Researchers at online shopping site eBay have come up with a way to surf apps on your smartphone without having to use your fingers. Their solution? Use your head, literally. Michelle Quinn has more on the newest way to scroll through your phone, hands not required.
…
Month: December 2018
NASA’s 1st Flight to Moon, Apollo 8, Marks 50th Anniversary
Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon.
To this day, that 1968 mission is considered to be NASA’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous undertaking. That first voyage by humans to another world set the stage for the still grander Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later.
There was unprecedented and unfathomable risk to putting three men atop a monstrous new rocket for the first time and sending them all the way to the moon. The mission was whipped together in just four months in order to reach the moon by year’s end, before the Soviet Union.
There was the Old Testament reading by commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.
Lastly, there was the photo named “Earthrise,” showing our blue and white ball — humanity’s home — rising above the bleak, gray lunar landscape and 240,000 miles (386 million kilometers) in the distance.
Humans had never set eyes on the far side of the moon, or on our planet as a cosmic oasis, surrounded completely by the black void of space. A half-century later, only 24 U.S. astronauts who flew to the moon have witnessed these wondrous sights in person.
The Apollo 8 crew is still around: Borman and Lovell are 90, Anders is 85.
To Lovell, the journey had the thrill and romance of true exploration, and provided an uplifting cap for Americans to a painful, contentious year marked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, nationwide riots and protests of the Vietnam War.
The mission’s impact was perhaps best summed up in a four-word telegram received by Borman. “Thanks, you saved 1968.”
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine — who at age 43 missed Apollo — marvels over the gutsy decision in August that year to launch astronauts to the moon in four months’ time. He’s pushing for a return to the moon, but with real sustainability this next go-around.
50-50 chances
The space agency flipped missions and decided that instead of orbiting Earth, Borman and his crew would fly to the moon to beat the Soviets and pave the way for the lunar landings to come. And that was despite on its previous test flight, the Saturn V rocket lost parts and engines failed.
“Even more worrisome than all of this,” Bridenstine noted earlier this month, Apollo 8 would be in orbit around the moon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. “In other words, if there was a failure here, it would wreck Christmas not only for everybody in the United States, but for everybody in the world.”
As that first moon shot neared, Borman’s wife, Susan, demanded to know the crew’s chances. A NASA director answered: 50-50.
Borman wanted to get to the moon and get back fast. In his mind, a single lap around the moon would suffice. His bosses insisted on more.
“My main concern in this whole flight was to get there ahead of the Russians and get home. That was a significant achievement in my eyes,” Borman explained at the Chicago launch of the book Rocket Men last spring.
Everyone eventually agreed: Ten orbits it would be.
Liftoff of the Saturn V occurred on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 21, 1968.
On Christmas Eve, the spaceship successfully slipped into orbit around the moon. Before bedtime, the first envoys to another world took turns reading the first 10 verses from Genesis. It had been left to Borman, before the flight, to find “something appropriate” to say for what was expected to be the biggest broadcast audience to date.
“We all tried for quite a while to figure out something, and it all came up trite or foolish,” Borman recalled. Finally, the wife of a friend of a friend came up with the idea of Genesis.
“In the beginning,” Anders read, “God created the heaven and the Earth …”
Borman ended the broadcast with, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”
On Christmas morning, their spacecraft went around the moon for the final time. The engine firing needed to shoot them back to Earth occurred while the capsule was out of communication with Mission Control in Houston. Lovell broke the nervous silence as the ship reappeared: “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”
Back in Houston, meanwhile, a limousine driver knocked on Marilyn Lovell’s door and handed her a gift-wrapped mink stole with a card that read: “To Marilyn, Merry Christmas from the man in the moon.” Lovell bought the coat for his wife and arranged its fancy delivery before liftoff.
Splashdown occurred in the pre-dawn darkness on Dec. 27, bringing the incredible six-day journey to a close. Time magazine named the three astronauts “Men of the Year.”
Earthrise
It wasn’t until after the astronauts were back that the significance of their Earth pictures sank in.
Anders snapped the iconic Earthrise photo during the crew’s fourth orbit of the moon, frantically switching from black-and-white to color film to capture the planet’s exquisite, fragile beauty.
“Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders said. “There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!”
Before the flight, no one had thought about photographing Earth, according to Anders. The astronauts were under orders to get pictures for potential lunar landing sites while orbiting 70 miles (112 kilometers) above the moon.
“We came to explore the moon and what we discovered was the Earth,” Anders is fond of saying.
His Earthrise photo is a pillar of today’s environmental movement. It remains a legacy of Apollo and humanity’s achievement, said professor emeritus John Logsdon of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, forever underscoring the absence of political borders as seen from space.
Anders wondered then — and now — “This is not a very big place, why can’t we get along?”
Lovell remains awestruck by the fact he could hide all of Earth behind his thumb.
“Over 3 billion people, mountains, oceans, deserts, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,” he recalled at a recent anniversary celebration at Washington’s National Cathedral.
Astronaut-artist Nicole Stott said the golden anniversary provides an opportunity to reintroduce the world to Earthrise. She and three other former space travelers are holding a celebration Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, 50 years to the day Apollo 8 launched.
“That one image, I think, it just gives us the who and where we are in the universe so beautifully,” she said.
