Month: May 2018

WHO Chief Unveils an Ambitious Agenda to Promote Health for All

Posted on by Cosc

 In an energetic presentation, World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has kicked off the agency’s annual conference in Geneva by vowing to use his position to keep the world safe and to serve the vulnerable by promoting health for all.

The overflow audience at the Assembly enthusiastically marked the World Health Organization’s 70th Birthday. WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed there was much to celebrate. But noted there was little joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo where health workers were risking their lives to stop the Ebola outbreak in that country.

“It is concerning that we now have cases of Ebola in an urban center, but we are much better placed to deal with this outbreak than we were in 2014. I am pleased to say that vaccination is starting as we speak today,” he said.

Tedros said this was only the latest of 50 emergencies in 47 countries and territories to which WHO has responded in the past year. He noted the best way to prevent future disease outbreaks and emergencies was to strengthen health systems everywhere.

“That is why we established a High-Level Commission on Noncommunicable Diseases, to stop the premature and preventable deaths of millions of people,” he said. “It is why we established an initiative on climate change and health in small island developing states … It is why we are working on an aggressive new initiative to jumpstart progress against malaria, an entirely treatable disease that still kills half a million people every single year.”

WHO has rolled out an ambitious new five-year strategic plan, which aims to make a big impact on health. Tedros said the goal is to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all peoples in the world, poor and rich alike.
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NASA Shipper Orbital ATK Launches Space Station Supplies

Posted on by Cosc

One of NASA’s prime shippers, Orbital ATK, launched a fresh load of supplies to the International Space Station from Virginia on Monday.

The Antares rocket blasted off from Wallops Island before dawn, treating early risers along the East Coast to a cosmic light show, at least where skies were clear. The area of visibility stretched from New England to the Carolinas, and as far inland as Pittsburgh and Charlotte.

The 7,400-pound shipment — a third of it research — should reach the orbiting lab Thursday. A flight controller wished the Cygnus capsule “a smooth trip” on the rest of its journey.

“Very exciting morning. Earth’s newest spacecraft launched this morning in a column of fire and roar,” NASA’s space program manager, Kirk Shireman, said from Houston.

The Cygnus holds a student cement-mixing experiment, as well as an atom-cooling chamber from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that uses lasers to get temperatures colder than even space itself. There’s also equipment for a spacewalk next month, as well as computers and groceries for the six station astronauts.

Named for the swan constellation, the Cygnus is making Orbital ATK’s ninth contracted delivery for NASA. SpaceX is NASA’s other supplier.

This particular Cygnus is called the S.S. J.R. Thompson in honor of the former NASA and Orbital ATK executive, who died in November. Launch controllers wore dark suits, white shirts and red ties in memory of Thompson, who dressed that way on the job.

The space station is currently home to three Americans, two Russians and one Japanese. Three of them will return to Earth at the beginning of June, followed by the launch of three new crew members from Kazakhstan.

 

 
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Medical Teams Sent to South India Amid Deadly Virus Outbreak

Posted on by Cosc

A deadly virus has killed at least three people in southern India, officials said Monday, with medical teams dispatched to the area amid reports that up to six other people could have died from the virus and others are ill.

The three fatalities from the Nipah virus were all from the same family, said Kerala state health minister K.K. Shailaja.

There is no vaccine for Nipah, which can cause raging fevers, convulsions and vomiting. The only treatment is supportive care to control complications and keep patients comfortable. It has a mortality rate of up to 75 percent.

Media reports say five more people have died from high fevers in recent days, as well as a nurse who had treated people infected with the virus. But medical workers have not yet confirmed what killed those people. At least eight others sick with Nipah symptoms are being monitored.

People who had been in contact with Nipah victims have been put into isolation, Shailaja said.

Nipah, which was first identified during a late 1990s outbreak in Malaysia, can be spread by fruit bats, pigs and through human-to-human contact.

A team from India’s National Center for Disease Control has been sent to the coastal region of Kerala, where the outbreak occurred.

“We are closely monitoring the situation,” India’s health minister, J.P. Nadda, said in a statement.

 
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Trump Claims New Accord with China on Trade Negotiations

Posted on by Coeco

U.S. President Donald Trump says American farmers will be big beneficiaries of more trade with China.

“Under our potential deal with China, they will purchase from our Great American Farmers practically as much as our Farmers can produce,” Trump said Monday on Twitter.

In another comment, he said China “has agreed to buy massive amounts of ADDITIONAL Farm/Agricultural Products – would be one of the best things to happen to our farmers in many years!”

The U.S. leader said one result of talks with China last week in Washington is barriers to U.S.-Chinese trade and tariffs on each country’s exports will “come down for (the) first time.”

President Trump’s tweets come a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the two nations have agreed to back away from imposing tough new tariffs on each other’s exports, after reaching a deal Saturday for Beijing to buy more American goods to “substantially reduce” the huge trade deficit with the United States.

