Month: May 2018

Harry, Meghan Become Husband, Wife in British Royal Ceremony

Posted on by Corts

The big day finally arrived for Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as the couple married Saturday in the town of Windsor, outside London.

Prince Charles, Prince Harry’s father, walked the bride down the aisle.

The American former actress confirmed earlier that her father would not attend the ceremony, owing to ill health, after days of speculation over whether he would make the journey across the Atlantic.

Throngs of people descended on the historic town as well-wishers tried to catch a glimpse of the royal couple. Thousands of police officers mounted one of the biggest security operations in recent years, paid for by the public — a bill resented by some opposed to the monarchy.

Supporters argued the wedding was likely to attract big spending by visitors and those watching in bars and big screens across the country.

The ceremony began at midday in the stunning 14th century Saint George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle, where Prince Harry was baptized in 1984.

In Photos: The Royal Wedding

Some 600 guests were invited, mainly those who have a direct relationship with the couple.

In addition, more than 2,500 members of the public were invited onto the castle grounds — the prime spot to watch the guests come and go.

“To me, that was surprising, and it was very touching. Because for as much as they don’t like the media intrusion, the royals, they’ve invited media in, they’ve invited the public in, and they’re wanting to share their special day,” said Thomas Mace-Archer-Mills of the British Monarchist Society and Foundation.

Four members of the Mumbai city-based charity the Myna Mahila Foundation were invited. The non-governmental organization provides sanitary products in the slums of the Indian capital and was visited by Meghan Markle last year. It’s one of seven charities that the couple have asked guests to make donations to instead of providing wedding gifts. The charity’s founder, Myne Mahila, says the invitation came as a huge shock.

“We are representing not just ‘Myna,’ but also the women across the urban slums in the city and India as well. I think there is a lot on the plate and a lot of pressure,” she said.

More than 100,000 people were expected to line the streets of Windsor. Many arrived early to bag the best spots for a look. Donna Werner is a self-confessed royal “superfan” who flew over from her home in the U.S. state of Connecticut and camped out for four nights on a Windsor sidewalk.

In Photos: Crowds, Stars Gather for Royal Wedding

“Every little girl has read fairy tales from her childhood on by her mother and she always dreams of becoming a princess and living in a castle. And I mean, this is it. This is a real-life fairy tale,” she said.

In a break with U.S. tradition, Meghan Markle did not have a maid of honor. All of the six bridesmaids and four page boys were children of friends of the couple. Harry’s nephew, Prince George, was a pageboy, and niece, Princess Charlotte, a bridesmaid.  

In the kitchens of Windsor Castle, 30 chefs prepared a banquet for the reception guests.

“The couple … tasted everything, they’ve been involved in every detail,” says royal head chef Mark Flanagan.

That could mean some stateside surprises among the British fare.

“Are we going to see hot dogs and these sorts of American things? I’m sure there will be a nod to the American culture where food is concerned,” said Mace-Archer-Mills.

As well as the home crowds, millions were expected to watch on television around the globe, with the promise of British pomp mixed with plenty of Hollywood glamour.

Fern Robinson contributed to this report.
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Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Wed

Posted on by Corts

Millions around the world watch the union of British royalty and Hollywood glamour at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle in Windsor, near London, England.
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Congo: 3 New Ebola Cases Confirmed in City

Posted on by Cosc

Three new cases of the often lethal Ebola virus have been confirmed in a city of more than 1 million people, Congo’s health minister announced, as the spread of the hemorrhagic fever in an urban area raised alarm.

The statement late Friday said the confirmed cases are in Mbandaka city, where a single case was confirmed earlier in the week.

There are now 17 confirmed Ebola cases in this outbreak, including one death, plus 21 probable cases and five suspected ones.

The World Health Organization on Friday decided not to declare the outbreak a global health emergency, but it called the risk of spread within Congo “very high” and warned nine neighboring countries that the risk to them was high. WHO said there should be no international travel or trade restrictions.

The outbreak is a test of a new experimental Ebola vaccine that proved effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago. Vaccinations are expected to start early in the week, with more than 4,000 doses already in Congo and more on the way.

A major challenge will be keeping the vaccines cold in the vast, impoverished country where infrastructure is poor.

While Congo has contained several Ebola outbreaks in the past, all of them were based in remote rural areas. The virus has twice made it to Congo’s capital of 10 million people, Kinshasa, in the past but was rapidly stopped.

Health officials are trying to track down more than 500 people who have been in contact with those feared infected, a task that became more urgent with the spread to Mbandaka, which lies on the Congo River, a busy traffic corridor, and is an hour’s flight from the capital.

The outbreak was declared more than a week ago in Congo’s remote northwest. Its spread has some Congolese worried.

“Even if it’s not happening here yet I have to reduce contact with people. May God protect us in any case,” Grace Ekofo, a 23-year-old student in Kinshasa, told The Associated Press.

A teacher in Mbandaka, 53-year-old Jean Mopono, said they were trying to implement preventative measures by teaching students not to greet each other by shaking hands or kissing.

“We pray that this epidemic does not take place here,” Mopono said.

The WHO, which was accused of bungling its response to the West Africa outbreak, the biggest Ebola outbreak in history with more than 11,000 deaths, appears to be moving swiftly to contain this latest epidemic, experts said.

There is “strong reason to believe this situation can be brought under control,” said Dr. Robert Steffen, who chaired the WHO expert meeting on Friday. But without a vigorous response, “the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly.”

