Latest news with #GLASS
Daily Tribune
6 days ago
- Health
- Daily Tribune
Experts Warn: Antibiotics May No Longer Save Lives
TDT | Manama Addressing a critical global health concern, Dr. Jameela Al Salman, Bahraini physician and infectious disease specialist, sounded the alarm on the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) during her keynote speech at the Bahrain International Conference on Family Medicine and Primary Healthcare, held at the Gulf Hotel. Speaking about the escalating crisis, Dr. Al Salman warned that antimicrobial resistance could soon become one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide if urgent measures are not taken. "We are seeing patients every week who are at risk of dying due to infections that no longer respond to antibiotics," she said. "This isn't a distant threat — it's happening now, in our hospitals, in our communities." She highlighted alarming trends, including the fact that some bacteria are now resistant to all known antibiotics, making once-treatable infections potentially fatal. Dr. Al Salman emphasized that globalization, travel, and overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals have accelerated the spread of resistant microbes. 'Bacteria don't need passports,' she warned. 'An outbreak in one country can easily affect others.' Despite efforts made over the past decade, progress has been limited. In 2014, a global action plan was launched to combat AMR, and Bahrain became a regional leader by prioritizing national surveillance and reporting systems under the WHO's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS). However, she admitted that 'the world didn't do enough,' and resistance levels continue to climb. Dr. Al Salman called for a coordinated international approach, involving primary care physicians, hospitals, policymakers, and pharmaceutical companies. She stressed the need for better infection control practices, responsible prescription of antibiotics, public education, and investment in new treatments. She also pointed out that pharmaceutical companies are often reluctant to invest in new antibiotics due to low commercial returns, choosing instead to focus on more profitable treatments like cancer therapies. One of her key messages was the importance of the role of family doctors and primary care physicians, saying, 'You are at the center of this cycle. You're the first line of defense.' Overprescribing antibiotics, she said, not only affects individual patients but contributes to a wider community risk. Reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Al Salman noted that although it helped strengthen infection control measures, it also led to an increase in unnecessary antibiotic use, further exacerbating resistance. 'The clock is ticking. If we do not act now, we risk a future where simple infections could once again become deadly,' she concluded.
Forbes
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
A Glass Girl, Gods, Ghosts And An Imp. Inside Caryl Churchill's Universe
Deirdre O'Connell in GLASS. KILL. WHAT IF IF ONLY. IMP., written by Caryl Churchill and directed by ... More James Macdonald, at the Public Theater Joan Marcus This past November when Deirdre O'Connell was sent the script of a quartet of Caryl Churchill's short plays that would be performed together, there was no question that she had to be a part of the ensemble. 'I knew that my life was about to be swallowed up with the plays. There was the brilliance of the writing. And it's rare to feel there is only mining and nothing incomplete about it,' says the Tony-winning actor about the mosaic of themes and characters in Churchill's plays Glass. Kill. What If If Only. IMP. 'All I have to do is surrender to it and try to understand how it needs to be done. Because it is perfect.' All vastly different, yet linked together in subtle ways, the plays feature a girl made of glass who has to navigate her world, a God on a white cloud giving her take on humanity, a bunch of ghosts who have a keen insight on mortality and two kissing cousins, (who don't kiss), who may have an escaped IMP from a bottle running amok in their living room. Directed by James Macdonald, who often collaborates with Churchill, the four one acts are presented together for the first time and playing at the Public Theater. Often considered one of the world's finest playwrights, Caryl Churchill's work delves into sexual politics, identity, power, human instincts and why we behave the way we do. A pioneering, boundary pushing playwright, she blows the lid off convention and creates her own forms. (From left): John Ellison Conlee, Adelind Horan, and Deirdre O' Connell in GLASS. KILL. WHAT IF IF ... More ONLY. IMP Joan Marcus Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater's artistic director calls Churchill the most influential living playwright in the English language. 