By July 1969, Apollo 8 was overshadowed by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moon landing. But without Apollo 8, noted George Washington’s Logsdon, NASA likely would not have met President John F. Kennedy’s deadline of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Borman and Anders never flew in space again, and Soviet cosmonauts never made it to the moon.
Lovell went on to command the ill-fated Apollo 13 — “but that’s another story.” That flight was the most demanding, he said, “But Apollo 8 was the one of exploration, the one of repeating the Lewis and Clark expedition … finding the new Earth.”
…
George Lucas’ Film Empire Tops Forbes List of Richest US Celebrities
Filmmaker George Lucas’ Star Wars empire — the movie franchise, not Darth Vader’s fictional galactic government — planted him firmly atop Forbes magazine’s third annual ranking of the wealthiest U.S. celebrities which was released Tuesday.
The net worth of the 74-year-old writer, director, producer and creator of the enduring space saga was estimated at $5.4 billion, leading a list that also included athletes, musicians and one wealthy illusionist.
Most of Lucas’ wealth came from the $4.05 billion sale of the LucasFilm production company to Walt Disney Co. in 2012, Forbes said.
The figures on the list are Forbes’ estimates based on the celebrities’ known holdings of real estate, art and shares of companies both public and private, as well as other assets and estimated lifetime earnings. Reuters has not independently confirmed the figures.
Fellow filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who turned 72 on Tuesday, came in second, with an estimated $3.7 billion net worth.
Spielberg’s career as director, writer and producer spans some 50 years with credits that include Jaws, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.
The celebrities on the list had estimated combined assets of $18.7 billion, more than the gross domestic product of Iceland, Forbes said.
The richest female celebrity was Oprah Winfrey, 64, whose acting and media enterprises have yielded her a net worth of an estimated $2.8 billion, third overall.
Basketball legend Michael Jordan boosted his net worth by an estimated $400 million in the past year, mostly off his 34-year-long sneaker deal with Nike Inc and his stake in the Charlotte Hornets. His estimated $1.7 billion net worth ranked him fourth.
New to the Forbes list this year was Kylie Jenner, whose growing wealth from her Kylie Cosmetics are on track to make the 21-year-old the youngest ever self-made billionaire, the magazine said.
Jenner was tied with Rapper Jay-Z at No. 5, each with fortunes estimated at $900 million.
Rounding out the list were illusionist and entertainer David Copperfield, who amassed his fortune through a grueling pace of 600 shows per year in Las Vegas, rapper Diddy, golfer Tiger Woods and author James Patterson.
…
New Brazilian Minister: Even Military Must Compromise on Pensions
Every Brazilian, including current and former members of the armed forces, will have to compromise under the next administration’s pension reform plan, a former general set to become government minister said in an interview.
Retired General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz told Reuters in Brasilia last week that it was “inadmissible” in today’s world for some Brazilians employed in the public sector to retire in their 40s or 50s.
On December 4, right-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said he planned to tackle the overhaul of Brazil’s fiscally burdensome pension system with piecemeal reforms that can pass Congress, starting with an increase in the minimum age of retirement.
Many economists say cuts to Brazil’s social security system are essential to controlling a huge federal deficit and regaining Brazil’s investment-grade rating.
“There are some professions that will need to cede some things, as is the case with the justice system workers, the prosecutor’s office, and all public sector employment,” Santos Cruz said. “The military is in the same situation. The idea of retirement, for example, is going to have to be tweaked.”
One of a group of former army generals who have become close advisers to Bolsonaro, Santos Cruz will be Bolsonaro’s main liaison with Congress, state and local governments, when he takes office on January 1.
Brazil would have to take a long hard look at the age people stop working in order to protect public finances, said Santos Cruz, who is 66.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain and staunch defender of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, had pledged to protect military pensions and retirement rights, but the realization that they are responsible for nearly half of the pensions deficit led his economic advisers to push him to rethink that stance. In recent comments, Bolsonaro has said he is willing to countenance a minimum age for military retirement.
Santos Cruz also said any austerity measures should be leveled against top-earning public workers, for whom the pain is relatively less, rather than lower paid employees.
…
Greek Lawmakers Approve New Budget — With More Austerity
Greek lawmakers approved the heavily indebted country’s budget for 2019 late Tuesday, the first since Greece exited an eight-year bailout program.
The budget lawmakers passed with a 154-143 vote still is heavy on austerity measures to ensure Greece registers a hefty surplus, in compliance with its debt relief deal with international creditors.
Earlier Tuesday, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said the proposed budget was Greece’s first in 10 years to be drafted “under circumstances of relative financial and political freedom” from bailout creditors.
“Today we have the opportunity to vote for a budget that now reflects the priorities of the Greek government, and not of [its] supervising institutions,” he said during a parliamentary debate.
As the debate drew to a close, more than 2,000 people demonstrated peacefully outside parliament in two separate protests called by labor unions.
The budget submitted by the left-led government foresees Greece’s battered economy growing 2.1 percent in 2018 and 2.5 percent in 2019. The debt load is set to decline from 180.4 percent of output this year to 167.8 percent next year.
Greece owes most of that debt to European partners and the International Monetary Fund. The debt relief deal secured favorable repayment terms, but in return the country must achieve budget surpluses for decades to come.
