A10| Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
WORLD NEWS
Leap Year
Babies
Fight Back
ship has ballooned to 11,
from just 21 when she started
it in 1988. Among other things,
it maintains a list of issues the
leapers face.
Ms. Dawn, of Keizer, Ore.,
celebrates her 15th birthday
Saturday after spending a total
of 60 years on the planet. She
strives to make life easier on
leapers, including getting more
states to change their DMV
computers to recognize Feb. 29
and pushing restaurants to
honor free birthday offers ev-
ery year rather than every
four.
“I’ll tell you who cares, one
in 1,461 of us do,” Ms. Dawn
ContinuedfromPageOne
says in a video posted on her
website, citing the odds of be-
ing born on leap day.
Leapers fight back in the
ways of any interest group:
They write letters, they send
emails. And they have seen
some change. Some states have
rejiggered their computer sys-
tems to recognize Feb. 29 on
driver’s licenses, said Ms.
Dawn.
When Karen Korr turned
both 40 and 10 four years ago,
she first celebrated with a
party with face painters, bal-
loon animals and Barbie cakes.
Then, she and her girlfriends
jetted off to Las Vegas to see
Celine Dion.
“Not having your birthday
on the actual calendar means it
gets overlooked completely
sometimes, but you get to
make up for it with a killer cel-
ebration every four years,” said
Ms. Korr, a legal-marketing
strategist from San Diego.
Still, she feels hurt missing
out on birthday wishes fromher friends on Facebook.
“When I don’t get messages on
my Facebook wall on February
28, I assume that Facebook will
alert my friends on March 1,”
she said. “But sometimes Face-
book hasn’t alerted friends on
either day!”
A Facebook spokesman said
it does send birthday remind-
ers to friends of people who
are born on Feb 29.
Kelly Rowe delivered trip-
lets on Feb. 29, 2004, and since
then she and her husband, Jeff,
have had to deal with issues
ranging from correcting forms
for doctors’ offices to having to
convince customs agents on a
recent trip to Canada that their
children were legit.
“Customs were very enter-
tained with their birth certifi-
cates we presented and...didn’t
believe us because they are all
different sizes,” said Ms. Rowe,
of Charleston, S.C., whose trip-
lets vary in heights up to 6 feet
tall. The family eventually
made it through.a little sweat on mine, they let
me have my drinks!”
Michelle Mohring said
when she when she moved to a
new town in Michigan in 2009,
she was unable to register for
a library card online and
sought help in person. The
clerk, she said, tried but failed
to find a way to input Feb. 29
into the library system. She fi-
nally got a card when she sug-
gested just changing her birth
dateonittoFeb.28.
“He informed me I would
have this problem for the rest
of my life and joked that I
should just change my birth-
day,” said Ms. Mohring, a
teacher. “I found that a little
condescending. I’m entitled to
have a birthday and the correct
information without hassle.”
Ms. Mohring said she is
looking forward to her birth-
day on Saturday, when she
turns 52, or 13—the same age
as the middle-schoolers she
knows “who get a kick out of
knowing we were the same agethis year.”
Stacy Keyes, of Compton,
Calif., who turns 56 or 14 on
Saturday, said her late father
warned her life would be like
this. They were both born on
leap day and among their joint
issues: each being questioned
throughout their lives if their
birth date was real.
“For the mere mortals that
don’t understand the leap year,
we always get the side eye or
‘Is that really your birthday?
How did that happen?’ ” she
said.
Ms. Dawn, of the leap-year
baby group, says progress still
needs to be made. “We’ve
come a long way, but there are
still some things that have not
been fixed online,” she said.
“I’m not going to stop until we
are all leapified.”
She said she recently got a
coupon in the mail from a de-
partment store for leap-year
babies to use on their birthday.
There’s just one problem: The
expiration is Feb. 28.ing to the United Na-
tions, enough food to feed 81
million people.
The outbreak has put some
20 million people in Africa at
risk of starvation, and this
could rise to 33 million in the
next few months, according to
Irish aid agency Concern
Worldwide. The devastation is
hitting a region where millions
are already facing unprece-
dented food shortages because
of a lethal combination of
drought, flooding and insur-
gency.
Desert locusts typically livesolitary lives until a combina-
tion of conditions promotes
overbreeding and lead them to
form massive swarms.
The genesis of the current
plague came after vast rains
were dumped by cyclones in
the deserts of Oman, Yemen
and Somalia two years ago.