Mnuchin told Fox News the world’s two biggest economic powers “made very meaningful progress and we agreed on a framework” to resolve trade issues. “So right now we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework,” he said.

China’s state-run news agency Xinhua quoted Vice Premier Liu He, who led Chinese negotiators in trade talks in Washington this past week, as saying, “The two sides reached a consensus, will not fight a trade war, and will stop increasing tariffs on each other.”

China’s state-run news agency Xinhua quoted Vice Premier Liu He, who led Chinese negotiators in trade talks in Washington, as saying, “The two sides reached a consensus, will not fight a trade war, and will stop increasing tariffs on each other.”

Explainer: What is a Trade War?

Negotiations to continue

Liu said the agreement was a “necessity;” but, he added, “At the same time, it must be realized that unfreezing the ice cannot be done in a day; solving the structural problems of the economic and trade relations between the two countries will take time.”

Trump had threatened to impose new tariffs on $150 billion worth of Chinese imports and Beijing had responded that it would do the same on American goods.

Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross would soon go to Beijing to negotiate on how China might buy more American goods to reduce the huge U.S. trade deficit with Beijing, which last year totaled $375 billion. The United States has signaled it wants to trim the deficit by $200 billion annually, but no figure was mentioned in the agreement reached over the weekend.

Philip Levy, senior fellow on the global economy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, tells VOA that while the U.S. and China have for now avoided a tariff war, the outcome of the trade talks remains unclear.

“I think the Trump administration will crow about the fact that they arranged for some additional sales. That really wasn’t the issue. It may have been in their minds, but in terms of what is in the national interest, it wasn’t,” he said.

Levy says the result is a managed trade solution that still does not answer the fundamental question of how a state-dominated economy the size of giant China fits into the global system. 

But Kudlow said there has been a lot of progress.

“You can see where we’re going next. As tariffs come down, the barriers come down, there will be more American exports,” he told ABC television, saying any agreement reached will be “good for American exports and good for Chinese growth.”

ZTE

One contentious point of conflict between the U.S. and China is the fate of ZTE, the giant technology Chinese company that has bought American-made components to build its consumer electronic devices.

The U.S. fined ZTE $1.2 billion last year for violating American bans on trade with Iran and North Korea. ZTE, however, said recently it was shutting down its manufacturing operations because it could no longer buy the American parts after the U.S. imposed a seven-year ban on the sale of the components.

Trump, at the behest of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a week ago “instructed” Commerce Secretary Ross to intervene to save the company and prevent the loss of Chinese jobs.

Even so, Kudlow said, “Do not expect ZTE to get off scot free. Ain’t going to happen.”

Ira Mellman and Kenneth Schwartz contributed to this article.
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From Airlines to Pizza Parlors, EU Businesses Adopt Data Law

Posted on by Cobiz

Lisa Meyer’s hair salon is a cozy place where her mother serves homemade macaroons, children climb on chairs and customers chat above the whirr of hairdryers.

Most of the time Meyer is focused on hairstyles, color trends and keeping up with appointments. But now she’s worried about how the European Union’s new data protection law will affect her business as she contacts customers to seek permission to store their details. Even though she supports the law, Meyer fears it may cut her mailing list by 90 percent as people choose to withhold their data or simply overlook her emails.

 

“It will be difficult to market upcoming events,” she said at her shop, Lisa Hauck Hair & Beauty in London.

 

Businesses from pizza parlors to airlines across the EU’s 28 countries are bombarding customers with emails seeking consent to use personal data as they rush to comply with the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation, which takes effect May 25. While much of the attention has focused on how technology giants like Facebook and Google will comply with the rules, consumers are learning firsthand that they apply to any firm, large or small, that stores personal data.

The new rules , called GDPR for short, are designed to make it easier for EU residents to give and withdraw permission for companies to use personal information, requiring consent forms that are written in simple language and no more than one-page long. Companies that already hold such data have to reach out to customers and ask for permission to retain it. Authorities can fine companies up to 4 percent of annual revenue or 20 million euros ($23.6 million), whichever is higher, for breaching the rules.

As a result, email boxes all over the continent are being swamped with messages from opticians, hotels, greeting card companies and even charities that fear stiff penalties for non-compliance.

 

In an effort to rise above the clutter, some companies are trying to spice up their approach as they try to ensure continued access to information vital to their businesses.

 

The St. Pancras Hotels Group promises that “only nominated people have access to your details, and they are kept really safe, guarded by our very own British Bulldogs. And a rude punk rocker.” Britain’s Channel 4 television offered up a video featuring one of the country’s best-known comedians explaining GDPR and how it will affect viewers. Many are using animations, like this one from like France’s mobile operator Bouygues, to explain the rules.