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys. It is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
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Progress in Struggle to Save Animals From Extinction

Posted on by Cosc

Conservationists around the world are making great strides in rescuing animal species from the brink of extinction. Despite the recent death of the last male white rhinoceros, there is hope that science can bring the species back. In Europe, scientists are raising bison almost a century after they vanished from the wild, and California’s population of sea otters has rebounded from only 50 specimens in the 1930s. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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India, EU Give WTO Lists of US Goods for Potential Tariff Retaliation

Posted on by Coeco

India and the European Union have given the World Trade Organization lists of the U.S. products that could incur high tariffs in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump’s global tariffs on steel and aluminum, WTO filings showed Friday.

The EU said Trump’s steel tariffs could cost $1.5 billion and aluminum tariffs a further $100 million, and listed rice, cranberries, bourbon, corn, peanut butter, and steel products among the U.S. goods that it might target for retaliation.

India said it was facing additional U.S. tariffs of $31 million on aluminum and $134 million on steel, and listed U.S. exports of soya oil, palmolein and cashew nuts among its potential targets for retaliatory tariffs.

One trade official described the lists of retaliatory tariffs as “loading a gun,” making it plain to U.S. exporters that pain might be on the way.

India said its tariffs would come into effect by June 21, unless and until the United States removed its tariffs.

The EU said some retaliation could be applied from June 20.

Trump’s tariffs, 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, came into force in March to strong opposition as many see the measures as unjustified and populist.

There were also objections that the tariffs would have little impact on China, widely seen to be the cause of oversupply in the market.

Trump justified the tariffs by claiming they were for U.S. national security, in a bid to protect them from any legal challenge at the WTO, causing further controversy.

Rather than challenging the U.S. tariffs directly, the EU and India, like China, South Korea and Russia, told the United States that they regarded Trump’s tariffs as “safeguards” under the WTO rules, which means U.S. trading partners are entitled to compensation for loss of trade.

The United States disagrees.
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Rise of Chinese Middle Class Fuels Interest in Craft Beers

Posted on by Corts

“Panda Beer,” “Little General,” “Flying Fist IPA,” and “Mandarin Wheat” are among the offerings on tap at a craft beer exhibition this week in Shanghai dedicated to expanding the palette of Chinese consumers and promoting sales of high-end brews.

The 2018 Craft Beer of China Exhibition features breweries like Rasenburg Beer, Myth Monkey Brewing, Lazy Taps, Goose Island and Boxing Cat Brewery that are sharing tips on the latest technology and sales trends as Chinese shift from legacy brews to more experimental, refined and expensive flavors.

From taps at the expo flowed creative mixes of flavors and traditions, a swirling cocktail of Chinese ingredients, barley, hops and spices from around the world.

“After drinking it [craft beer], it feels much better than the domestic industry beer, and then you just can’t leave it,” said Yu Shiqi, a 40-year old craft beer consumer at the expo who dreams of brewing his own.

There’s money to be made in China, which drinks a quarter of all beer worldwide, and small-batch brewers and giant multinationals are cashing in. Though craft beer is far from upstaging local beer behemoths like Tsingtao that dominate the $28 billion national beer market, it is rising in popularity as small breweries open up in China’s major metropolitan areas like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Craft beers are typically more expensive than mass-market, low-alcohol content brews like Budweiser and China’s Yanjing. But as China’s middle class grows, so too does its tastes for finer products.

A couple of years ago, craft beer made up only 0.3 percent of total beer consumption. It has since risen to about 5 percent, said Darren Guo, one of the exhibition’s organizers, who expect to see 30 percent growth in the craft beer market every year until 2020. “Beer culture is pretty much on the beginning or starting level.”

Laurel Liu, sales director of Beijing-based Jing-A brewery, says she gets calls from small towns asking how to start up a craft brewery.

“You don’t even expect them to have craft beer there but now they do,” Liu said. “I’m really surprised and happy to see now that craft beer in China is a thing and it’s really easier to access these products now.”

More money was spent on beer in China than the U.S. in 2017, according to beer industry research firm Drink Sector. Craft breweries were “rapidly increasing,” although foreign imports continue to dominate the high-end beer sector.

The Belgian-Brazilian firm Anheuser-Busch InBev, the makers of Budweiser, has invested heavily in China, building breweries and acquiring craft breweries like Shanghai’s Boxing Cat. Anheuser Busch also owns Goose Island, which is based in Chicago.

Michael Jordan, brew-master at Boxing Cat, and his staff experiment with flavors like egg tart, green tea, peppercorn, chai, kiwi, hibiscus and sweet potato.

Jordan chalks up some of the success of craft brewing in China to President Xi Jinping sharing a pint of IPA, or Indian Pale Ale, in 2015 in the UK with then-prime minister David Cameron.

“The ‘Xi phenomenon’ really kind of opened people’s eyes to IPA,” he said.
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Canada’s Trudeau Talks Tech at MIT Gathering

Posted on by Cobiz

Canadian computer scientists helped pioneer the field of artificial intelligence before it was a buzzword, and now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hoping to capitalize on their intellectual lead.

Trudeau has become a kind of marketer-in-chief for Canada’s tech economy ambitions, accurately explaining the basics of machine learning as he promotes a national plan he says will “secure Canada’s foothold in AI research and training.”

“Tech giants have taken notice, and are setting up offices in Canada, hiring Canadian experts, and investing time and money into applications that could be as transformative as the internet itself,” Trudeau wrote in a guest editorial published this week in the Boston Globe.

Trudeau has been taking that message on the road and is likely to emphasize it again Friday when he addresses a gathering of tech entrepreneurs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His visit to the MIT campus headlines an annual meeting of the school’s Solve initiative, which connects innovators with corporate, government and academic resources to help them tackle world problems.

