Month: September 2017

Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere, Ending 20-year Journey

Posted on by Cosc

Tears, hugs and celebrations Friday marked the end of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini.

In mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Cassini program manager Earl Maize’s voice was heard loud and clear: “The signal from the spacecraft is gone, and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft.”

WATCH: Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere Ending 20 Year Journey

At a news conference afterward, Maize paid tribute to Cassini.

“This morning, a lone explorer, a machine made by humankind, finished its mission 900 million miles away. The nearest observer wouldn’t even know until 84 minutes later that Cassini was gone. To the very end, the spacecraft did everything we asked,” he said.

Launched in 1997, Cassini’s trip to Saturn took seven years.

“When I look back at the Cassini mission, I see a mission that was running a 13-year marathon of scientific discovery, and this last orbit was just the last lap,” Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker said.

Saturn and its moons

Cassini has been exploring Saturn and some of its moons, making discoveries along the way.

“The discoveries that Cassini has made over the last 13 years in orbit have rewritten the textbooks of Saturn, have discovered worlds that could be habitable and have guaranteed that we’ll return to that ringed world,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Michael Watkins said.

Cassini discovered ocean worlds on the Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus. It also detected strong evidence of hydrothermal vents at the base of Enceladus’ ocean.

These discoveries prompted the decision to destroy Cassini as it ran out of fuel, so there would be no risk of contaminating these moons with bacteria from Earth.

In its last hours, Cassini took final images, including Enceladus setting behind Saturn; Saturn’s rings; Titan’s lakes and seas; and an infrared view of Saturn.

As Cassini plunged into Saturn, its sensors experienced the first taste of the planet’s atmosphere, sending critical information to Earth until it disintegrated.

“It just really tells us about how Saturn formed and the processes going on and really how all the planetary bodies in our solar system have formed,” said Nora Alonge, Cassini project science and system engineer.

Bittersweet moments

The final moments of the spacecraft’s journey were bittersweet for Alonge, who has been working on the Cassini mission for more than a decade.

“I’m feeling so many emotions. I’m very proud and I’m honored to be part of such an amazing mission, such a fruitful scientific mission, an engineering feat for a robust spacecraft that has lasted for so long, and of course I’m sad,” she said. “I feel like I’ve lost a friend. We’ve been talking to Cassini for years. We check on the health and safety. It talks back to us and gives us data. That’ll be missed. It’ll be a big change for many of us.”

“This, this has truly been beyond my wildest dreams,” said Julie Webster, Cassini’s spacecraft operations manager. She was with this mission from the time Cassini was built.

The members of the Cassini mission team said the end of the spacecraft was picture perfect.

“We found the best possible solution to get scientific data that would have been too risky to take at any other time by diving between the planet and the rings. We’re going into a region we could have never explored before. Cassini is becoming now a part of Saturn, and it’s the perfect ending point,” Alonge said.

IN PHOTOS: Cassini’s Amazing Pictures of Saturn, Rings & Moons

Scientists said the end of Cassini also marked the beginning of other planetary explorations and more discoveries as scientists continue to analyze the unprecedented data on Saturn collected by Cassini.
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Space Business Booming at Florida’s Cape Canaveral

Posted on by Cosc

After the last space shuttle mission ended in July 2011, the activity at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, seemed to be waning. NASA’s next launch vehicle was still in the early stages of design, so launch activity was transferred to the Russian space center in Baikonur. But this opened new opportunities for the space center, and today it is booming with private business activity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From Towering Peaks to the Pacific

Posted on by Corts

After an exhilarating time exploring the land and whitewater rapids of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, national parks traveler Mikah Meyer headed north, to experience other scenic, historic and geological wonders within the national park system. He shared his highlights with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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Top 5 Songs for Week Ending Sept. 16

Posted on by Corts

We’re setting sail with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending Sept. 16, 2017.

We have one new song this week and it isn’t just a newcomer … it’s a game changer.

Number 5: Charlie Puth “Attention”

Let’s open in fifth place, where Charlie Puth holds with “Attention.” It’s a mid-tempo track and Charlie says that’s where he’s at now: no more love ballads.

The young singer-songwriter says his debut album “Nine Track Mind,” while filled with love songs, didn’t truly represent him — it was a case of others nudging him in a certain direction. Charlie’s sophomore album “Voice Notes” should arrive by the end of the year.

Number 4: DJ Khaled Featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller “Wild Thoughts”

DJ Khaled slips two slots with “Wild Thoughts” featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. 

Rihanna was at New York Fashion Week, showing her latest Fenty x Puma designs. It all happened September 10, with the models upstaged by a team of motocross bikers racing across the stage… and, for the grand finale, Rihanna herself exited on the back of a motorbike.

Number 3: Cardi B “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)”

Cardi B holds in third place with “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves).” Cardi tells Billboard that she’s confident we’ll love her debut album, arriving in October. All that confidence left her, however, when she met Beyonce. The Bronx rapper says she was speechless and couldn’t breathe.

Number 2: Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee Featuring Justin Bieber “Despacito”

Here’s something to leave you speechless: “Despacito” is no longer the number one single on the Hot 100.

Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber drop to second place, but Luis continues to enjoy the ride. He is currently on a world tour, and the Puerto Rican star says he’s been lucky enough to hit several countries for the first time. The list includes Italy, Turkey, and Egypt … where he says fans mobbed him on the street.

So, if “Despacito” isn’t No. 1, what is?

Number 1: Taylor Swift “Look What You Made Me Do”

Ladies and gentlemen, may we present Taylor Swift, who notches her fifth career Hot 100 win, as “Look What You Made Me Do” skyrockets from 77th to first place.

Taylor’s seventh album, “Reputation,” drops on November 10, and if history is any indication, it’s a shoo-in to become her fifth consecutive chart-topping album.

That’s yet to come … but one thing’s for sure: Ee’ll have a new singles lineup for you next week.
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For Muslim Relief Workers, Faith & Charity Form an Inextricable Bond

Posted on by Coeco

When Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Coast, the Islamic Circle of North America arranged shelter. After it passed, they provided relief. Its volunteers — made up of immigrant and nonimmigrant, Muslim and non-Muslims — has opened minds and hearts wherever they go, to their shared desire to give back to the country.
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For Muslim Relief Workers, Faith and Charity Form Inextricable Bond

Posted on by Coeco

When Hurricane Irma battered the Florida Coast, volunteers of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) arranged shelter.

After it passed, they provided relief — from flood-damaged homes in Naples to uprooted tree trunk clearings in Cooper City, Florida.

Abdulrauf Khan, a Pakistani immigrant and assistant executive director at ICNA Relief USA — a network of disaster relief and social services — has been through all of it. Anytime a natural calamity strikes, he’s present.