 

Regulators say the law applies to anyone who collects, uses or stores personal data. That can be a burden for small businesses that are forced to hire outside lawyers or consultants because they don’t have the staff or expertise to deal with the law.

 

The EU’s one-size-fits-all approach is one of the flaws in the law, according to Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy advocate who has formed a non-profit to take action against big companies that deliberately violate the new rules.

 

When the rules were being discussed, industry lobbyists sought to weaken the law by creating uncertainty, and as a result there are no clear guidelines that exempt small companies, Schrems told the BBC recently.

 

“GDPR is a prime example of corporate law gone wrong, because it’s helpful for big companies,” he said. “They have to do all of this anyways and they can use the uncertainty in the law to kind of get around things. But it leaves small companies that don’t … have a law department, or something like that, in a situation with a lot of uncertainty.”

 

Meyer falls under the new rules’ jurisdiction because she keeps data. Like many hair colorists, she keeps a card on each of her clients that notes whether they are allergic to any chemicals used in the dyes. That’s considered personal medical information that must be protected.

 

She took a data protection course to learn about her obligations and avoid legal bills.

 

“I find it actually quite scary how data is being used so carelessly,” Meyer said. “It’s a good wake-up call. It’s made me more aware.”

 

But many others have been caught off guard.

 

A survey by French consultancy Capgemini says that 85 percent of European firms will not have completed their preparations for GDPR this week. It finds that British businesses are the most advanced and Swedish ones have the most work to do still.

 

A survey conducted by Britain’s Federation of Small Businesses estimates that complying with the rules will cost an average of 1,030 pounds ($1,390) per company.

“For a small business, it’s hugely onerous,” said Mark Elliott, who runs the digital marketing company, Sparks4Growth Ltd. He knows other small business owners who are worried about the extra red tape and costs of complying with the law. “I think, quite simply, they left us open to the lions,” he said of regulators.

 

EU officials say GDPR is necessary to catch up with all the technological advances since 1995, when the last comprehensive European rules on data privacy were put in place.

 

As technology advances, data becomes more important. The ability to analyze everything from medical records to the weather holds enormous potential, with suggestions it will make us healthier, improve traffic flows and help scientists learn more about the movements of endangered species, to name but a few items.

 

But with that potential comes concern about privacy.

The threat was vividly illustrated earlier this year when allegations surfaced that a little known campaign consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, misused data from millions of Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election. That touched off a global debate over internet privacy and triggered speculation other jurisdictions will soon follow the EU in tightening data protection laws.

 

That is just fine with Meyer, who thinks society needs a new etiquette for dealing with personal data.

 

“It’s like sitting up straight at the table. It’s like not talking too loud on the bus,” she said. Respect for data “has to get into our culture.”

 
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EU Parliament to Broadcast Zuckerberg Hearing

Posted on by Cobiz

A European Parliament meeting on Tuesday with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be broadcast live, parliamentary officials and the company said on Monday after controversy over plans for a closed-door hearing.

Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who was criticized by legislators and some senior EU officials over arrangements for the discussion on public privacy concerns, tweeted that it was “great news” that Zuckerberg had agreed to a live web stream.

A Facebook spokeswoman said: “We’re looking forward to the meeting and happy for it to be live streamed.”

Zuckerberg, who founded the U.S. social media giant, will be in Europe to defend the company after scandal over its sale of personal data to a British political consultancy which worked on U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign, among others.

He will meet Tajani and leaders of parties in the European Parliament in Brussels from 6:15 p.m. (1615 GMT) on Tuesday.

He is also due to meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday.
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China Puts its Own Spin on Agreement to Reduce Trade Deficit

Posted on by Coeco

China’s state media are playing up what it says is a trade war truce and de-escalation in tensions after negotiators from Washington and Beijing agreed to hold off on tariffs and “substantially reduce” the U.S. trade deficit. However, economists and business leaders argue that there is more to managing the relationship than balancing imports and exports.

State media in China are focusing heavily on the argument that Beijing did not give any ground and adopting their own take on the deficit question — focusing instead the country’s pledge to boost imports from the United States.

An editorial in the China Daily entitled “Sino-US agreement benefits both countries and the world” said that: “For China, ‘significantly increasing’ imports of U.S. goods and services, such as agricultural and energy products, will help meet its development needs and the desires of Chinese consumers.”

The editorial added that, “despite all the pressure, China didn’t “fold” as U.S. President Donald Trump observed. Instead, it stood firm and expressed its willingness to talk.”

An editorial in the party-backed Global Times said that while many may have noted what the joint statement said about reducing the U.S. deficit, that does not mean that the U.S. has won the trade talks. Instead, the piece said it was more a matter of learning to right an imbalance in the two countries’ trade systems.

