The use of blood-sucking leeches in treating disease may seem like a relic of the Middle Ages, but one Polish company says there is growing demand by doctors for the worms. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Month: February 2018
NYC E-Bike Ban is Disaster for Immigrant Delivery Workers
Electric powered bicycles, known as “e-bikes,” are a common sight among New York’s immigrant delivery workers, who consider the bikes a necessity to make a living wage. The problem is, they’re illegal to operate in the city, creating a dilemma for these immigrants who feel they have no alternative employment options. VOA’s Ramon Taylor and Ye Yuan report.
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‘Can You Dig It?’ Africa Reality Show Draws Youth to Farming
As a student, Leah Wangari imagined a glamorous life as a globe-trotting flight attendant, not toiling in dirt and manure.
Born and raised in Kenya’s skyscraper-filled capital, Nairobi, the 28-year-old said farming had been the last thing on her mind. The decision to drop agriculture classes haunted her later, when her efforts in agribusiness investing while running a fashion venture failed.
Clueless, she made her way to an unusual new reality TV show, the first of its kind in Africa. “Don’t Lose the Plot,” backed by the U.S. government, trains contestants from Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and gives them plots to cultivate, with a $10,000 prize for the most productive. The goal: Prove to young people that agriculture can be fun and profitable.
“Being in reality TV was like the best feeling ever, like a dream come true for me,” Wangari said. But she found it exhausting. As callouses built up on her hands, her friends made bets that she wouldn’t succeed.
“Don’t Lose the Plot” is aimed at inspiring youth in East Africa to pursue agribusiness entrepreneurship. Producers said the show wants to demystify the barriers to starting a small business and challenge the prejudices against farming-related careers, even as many youths flee rural areas for urban ones.
“What we hope to achieve … is first to show people that you can make money out of farming, to change the age profile of farmers in Africa from 60 to the youth. And the next thing we want to do is to show farmers, young farmers, that they can use their mobile and technology in order to farm and achieve their goals,” producer Patricia Gichinga said. The show also offers training via online platforms and text message.
Attracting people to agriculture is no small challenge in Africa, where a booming young population is often put off by the image of punishing work and poor, weather-beaten farmers.
“Most young Africans think of farming as back-breaking labor that pays peanuts,” former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the committee chair for the $100,000 annual Africa Food Prize and a farmer himself, wrote in the New African magazine last year. “This view, though largely inaccurate, is to some extent understandable.”
If Africa’s youth, who make up about 65 percent of the population, don’t venture into agribusiness, “then there is little chance that agriculture will have a transformative impact on the continent’s fortunes,” Obasanjo wrote.
Most experts agree that farming growth can boost African economies by increasing trade, creating more jobs and improving food self-sufficiency on a continent with the highest occurrence of food insecurity in the world.
But much of the potential remains untapped. Africa has over 60 percent of the world’s fertile but uncultivated land while importing $35 billion to $50 billion in food per year, the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa says . Weak or corrupt land governance is a challenge, as well as conflict.
Yields for major crops remain low compared to other regions of the world. Change must come by empowering the smallholder farmers who produce 80 percent of the food consumed on the continent, the organization says.
Now Wangari is one of them. After placing second in “Don’t Lose the Plot,” she became a full-time mushroom farmer.
In a damp structure of mud and clay on the outskirts of Nairobi, she has harvested her first crop and is preparing for her second. She had expected to make a $2,500 profit but took in $1,000 instead after mites from a nearby chicken house invaded and lowered her yield.
“When I see young men in the village now sitting idle I feel disappointed because there is a lot of idle land and they can use it to make ends meet,” she said. “They don’t require a lot of capital but they don’t have the information.”
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Solar Power Push Lights Up Options for India’s Rural Women
In her village of Komalia, the fog swirls so thick at 7 a.m. that Akansha Singh can see no more than 15 meters ahead. But the 20-year-old is already cycling to her workplace, nine kilometers away.
Halfway there she stops for two hours at a computer training center, where she’s learning internet skills. Then she’s off again, and by 10 a.m. reaches the small garment manufacturing plant where she stitches women’s clothing for high-end brands on state-of-the-art electric sewing machines.
Solar energy powers most of her day — the computer training center and the 25-woman garment factory run on solar mini-grid electricity — and clean power has given her personal choice as well, she said.
If the mini-grid system had not been put in place, Singh — a recent college graduate without funds to pursue training as a teacher, the only job open to women in her village — would have had no alternative but to marry, she said.
In fact, “I would already be married off,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Today, however, she earns 4,500 rupees ($70) a month working on solar-powered sewing machines. She uses part of that to pay 300 rupees ($4.70) a month for her computer education class — and is planning to start a computer training center closer to home.
Like her, most of the women at the factory earn between 2,500 and 4,500 rupees ($39- $70) a month, which has helped their families eat better, get children to school and pay for healthcare, they said.
“With a month’s earning alone we can buy new bicycles for ourselves and our school-going children,” Bandana Devi, a mother of four, told the Thomson Reuter Foundation, as she looked up from her sewing.
She bought one for her 12-year-old daughter, she said, and her 6-year-old rides pillion with her to the school, 2 km away.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a $2.5 billion plan to electrify every Indian household by 2019 — a huge task in a country where close to 240 million people still have no access to electrical power.
Solar power — including the use of small local grids — is likely to be a big part of the push, with 60 percent of new connections expected to be to renewable power, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.
Stable Power, More Contracts
In a clearing in an acacia plantation, the more than 140 solar panels that make up the Kamlapur mini-grid are being cleaned early in the morning.
The 36-kilowatt plant, set up by the for-profit OMC Power Private Ltd.(formerly Omnigrid Micropower Company) in 2015, distributes solar energy over 2.4 kilometers of power lines to 70 households, two telecommunications towers, the clothing manufacturing unit and several other small businesses.
Solar mini-grids usually rely on one or two large users of power — often mobile phone towers — to provide a stable base revenue for the system. But as solar electricity becomes available in areas beyond the traditional grid, power-hungry small businesses are emerging that could become anchor users.