The country also secured a cash buffer from creditors so it would not have to tap bond markets until the rates demanded by investors to buy Greek government bonds drop.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told lawmakers Tuesday that the country is not locked out of bond markets by high borrowing costs — even though his government has so far shelved stated plans to issue bonds shortly after the end of Greece’s last bailout, in August.
“[It] is a myth” that Greece can’t tap bond markets, Tsipras said. “You can be certain that we will again make a market exit, with a very good rate.”
Greece depended on bailout loans from 2010 until August 2018, and imposed crippling cutbacks to secure the money. Its finances are still subject to creditor scrutiny, albeit less intense than before.
Tsipras’ government is playing up citizen assistance programs that are intended to bring some 900 million euros in tax cuts and welfare benefits to less well-off Greeks. The money for the relief measures is supposed to come from a surplus generated by high taxes and constrained public spending.
However, labor unions say that’s not enough.
“Funding in the budget both for education and for health is much lower than our expectations,” Giannis Paidas, head of the Adedy civil servants’ union, said during the smaller of Tuesday’s two central Athens protests.
“It is the same and worse as during previous bailout-era years,” Paidas added. “There will be a 1 billion-euro increase in taxation. As you understand, this increase will burden working Greeks.”
…
African Art Restitution Claims Gain Traction
When a private museum in Benin displayed artifacts from the ancient Dahomey kingdom a decade ago, roughly a quarter-of-a-million Beninese flocked to see the exhibit — a stunning turnout for the tiny West African country.
There was only one hitch: although the pieces were part of its heritage, they didn’t belong to Benin, but rather were on loan from former colonial power France.
The next time Benin exhibits Dahomey art may be under very different circumstances. France has promised to return 26 royal artifacts taken by the French army in 1892—a move that may prove a watershed for other African restitution claims.
“If Benin succeeds in showing its heritage I think everything will change,” says Marie-Cecile Zinsou, a French-Beninese who counts among Africa’s most vocal restitution advocates and whose Zinsou Foundation hosted the Dahomey exhibit in 2006. “Then you’ll have a real example of how African countries are getting their heritage back and showing it to the public. Then people will believe.”
Macron report recommends return
After years of rebuffing restitution arguments, France is now catalyzing new hope — and concern — that tens of thousands of artifacts taken from former African colonies might head back to their places of origin. The first signs of a turnaround came in Burkina Faso last year, when French President Emmanuel Macron promised to temporarily or permanently return Africa’s patrimony to the continent within five years.
The latest breakthrough came in November, when a pair of academics delivered a groundbreaking report, commissioned by Marcon, which recommended France permanently return objects acquired through “theft, looting, despoilment, trickery and forced consent.”
In a continent where 60 percent of the population is under 20, young people should have “access to their own culture, creativity and spirituality from other eras,” Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French historian Bénédicte Savoy wrote. “The youth of Africa as much as the youth of France and Europe in general, have a right to their artistic and cultural heritage.”
Today, the report is sparking cascading restitution claims in Africa, although most are not yet official. Benin, which for years demanded its plundered artifacts be restored, is the first beneficiary.
But others include Ivory Coast and Senegal, where Senegalese Culture Minister Abdou Latif Coulibaly said “if we have 10,000 (objects in France), we want the 10,000.”
Museum directors in Mali and Chad have announced their countries were ready and able to house artifacts currently located in France and elsewhere. And in Democratic Republic of Congo, President Joseph Kabila said he would officially request former colonial power Belgium to return objects acquired during years of brutal rule.
The French report is also sparking some action in other western countries.
Last week, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution supporting returning objects to their countries of origin, calling on member states to create databases and step up the fight against art trafficking. The British museum has promised to return priceless bronzes to Nigeria. And Germany is helping Kenya track its valuable stolen artifacts that ended up in western museums, including German ones.
Powering restitution arguments is a sobering statistic: up to 90 percent of African antiquities are located outside the continent. That includes in France, where an estimated 90,000 African artifacts are housed in French museums, mostly the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris.
Where to house returned artifacts?
Meanwhile, new museums are sprouting or in the works across Africa, which — according to proponents — counters arguments the region cannot properly house its heritage. Senegal’s Museum of Black Civilizations opened its doors in Dakar earlier this month, while last year Ivory Coast reopened its national museum that had been shuttered during a protracted civil war. Gabon, DRC and Benin are also in the process of building or revamping art spaces.
“African countries will obviously deal with their heritage, that’s not a question,” says Zinsou, who notes Benin has announced it would open three museums and renovate six others.
Some are not so sure. “We know the shortage in African museums” of proper conservation, art expert Alexandre Guigello told Agence France-Presse news agency, reflecting concerns echoed in other European capitals.
France’s culture minister supports loaning artifacts to Africa rather than permanent returns, while Quai Branly museum head Stephane Martin described the restitution report as a bad answer,” telling Le Figaro newspaper there were “other ways to engage in cultural cooperation with Africa.”
Former French culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon offered a more dramatic response, predicting in a Le Figaro op-ed that returning the artifacts would “empty the museums,” leaving only copies.
Indeed, the report raises a slew of questions about the fine print of restituting African heritage— and suggests French law, enshrining the inalienability of public collections, must be changed to do so.
“It is also not clear what exactly Macron’s temporary or definitive restitution’ entails,” adds Charline Kopf, a doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo who has examined the debate.