The editorial called the now averted trade war a “historic period of difficult adjustment,” adding that “as one of the largest trade surplus countries in the world, China has learned from this dispute with the US.”

On news commentary boards, online response to agreement was mixed. Some argued the agreement was a sign that China had won. One commentator said: “America is just a paper tiger, there’s no need to be afraid.” Another: “Washington is weak in the knees.”

Many were pleased to see the two countries cooperating, agreeing that the decision was a “win-win.”

Others were not as certain. “Be careful, Trump will go back on his word,” wrote one person.

Despite state media’s rosy outlook about the agreement and confidence China had won online, huge differences between the two economies remain.

Lu Suiqi, an associate professor in economics at Peking University noted the agreement is just an incremental one and follow through will be key.

He said the focus on talks instead of brinkmanship was a positive development but not a guarantee of smooth sailing ahead.

 

“If any party fails to make good on its implementation, there may be renewed differences. And if these differences are hard to resolve, there’s still the possibility of putting the trade war back on,” Liu said.

Explainer: What is a Trade War?

 

Philip Levy, senior fellow on the global economy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs told VOA the deal is not the worst outcome we could have had, it’s sort of the mediocre outcome many feared.

“This looks like they’re opting for some sort of managed trade solution that I don’t thing is good for either country, but it is better than a tariff war,” Levy said.

Much of what the statement said about longstanding trade differences was vague at best, some analysts note.

The joint statement said both sides agreed to encourage two-way investment and committed to creating a business environment for fair competition.

Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it has been promising and pledging to open up and many are growing tired of the talk. Over the past few years, a shift backwards toward a more central state-led economy has become more prominent.

And even as Chinese President Xi Jinping pledges to open up China’s economy further, he is asserting the party and state’s control and dominance over everything — including business.

Foreign companies’ frustration with rules in China that force the handover of sensitive technology and concerns about intellectual property persist. There is also concern about government subsidies in cutting edge industries and support for state-owned enterprises.

“There are fundamental questions about how a state dominated economy of that size fits into the global trading system. And I don’t think we’ve answered those questions,” said Levy.

Speaking at a gathering of former officials and business leaders in Beijing last week, Jeremie Waterman, the president of the China Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that for businesses, market access is a bigger concern than trade imbalances.

“The focus of U.S Chamber of Commerce and our members really is on resolving the systemic issues, not on near term efforts to address the trade deficit,” Waterman said.

He added that focusing on opening markets and not closing them is best because it would address longstanding concerns about access in China. It could also help with the deficit.

Joyce Huang and Ira Mellman contributed to this report.
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Xinhau: China Launches Satellite to Explore Dark Side of Moon

Posted on by Cobiz

China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Citing the China National Space Administration, Xinhua said the satellite was launched at 5:28 a.m. (2128 GMT Sunday) on a Long March-4C rocket from the Xichang launch center in the southwest of the country.

“The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the moon,” Xinhua quoted Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, as saying.

It said the satellite, known as Queqiao, or Magpie Bridge, will settle in an orbit about 455,000 km (282,555 miles) from Earth and will be the world’s first communication satellite operating there.

China aims to catch up with Russia and the United States to become a major space power by 2030. It is planning to launch construction of its own manned space station next year.

However, while China has insisted its ambitions are purely peaceful, the U.S. Defense Department has accused it of pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets during a crisis. 
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New GPS Technology Offers Help For Old School Transportation

Posted on by Cobiz

Drivers can choose from several GPS apps that can alert them to accidents or slow traffic so they can avoid them. But bike riders – who travel the same roadways as cars – are on their own. So an English university student designed an app to help cyclists report dangerous hot spots to other cyclists, and local governments. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Washington Digests US-China Trade Announcement

Posted on by Coeco

Washington is digesting China’s stated intention to purchase more American goods and reduce the trade imbalance between the two countries. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, last week’s talks between U.S. and Chinese negotiators did not yield specific commitments from Beijing in dollar figures, sparking criticism from some lawmakers in Washington.
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Facebook’s Zuckerberg, EU Lawyers Locked in Negotiations

Posted on by Cobiz

Facebook and European Union officials were locked in high-stakes negotiations Sunday over whether founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear Tuesday before EU lawmakers to discuss the site’s impact on the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Europeans, as well as Facebook’s impact on elections on both sides of the Atlantic and the spreading of fake news.

Being debated is whether the meeting would be held after EU Parliament President Antonio Tajanibe agreed to have it live-streamed on the internet and not held behind closed-doors, as previously agreed.

The leaders of all eight political blocs in the parliament have insisted the format be changed.

Lawmakers say it would be deeply damaging for Zuckerberg, if he pulls out simply because they want him to hold what they say is the equivalent of a “Facebook Live.”