Khan describes his motives as two-fold: a desire to assist his neighbors, while empowering his three children.

“I have a son who is 18 years old,” he begins to recount a vivid memory. “He asked me five years ago, ‘Dad, what have you done for this country?’”

It’s a simple question that would provide clarity to Khan’s mission.

“We have to work and we have to make sure our children feel that ownership of the country,” he said. “We have to give back.”

‘A basic part of the religion’

From Hurricanes Harvey to Irma, there are many Texans who embrace the work of Muslim relief volunteers, and select others who are hesitant to grant their trust, based solely on religion. But regardless of their reception, ICNA answers the call to assist, and changes some minds in the process.

“Charity is a big part of Islam, and giving back to the community is a big part of Islam,” says Aqsa Cheema, administrative coordinator for ICNA Relief South Florida.

Cheema, 22, a generation Pakistani-American who assisted with Irma relief, says she has been in the habit of giving back since she was a kid, attending mosque.

“You go along with it, and you get the chance to distribute food and do things that can benefit the community,” she says. “That’s just a basic part of the religion.”

Open hearts, open arms

Earlier in the week, as Irma’s ruthless winds pounded the state indiscriminately, ICNA facilitated shelter for Floridians — any and all Floridians —  in a Boca Raton-based Islamic Center.

Some of their guests said they had never met a Muslim.

“It was their first experience coming to an Islamic Center,” Khan said. “They felt like, ‘this is what we feel like when we go to church, when we go to synagogue’” — welcome, and at home.

Cheema, who is studying to be a social worker, describes her work as enriching, but never complete.

“That lack of true fulfillment is what keeps me going,” she says.

“I accept the fact that I can’t help everyone, but maybe if I help one person, and someone sees me helping that person, they will be like, ‘Hey, you know what? It felt nice to bring a smile on a person’s face. I can help them too.’”
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Somalia Gets First Forensic Lab Dedicated to Rape Investigation

Posted on by Cosc

A new forensic lab launched in central Somalia could transform how the Puntland state government handles cases of rape and gender-based violence, and possibly create a model for the rest of the country to follow.

The Puntland Forensic Center, funded by the Swedish government and supported by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), was opened September 6. It brings advanced DNA testing capabilities to a country still lacking in paved roads and reliable electricity.

The lab opened less than a year after Puntland enacted its Sexual Offenses Act, the first law in Somalia to criminalize sexual offenses and impose harsh penalties, including jail time, fines and public lashing, on the perpetrators.

The lab was designed to provide critical scientific evidence to the police and officials investigating and prosecuting crimes under this new law.

“As we were helping [the Puntland government] develop that piece of legislation, the question came of, ‘How do we enforce that legislation when it is finally approved?'” said Nikolai Botev, UNFPA’s Somalia representative.

“This is when the realization came that there are actually no forensic facilities within Somalia.”

Culture of silence

Rape and sexual assault are pervasive in Somalia, where decades of conflict have created persistent instability and crippled the institutions meant to uphold the law.

Thirty-year-old Fatima was collecting firewood outside her family’s home in a camp for displaced people in Puntland when she was attacked by three strangers. The men gang-raped her so violently that it caused Fatima, who was pregnant, to miscarry.

“After I came home, I started to bleed the next night. After three to four days, I lost my four-month-old baby,” Fatima told VOA in an interview at a women’s health clinic in Garowe.

Like many women in this conservative country, Fatima preferred to stay silent rather than endure the stigma of her community. The blame and shame survivors face deters many women from reporting rapes and assaults, creating a culture of silence.

“I was shy and said to myself, ‘Don’t tell your story to anyone because it is shameful,'” Fatima said. She was dressed in a full black niqab that revealed nothing but her eyes through a small slit.

Although statistics on the numbers of sexual crimes are largely unavailable, Somalia has been ranked as one of the worst countries to be a woman, and stories like Fatima’s are alarmingly common. 

UNFPA says reports of rape and sexual assault have increased this year, after a devastating drought pushed women like Fatima into displacement camps where they become even more vulnerable.

“We’re seeing a significant increase of sexual violence, particularly targeting internally displaced people,” Botev said. “The whole idea of the forensic center was born out of a bigger idea of how to address gender-based violence, sexual violence in the context of Somalia.” 

A broken system

Somalia’s government, even at the state level, has yet to recover from decades of war. Many Somali women do not bother to report crimes because they lack faith that the system can, or wants to, help them get justice.

Officer Kis Shamis Kabdi Bile stands out in her bright orange sneakers, blue hijab and mirrored sunglasses. As the only woman in Garowe’s Criminal Investigation Division, she handles every case of rape and gender-based violence because, she says, most male officers don’t even consider them to be crimes.

“There are some police officers who say rape is not a big deal and consider it a minor thing,” she told VOA in an interview at the police station. “They say that it is nothing new.”

Bile hasn’t been paid in over a year, and conducts her investigations on foot, as the police department doesn’t have a car. She says the police need resources and specialized training in how to handle sexual crimes. 

Many of Bile’s cases are taken over by community elders, who settle disputes through Somalia’s traditional herr system. Often the rapist’s family pays a fine of camels or goats to the survivor’s family, or the survivors are forced to marry their attackers.

It’s frustrating, Bile said. “As you are in the middle of the case, those elders will come and say, ‘We are going to negotiate before you finish the case.'”

During our interview, a young girl, no older than 15, came to plead for Bile’s help. The male police officer assigned to her rape case was insisting she lacked the evidence to go to court, she said, and was encouraging her to resolve her case through the community elders. Bile called the officer in for a strong scolding, and then took over the case.

Changing times

There are promising signs that Puntland’s efforts are already helping more rape survivors to hold their attackers accountable.

Data from Puntland’s attorney general shows that of the 108 rapes reported in Puntland in 2016, only 14, or 12 percent, resulted in convictions. Almost a third were dropped due to lack of evidence.

But since the Sexual Offenses Act was implemented this year, the conviction rate has risen to 27 percent, while the number of cases thrown out for insufficient evidence has dropped to 21 percent.

The trend is encouraging to local politicians, who hope the forensic laboratory will build upon the law’s early success by providing authorities with stronger evidence in a shorter time so they can investigate and prosecute more cases that will stand up in a court of law.

“We used to send DNA from here to Nairobi or from here to South Africa,” said Salah Habib Haaji Hama, Puntland’s Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs. “So those restraints now are easy. We can manage this and get answers within a timely period. Within hours, within minutes, when we used to have days, sometimes months, to receive those.”

An important component to the lab’s success is providing education, both to the survivors and the wider community, about how DNA testing works and why it’s so important. 