Kamlapur’s garment factory, for instance, consumes 10 kilowatts of power each day — the same as the telecom towers, said Ketan Bhatt, an OMC official in Uttar Pradesh state.
The state in 2016 became India’s first to put in place a mini-grid policy, recognizing private solar companies as legitimate players in India’s push to get power to all.
Company owners, in turn, say solar mini-grids — which can be more reliable than the unstable grid power their competitors rely on — is giving them a business advantage.
“Because the power supply is steady, we are regularly able to deliver on contract deadlines, which in turn enhances our reputation to bag more contracts,” said Mohammad Riyaz, who set up the Kamlapur garment unit in 2016.
Rohit Chandra, a co-founder of OMC, said he was seeing many solar power users moving beyond simply buying power for home lighting and appliances. Now, he said, they are harnessing solar energy for profit.
“We see barbers installing televisions and fans in their shops to attract more customers. Carpenters buy electric saws and wood polishers, fruit sellers are adding electric juicers. Health centers and dispensaries are coming up in underserved villages too,” Chandra said in a telephone interview.
“People are now continuously climbing,” he said.
Sangeeta Singh, of the Uttar Pradesh New and Renewable Energy Development Agency, said rural villagers “are willing to pay for assured, customized hours of supply, even at a higher price.”
“The myth that rural consumers will not pay for electricity is now demolished,” added Jaideep Mukherji, the CEO of Smart Power India (SPI). “Over the last two years we’ve discovered not only do rural consumers pay for the electricity, 93 percent pay on time.”
SPI is backed by the the U.S.-based Rockefeller Foundation’s $75 million Smart Power for Rural Development initiative, which aims to get power the “last mile” to users without it in India, Myanmar and sub-Saharan Africa.
SPI works with seven private mini-grid operators, including OMC, in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand — some of India’s least electrified states — to boost demand for solar mini-grid power and help develop rural economies.
The aim is both to improve life for poor people in power-hungry regions and help make sure solar mini-grid power is financially feasible for its operators, Mukherji said.
Chandra, of OMC, said that, on average, after supplying reliable power for a year, “we see around 30 micro-enterprises come up in each village.”
Though most are expansions of existing businesses, some are new ventures — such as a new water purifying plant in Kamlapur.
Sanskrit language teacher Aparna Mishra has just invested 400,000 rupees ($6,240) to set up a reverse osmosis water purifier.
Starting later this month, 100 customers — including schools, hotels and homes in the area — will begin receiving 20-liter refillable jars of water, dropped off at their doorstep, the entrepreneur said.
Mishra’s two-year target is to produce 3,000 liters of clean water a day, delivered over a 12-km radius from the 5-kilowatt plant.
“If villagers can understand the link between good health and clean drinking water from my plant, that itself is the biggest return on my investment,” the 26-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
An assessment of Smart Power India villages at the end of 2016 found that after two years of access to mini-grid power, small businesses using it had increased their monthly income by 13 percent.
A Price Too High?
While Smart Power India is reaching a growing share of communities without electricity, a 2017 study by the International Center for Research on Women found that large numbers of women and poor families still lack access to clean energy, even in areas where it is available.
For some of them, the cost of private mini-grid power is a deterrent to using it.
Riyaz’s clothing factory, for instance, pays 25 rupees (39 cents) for each kilowatt of the 10 kilowatts of power it uses each day — well above the 11 to 17 rupees that rural users of grid power pay.
“The electricity bill pinches,” the 45-year-old tailor said.
Chandra, of OMC, admitted that “on the face of it, our charges for reliable power might look high.”
But grid power users in Uttar Pradesh must pay a minimum monthly fee of 1,000 rupees, he said. With many small solar businesses — such as phone recharging — using less power, and even larger businesses often saving energy by using efficient machines, solar mini-grid power can come out cheaper, he said.
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Surgical Infections More Common in Low-Income Countries, Study Finds
Surgeries in low-income countries had higher rates of infections than those in higher-income countries, according to a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The authors said their report provided a starting point for making surgery safer.
Infections at the site of surgery are the most common complications after operations. These infections raise the cost of procedures that are already expensive. And they often make recovery longer and more painful.
The study looked at more than 12,000 gastrointestinal surgeries at 343 hospitals in 66 countries.
Marked difference
Overall, about one in 10 patients developed a surgical site infection. But in low-income countries, that rate rose to nearly one in four.
That’s after taking into account factors such as the patient’s health, the type of surgery and the condition being treated.
Other elements that could have been behind the difference included the kinds of facilities available in low-income countries, or how long it took to get patients to a hospital, said study co-author Ewen Harrison at the University of Edinburgh.
“If you’re in rural sub-Saharan Africa and you’re run over by a car, it may be a number of days before you can get to a hospital,” he said. “During that time, infection can get into wounds.”
Drug resistance
Another component could have been the availability of effective antibiotics, Harrison said.
Antibiotics were nearly always given before surgery to prevent infection. But overall, about one in five surgical site infections were resistant to these antibiotics. The rate was higher in low-income countries — one in three — but the authors cautioned that they did not have enough data to draw firm conclusions.
Resistance generally develops faster the more antibiotics are used. The study noted that hospitals in low-income countries gave patients more antibiotics than elsewhere, both before and after surgery.
“That may be completely appropriate if the patients are needing the antibiotics,” Harrison said. “But that may also be an area where unnecessary use of antibiotics could be reduced in order to reduce drug resistance.”
The authors’ next plan is to test different skin-cleaning techniques, antibiotic-impregnated stitches, and other simple, low-cost methods to reduce surgical site infections in low-income countries.
More than 1,500 health care providers took part in the research. Harrison said the study organizers “crowdsourced” their participants, using social media to recruit young surgeons-in-training around the world.
“They are really the driving force behind the change that we hope to happen,” he said.
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IMAX Movie ‘America’s Musical Journey’ Shows Unique Heritage
An IMAX movie premiering this week aims to show America’s musical heritage to the world.
“America’s Musical Journey” is narrated by Morgan Freeman and stars singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc as he explores cities like New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit and Miami.