Claude Moraes, chairman of the EU parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs panel, warned Zuckerberg will have to go into greater detail than he did in his testimony before U.S. Senate and Congressional panels last month on the “issues of algorithmic targeting, and political manipulation” and on Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook shared with the British firm the data of millions of Americans and Europeans, which was subsequently used for election campaigning purposes. Facebook did not return calls from VOA asking about whether Zuckerberg’s meeting with EU lawmakers would still go ahead.

“EU governments are absolutely aware that every election now is tainted. We want to get to the heart of this,” said Moraes. EU lawmakers say Zuckerberg’s appearance is all the more important as he has declined to appear before national European parliaments, including Britain’s House of Commons.

Terrorist connections

Zuckerberg is likely also to be pressed on why Facebook is still being used by extremists to connect with each other and to recruit. Much of the focus in recent weeks on Facebook has been about general issues over its management of users’ data, but analysts are warning the social-media site is enabling a deadly form of social networking and isn’t doing enough to disrupt it.

“Facebook’s data management practices have potentially served the networking purposes of terrorists,” said the Counter Extremism Project, nonprofit research group, in a statement.

“CEP’s findings regularly debunk Facebook’s claims of content moderation. This week, a video made by the pro-ISIS al-Taqwa media group was found that includes news footage from attacks in the West and calls for further violence, encouraging the viewer to attack civilians and ‘kill them by any means or method,” according to CEP

CEP researchers say Facebook’s “suggested friends” feature helps extremists connect to each other and is “enabling a deadly form of social networking.” “Worldwide, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, there has been a spike of militant activity on social media channels … Encrypted messaging apps like Facebook-owned WhatsApp are well known mechanisms used by terrorists to communicate, plot and plan attacks, a practice that is tragically continuing,” CEP says.

New rules

Aside from the EU parliament, Zuckerberg has agreed to be interviewed onstage Thursday at a major tech conference in Paris, and is scheduled to have lunch with French president Emmanuel Macron during the week.

His visit comes as the British government is threatening social-media companies with a tax to pay for efforts to counter online crime. According to Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, British ministers have instructed officials to carry out research into a new “social media levy” on internet companies.

Culture Minister Matt Hancock indicated Sunday the British government is beginning to move away from allowing the internet companies to regulate themselves and is ready to impose requirements on them, which if approved by parliament will make Britain the “safest place in the world” to be online.

A new code of practice aimed at confronting social-media bullying and to clear the internet of intimidating or humiliating online content could be included in the legislation, say officials. Other measures being considered include rules that have to be followed by traditional broadcasters that prevent certain ads being targeted at children. Hancock said work with social-media companies to protect users had made progress, but the performance of the industry overall has been mixed, he added.

Hancock said, “Digital technology is overwhelmingly a force for good across the world and we must always champion innovation and change for the better.”

 
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American Inventors You’ve Never Heard Of

Posted on by Cobiz

Edison did it. Eastman did it. And so did Steve Jobs.

They invented products that changed our lives.

But for every well-known inventor there are many other, less recognizable individuals whose innovative products have greatly impacted our world.

Fifteen of those trailblazing men and women — both past and present — were recently honored for their unique contributions in a special ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, which is nestled in a corner of the vast atrium of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office building in Alexandria, Virginia.

Augmented reality

Stan Honey was honored for inventing a graphics systems that makes it easier for television viewers around the world to see key moments during live sporting events… such as sailing, car racing and American football.

“What we do is we superimpose graphic elements like yellow lines into the real world, correctly positioned so that they can reveal something that’s important to a game that is otherwise hard to see,” he said.

The graphics make those yellow lines look like they’re actually on the field, Honey explained, but “they’re keyed underneath the athletes… so it looks like it’s on the grass, but in fact if you were in the stadium of course, it’s not actually there!”

In sports like football, Honey pointed out, the graphics are used “for the ‘first down’ line.” In baseball, to show “where the balls go through the strike zone or miss the strike zone,” and in sailing they’re used “to show who’s ahead, who’s behind, where the laylines are, what the wind direction is.”  

“Any sport that has something that’s really important and hard to see can benefit from graphics that are inserted into the real world,” he added.

WATCH: Julie Taboh’s video report

Lasting beauty

“Curiosity and exploration are the essential starting points of innovation,” says inductee Sumita Mitra. She credits her life-long love of learning to her parents and teachers; “They taught me how to learn… and if you know how to learn, you can learn anything.”

Mitra put her learning skills to full use when she discovered that using nanoparticles can strengthen dental composites while helping teeth maintain their natural look. She was looking for “beauty that lasts,” she said, and decided “nanoparticle technology would be the right ticket to create something to meet these objectives.”

Rini Paiva, who oversees the selection committee at the National Inventors Hall of Fame, noted that more than 600 million restorations take place every year using Mitra’s technology.

Gallery of icons

The annual selection process is very competitive, say Paiva, “because there are a lot of terrific inventors out there and our job is really to look for the ones who have had the most impact on our world.”