“There’s a limited time that they have to report or the results of the lab will not be successful. So we will try to educate them,” said Maryan Ahmed Ali, Puntland’s Minister of Women. “What is the time limit? What do they have to do? Do they have to take a shower? Do they have to change or wash their clothes?”

Understanding the implications of DNA testing could deter potential attackers from committing crimes for fear of being caught. It could also be a game changer for women like Fatima, who said she didn’t report the crime because she didn’t know her attackers’ names.

“Who am I going to accuse? I can only accuse a person I know. I can’t catch someone who I only saw in the jungle. I can barely remember the faces,” she said.

A multitude of challenges, including poor infrastructure, potential security threats and lack of qualified technicians, could impede the lab’s success, said UNFPA’s Botev. Somalia lacks advanced universities and hospitals, so the technicians overseeing the facility all studied abroad. They hope to make the lab a training ground for aspiring Somali scientists.

But the greater hope is that more successful convictions will foster increased confidence in Puntland’s new system, and encourage more women to report. Ultimately, Ali said, this will help reduce the social stigma and break the culture of silence surrounding rape and sexual assault.

“There will not be a stigma. There will not be a discussion about who did this, who did the crime, who did the rape. So it’s a big encouragement,” Ali said.
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Cashless Dreams Feature Motorbike Bankers, E-wallets in Vietnam

Posted on by Coeco

Think of it as motorbike banking.

For Vietnamese who live far from a retail bank branch, VietinBank scrambles scooters so its officers can meet clients where they live, tablet in hand.

There’s also the strategy of DongA Bank, which decks out a van with four ATMs and parks it near factories to reach laborers.

All across Vietnam, people are heeding the government’s call for “financial inclusion,” the global buzzword for bringing banks to the masses, and all the better if it can be digital. Hanoi has staked out some national targets for the year 2020, including an ambitious reduction in the share of transactions based on cash, down to a whopping 10 percent.

That goes hand in hand with other targets, like increasing the number of point-of-sales (POS) devices to 300,000, and getting 70 percent of utility payments done electronically.

But most seem to think those will be a tough goal to meet and that cash, the Vietnamese dong, will stay king.

“Cash will not disappear in Vietnam soon,” State Bank of Vietnam payment director Le Anh Dung conceded, even as he’s promoting a cashless society.

But nevertheless, the communist country is seeing a very visible sea change in the digitization of the economy.

Take utilities. To pay for water or power, Vietnamese used to have only the cash option, which meant either stopping in at the post office, or waiting for a collector to ring the doorbell. But now convenience stores from 7-Eleven to Circle K have mushroomed around cities, and with them comes an explosion of POS devices that accept utility payments.

Downsides to branchless banking

But the push toward more sophisticated finance is not all smooth sailing. Customers worry their bank accounts can be hacked, in the same way that thieves can purloin Vietnamese dong stashed in the mattress. Programs that let workers borrow against their salaries to buy phones or fridges risk breeding a culture of debt and consumerism. And citizens have been slow to adopt branchless banking tools like e-wallets Moca, MoMo, and Payoo, which are Vietnam’s answer to PayPal.

“At the moment, the mobile wallet has really taken off — in terms of institutions,” but not so much in terms of customer use, said Kalidas Ghose, CEO of the consumer finance company FE Credit, speaking last week at the Seamless e-commerce conference in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the conference, Dung praised the innovations of global brands like Alibaba’s use of QR codes, Amazon’s one-click pay option, and Uber’s “invisible” transactions, meaning users don’t have to lift a finger and the app charges them instantly after each ride. What the three have in common is to make it close to effortless for customers to hand over their money.

Uber, though, also provides a counter-example of a foreign business adapting to the indigenous reliance on cash in Vietnam. This is one of the few countries where the San Francisco-based company allows riders to pay with hard currency.

Google, similarly, allows people in a number of places, including Vietnam, to make purchases in Google Play through their phone credits.

These are a workaround to keep customers who don’t have debit cards, and they demonstrate the transition that societies undergo on the road to cashless economies.

For Vietnam the transition has been multifaceted.

Vietnam’s financial evolution

About a decade ago, most businesses paid their employees in physical dong. Then policymakers and bankers campaigned to turn that process into direct deposits.

“We encountered huge challenges because everybody wanted salary in cash and thought it was a hassle to use the card,” DongA Bank deputy CEO Nguyen An said. But the bank collaborated with employers and union leaders to change people’s minds.

Then came online retail. Vietnam’s e-commerce market was worth $400,000 in 2015 but will grow to $7.5 billion in 2025, according to a report from Google and Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund.

Officials are happy to see more people move to the Internet, but they’re not quite as digital as hoped: 89 percent of Vietnam’s online shoppers use cash on delivery, said Dung, who wants more buyers to pay with plastic or wire transfers.

Next in the Southeast Asian country’s financial evolution are plans to digitize public services,so that Vietnamese can pay electronically for hospitals, traffic tolls, schools, and other fees.

After that, locals predict further use of blockchain, the virtual ledger system behind bitcoin. Nicole Nguyen, head of marketing at Infinity Blockchain Labs, expects Vietnam will find applications for agriculture, the internet of things, and financial technology.

“We think that these are the three areas where blockchain can thrive in the next few years,” she said.

For now, mobile banks will continue to roam the cities of Vietnam, searching for customers.

 
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NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Takes ‘Death Dive’ Into Saturn

Posted on by Cosc

After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the spacecraft Cassini is preparing to make a final “death dive” Friday into the planet Saturn.

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect the spacecraft to plunge into the planet at 11:55 GMT.

NASA said their decision to end the life of the spacecraft in this way is because of what they found during the mission, the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.

“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s Assistant Project Science Systems Engineer of the Cassini.

The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.

“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer, said.

Instruments on Cassini have been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.

“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.

Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.

“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.

These discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do with as it runs out of fuel. They do not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.

“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.

Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.

“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” said Cable.

As Cassini plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere, it continues to send critical data to Earth until the very end. The data will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.

In Photos: Cassini & Saturn
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In Times of Disaster, Some Businesses Rise to the Occasion

Posted on by Coeco

Jim McIngvale was standing in the parking lot of Gallery Furniture, greeting drivers and directing cars as they trickled in one sunny afternoon.

It had been a week and a half since his local furniture store chain opened the doors to its showrooms and offered shelter to hundreds of Houstonians during Hurricane Harvey.

Everyone had since relocated to other shelters, but McIngvale and his employees remained in disaster-relief mode as a long line of men, women and children snaked across the parking lot. On this day, drinking water, cleaning supplies, toiletries, clothing and free pizza were being handed out.

“My parents taught me that the essence of living is giving,” McIngvale said. “That’s who I am, that’s what we do.”