Along the way, Blacc learns about music history and different genres, from gospel to country to Latin.
The movie is a project of Brand USA, the agency that promotes U.S. tourism.
Fewer international travelers are vacationing in the United States, and Brand USA hopes the film will inspire trips to the U.S. to experience authentic destinations featured in the movie.
At a screening in New York on Tuesday, Blacc noted that music is one of America’s “biggest exports” and “something that makes us unique.”
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US Postal Service Enters Digital, Virtual, Augmented Worlds to Attract Customers
Even though the U.S. Postal Service delivers about 46 percent of the world’s total mail, competition is getting tougher every day. The post office is turning to technology to stay current. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee shows how the USPS is using virtual and augmented realities, along with email, to attract business.
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US Social Media Firms Step Up Help on Security Efforts, Intelligence Leaders Say
Leaders of U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies said Tuesday the U.S. private sector has been helpful in efforts to keep the country safe.
While the leaders did not name companies, industry sectors or what specific help has been provided, they did discuss the challenges of monitoring social media.
The comments may reflect a shift in what law enforcement has seen as the technology industry’s adversarial approach when it comes to fighting crimes and addressing national security issues.
The most notable example of this tension was support by tech industry groups for Apple’s battle with law enforcement over breaking the encryption of an iPhone used by the man who killed 14 people in the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.
‘Forward-leaning engagement’
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, Dan Coats, director of National Intelligence, said the U.S. government has received more support from those in the private sector “who are beginning to recognize ever more the issues that are faced with the material that comes through their processes.”
Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, referred to the help from the private sector as a “more forward-leaning engagement.”
“So, it’s teamwork within the intelligence community and then partnership with the private sector, which is, I think, the other big change I’ve noticed — is a lot more forward-leaning engagement with the private sector in terms of trying to share information and raise awareness on their end,” said Wray, also speaking at the hearing.
“Because at the end of the day, we can’t fully police social media, so we have to work with them so that they can police themselves a little bit better as well,” Wray added.
Gates: Be careful of arrogance
Separately, Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, said in an interview that tech firms need to be careful of being too arrogant when working in realms outside their businesses or they’ll face the kind of government intervention his firm experienced in its antitrust dispute.
“The tech companies have to be careful that they’re not trying to think their view is more important than the government’s view, or than the government being able to function in some key areas,” said Gates in an interview with Axios.
Gates cited Apple’s iPhone battle with the government, criticizing “their view that even a clear mass-murdering criminal’s communication should never be available to the government.”
“There’s no question of ability,” he said about unlocking the iPhone. “It’s the question of willingness.”
He also cited companies’ “enthusiasm about making financial transactions anonymous and invisible.”
Microsoft’s consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department came to an end in 2011, a result of the government’s settlement with the software giant in its antitrust case.
Remarks on Trump administration
On Tuesday, Gates and his wife, Melinda, issued their foundation’s annual letter.
In terms of the Trump administration, Gates wrote that while “we disagree with this administration more than the others we’ve met with, we believe it’s still important to work together whenever possible. We keep talking to them because if the U.S. cuts back on its investments abroad, people in other countries will die, and Americans will be worse off.”
Melinda Gates wrote that the president is a role model of “American values in the world.” She continued, “I wish our president would treat people, and especially women, with more respect when he speaks and tweets.”
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The Different Faces of Love
A look at the stories of various couples from around the globe
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Award-Nominated Film Spotlights Trauma of Calais ‘Jungle’ Kids
The director of an award-nominated film about a traumatized boy stuck in the Calais “Jungle” camp has urged Britain to take in more lone child refugees stranded across Europe to prevent them from falling prey to traffickers.
Vika Evdokimenko’s film “Aamir” is loosely based on the story of a boy her husband met two years ago when the couple volunteered in the French camp, which has since been bulldozed.
“It was just one of the most miserable places I’ve been to,” Evdokimenko said ahead of Sunday’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards – Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars – where “Aamir” is in the running for best short film.
“Kids [were] in purgatory in that place,” she added.
The camp, a sprawling shanty town near the northern port of Calais, was once home for 10,000 refugees and migrants who hoped to reach Britain by stowing away on trucks, cars or trains.
Evdokimenko said life was hardest for the hundreds of lone children, many of whom had been trafficked after fleeing violence or poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
In 2016, Britain pledged to take 480 of the most vulnerable young asylum seekers in Europe. Around half have arrived so far.
Refugee groups had originally hoped Britain would take 3,000.
“I think Britain can afford to be more generous … it’s a first-world country,” said Evdokimenko, who moved to the United Kingdom from Russia as a child.
Evdokimenko’s 16-minute-long film focuses on a boy driven to an act of violence when he cannot find a door for his shelter.
“He was absolutely desperate for a door. He felt very exposed, very unsafe,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“These kids get angry … There’s a lot of trauma, there’s a lot of issues and I wanted to show an imperfect portrait of a child refugee, but one that was relatable,” Evdokimenko added.
Locked in trunks
The director said the children she met told “horrific” stories about their experiences at the hands of smugglers.
Some described beatings. Others were locked in car trunks, sometimes for days, with just a tube to breathe through.
The film highlights the children’s vulnerability – Aamir is robbed after being drugged by men who appear to befriend him.
It also conveys the physical misery as relentless rains pour through flimsy shelters, turning the ground into a mud bath.
Evdokimenko, who worked at the camp in 2016 packing food rations, described a bleak dune-like landscape engulfed in the stench of a nearby chemical factory and littered with rubbish.
The production team had originally hoped to cast one of the boys in the camp as Aamir, but decided it would be wrong to ask the children to relive their experiences for the camera.
They were also disturbed to find that whenever they returned to the camp, the boys they met on the last visit had vanished.
Evdokimenko said she was sure many had been trafficked.
Despite the Jungle’s demolition, Evdokimenko said her film was still relevant given the tens of thousands of unaccompanied refugee and migrant children scattered throughout Europe.
There are signs the Calais camp is being rebuilt, she said.
“My main anxiety about these kids is how they can ever recover from these things they’ve been through,” she added.