Each year, as a select group of inventors are inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, they’re presented with hexagonal-shaped plaques inscribed with their name, invention and patent number. Those simple but symbolic awards become part of a permanent collection that now stands at more than 560.

Five of the 2018 inductees were recognized for their contributions posthumously, their awards accepted by their respective representatives.

Temperature controls

Mary Engle Pennington, who died at the age of 80 in 1952, was a pioneer in the safe preservation, handling, storage and transportation of perishable foods, which impacted the health and well-being of generations of Americans. She was recognized for her numerous accomplishments, including her discovery of a way to refrigerate train cars, allowing perishable foods to be safely moved from one place to another.

In 1895, Warren Johnson introduced the first multi-zone automatic temperature control system commercially feasible for widespread application. The Johnson System of Temperature Regulation was used in commercial buildings, offices, and schools, and also installed in the U.S. Capitol Building, the Smithsonian, the New York Stock Exchange, West Point Military Academy, and the home of Andrew Carnegie. In 2008, it was designated an ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

Johnson’s innovations and the company he co-founded, Johnson Controls, helped launch the multi-billion-dollar building controls industry.

The real deal

Established in 1973 in partnership with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum provides numerous displays and interactive exhibits on patents and the patent process, and the inductees and their patented inventions.  

There’s a model of Thomas Edison’s light bulb, George Eastman’s hand-held cameras, and replicas of Ford Mustangs from 1965 and 2015 — split down the middle to show how the iconic car has changed over 50 years.

Visitors can also learn about trademarks, (think NIKE’s Swoosh logo), how to detect the real from the fake, (counterfeit designer handbags and accessories were hard to tell apart from the genuine article), and match characters, colors, and even sounds, to their respective brands.

Future inventors

Rini Paiva notes that while the museum is dedicated to honoring the greatest innovative minds from the past and present, it is also committed to its educational intiatives through its partnership with 1,300 schools and districts nationwide.

“Our museum does share the stories of the inductees in the National Inventors Hall of Fame, but beyond that it really shows people what we can do through our education programs, really in encouraging young people to pursue STEM fields, and also in the power of intellectual property.”

Education merges with the symbolic presence of some of the world’s most innovative minds whose examples of American ingenuity serve to inform and inspire others who may follow in their paths.
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DRC Launching Ebola Vaccination Campaign to Stop New Outbreak

Posted on by Cosc

The Democratic Republic of Congo plans to launch an Ebola vaccination program Monday to stop another widespread outbreak of the deadly disease.

More than 4,000 doses of vaccine have been shipped to the large port city of Mbandaka, where three cases of the virus have been confirmed since last week and two are suspected. More vaccine is on the way.

Twenty-six Ebola-related deaths have been reported in northwestern DRC since April along with a number of suspected cases.

“Previous outbreaks have demonstrated the importance of a rapid and well-resourced response in order to save lives, but also prevent an exponential increase in the economic cost of a response,” World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Sunday.

The WHO and Congolese health officials are striving to stop outbreak from moving down river from Mbandaka to Kinshasa, where 10 million people live.

President Joseph Kabila and his Cabinet have increased Ebola emergency response funds to more than $4 million.

The latest Ebola outbreak is the ninth in the DRC since the 1970s.

A 2013 outbreak in West Africa lasted more than two years and killed more than 11,300 people. Most of the victims lived in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone with other cases scattered as far away as the United States.

Ebola causes internal bleeding, vomiting, and diarrhea and is spread through direct contact with a victim’s bodily fluids. There is no specific treatment.

An outbreak in a densely populated urban area could be catastrophic, experts say.

 
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Santa Fe Students Cope in Wake of High School Mass Shooting

Posted on by Corts

The day after the mass shooting at a Texas high school in the small town of Santa Fe, the students who survived are living through the painful aftermath. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee spoke to a couple of them who decided that working is the best way to cope.
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Wild Animals in the Halls of the US Capitol

Posted on by Corts

Wild animal sounds were heard recently in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. But these were not the calls of escaped animals. They were the sounds of endangered animals serving as the animal world’s ambassadors to commemorate “Endangered Species Day.” Their presence in the Capitol was intended to encourage legislators to support efforts to protect endangered and rare animals. But as Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, conservation and animal welfare appears to be a touchy subject on Capitol Hill.
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‘Women on Wheels’ in Pakistan’s Punjab Province Aimed at Expanding Workforce

Posted on by Corts

As part of a wave of women’s empowerment programs, the government of Pakistan’s Punjab province is running a campaign called “Women on Wheels”, a 2-year-old program that trains women to ride motorcycles as a way to raise awareness of gender-based violence and street harassment. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on the excitement and independence the campaign has brought to participants.
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3-D Printed Practice Organs Smooth Toddler’s Transplant

Posted on by Cobiz

A sick toddler is thriving thanks to his father’s kidney and a practice surgery using 3-D printed organs. VOA’s Steve Baragona explains.
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South Korea’s LG Group Chairman Dies at 73

Posted on by Coeco

South Korea’s fourth-largest conglomerate, LG Group, said its Chairman Koo Bon-moo did Sunday.