Trudeau isn’t the only head of state talking up AI — France’s Emmanuel Macron and China’s Xi Jinping are among the others — but his deep-in-the-weeds approach has caught U.S. tech companies’ attention in contrast to President Donald Trump, whose administration “got off to a little bit of a slow start” in expressing interest, said Erik Brynjolfsson, an MIT professor who directs the school’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

“AI is the most important technology for the next decade or two,” said Brynjolfsson, who attended the Trump White House’s first AI summit last week. “It’s going to completely transform the economy and our society in lots of ways. It’s a huge mistake for countries’ leaders not to take it seriously.”

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Uber and Samsung have all opened AI research hubs centered in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton, drawn in large part by decades of academic research into “deep learning” algorithms that helped pave the way for today’s digital voice assistants, self-driving technology and photo-tagging services that can recognize a friend’s face.

Canada’s reputation as a welcoming place for immigrants is also helping, as is Trudeau’s enthusiasm about the AI economy, Brynjolfsson said.

“When a national leader says AI is a priority, I think you get more creative, smart young people who will be taking it seriously,” he said.

AI is an “easy and recognizable shorthand” for the digital economy Trudeau hopes to foster, said Luke Stark, a Dartmouth College sociologist from Canada who studies the history and philosophy of technology.

A former schoolteacher, Trudeau is “smart enough to know when to learn something so he can talk about it intelligently in a way that helps educate people,” Stark said.

Stark said that also allows Trudeau to “push into the background some of the less high-tech, less fashionable elements of the Canadian economy,” such as the extraction of oil and gas.

The visit comes amid talks between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico over whether to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement. Negotiators have now gone past an informal Thursday deadline set by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, increasing the likelihood that talks could drag into 2019.
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Huge Security Operation Under Way as Britain Prepares For Royal Wedding

Posted on by Corts

The big day is nearly here for Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as the couple are to wed Saturday in the town of Windsor, just outside London. The former American actress confirmed this week that her father will not attend the ceremony because of ill health. Huge crowds are expected as well-wishers try to catch a glimpse of the royal couple and, as Henry Ridgwell reports, from the security operation, to the catering, to the flowers, the day marks the culmination of months of preparation.
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China Ends US Sorghum Anti-Dumping Probe, OKs Toshiba Deal

Posted on by Coeco

China has dropped an anti-dumping investigation and given long awaited approval for the sale of Toshiba’s memory chip business, in gestures that could suggest a thaw between Beijing and the U.S. as trade talks resumed in Washington.

The Commerce Ministry said Friday ended the probe into imported U.S. sorghum because it’s not in the public interest. A day earlier, Beijing cleared the way for a group led by U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital to buy Toshiba Corp.’s computer memory chip business.

The moves signaled Beijing’s willingness to make a deal with Washington amid talks between senior U.S. and Chinese officials aimed at averting a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, analysts say.

“I think China is willing to make concessions,” said Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS. “The Chinese stance has been very clear, that China wants to mute any trade dispute. But of course it doesn’t mean China would heed to all the demands the U.S. would place.”

A White House official said China had offered to work to cut the trade deficit with the U.S. by $200 billion, while stressing that the details remained unclear. But China’s Foreign Ministry denied it.

“It’s untrue,” said spokesman Lu Kang. “The relevant discussion is still underway, and it is constructive.”

The Commerce Ministry said it was ending the anti-dumping probe and a parallel anti-subsidy investigation because they would have raised costs for consumers.

The U.S. is China’s biggest supplier of sorghum, accounting for more than 90 percent of total imports. China’s investigation, launched in February, had come as a warning shot to American farmers, many of whom support the Trump administration yet depend heavily on trade. They feared they would lose their largest export market for the crop, which is used primarily for animal feed and liquor.

The Commerce Ministry said that, “Anti-dumping and countervailing measures against imported sorghum originating in the United States would affect the cost of living of a majority of consumers and would not be in the public interest,” according to a notice posted on its website.

It said it had received many reports that the investigation would result in higher costs for the livestock industry, adding that many domestic pig farmers were facing hardship because of declining pork prices.

China’s U.S. sorghum imports surged from 317,000 metric tons in 2013 to 4.76 million tons last year while prices fell by about a third in the same period.

The ministry said any deposits for the preliminary anti-dumping tariffs of 178.6 percent, which took effect on April 18, would be returned in full.

The announcement came after President Donald Trump met at the White House with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, the leader of China’s delegation for talks with a U.S. team headed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Trump had told reporters earlier that he had doubts about the potential for an agreement. He also raised fresh uncertainty about resolving a case involving Chinese tech company ZTE, which was hit with a crippling seven-year ban on buying from U.S. suppliers, forcing it to halt major operations. Trump said the company “did very bad things” to the U.S. economy and would be a “small component of the overall deal.”

Song Lifang, an economics professor and trade expert at Renmin University, said haggling is currently underway.

“It’s time for both to present their demands, but it’s also a time to exhibit their bargaining chips,” said Song, adding that approval for the Toshiba deal, worth $18 billion, was “an apparent sign of thaw” amid a U.S. investigation into Chinese trade practices requiring U.S. companies to turn over their technology in exchange for access to China’s market.

The Trump administration has proposed tariffs on up to $150 billion in Chinese products to punish Beijing while China has responded by targeting $50 billion in U.S. imports. Neither country has yet imposed tariffs.
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EU Mulls Direct Iran Central Bank Transfers to Beat US Sanctions

Posted on by Coeco

The European Commission is proposing that EU governments make direct money transfers to Iran’s central bank to avoid U.S. penalties, an EU official said, in what would be the most forthright challenge to Washington’s newly reimposed sanctions.

The step, which would seek to bypass the U.S. financial system, would allow European companies to repay Iran for oil exports and repatriate Iranian funds in Europe, a senior EU official said, although the details were still to be worked out.

