total de minutes regardées.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1529884/BBC_Moonbug.jpg

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Coppel Mexico Picks VoltDB to Power Customer Profiles

BEDFORD, Mass., June 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — VoltDB, the only enterprise-grade data platform that meets the real-time data requirements of modern applications, announced today that Coppel, the biggest nationwide department store in Mexico, is now using the VoltDB Data Platform to create a unified system for customer profiles.

“Volt has really been a game-changer for us,” said Coppel CTO Robert Gil. “We can now have a unified platform to manage all of our 13 million customer portfolio data, which then feeds into much better customer experiences and far bigger ROI for us thanks to improved customer loyalty.”

One of Coppel’s main assets, customer portfolios, also present a big challenge: to have a single profile that is online and up-to-date with all the customer’s information and for this profile to be live in an omnichannel environment so that customers can access their information on charges, credits, and installments (balances) in real time, without compromising the speed at which transactions are processed within the portfolio.

Coppel chose VoltDB because it needed a data platform that could enable them to:

  • Store online information in one place
  • Be fault tolerant through distributed, multi-site optimized finite-difference (DRP) schemes
  • Analyze information in real time with dashboards
  • Do real-time data collection
  • Perform fraud analysis without compromising database performance

“All the tests we carried out with Volt exceeded the expectations with respect to performance in transactions per second,” Gil said.

Moving forward, Coppel plans to expand its use of Volt to various call center and customer service use cases.

For more information on why organizations across all industries are choosing VoltDB to power their operations, visit https://www.voltdb.com/.

About VoltDB

VoltDB is the only data platform designed to support telco applications in the age of 5G. We combine in-memory data storage with predictable low-latency and other key capabilities to power BSS/OSS, customer management, and revenue assurance applications that need to act in single-digit milliseconds to drive revenue or prevent revenue loss, without compromising on data accuracy. For more information, visit voltdb.com.

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1334383/VoltDB_Logo.jpg

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Moonbug Entertainment’s Hugely Popular Kids Shows come to the BBC

Programs Including Global Hits CoComelon, Go Buster, Little Baby Bum And More Are Now Available

LONDON, June 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Moonbug Entertainment Ltd., one of the largest digital media companies in the world, today announced its fun, relatable and enriching kids shows are now available on the BBC. All available episodes of hugely popular titles, including CoComelon, Digley and Dazey, Little Baby Bum, Go Buster and Playtime with Twinkle can now be enjoyed by families across the UK on BBC iPlayer.

Moonbug x BBC

“Our collaboration with the BBC marks the first partnership with a public service broadcaster. A real quality stamp for our creative teams!” said Nicolas Eglau, Managing Director EMEA & APAC, Moonbug. “BBC is known worldwide for its engaging programming for preschoolers, and Moonbug is excited to enter a partnership with such a renowned organization.”

Moonbug’s programming introduces universal themes that children can relate to via colorful animation and compelling storytelling. Whether it’s eating veggies or getting ready for bed, Moonbug’s playful animation and catchy songs supports children’s development and learning.

About Moonbug Entertainment
Moonbug Entertainment is an award-winning global entertainment company providing values-based educational programming for children. Its popular kids lineup includes global sensations CoComelon, Blippi, Little Baby Bum, My Magic Pet Morphle, Supa Strikas, Go Buster, Playtime with Twinkle, Gecko’s Garage, ARPO and many more which are available in 27 languages.

In just two years, it has become a kids programming powerhouse with a library of more than 550 hours of content, which is distributed on more than 100 platforms globally, including YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Sky, Tencent, Youku and Roku. In May of 2020, Tubular Labs named Moonbug one of the leading digital kids’ entertainment companies in the world based on the total number of minutes watched worldwide.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1529884/BBC_Moonbug.jpg

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Zoom lance Zoom Phone Appliances, enrichissant les capacités des professionnels hybrides

Zoom Phone Appliances offre une solution de téléphonie de bureau tout-en-un pour les appels et les réunions, avec des solutions matérielles de Poly et Yealink

SAN JOSÉ, Californie, 10 juin 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ : ZM) a annoncé aujourd’hui le lancement de Zoom Phone Appliances, une nouvelle catégorie de matériel optimisé pour les professionnels hybrides, des bureaux à domicile aux espaces de huddle partagés, s’adressant aux cas d’utilisation dans tous les secteurs. Zoom Phone Appliances combine la technologie de Zoom avec le matériel de Poly et Yealink pour fournir des capacités vidéo et audio et un écran tactile, dans une solution de téléphonie de bureau tout-en-un pour les appels téléphoniques, les tableaux blancs interactifs et les réunions vidéo HD.