Returning art to places whose borders have shifted over the years poses still other headaches. While current restitution claims are being made by African nations, “sometimes such claims are also made by indigenous communities … and do not neatly correspond to boundaries on a map,” Kopf adds.
Robert Jonard, who sells African artifacts in Paris, says smaller dealers like himself aren’t worried they may lose ownership of their most valued pieces. “It’s mostly a discussion at a higher level, among leading experts and museum heads,” he says.
Like other skeptics, Jonard is worried about returning precious artifacts to places where they risk being looted or badly cared for. He claims many were originally crafted for purely practical purposes, and their original owners had few qualms about destroying or selling them when their use ran out.
“Consider what might happen to French museums if all the art Napoleon plundered in Italy was sent home?” Jonard adds. “What will remain in the world’s museums if each country asks for its art back?”
…
World-Famous T.Rex Sue Gets New Lair in Chicago
Sue, the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever unearthed, gets to show off its new lair this week at the Field Museum in Chicago.
The museum on Friday will unveil the 40-1/2-foot-long (12.3-meter) Sue, one of the world’s best-known dinosaur fossils, in the giant meat-eater’s new permanent exhibition space after 10 months of work moving and remounting the huge bones. Sue’s bones were mounted in a way that reflects new understanding about the species acquired over the past two decades.
One major change was the addition of gastralia, bones resembling an additional set of ribs spanning the belly that may have provided structural support to help the dinosaur breathe.
“The gastralia form a basket of bones in the abdominal wall and really help us visualize the size and girth of Sue. We also adjusted the shoulder blades to fit with what we now consider to be the correct wishbone, and this had the effect of bringing the arms lower and closer to the midline. Sue can now clap,” said paleontologist Pete Makovicky, the museum’s associate curator of dinosaurs.
Sue is named for the woman who discovered the fossils in South Dakota in 1990. It is not clear whether the actual dinosaur was female or male. The museum bought the fossils at auction for $8.4 million and put Sue on display in 2000.
“Adjustments were also made to the ribcage and the right leg is less flexed. Finally, we gave the mount a slightly wider gape for dramatic effect,” Makovicky added. “The new exhibit is a smaller, more intimate space, so the sheer size of the skeleton comes across in a much more visceral way.”
T. rex, one of the largest land predators ever, roamed western North America during the twilight of the age of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period, alongside horned dinosaurs, armored dinosaurs, duckbilled dinosaurs, flying reptiles called pterosaurs, birds with and without teeth and other creatures.
An asteroid impact off the coast of Mexico 66 million years ago doomed the dinosaurs and many other land and sea creatures, though mammals survived the calamity and later became dominant.
…
Mexico Budget Plan Races Past First Congressional Hurdle
The finance committee of Mexico’s lower house of Congress on Tuesday rapidly approved the revenue section of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 2019 draft budget, auguring speedy passage in the legislature his party controls.
Lopez Obrador’s leftist government only unveiled the budget proposal on Saturday night. It met with a positive initial response from financial markets, with investors warming to his commitment to keep a lid on spending.
The president’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) and its allies dominate Congress, having won the first outright majority in more than two decades.
Having been approved by the finance committee without changes, the revenue section is expected to go to the floor of the lower house on Tuesday afternoon. Once approved, the revenue budget proposal moves to the Senate.
The budget is a major test of Lopez Obrador’s credibility, which was shaken when he said on Oct. 29 he was scrapping a partly built $13 billion new Mexico City airport on the basis of a referendum that was widely panned as illegitimate.
…
Penny Marshall, Actress and Director, Dies at Age 75
Penny Marshall, the trailblazing director of smash-hit big-screen comedies who first indelibly starred in the top-rated sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” has died. She was 75.
Marshall’s publicist, Michelle Bega, said Tuesday that Marshall died in her Los Angeles home on Monday due to complications from diabetes.”Our family is heartbroken,” the Marshall family said in a statement.
In “Laverne & Shirley,” among television’s biggest hits for much of its seven-season 1976-1983 run, the nasal-voiced, Bronx-born Marshall starred as Laverne DeFazio alongside Cindy Williams as a pair of blue-collar roommates toiling on the assembly line of a Milwaukee brewery. A spinoff of “Happy Days,” the series was the rare network hit about working-class characters, and its self-empowering opening song (“Give her any chance, she’ll take it/ Give her any rule, she’ll break it”) foreshadowed Marshall’s own path as a filmmaker in Hollywood.
“Almost everyone had a theory about why ‘Laverne & Shirley’ took off,” Marshall wrote in her 2012 memoir “My Mother Was Nuts.” “I thought it was simply because Laverne and Shirley were poor and there were no poor people on TV, but there were plenty of them sitting at home and watching TV.”
Marshall directed several episodes of “Laverne & Shirley,” which her older brother, the late filmmaker-producer Garry Marshall, created. Those episodes helped launch Marshall as a filmmaker. When Whoopi Goldberg clashed with director Howard Zieff, she brought in Marshall to direct “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” the 1986 comedy starring Goldberg.
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” did reasonable business, but Marshall’s next film made her the first woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million. Her 1988 hit comedy “Big,” starring Tom Hanks, was about a 12-year-old boy who wakes up in the body of a 30-year-old New York City man. The film, which earned Hanks an Oscar nomination, grossed $151 million worldwide, or about $320 million accounting for inflation.