“The longer we leave them in these places, which are just so unsuitable for kids … the more we lose our opportunity to allow them to become amazing members of our communities.”
your ads here!US Postal Service Rolls Out Virtual Mail
A new service that sends virtual images of the day’s mail to inboxes, before snail mail arrives in actual mailboxes, is now a reality in the United States.
“Informed Delivery” is the latest way the United States Postal Service (USPS) is trying to stay competitive.
“Informed Delivery is a way for you to receive an email every single day of all the digital images of all your mail,” explained David Rupert, media relations specialist at USPS. Rupert said his digital images arrive around 9 a.m. each day.
Though the USPS delivers about 46 percent of the world’s total mail, it is battling email, text messages, online advertising, television and other delivery services for consumers’ attention and business.
“In a digital world, more and more people are having their bills delivered online, paying them on line. And that’s starting to cut into the overall letter volume, as well as the handwritten letter and the notes that we used to send. The reality is, we’re not doing that anymore. That’s not just a U.S. trend, that’s a worldwide trend,” Rupert said.
WATCH: USPS Enters Digital, Virtual, Augmented Worlds to Attract Customers
Battling that trend also means using virtual and augmented technology in advertising, often called “junk” mail.
“What you can do is to take your cellphone, and you can take a mail piece, and it will interact with that mail piece,” Rupert described.
If there is a special digital code on an ad, consumers can scan it with their mobile device and an animated, augmented reality ad will appear. An advertiser can also send a cardboard virtual reality headset along with a code for mobile phone users to scan. What shows up is a VR ad that can be inserted into the headset for a 360-degree experience.
Virtual and augmented reality advertising are getting mixed results from consumers.
“Not all junk mail [pieces] are junk mail. You can find some good [things] within the junk mail. It’s a good idea. We’ll see how it works out,” said consumer Victor Teah.
“For some, that might be fun. But for me, I wouldn’t have any use for it,” consumer Jocelyn Coatney said.
Informed Delivery has broader appeal.
“I think I would like that a lot, especially with checks and things coming in, and things coming in from grandkids. That would be a nice service,” said Coatney.
Rupert added: “We don’t want to be a world leader on technology, but we certainly want to make our services relevant to you — in your home and in your neighborhood.”
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Marvel Takes New York Fashionistas to Black Panther’s Wakanda
Marvel Studios transported New York fashionistas to the mythical African nation of Wakanda where its highly anticipated superhero movie “Black Panther” takes place.
Under a blue sky and surrounded by greenery, designers who were inspired by the film’s characters and themes showcased their work as part of “Welcome to Wakanda,” an event meant to celebrate the film’s fierce African flair.
While Wakanda may be fictional, the film’s costume designer Ruth E. Carter drew from real people and places, traveling across Africa to study the patterns, bead work and silhouettes of various tribes and peoples.
“We took elements of Africa and we were inspired by it and we designed it in a futuristic way,” Carter said. “When it all came down, it was all about Wakanda and a futuristic world — a better world.”
The New York Fashion Week presentation is the first of its kind for Walt Disney Co., which owns Marvel. It has been involved in high-end collaborations before, but it’s the first time it has put on a fashion event of this scale ahead of a Marvel movie.
Winston Duke, who plays villain M’Baku in the Ryan Coogler-directed movie, spoke about the importance of seeing black fashion and culture portrayed in film.
“It connects you to your family, it connects you to your roots,” Duke said. “And knowing that your sense of fashion and the culture it’s connected to is valid really makes it a stronger thing for you.”
Designers presented their one-of-a-kind ensembles meant to pay homage to the film, which features a predominantly black cast including Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Angela Bassett.
Following the event, the looks will be auctioned off in support of Save the Children, an international humanitarian organization.
New York-based designer LaQuan Smith was one of the designers chosen to present an ensemble for the collection. The look featured trendy Matrix-style sunglasses and a black sequined jumpsuit finished off with a floor-length trench coat.
“I wanted to focus on strength and a level of sensuality and sex appeal,” said the New York-born designer, who has dressed Beyonce and other celebrities. “And knowing that women can be confident, sexy and strong all in the same realm.”
“Black Panther,” which opens this week worldwide, is expected to rake in about $150 million at the North American box office on its opening weekend.
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Top Dog to Fetch ‘Best in Show’ Prize at New York Westminster Show
Even the most prestigious pooches in the 142nd annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, where top dog will be crowned “Best of Show” on Tuesday, are still cuddly canines at heart.
“Biggie is a goof,” said Esteban Farias, handler of a pug named Biggie, who won the toy group contest on Monday and will be among the seven group champions vying for the ultimate prize.
“He’s funny. … When my kids are playing, he grabs the toys and runs all over the house.”
This year’s Best in Show winner, picked from a pack of nearly 3,000 competitors, gets a trophy, a media tour and bragging rights that boost breeding fees. It is the reward for patiently withstanding the blasts of blow dryers and tugs of combs and brushes.
Dogs compete in seven groups — hound, toy, nonsporting, herding, working, sporting and terrier — with the winners then competing for Best in Show, in the competition at Madison Square Garden in midtown Manhattan.
Four chosen on Monday included Biggie, a borzoi named Lucy from the hound group, a bichon frise named Flynn from the nonsporting group and a border collie named Slick from the herding group. The remaining three challengers will be from the working, sporting and terrier groups, whose winners were set to be picked on Tuesday.
More than 2,880 dogs from 201 breeds and varieties competed in the two-day event, according to organizers of the United States’ second-oldest sporting event after the Kentucky Derby. They came from all 50 U.S. states and 16 other countries, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, Russia, Australia and China, the Westminster Kennel Club said in a statement.
Rumor, a female German shepherd, was named Best in Show at last year’s competition.
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Bill and Melinda Gates Talk Trump, Taxes
Bill and Melinda Gates say they’re concerned about some of President Donald Trump’s policies and statements. Here are some excerpts from their recent interview with The Associated Press:
Giving pledge
Bill Gates says he’s met with Trump twice since he took office. The Microsoft co-founder hasn’t asked Trump to sign “The Giving Pledge,” a movement Gates founded that asks billionaires to commit to donating most of their wealth to charity.
