Month: June 2017

Chilean Scientists Produce Biodiesel From Microalgae

Biodiesel made from microalgae could power buses and trucks and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent, Chilean scientists said, possibly curbing pollution in contaminated cities like Santiago.

Experts from the department of Chemical Engineering and Bioprocesses at Chile’s Catholic University said they had grown enough algae to fragment it and extract the oil which, after removing moisture and debris, can be converted into biofuel.

“What is new about our process is the intent to produce this fuel from microalgae, which are microorganisms,” researcher Carlos Saez told Reuters.

Most of the world’s biodiesel, which reduces dependence on petroleum, is derived from soybean oil. It can also be made from animal fat, canola or palm oil.

Saez said a main challenge going forward would be to produce a sufficient volume of microalgae. A wide variety of fresh and salt water algaes are found in Chile, a South American nation with a long Pacific coast.

The scientists are trying to improve algae growing technology to ramp up production at a low cost using limited energy, Saez said.

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Thailand, China to Sign $5 Billion Rail Infrastructure Agreement

In a major boost to Thailand’s transportation infrastructure, the military government is set to sign a more than $5 billion agreement with China for a high-speed rail network.

The first stage of the rail, the 252 kilometers from Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima, is a key step in a line that, once complete, will stretch more than 1,260 kilometers to Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province. The next stages will reach the Thai border with Laos. 

Analysts see the rail line as an extension of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, expanding regional trade and investment. The project also highlights China’s growing regional influence.

The agreement, expected to be signed in July, follows almost two years of delays in negotiations, with final details of the contract still to be made public.

The deal has also raised widespread criticism of the government’s use of powerful clauses in an interim charter.

Economic boost for Thailand

Economists say investment in Thailand’s rail infrastructure needs to be a priority.

Pavida Pananond, an associate professor of business studies at Thammasat University, said general improvements to Thailand’s transportation network are welcome.

Several other countries, including Japan and South Korea, have put forward transportation plans and proposals for rail systems in recent years.

“It’s good for Thailand and it’s good for Thai business. I would say a clear ‘yes’ because Thailand is in dire need of better infrastructure, especially with regard to transport,” Pavida said.

Thailand, she said, faces high transportation logistics costs due to a reliance on roads.

Talks surrounding the Sino-Thai rail agreement have been bogged down for over two years due to disputes over land access to China, debate over interest charges on loans from Chinese banks, and the eligibility of Chinese engineers and architects to work on the project.

Professor of economics Somphob Manarangsan said the rail project offers the region significant economic potential and a boost in Chinese foreign direct investment.

He said Thailand is also looking to China to invest in the government-backed Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) that is targeting regional foreign investment.

“Thailand wants them [China] to move their regional supply chain outside of China to the mainland of ASEAN [Association of South East Asian Nations] area, which has Thailand at the hub, connecting to CLMV [Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam],” he told VOA.

The rail network includes a 410-kilometer section through Laos, in which China is contributing 70 percent of the total $5.8 billion cost. Laos sees the rail line as vital to enable it to export goods to the Thai seaport of Laem Chabang, near Bangkok.

Special powers raise concern

But the project has come under increasing criticism in Thailand after the military government, in power since May 2014, insisted on using powers under Section 44 of the interim charter that give the government absolute authority in policy application.

The government claims the use of the special power was to ensure Chinese investment, expertise, technology and equipment.

Former army chief and Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha told local media the use of the charter powers was to clear legal hurdles in the Thai-Sino rail project, “not a special favor to China but to Thailand’s benefit.”

But the use of the laws was challenged by organizations of Thai professional engineers and architects who said Chinese engineers were not registered to work in Thailand.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, in a commentary, said Thailand should press for open bidding on the project to ensure the country ended up with the “best bid with the best value.”

“Instead, opting for the Chinese plan is poised to violate a slew of Thai laws and undermine the government’s own good governance agenda,” Thitinan said.

Besides exemptions to Chinese engineers and architects working on the project, the charter articles also exempt state procurement laws and environmental regulations covering forest reserves, which will be set aside for the line’s construction.

Thammasat University’s Pavida said other concerns include levels of transparency on the agreement.

“People don’t know the details. People haven’t seen much information on the potential benefit, and partly, this is because the feasibility study has been done by the Chinese,” she said.

“So, if you look at that and the Chinese try to sell their technology and then we let them do the feasibility study, so they would say, ‘yes, it is feasible.’ So that’s one of the reasons why people do not have trust in the rush into this,” she said.

Analysts said the government’s push to sign an agreement comes as Thai’s Prayut is due to visit China in September to attend meetings of the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — forum in Xiamen.

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India to Rollout Momentous Tax Reform, But Many Fear Rocky Transition

India is set to rollout a momentous tax reform at midnight Friday that will transform the country of 1.3 billion people into a single market.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) will replace an entanglement of more than a dozen confusing levies with a single tax and bring down barriers between states.

But the transition is bringing upheaval. The new tax has sparked strikes, protests and concerns it could disrupt many businesses unprepared for a leap into the digital economy.

In markets across the country, confusion and chaos prevail among millions of small shopkeepers and traders, who have for decades maintained records in dusty ledgers and issued paper receipts to customers. Some are hurriedly investing in computers as new rules require all but the smallest businesses to submit online taxes every month.

Calculator to computer

Suresh Kumar, who runs a family owned store in a bustling neighborhood market in New Delhi, has never operated a computer and does not have an Internet connection in his shop. His customers mostly pay in cash and a calculator on his counter is the only modern gadget he has used since he opened this shop 47 years ago.

“How will I pay the salary of an accountant? I can barely cover the costs of these three men who help me,” Kumar said, pointing out that stores like his run on wafer-thin profit margins to stay in business.

The archaic accounting systems that were the method of operation of thousands of shops and traders also kept them out of the formal economy.

But as GST draws them into the tax net, government revenues are expected to get a huge boost in a country where tax compliance has been very low.

​Growing pains

The government agrees there will be growing pains due to the scale of the task ahead but points to long-term advantages. Over time, the new tax is expected to add about 2 percent to gross domestic output and vastly improve business efficiencies in the world’s fastest growing economy.

Economists say the GST will be a benefit for manufacturers, because it will free up domestic trade by cutting through a gigantic bureaucracy that involved a myriad of tax inspectors and checkpoints at state borders.