The European Union, once Iran’s biggest oil importer, is determined to save the nuclear accord, that U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned on May 8, by keeping money flowing to Tehran as long as the Islamic Republic complies with the 2015 deal to prevent it from developing an atomic weapon.

“Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has proposed this to member states. We now need to work out how we can facilitate oil payments and repatriate Iranian funds in the European Union to Iran’s central bank,” said the EU official, who is directly involved in the discussions.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Tuesday more sanctions on officials of the Iranian central bank, including Governor Valiollah Seif,. But the EU official said the bloc believes that does not sanction the central bank itself.

European Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete will discuss the idea with Iranian officials in Tehran during his trip this weekend, the EU official said. Then it will be up to EU governments to take a final decision.

EU leaders in Sofia this week committed to uphold Europe’s side of the 2015 nuclear deal, which offers sanctions relief in return for Tehran shutting down its capacity, under strict surveillance by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, to stockpile enriched uranium for a possible atomic bomb.

Sanctions-blocking law

Other measures included renewing a sanctions-blocking measure to protect European businesses in Iran.

The Commission said in a statement it had “launched the formal process to activate the Blocking Statute by updating the list of U.S. sanctions on Iran falling within its scope,” referring to an EU regulation from 1996.

The EU’s blocking statute bans any EU company from complying with U.S. sanctions and does not recognize any court rulings that enforce American penalties. It was developed when the United States tried to penalize foreign companies trading with Cuba in the 1990s, but has never been formally implemented.

EU officials say they are revamping the blocking statute to protect EU companies against U.S. Iran-related sanctions, after the expiry of 90- and 180-day wind-down periods that allow companies to quit the country and avoid fines.

A second EU official said the EU sanctions-blocking regulation would come into force on August 5, a day before U.S.

sanctions take effect, unless the European Parliament and EU governments formally rejected it.

“This has a strong signaling value, it can be very useful to companies but it is ultimately a business decision for each company to make [on whether to continue to invest in Iran],” the official said.

Once Iran’s top trading partner, the EU has sought to pour billions of euros into the Islamic Republic since the bloc, along with the United Nations and United States, lifted blanket economic sanctions in 2016 that had hurt the Iranian economy.

Iran’s exports of mainly fuel and other energy products to the EU in 2016 jumped 344 percent to 5.5 billion euros ($6.58 billion) compared with the previous year.

EU investment in Iran, mainly from Germany, France and Italy, has jumped to more than 20 billion euros since 2016, in projects ranging from aerospace to energy.

Other measures proposed by the Commission, the EU executive, include urging EU governments to start the legal process of allowing the European Investment Bank to lend to EU projects in Iran.

Under that plan, the bank could guarantee such projects through the EU’s common budget, picking up part of the bill should they fail or collapse. The measure aims to encourage companies to invest.
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WHO: Ebola in Congo Not Yet Global Health Emergency

Posted on by Cosc

Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak does not yet warrant being declared a global health emergency, the World Health Organization announced Friday, as health officials rushed to contain the often deadly virus that has spread to a city of more than 1 million.

The vast, impoverished country now has 14 confirmed Ebola cases, with dozens of others probable or suspected.

WHO officials, speaking after an experts’ meeting on the outbreak, said vaccinations could begin as early as Sunday in a key test of an experimental vaccine.

The health agency called the risk to the public in Congo “very high” and the regional risk high, with the global risk low. The Republic of Congo and Central African Republic are nearby and are among nine neighboring countries alerted. WHO said there should be no international travel or trade restrictions.

Dr. Robert Steffen, who chaired the expert meeting, said there was “strong reason to believe this situation can be brought under control.”

He noted the almost immediate response by WHO and partners after Ebola was announced in Congo last week. Without a vigorous response, “the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly,” he added. If the outbreak spreads internationally, the expert committee would reconvene to reconsider its assessment of the epidemic.

Congo has contained several past Ebola outbreaks but the spread of the hemorrhagic fever to an urban area poses a major challenge. The city of Mbandaka, which has one confirmed Ebola case, is an hour’s flight from the capital, Kinshasa, and is located on the Congo River, a busy travel corridor.

For a health crisis to constitute a global health emergency it must meet three criteria stipulated by WHO: It must threaten other countries via the international spread of disease, it must be a “serious, unusual or unexpected” situation, and it may require immediate international action for containment.

‘Major, major game-changer’

Ebola has twice made it to Congo’s capital in the past and was rapidly stopped. Congo has had the most Ebola outbreaks of any country, and Dr. David Heymann, a former WHO director who has led numerous responses to Ebola, said authorities there have considerable expertise in halting the lethal virus.

The Ebola vaccine proved highly effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago, although the vaccine was used long after the epidemic had peaked. More than 4,000 doses have arrived in Congo this week, with more on the way, and vaccinations are expected to start next week. One challenge will be keeping the vaccine cold in a region with poor infrastructure and patchy electricity.

Just one Ebola death in the current outbreak has been confirmed so far. Congo’s health ministry late Thursday said the total number of cases is 45, including 10 suspected and 21 probable ones.

The health ministry said two new deaths have been tied to the cases, including one in a suburb of Mbandaka. The other was in Bikoro, the rural area where the outbreak was announced last week. It is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Mbandaka.

“This is a major, major game-changer in the outbreak,” Dr. Peter Salama, WHO’s emergency response chief, warned Thursday after the first urban case was announced. “Urban Ebola can result in an exponential increase in cases in a way that rural Ebola struggles to do.”

Until now, the outbreak had been confined to remote rural areas, where Ebola, which is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected, travels more slowly.

Health teams

Doctors Without Borders said 514 people believed to have been in contact with infected people were being monitored. WHO said it was deploying about 30 more experts to Mbandaka.