That created favorable breed-
ing conditions that allowed
three generations of locusts to
flourish unchecked in areas be-
yond government control,
where they bred into vast colo-
nies before flying east, west
and south in search of food,aid agencies say.
The swarms are so big that
traditional and more-inventive
forms of pest control are inef-
fective.
Mapping the scale of the
damage is made more compli-
cated because the hardest-hit
areas are in regions at war.
Perhaps the worst damage has
been in Somalia, where farm-
ers and authorities can’t con-
duct aerial spraying because of
fears the aircraft could be shot
down by insurgents.
“People already on the run
from violence saw their ani-
mals wither and die in
drought, their crops washed
away by floodwaters, and now
what remains be eaten by lo-
custs,” said Juerg Eglin, the
head of the Somalia delegation
for the International Commit-
tee of the Red Cross.
In northern Kenya, the lo-
custs have stripped grazing
pastures, pushing herders to
move livestock farther south.
Many pastoralists have left be-
hind women and children, rais-
ing fears of malnutrition and
starvation, aid officials say.
In recent weeks the swarms
have reached new countries—
including Tanzania, Ugandaand South Sudan, a nation
where more than half its 12
million people are already fac-
ing severe food insecurity and
in need of humanitarian assis-
tance. The U.N. said Tuesday
that a locust swarm had
reached the eastern border of
Democratic Republic of Congo
for the first time since 1944.Farmers Samson Ngorok, in
Uganda’s northeastern Kara-
moja region, and Peter Loko-
ruka in Turkana, a county in
northwestern Kenya, say they
are planning to move cattle to
areas not yet affected by the
locusts.
“It’s the only option now.
Otherwise our cattle will
starve,” Mr. Ngorok said.
Countries in East Africa had
formed a regional pest control
body, the Desert Locusts Con-
trol Organization, in 1962 todeal with plagues. But the re-
gion, which ranks among the
poorest in the world, was
caught unprepared, officials
say. Until the current out-
break, Uganda had last paid its
membership fees in- Kampala hastily paid
around $3 million in member-
ship arrears early February,
but this was too late to secure
required locust-spraying equip-
ment to avert the invasion.
Kampala still owes $2 million,
joining Sudan, Eritrea and So-
malia as defaulters.
Complicating response ef-
forts, the regional pest control
body is tackling the invasion
with just four outdated 1965
spraying aircraft, which are in-
sufficient to address the
breadth of the problem, the aid
agency Oxfam says. Kenya,
which has deployed a total of
eight aircraft, has failed to
stop the pests in two months
of constant spraying. Uganda
has yet to secure spray aircraft
and lacks the experience,
equipment and budget to han-
dle the invasion.
The upshot, experts warn, is
that there could be another
surge in the locust population
in March.
KAMPALA, Uganda—Across
Somalia, desert locusts in a
swarm the size of Manhattan
have destroyed a swath
of farmland as big as Okla-
homa. In Kenya, billions-strong
clouds of the insects have
eaten through 800 square
miles of crops and survived
a weekslong spraying cam-
paign. In parts of Pakistan, the
pests have eaten 40% of the
harvest, forcing the govern-
ment to declare a national
emergency.
The worst plague of locusts
in generations isn’t over yet,
but the gargantuan scale of the
damage it has wrought is com-
ing into focus and raising con-
cerns of a humanitarian crisis.
Billions upon billions of the in-
sects—feared by many of the
world’s ancient civilizations—
have gathered into thick bliz-
zards that have now swept
across more than 10 nations
on two continents, eating ev-
ery crop in their path. In parts
of East Africa, the center of the
plague, swarms the size of
large cities are destroying
some 1.8 million metric tons of
vegetation every day, accord-
BYNICHOLASBARIYO
Swarms of Locusts Threaten East Africa
Desert locusts typically live solitary lives until a combination of
conditions promotes overbreeding, leading to massive swarms.MICHELE SIBILONI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALFROM PAGE ONE
The U.S. and the Taliban
were set to sign a deal in Qatar
on Saturday that will chart a
path for all American troops to
leave Afghanistan after more
than 18 years of war, but it
leaves unanswered fundamental
questions about the country’s
future, including whether it will
remain a democracy and what
rights will be afforded to
women.
President Trump has long
telegraphed his impatience with
the war and desire to bring the
troops home. Despite the ur-
gency in Washington, com-
pounded by the approaching
2020 election, the next phases
of the process face steep chal-
lenges, according to analysts
and former officials.