“We’ve never had a direct conversation about that,” Gates said. “It’s always a voluntary thing, and as I do dinners, I meet with a lot of people but never discussed it with him.”
Women, minorities
Melinda Gates, who left her job at Microsoft to raise their three children before turning to the foundation full-time, has lately embraced her role as a public figure more boldly. She called out Trump’s behavior, including what she described as his habit of using Twitter to attack women and minority groups.
“Those kinds of comments just don’t belong in the public discourse,” Melinda Gates said.
Tax overhaul
Bill Gates is among the billionaires who have advocated for more taxes on the wealthy. He says Trump’s tax overhaul mostly benefits corporations.
“We’ve in a broad sense said taxes should be more progressive, and this was not a move toward being more progressive.”
Feminism
Melinda Gates says some of Trump’s comments about women have troubled her, but his rejection of the “feminist” label has not.
“Some men have trouble — and some women, quite frankly — have trouble embracing that term and what it means, so that honestly doesn’t bother me. It’s more the specific comments he’s made over and over again about specific people or minorities or women that just do not reflect the values I see across the United States.”
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Russian Cargo Ship Launched to ISS After 2-Day Delay
An unmanned Russian cargo ship has blasted off for the International Space Station, two days after the original launch was scrubbed.
The Progress capsule is carrying 2.7 metric tons (3 U.S. tons) of food, fuel and other supplies. It entered orbit eight minutes after liftoff Tuesday from the Russian space complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
The abandoned Sunday launch was intended to test a new regime for fast deliveries to the space station, docking less than four hours after launch. But Tuesday’s launch will follow a longer route, with docking scheduled for Thursday.
There are six astronauts aboard the space station – three Americans, two Russians and one from Japan.
your ads here!A New Weapon in Fight Against Poachers
In the dense tropical rainforests of the Minkebe national park in northern Gabon, conservationists are hoping a new weapon can help them win a war against elephant poaching. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Holidaying Frog Game Finds Fans Among China’s Harried Youth
Wang Zhuyin studies 10 hours a day preparing for a series of tests to obtain a U.S. physician’s license. But like millions of young Chinese adults, the 26-year-old has found a new way to cope with the pressure: an online game about a frog.
A frog that’s perpetually on vacation.
Wang’s diversion, the Japanese mobile game “Travel Frog,” has attracted a massive following in China by speaking to a desire for a more passive existence among harried young people that some have termed “Buddhist style” for its desired goal of Zen-like serenity.
The game has only two scenes, a loft home and a courtyard where users can collect clover leaves to buy food and other travel supplies for their frog. There isn’t much else a user can do, either. The virtual frog randomly spends time reading a book at home, eating or going on vacation around Japan. Since users have no control over their frog’s behavior, waiting takes up most of the playing time.
“When your frog goes sightseeing, there is nothing you can do but go with the flow,” said Wang, a native of the high-tech center of Hangzhou outside Shanghai. “This is similar to the situation young people are facing. Suffocated by stress, we learn to pretend we don’t care.”
The game’s popularity underscores the degree of pressure Chinese millennials face in a highly competitive society where stability and opportunity have become ever more elusive.
Developed by Nagoya-based Japanese company Hit-Point, Travel Frog — also known as Tabi Kaeru — has become the most downloaded free game app in China, despite never having been translated into Chinese.
The game’s simplicity has users enthralled. Wang and others describe a sense of healing when gallivanting frogs send photos from their trips, or just relax at home.
The frog “doesn’t interact with you or talk to you. You just watch the frog living its own life,” said Jia Weiwei, 37, who works with autistic children in Beijing. “There isn’t a lot of information, which gives you plenty of space for imagination.”
Jia has studied an online translation guide and checks her phone regularly to see whether her frog will surprise her by sending a photo or bringing home souvenirs.
Psychologist Hai Ming says the popularity of the game shows that human relations have declined in an increasingly data-driven digital society.
“Behind every frog-raising player is a lonely person,” Hai said. “How do you externalize your loneliness, your indecision? Through the frog.”
On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, the topic (hash)TravelFrog(hash) has received over 1.96 billion views. According to Travel Frog developer Mayuko Uemura, Travel Frog has racked up about 30 million downloads on Apple’s App Store and Google Play since its launch in November. Fully 95 percent of downloads of the game from the App Store were in China.
“We were hoping to some extent that people overseas would be able to enjoy this game as well, but I would never have imagined that it would become so popular with people in China,” Uemura said.
The company is now considering producing an international version that could be tailored to appeal to local audiences, she said.
Social media have played an important role in the game’s success, said Chenyu Cui, a game analyst with IHS Markit in Shanghai.
Gamers can show off on Chinese social media sites by comparing photos of their frogs’ “travels,” Cui said.
Some users refer to the frog as their child and will worry if it hasn’t been home for even two days.
“It connects with people’s common experience,” said Shao Yuanyu, 32, a Taiwanese doctor based in Beijing. “Now I know how my mom felt when she waited for me to come home.”
For young people living in China’s fast-paced modern society, the game provides a sense of connection, said Xu Ziwei, a counselor from the mental health center at Beijing’s Renmin University.
“To some extent, you feel that you have a stable relationship with the frog. If it leaves, it will always come back, it will send you a postcard,” Xu said.
Not all are as positive. The game and the social trends it embodies run counter to the ruling Communist Party’s frequent exhortations to the public to strive for economic advancement. In a speech last year, President Xi Jinping called on young people to “write a vivid chapter in your tireless endeavors to serve the interests of the people.”
The party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, stated in a recent Weibo post that young people should spend their time enriching themselves “instead of just being a lonely frog-raising person.”
But others see the frog game and the popularity of “Buddhist style” thinking as examples of young Chinese expressing a newfound independence. People born in the 1990s are largely better off than earlier generations of Chinese and they’re searching for meaning beyond material wealth, said Jia, the frog raiser in Beijing.
“This is like the western lifestyle we always envy: to be able to really be ourselves and not care about how others judge us,” Jia said.
