National parks traveler Mikah Meyer had plenty of fun among giant powdery dunes recently, as he celebrated a milestone. He’s exactly one-third of the way through his 3-year journey to visit all 417 sites within the U.S. National Park Service. The young adventurer shared highlights of his 139th site visit with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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Month: May 2017
US-China Ties in Arts and Education Deepen
On the political and military front, U.S.-China relations have been an often-tense dance between governments. However, in arts and education, many say the relationship is deepening. There is debate among Americans as to whether the ties are positive or negative.
Some say this is progress that is reaping economic and cultural benefits for citizens in both countries.
“When people collaborate on making anything artistic, there’s an emotional pull inside of that and if it works well, you not only have a great business, you also have a great diplomatic cohesion between the two countries,” said Chris Fenton, U.S.-Asia Institute Trustee and the President of DMG Entertainment.
In August, Fenton will be taking a group of U.S. lawmakers to China to look at the country’s growing entertainment and media industry, with the hope of even more Chinese investment in Hollywood.
Chinese language and culture
China has also been investing in educating Americans in language and culture through its Confucius Institutes. Mandarin immersion kindergarten teacher Carol Chen says the University of California Los Angeles Confucius Institute has been a good resource for her and her students.
“For example, books and also resources of our Chinese cultures. One of the years, they actually brought Chinese folk culture tradition to the campus,” said Chen, who teaches at Broadway Elementary, a dual language immersion school.
Funded by the Chinese government, there are nearly 500 Confucius Institutes globally, most on university campuses. The UCLA Confucius Institute taps into the local Mandarin-speaking population to develop a pipeline of Mandarin teachers. It also provides cross-cultural programs in the arts.
“Bringing more artists together and exposing them to each other’s culture and to shared cultural experience with China, you’re sort of training, sort of a new generation of diplomats,” said Susan Pertel Jain, UCLA Confucius Institute Executive Director.
But long-time critic and academic Perry Link says Confucius Institutes are an example of China’s soft power.
“Soft power is cultural or educational things that cause people in other countries to view one’s own country in a more friendly way. To reach out into the world with soft power is a new thing from the Chinese government’s point of view, but an important thing because the rest of the successful world seems to be doing it,” said Link, who is the University of California Riverside’s Chancellorial Chair for Innovation in Teaching Across Disciplines.
But Link says the presence of the Confucius Institutes on university campuses is dangerous because it often limits academic freedom to discuss China’s human rights issues.
“It’s induced self-censorship. That is, ‘We are going to give you these funds and you can invite speakers about China and the fund comes from Beijing and you know that and we know that.’ Now, as the director of a Confucius Institute, do you think, ‘Oh, I’ll invite the Dalai Lama’ to speak? No.Of course you don’t do that,” Link said.
But Jain said the UCLA Confucius Institute does not back away from touchy topics.
“Whether it’s artists that we present there who were active in sort of [an] anti-government movement or whether it’s the screening of films that are maybe not officially approved by the government, we don’t shy away from that, but what we always tell our colleagues in China is that we promise to always present everything in a fair and balanced way,” said Jain.
Entertainment industry
In the past, Hollywood movies have been America’s example of soft power.
Last fall, 16 members of Congress wrote a letter to the Government Accountability Office to express national security concerns about the growing number of Chinese investments in the United States, including in the media and entertainment industry.
“There is definitely a self-censorship. There is no doubt. I think the most obvious version of that was when self-censorship was not used and it really backfired,” said Fenton.
China is close to becoming the top global market at the box office and one that is much desired by Hollywood executives. If China closes that door to certain production studios in Hollywood, it will hurt financially.
“It’s a very large piece of the pie because it’s roughly seven billion in dollars,” Fenton said. “If you’re thinking like a business person, there is a certain creative vision you should have for the content you’re making that if you want to call it self-censorship that’s fine, or you call it just good business.”
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Fitness Trackers Bad at Measuring Calories Burned, Study Says
It’s probably not a good idea to decide what to eat based on how many calories your wearable fitness tracker says you’ve burned, according to a new study.
Researchers at Stanford University in California, who tested several popular fitness trackers on 60 volunteers, say the fitness trackers are good for measuring heart rate and counting steps, but they’re bad at measuring energy expenditure.
The volunteers, 29 men and 31 women, engaged in a variety of physical activities, including walking or running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike. Their heart rates were measured using a medical-grade electrocardiograph. Energy expenditure was determined by measuring the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the volunteers’ breath.
Six of the seven devices tested, which included the Apple Watch, Basis Peak, Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band, Mio Alpha 2, PulseOn and the Samsung Gear S2, did a good job measuring heart rate, coming within 5 percent of the accuracy of the electrocardiograph.
However, when it came to measuring calories burned, they did not do a very good job, with the most accurate tracker off by 27 percent. One was off by 93 percent.
“People are basing life decisions on the data provided by these devices,” said Euan Ashley, a professor of cardiovascular medicine, of genetics and of biomedical data science at Stanford, who added that consumer devices aren’t held to the same standards as medical devices.
Ashley was surprised by the results.
“The heart rate measurements performed far better than we expected,” he said. “But the energy expenditure measures were way off the mark. The magnitude of just how bad they were surprised me.”