At the moment, trucks transporting goods lose an estimated 60 percent of transit time as they wait at state borders. Paying bribes was a fact of life accepted by businesses.

The tax will also make India’s $2 trillion economy more attractive to investors as it makes the economy more transparent.

More time needed

But in recent weeks many businesses have called for a postponement of the July 1 rollout, saying they did not get enough time to prepare.

K.E. Raghunathan, president of the All India Manufacturers Organization, said businesses need more time to adjust.

“The way it is being implemented, it is bound to create lots of chaotic conditions,” he said.

Underlining concerns of millions of small and medium manufacturers, he said, “they neither have the wherewithal to understand the sudden implementation and if they approach chartered accountants or consultants, it costs lots of money.”

A big concern is that the GST being rolled out by India is far more complex than that introduced by other countries where a single rate prevails. There will be four layers of taxation with rates of 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent.

Manufacturers and traders complain the different levels are creating confusion.

More than 50,000 textile traders went on strike this week. Thousands of other traders shut businesses Friday.

Many big and small retailers worried about the switchover have been offering massive discount sales across the country to get rid of their inventories.

Government pushes ahead

But the government has brushed aside concerns about businesses not being prepared for the switchover. 

“If he is still not ready, then I am afraid he does not want to be ready,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently as he rejected calls for a delay of the rollout.

Businesses say the tax rollout is the second disruption they have faced, coming months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s radical move to scrap 86 percent of the country’s currency, which slowed the economy.

As customers pour into his shop to buy stationery and other items, New Delhi shopkeeper Vimal Jain wonders whether he will handle customers or enter transactions in a computer starting Saturday. 

“Now this is another headache,” he said. “We had barely begun to recover from demonetization and now this sword hangs over our head.”

The tax will be ushered in at a grand midnight ceremony in parliament, but even that has become contentious. Calling it a “publicity stunt,” the main opposition Congress Party and several other parties have said they will boycott the special session.

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In the Age of Smart Devices, How to Protect Yourself from Surveillance, Abuse?

As technology has become part of our daily life, it’s increasingly been used to intimidate victims of domestic violence. In Australia, an organization is helping victims discover smart devices abusers might be using to invade their privacy and control them from afar. As Faiza Elmasry has the story. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.

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Experiencing Hurricane-Force Wind

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has arrived. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there’s a 45 percent chance that this year’s activity will be above normal, with up to four major hurricanes. VOA’s George Putic visited the wind tunnel at the nearby University of Maryland to experience the hurricane-strength wind and check out the latest in the science of predicting the stormy weather.

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US Growth in First Quarter Better Than Expected, Global Outlook Improves

U.S. economic growth in the first quarter of 2017 was better than expected but not by much. The Commerce Department says U.S. GDP, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the country, grew 1.4 percent from January to March, 0.2 percent faster than the previous estimate. But many analysts believe U.S. growth will improve in the second quarter. And growth prospects for the global economy are the best they’ve been in six years. Mil Arcega has more.

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Preterm Births in US Increase for a Second Year 

New government data show the health of pregnant women and babies in the U.S. is getting worse, and a report by the National Center for Health Statistics shows the number of babies born prematurely has been increasing since 2014.

Preterm American births increased in 2016 and 2015 after seven years of steady declines. Prematurity rose by 2 percent in 2016 and by 1.6 percent the year before.

Stacey Stewart, president of the March of Dimes, a nonprofit U.S. group that works to eliminate prematurity and birth defects, called the increase “an alarming indication that the health of pregnant women and babies in our country is heading in the wrong direction.”

Expand health care

Stewart called on Washington to expand access to quality prenatal care and promote proven ways to help reduce the risk of preterm birth. Noting that the U.S. Senate is considering a health care bill that many Americans believe would reduce health benefits for poor families and change coverage for maternity and newborn care, Stewart said now “is not the time to make it harder for women to get the care they need to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.”

In the U.S., about 400,000 babies born each year before the 37th week of pregnancy are considered preterm. No one knows all the causes of prematurity, but researchers have discovered that even late-term “preemies” face developmental challenges that full-term babies do not. Several studies show that health problems related to preterm births persist through adult life, problems such as chronic lung disease, developmental handicaps and vision and hearing losses.

African-American rates

Research also shows that African-American women are 48 percent more likely to bear a child prematurely than all other women. And African-American infants born with birth defects are much more likely to face severe outcomes, compared to other U.S. newborns.

African-American women in general are worse off than low-income white women, Stewart said.

“We want to make sure that all babies have access to opportunities to be delivered at full term,” she told VOA, “that mothers have the opportunity to have healthy pregnancies and deliver their babies full term, and we know we must do a much better job in African-American and Hispanic communities and in other communities of color,” to make sure that solutions are available.

The report from the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that preterm rates rose in 17 of the 50 U.S. states, and that none reported a decline.

The incidence of low birth weight, a risk factor for some serious health problems, also rose for a second straight year in 2016. Again, rates of low birth weight babies were higher for African-Americans than for other racial groups.

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Simple Malaria Intervention in African Schools Leads to Big Improvement in Students’ Performance

New research suggests that the ability of children in Africa to perform well in school could be dramatically improved through basic malaria education and treatment. While less fatal among older children, malaria infections often reduce a child’s ability to concentrate, as Henry Ridgwell reports.

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Ambitious Cambodian Dance Troupe Honors Artistic Traditions in New Ways

Prumsodun Ok, a Cambodian-American born to refugee parents, knew he wanted to be an “apsara” dancer from the age of 4, when he was entranced by a performance captured on one of his family’s home movies.

No matter that the dance dated back to the seventh century, or that traditionally apsaras were beautiful, heaven-born females, destined to entertain gods and kings at the Angkor temples in the ancient Khmer Empire, modern-day Cambodia. Ok focused on the stylized grace of the dancing and thought little about the fact that the dancers were women, because he was a kid and he had a dream.

But he put that on hold for 12 years. 

Growing up in Long Beach, California, home to 20,000 Khmer immigrants, Ok was bullied because he was “different.” He recalls being branded as gay and “kteu” — Thai or Cambodian slang for someone who is born male but acts or looks female — when he was 5. That name calling led him to self-identify as gay in his teens.

“I don’t know when I knew,” Ok said about realizing that he was gay, “but I can say that I only became comfortable in my latter years of high school. This is me, this is who I am, and no one can change that or take that away from me.”