Amid fears of the outbreak spreading to neighboring countries, the U.N. migration agency said Friday it would support the deployment of Congolese health teams to 16 entry points along the nearby border with the Republic of Congo for infection control and prevention.

The U.N. children’s agency said it was mobilizing hundreds of community workers to raise awareness on protection against the disease.

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
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Inventors Honored in Hall of Fame Special Ceremony

Posted on by Cobiz

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Apple founder Steve Jobs are some of America’s best known inventors. But there are other, less recognizable individuals whose innovative products have greatly impacted our world. More than a dozen of them were recently honored for their unique contributions in a special ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum in Alexandria, Virginia. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Researchers Take Two-Pronged Approach to Testing for Zika

Posted on by Cosc

Researchers at New York University College of Dentistry are taking a new approach to quickly identifying Zika and other infections. As Faith Lapidus reports, unlike currently available tests, the approach does not involve drawing blood.
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In the Name of Safety: NYC Tradition – Blessing of the Bikes

Posted on by Cobiz

For almost 20 years, cyclists have gathered in New York’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for what might seem like an unusual ceremony the blessing of the bikes. Held the day before the city’s Five Boro Bike Tour, the ceremony is meant to bring luck and safety to those who travel around the Big Apple on a bike. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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Silicon Valley Startup Peddles 3-D-printed Bike

Posted on by Cobiz

After a career that included helping Alphabet’s Google build out data centers and speeding packages for Amazon.com to customers, Jim Miller is doing what many Silicon Valley executives do after stints at big companies: finding more time to ride his bike.

But this bike is a little different. Arevo, a startup with backing from the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency and where Miller recently took the helm, has produced what it says is the world’s first carbon fiber bicycle with 3-D-printed frame.

Arevo is using the bike to demonstrate its design software and printing technology, which it hopes to use to produce parts for bicycles, aircraft, space vehicles and other applications where designers prize the strength and lightness of so-called “composite” carbon fiber parts but are put off by the high-cost and labor-intensive process of making them.

Arevo on Thursday raised $12.5 million in venture funding from a unit of Japan’s Asahi Glass, Sumitomo’s Sumitomo Corp. of the Americas and Leslie Ventures. Previously, the company raised $7 million from Khosla Ventures, which also took part in Thursday’s funding, and an undisclosed sum from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital fund backed by the CIA.

Traditional carbon fiber bikes are expensive because workers lay individual layers of carbon fiber impregnated with resin around a mold of the frame by hand. The frame then gets baked in an oven to melt the resin and bind the carbon fiber sheets together.

Arevo’s technology uses a “deposition head” mounted on a robotic arm to print out the three-dimensional shape of the bicycle frame. The head lays down strands of carbon fiber and melts a thermoplastic material to bind the strands, all in one step.

The process involves almost no human labor, allowing Arevo to build bicycle frames for $300 in costs, even in pricey Silicon Valley.

“We’re right in line with what it costs to build a bicycle frame in Asia,” Miller said. “Because the labor costs are so much lower, we can re-shore the manufacturing of composites.”

While Miller said Arevo is in talks with several bike manufacturers, the company eventually hopes to supply aerospace parts. Arevo’s printing head could run along rails to print larger parts and would avoid the need to build huge ovens to bake them in.

“We can print as big as you want – the fuselage of an aircraft, the wing of an aircraft,” Miller said.
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Cryptocurrency May Fast-Track Solar Power in Moldova

Posted on by Cobiz

Moldova, a small, landlocked country in eastern Europe, imports three-quarters of its energy and has seen its energy costs rise by more than half in the past five years.

But that could soon change, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which this year will launch an innovative effort to power a Moldovan university with cryptocurrency-funded solar energy.

The initiative with Sun Exchange, a South African solar power marketplace, will allow people to buy solar cells using SolarCoin, a cryptocurrency launched by blockchain start-up ElectriCChain, and then lease them to the Technical University of Moldova, one of the country’s largest universities.

Crowd-fund project

The idea is to find new sources of finance to “help buildings go green overnight,” in this instance with rooftop solar panels, said Dumitru Vasilescu, a program manager with UNDP in Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries.

“One of the biggest obstacles to countries investing in renewable energy is a lack of finance, as you often have to wait 10 to 15 years before you get a return on your investment,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But the university will get a full 1 megawatt of energy installed in the summer, he said, as a result of the crowd-funding effort.

Owners of the solar cells, in turn, will receive SolarCoins as soon as the university produces energy, earning interest of about 4 percent on their investment, Vasilescu added.

Moldova currently has more than 10,000 square meters of unused rooftop space on public buildings that could be potentially used for such efforts, he said.

Key technology

Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinning the virtual currency bitcoin, is a digital shared record of transactions maintained by a network of computers on the internet, without the need of a centralized authority.

It has become a key technology in both the public and private sectors, given its ability to record and keep track of assets or transactions without the need for middlemen.

Research firm IDC estimates global investment in blockchain will more than double in 2018 to $2.1 billion from $945 million last year, most of it for banking. IDC expects “strong, double-digit growth” in the energy space between 2016 and 2021.

Kevin Treco, an associate director at the Carbon Trust, an environmental consultancy, said blockchain-based technologies could significantly change energy use in countries striving to decentralize power and boost renewable sources.

Renewable energy fast

In Moldova, for example, cryptocurrency-funded renewable energy could reduce the country’s dependence on energy imports such as oil and gas from Russia, Vasilescu said.

Darius Nassiry, a senior research associate at the Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank, predicted that most of the growth in cryptocurrency-funded energy would occur in the developing world.

“They have faster-growing energy needs — and a more accommodating legal and regulatory environment towards such innovations,” he said by email.