The findings were published May 24 in the Journal of Personalized Medicine.
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Reports: US Job Market Remains Strong; Merchandise Trade Deficit Gets Worse
New data Thursday paint a mixed picture of the U.S. economy.
A report on the job market shows a slight increase in the number of people signing up for unemployment assistance last week. But the data also show that the number of people laid off remains at a low level consistent with a strong job market, where it has been for well over two years.
Economists say strong employment data will encourage the U.S. central bank to raise interest rates at its next meeting in June. The U.S. unemployment rate will be updated late next week.
A separate report shows the United States buys more merchandise abroad than it sells to foreigners. April’s trade gap was the second-worst in two years.
The trade data could mean slower economic growth. Friday, experts will publish an update to the U.S. GDP for the first few months of this year. A survey of economists shows they expect it to decline slightly from the disappointing seven-tenths of a percent annual rate reported earlier.
your ads here!Hypersonic Space Plane May Soon Be a Reality
The next generation hypersonic space plane just took a big step toward reality as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Boeing will “complete advanced design work” for the Experimental Spaceplane, XS-1.
The goal of the project is to offer quicker access to low Earth orbit, decreasing the preparation time to launch from months to days. For example, in the case of the loss of a military or commercial satellite, the unmanned, reusable XS-1 could quickly be used to launch a replacement.
“The XS-1 would be neither a traditional airplane nor a conventional launch vehicle, but rather a combination of the two, with the goal of lowering launch costs by a factor of 10 and replacing today’s frustratingly long wait time with launch on demand,” said Jess Sponable, DARPA program manager.
According to DARPA, the XS-1 will be about the size of a business jet and take off vertically, propelled not by external boosters but by “self contained cryogenic propellants.” After reaching a suborbital altitude, the plane would launch an expendable upper stage that would be able to push a satellite into orbit. The plane would then return to Earth, landing like a plane.
DARPA said the plane could then be reused “potentially within hours.”
The XS-1 could fly as fast as Mach 10, DARPA said.
The XS-1 is still years away from reality, with DARPA saying testing the plane’s engines on the ground slated for 2019.
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Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Honored by Authors Guild
Toni Morrison praised the power of literature and the “community” of writers. James Patterson told some jokes, and even sang.
Both received Distinguished Service Awards Wednesday night at the 25th annual Authors Guild dinner gala, held in Manhattan. The Guild, which represents thousands of published writers, also gave a service award to the heads of the self-publishing platform IngramSpark.
The 86-year-old Morrison, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1993, was cited by longtime editor Robert Gottlieb for literary achievements in such novels as “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon,” and for her contributions as an editor and educator.
“We’re all here together,” Morrison reminded the audience, which included such fellow authors as Erica Jong and Walter Mosley. “We are a necessary community.”
Morrison warned of the dangers of “ignorance,” and called for language to be given its rightful place as a force of “power” and “eloquence,” rendered “one book at a time.”
Patterson, 70, was honored not only for his extraordinary commercial success, more than 300 million books sold worldwide, but also for donating millions of dollars to librarians, booksellers and schools.
Patterson’s productivity is hard to match. He sometimes turns out best-sellers on a monthly basis. The man who negotiates his book deals, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, was not kidding Wednesday night when he said that Patterson’s latest contract called for 22 books, to come out in two years.
Patterson spent much of his speech mocking his own image. He conjured a daily ritual in which he wrote multiple outlines for novels in the morning and ordered a gaggle of co-writers, kept under lock and key, to finish the job.
There were jokes about President Donald Trump, a gag about writing a “truer than truer crime” book with Russian President Vladimir Putin, some profanity and, to top it off, a few words from the song “You Light Up My Life.”
“I did not steal that from Will Ferrell’s speech at USC,” he added.
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Gold Star Father Khizr Khan Plans Book for Young People
Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who became a national celebrity after speaking at last year’s Democratic National Convention, has a book planned for young readers.
Khan’s “This Is Our Constitution” comes out Nov. 14, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers told The Associated Press on Thursday. The book arrives the same day as his memoir “An American Family,” announced last fall.
Khan is an immigrant from Pakistan whose son Capt. Humayun Khan was killed in Iraq in 2004. At the convention, Khizr Khan taunted Donald Trump for his divisive comments about Muslims and held up a pocket-sized edition of the Constitution, wondering if the Republican candidate had read it. According to Knopf, “This is Our Constitution” will help educate readers ages 10 and up about American history.
your ads here!Trump Seeks to End Program for Older Jobless Americans
Nathan Singletary is beyond the traditional retirement age, but he’s only just beginning a new career — helping other low-income, unemployed Americans over age 55 find jobs.
Singletary got his job through the half-century-old Senior Community Service Employment Program, a training and placement program underwritten by taxpayers aimed at putting older Americans back into the workforce.
President Donald Trump says there are too few participants who find work that’s not paid for by the federal government. This week, he proposed deleting the $434 million program from the federal budget — a strike at a piece of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
“That would mean a great deal of hardship, for me and the people who come to us for help,” Singletary, 67, said last week from his desk at the AARP Foundation’s offices in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “It’s hard enough to find a job at this age.”