That was about the time when, after years of watching his younger sister practice traditional Khmer dances, that he found the courage to approach her dance master.

A rising star among dance students

“I really love dance. Can you please teach me?” Ok pleaded, and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro agreed. Teenager Ok quickly became a rising star at her Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach, which is affiliated with an arts ensemble in Cambodia.

The school, founded by Shapiro, teaches traditional arts to Cambodian-Americans. Shapiro was one of the first graduates from Phnom Penh’s School of Fine Arts after the fall of the Pol Pot regime and is revered as one of Cambodia’s leading contemporary dance choreographers.

In 2015, Ok, now 30, moved to Cambodia and established Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA, the country’s first gay dance company. Male dancers ages 18 to 24 fill roles traditionally performed by women. The troupe stages Khmer classical dances as well as new works that Ok creates.

“What I’m doing is drawing from our traditions and using these traditions in ways that people could never imagine to create a more inclusive and compassionate and just Cambodia,” he said.

Coming from “a long tradition of people who are in the service of society … of humanity,” Ok said he has learned “that service is not just about being comfortable: those who are comfortable are not always necessarily right.”

Cambodian society’s tolerance

Srun Srorn, 36, the founder of CamASEAN and a human rights activist, told VOA Khmer that while the majority of LGBTQ Cambodians are marginalized and discriminated against, society is more tolerant of their role in the arts.

Ok’s group “is more professional, so I think it will bring the positive [response] from the community,” Srorn said. “So far, this part of the art — performing — is not getting any negative reaction from the public.

Ok says his role as a teacher of dance goes beyond the classroom.

“Getting them to learn how to see, getting them to have the courage to ask questions, getting them to have the bravery to explore things on their own,” he said. “Those are the most essential things that a teacher of any art form, or discipline or medium, needs to inspire in their students.”

Choung Veasna, 19, of Phnom Penh, says Ok gave him confidence: “I’ve learned from my teacher that no matter what people say about you, it doesn’t matter.”

Tes Sokhon, 24, from Pailin province, the oldest dancer in the group, says his teacher is inspiring. 

“He’s more than my idol,” Sokhon said. “He’s the first teacher to train me in classical dance. He provides us with income and makes our lives better.”

​‘Combination of beauty and tradition’

The troupe’s passion for classical Khmer dance has not gone unnoticed.

Craig Dodge, director of sales and marketing at Phare, the Cambodian Circus performance troupe in Siem Reap, said: “When I watched the video on their homepage and heard the young men talk about what performing has meant to them, their identity and their self-esteem, it made me cry.”

Courtesy Prumsodun Ok and NATYARSA 

 

Dodge worked with Ok to make the troupe’s Siem Reap debut in Cambodia’s artistic center a reality, by tapping into the city’s strong sense of community, which he describes as “the perfect place for nurturing and presenting traditional and new Cambodian creative expression.”

Resident Darryl Collins, an art historian, is providing the venue without charge because “the combination of beautiful and traditional 100-year-old Khmer houses with an elegant contemporary form of classical dance seemed an exciting collaboration.”

Other Siem Reap businesses are pitching in with free accommodations, transportation, security and are helping stage the performances July 14 and 15.

Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA is scheduled to perform three dances: PRUM x POP, ranging from Khmer classical dance to pop music; Beloved, which explores a 13th century Khmer king’s love for his land; and Robam Santhyea Vehea, a tale of love and marriage of two men.

Ok hopes an open-minded audience will see the performance as a measure of how LGBTQ people can create art in their communities.

“I want the company to be a model for compassion, for bravery, for beauty,” he said.

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Kenya’s Nomads Work Together to Reduce Conflicts and Poverty

It looked like a hostage swap, only the currency was livestock and the mission was to end decades of deadly clashes.

More than 50 sheep, goats and cows stood in the scorching heat of a desolate no-man’s land in arid northern Kenya, as Maasai and Samburu herders negotiated their handover.

Lipan Kitonga cast a critical eye over his emaciated herd, which 10 gun-toting Samburu had stolen from his home in Isiolo County, 300 kilometres (186 miles) north of Kenya’s capital.

“I was not around at the time,” said Kitonga, a community-based police officer, known as a police reservist, dressed in camouflage fatigues with a G3 rifle in hand. “Otherwise it would have been a different matter,” he said, his voice still tight with anger nine days after the animal theft.

Drought and violence

Nomadic herders in remote northern Kenya, which is awash with illegal arms, frequently raid cattle from each other and fight over scarce pasture and water, especially during droughts.

A wave of violence has hit Isiolo’s neighboring Laikipia region in recent months as armed herders searching for grazing have driven tens of thousands of cattle onto private farms and ranches from denuded communal land.

The livestock exchange was organized by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), a charity set up in 2004 with support from donors and conservationists to reduce conflict and poverty among nomads by helping them better manage their land.

Almost 300,000 people are members of NRT’s 33 conservancies, which are community organizations focused on conservation, owning nearly 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares) of land across Kenya’s north and coast.

Nomads no more

Drought has hit millions this year in northern Kenya, where most people live off their livestock. As Kenya’s population has doubled in 25 years, nomads can no longer freely follow the rains, turning some overgrazed common lands to dust.

“You have got more people, with more livestock, on less and less productive rangeland and it’s a really explosive situation,” said Mike Harrison, chief executive of NRT, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “The only answer to this is that everybody has to invest in improving their land.”

NRT promotes rotational grazing with a sustainable number of livestock, which allows land to rest, and the reseeding of degraded areas. Zones are set aside for wildlife, people and livestock, with limited access during drought for nomadic animals from other communities.

It also helps develop new businesses — tourism, bead-making and livestock markets — so nomads are less dependent on herding.

Tourism is the real money-spinner.

The most successful conservancies earn about $500,000 a year from visitors paying daily entry fees of $50-$80, Harrison said.

These earnings go into a community fund with 40 percent spent on operations, such as rangers’ salaries, and 60 percent on community projects, such as education and health, NRT says.

Shootouts

One of NRT’s main achievements has been to reduce conflict, cattle rustling and poaching by funding more than 500 rangers, trained by Kenya Wildlife Service, to patrol members’ land.

Many are police reservists, like Kitonga, issued rifles by the government to back up the overstretched police.

In Nasuulu, just north of Isiolo town, the Samburu, Turkana, Somali and Borana — who have traditionally fought each other — have come together to form one conservancy, an NRT member.