But a lack of understanding on how blockchain applications such as cryptocurrencies work could slow their growth in the energy sector, he added.

For Abraham Cambridge, the founder and CEO of Sun Exchange, the solar currency exchange system “has all the right incentives in place.”

“It reduces the costs of going solar dramatically for the end user and makes it easy for anyone in the world to own a solar cell anywhere in the world and, from it, make a steady source of sunlight-powered income,” he said in a statement.

Blockchain is also being used in the energy sector to facilitate carbon trading, with U.S. computing giant IBM announcing this week that it will partner with Veridium Labs, an environmental tech startup, to turn carbon credits into digital tokens.

If the Moldovan solar currency pilot is successful, UNDP plans to replicate it in neighboring countries, said Vasilescu, adding that it could “revolutionize the renewable energy market for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.”
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Switzerland Seeks a Study of Starting Its Own Cryptocurrency

Posted on by Coeco

Switzerland’s government has requested a report into the risks and opportunities of launching its own cryptocurrency, a so-called “e-franc” that would use technology similar to privately launched coins like bitcoin but have backing of the state.

The lower house of the Swiss parliament must now decide whether to back the Federal Council’s request for a study into the subject, which has been discussed in Sweden.

Cryptocurrencies have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and international governing bodies coming to grips with the technology’s rapid ascent. The coins use encryption and a blockchain transaction database designed to enable anonymous transactions that do not require centralized processing.

Other countries interested

Several countries have begun evaluating the viability of introducing their own state-backed digital currency, with Sweden’s Riksbank saying an e-crown might help counteract issues arising from declining cash use and help make payment systems more robust.

But existing digital currencies such as bitcoin have been hampered by extreme volatility, high-profile hacks and doubts about long-term viability. Venezuela has issued a state-backed coin, but major developed economies have so far steered clear.

The Bank of International Settlement in March warned central banks to think hard about potential risks and spillovers before issuing their own cryptocurrencies.

Swiss bank cautious

In Switzerland, if the proposal is approved, a study will be produced by the Swiss finance ministry. No timing has been given on when it would be published should the go-ahead be given.

Swiss lawmaker Cedric Wermuth, vice president of the Social Democratic Party, called for the study. In its response Thursday, the Swiss government, or Federal Council, backed the proposal to look into it, although it said there were hurdles.

“The Federal Council is aware of the major challenges, both legal and monetary, which would be accompanied by the use of an e-franc,” it said. “It asks that the proposal be adopted to examine the risks and opportunities of an e-franc and to clarify the legal, economic and financial aspects of the e-franc.”

The Swiss National Bank has so far been cautious on the issue. Private-sector digital currencies were better and less risky than any version that might be offered by a central bank, SNB governor Andrea Maechler said last month.
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New US Sanctions Hit at Hezbollah-Linked Financier, Companies

Posted on by Coeco

The United States sought on Thursday to further choke off funding sources for Iranian-backed Hezbollah, imposing sanctions on its representative to Iran, as well as a major financier and his five companies in Europe, West Africa and the Middle East.

The U.S. Treasury said Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi was a Hezbollah financier operating through Belgium, Lebanon and Iraq, and was a close associate of Gambia’s former president Yahya Jammeh, who is accused of acquiring vast wealth during his decades-long rule.

It also imposed sanctions on Hezbollah’s representative to Iran, Abdallah Safi Al-Din, who it said served as an interlocutor between Hezbollah and Iran on financial issues.

The department said it had blacklisted Belgian energy services conglomerate Global Trading Group; Gambia-based petroleum company Euro African Group; and Lebanon-based Africa Middle East Investment Holding, Premier Investment Group SAL Offshore and import-export group Car Escort Services. All were designated because they are owned or controlled by Bazzi, the Treasury said.

“The savage and depraved acts of one of Hezbollah’s most prominent financiers cannot be tolerated,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

“This administration will expose and disrupt Hezbollah and Iranian terror networks at every turn, including those with ties to the Central Bank of Iran,” he said.

The sanctions are among a slew of fresh measures aimed at Iran and Hezbollah since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last week.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to outline in a speech in Washington on Monday plans by the United States to build a coalition to look closer at what it sees as Iran’s “destabilizing activities,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters at the State Department.

In one of the biggest moves this week aimed at clamping down on Iran’s overseas operations, the Treasury sanctioned Iran’s central bank governor, Valiollah Seif.

On Wednesday, the United States, backed by Gulf States, imposed additional sanctions on Hezbollah’s top two leaders, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Naim Qassem.
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Afghanistan Attacks Threaten Health System Gains

Posted on by Cosc

Deteriorating security is forcing Afghanistan to spend more money on trauma care, rather than investing in women and children’s health, its health minister said Thursday.

The government has come under increasing pressure over rising violence, with a string of attacks this year causing hundreds of casualties in the capital, Kabul, alone.

“The concern is that nowadays, suicide bombings and armed conflict is the third (highest) cause of deaths and disability in Afghanistan,” Ferozuddin Feroz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in London. “Instead of focusing on maternal health, on nutritional status, we will spend it on trauma.”

Health care gains

Afghanistan’s health system is rudimentary, battered by decades of war and conflict. About 60 percent of the population has access to health services, defined as being within one hour’s walking distance, Feroz said.

Feroz, who is a trained doctor and has advised other countries on health system reform, aims to increase this to 75 percent by the end of 2018.

Afghanistan has made gains in maternal health, with 400 deaths per 100,000 live births, up from 1,600 per 100,000 in 2002, according to the United Nations Population Fund, but it is still one of the worst rates in the world.

“Maintaining these achievements during an increasing security situation is really a challenge,” Feroz said. “If we maintain the current rate of funding, that also would help us to maintain what we have achieved.”