He says a friend told him about Trump’s plan around the time the president celebrated his 100th day in office three miles down the Susquehanna River at the Ames Companies’ thriving wheelbarrow factory. There, Trump signed executive orders to “defend American workers and companies.” It’s part of Trump’s agenda to boost American workers through apprenticeships, fairer trade deals and other incentives for employers to create jobs here in the U.S.
The seniors’ employment program that Trump proposes to eliminate provides part-time work at minimum wage. Participants have to live locally, have income close to or below the poverty level and be over 55.
In Harrisburg, participants accepted into the program are coached by Singletary at the AARP offices on how to explore online job listings. He, in turn, is being trained by another program participant, employment specialist Luz Rivera, to help participants find a job and get the required training.
Singletary watches as Rivera, 68, asks a newer participant, Luis Quinones, if he has computer skills. “I’m computer illiterate,” Quinones, 66, says with a grin. Rivera signs him up for computer training and a second year in the program.
About two-thirds of the participants in Harrisburg are able to find jobs not subsidized by the federal government, according to the program’s literature. The figure for the whole Senior Community Service Employment Program nationally is lower — at or slightly less than half, according to a 2015 government study Trump cites as evidence for nixing the program.
Across town, Jimmie Cobb, a 63-year-old sous chef by trade, recently scored a full-time position — with benefits — as a custodian at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, where the program had placed him temporarily last fall.
“This job is a comfort to me,” the Harrisburg resident says during a break. He says he “just walked in” to the AARP offices nine months ago, filled out paperwork and a day later was undergoing training. “I could not find more than temporary work before.”
It may seem like a good time to be an older worker seeking a job in an economy recovering from recession. Unemployment among Americans over 55 is at 3.3 percent, lower than the nation’s already healthy 4.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But older Americans face unique challenges finding work, including health problems, living in rural areas and the plain fact that they have a limited working future, various studies have shown. A 2012 analysis by a private contractor for the Labor Department found that job placement among those participating in the seniors’ employment program declined with age.
The government estimates that by 2020, workers age 55 and over will make up a quarter of the workforce. The Labor Department says the seniors’ employment program has helped more than 1 million workers in this age group enter the workforce.
But Trump says that’s not enough. His budget plan says 68,000 people a year get some support from the program. But at a cost of nearly $6,500 per participant, the program “fails to meet its other major statutory goals of fostering economic self-sufficiency,” it says. The document says the seniors could get help instead under the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs, which apply to would-be workers of all ages.
Singletary estimates that locally about 40 percent of people who qualify for the seniors’ training and placement positions “simply are going through the motions, show up one time to fulfill a requirement and you don’t see them again.”
Singletary says, “They spoil the whole outlook for the agency and the participants that want to do things for themselves.”
It’s not clear whether the Republican-controlled Congress will go along with Trump’s proposal to kill the program. Even some of his allies have declared the president’s budget dead on arrival, like most presidents’ budget proposals.
Here in Dauphin County — a blotch of Democratic blue surrounded by red Trump Country — the unemployment rate is 4.5 percent, slightly higher than the national average.
About 53 percent of program participants in Harrisburg are white and 42 percent are black, according to Elizabeth Stachiw, SCSEP’s project director for the AARP Foundation, a recipient of the federal grant money. About 16 percent consider themselves Hispanic, Latino and Spanish. The rest are Asian and American Indian, she said.
Nationally, about half of the current participants are white.
“We are not thinking about it,” she says of Trump’s proposed cuts. “We are focused on helping individuals 55 and over re-entering the workplace regain their confidence in order to find jobs in today’s market.”
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Attempt to Rebrand Harlem as ‘SoHa’ Leaves Residents Fuming
Community activists in New York City say an attempt to rebrand a section of Harlem as “SoHa” – short for Harlem – is insulting and another sign of gentrification run amok.
NY1 reports that community board member Danni Tyson says no real estate company, coffee shop or business should be using the term SoHa to refer to Harlem.
His comments were in response to some business people rebranding the area from 110th Street to 125th Streets in Manhattan as SoHa.
Democrat Brian Benjamin, who won Tuesday’s special election for Harlem’s state senate seat, says the rebranding effort is akin to someone trying to rob Harlem residents of their culture.
Nicknames such as TriBeCa, Nolita and SoHo have been in vogue for those trendy Manhattan neighborhoods for years.
your ads here!OPEC, Non-OPEC Nations Poised to Extend Output Cuts
OPEC and other oil nations meeting Thursday appeared set to extend their production cuts in an effort to shore up prices. But the intended impact could be short-lived.
That’s due to U.S. shale producers. With crude prices above $50 a barrel from lows of last year, they are increasingly moving back into the market. Their output already is partially offsetting the cuts, and even more U.S. companies are poised to return if prices rise further.
The upshot is that the price of oil — and derived products like fuel — is unlikely to increase much in coming months, analysts say. That will be welcome news to consumers and energy-hungry businesses worldwide but could continue to strain the budgets of some of the more economically-troubled oil-producing nations, like Venezuela and Brazil.
The latest reductions have been in effect since November, when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day. Non-OPEC countries led by Russia chipped in with a further 600,000-barrel reduction.