The local businessman and philanthropist is a longtime fixture in the Houston community, and he received national media attention along with an outpouring of public support for his latest efforts.

What about the bottom line?

How businesses respond in times of disaster can either enhance or undermine their public image. But does it affect their bottom line?

McIngvale didn’t seem concerned.

“After this hurricane, we took the people in and we said, ‘to hell with profit, let’s take care of the people,’” McIngvale said. “Profit takes care of itself. If you take care of the people, the people will take care of you.”

“When businesses make public stands and they make public commitments to do good things, consumers take notice,” said Utpal Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University.

According to Dholakia, doing well and doing good don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Businesses are a part of the community in which they operate, and as a result, community members can be seen as stakeholders. Businesses thrive when communities support them and vice versa.

“The company tries to do something good for the community and it actually helps them sell more and also make more money,” Dholakia said.

Employee Juan Rea has worked at Gallery Furniture for more than 30 years and has seen firsthand how McIngvale’s responses over the years have resulted in community members giving back to the business.

Hurricane Harvey evacuees slept on the store’s sofas and mattresses, and later were offered discounts of 20 percent to 40 percent off the same furniture, according to Rea.

“He helps the people and he makes money also,” Rea said.

Or taking advantage

Meanwhile, taking advantage of trying times for the sake of a buck can result in a public relations nightmare.

A local Best Buy electronics store decided to price a case of water at an exorbitant $42.96. After a customer snapped a photo and posted it on Twitter, the resulting public outrage prompted a public apology from company officials.

Why different responses?

In emergency scenarios, why do company responses vary so widely? Dholakia said that can be attributed to differences in management thinking and companies’ corporate cultures.

“Some managers have a very detailed plan of action in place about how to react when something like a hurricane or a similar natural disaster happens. So they’re able to execute their plan of action right away,” Dholakia said. “Other companies react in a slower way because they’re not prepared.”

McIngvale clearly was ready.

“Get prepared, get some sleep,” he told his employees before the hurricane. Rea worked seven consecutive days to aid evacuees, and after a day off, he was ready to keep going.

While it’s hard to quantify how a company’s bottom line benefits from good deeds, Dholakia said giving back can only help boost a brand’s standing in the eyes of its customers.

“It creates a positive knowledge association for the brand, which then feeds into the rest of the things that the customers know about the brand,” Dholakia said.

With so many advertisers vying for our dollars online and offline, good deeds become a way to rise above the noise.

“It is harder and harder to gain consumer attention in this fragmented media landscape,” Dholakia said. “Suddenly, you do something positive for the community and everyone is talking about it.”
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In Times of Disaster, Why Businesses React the Way They Do

Posted on by Coeco

During natural disasters, why do some companies open their doors to the community while others take advantage of its members? Tina Trinh explores the reasons why businesses react the way they do and the cost to their public image.
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Las Vegas Welcomes Mexico’s Independence Day, Crowds it Brings

Posted on by Corts

Las Vegas never needs an excuse to party, and as an entertainment oasis a short trip from Mexico, the city will roll out the red, white and green carpet starting Friday to celebrate Mexican Independence Day.

A premier boxing match, a bell-ringing ceremony and more than a dozen performances by Latin megastars, including Ricky Martin and Alejandro Fernandez, were expected to attract tens of thousands of visitors, making the weekend once again one of Sin City’s busiest.

The holiday, often mistaken in the U.S. for Cinco de Mayo, over time has become a star-studded celebration of Hispanic culture.

“It has developed over two decades or more to become a staple. Las Vegas has the ‘ambiente’ — the fun, the excitement — all year long, and then you bring in Alejandro Fernandez, Pepe Aguilar and the ones who have the residencies like Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez,” said Rafael Villanueva, senior director of international business sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Celebration goes beyond Mexico

The celebration is so much wider it includes those superstars who aren’t Mexican, including Martin and Lopez, who both have Puerto Rican roots.

“If you talk to many people in Mexico, they’ll say if we are not going to the Ciudad de Mexico, we are coming to Las Vegas because of all the fun and all the entertainment,” he said.

The Sept. 16 holiday marks Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla’s call to arms that sparked the Mexican uprising against Spanish rulers in 1810. The rebel priest was killed the next year, but his words, known as the “Cry of Dolores” or “Grito de Dolores,” eventually led to independence from Spain in 1821.

What started as private entertainment shows for high rollers from Latin America has evolved into one of the city’s busiest weekends, with companies booking performers a year in advance and airlines adding direct flights from Mexico.

Concerts, boxing match

The concert lineup aims to appeal to a range of musical tastes and generations and includes Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Emmanuel, Enrique Iglesias, Carlos Santana, Mana, Marco Antonio Solis, Jesse and Joy, Gloria Trevi and Alejandra Guzman.

“Probably over the past 15-20 years, we have really embraced the holiday, bringing top-level, A-level acts and fights,” said Sid Greenfeig, vice president of entertainment and booking for MGM Resorts International, which is hosting seven shows and a megaboxing match across its properties. “We look definitely at diversity within the artists, and having arenas and large venues, we also look at acts that can fill these rooms.”

The city’s signature offering is a boxing match. So much so, Floyd Mayweather Jr., before he retired, made Mexican Independence Day his own holiday, fighting multiple times over the years. Promoters have traditionally offered fights featuring Mexican boxers on the El Grito and Cinco de Mayo weekends.

Mexico’s popular Saul “Canelo” Alvarez squares off Saturday against Gennady Golovkin in a long-anticipated middleweight bout at the sold-out T-Mobile Arena.

For the past three years, the tourist bureau’s occupancy rate records show hotels reached above 96 percent capacity during the three-day period associated with the holiday. In 2016, 98.4 percent of the city’s 149,000 hotel and motel rooms were booked, making it the year’s fourth busiest weekend.

On Friday, San Diego resident Esthela Pedrin will see Fernandez’ yearly Mexican Independence Day concert in Las Vegas for the tenth time. With so many options to choose from, she said she’s having a difficult time picking a Saturday concert to attend.

“I love celebrating it in Las Vegas, especially because so many people from all over our country of Mexico gather there,” Pedrin, a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S., said. “(Fernandez) brings out the flag. We all sing.”

The festivities begin Friday night with a celebratory ringing of a bell by Mexican Consul Alejandro Madrigal Becerra at The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. Hidalgo, the rebel priest, rang a bell when he gave his famous speech, and Mexico’s president does it in Mexico City every year.
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China Bitcoin Exchange to End Trading; Currency Value Falls

Posted on by Coeco

One of China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges says it will end trading after news reports that regulators have ordered all Chinese exchanges to close caused the price of the digital currency to plunge.

 

BTC China said on its website it will “stop all trading business” Sept. 30. The exchange said it was acting in the spirit of a central bank ban last week on initial coin offerings but gave no indication it received a direct order to close.