“They never used to talk to each other before, but they are now working together,” said Omar Godana, Nasuulu’s chairman.

 

Wildlife protected, too

Elephant poaching has stopped on 35,000 hectare (86,487 acre) Nasuulu since 12 NRT-funded scouts were deployed, he said.

NRT’s mobile security teams work with the police and wildlife service and receive aircraft and tracker-dog backup from a nearby wildlife conservancy, Lewa.

With increased security and strict controls on grazing, shootouts between armed herders and rangers are inevitable.

“It’s a killer squad,” said John Leparsanti, a Samburu herder in Laikipia who sees the crackdown on illegal grazing on NRT conservancies as a threat to his traditional way of life. “When there is a biting drought we cannot graze.”

Herding is key to the identity and culture of Kenya’s nomads, whose young men are initiated as warriors in colorful ceremonies where each kills a cow and drinks its blood. Their role as ‘morans’ is to guard the community and its animals.

Livestock provide nomads with a ready income because they can be sold quickly for cash. Pastoralists often do not have bank accounts and have high illiteracy rates because they roam over vast terrains with their cattle from a young age.

“We are not ready to do business like other tribes because we believe in cows,” said Samburu politician Mathew Lempurkel. “What are we going to replace them with?”

Harrison says less than 1 percent of NRT members’ land is set aside exclusively for wildlife.

Livestock is life

In remote, insecure lands, with poor roads and patchy mobile phone networks, there are no obvious alternative ways of life.

“If we went to say: ‘Look, you’ve all got to cut your livestock numbers in half, we would be laughed out the door,” Harrison said. “It’s a long slow process of rethinking what the incentives might be, trying different options.”

The authority of elders who used to control shared grazing land has been eroded by centralized government rule and modern education, experts say.

As climate change has brought increasingly frequent and prolonged drought and less grass, herders are keeping more goats as they can browse on shrubs and young shoots, unlike cattle.

The goats rip out the grass roots, further degrading the rangeland and reinforcing the vicious downwards cycle.

Some northern counties have formalized traditional land management customs in local bylaws, with the aim of giving power back to elders, in contrast to NRT’s approach of supporting decision-making by conservancy boards of directors.

“When you have the elders managing, there is enhanced ownership and the feeling of exclusion is not there,” said George Wamwere-Njoroge, an expert with the International Livestock Research Institute, which supports such initiatives.

ILRI is also encouraging herders to keep fewer, healthier animals, which fetch a better price at local markets, instead of trucking their cattle for 24 hours to the capital, Nairobi, where cartels control sales, he said.

Status cows

One solution, rarely discussed by politicians, would be to reduce the number of livestock owned by wealthy, urban elites, who keep vast herds on northern lands as a status symbol.

Unlike in the past, when droughts would naturally have reduced livestock numbers, the elites ship in hay and water to keep their animals alive.

“A lot of destitute pastoralists have dropped out and moved to the small trading centers and depend on relief and petty trade,” said Wamwere-Njoroge. “But the elite pastoralist animals keep on going.”

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The Next Silicon Valley? Head to France  

France is known worldwide for its wine, food and culture, but under its new president, the French are aiming to be the new global hub for tech startups.

President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to build a version of Silicon Valley in France. His administration has launched pro-business initiatives that are loosening government restrictions and encouraging entrepreneurs to launch their startups in the country.

“The tradition has been in Europe and in France to invest in big, traditional companies and not specifically [in] tech startups. So we will dedicate a €10 billion fund to the investment in tech startups in France,” said Mounir Mahjoubi, France’s Secretary of State for Digital Affairs.

Both public and private investments will factor into Macron’s vision of France as a “country of unicorns” — the term popularly used for tech startups valued at $1 billion or more, said Mahjoubi, who recently was in New York City for “La French Touch” conference, where he discussed France’s strategy for attracting the tech world’s best and brightest.

In the French tech world, all eyes are on the privately financed Station F, which is set to open this summer in Paris. Billed as the world’s biggest startup campus, the 34,000-square-meter space already has major tech companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Ubisoft signed on. The companies will develop their products, as well as host and mentor startup founders in incubator programs. One thousand individual startups are expected to set up shop at Station F.

Seeking global appeal

Silicon Valley has attracted tech talent from all over the world. Now France hopes to do the same for those beyond its borders. Initiatives like the “French Tech Ticket” and more recent “French Tech Visa” are designed to bring startup founders, employees and investors to the country through a combination of mentorships, grants and subsidized work spaces. The French Tech Visa fast-tracks a process for participants to obtain a renewable, four-year residence permit.

Not to be left out are the locals in France’s poorer, outer suburbs, the banlieue. The new administration is aiming for social diversity through inclusion initiatives that foster entrepreneurship, said Mahjoubi.

“We decided to create hubs in the private area[s] of France,” said Mahjoubi. “There might be entrepreneurs over there that believe that it’s not for them, because they couldn’t afford to not having a salary for a year of entrepreneurship … we created the condition so they could receive money from the state, to have a salary during these 12 months [to] push their project to the highest level they can.”

Unemployment at 9.5 percent

The encouragement of entrepreneurship is a novel sentiment in a country where traditional attitudes and strict labor laws have long dominated work culture. With a national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, venturing out on one’s own to start a business can seem too risky.

But with the success of French unicorns like ride-sharing service BlaBlaCar and network provider Sigfox, attitudes appear to be shifting; 68 percent of French people aged 18 to 25 aspire to run their own business one day, according to a 2015 Ernst & Young survey.

“I think the ecosystem, the government, have done a very good job to do some marketing about entrepreneurship and I think it’s very important because when we compare our situation to the U.S., in the U.S. there is a lot of storytelling, everyone is super enthusiast[ic] and it brings a momentum that is super beneficial,” said François Wyss, co-founder of French startup DataBerries.

Funding available

Wyss and his co-founders recently secured $16 million in their first round of funding for his digital marketing startup.

“There is a lot of funding now in France, so it’s great. We have the chance to have world-class engineers, which are far cheaper than in the U.S. So a lot of companies are developing their core product and R&D in France before exporting it overseas,” said Wyss.

“French tech is all about having roots in France and having a vision for the world,” said Mahjoubi. “The French tech startup scene is an international startup scene.”

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Long-awaited ‘Jumanji’ Sequel Puts New Twist on Magical Board Game

In the verdant rainforests of Hawaii, Jack Black, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan simulated dodging rampaging rhinos and hungry hippos as they filmed the long-anticipated sequel to the Robin Williams 1995 adventure film Jumanji.