Ahead of the meeting, the organization announced that Equatorial Guinea had joined, expanding OPEC membership to 14.
With the deal due to expire at the end of June, OPEC oil ministers appeared ready to prolong it up to nine months even before they sat down to make a formal decision.
Saudi Oil Minister Khalid A. al-Falih spoke of a “9-month straight” extension going into Thursday’s meeting. Iran’s Bijan Namdar Zanganeh floated possible extensions of three months, six months or even a year and said his country had “no difficulty” with any of the options, while Jabbar Ali Hussein al-Luiebi, his Iraqi counterpart, mentioned “the scenario of a nine-month freeze.”
Al-Falih said that the cuts had achieved a key aim. “Inventories are drawing down,” he told reporters.
But even with the reductions, oil prices have risen less than OPEC hoped for from last year’s levels. At over $50 a barrel, benchmark crude sits substantially below the highs reached in 2014, but is priced high enough to bring back into the market U.S. producers who eased back as prices tumbled last year. U.S. shale production requires a higher price to be profitable.
U.S. output since last year has increased by nearly a million barrels a day to a daily 9 million barrels. That already puts American producers in the league with oil giants Saudi Arabia and Russia and cuts further into OPEC’s past ability to play a role in setting prices and supplies.
More than 400 oil rigs are now working U.S. shale fields — an increase of more than 120 percent compared with a year ago. And U.S. producers are poised to expand more, even if prices tick upward only moderately as a result of an oil-cut extension by OPEC and its partners.
Commerzbank cited data from the U.S. Department of Energy saying U.S. production was roughly 540,000 barrels per day higher in mid-May than at the start of the year.
“This offsets nearly half of OPEC’s production cuts,” it noted.
Even a decision to maintain oil cuts thus is likely to only kick the can down the road from Thursday’s meeting until OPEC ministers convene again late this year. Crude prices are unlikely to rise substantially — and that means the era of windfall profits appears to be over for member nations, at least for now.
While analysts at research firm IHS Markit expect OPEC revenues to rise modestly this year after dropping from their peak of $1.2 trillion in 2012, “the total will be less than half the level of 2012, when prices were more than double current levels.”
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Computer Wins 2nd Game Against Chinese Go Champion
A computer beat China’s top player of go, one of the last games machines have yet to master, for a second time Thursday in a competition authorities limited the Chinese public’s ability to see.
Ke Jie lost despite playing what Google’s AlphaGo indicated was the best game any opponent has played against it, said Demis Hassabis, founder of the company that developed the program.
AlphaGo defeated Ke, a 19-year-old prodigy, in their first game Tuesday during a forum organized by Google on artificial intelligence in Wuzhen, a town west of Shanghai. They play a final game Saturday.
AlphaGo previously defeated European and South Korean champions, surprising players who had expected it to be at least a decade before computers could master the game.
Internet users outside China could watch this week’s games live but Chinese censors blocked most mainland web users from seeing the Google site carrying the feed. None of China’s dozens of video sites carried the live broadcasts but a recording of Tuesday’s game was available the following night on one popular site, Youku.com.
State media reports on the games have been brief, possibly reflecting Beijing’s antipathy toward Google, which closed its China-based search engine in 2010 following a dispute over censorship and computer hacking. Google says 60 million people in China watched online when AlphaGo played South Korea’s go champion in March 2016.
The official response to the match, a major event for the worlds of go and artificial intelligence, reflects the conflict between the ruling Communist Party’s technology ambitions and its insistence on controlling what its public can see, hear and read.
The government encourages internet use for business and education but tries to block access to material considered subversive.
The possible reason for suppressing coverage while allowing Google to organize the event was unclear. Censorship orders to Chinese media are officially secret and government officials refuse to confirm whether online material is blocked.
On Thursday, AlphaGo “thought that Ke Jie played perfectly” for the first 50 moves, Hassabis said at a news conference.
“For the first roughly 100 moves, it is the closest game we have ever seen anyone play against the master version of AlphaGo,” he said.
Ke said the computer made unexpected moves after playing more methodically on Tuesday.
“From the perspective of human beings, it stretched a little bit and I was surprised at some points,” he said.
“I also thought that I was very close to winning the match in the middle,” Ke said. “I could feel my heart thumping. But maybe because I was too excited, I did some wrong or stupid moves. I guess that’s the biggest weak point of human beings.”
Go players take turns putting white or black stones on a rectangular grid with 361 intersections, trying to capture territory and each other’s pieces by surrounding them. The game is considered more difficult than chess for machines to master because the near-infinite number of possible positions requires intuition and flexibility.
This week’s games are taking place in a hall where Chinese leaders hold the annual World Internet Conference, an event attended by global internet companies.
China has the world’s biggest population of internet users, with some 730 million people online at the end of last year, according to government data.
Censors block access to social media and video-sharing websites such as Facebook and YouTube. Internet companies are required to employ teams of censors to watch social media and remove banned material.
Web surfers can get around online filters using virtual private networks, but Beijing has cracked down on use of those.
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Search for Kidney Cements Personal Cambodian-American Bond
Tony Chhim, a first-generation Cambodian-American, needs a kidney.