 

The central bank has not responded to questions about the currency’s future in China.

 

There was no immediate word from other Chinese bitcoin exchanges about their plans.

 

Bitcoin’s value tumbled 15 percent Thursday to about $3,300. The famously volatile currency has shed about a third of its value since Sept. 1 but is up from about $600 a year ago.

 

Bitcoin surged in popularity in China last year as its price rose. Trading dwindled after regulators tightened controls and warned the currency might be linked to fraud.

 

Bitcoin is created and exchanged without the involvement of banks or governments. Transactions allow anonymity, which has made bitcoin popular with people who want to conceal their activity. Bitcoin can be converted to cash when deposited into accounts at prices set in online trading.

 

A Chinese business news magazine, Caixin, said at one point up to 90 percent of global trading took place in China.
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Leverage in Cambodia Key Question for US, EU

Posted on by Coeco

Radio Free Asia has joined the ranks of media outlets shuttered under the now almost blanket smothering of an independent press in Cambodia, as U.S. and European diplomatic efforts have failed, so far, to halt the county’s descent into authoritarianism ahead of elections next year.

The closure of the U.S.-funded outlet, due to what it called intimidation, represents another escalation in opposition to Washington by Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Conciliatory overtones made in a news conference Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador William Heidt have failed to halt the government’s campaign to paint Washington as the masterminds of a vast conspiracy involving all major opponents of the government.

“These are extraordinary allegations. The business of diplomacy is normally carried out with careful and respectful language, the kind of language I’m going to use today. Difficult messages are delivered privately first. Friendly nations seek ways to bridge differences,” he told reporters.

Two days later, the government mouthpiece Fresh News posted an article declaring the United States “should take a helicopter to transport its citizens from Cambodia, as it did in April 1975.”

Having spent billions of dollars promoting a stable, nominally democratic Cambodia, the United States and the European Union now have only a beleaguered opposition to show for it. The party’s leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested this month in connection with Washington’s alleged grand plan.

“Basically, after tens of billions of dollars invested in Cambodia, we’re back where we were 25 years ago … the more things changed, the more they actually stayed the same,” said Sophal Ear, author of Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy.

China’s deep pockets are often cited as an unstoppable force whittling away Western leverage in Cambodia, and Beijing has offered public support for Cambodia’s arrest of Sokha.

Returning from China on Wednesday, Hun Sen praised Beijing as “a strong backer who continues to help Cambodia in all circumstance, which no foreign [countries] can break.”

But Cambodia’s economic entanglements are far more complicated than mere aid contributions, and as tension with Western powers intensifies, drastic measures that would be considered unthinkable under normal circumstances could come into play.

Access to markets

Aid to Cambodia is measured in millions of dollars, but export markets are measured in the billions.

The United States is its biggest individual country export market at $3.5 billion, or 22 percent of the total, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), an online resource for economic data. China accounts for just 4.4 percent.

Cambodia also benefits handsomely from preferential access to European markets, with its exports there rising from just above $595 million in 2006 to about $5.25 billion in 2016 — under a scheme that has both labor and human rights clauses. In comparison, Cambodia has an enormous trade deficit with China of around $3 billion, OEC data show.

The EU has withdrawn a country’s access to these markets three times: from Sri Lanka in 2010 for human rights violations carried out during that country’s civil war, from Myanmar in 1997 for forced labor and from Belarus in 2007 for failing to respect the basic rights of trade unions.

“What could trigger such a procedure is a serious and systematic violation of one of the listed fundamental human rights or labor rights conventions,” an EU spokesperson told VOA.

So while it is true that Chinese foreign investment in and aid to Cambodia increased dramatically — in 2015 its foreign direct investment eclipsed all other countries combined at around $1 billion — the assertion that the West’s relationships with Phnom Penh are rendered meaningless as a result is not the full picture.

“The last thing Hun Sen would want would be to provoke the U.S., whether the Congress, White House or U.S. trade representative, to raise Cambodia’s market access to the United States. Unrest by textile workers would destabilize the Hun Sen regime and provide grist for the opposition mill,” said Carl Thayer, an emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

There are more than 700,000 registered garment workers in Cambodia in an industry heavily reliant on Western markets.

Bigger fish to fry

Some are interpreting new U.S. visa restrictions on Cambodians as a punitive measure. But other than that and the usual statements expressing concern and urging transparency, the response in the West has been muted, especially in Washington.

“I can only surmise that the State Department is in disarray with the new Trump administration, a new secretary of state with little experience in diplomacy, vacancies at the senior level, and impending budget cuts,” Thayer said.

“There has been no response by the Trump administration to Hun Sen’s cancellation of military exercises with the U.S. earlier this year. Since Trump’s Afghanistan speech, in which he nixed nation-building and democracy promotion, who at State will take any initiative against Hun Sen?” Thayer asked.

Trump has also abandoned U.S. participation in one of the State Department’s sharpest diplomatic tools in Asia, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Meanwhile, higher priorities are bountiful, even in Asia.

“Whether we like it or not, Cambodia is not one of the so-called hot spots of global politics. The international community’s focus is on countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan or Myanmar,” said Barbara Lochbihler, vice chair for the European Parliament’s Human Rights Committee.
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Mental Disorders, Poor Diets, Tobacco Make World Ill, Study Says

Posted on by Cosc

Heart disease and tobacco ranked with conflict and violence among the world’s biggest killers in 2016, while poor diets and mental disorders caused people the greatest ill health, a large international study has found.

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, published in The Lancet medical journal, found that while life expectancy is increasing, so too are the years people live in poor health. The proportion of life spent being ill is higher in poor countries than in wealthy ones.

“Death is a powerful motivator, both for individuals and for countries, to address diseases that have been killing us at high rates. But we’ve been much less motivated to address issues leading to illnesses,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, which led the study.

He said a “triad of troubles” — obesity, conflict and mental illness — is emerging as a “stubborn and persistent barrier to active and vigorous lifestyles.”

Diet critical

The IHME-led study, involving more than 2,500 researchers in about 130 countries, found that in 2016, poor diet was associated with nearly one in five deaths worldwide. Tobacco smoking killed 7.1 million people.

Diets low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds, fish oils and high in salt were the most common risk factors, contributing to cases of obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and high cholesterol.

The study found that deaths from firearms, conflict and terrorism have increased globally, and that noncommunicable, or chronic, diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes caused 72 percent of all deaths worldwide.

Heart disease was the leading cause of premature death in most regions and killed 9.48 million people globally in 2016.

Mental illness was found to take a heavy toll on individuals and societies, with 1.1 billion people living with psychological or psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems in 2016.

Major depressive disorders ranked in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries worldwide.