“The ‘Buddhist style’ doesn’t mean a lack of pursuits or simply giving up,” Jia said. “I think it’s a spiritual pursuit. It’s not harmful if it makes people more at peace.”
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GM to Close Auto Plant in South Korea in Restructuring
General Motors said Tuesday it will close an underutilized factory in Gunsan, South Korea, by the end of May as part of a restructuring of its operations.
The move is a setback for the administration of President Moon Jae-in, who has made jobs and wages a priority.
A GM statement said Monday the company has proposed to its labor union and other stakeholders a plan involving further investments in South Korea that would help save jobs.
“As we are at a critical juncture of needing to make product allocation decisions, the ongoing discussions must demonstrate significant progress by the end of February, when GM will make important decisions on next steps,” Barry Engle, GM executive vice president and president of GM International, said in the statement.
The company’s CEO Mary Barra has said GM urgently needs better cost performance from its operations in South Korea, where auto sales have slowed.
South Korea’s government expressed “deep regret” over the factory’s closure. It said it plans to study the situation at the business and will continue talks with GM.
Korea’s finance ministry said earlier this month that GM had sought government help. The government has denied reports that South Korea will raise the issue in trade talks with the U.S.
The factory in Gunsan, a port city about 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Seoul, has been making the Cruze, a sedan, and the Orlando model SUV. It employs about 2,000 workers, and only used about 20 percent of its full production capacity in 2017, rolling out 33,982 vehicles.
GM Korea has made 10 million vehicles since it was set up in 2002. In 2017, it sold 132,377 units in Korea and exported 392,170 vehicles to 120 markets around the world.
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‘Hello, Universe’ Wins Newbery for Best Children’s Book
Erin Entrada Kelly’s “Hello, Universe,” a nuanced account of a diverse group of middle school students and their unexpected encounters, has won the John Newbery Medal for the outstanding children’s book of 2017. The Randolph Caldecott Medal for best illustration went to Matthew Cordell and his near-wordless story of a girl and the wolf pup she saves, “Wolf in the Snow.”
The awards were announced Monday by the American Library Association, which has gathered in Denver for its annual mid-winter meeting. Both the Newbery and Caldecott medals are more than 80 years old, with previous winners including Jacqueline Woodson’s “Brown Girl Dreaming” and Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”
On Monday, Woodson who received the Laura Ingalls Wilder award for lifetime achievement and Nina LaCour’s “We Are Okay” was given the Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult literature. Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give,” one of last year’s top-selling young adult novels, was cited twice. It won a William C. Morris Award for best debut book for teens and an Odyssey Award for best audiobook.
Renee Watson’s “Piecing Me Together” won the Coretta Scott King Award for outstanding book by an African-American. The King award for best illustrator went to Ekua Holmes for “Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets.” Eloise Greenfield, whose dozens of books include “Honey, I Love” and “In the Land of Words,” won the King award for lifetime achievement.
The Pura Belpre Award for best Latino book was given to “Lucky Broken Girl,” by Ruth Behar. The Pura Belpre illustrator prize went to Juana Martinez-Neal and “La Princesa and the Pea.”
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Opioid Makers Gave $10 Million to Advocacy Groups Amid Epidemic
Companies selling some of the most lucrative prescription painkillers funneled millions of dollars to advocacy groups that in turn promoted the medications’ use, according to a report released Monday by a U.S. senator.
The investigation by Missouri’s Senator Claire McCaskill sheds light on the opioid industry’s ability to shape public opinion and raises questions about its role in an overdose epidemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of American lives. Representatives of some of the drugmakers named in the report said they did not set conditions on how the money was to be spent or force the groups to advocate for their painkillers.
The report from McCaskill, ranking Democrat on the Senate’s homeland security committee, examines advocacy funding by the makers of the top five opioid painkillers by worldwide sales in 2015. Financial information the companies provided to Senate staff shows they spent more than $10 million between 2012 and 2017 to support 14 advocacy groups and affiliated doctors.
The report did not include some of the largest and most politically active manufacturers of the drugs.
The findings follow a similar investigation launched in 2012 by a bipartisan pair of senators. That effort eventually was shelved and no findings were ever released.
While the new report provides only a snapshot of company activities, experts said it gives insight into how industry-funded groups fueled demand for drugs such as OxyContin and Vicodin, addictive medications that generated billions in sales despite research showing they are largely ineffective for chronic pain.
‘Pretty damning’
“It looks pretty damning when these groups were pushing the message about how wonderful opioids are and they were being heavily funded, in the millions of dollars, by the manufacturers of those drugs,” said Lewis Nelson, a Rutgers University doctor and opioid expert.
The findings could bolster hundreds of lawsuits that are aimed at holding opioid drugmakers responsible for helping fuel an epidemic blamed for the deaths of more than 340,000 Americans since 2000.
McCaskill’s staff asked drugmakers to turn over records of payments they made to groups and affiliated physicians, part of a broader investigation by the senator into the opioid crisis. The request was sent last year to five companies: Purdue Pharma; Insys Therapeutics; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, owned by Johnson & Johnson; Mylan; and Depomed.
Fourteen nonprofit groups, mostly representing pain patients and specialists, received nearly $9 million from the drugmakers, according to investigators. Doctors affiliated with those groups received another $1.6 million.
Most of the groups included in the probe took industry-friendly positions. That included issuing medical guidelines promoting opioids for chronic pain, lobbying to defeat or include exceptions to state limits on opioid prescribing, and criticizing landmark prescribing guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Doctors and the public have no way of knowing the true source of this information and that’s why we have to take steps to provide transparency,” said McCaskill in an interview with The Associated Press. The senator plans to introduce legislation requiring increased disclosure about the financial relationships between drugmakers and certain advocacy groups.
‘Front groups’
A 2016 investigation by the AP and the Center for Public Integrity revealed how painkiller manufacturers used hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to fight state and federal measures aimed at stemming the tide of prescription opioids, often enlisting help from advocacy organizations.