Until a few weeks ago, his family thought a yearlong search among relatives in Cambodia and in Khmer communities throughout the United States had been fruitless. Then Taylor Tagg, an American friend of Tony’s dad, Tim, surprised everyone by turning out to be a match.
The euphoria lasted until a few days ago, when doctors at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, discovered a complication. That dashed what had been a feel-good, one-in-a-million, happy-ending kind of saga that transcended race, religion and national origin, as Tagg prepared to be the first American to donate a kidney to the son of Cambodian refugees.
Painful dialysis 3 times a week
Tony Chhim, 31, is Tim’s only son. Born in the United States, Tony is a football player and roots for the North Rockland Red Raiders football team in Thiells, New York. With only one functioning kidney, he’s in dialysis.
“It’s painful. Imagine you go [for treatment] four to five hours every other day for the rest of your life,” Tony said. “How much of that is your life?”
Now, once again, Taylor Tagg and Tim Chhim are supporting Tony during another search for a kidney match. Julie Kimbrough, senior director of marketing and communications for the National Kidney Foundation, told VOA Khmer the numbers are grim: About 19,000 people receive a transplant every year, and there are 120,000 people waiting for a kidney transplant.
“Every year there are over 4,000 people who die waiting” for help, she said.
A ‘special’ connection
Tagg and the older Chhim met in 2012 when they joined the same self-help group. A shared history of overcoming the kind of life trials that would stop many others — Tim escaped execution by the Khmer Rouge three times — grew into a friendship and a business partnership.
Neither of them cared that Tagg is a white Christian American and Chhim is an Asian Buddhist immigrant.
Tagg, a life coach who teaches forgiveness, lives in Germantown, Tennessee. The 46-year-old’s motto is: “Life gets better when you let go of the bitters.”
Chhim owns an Allstate Insurance agency in Nanuet, New York, and also is a motivational speaker.
His positive message dovetails with Tagg’s message of self-empowerment to survivors, especially refugees: “Don’t become victims forever. You were a victim, but not now. Now you are a victor.”
Tagg says they have a “special” connection.
In 2015, the two men co-wrote a book, Adversity to Advantage: 3 Epic Stories of Transforming Life’s Obstacles into Opportunity.
A hero’s gift
“We both felt through our meeting through the Napoleon Hill Foundation, then writing a book together, a higher power placed us in our paths so that we can come together for Tony’s needs to help him with his kidney,” Tagg said. “Tim is one of my living heroes, and so when the opportunity presented itself, he asked for a blood test. Those with O blood type stepped up to get tested. Of course, I did that and turned out to be a match for Tony.”
Chhim has the same feeling about Tagg: “Taylor, you are my hero, not the other way around. How many people out there are willing to give a part of their body, their organ for someone else who’s not related to you?”
Not many. But Neang Chhim, 59, Tony’s mother, understands this sacrifice. In 2010, she gave one of her kidneys to her son.
“You have to do what a mother has to do,” she said. “I checked the blood and it matched. You act quickly because you try to save your son’s life.”
Five years later, Tony’s body rejected Neang’s kidney, and that led to the tests that showed Tagg’s kidney was a match for the young man’s.
Tony says that kindness transcends any differences: “For me, it doesn’t matter if you’re non-Cambodian, black, and white. Just the fact that anybody that would step up that didn’t even know me, it really touched me. It made me happy inside knowing that there are people out there that do genuinely want to help.”
The kidney transplant surgery was scheduled for this week, but three weeks ago the medical team called it off because of complications that indicated it would not be a long-term solution to Tony’s problems.
Tony Chhim says his bond with Taylor Tagg is solid: “I still consider him my brother and he’s just as heartbroken as I am.”
Ever his father’s son, Tony vows to keep on fighting, “to find the good in the adversity.” And he hopes his story will inspire more organ donors.
“My main mission is to get people aware,” he said. “If one person besides me gets a kidney because I’m talking about it, then I’m more than happy just to stay on dialysis.”
This report originated on VOA Khmer.
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New Zealand-Launched Rocket Reaches Space, Not Orbit
California-based company Rocket Lab said Thursday it had launched a test rocket into space from its New Zealand launch pad, although the rocket didn’t reach orbit as hoped.
The company said its Electron rocket lifted off at 4:20 p.m. Thursday and reached space three minutes later.
“It has been an incredible day and I’m immensely proud of our talented team,” company founder Peter Beck said in a statement.
Beck, a New Zealander, said the early stages of the mission went well.
“We didn’t quite reach orbit and we’ll be investigating why, however reaching space in our first test puts us in an incredibly strong position,” he said.
More tests approved
Rocket Lab was given official approval last week to conduct three test launches from the remote Mahia Peninsula on the North Island. The company hopes to begin commercial launches later this year and eventually launch about one rocket every week.
The company said it will target getting to orbit on the second test and will look to carry the maximum payload.
New Zealand has never had a space program but officials hope regular launches could change perceptions of the South Pacific nation and generate hundreds of millions of dollars each year in revenue.
Rocket Lab plans to keep costs low by using lightweight, disposable rockets with 3D-printed engines. It sees an emerging market in delivering lots of small devices into low Earth orbit. The satellites would be used for everything from monitoring crops to providing internet service.