Koo, 73, had been struggling with an illness for a year, LG Group said in a statement.

“Becoming the third chairman of LG at the age of 50 in 1995, Koo established key three businesses — electronics, chemicals and telecommunications — led a global company LG, and contributed to driving (South Korea’s) industrial competitiveness and national economic development,” LG said.

A group official said Koo had been unwell for a year and had undergone surgery. The official declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Before its chairman’s death, LG Group had established a holding company in order to streamline ownership structure and begin the process of succession.

Heir apparent Koo Kwang-mo is from the fourth generation of LG Group’s controlling family. He owns 6 percent of LG Corp and works as a senior official at LG Electronics Inc.

The senior Koo’s funeral will be private at the request of the family, the company said.
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Japan’s ‘Shoplifters’ Takes Palme d’Or at Cannes

Posted on by Corts

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda won the Palme d’Or at Cannes on Saturday for Shoplifters, a critically acclaimed family drama with

unguessable plot twists.

The award, to a director who has won prizes at the festival before, defied speculation that the Palme might go to a female director, with three strong contenders in a year when the Hollywood sex scandal was the talk of the town.

Italian actress Asia Argento, who has accused movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, said there were abusers in the audience who had yet to be outed.

Argento said Weinstein raped her during the Cannes festival in 1997 when she was 21. “This festival was his hunting ground,” Argento said in a speech ahead of the prize announcements.

Weinstein has denied allegations of non-consensual sex. A spokesman for Weinstein had no immediate comment. Argento’s London-based agent, Steve Kenis, was not immediately available to provide further details.

“Even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women,” Argento told the black-tie ceremony. “You know who you are, but, most importantly, we know who

you are, and we are not going to allow you to get away with it any longer.”

After the ceremony, Cate Blanchett, who headed the jury of five women and four men, said: “Women and men alike on the jury would love to see more female directorial voices represented,” adding that it had been “bloody hard” to select a winner.

‘Bowled over’

“But in the end I think we were completely bowled over by how intermeshed the performances were with the directorial vision,” she said of Shoplifters.

The runner-up prize, the Grand Prix, went to Spike Lee’s satire BlacKkKlansman, based on the true story of a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.

Blanchett said the film’s ending, with footage of the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August and President Donald Trump blaming “both sides” for the deadly violence, “blew us out of the cinema.”

A female director, Nadine Labaki from Lebanon, won the Jury Prize — effectively, the bronze medal — for Capharnaum, a realist drama about childhood neglect in the slums of Beirut.

Fifty years after he helped get the Cannes festival canceled in 1968 in solidarity with worker-student protests, 87-year-old Jean-Luc Godard received a Special Palme d’Or for his collage of sounds and images, The Image Book.

Poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski won Best Director for Cold War, a romance that moves from the peasant farms of Poland to Paris jazz clubs and back from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Girl, a Belgian drama about a transgender teenage girl’s quest to become a ballerina, won the Camera d’Or for the best directorial debut for director Lukas Dhont.

Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director who is prevented from leaving Iran and is in theory banned from making films, won Best Screenplay for 3 Faces along with co-writer Nader Saeivar.

The award was given jointly to another film, Happy as Lazzaro, written and directed by Italian Alice Rohrwacher.
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Justify Wins Foggy Preakness, Keeps Triple Crown Bid Alive

Posted on by Corts

Justify emerged from the fog and sloshed his way to another victory Saturday, holding off several hard-charging challengers to win the Preakness Stakes and keep alive the chance for trainer Bob Baffert’s second Triple Crown champion in four years.

On a sloppy track similar to the conditions in the Kentucky Derby, Justify improved to 5-0 and will go to the Belmont Stakes in New York on June 9 looking to do the same thing American Pharoah did for Baffert in 2015.

Justify showed no ill effects from a bruised heel on his left hind foot that was discovered in the aftermath of the Derby, an injury Baffert insisted would not be a problem.

Justify and Good Magic went to the lead early and traded first back and forth throughout the 1-3/16-mile race. Bravazo edged longshot Tenfold for second, and Good Magic was fourth.

“They had their own private match race,” Baffert said. “He’s just a great horse to handle all that pressure and keep on running.”

Baffert tied veteran D. Wayne Lukas’ record with his 14th victory in a Triple Crown race and matched 19th-century trainer R.W. Walden with his seventh Preakness title. Baffert also remained undefeated with Derby winners in the Preakness following Silver Charm, Real Quiet, War Emblem and American Pharoah.