The first trailer for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, released Thursday, shows how four high school teenagers are transported into a Jumanji video game as adult avatars and find themselves pursued by jungle creatures and motorcycle assailants, jumping into waterfalls and encountering perilous caves.

The first Jumanji told the story of a boy trapped in the magical board game for 26 years. He is released as a grown man (Williams) when two children discover the game.

As they start playing again, stampeding elephants and wild creatures escape from the Jumanji jungle into the real world, causing havoc in a small town.

In the sequel, due out in theaters on Dec. 20, viewers are meant to get a sense of being pulled back into the alternative world of the board game jungle.

“This has the original energy and magic of the classic that everyone saw 20 years ago but, this time, I like to tell people it’s in the game,” Black told Reuters in interviews from the Hawaii set of the film.

“I’d say that our movie is on a grander scale because it’s a whole universe of Jumanji,” he added.

To kick off the sequel, four high school teenagers forced to clean out their school’s basement while in detention come across an old Jumanji video game. They soon wind up being transported into the game, as the adult video game avatars that they pick.

A nerdy teen becomes the muscle-bound Johnson, a blonde cheerleader transforms into the bespectacled Black, an introverted girl becomes a skimpily-clad Gillan, while a buff football player transforms into the diminutive Hart.

Johnson said the sequel pays homage to Williams, who committed suicide in 2014.

“In terms of Robin and our story, it’s done with so much love and respect that I think we’re putting ourselves in a really good position, and I think fans will love it,” he said.

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Facebook Says Internet Drone Lands Successfully on Second Test

Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it had completed a second test of an unmanned aircraft designed to someday beam internet access to remote parts of the planet, and unlike in the first test, the drone did not crash.

Facebook plans to develop a fleet of drones powered by sunlight that will fly for months at a time, communicating with each other through lasers and extending internet connectivity to the ground below.

The company called the first test, in June 2016, a success after it flew above the Arizona desert for 1 hour, 36 minutes, three times longer than planned. It later said the drone had also crashed moments before landing and had suffered a damaged wing.

The second test occurred on May 22, Martin Luis Gomez, Facebook’s director of aeronautical platforms, said in a blog post. The aircraft flew for 1 hour, 46 minutes before landing near Yuma, Arizona, with only “a few minor, easily repairable dings,” he said.

Facebook engineers had added “spoilers” to the aircraft’s wings to increase drag and reduce lift during the landing approach, Gomez said.

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Spider-Man Swings Into Marvel Universe for Latest Film

Fans were crawling up the walls with excitement as the stars of Spider-Man: Homecoming swung into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe series of films, which have dominated the global box office for years.

British actor Tom Holland, who plays the web-slinging hero, showed up at Wednesday’s premiere accompanied by an actor in full Spider-Man costume who was lying on the hood of a car and performing back flips for the crowd.

“I think for me I’ve realized the responsibility of being a role model for young kids everywhere,” Holland told reporters, adding that the character’s motto that “with great power comes great responsibility” resonated with him.

The film is the first time that Spider-Man, one of Disney-owned Marvel’s most popular characters, is the lead in a film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, championed the cause of getting Spider-Man into the Disney-run sphere.

“Now we have the first time Spider-Man in the Marvel Universe where he belongs,” he stated at the premiere, adding, “I sort of am still pinching myself. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe we’re premiering the movie tonight and I can’t wait for people to see it.”

The film sees Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr., another staple of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who has been featured in several of the series’ films, taking a co-starring role alongside Holland.

The film is to be released in European cinemas on July 5 and in U.S. theaters on July 7.

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Climate Change Up Close: Southern, Poor Counties to Suffer

Poor and southern U.S. counties will get hit hardest by global warming, according to a first-of-its-kind detailed projection of potential climate change effects at the local level.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, calculates probable economic harms and benefits for the more than 3,100 counties in the United States under different possible scenarios for worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases. It looks at agriculture, energy costs, labor costs, coastal damage from rising seas, crime and deaths, then estimates the effect on average local income by the end of the century.

Researchers computed the possible effects of 15 types of impacts for each county across 29,000 simulations.

“The south gets hammered and the north can actually benefit,” said study lead author Solomon Hsiang, a University of California economist. “The south gets hammered primarily because it’s super-hot already. It just so happens that the south is also poorer.”

The southern part of the nation’s heartland — such as Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky and southern Illinois — also feels the heat hard, he said. Michigan, Minnesota, the far northeast, the northwest and mountainous areas benefit the most.

Counties hit hardest

The county hit hardest if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated is tiny and impoverished Union County in Florida, where median income would take a 28 percent hit. And among counties with at least 500,000 people, Polk County in central Florida would suffer the most, with damages of more than 17 percent of income.

Seven of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of projected county income losses from climate change are in Florida, along with two in Texas and one in Georgia. Half of these are among the poorest counties in the country. 

Five of the 10 counties that would benefit the most from global warming are in Michigan. The others are in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and the mountainous region of North Carolina. Mineral County in Nevada would see a 13 percent increase in income, while Tacoma, Washington’s Pierce County would benefit by about 2 percent, the most among counties with a population of more than 500,000.

“You’re going to see this transfer of wealth from the southeast to the parts of the country that are less exposed to risk,” said study co-author Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University climate scientist. “On average both in this country and on this planet just poorer people are in hotter areas.”

The whole nation’s gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7 percent for every degree Fahrenheit temperatures go up, the study calculates, but that masks just how uneven the damage could be. On average, the poorest counties would suffer a drop of 13.1 percent of income if carbon pollution continues unabated, while the richest counties would fall 1.1 percent.

Rise in fatalities

Economists and scientists who specialize in climate and disasters praised the study as groundbreaking.

“This is the most comprehensive, the most detailed information to date,” said University of Illinois finance professor Donald Fullerton, who wasn’t part of the study. “Nobody had ever done anything like this.”

The biggest economic damage comes from an increase in deaths. In the early stages of warming, overall deaths fall because the number of deaths from extreme cold falls fast. But as the world warms further, the increase in deaths from heat rises faster and results in more deaths overall by the end of the century.

Fullerton said the one place where he felt the study could overstate costs is in these deaths because it uses the same government-generated dollar value for each life — $7.9 million per person — when most of the people who die in temperature-related deaths are older and some economists prefer valuing deaths differently by age.