New space club member
Politicians are rushing through new space laws and the government has set up a boutique space agency, which employs 10 people.
“So far, it’s only superpowers that have gone into space,” Simon Bridges, New Zealand’s economic development minister, told The Associated Press last week. “For us to do it, and be in the first couple of handfuls of countries in the world, is pretty impressive.”
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is unusual in many respects. It carries only a small payload of about 150 kilograms (331 pounds). It’s made from carbon fiber and uses an electric engine. Rocket Lab says each launch will cost just $5 million, a tiny fraction of a typical rocket launch.
It’s a different plan than some other space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which uses larger rockets to carry bigger payloads.
Rocket Lab was founded by Beck and is privately held. The company has received about $150 million in venture capital funding.
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Probiotics Show Promise as Mood Elevator
A new study suggests that probiotics, so-called “good” bacteria that aid in digestion, may also ease symptoms of depression. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that what happens in the gut affects the brain.
Some 300 to 500 bacterial species inhabit the human gut, many aiding in digestion and the proper functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.
Experts say some of these bacteria produce proteins that communicate with the brain.
Your gut, your mood
The gut flora not only play a role in helping to orchestrate the neural responses that regulate digestion, scientists say, but evidence is emerging that gut bacteria can also affect a person’s mood.
Premysl Bercik, a gastroenterologist at Ontario Canada’s McMaster University, researches what he calls the microbiota-gut-brain axis, or the communication between the gut and the brain through the millions of bacteria that live in the gastrointestinal tract.
Bercik said between 40 and 90 percent of people with irritable bowel syndrome, a distressing intestinal disorder, also battle symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Research led by Bercik suggests the gut bacteria themselves may have an effect on mood.
In Bercik’s pilot study of 44 patients with irritable bowel syndrome and mild to moderate anxiety or depression, half of the patients received a daily probiotic — a beneficial gut bacterium called Bifidobacterium longum — and the other half were given a placebo. The participants were followed for 10 weeks.
“What we found was that the patients that were treated with this probiotic bacterium improved their gut symptoms but, also surprisingly, decreased their depression scores,” Bercik said. “That means their mood improved. And this was associated also with changes in the brain imaging.”
Depression, anxiety improve
At the beginning of the study, the patients’ levels of depression and anxiety were scored. The patients also underwent high-tech brain imaging to see which structures were activated in response to happy and sad images.
At six weeks, 64 percent of patients taking the probiotic had a decrease in their depression scores compared to 32 percent of the placebo patients.
A second round of imaging showed changes in multiple brain areas involved with mood control in the patients who felt better.
While the participants’ gut symptoms improved, Bercik said it was not to a statistically significant degree, suggesting the probiotic may have improved their anxiety and depression independent of symptom relief.
Results of the study were published in the journal Gastroenterology.
More study needed
Bercik says larger studies are needed to confirm the findings.
“However, I think that it shows a great promise,” he said. “I mean new treatments, not only for patients with functional bowel disorders like irritable bowel syndrome, but it may also offer some new treatments for patients with primary psychiatric disorders like depression or anxiety.”
B. longum was developed by Nestle, a Swiss food and drink company, which funded the study. It is not yet commercially available.
However, Bercik says it’s possible other probiotics found in the gut have the potential to improve mood. And he doesn’t stop there. Bercik says he envisions a form of personalized medicine using genome sequencing techniques to create microbiome profiles of individuals, which can be tweaked with oral probiotics for maximum health.
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China Expands Globally Amid Concerns Over its Mercantilist Policies
Just as President Xi Jinping was launching the One Belt, One Road initiative to expand China’s geo-economic footprint, a former high-level U.S. trade official raised concerns that Beijing has been reversing its policies of reform and keeping the market to itself.
Charlene Barshefsky, who worked as the U.S. Trade Representative under President Bill Clinton and witnessed China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, told a group of corporate executives gathered in Tokyo that “China has stopped the process of economic reform and opening, and instead has put in place a spate of measures that are zero-sum, highly mercantilist, and discriminate against U.S. and foreign companies.”
Sinicizing the Chinese economy
Barshefsky accuses Beijing of “Sinicizing” the Chinese economy, all the while taking advantage of other countries’ open markets.
The former U.S. trade representative’s remarks echo sentiments revealed in the latest Business Climate Survey put out by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, which represents nearly 1,000 companies doing business there.
Respondents to the survey said it seems “China has gone backwards … more regulations, taxes and local company market share protectionism.” Others noted that “despite a long track record of employing and training locals and investing in the local community, when the economy gets tough, the foreign firm is always seen as somehow not friendly to China.”
Golden days over?
William Zarit, head of AmCham China, tells VOA that “25 percent of our companies are either reducing investment or not increasing investment — that’s one out of four companies. Some companies are looking elsewhere in Asia, and some companies are looking back to North America.”
In another sign of how China is losing its luster in the eyes of foreign investors, the latest Business Climate Survey shows the percentage of companies that consider China a high priority investment destination has dropped below 60 percent. Zarit points out that nearly 60 percent “would seem to be good except that three or four years earlier, it was over 80 percent.”