Marshall reteamed with Hanks for “A League of Their Own,” the 1992 comedy about the women’s professional baseball league begun during World War II, starring Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell. That, too, crossed $100 million, making $107.5 million domestically.
More than any other films, “A League of Their Own” and “Big” ensured Marshall’s stamp on the late ’80s, early ’90s. The piano dance scene in FAO Schwartz in “Big” became iconic. Hanks’ reprimand “There’s no crying in baseball,” from “A League of Their Own,” remains quoted on baseball diamonds everywhere.
“She had a heart of gold. Tough as nails,” recalled Danny DeVito, who starred in Marshall’s 1994 comedy “Renaissance Man.” “She could play round ball with the best of them.”
The pair of hits also made Marshall a beacon to other aspiring female filmmakers. Ava DuVernay, whose “A Wrinkle in Time” was the first $100 million-budgeted film directed by a woman of color, said Tuesday: “Thank you, Penny Marshall. For the trails you blazed. The laughs you gave. The hearts you warmed.”
In between “Big” and “A League of Their Own,” Marshall made the Oliver Sacks adaptation “Awakenings,” with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. The medical drama, while not as successful at the box office, became only the second film directed by a woman nominated for best picture.
Carole Penny Marshall was born Oct. 15, 1942, in the Bronx. Her mother, Marjorie Marshall, was a dance teacher, and her father, Anthony, made industrial films. Their marriage was strained. Her mother’s caustic wit — a major source of inspiration for Marshall’s memoir — was formative. (One remembered line: “You were a miscarriage, but you were stubborn and held on.”)
“Those words are implanted in your soul, unfortunately. It’s just the way it was,” Marshall once recalled. “You had to learn at a certain age what sarcasm is, you know? When she says it about somebody else, you laughed, but when it was you, you didn’t laugh so much.”
During college at the University of New Mexico, Marshall met Michael Henry, whom she married briefly for two years and with whom she had a daughter, Tracy. Marshall would later wed the director Rob Reiner, a marriage that lasted from 1971 to 1981. Tracy, who took the name Reiner, became an actress; one of her first roles was a brief appearance in her mother’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” (Marshall is also survived by her older sister, Ronny, and three grandchildren.)
Marshall never again matched the run of “Big,” “Awakenings” and “A League of Their Own.” Her next film, the Army recruit comedy “Renaissance Man,” flopped. She directed “The Preacher’s Wife” (1996) with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. Her last film as director was 2001’s “Riding in Cars With Boys,” with Drew Barrymore. Marshall also helmed episodes of ABC’s “According to Jim” in 2009 and Showtime’s “United States of Tara” in 2010 and 2011, and directed the 2010 TV movie “Women Without Men.”
…
With Click of Button, Britain’s Homeless Crowdfund Their Way to Work
When Hana fled to Britain with her son from East Africa, she was grateful to have found safety from persecution and a roof over her head in her sister’s tiny London apartment.
It should have been a stop-gap, but a year on, the four still live together in cramped conditions, with Hana sharing a bed with her young son, and her sister doing the same with her toddler.
“When I came to Britain, I struggled with everything. It’s very hard to be a single mum and homeless,” said Hana, who did not share her full name for fear of repercussions.
With no job prospects, she had no chance of finding her own home in London, where rents are among the highest in the world.
Homelessness has been rising in England for nearly a decade, with over 82,000 families in temporary accommodation, including more than 123,000 children, government data shows.
But 32-year-old Hana is hoping to buck that trend, after a crowdfunding campaign by social enterprise Beam paid for her to study beauty therapy.
“It’s been a dramatic change, now I will be a professional beauty therapist. Straight away I want to start a job, the day I finish my studies,” Hana said in a phone interview.
She is one of about 50 homeless people who secured employment training through Beam, which it says is the world’s first purpose-built platform that helps homeless people crowdfund donations through their online profile.
The participants, who are referred to Beam by homelessness charities, are also supported by caseworkers throughout their studies and job hunt.
“We really want to return people to a stage of independence. They should never be defined by their homelessness,” said Beam founder Alex Stephany, who launched the platform last year.
He said each crowdfunding campaign is fully funded before a new one is launched to ensure each person has the chance to take a training course of their choice, be it accounting, dental nursing or carpentry.
“There are lots of people who need help, and also lots of people who want to help, and technology has a really important part to play in making it safe and easy for people to do that,” Stephany said in an interview.
‘Housing emergency’
Homelessness charity Shelter, which partners with Beam, blames rising private rents, a freeze on benefits and a shortage of social housing for the sharp increase in homelessness.
“We see destitution every day and desperation from people. People who are being priced out of the rental market. We’re calling it a housing emergency, it’s atrocious,” said Alison Mohammed, Shelter’s director of services.
Discrimination against homeless people has also made it difficult for them to secure rental properties, she said.
A hotel in the northern English city of Hull was criticized this week after it canceled paid bookings made by a local charity to give rough sleepers a bed for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
‘Message from heaven’
Mohammed said initiatives like Beam can harness the public’s goodwill to help homeless people, but it is just “one piece of the puzzle.”
“Anything that can tap into the public’s wish to do something about homelessness is a good idea,” she said in a phone interview.