The GBD is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global health charity and gives data estimates on 330 diseases, causes of death and injuries in 195 countries and territories.
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CIA Director Pompeo Cancels Harvard Speech Over Manning

Posted on by Corts

CIA Director Mike Pompeo scrapped his appearance Thursday at Harvard University over the school’s decision to make Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of leaking classified information, a visiting fellow.

Pompeo called Manning an “American traitor.” He said he agreed with military and intelligence officials who believe Manning’s leak endangered the lives of CIA personnel.

Pompeo was scheduled to appear at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to discuss allegations of Russian involvement in last year’s presidential election, the nuclear standoff with North Korea and other global security concerns.

Pompeo letter released

Minutes after the event was to begin, Douglas Elmendorf, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, took the stage and told the audience Pompeo was not there and would not speak.

“We will try to reschedule it as soon as we can, but the CIA director, is obviously, in charge of his schedule,” Elmendorf said. “We are not in charge of his schedule and he gets to decide when and where he speaks, of course.”

Several hours later, the CIA released a letter that Pompeo wrote to a Harvard official.

Pompeo, who has a law degree from Harvard, said he didn’t make the decision lightly. He wrote that he would betray the trust of CIA employees if he appeared.

 

Manning was released from a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on May 17 after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, which was commuted by former President Barack Obama in his final days in office. Obama said in January he felt justice had been served.

Manning, a 29-year-old transgender woman, formerly known as Bradley Manning, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in a recent interview that she was prompted to give the 700,000 military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks because of the human toll of the “death, destruction and mayhem” she saw as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Morell resigns position

 

In his letter, Pompeo reiterated his earlier claim that WikiLeaks is a U.S. adversary “akin to a hostile foreign intelligence service.” He stressed that his decision had nothing to do with Manning’s transgender identity.

 

“It has everything to do with her identity as a traitor to the United States of America and my loyalty to the officers of the CIA,” Pompeo said.

 

“Harvard’s actions implicitly tell its students that you too can be a fellow at Harvard and a felon under United States law,” he wrote.

 

Earlier in the day, Mike Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, sent a resignation letter to Elmendorf. Morell told Elmendorf he was resigning immediately over the school’s decision to invite Manning to be a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

Morell said he could not be part of an organization that “honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information.” Pompeo said Morell’s exit was “Harvard’s loss.”

Harvard also has invited former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Harvard says Manning will be among fellows who will visit the campus for a “limited” number of events meant to spark campus discussion.

 
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Director Channels Fury at State of the World into ‘mother!’

Posted on by Corts

Darren Aronofsky does not just want audiences to watch his new film mother! He wants to shake them up and leave them thinking about his genre-defying, surreal apocalyptic thriller.

“It’s very much a scary film. It’s very much a film that we want to shake audiences,” Aronofsky told Reuters.

“This is definitely a film that we want people to be talking about and giggling about and analyzing and thinking about for times to come,” he added.

An allegorical tale

Aronofsky, 48, mined the depths and descent of the human psyche in films such as Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.

With mother!, released in U.S. theaters Friday, Aronofsky channels his fury with the state of the world into an allegorical story that reflects mankind’s selfish relationship with nature, gender, politics and religion.

The film centers on Jennifer Lawrence, a beautiful, naive young woman newly married to an older writer (Javier Bardem) suffering from writer’s block, and the two settle down into the writer’s secluded home.

As Lawrence’s character, an embodiment of Mother Nature, slowly renovates the property, two strangers, played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris, turn up at their doorstep and kick off a series of events that blur the lines of reality and escalate into chaos.

“I was interested in the home invasion genre — the kind of feeling of people coming into your home that won’t leave,” the director said.

“Turning that into a nightmare was the journey we wanted to take audiences on, and then we had this other big idea of like trying to capture what it feels like to be in 21st century America, which is a crazy time right now,” he added.

Reviews mixed

The film sharply split critics as it made the rounds at festivals in Venice and Toronto earlier this month, receiving both boos and cheers at screenings.

Aronofsky said he welcomed the mixed reaction because it meant the film had caught people’s attention.

“We wanted to make something big and loud and also something that’s immediate,” he said.

“I want everyone to know, ‘hey man, you only come if you want to go on the roller coaster and hold your arms up and scream into the abyss.’ That’s why it’s (the film title) got an exclamation point,” he added.
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Research Points to Ecological Costs of ‘Unethical’ Chocolate

Posted on by Coeco

Your afternoon chocolate bar may be fueling climate change, destroying protected forests and threatening elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in West Africa, research suggests.

Well-known brands, such as Mars and Nestle, are buying through global traders cocoa that is grown illegally in dwindling national parks and reserves in Ivory Coast and Ghana, environmental group Mighty Earth said.

“Every consumer of chocolate is a part of either the problem or the solution,” Etelle Higonnet, campaign director at Mighty Earth, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“You can choose to buy ethical chocolate. Or you’re voting with your dollar for deforestation.”

Mars and Nestle told the Thomson Reuters Foundation they are working to tackle deforestation.

“We take a responsible approach to sourcing cocoa and have committed to source 100 percent certified sustainable cocoa by 2020,” Mars said in an email.

Both companies have committed to join the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, a major effort to end deforestation in the global cocoa supply chain, launched in March.

“We will be working to ensure human rights are given a high priority alongside the environmental aims of this initiative,” Nestle said in emailed comments.

Conversion to plantations

Almost one-third of 23 protected natural areas in Ivory Coast that researchers visited in 2015 had been almost entirely converted to illegal cocoa plantations, the report said.

Researchers said the practice is so widespread that villages of tens of thousands of people, along with churches and schools, have sprung up in national parks to support the cocoa economy.

Ivory Coast, Francophone West Africa’s biggest economy, is the world’s top cocoa grower.

While the bulk of its 1 million cocoa farmers ply their trade legally, Washington-based Mighty Earth estimates about a third of cocoa is grown illegally in protected areas.

Deforestation for cocoa happens in sight of authorities and chocolate traders are aware of it, they said.

Loss of natural forests is problematic because they act as a home for the region’s wildlife and a key weapon against climate change, absorbing carbon dioxide — a major driver of climate change — as they grow.

Available land for new cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast ran out long ago, so farmers have moved into parks and reserves, taking advantage of a decade of political crisis that ended in 2011.

Ivory Coast’s now has about 2.5 million hectares (6 million acres) of natural forest, a fifth of what it had at independence in 1960, according to European Union figures. Most of the losses have been caused by expanding agriculture.

The government has struggled to evict farmers from forest reserves amid accusations in 2013 of human rights abuses by security forces.