The study looks at production of four different crops — soy, wheat, corn and cotton. Much of the Midwest could be hit “with the type of productivity losses we saw during the Dust Bowl,” Hsiang said.

The study also examines two types of crime data: property and violent crime. Previous studies have found a direct and strong correlation between higher temperatures and higher rates of violent crime such as assault, rape and murder, Hsiang said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann called it “a fascinating and ambitious study.” But because many extreme weather factors weren’t or can’t yet be calculated, he said the study “can at best only provide a very lower limit on the extent of damages likely to result from projected climate changes.”

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Climate Change Up Close: Southern, Poor US Counties to Suffer

Poor and southern U.S. counties will get hit hardest by global warming, according to a first-of-its-kind detailed projection of potential climate change effects at the local level.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, calculates probable economic harms and benefits for the more than 3,100 counties in the United States under different possible scenarios for worldwide emissions of heat-trapping gases. It looks at agriculture, energy costs, labor costs, coastal damage from rising seas, crime and deaths, then estimates the effect on average local income by the end of the century.

Researchers computed the possible effects of 15 types of impacts for each county across 29,000 simulations.

“The south gets hammered and the north can actually benefit,” said study lead author Solomon Hsiang, a University of California economist. “The south gets hammered primarily because it’s super-hot already. It just so happens that the south is also poorer.”

The southern part of the nation’s heartland — such as Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky and southern Illinois — also feels the heat hard, he said. Michigan, Minnesota, the far northeast, the northwest and mountainous areas benefit the most.

Counties hit hardest

The county hit hardest if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated is tiny and impoverished Union County in Florida, where median income would take a 28 percent hit. And among counties with at least 500,000 people, Polk County in central Florida would suffer the most, with damages of more than 17 percent of income.

Seven of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of projected county income losses from climate change are in Florida, along with two in Texas and one in Georgia. Half of these are among the poorest counties in the country. 

Five of the 10 counties that would benefit the most from global warming are in Michigan. The others are in Alaska, Colorado, Nevada and the mountainous region of North Carolina. Mineral County in Nevada would see a 13 percent increase in income, while Tacoma, Washington’s Pierce County would benefit by about 2 percent, the most among counties with a population of more than 500,000.

“You’re going to see this transfer of wealth from the southeast to the parts of the country that are less exposed to risk,” said study co-author Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University climate scientist. “On average both in this country and on this planet just poorer people are in hotter areas.”

The whole nation’s gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7 percent for every degree Fahrenheit temperatures go up, the study calculates, but that masks just how uneven the damage could be. On average, the poorest counties would suffer a drop of 13.1 percent of income if carbon pollution continues unabated, while the richest counties would fall 1.1 percent.

Rise in fatalities

Economists and scientists who specialize in climate and disasters praised the study as groundbreaking.

“This is the most comprehensive, the most detailed information to date,” said University of Illinois finance professor Donald Fullerton, who wasn’t part of the study. “Nobody had ever done anything like this.”

The biggest economic damage comes from an increase in deaths. In the early stages of warming, overall deaths fall because the number of deaths from extreme cold falls fast. But as the world warms further, the increase in deaths from heat rises faster and results in more deaths overall by the end of the century.

Fullerton said the one place where he felt the study could overstate costs is in these deaths because it uses the same government-generated dollar value for each life — $7.9 million per person — when most of the people who die in temperature-related deaths are older and some economists prefer valuing deaths differently by age.

The study looks at production of four different crops — soy, wheat, corn and cotton. Much of the Midwest could be hit “with the type of productivity losses we saw during the Dust Bowl,” Hsiang said.

The study also examines two types of crime data: property and violent crime. Previous studies have found a direct and strong correlation between higher temperatures and higher rates of violent crime such as assault, rape and murder, Hsiang said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann called it “a fascinating and ambitious study.” But because many extreme weather factors weren’t or can’t yet be calculated, he said the study “can at best only provide a very lower limit on the extent of damages likely to result from projected climate changes.”

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Studies Fuel Dispute Over Whether Banned Pesticides Harm Bees

Two major studies into how bees are affected by a group of pesticides banned in Europe gave mixed results on Thursday, fueling a row over whether the chemicals, called neonicotinoids, are safe.

The studies, one conducted across three European countries and another in Canada, found some negative effects after exposure to neonicotinoids in wild and honeybee populations, but also some positives, depending on the environmental context.

Scientists who conducted the European research – in Britain, Hungary and Germany – told reporters their overall findings suggested neonicotinoids are harmful to honeybee and wild bee populations and are “a cause for concern.”

But scientists representing companies who funded the work – Germany’s Bayer AG and Switerland’s Syngenta AG – said the results showed “no consistent effect.”

Several independent experts said the findings were mixed or inconclusive.

The European Union has since 2014 had a moratorium on use of neonicotinoids – made and sold by various companies including Bayer and Syngenta – after lab research pointed to potential risks for bees, crucial for pollinating crops.

But crop chemical companies say real-world evidence is not there to blame a global plunge in bee numbers in recent years on neonicotinoid pesticides alone. They argue it is a complex phenomenon due to multiple factors.

A spokesman for the EU’s food safety watchdog EFSA, said the agency is in the process of assessing all studies and data for a full re-evaluation of neonicotinoids, expected in November.

EFSA’s scientific assessment will be crucial to a European Commission decision in consultation with EU states on whether the moratorium on neonicotinoid use should remain in place.

The two studies published on Thursday, in the peer-reviewed journal Science, are important because they were field studies that sought to examine the real-world exposure of bees to pesticides in nature.

Researchers who led the Canadian study concluded that worker bees exposed to neonicotinoids – which they said often came from contaminated pollen from nearby plants, not from treated crops – had lower life expectancies and their colonies were more likely to suffer from a loss of queen bees.

On the findings of the European study, researchers told a briefing in London that exposure to neonicotinoid crops harmed honeybee colonies in two of the three countries and reduced the reproductive success of wild bees across all three.

They noted, however, that results from Germany showed a positive effect on bees exposed to neonicotinoids, although they said this was temporary and the reasons behind it were unclear.

“This represents the complexity of the real world,” said Richard Pywell, a professor at Britain’s Center of Ecology and Hydrology who co-led the work. “In certain circumstances, you may have a positive effect … and in other circumstances you may have a negative effect”

Overall, however, he said: “We are showing significant negative effects on [bees’] critical life-cycle stages, which is a cause for concern.”