“It’s not going to solve the lack of social housing, but it is going to help people who have got to a position in their life where they can take that step,” Mohammed said.
Beam said a dozen people had so far gained employment and the group hopes to expand beyond London and roll out the initiative across the country.
For Hana, who will finish her beauty therapy studies next year, knowing that hundreds of strangers care about her well-being and future in Britain has been a source of comfort.
She is confident she will find her own place to live too.
“I don’t know these people and I don’t even see their faces, but they encourage me very much. It’s like a message from heaven,” she said.
…
IMF Approves $3.9B Credit Line for Ukraine Ahead of Elections
The International Monetary Fund approved a new $3.9 billion stand-by aid agreement for Ukraine on Tuesday, intended to help the country maintain stability and the trust of investors as it heads into a choppy election period.
The Finance Ministry said a first tranche of $1.4 billion should arrive by Dec. 25, and decisions on the next two tranches would come in May and November next year.
Separately, the World Bank on Tuesday announced a $750 billion loan guarantee to help Ukraine raise an estimated $1 billion in debt on international markets.
IMF aid had effectively been frozen since April 2017 due to Ukraine’s stop-start efforts to implement reforms and tackle corruption as required by the IMF and other donors. The government reluctantly raised household gas tariffs in October, a potential vote-loser that was seized on by the opposition.
Ukraine holds what are likely to be tight presidential and parliamentary elections next year, while fighting a conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014. The authorities imposed martial law in some parts of the country in November, citing the threat of a Russian invasion.
The new IMF agreement spans 14 months and replaces a $17.5 billion programme that has propped up Ukraine since it plunged into turmoil following the 2014 Crimea annexation.
“The Fund’s decision stands as an important display of recognition of our undeniable progress in macroeconomic stabilization and confirmation of success in reforms,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
The IMF said the programme would focus on four priorities, including fiscal consolidation, reducing inflation, strengthening the financial sector and pushing reforms.
The prospect of securing more IMF loans has allowed the government, which must service a rising debt burden next year, to go to the market to issue new debt, and paved the way for the European Union and other foreign donors also to disburse aid.
The World Bank approved a loan guarantee geared at pushing reforms and tackling corruption.
“Overall, the reform program … addresses structural bottlenecks and sends a signal to investors about Ukraine’s ability to sustain reforms and address macroeconomic vulnerabilities ahead of the 2019 elections,” said Satu Kahkonen, World Bank Country Director for Ukraine.
…
SpaceX Halts US Satellite Launch for National Security Mission
Elon Musk’s SpaceX halted Tuesday’s launch of a long-delayed navigation satellite for the U.S. military, postponing for at least a day the space transportation company’s first designated national security mission for the United States.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a roughly $500 million global positioning system (GPS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin Corp, was due to take off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral shortly after 9:30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT), but was stopped minutes before takeoff.
“This abort was triggered by the onboard Falcon 9 flight computer,” a SpaceX official narrating the launch sequence said without providing additional details. He said SpaceX would attempt the launch on Wednesday morning.
If the mission is successful it will mark a victory for Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur who has tried for years to break into the market for lucrative military space launches, long dominated by Lockheed and Boeing Co.
SpaceX sued the U.S. Air Force in 2014 in protest over the military’s award of a multibillion-dollar, non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed.
SpaceX dropped the lawsuit in 2015 after the Air Force agreed to open up competition, according to SpaceX’s website.
The next year, SpaceX won a $83 million Air Force contract to launch the GPS III satellite, which will have a lifespan of 15 years, Air Force spokesman William Russell said by phone.
Tuesday’s launch was to be the first of 32 satellites in production by Lockheed under contracts worth a combined $12.6 billion for the Air Force’s GPS III program, Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder said.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Florida to attend the launch, which he called “an important step forward as we seek to secure American leadership in space.”
“Once fully operational, this latest generation of GPS satellites will bring new capabilities to users, including three times greater accuracy and up to eight times the anti-jamming capabilities,” said Russell.
The GPS satellite launch was originally scheduled for 2014 but has been hobbled by production delays, the Air Force said. The next GPS III satellite will launch in mid-2019, Eschenfelder said, while subsequent satellites undergo testing in the company’s Colorado processing facility.
The launch marks SpaceX’s first so-called National Security Space mission as defined by the U.S. military, SpaceX said. The Hawthorne, California-based company has previously launched payloads for the Department of Defense in 2017 that were not designated as a National Security Space missions.
…
As US Life Expectancy Falls, West Virginia Offers Lessons
If you want to understand why U.S. life expectancy is declining, West Virginia is a good place to start.
The state is a bellwether of bad health, portending major problems years before they became severe nationally.
“It seems that the worst outcomes happen here first,” said Dr. Michael Brumage, a West Virginia University public health expert who formerly ran the health department in Charleston. “We’re the canary in the coal mine.”
The drug overdose death rate for all Americans today is where West Virginia’s rate was 10 years ago. The nation’s suicide rate is where West Virginia’s was nearly 20 years ago.
Obesity was common in West Virginia before it became widespread in the rest of the country. And life expectancy started tumbling in the Mountain State before it began falling across the U.S.
Maggie Hill has lived in the state for all of her 67 years. Sitting in her cabin in the town of Madison recently, she ticked off the many deaths that have befallen her family: An older brother drowned in a flood in 1977. A sister died in a house fire. Two siblings, both smokers, died of lung cancer. Two others were stillborn. Her first husband died of congestive heart failure.