Details of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, which is initially focusing on Ivory Coast and Ghana, will be announced by November’s global climate talks in Bonn.
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‘A Fantastic Woman’ Could Lead to Trans History at Oscars

Posted on by Corts

A transgender Chilean actress has turned in one of the most buzzed-about performances of the year and some are hoping she could be the first trans actor to land an Oscar nomination.

Daniela Vega, 28, stars in Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman. She plays Marina, a transgender woman whose partner (Francisco Reyes) dies, after which Marina is subjected to harsh treatment by the family of her deceased lover and by police investing the death.

Chile has selected the film as its Academy Awards submission this year. But the bigger spotlight may be on whether Vega’s breakout performance — one of stirring strength and compassion — could make Oscar history. Reviewing the movie at its Berlin Film Festival premiere, Variety called her performance “a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting,” that deserves “so much more than political praise.”

While several transgender musicians have been Oscar-nominated, no trans performer has ever earned an acting nod.

“It’s too early to talk about that, to think about it. I have lots of festivals to attend, lots of dresses to wear,” Vega said with a grin in an interview. “The Oscars are a little bit beyond the timeline I’m thinking about right now. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Vega and A Fantastic Woman will not have an easy road to the Oscars. Performances in foreign-language films rarely break into the acting categories, and this year, like most, the field of potential contenders boasts plenty of heavyweight, bigger-name performers like Meryl Streep (The Post) and Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game).

But Vega has two things going for her: the depth of her performance and the possibility of a long-awaited Oscar landmark. Such a result could have great meaning for a trans community that President Donald Trump recently banned from entering the military.

“If we broaden our gaze, it will be more interesting, more beautiful. If we can make more diverse colors, people, stories, it will be interesting,” Vega said. “Uniforms are for the military and the police, not for our thinking.”

Hollywood has far from shied away from telling transgender stories, but the industry has come under increasing criticism for not casting them in high-profile parts. Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) have taken home awards, and movies like 2015’s The Danish Girl, with Eddie Redmayne, and 2005’s Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman, have garnered nominations.

While those films and the Amazon series Transparent have been widely applauded, pressure has mounted urging producers to cast trans actors for trans parts. Progress has instead come in smaller, offbeat productions like Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the much-lauded 2015 film Baker shot with iPhones. It starred a pair of transgender performers, Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez. Taylor last year won an Independent Spirit Award for her performance.

“There is very beautiful transgender talent,” Taylor said, accepting the supporting actress award. “You better get out there and put it in your movie.”

Transgender people have been nominated in other Oscar categories. The composer Angela Morley received two nods, for 1974’s The Little Prince and 1976’s The Slipper and the Rose.

Most recently, singer Anohni, formerly known as Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, became the first transgendered performer ever nominated. She collaborated with J. Ralph on the nominated song Manta Ray for the documentary Racing Extinction. But when the category’s other nominees — Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, the Weeknd — were given performing slots during the 2016 broadcast, Anohni was not, and she opted to boycott the ceremony.

In a fiery essay announcing her refusal to attend, Anohni declared: “They are going to try to convince us that they have our best interests at heart by waving flags for identity politics and fake moral issues.” 

Whether Vega — and Oscar voters — can change history won’t be decided for months. Sony Picture Classics, which has guided performers to dozens of Academy Award nominations, will release the film on Nov. 17. For now, Vega is soaking up her moment.

“It’s like living a dream,” said Vega. “It’s like a film in a film.”
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Hong Kong Singer, Actress Josie Ho Making New Music

Posted on by Corts

To say that Josie Ho has been busy is an understatement.

The Hong Kong singer and actress is putting out new music, touring Asia and has shot a new travel show on TLC.

Together with her indie rock band, Josie and the Uni Boys, Ho is releasing seven new singles on vinyl records, one song at a time. She said her new music is inspired by the psycho thriller film Split starring James McAvoy, about three young girls kidnapped by a man who suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Fittingly, the first single is named Skitzo.

“I believe everyone has at least five personalities, like when you go home and face your parents, your lover, your friends, your colleagues, your boss and like, some PR friends,” Ho explained. “Some people have guilt trips about having different faces, like they feel like they’re two-faced, which I don’t think so. That’s why we need to put this concept out there, so when people really understand our lyrics and our music, I hope everyone feels that ‘We’re OK. We’re all OK. We’re fine.'”

Split might just be the way Ho, 42, feels about her life. The daughter of Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho, Ho defied her parents and refused to join the family business. Instead, she wanted to become an actress and singer.

In 1996, she released her first solo albums and also began acting in films. However, it wasn’t until she played a prostitute in the 2003 movie Naked Ambition that critics began to take her seriously as an actress. For that performance, Ho won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. She also attempted to break into Hollywood, gaining a small part in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion about the SARS epidemic. 

This year, Ho is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her band. They will kick off a tour in Tokyo in October, and Ho could hardly contain her excitement.

“I’m going to be able to perform like a Japanese band at their live houses. Those are not just any live houses, those are scared rock ‘n’ roll, hall of fame places. So, I’m really honored to play there,” Ho said.   

After Japan, Josie and the Uni Boys head to China, the Philippines and Taiwan before returning home to Hong Kong next spring.

Until then, fans can catch Ho on TLC, A Taste of Hong Kong with Josie Ho, where she hosts other Asian celebrities in Hong Kong and shows them around town. Her favorite spot in Hong Kong? Surprisingly, the outdoors.

“A lot of countries have outdoor sports as well, but our outdoor sports are only 20 minutes away from the city. So I think we have the upper hand, compared to other cities in Asia. So you can go wakeboarding, take 45 minutes to shower and change, and go to work in central. I think that’s a really important point to tell people,” she said.
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Text Message Network Connects Offline Farmers in Kenya

Posted on by Cobiz

When she woke up one morning in February, Catherine Kagendo realized that one of her cows could not stand.

“It was lying on its side, had lost its appetite and was breathing heavily,” she told Reuters from her farm in Meru, in eastern Kenya.

With her husband, she decided to turn to WeFarm, a text-based network of small-scale farmers, for help.

Within an hour, their text — “one of my lactating cows cannot stand” — generated a flurry of suggestions, from “feed your cow with minerals rich in calcium” to “make sure the cow shed is clean and well-drained so the animals don’t slip.”

“I realized our cow had milk fever, so gave it calcium-rich feed and it was standing again within hours,” Kagendo explained.

She is one of many Kenyan small-scale farmers who lack good information — mostly due to a lack of internet access — on how to manage problems from dry spells to diseases, local farm experts say.

As a result, such farmers often lose their harvest or animals, they said.

But WeFarm, a farmers’ network launched in Kenya in 2014 and more recently expanded to Uganda and Peru, allows people to ask a question by text message and receive advice from their peers.