'For over 50 years she has been creating utterly unique, unpredictable plays that combine formal experimentation with deep social engagement. She's a profoundly political playwright whose work is always aesthetically compelling; she's a brilliantly innovative artist whose work tackles the deepest and most difficult issues we face,' writes Eustis in the show's playbill about the Public Theater's collaboration with Churchill that has spanned nearly five decades. 'She isn't the most commercially successful writer we have; indeed, she's never aimed at that kind of success. But her influence on generations of playwrights is unequalled in the Anglo-American theater.' O'Connell is part of an ensemble featuring Japhet Balaban, Ruby Blaut, John Ellison Conlee, Adelind Horan, Maddox Morfit-Tighe, Cecilia Ann Popp, Sathya Sridharan, Junru Wang, Ayana Workman, Kyle Cameron, Orlagh Cassidy and Anya Whelan-Smith. When asked about why she believes Churchill's work has endured all these decades O'Connell points to the depths of her writing. 'She has a very clear headed way that she looks at the world combined with this acknowledgement of its mysteries,' says O'Connell of the plays that are running at the Public Theater through May 25. 'There is the glee she has as a writer. And she offers that pleasure to the artist making it and, hopefully, to the world watching it.' Jeryl Brunner: In the one act IMP you play Dot, a former nurse who is nursing her own bad back and stays put in her reclining armchair. While in Kill you take on the role of 'Gods' and are perched on a cloud delivering an epic monologue. Both pieces are extremely different. What is that like for you? Deirdre O'Connell: They are each remarkable in their own way and so utterly different from each other. One kind of earns you the ability to do the other. Kill , in particular, was terribly intimidating. On the page, there is very little punctuation. It's just four single spaced pages of ferocious writing about death, war, families and cultures. It's about how the world creates an impossible situation for each generation and tries to move out of it, Yet it's impossible to do, because you are birthed into a legacy of some kind of violence and revenge fantasy. It seemed very prescient , yet she had written it around six years ago. I guess it will never stop feeling like this is the exact story that needs to be told right now. I was terrified reading Kill . I thought, Can I just do IMP , the fun British comedy? But of course, no, you can't. You have to be able to do both things. And the fun British comedy wouldn't be the same thing without the Gods in Kill , and the Gods wouldn't be the same thing without the fun British comedy. Brunner: Were you able to connect with Caryl Churchill at some point? O'Connell: A little bit. She did some Zoom meetings with us from London as a group when we were beginning rehearsal. Imagine social anxiety. We didn't know each other yet. There was all of us in a room on one screen, and then there was her and her cat, by herself in London. She was very nice. It was like we all came over for tea and she was such a great hostess to us. I did not sit down and have in-depth question answer sessions with her. We had our director James, who has worked with her so much and understands her writing so well and had directed these plays before [in the United Kingdom] a few years ago. It was funny because it was long ago enough so when I would ask him very specific questions, like: 'How did you solve this problem?' But he would say, 'I don't remember.' So we were starting from scratch, but with someone who had already figured out and knew that worked. It was as if we were working with a magician who solved the tricks but had to teach them to you. Brunner: How has doing the play impacted you? O'Connell: It might be something about the nature of the dark and the light of the task, but it makes me feel extremely happy. I don't always feel that way. Even when I'm in something I really like, feel excited and challenged. This is a particular kind of happiness. And even sometimes when I have the dark moments of the soul, I remember how this makes me incredibly happy. As dark as the play is, it's also extremely pleasurable to do. Brunner: Why do you think that is? O'Connell: I believe that has a lot to do with Carol and James. James is incredibly gentle as a director, but he also puts out breadcrumbs through the forest for you. They are these brilliant, bright breadcrumbs and you just have to follow them. He is so gentle that anytime you start to bite down, he says, 'No, no, no. You don't have to freak yourself out about this.' He has a way of not freaking out as a director, in terms of having faith that the soup will brew up into the thing it needs to be. James trusted us a lot and let us build. But at the same time, he was guiding with such a gentle hand. So I felt very held by him while feeling a lot of freedom inside a very tight structure. (From left:) Adelind Horan, Ayana Workman, Sathya Sridharan and Japhet Balaban in Glass. Joan Marcus Deirdre O'Connell Courtesy The Public Theater