Then there were the suicides. Two of her three sons shot themselves to death, one of them after losing his job. Her second husband died the same way, using a gun in their bedroom closet one Sunday morning while she was still in bed.
“I don’t think people have a lot to live for,” she said. “I really and truly don’t see things getting better.”
Life expectancy
After decades of steady increases, U.S. life expectancy has been declining since 2014. A government report released last month said the trend continued last year, driven in part by suicides and drug overdoses — the so-called diseases of despair.
What else is driving the decline? Experts say America’s obesity problem has worsened the diabetes death rate and helped stall progress against the nation’s leading killer, heart disease.West Virginia eclipses most other states in the percentage of people affected by diabetes, heart disease and obesity. It has had the nation’s highest rate of drug overdose deaths for years running. It also has the highest obesity rate and the highest rates of diabetes and high blood pressure. Adding to those woes is the highest suicide rate among states east of the Mississippi River.
Earlier this fall, U.S. health officials released for the first time life expectancy predictions at a neighborhood level. An Associated Press analysis of the data found wide disparities in cities and towns. Among states, the AP found, Hawaii had the highest life expectancy. West Virginia was the second lowest, behind Mississippi.
Mississippi, Oklahoma and a few other states suffer death and disease rates that are about as bad — or sometimes worse. But those places have unusually large populations of low-income black or Native American people, who suffer a disproportionate share of disability, disease and death.
West Virginia is 94 percent white. That makes it a telling indicator. Nearly 80 percent of the Americans who die each year are white people, and death rates rose in white men and women last year but were flat or falling in blacks and Hispanics.
So white deaths — particularly those of people who are not elderly — are mainly responsible for the nation’s declining life expectancy.
Widespread attention
Ten years ago, The Associated Press described Huntington, West Virginia, and its environs as the unhealthiest place in America , based on health survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that put it at the bottom of the charts in more than a half-dozen measures, including the highest proportions of people who were obese, had diabetes and had heart disease.
The AP report, and others like it, drew widespread attention that peaked in 2010, when celebrity chef Jamie Oliver staged a reality TV show in Huntington to teach people how to eat better.
The attention was not entirely welcomed. It felt like outsiders coming in to criticize and perpetuate “hillbilly” stereotypes, said Steve Williams, who was elected Huntington’s mayor in 2012.
But Williams said it also was motivating, prompting changes in school food and even improvements to parks and sidewalks.
“We get slammed all the time with obesity,” said Andy Fischer, a financial adviser who organized a 2,500-person community walking program. “We’ve got to get better.”
These days, the Huntington area looks somewhat better in government health surveys. For example, the region’s obesity rate is only a few percentage points above the national median — instead of 10 or 20 points.
That said, it’s clear the Huntington area still has some big problems. It ranks among the worst metro areas in measures like the percentage of adults who smoke, have high blood pressure and have had a stroke.
Opioids and obesity
About the time Huntington was trying to tackle its weight problem, it was rocked by a new crisis — opioid addiction.
A recently-closed crisis and detox center in downtown Logan, W.Va. (AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
West Virginia now has the distinction of having the nation’s highest drug overdose death rate. Last year, for the first time, the state’s body count surpassed 1,000. The epidemic also produced ripple effects such as a spike in the number of children taken into foster care because of dead or addicted parents.
In the last two years, no West Virginia county has seen more overdose deaths than Cabell County, which includes Huntington.
One of the grimmest spots has been Huntington’s West End — some locals call it “the Worst End.” The AP analysis of neighborhood-level death data found the area had a life expectancy at birth of only 62 years, 16 years shorter than national life expectancy.
Huntington’s reputation crystalized on a chaotic Monday in August 2016, when emergency responders saw 28 overdoses over six hours — including two deaths.
The city soon became known as America’s overdose capital. As documentary crews descended, Huntington tried to confront the problem. Among the efforts were quick-response teams charged with finding people days after they were treated for an overdose. The teams include a police officer, a clergy member, a paramedic and a treatment counselor who hand out overdose-reversing naloxone and provide information about treatment. They also direct people to a needle-exchange program run by the Cabell-Huntington Health Department.
Thommy Hill stands outside the Cabell County/Huntington Health Department, where he works in the harm reduction program, in Huntington, West Virginia, on Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
One of the key figures in the program is Thommy Hill, a former drug dealer who has become its gatekeeper and central cog. He knows every drug user who visits and constantly tries to persuade them to try treatment — arranging immediate transportation and handing them a backpack full of clothes if they agree.
One morning in late October, bantering with a man who had come in for fresh needles, Hill lit up when the visitor mentioned a past vacation. Hill pitched him a one-week stay at a treatment hospital, joking that “people will wait on you hand and foot.”
A few minutes later, he explained: “It’s all about treating them like people. They don’t get a lot of that.”
Something seems to be working. Non-fatal overdoses in Huntington have fallen and are on track to be 40 percent lower than 2017, city officials said. They are optimistic deaths will be down this year, too.
“If we can turn around overdose numbers here, we can do it anywhere,” Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said in May at a health summit in Huntington.
Politicians including President Donald Trump have decried the opioid epidemic, prioritizing it over other health crises. But obesity still presents a towering threat.