Bob Twillman, executive director of the Academy of Integrative Pain Management, said most of the $1.3 million his group received from the five companies went to a state policy advocacy operation. But Twillman said the organization has called for non-opioid pain treatments while also asking state lawmakers for exceptions to restrictions on the length of opioid prescriptions for certain patients.
“We really don’t take direction from them about what we advocate for,” Twillman said of the industry.
The tactics highlighted in Monday’s report are at the heart of lawsuits filed by hundreds of state and local governments against the opioid industry.
The suits allege that drugmakers misled doctors and patients about the risks of opioids by enlisting “front groups” and “key opinion leaders” who oversold the drugs’ benefits and encouraged overprescribing. In the legal claims, the governments seek money and changes to how the industry operates, including an end to the use of outside groups to push their drugs.
U.S. deaths linked to opioids have quadrupled since 2000 to roughly 42,000 in 2016. Although initially driven by prescription drugs, most opioid deaths now involve illicit drugs, including heroin and fentanyl.
Companies and their contributions
Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, contributed the most to the groups, funneling $4.7 million to organizations and physicians from 2012 through last year.
In a statement, the company did not address whether it was trying to influence the positions of the groups it supported, but said it does help organizations “that are interested in helping patients receive appropriate care.” On Friday, Purdue announced it would no longer market OxyContin to doctors.
Insys Therapeutics, a company recently targeted by federal prosecutors, provided more than $3.5 million to interest groups and physicians, according to McCaskill’s report. Last year, the company’s founder was indicted for allegedly offering bribes to doctors to write prescriptions for the company’s spray-based fentanyl medication.
A company spokesman declined to comment.
Insys contributed $2.5 million last year to a U.S. Pain Foundation program to pay for pain drugs for cancer patients.
“The question was: Do we make these people suffer, or do we work with this company that has a terrible name?” said U.S. Pain founder Paul Gileno, explaining why his organization sought the money.
Depomed, Janssen and Mylan contributed $1.4 million, $650,000 and $26,000 in payments, respectively. Janssen and Mylan told the AP they acted responsibly, while calls and emails to Depomed were not returned.
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At #metoo Olympics, Organizers Confront Sexual Abuse
A Catholic nun waits eight hours each day at a folding table, ready for a call but praying nothing has happened to cause the phone to ring.
Her office, the “Gender Equality Support Center,” a tiny trailer tucked between a bathroom and a police post under the ski lift at the Phoenix Snow Park, is a nondescript acknowledgment of the revolution in women’s rights that, outside the Olympic gates, is thundering through the world.
Sungsook Kim — who goes by her religious name, Sister Droste — speaks little English. But to describe her mission, she says the name of the American movement: “me too.”
The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang arrives amid the reckoning that has brought down celebrities, politicians and the entire board of U.S.A Gymnastics. NBC star Matt Lauer was fired for sexual misconduct, and his accuser said the harassment began at the last Winter Olympics, in Sochi.
During the Summer Games in Rio, two athletes were accused of assaulting housekeepers. A horrified world recently watched dozens of women and girls, some of them Olympians, describe in detail how Larry Nassar, the gymnastics doctor, had sexually abused them for decades as layers of elite athletic organizations failed to stop it.
“The whole world just got a front row seat to a master class in trauma,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former Olympic swimmer and activist calling on Olympic committees to do much more to protect vulnerable athletes.
“This is what trauma does. This is what it looks like,” she says. “It stops professional careers, it stops somebody’s education, it stops people from being close to other people, it invades their ability to feel safe.”
A solution begins
So this year, for the first time, there is an organized and advertised contingent of offices designed to help sexual assault victims dotted around the sprawling Olympics venues — from clinics that cater to world-class athletes to Sister Droste’s four trailers, organized by the local community for the army of 14,000 volunteers, most of them young, 70 percent of them female.
“‘(hash)metoo’ allowed us all to see that it’s not the victim’s fault, being sexually harassed. It’s not because of their appearance. It gives courage to the victims,” Droste said through a translator.
So far they have responded to four reports of harassment, Droste said, the details of which she could not describe because of confidentiality rules, but said they were not severe.
“Having equal rights,” the sister said, “men and women, makes it possible for us to accomplish freedom.”
Olympic organizers have finally decided it’s time to get serious. On Sunday, Prince Feisal of Jordan, a board member on the International Olympic Committee, said the Olympic body should pursue the fight against sexual assault and harassment as seriously as it does doping.
“The current scandal begs the question: Why aren’t we doing more?” he said.
The United States Olympic Committee has come under withering criticism in the wake of the Nassar abuse scandal. Aly Raisman, a three-time Olympic gold medalist assaulted by the doctor, publicly rebuked the committee for failing to spot and stop the abuse, and for not reaching out to the victims once it was made known.
This happened in a prosperous country with a powerful Olympic committee and the resources to protect athletes, Feisal said. “Imagine countries and federations who’ve got nothing.”
The International Olympic Committee launched a program last year aimed at coaching athletic organizations around the world how to implement policies to protect vulnerable athletes. In 2016, they hastily put together a “safeguarding” program for the summer games in Rio, in which an officer was available to field allegations of abuse and route them to medical services or law enforcement.
But the plan was approved in June and the Olympics began in July, and they did not have time to effectively spread the word about the program, said Susan Greinig, the safeguarding officer.
As she watched the Nassar saga unfold on television, she remembers feeling a mix of regret and motivation.
“I just thought, if only we could have put this help in place earlier to save these people. But they are an example of future potential victims that we will save, that we will give a voice to,” she said. “Out of every evil there can be some good that comes out of it.”
This year, she has an office in the Olympic villages, and marches around with a pin on her jacket that reads: “Need to talk?” A sign is plastered to her office door says “I see, I hear, I speak.” The posted hotline number for athletes to report sexual abuse routes to her cell phone and she checks it every few seconds.
Three days into the Games, no one had called it yet.
“After these Games, if I didn’t have any calls, you could read two ways into that: You could believe people still didn’t dare, or there just weren’t any incidents that happened during the games,” she said. “Obviously, I prefer to believe the second.”