Several specialists with no direct involvement in the study who were asked to assess its findings said they were mixed.

Rob Smith, a professor at Britain’s University of Huddersfield, said the results were “important in showing that there are detectable effects of neonicotinoid treatments on honeybees in the real world”, but added: “These effects are not consistent.”

Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia said the findings “illustrate the complexity of environmental science.”

“If there was a really big effect of neonicotinoids on bees, in whatever circumstances they were used, it would have shown up in both of these studies,” she said.

Norman Carreck, an insect expert at Britain’s Sussex University, said: “Whilst adding to our knowledge, the study throws up more questions than it answers.”

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Indigenous Knowledge Crucial to Tackling Climate Change, Experts Say

In the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, indigenous farmers gather at the top of mountains the night after the winter solstice — not to enjoy the view, but to forecast the timing and quantity of rains.

If the Pleiades star cluster appears large and bright, then rains will be abundant. If it looks small and dim, then the rains will be poor — in which case, the farmers delay the planting of their crops.

“What could at first glance seem like a far-fetched ancestral tradition actually showcases indigenous peoples’ ability to make useful and constructive observations on climate forecasting,” said Douglas Nakashima, head of the small islands and indigenous knowledge section at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“While scientists know that El Niño reduces rainfall in the Andes, they were previously not aware of the link between El Niño and cloud cover,” he said.

Traditional skills and knowledge should be seen as a complement, not a barrier, to scientific knowledge and climate adaptation efforts, experts said at a conference on how communities adapt to climate change, held this week in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

Pool traditional knowledge

National policies to adapt to climate change not only often disregard traditional knowledge, they sometimes even undermine the resilience of indigenous populations, Nakashima said.

“Initiatives around the world to build large dams or boost green fuels to reduce emissions have displaced many communities,” he said.

Krystyna Swiderska, a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said that governments also largely ignore indigenous innovation in farming.

“In Peru, for example, farmers already grow hundreds of potato varieties — as opposed to relying on just a few varieties as many countries do — so they have a better chance of surviving the negative impacts of climate change,” she said.

“But there is still a strong belief among the international community that science is the best solution for climate adaptation,” she said.

Herders — who have been adapting to erratic weather for decades — have much to teach about coping with climate change, said Elizabeth Carabine, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank.

Cities and slums

Conference participants stressed that cities, and slums in particular, could also be a significant source of inspiration for climate adaptation.

One participant highlighted that slum dwellers were highly innovative and entrepreneurial, for example by converting parts of their home into a school or a soup kitchen.

Using cities’ knowledge is all the more important as people living in cities are just as affected as others — and perhaps more so — by climate change, said Julie Arrighi from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center.

“Cities are big consumers of energy and particularly exposed to threats like flooding as a result of rising sea levels,” she said. “That challenge is only going to get bigger as cities grow.”

Julie Greenwalt, an urban environment specialist at the Cities Alliance, guarded against governments ignoring the needs of cities to adapt to a changing climate, and instead focusing their resources on rural areas.

“Our definitions of urban and rural are largely driven by developed countries, but even in some cities — like in India — people keep cattle,” she said.

This, said Rebecca Carter from the World Resources Institute, means that “climate adaptation should become part of how a city works, not just an add-on.”

 

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Malawi, UNICEF Launch Africa’s First Humanitarian Drone Testing Corridor

Malawi and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) launched an air corridor Thursday to test the effectiveness of drones in humanitarian emergencies and other development uses, the first project of its kind in Africa.

Landlocked Malawi, which suffers periodic crop failures and is prone to floods, is frequently in need of food and other aid, and limited road access in many of its rural areas makes it difficult to get help to needy communities.

“Drone technology has many potential applications. … One that we have already tested in Malawi is to transport infant blood samples to laboratories for HIV testing,” UNICEF Malawi Resident Representative Johannes Wedenig said at the launch in Kasungu, 100 km (60 miles) from the capital Lilongwe.

The test corridor is centered at the Kasungu Aerodrome, with a 40-kilometer radius and focusing on three areas: generating aerial images of crisis situations, using drones to extend Wi-Fi or mobile phone signals across difficult terrain in emergencies, and delivering low-weight emergency supplies.

“The launch of the testing corridor is particularly important to support transportation and data collection where land transport infrastructure is either not feasible or difficult during emergencies,” Malawian Minister of Transport Jappie Mhango told Reuters.

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What Amazon Wants From Whole Foods: Data on Shopping Habits

Why is Amazon spending nearly $14 billion for Whole Foods ? One reason: People who buy yoga mats and fitness trackers on Amazon might also like grapes, nuts and other healthy items at the organic grocery chain.

In short, the deal stands to net Amazon a wealth of data-driven insights into how shoppers behave offline — insights that are potentially very lucrative.

To be sure, there are plenty of other benefits to the combination. Amazon will derive steady revenue from more than 460 Whole Foods stores; it can also introduce robots and other automation technologies to cut costs and improve the bottom line. But ultimately, Amazon wants to sell even more goods and services to both online and offline shoppers — including stuff they might not even realize they need.

Amazon has been quiet on its specific plans so far, but analysts are enthusiastic about the possibilities. “This will be a fun time for Amazon,” said Ryne Misso of the Market Track retail research firm in Chicago. “They are introducing a whole new set of shopper profiles that span grocery stores and durables.”

The tracking

Amazon is a pro at using data on past shopping and browsing to prod you to buy more. The home page, for instance, offers quick access to recently viewed items and suggests products “inspired by your shopping trends.” Amazon sends emails about price cuts on items you’ve searched for but haven’t bought — yet.

Brian Handly, CEO of the mobile analytics firm Reveal Mobile in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that while Amazon doesn’t necessarily have better artificial-intelligence capabilities than its rivals, it has scale in the number of shoppers and variety of businesses it has.

Whole Foods can help by giving Amazon a better understanding of what people do at physical retail stores, where 90 percent of worldwide retail spending still happens, according to eMarketer.

Amazon could learn whether a particular customer tends to come once a month to stock up, or make smaller and shorter visits more frequently. Wi-Fi hotspots in stores might collect unique signals emanating from smartphones to figure out which aisles customers spend the most time in. Same with sensors on product shelves, something Amazon is currently testing at a convenience store in Seattle.

“They will break that data down to build stories about their consumers,” Misso said.