Once signed, the agreement
provides that the U.S. will im-
mediately begin withdrawing
troops, in exchange for Taliban
commitments on counterterror-
ism and the start of negotia-
tions with Afghan groups, in-
cluding the government, to
decide how to govern and share
power.
March 10 is the tentative
date for the start of those nego-
tiations. But a lack of clarity
over the format, from presence
of a mediator to the formation
of the negotiating teams, to
where the process will actually
take place, all raise questions
over whether the intra-Afghan
process will launch as planned.
“If you don’t have a proper
preparation for the talks and
some one, or some entity, who
is managing those preparations,
it’s quite possible that the talks
will just blow up on the launch
pad,” said Laurel Miller, who
served as the acting U.S. envoy
for Afghan talks during the
Obama and Trump administra-
tions.
Mr. Trump said in a state-
ment Friday that the signing of
the agreement provided “a
powerful path forward to end
the war...and bring our troops
home.”
Once the deal is signed, the
U.S. military plans to spend
three to five months drawing
down to roughly 8,600 troops,
defense officials said. There
now are about 13,000 U.S.
troops in Afghanistan. Allies
also are expected to reduce
their forces there, the officials
said.
Details on U.S. troop reduc-
tions, which analysts and for-
mer officials expect to take
place over 18 months, likely will
be announced Saturday. Offi-
cials haven’t said how closely
the drawdown will be tied to
conditions including a cease-
fire, the intra-Afghan talks andassurances from the Taliban re-
garding the use of Afghan terri-
tory by terrorists.
All those factors could keep
U.S. forces in Afghanistan for
years.
In a further complication,
the political landscape in Af-
ghanistan is different than in
September, when Mr. Trump
walked away from a nearly
completed U.S.-Taliban deal af-
ter an attack that killed an
American soldier.
The U.S. won concessions
from the Taliban before restart-
ing talks, including a seven-day
reduction in violence before the
signing and the release of two
Western hostages, including an
American. That seven-day pe-riod began last weekend and
runs until Saturday.
But the break from talks last
year also allowed Afghanistan
to hold a presidential election
that resulted—as had been
widely feared—in a deadlock
between the two leading candi-
dates.
Both President Ashraf Ghani
and his rival Abdullah Abdullah
claimed victory after a fraud-
marred vote and vowed to form
parallel governments. The top
U.S. envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad,
having wrapped up talks with
the Taliban, has spent the past
week in Kabul trying to broker
an agreement between the ri-
vals, succeeding at least in per-
suading them to postpone theirplanned inaugurations.
Both the Afghans and the
Taliban have been slow to pre-
pare for the intra-Afghan pro-
cess. The Afghan side has been
unable to agree on a negotiat-
ing team. The Taliban have
tried to demand a swap of thou-
sands of prisoners before it
starts and have been vague on
the substance of their beliefs
and demands.
The Taliban also have been
vague on the immediate ques-
tion of whether attacks will pick
up this weekend after the seven
days of reduced violence have
elapsed and the deal is signed.
The U.S. military is monitoring
the reduction in violence, with a
contact group in Doha, Qatar,used to resolve issues that have
come up during the week.
The Afghan interior ministry
said Thursday that 17 of its se-
curity forces had been killed by
day five, although that is a frac-
tion of the casualties normally
seen in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Afghan officials
have signaled their expectation
that all parties will continue to
move toward a full cease-fire
after the deal is signed. The
Taliban have said that the com-
mitment is just for seven days.
That suggests the group may be
unprepared to give up its lever-
age on the battlefield as early
as its opponents had hoped.
—Nancy A. Youssef
contributed to this article.ByJessica Donatiin
Washington and
Ehsanullah Amiriin
KabulAfghanistan Faces Uncertain Course After Peace Pact
Young people release balloons and pigeons as they celebrate the reduction in violence, in Jalalabad, on Friday. The next phases of the peace process face steep challenges.NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESThe worst plague in
generations puts
some 20 million at
risk of starvation.One life milestone—being
able to legally buy one’s first
drink at 21—often becomes a
sobering experience. Annabella
Gualdoni is still annoyed, 30
years later, about when she
went to a bar near her college
in Los Angeles to celebrate her
21st birthday and showed herID for an Alabama Slammer.
“The waiter looked it up and
down, scrunched his face, and
said, ‘Uh, are you celebrating
your 21st birthday tonight?’ ”
said Ms. Gualdoni of Newton,
Mass. “I said that I was and he
said, ‘I’d better check with my
boss about this.’ After much
deliberation on their part, andHappy birthday!