Justify showed more evidence of being the same kind of super horse as American Pharoah, and Baffert has repeatedly drawn comparisons between them. Three years after American Pharoah won at Pimlico in a driving rainstorm, Mike Smith rode Justify through thick fog that engulfed the racetrack.

Smith won the Preakness for just the second time in 17 tries, 25 years after his first aboard Prairie Bayou.

Justify is the 36th horse to win both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

“I’m so happy that we got it done,” Baffert said. 
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US, China Agree to Increased Trade Cooperation

Posted on by Coeco

China and the United States said Saturday that they had reached consensus on steps to substantially reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Beijing.

The announcement followed high-level talks in Washington and U.S. allegations that unfair Chinese trade practices meant the United States was buying far more from China than it sold there.

China pledged to make “meaningful” increases in purchases of services and goods, particularly agricultural and energy items. 

A statement from the White House said Washington would send a team of officials to China to work out details. It mentioned the importance of intellectual property protection and said the two sides would work to achieve a “level playing field in trade.”

New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, said the statement offered too few details.

He said China often denies access to its huge market unless U.S. companies give Chinese firms access to American technical and business secrets. Schumer said short-term purchases of U.S. goods would not make up for that. 
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Worlds Away from Windsor, People Celebrate Harry and Meghan’s Big Day

Posted on by Corts

From the windswept Falkland Islands, battered by the South Atlantic and home to colonies of penguins, to the heat of Kenya, India and Australia, people around the world celebrated Britain’s glittering royal wedding Saturday.

The scenes of pageantry and romance in Windsor, where Prince Harry married his American bride Meghan Markle, were beamed to locations across continents where people dressed up, raised their glasses and enjoyed the fun of a uniquely British event.

“We are very fond of our royal family and it’s lovely to celebrate an event like this,” said Falkland Islander Leona Roberts, a member of the local assembly and one of the organizers of a wedding party in the tiny capital, Port Stanley.

Children dressed up as princes and princesses for the party, where they received special gifts.

Argentina disputes Britain’s sovereignty over the Falklands, which lie 300 miles (500 km) from the Argentine coast, and the two countries fought a war in 1982 over the islands. Many islanders are fiercely patriotic about Britain.

“As a Falkland Islander, I definitely feel a bond with the royal family as a symbol of Britishness. I am a staunch royalist,” said Arlette Betts, at her home on the waterfront in Port Stanley, home to most of the archipelago’s 4,000 inhabitants.

On the other side of the world, in India, a group of Mumbai’s famed dabbawalas, or lunch delivery men, chose a traditional sari dress and kurta jacket as wedding gifts for Harry and his bride, while at the Gurukul School of Art children painted posters of the royal couple and Queen Elizabeth.

In Australia, where the British monarch remains the head of state, some pubs held wedding parties, while a cinema chain screened the wedding live across its network. Viewers dressed in finery, with prizes for the most creative outfits.

At the Royal Hotel in Sydney, guests celebrated with a fancy banquet and burst into a spontaneous chorus of “Stand by Me” when a gospel choir sang the Ben E. King hit during the ceremony in Windsor.

“I just think the monarchy as such brings everyone together,” said retiree Bernie Dennis, one of those attending the banquet. “It’s like a family wedding.”

In Melbourne, fashion designer Nadia Foti attended an “English high tea” where guests wore plastic crowns and enjoyed traditional British treats such as scones and the popular summer drink Pimm’s.

“It’s exciting for the fashion and the spectacular,” said Foti. “It’s a joyous occasion and I’ve made a plum cake to celebrate in classic English style.”

There were lavish celebrations at the Windsor Golf and Country Club on the outskirts of Nairobi, where guests had shelled out 1 million shillings ($10,000) to view the wedding on a giant screen, enjoy a seven-course banquet and fly to Mount Kenya by helicopter for breakfast the following morning.

Trainee lawyer Odette Ndaruzi, who is preparing for her own wedding later in the year, said she wanted to pick up some tips.

“I’m excited to see how the maidens in England are dressed, the jewelry and colors they are wearing,” she said.

The event drew criticism from some Kenyan media, however, due to the hefty price tag in a country where millions live in slums.

But perhaps the greatest interest in the royal wedding, outside of Britain, was in the bride’s home country, the United States.

In New York, revelers headed to Harry’s Bar to watch the ceremony on TV, surrounded by U.S. and British flags. Many posed for photos alongside cardboard cutouts of the bride and groom.

In Los Angeles, a lively crowd at the English-style Cat and Fiddle pub in Hollywood enjoyed pints of beer, royal-themed cocktails and British staples like sausage rolls and scones.

Popular tipples included the “Bloody Harry,” billed as a modern take on the Bloody Mary, but with added ginger as a cheeky nod to the prince’s red hair.
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