Feroz was in London to meet with researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which is providing his ministry with technical support to develop a basic health care package with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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In ‘Solo,’ a Battle for the Soul, and Tone, of ‘Star Wars’

Posted on by Corts

When J.J. Abrams was a Star Wars novice, Lawrence Kasdan, the writer of The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, had some advice for him: Star Wars is not important.

“But what is important is the way people feel about it,” said Kasdan. “And they are very committed to it. What they’re committed to is a certain kind of film.”

The question of what constitutes a Star Wars film — how it should feel and what it should sound like — was at the center of the battle over the Han Solo spinoff Solo: A Star Wars Story and the dispute that resulted in directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord being replaced in mid-production with Ron Howard. Though the pace and improvisational manner of Lord and Miller’s direction was part of the clash, the main issue was, simply, tone.

Lord and Miller, the filmmaking duo of irreverent, highly meta comedies like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, wanted to push Solo into Guardians of the Galaxy territory. Kasdan did not.

“You can have fun with the tone but you never make fun of the tone, in my world,” Kasdan said in an interview alongside his son and co-writer John Kasdan, the morning after the Solo premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. “We live in a very meta culture and there’s a tendency to make fun of these things before they’re even anything.”

The pains of finding the balance between recapturing the feel of Lucas’ original trilogy and allowing a new generation of filmmakers to put their own stamp on Star Wars may be the most pressing creative issue before Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Beneath the billions of dollars in box office and merchandise, there are hints of a growing existential crisis in the far, far away galaxy as it gets further and further removed from George Lucas’ original vision.

Splits among fans

The first spinoff, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, saw Gareth Edwards booted for Tony Gilroy. Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World) was to helm 2019’s Episode IX before Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams was brought back in the fold. And even Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, which according to critics succeeded the most in freshening up Star Wars with a distinct filmmaking sensibility, was very divisive among fans.

Some applauded Johnson’s changes and some reviled them — and the split hurt business. The Last Jedi grossed $1.3 billion worldwide, but ticket sales fell sharply after the first two weeks of release and it made only $42.6 million in China. Solo came to Cannes — the world’s largest film festival — with an eye toward boosting global awareness.

Much of the conversation leading up to the release of Solo has been estimating how much of the film is Lord and Miller’s and how much is Howard’s. But the highest percent might belong to Kasdan, who initiated the film’s premise years ago, and who — when the comic tenor started shifting — felt some ownership of the film.

“There is that, no question. I got excited because I wanted it to sound like a certain thing. It’s all about sound and tone and voice,” Kasdan said. “We were very excited to get Phil and Chris onto the movie. It was a very difficult movie and they shot a lot of it. And it was a struggle to maintain that voice and hear that tone.”

Guardian of the soul

When George Lucas exited any active role in the science-fiction soap opera he created, that left Kasdan as the primary — and most widely respected — connective tissue between the past and present of Star Wars. The 69-year-old Kasdan, who also co-wrote The Force Awakens, has emerged as something of a guardian of the soul of Star Wars.

“Larry, having had written Empire and Jedi, just figures into this equation differently than any writer could,” said John Kasdan. “He’s in a very funny and challenging position, to be kind of the keeper of the flame and to help usher it into a new era with new filmmakers.”

Lord and Miller, who have taken executive producer credits, have only spoken publicly once about the fallout. In November, Lord said there was simply a “really big gap to bridge and it proved to be too big. Sometimes people break up and it’s really sad and it’s really disappointing, but it happens and we learned a lot from our collaborators.” 

Reviews for Solo have been a little tepid (70 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes as of Thursday) but critics have been impressed by how little evidence there is of the film’s schizophrenic production. John Kasdan believes the finished product is actually aided by “the tension between Larry’s sensibility and Chris and Phil’s sensibility.”

“It was brutal and painful but what also came out of it are moments like the Han and Chewbacca meeting,” says the 38-year-old writer.

Advance tracking has estimated a possible weekend opening of around $170 million, suggesting fans remain excited for the film starring Alden Ehrenreich in Harrison Ford’s iconic role — and perhaps more crucially, Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. (Kennedy, sensing the clamor for Glover, has naturally suggested a Lando spinoff could happen.)

The popular Howard also helped stabilize Solo. He shares some continuity with Lucas, too, having worked with him on 1973’s American Graffiti and 1998’s Willow. A longtime friend of Howard’s, Lucas even stopped by the set on the director’s first day.

“George has a real understanding of what the medium can do in terms of really transporting audiences — which I discovered in great detail when I came onto Solo. I began to see how dimensionalized the tone is,” said Howard. “It’s playful but it’s also thematically centered and serious. It’s visual and imaginative and yet there’s something connected to our past experience, in a way.”

Ultimately, the elder Kasdan doesn’t think the soul of Star Wars is anything too deep — nothing about the Force or political metaphor, anyway. 

“What drew me to it was there was this guy who walked into the cantina,” says Kasdan. “A gunslinger with a great sidekick.”
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For Some African-Americans, Meghan Markle Is Cause for Celebration

Posted on by Corts

Ishea Brown and more than a dozen of her black friends will gather around the TV set in her Seattle home on Saturday to watch the biracial actress Meghan Markle marry Britain’s Prince Harry and to toast a union the hostess never imagined possible.

Brown is not a longtime devotee of all things royal, and she was not particularly interested in the House of Windsor before November. All that changed with the announcement of the wedding of the queen’s grandson to Markle, whose mother is black.

“These are things that growing up I never would have thought that we would see,” Brown, 33, said, referring to a woman with African-American heritage becoming a royal in the United Kingdom.

“I hope that women, but particularly black women, are able to see themselves in her and her mother, and know that there are no spaces that are not meant for us,” she said.