All this might feel creepy, but it’s something Amazon already does and does well online. Larry Ponemon, who runs the Ponemon Institute privacy think tank, said he personally would find tracking of his self-described unhealthy eating habits “very creepy.” But he doesn’t expect any consumer backlash because Amazon and Whole Foods have both earned a high level of trust and loyalty.

Reconfiguring the store

To make stores more profitable, Amazon could push customers to order lower-profit bulk items such as detergent and toilet paper over the internet. That would free up store space for higher-profit items, such as perishables and ready-to-heat prepared meals.

Amazon’s challenge will be to “separate the profitable businesses that can be better done online and the profitable businesses that can be better done at retail,” said Larry Light, CEO of the brand consulting firm Arcature in Delray Beach, Florida.

Amazon might find that some items sell better at some locations than others. It can stock just the most popular items at each location; other items are just a click away for home delivery. It’s an approach Amazon is already taking at its eight physical bookstores.

Handly said that even if Amazon can’t get rid of every lower-profit item on shelves, it can use data to figure out ways to drive more customers to those aisles.

Beyond groceries

Amazon will be able to use grocery data to drive other purchases as well. Say you buy a lot of ingredients typically found in Asian recipes. Amazon might then suggest a Thai or Japanese cookbook. It might also recommend a new rice cooker.

It works the other way, too. If you just watched a Mexican food show on Amazon video, Amazon might point you to deals on avocados and perhaps offer subscriptions for regular deliveries of tortillas and canned beans. Or it might automate a grocery shopping list based on a chosen recipe on your Kindle e-reader.

Just bought some camping equipment? Amazon might offer granola bars and other ready-to-eat meals for your hikes. Likewise, someone who just bought a fitness tracker might be in the market for more produce.

Implications for the industry

Walmart remains the leading retailer overall and has its own huge stake in groceries; its retail revenue is more than three times that of Amazon, even with Whole Foods included. Yet it’s on the defensive. To beef up its online operations, Walmart has gone on a spending spree for e-commerce companies such as Jet, Bonobos, ModCloth and Moosejaw. Analysts say these companies should help Walmart get into the data game as well.

“The real challenge of Walmart is they recognize that technology can be bought and technical expertise can be bought,” Light said.

But playing catch-up is “harder than just building it into your company as a core part of the company’s DNA,” said Brent Franson, CEO of Euclid Analytics, a San Francisco company looking to bring data analysis to physical stores. “Amazon has the benefit from Day One of architecting a business that is data-driven, out of the gate.”

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Mali Study Finds Simple Malaria Intervention Boosts Students’ Performance

New research suggests that the ability of children in Africa to perform well in school could be dramatically improved through the provision of basic malaria education and treatment.

Most malaria prevention programs focus on children under 5. Infections are less fatal among older children, but many harbor malaria parasites without displaying any symptoms of the disease. If such a condition is left untreated, a young victim’s health often deteriorates, said lead researcher Dr. Sian Clarke of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“The malaria parasites destroy the red blood cells, and as a consequence of that you get chronic anemia in children,” Clarke said. “Generally, children who are anemic feel weak, they’re tired, they’re generally lethargic, they are going to be less active and less fully engaged.”

The research involved nearly 2,000 schoolchildren in Mali, led by Save the Children and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, alongside the National Institute for Public Health Research in Mali.

About half the children were given a malaria control package delivered by their teachers, which included prevention education, insecticide-treated nets and anti-malarial treatment. Malaria infection rates fell from 80 percent to just 5 percent, and cases of anemia were almost halved compared with the control group.

“And the children’s capacity to pay attention for longer was increased,” Clarke said.

Save the Children has helped expand the program to 400 schools in Mali. It was the second African country to host the trial.

“The first study was done in Kenya, an area of year-round [malaria] transmission,” Clarke said. “This study was done in Mali, an area with malaria concentrated in just a few months.  And the fact that we saw similar results in both settings would suggest that where malaria is a significant problem and the levels of infection are high, then you might expect to see a similar impact in other settings.”

Aid workers say preventing anemia in Malian schoolgirls is particularly important because of high teenage marriage and pregnancy rates. Anemia during pregnancy can lead to a low birth weight and a higher risk of child mortality.

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From Bars to Baseball Parks: Lady Gaga Readies Live Shows

Whether it’s at a bar or baseball park, Lady Gaga says she’s going to give every performance her all.

The singer will launch a summer tour with stops at arenas and stadiums across the globe, and she’s also returning to the Dive Bar Tour with Bud Light to perform a show in Las Vegas on July 13.

She called the first bar crawl, completed last fall around the release of “Joanne,” a deep experience.

“For what it’s worth, when I got up there, I totally forgot where we were and I just went into performance mode,” she said in a phone interview. “For me, no matter how small a venue is, you don’t perform it differently than you perform at a big venue, that’s not fair to the fans.”

Last year’s tour included a stop at The Bitter End, the New York City bar where Gaga performed before her pop star days. The new Dive Bar Tour will also include shows in Los Angeles (July 26) and New Orleans (August 30), to be headlined by other artists, who will be announced soon.

Gaga, 31, will launch a world tour on Aug. 1 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It includes stops at baseball parks like Citi Field in New York, AT&T Park in San Francisco, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston.

Now that she’s wrapped filming “A Star is Born” with Bradley Cooper — an experience she called “life changing,” “wonderful” and “inspiring” — she’s focusing on the massive tour.

“This one will be a little bit different,” she said. “I also like to change things up. “I have some other ideas about how I’d like to perform some of my fans’ classics.”

Part of switching it up comes from the sound of “Joanne,” which includes rock, country and slower songs compared with Gaga’s past electro-flavored dance hits.

“The album is extremely healing and reflective for me. I wrote about things that I’ve never written about before that are extremely deep and personal, and dare I say, things that haunted me, that were poisoning me, that were toxic to me, and I had to get them out. And it was very revealing in that way,” she said.

“The cover of the album is very indicative of that — me putting a hat on that I’ve never worn before and just not sure where I’m going at all — but knowing I got to get out of where I am.”

At the Coachella festival in April, where Gaga headlined, she released “The Cure,” an upbeat song about healing. She said she wrote the song after performing at the Super Bowl halftime show.

She added that she’s writing new music and said she could drop another song unrelated to an album.

“You know, I wouldn’t say that it’s out of the question,” she said.

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