The service, whose Scottish co-founder Kenny Ewan describes it as “the internet for people with no internet,” is free to use and only requires a mobile phone.

Farmers text questions to a local number, and WeFarm transmits the message to users with similar interests in the area, tapping into their knowledge.

“We want farmers to get answers to their problems without needing to access the internet, so the information is available to all,” said Mwinyi Bwika, head of marketing at WeFarm.

Although the platform also exists online, over 95 percent of users choose to use it offline, he said.

Information gap

Kagendo said that when her animals were ill or her maize crops too dry, she used to have to hire an extension officer to help solve the problem.

“But we had to pay a fee ranging from 500 to 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($5-$20), and most of the time the officer didn’t even explain their diagnosis,” she said.

That cut into her family’s income and left them no better able to understand the diseases facing their cattle and their crops.

“We cannot even afford a smartphone to go online, so finding credible information was near impossible,” she said.

According to Bwika, small-scale farmers often lack the information they need because of a lack of cash — most live on less than a dollar a day — as well as poor internet connection and low literacy levels.

“Ewan realized that farmers living just a few miles from each other were facing the same challenges, but with no way to communicate about them. So, he created a platform to connect them,” Bwika said.

Joseph Kinyua, another farmer from Meru who grows vegetables, said he spends at least 30 minutes per day using WeFarm.

“It’s taught me anything from using pest control traps to ensuring that my sprinklers don’t put out too much water,” he said. “And I know the methods are proven and tested by other farmers.”

The knowledge has helped improve the quality of the kale he grows, he said, enough that “I can now sell a kilo at the market at 70 shillings [$0.70] compared to 50 [$0.50] previously.”

Preventing problems

While the platform might receive dozens of replies to a question, it only sends out to the user a selection of answers judged correct, Bwika said.

But it uses the questions and advice received to help track disease outbreaks or extreme weather spells, and shares those insights with governments and non-governmental organizations, Bwika said.

“In doing so, we hope to prevent disease outbreaks and track problems before they occur,” he said.

Not everyone shares this optimism, however.

Mary Nkatha, a farmer from Meru, said she found it hard to implement some of the recommendations she received from WeFarm without the practical guidance of an expert.

“If I am told to inject my cow with something, how do I make sure I do it in the right place? And where do I find the equipment?” she asked.

Fredrick Ochido, a Kenya-based consultant on dairy farming, also worries that the platform may be entrenching farmers’ poor use of technology, rather than helping them keep up with new trends.

The WeFarm platform has over 100,000 current users in Kenya, Uganda and Peru, and its operators hopes to reach one million farmers in the next year. They also aim to expand the effort to other countries, including Tanzania.
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A Dead Dictator, His Rusting Boat and a Fight for History

Posted on by Corts

In a Croatian port sits a boat built to carry bananas from Africa to Italy, that laid mines for Nazi Germany and was sunk by Allied planes before it was salvaged as the personal yacht of a globe-trotting communist leader.

Josip Broz Tito and the state he led – Yugoslavia – have long passed into history, and the boat, the Galeb (Seagull), was left to rust in a corner of Rijeka’s once mighty docks.

Now, with Rijeka readying to become European Capital of Culture in 2020, city authorities have secured European Union money to restore the 117-meter (384-feet) boat as a museum, just as debate in Croatia rages over the life and deeds of the man who graced the pink mattress in the front port-side cabin.

If the Galeb was a symbol of Tito’s prestige on the world stage – a communist leader welcome in ports West as well as East – its restoration is part of Croatia’s own tortured process of reconciliation with its 20th century history.

Villain to some, hero to others

To conservatives in Croatia, Tito – who was born in what is today Croatia to a Croat father and Slovene mother – was a totalitarian dictator: to look fondly on him means to be nostalgic for a shared federal state that denied Croats their own until they forged one in a 1991-95 war.

Liberals, however, recall his guerrilla fight against the Nazis and the relative freedom and prosperity of Yugoslavs compared to those who lived in the Soviet Union or in its shadow.

They see in the disdain of conservatives a thinly veiled fondness for the World War II Croatian state that collaborated with the Nazis but was snuffed out with Tito’s Partisan victory – sentiment that has gained a foothold in mainstream Croatian

politics in recent years.

It is a tug-of-war over history and identity that was encapsulated this month in the renaming by Zagreb’s city council of the capital’s Marshal Tito Square to Republic of Croatia square.

Days later, the government ordered the removal of a plaque near the site of a World War II concentration camp that bore a notorious slogan associated with the Nazi puppet regime in Croatia.

“We live in a time when history is being reinvented retroactively,” said Ivan Sarar, who as head of culture at Rijeka’s city council is in charge of its 2020 makeover.

“It’s interesting that just by undertaking this [restoration] we have already been declared revisionists,” he told Reuters.

‘Quasi-cultural exhibitionism’

After years of false-starts, work on restoring the Galeb is imminent – “a mammoth, multi-million-euro task to recreate the 1950s chic of Tito’s floating palace, host to over 100 heads of state and some of Hollywood’s finest.

Some of the furniture remains – in Tito’s cabin, his turquoise-tiled bathroom and the adjacent salon with doors that open to the deck. But the ship itself is little more than a rotting hull.

The Galeb was the stage for Tito’s major contribution to history, said Sarar, a showcase for the non-aligned movement he helped found in answer to the East-West polarization of the Cold War.

But Sarar stressed: “We won’t be soft on anyone.”

He noted Tito’s cosy ties with dictators around the world, the exodus of Italian residents of Rijeka when he took the city as part of Yugoslavia, and his denial of democracy during 35 years of one-man rule until his death in 1980. Yugoslavia fell apart in war a decade later and some 135,000 people were killed.

It was Tito’s seizure of Rijeka and the Istrian peninsula that cemented his status in this part of Croatia as a liberator.

Dozens of streets in Istria still bear his name, as do others in the Balkans – most notably in Serbia, once the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.

Conservatives, however, struck a blow with the renaming of Zagreb’s Marshal Tito Square, part of a deal struck by the mayor to secure his majority in the city assembly.

The man behind the initiative, leading right-wing politician Zlatko Hasanbegovic, told Reuters that while Tito was “undeniably a significant historical figure,” so were Napoleon, Stalin and Lenin.

“In all countries, streets and squares bear the names of those who embody the values with which the entire nation identifies itself,” he said, describing the restoration of the Galeb as part of an attempt to revive the cult of Tito.

“Those insisting on it should ask themselves how the tens of thousands of victims of Yugoslav communism look on that kind of quasi-cultural exhibitionism.”

In Rijeka, Sarar denied planning any kind of homage to Tito.

“We want to create a place for dialogue, away from the current situation of extreme black, white and red truths that lead nowhere,” he said. “It’s bound to be difficult.”
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