Brown has dubbed her party “Black A.F. Royal Wedding Brunch” and is using the hashtag of #WakandaWeddingWeekend, a reference to the fictional African country Wakanda featured in the blockbuster movie “Black Panther.”

Hundreds of thousands of royal watchers around the world will tune into the royal nuptials on May 19, and interest is particularly intense in the United States, with its historical, cultural and linguistic ties to Great Britain.

There has been a surge of interest and excitement among some black Americans, especially black women, who are inspired by Meghan Markle’s new-found status, said Sarah Gaither, a Duke University psychology professor who has focused on diversity issues and race relations.

“Most communities of color really aspire to have representation or role models, said Gaither, who is also a biracial woman.” That’s what I think is really unique of Meghan Markle – because she’s biracial.”

That said, Gaither pointed out some people within the black community do not fully identify with Markle because she is a biracial woman.

Kim Love, a black American with a large Twitter and YouTube following who frequently comments on social mobility issues, raised that point in an online post on Tuesday.

“Meghan Markle’s marriage does not represent a win for black women,” Love said in a tweet. “Besides, she doesn’t even self-identify as a ‘black woman,’ so please stop forcing it.”

In New York City, Claire Osborne, a 34-year-old stage manager and a fan of “Suits,” the USA Network television series that starred Markle, is one of those black women fascinated by the wedding. In fact, her interest runs so deep, she says she now spends much of her free time on Twitter to learn more about the festivities.

“A lot of my friends, we all weren’t that interested in the royal family but now she’s in there, as a person of color, we want to follow now,” Osborne said, who also plans on waking up early to watch the wedding on television. “We’re kind of rooting for her because you see someone in that world who looks like you and representation matters.”

The wedding service starts at 1200 GMT (5 a.m. PDT), and to get in the spirit, Brown and her friends will wear tiaras or fascinators, a style of headwear favored by women at British weddings. But in a nod to the bride’s heritage, the Seattle women will lace their hats with African prints.

In Seattle, Brown initially scheduled her get-together to start before dawn, but too many of her friends had schedule conflicts, so she changed the party time for noon, when guests will watch the festivities on delay.

Brown and her friends will sip glasses of English rose champagne and Hennessy refresh tea, a mix of the cognac and English Earl Grey black tea, which she said “is the best of both worlds.”

“We’re going to do cucumber sandwiches to be traditional, but we’ll also have fried chicken sandwiches,” Brown said. “We know that his favorite stuff is bacon and pizza, so we may have a breakfast pizza.”

While the party is mostly about having fun, Brown says her identification with Markle runs deep. Like the royal bride, she also went through a divorce and is currently in an interracial relationship.

Brown says Markle represents the kind of woman whose life was not limited by preconceptions and arbitrary social boundaries.

“I find it inspiring,” she said.
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US Warns China Against Imposing ‘Political Correctness’ on US Firms

Posted on by Coeco

U.S. officials and politicians say they are increasingly frustrated and looking for ways to fight back against what they see as China’s use of its market power to impose “politically correct” behavior on American companies. Airlines, retailers and hoteliers all have been pressured to alter products and promotions that offended Beijing.

“These actions are outrageous and disturbing,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs Alex Wong told American lawmakers Tuesday.

“China is very much well aware that it’s wading through treacherous waters here. And they understand that if they continue along this path, continue to employ these tactics, that will negatively affect the U.S.-China relationship and that there will be consequences,” said Wong during a hearing at Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.

“The consequences are under review,” Wong added.

His remarks come after American clothing retailer Gap apologized and recalled the sale in the Chinese market of its T-shirts showing a map that’s seen by Beijing as politically incorrect. The T-shirts were also destroyed. 

A Chinese student earlier this week posted pictures of the T-shirt, which did not include Taiwan, parts of Tibet and islands in the South China Sea that Beijing claims are Chinese territories. Gap quickly apologized, citing “unintentional error.” Photos circulated on Chinese social media network Weibo were said to be have been taken at an outlet store in Canada. 

A Chinese government spokesperson took note of Gap’s apology and the American company’s pledge to respect “China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and is conducting an internal inspection.”

“We have taken note of this statement. We will continue to listen to its [Gap’s] words, and watch the actions,” said Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Lu Kang on Tuesday.

But U.S. officials and lawmakers are hitting back.

“American companies are being bullied,” said Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing.

Rubio said U.S. airlines “are being threatened by China, that if their website doesn’t say Taiwan [is part of] China, they’re going to lose their routes and have fines and penalties.”

On April 25, the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration sent a letter to 36 foreign air carriers, including a number of American carriers, demanding the carriers remove references on their websites or in other material that suggests Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are independent territories from China.

And in January, Beijing requested U.S. hotel giant Marriott International change the way it referred to Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau to be in line with Beijing’s views.

The request came after a Marriott employee “liked” a tweet by Friends of Tibet that praised Marriott for “listing #Tibet as a country along with #HongKong and #Taiwan” in an online customer questionnaire.

The employee was fired and Marriott apologized to Beijing.

Observers said market access to the growing population of affluent Chinese consumers leads to American companies’ compliance.

“It’s totally based on market strategy or, more precisely, fear of being shut out of the China market,” Brooking Institution’s Senior Fellow Richard Bush told VOA on Thursday. 

U.S. officials said they have raised this issue privately with their Chinese counterparts, while also condemning Beijing’s actions in public. U.S. officials have also talked with companies who have been involved in the incidents.

China claims democratically ruled Taiwan is part of its territory, and it has never renounced the use of military force to bring the island under Beijing’s control. The U.S. broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979 and has “acknowledged” Beijing’s position, while insisting on a “peaceful resolution of cross-Strait differences.”
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