‘They are listening now’
The odds are that among the women chasing medals on Pyeongchang’s slopes and slides, some have stories to tell. Scientific research shows that the more elite an athlete is, the more likely they are to be victims of assault, Greinig knows, because the higher an athlete climbs the more they have to lose. Abusers know that, and exploit it. The Olympics is a natural home to the kind of power dynamics that foster abuse: coaches to athletes, athletes to maids.
Greinig does not expect the Olympics would be the venue most would choose to blow the whistle on longstanding abuse. Athletes are away from home, focused on winning, surrounded by strangers.
But she hopes their efforts send a signal — to victims that they will be believed and protected, and to abusers that the sporting world is getting serious about the issue, even if it is overdue. She has worked for the IOC for 21 years, with a focus on preventing sexual abuse since 2004.
“It used to be frustrating to make people listen,” she said. “But they are listening now.”
She is compiling a list of committees and federations as they take steps to implement protections for athletes — a sort of shaming technique she hopes forces slow-moving organizations to get on board as the (hash)metoo movement spreads from the United States around the globe.
Sister Droste, 50, has watched women’s rights in her country slowly improve. Women are more educated now, more confident, yet remain “far behind” other countries. Outside the Olympics, she works in a hotline counseling center for victims of sexual violence, so she confronts the inequities every day. When she looks around, she still sees most positions of power in her country filled by men.
But she is encouraged by signs that the (hash)metoo movement landed last month in South Korea.
Seo Ji-hyeon, a 45-year-old prosecutor, went on national television to say she was groped at a funeral by a high-ranking government official. When she reported it, instead of punishing him, her superiors demoted her by sending her away to work in a fishing village. Her story inspired others to come forward in recent days — a lawmaker, a university student, a news reporter.
She hopes any of the thousands of volunteers in her charge know they have a voice now, too. Meanwhile, she runs four centers during the Olympics that are staffed by 29 professional volunteer counselors working in conjunction with medical teams and law enforcement.
“I am praying to God that nothing happens,” Droste says. “But we are here.”
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Burnished in History: How an AP Photo Showed Cost of War
Dallas Brown can still see the bullets coming for him 50 years later, smacking into the dirt at his feet as north Vietnamese soldiers fired on his platoon during an ambush deep in the jungle.
Minutes later, as the deadly firefight wound down, Brown and his fellow soldiers in the 101st Airborne would be immortalized.
In one of the most searing images of the Vietnam War, Brown grimaces as he lies on the ground with a back injury. Not far away, a platoon sergeant raises his arms to the heavens, seemingly seeking divine help.
Landing on the front page of The New York Times, the black and white image by Associated Press freelancer Art Greenspon gave Americans back home an unflinching look at the conditions soldiers endured in what would become the war’s deadliest year. Captured on April 1, 1968, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and appeared prominently in Ken Burns’ recent Vietnam War documentary.
But for the young Americans who have decided to talk about it a half-century later, it was merely a moment in another sweltering day in a Southeast Asian jungle with well-hidden enemies all around. Some of them have spent years putting the experience in perspective.
“When I look at that picture now, I say, ‘If I can survive that, I can survive anything,'” said Tim Wintenburg, who in the photo helps carry a wounded soldier over brush hacked away to create a helicopter landing zone.
Sgt. Maj. Watson Baldwin has his arms raised to guide in a helicopter that would take away the wounded men, including one shot in the leg by the Vietnamese soldier who was firing at Brown. Baldwin died in 2005, according to Fort Campbell officials who recently tracked down soldiers in the photo.
Brown, who lives near Nashville, and Wintenburg, of Indianapolis, met with an Associated Press reporter at Fort Campbell in Kentucky to recount the events surrounding the photo — their first news media interviews ever on the war.
After he received his draft notice in 1965, Wintenburg visited a recruiting office and was told he looked “like Airborne material.”
By early 1968, he was 20 years old and on the front lines.
Brown, who was 18 when he landed in Vietnam, remembers being inspired by “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” He was encouraged to go through airborne training. Both men ended up at Fort Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne.
In the spring of 1968, Brown and Wintenburg’s squad was in the dangerous A Shau Valley on a weekslong “search and destroy” mission, meaning they never took prisoners. Firefights were commonplace.
Brown recalls their battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, telling them before one mission: “You get a body count, you get a prize.”
“To my knowledge we might have taken a handful of prisoners the whole time we was in Vietnam,” Brown said.
The soldiers were hiking up a slippery mountain trail after a monsoon when they paused to eat lunch.
Brown, sitting on his rucksack with his M-16 rifle across his lap, thought he saw a sapling move down a ravine. He didn’t feel any wind. He switched his rifle to full-automatic as an enemy fighter stepped into view.
Known in the platoon as “hillbilly” for his Tennessee drawl and proficiency with a rifle, Brown fired on the first north Vietnamese soldier, killing him and then another behind him. He was reloading when a third enemy fighter fired back.
“You know you see these movies where you see clods of dirt jumping up? I could see them, I mean they was coming right at me and that’s when I got off that rucksack,” Brown said. “I thought, this guy, he means to kill me as sure as the world.”
Brown lunged for cover, and a bullet struck the leg of a soldier who had been behind him. Once the ambush was put down, Brown carried the wounded man up the hill, injuring his back on the way.
Brown grimaced as the photo was snapped. Wintenburg, who had lost his helmet, helped the wounded soldier up to the landing spot. He glanced back toward Greenspon.
Greenspon now lives in Connecticut. He declined to be interviewed, saying the soldiers should always be the focus of any story about the photograph.
Brown and Wintenburg each spent about a year in Vietnam, and both men struggled with anxiety for years. But now, 50 years later, they relish opportunities to reunite with fellow 101st Airborne members.
Brown has a copy of the photo hanging in his home, and he has plenty of stories of how he convinced relatives and friends that he’s in it. A few years ago, Brown’s granddaughter and her boyfriend — now her husband — asked about it. Seeing it through their eyes reminded him of the growing pride he now takes in his piece of history.
Wintenburg shares that pride, though he is perhaps more sanguine about what led him to that moment.
“We didn’t really have a choice back then,” he said. “We did what we had to do.”
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