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Byway not the highway: why you should take your 4x4 off-road
Our editor-at-large loves ploughing through mud in his Defender It was once estimated that the rise in popularity of SUVs had effectively undone all of the efficiency improvements made on internal combustion engines. As in, the International Energy Agency said we'd burnt as much fuel in the previous decade as if we'd all stayed driving hatchbacks and made no tech improvements. In 2023, some 60% of all cars sold in the UK were SUVs, up from 50% in 2021. There are two reasons for this. The first is that SUV is such a broad term that it now applies to a Ford Puma and a Tesla Model Y just as equally as it applies to a Jeep Wrangler or Land Rover Defender. This is daft because these cars don't all do the same thing: some SUVs are proper four-wheel-drive off-road-capable vehicles, while others are tall family wagons with big boots and a seat height that makes it easy for ageing hips or child seats to slide on and off them. Really we should call these practical family wagons something other than SUVs. The second reason is that people think real 4x4s are cool and that off-roading might feel very adventurous, so they want to look like they do it. Hence some SUVs-not-4x4s try to look more like actual off-roaders. But not all 4x4s, let alone all SUVs, are created equal. And I'll let you into a secret, just in case you haven't already tried it: off-roading is great. It's as good a day out as a track day, by my reckoning. Some of my best days at work are off-road days, typically where we hire a disused quarry and devise a series of objective tests for the assembled 4x4s. Off-roading is so much fun that I go off the beaten path in my Land Rover Defender on my own time. I even do it on my motorbike, although, because that weighs a quarter of a tonne and I am a weakling, not terribly ambitiously. You can do this too, without actually leaving the road. Organisations involved in using and maintaining places you can freely take your 4x4 are quite keen to make a distinction about this. Using Britain's network of byways, colloquially known as green-laning, is not off-roading. These are highways just like the M1 is a highway, subject to road laws and accessible to all traffic. These are roads. There will be some in your area, if you live in England and Wales. (In Scotland, they don't exist and access rights are different. In Ireland, they don't either but some very minor rural roads are stony tracks.) Byways vary from those accessible only by cars with a generous ride height and serious tyres to those you could drive a hatchback down if you didn't care about it much. I like them all. If you like using byways often, or just care about their future, I'd recommend joining an association like GLASS (The Green Lane Association) or for two-wheelers the TRF (Trail Riders Fellowship), because you'll get more intel than an OS map can give you and it's fair to say the future of access to many roads has been secured by these groups. Your subs help defend the rights of drivers and riders to use roads as we have always been able to. But if that's not hardy enough and you want to give a 4x4 a proper workout, somewhere you can make a mess, get it stuck, get rescued, get stuck again, stop for a cup of tea and giggle while someone else gets stuck before towing them out, to hone a skill and find out just how far a 4x4 can go (and even after trying and seeing it dozens of times, I'm still surprised at that), hire some time in an off-road centre. It's affordable (tens rather than hundreds of pounds), slow, friendly, challenging, adventurous, probably not very noisy, and benign. And it's immense fun, although I find it harder to describe exactly why than, say, doing a track day or riding a motorbike. After all, it's not like there's the thrill of speed, and you'll probably get wet socks. But, then, describe to me the appeal of Diggerland or going on a steam train. I'm not sure it's that easy. If you like machines, and seeing what you can make them do, it's just fun. The thing about a 4x4 is that you can have that fun, then also pull a horse trailer or a boat or caravan somewhere, then go to the shops and then to work in it. And if there wasn't an intrinsic, if insoluble, appeal to that, fewer drivers would buy cars that made them look like they did it. ]]>