Watch: William Zarit, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China
Dangers despite continued presence
“Every company has to be in China, to a certain extent,” says Georgetown University’s Ted Moran, professor of business and economics.
While a majority of companies may choose to maintain a presence, their decisions to expand less rapidly “are also a danger,” Moran says.
“They may be there, but they’re not going to have as strong value-added, they’re not going to expand as rapidly, they’re not going to introduce their best technology,” which in turn will confine China to a work bench economy, instead of one where companies feel comfortable bringing in operations with higher technology components.
Watch: Ted Moran, Georgetown professor of business and economics
‘A lot of things we have to consider’
Barshefsky, the former trade official, calls on President Donald Trump to either renegotiate the trade relationship with China or to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership led by the United States.
A Chinese trade official, speaking at the same forum, defended Beijing’s policies, saying the reform, although having slowed down, is still going on, and “there are a lot of things we have to consider.” The official, Long Yongtu, who now presides over the Boao Forum for Asia, also warned foreign companies to buckle up for stiff competition coming from Chinese domestic companies.
Resurgence of the state in the Chinese economy
Ever since China started accumulating more and more capital and demonstrating less and less hesitancy to use that capital to advance its interests abroad, many have voiced the concern that as Beijing’s investment spreads, so will its politics. Lately, concern over expansion of the state sector in the Chinese economy as well as the government-guided overseas investment strategy and potential consequences have grown louder.
In a report issued earlier this year by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow, pointed to official figures released by the People’s Bank of China that corporate loans issued to government-backed firms rose from 35 percent in 2013 to 60 percent in 2014, the latest year official figures were available.
While one negative of pumping money into state-owned enterprises is that less capital and less market share would be available to smaller, private firms, other concerns have to do with both the financial viability of this approach and how it could impact not only China but the United States and other countries.
In a sign of both the ballooning footprint of Chinese state-owned companies in the world economy as well as the uncertainties of their fates, three Chinese state-owned companies made Fortune Magazine’s Global 500 list in 2016, but two of the three, China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinopec (a producer of chemical products) saw significant reductions in revenue in 2016 (more than 30 percent from the previous year), and a loss of profit of 56.7 percent and 30.6 percent, respectively.
Rory MacFarquhar, a former White House economics and finance official, warns that if the Chinese government continues to prop up state firms that he says are “more indebted, less profitable and less productive than private firms,” and use them to channel China’s plans and objectives abroad, it could have serious spillovers for other countries, including the United States, because the presence of these companies could potentially “distort the competitive playing field, and their outward investment may raise national security concerns.”
One Belt, One Road
President Xi promised that China would add billions of dollars’ worth of investment to the One Belt, One Road initiative. Asked if it is true that American companies are giving the initiative the “cold shoulder,” as some media reports have suggested, Zarit, the president of AmCham China, replied: “A number of AmCham China members are closely following OBOR developments to gauge progress and substantive opportunities for their respective companies, although some members still view the project with a bit of skepticism.
“Despite OBOR still being a fledgling initiative, the Chinese have rolled out this Xi Jinping presidential priority through an oversized summit with undersized substance. Having said that, American companies are interested in OBOR if it makes business sense.”
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China Expands Globally Amid Concerns Over its Mercantilist Policies
China recently rolled out a global economic initiative known as One Belt, One Road, named after the ancient Silk Road. Chinese President Xi Jinping says the initiative is aimed at promoting international cooperation, but former U.S. officials and some business executives are concerned that China is not keeping its doors as open as it claims. Natalie Liu has more from Washington.
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New Generation of Companies Looks to Create New Kind of Plant-based Food
In a San Francisco kitchen, chefs are re-creating everyday foods, such as eggs, mayonnaise, salad dressings and cookies from unconventional sources.
“Playing with ingredients that are totally different in the food system is a lot like walking on the moon. We’re doing things no one has ever done before so it’s challenging,” said chef Chris Jones, who heads product development at the Hampton Creek technology company.
While vegetarian foods have been around as long as there have been vegetarians, a new generation of companies, mostly from California, is using new technology to look for alternative protein sources that do not come from an animal.
Hampton Creek
Hampton Creek uses robotics to identify plants from around the world that can help re-create traditional foods substituting animal products with plant material.
“We look into the different molecular characteristics and ultimately we’re able to identify relationships between what we see on a molecular level and whether it causes a cake to rise or what makes a mayo taste good or whether it binds a cookie together or makes a nice creamy butter,” said Hampton Creek founder Josh Tetrick.
“It’s been really recent advances, both in screening methodologies as well as data science, that actually makes it possible,” said Jim Flatt, Hampton Creek’s chief of research and development.
Beyond burger
In the lab of another company, Beyond Meat, scientists re-created a hamburger patty out of proteins from yellow peas, soy and beets for the look of blood. The scientists are breaking down the building blocks of meat and going into the plant kingdom to look for those same elements. They’re then rebuilding them into a new kind of food that uses plant-based protein to create a patty that looks just like a beef patty
“What we’re doing is we’re taking plant matter. We’re running it through heating, cooling and pressure and that’s basically stitching together the proteins so they take on the fibrous texture of animal muscle,” said Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown
These companies say plants hold the key to solving global food problems.