« Zoom continue de faire preuve d’un rythme rapide d’innovation et d’une capacité à évoluer à l’échelle mondiale avec son offre robuste de téléphonie cloud, Zoom Phone », a déclaré Elka Popova, vice-présidente de la recherche sur le travail connecté chez Frost & Sullivan. « Zoom Phone a toujours été une alternative révolutionnaire aux anciennes solutions de téléphonie et ce nouveau programme d’appareils améliore davantage sa proposition de valeur en permettant aux entreprises d’ajouter la vidéo aux espaces de travail avec des appareils spécialement conçus et faciles à obtenir, déployer et gérer. »

« Le lieu de travail traditionnel s’adapte et évolue, et notre objectif est de donner aux professionnels les moyens d’accomplir davantage de choses en estompant les frontières entre la voix et la vidéo », a déclaré Graeme Geddes, responsable de Zoom Phone et Zoom Rooms chez Zoom. « Le nouveau programme Zoom Phone Appliance comprend une sélection de matériel Zoom Phone spécialement conçu de Poly et Yealink, rationalisant les communications, éliminant les frictions et permettant une expérience de communications puissante. »

Zoom Phone Appliances simplifie l’octroi de licences, l’installation, l’utilisation et la gestion, bénéficiant à la fois aux utilisateurs finaux et aux services informatiques. Parmi les autres points saillants de Zoom Phone Appliances, on peut citer :

  • Un téléphone de bureau complet avec de puissantes capacités Zoom. Les appareils Zoom Phone Appliances sont toujours opérationnels et toujours prêts pour une communication et une collaboration instantanées. Démarrez des réunions ad hoc ou planifiées, passez et recevez des appels téléphoniques, consultez votre messagerie vocale et collaborez virtuellement grâce au partage de contenu et aux annotations, tout cela en toute simplicité
  • Gestion centralisée via le Zoom Admin Portal : gestion simplifiée, évolutive et centralisée avec provisioning et mises à jour à distance
  • Aucun octroi de licences supplémentaire requis : connectez-vous à un appareil Zoom Phone Appliances avec votre compte Zoom et créez une expérience bureautique instantanée
  • Solution personnalisée en fonction de l’utilisateur : se synchronise avec le calendrier, le statut, les paramètres de réunion et le téléphone de l’utilisateur pour une expérience intégrée de communications unifiées mettant la vidéo au premier plan
  • Intégration simplifiée avec provisioning sans contact tactile : minimise le besoin d’assistance informatique avec une configuration et une expérience utilisateur simplifiées
  • Écran tactile avec tableau interactif : collaborez avec vos collègues grâce au tableau interactif qui peut facilement être exporté et partagé
  • Zoom Certified : les Zoom Phone Appliances introduisent une nouvelle catégorie de matériel certifié, garantissant que ces appareils sont spécialement conçus pour offrir une expérience de réunions et Zoom Phone optimale. Davantage de périphériques seront ajoutés à cette catégorie au fil du temps

La classe inaugurale de Zoom Phone Appliances propose des solutions innovantes de deux partenaires matériels de Zoom, Poly et Yealink, d’autres étant à suivre.

Téléphones de bureau Poly CCX 600 et CCX 700 avec caméra vidéo intégrée

« Nous sommes ravis d’être parmi les premiers à intégrer une expérience Zoom native dans notre gamme Poly CCX, sous la forme de Zoom Phone Appliances », a déclaré John Lamarque, vice-président et directeur général de la collaboration vocale chez Poly. « Cela donne à la plateforme Zoom, que nous connaissons et aimons tous, la place centrale dans l’écran tactile de l’appareil, offrant une expérience puissante et immersive. »

Vidéophone intelligent Yealink VP59

« Nous sommes ravis de dévoiler le nouveau vidéophone VP59, fiable et à la pointe de la technologie, un appareil Zoom Phone Appliance », a déclaré Alvin Liao, vice-président des produits chez Yealink. « L’écran tactile du vidéophone VP59 sera alimenté par la plateforme leader de communications vidéo de Zoom, fournissant aux clients une interface conviviale et une expérience intuitive. »

Les Zoom Phone Appliances sont disponibles via le programme Zoom Hardware-as-a-Service ainsi qu’auprès des revendeurs agréés Poly et Yealink. Pour en savoir plus sur Zoom Phone Appliances, consultez le site Web de Zoom Phone Appliances et notre blog.

À propos de Zoom
Zoom est fait pour vous. Nous vous aidons à exprimer vos idées, à communiquer avec les autres et à bâtir un avenir limité uniquement par votre imagination. Notre plateforme de communications sans friction est la seule qui a commencé par la vidéo comme fondement, et nous avons établi la norme en matière d’innovation depuis lors. C’est pourquoi nous sommes un choix intuitif, évolutif et sécurisé aussi bien pour les particuliers, que les petites et grandes entreprises. Fondée en 2011, Zoom est cotée en bourse (NASDAQ : ZM) et a son siège social à San José, en Californie. Rendez-vous sur zoom.com et suivez@zoom.

Relations publiques de Zoom
Farshad Hashmatulla
Responsable des relations publiques
press@zoom.us