“Whether it’s Asia, Africa, India, you’re seeing a very strong trend toward increasing animal protein consumption. I don’t think as a globe we can afford that,” Brown said.
“The planet actually cannot work with the way we are consuming meat because we don’t have enough arable land to create enough cereals for all the animals that we need if we are to feed the world through meat,” said Jeremy Coller of Coller Capital, an investor of alternative protein foods.
“Food security is an increasingly big issue, particularly because of climate change and some other issues. I think if you expand the number of tools we can use to feed people really well, you help to mitigate against these risks,” said Tetrick, who envisions bringing healthier, new plant-based foods, that are culturally relevant to local cuisines, to regions in the world such as Africa, where hunger is no stranger.
For now, Beyond Meat’s patties are sold in Hong Kong and the U.S. Hampton Creek’s mayonnaise, salad dressings and cookies can be found in Mexico, Hong Kong and U.S. grocery stories. Both companies are trying to improve and expand their range of products.
“How do we figure out a way to make food healthier, that’s more sustainable, to actually taste good that’s actually affordable for everyone,” explained Tetrick of his mission.
Because of this greater global goal, those who work in this industry say the subject of alternative sources of protein is not a fad, but a trend that is here to stay.
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On Memorial Day, Military Monuments Have Special Meaning
Cities across the United States have erected memorials to the hometown heroes who fought and died in America’s wars, from the American Revolution of 1776 to the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Washington, DC, is no exception. The capital city area is home to some of the best-known military monuments, as Faith Lapidus reports on this Memorial Day.
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Using the Internet to Monitor the Elderly at Home
According to the National Institutes of Health, 17 percent of people around the world will be 65 or older by 2050. Currently it is just more than 8 percent. That expected flood of elderly people is prompting authorities to think about new ways to care for them, and no surprise, the internet is involved. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Virtual Reality Lets Us Travel in Space and Time
An increasing number of museums and exhibition halls around the world use virtual reality technology to transport visitors to different spaces and different time. London’s Somerset House recently opened a virtually recreated exhibition staged 178 years ago, showing some of the earliest photographs, transporting users to the birth of the information age. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Treasury Chief Says US Reviewing Iran’s Aircraft Licenses
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday that his department is reviewing licenses for Boeing Co and Airbus to sell aircraft to Iran, telling lawmakers he will increase sanctions pressure on Iran, Syria and North Korea.
“We will use everything within our power to put additional sanctions on Iran, Syria and North Korea to protect American lives,” Mnuchin said in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee. “I can assure you that’s a big focus of mine and I discuss it with the president.”
He did not elaborate on the review of the aircraft licenses, which are tied to Iran’s compliance with a 2015 agreement with world powers to freeze its nuclear weapons development.
IranAir has agreed to buy a total of 200 U.S. and European passenger aircraft worth a total of $35 billion — $37 billion at list prices, though such deals typically include big discounts.
They include 80 passenger jets from Boeing, 100 from its European rival Airbus and 20 turboprop planes from Franco-Italian supplier ATR. All of the aircraft need U.S. export licenses.
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Treasury Chief to Congress: Raise Debt Limit Before August
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers on Wednesday that they should vote to increase the government’s borrowing authority — and avert a disastrous economic default — before their August recess.
Within hours, the conservative House Freedom Caucus said it would oppose such a vote unless certain conditions are met.
The timeline is earlier than previous estimates. It had been expected that Congress wouldn’t have to act on the politically painful measure until sometime this fall, but tax revenues are coming in lower than previously estimated.
Mnuchin also urged the House Ways and Means Committee to pass the debt limit legislation as a bill without controversial additions, such as spending cuts sought by conservatives, that could complicate its approval.
“We can all discuss how we cut spending in the future and how we deal with the budget going forward but it is absolutely critical … that we keep the credit of the United States as the most critical issue,” Mnuchin said.
Pelosi favors debt limit increase
Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, have promised to support a debt limit increase provided it’s not weighed down by GOP policy changes. But such a vote is sure to be painful for conservative Republicans who opposed hiking the debt limit, presently set at almost $20 trillion.
In a statement, the Freedom Caucus said it would oppose a “clean raising of the debt ceiling,” and “we demand that any increase of the debt ceiling be paired with policy that addresses Washington’s unsustainable spending by cutting where necessary, capping where able, and working to balance in the near future.”
The Freedom Caucus counts several dozen conservatives who wield considerable clout in the House.
‘Extraordinary measures’
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney told a separate House panel that the reason for the new deadline is that “receipts currently are coming a little bit slower than expected.”
Mnuchin said in a letter to lawmakers in March that that he has started employing bookkeeping measures to avoid breaching the debt limit.
Those maneuvers, set out in law, are deemed “extraordinary measures,” but in reality they have been employed numerous times by Mnuchin’s predecessors to buy time until Congress could pass the legislation needed to raise the borrowing limit.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bookkeeping maneuvers Mnuchin can use will be exhausted by sometime in the fall.
Mnuchin has urged lawmakers to move quickly to remove investor doubt about any potential default. Lawmakers had been expected to wait until September or later to act.
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