West Virginians exercise less than other Americans. They eat fruits and vegetables less often. Only Mississippi has a larger proportion of adults drinking soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages each day.
In some cases, state policies are not helping.
For example, bariatric surgery can help certain obese people for whom conventional diet and exercise programs have no lasting effect. But West Virginia’s Medicaid program has unusually harsh cost-control barriers that make it difficult for severely obese people to get approved for surgery, according to a recent analysis by George Washington University.
Then there’s the soda tax, which health advocates say can give consumers second thoughts about choosing those drinks. Last year, Gov. Jim Justice proposed raising it from 1 cent per 16.9-ounce bottle to a penny per ounce. It failed in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Signs of change
There are some signs of hope in West Virginia. In October, health advocates held a conference on obesity in the South in West Virginia’s capital city. It was a surprisingly upbeat meeting.
The South has long had the highest obesity rates in the country, and nowhere has adult obesity been more common than in West Virginia. But future-focused projects are popping up all over the state, aimed at getting kids to embrace exercise and healthy eating.
“We want to give people hope that we can be knocked off the unhealthiest list” of states, said Kayla Wright, director of an organization called Try This West Virginia that’s funding many of them.
One grant paid for high school students to build a 5K trail and explore creating a teen cross-country running group. Another grant went toward restoring a greenhouse and helping people learn to garden.
Many of the projects are baby steps, but conference participants cited a few places where progress seems broader. Huntington is one, they say.
Another is Mingo County, in the southwest corner of the state, deep in the heart of coal country. Life expectancy there has never been high. Jobs in the lumber and coal industries were notoriously dangerous. Doctors could be hard to find. And there was violence: The deadly Hatfield-McCoy feud played out in those hills, as did bloody labor battles between miners and coal companies.
The largest municipality in the county, Williamson, became known in the last decade as a center for the abuse of prescription opioid painkillers. (Some called the 3,000-person town “Pilliamson.”)
But while the drug crisis was playing out, some local leaders — led by a young doctor named C. Donovan “Dino” Beckett — built a series of programs aimed at creating a culture of health. It started seven years ago with the opening of a free clinic that later became the Williams Health and Wellness Center. That spawned a community garden and a vegetable delivery service, a running club and once-a-month 5K races that draw a few hundred runners. Also in the works, for next year, is a federally funded treatment program for people addicted to drugs.
So far, perhaps the most successful program is one that sends health workers to the homes of diabetics.
Jamie Muncy is one success story.
The 48-year-old lost his job three years ago when the mine he was working in shut down. Last fall, he had just pulled out of a long-term habit of pain pills and other drugs when he bizarrely tore a tendon in his foot while picking up a piece of paper at a post office.
It was so painful he rarely walked, but he continued to eat terribly. Out of a job and with his marriage in ruins, “I had no motivation” to be healthy, he said. “I didn’t care.”
By January, the 5-foot-3 former mine foreman ballooned from 165 pounds to 196. “I was round as I was tall,” he said.
A visit to the Williamson health center revealed he had alarming, diabetes-qualifying blood sugar levels. He’d had mini-strokes in the past, and his physician said a much bigger one was probably on its way if Muncy did not take drastic steps.
The doctor put him on a tight carb-cutting diet, connected him to physical therapy and put him in the home-visit diabetes program.
Now Muncy walks 5 miles a day and is a regular at the farmer’s market. His weight is down to about 145 pounds, he said in a recent interview. He still smokes, though.
An uncertain future
University of Washington researchers recently calculated something called “healthy life expectancy” — the period someone born today could expect to live in relative health. West Virginia, at 62½ years, was the lowest among states.
Clearly, health problems abound.
Black lung disease rates and coal mine injury rates appear to be up.
West Virginia has been at the top of the charts in hepatitis B and C infection rates. Adding to that, the state saw an HIV outbreak last year, and it is still weathering a hepatitis A outbreak — both associated with injection drug users
Maggie Hill, the lifelong West Virginian, has little hope for the future. But she does have Charity.
Charity is a 10-year-old girl Hill adopted about five years ago. Hill’s son had been raising her but lost custody during his ongoing struggle with drug addiction, Hill said.
Hill and Charity live in a small wooded valley with a creek in it — a holler, as they say in West Virginia. Her house is a cabin that from the outside resembles a small, tidy barn. Charity has given her life a purpose, she said.
“I taught her how to survive when I’m gone,” she said. “I have to. She’s going to need to know how to cook. … She needs to know how to keep house. She needs to know how to mow grass, so if she ain’t got a man, she can keep the yard clean. I teach her every bit of this.”
Charity is a good student (“Four A’s and a B on her last report card,” Hill said). And there’s hope that she will do well enough to go to college. Hill is saving for it. “She wants to be a doctor,” Hill said.
If Charity does go to college, some place away from Boone County, Hill says she will move there with her. “If I’m alive,” she said.
your ads here!
RSF: Violence Against Journalists Hits Unprecedented Levels
The murder of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a year when more than half of all journalists killed were targeted deliberately reflects a hatred of the media in many areas of society, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday.
At least 63 professional journalists around the world were killed doing their jobs in 2018, RSF said, a 15 percent increase on last year. The number of fatalities rises to 80 when including all media workers and citizen journalists.
“The hatred of journalists that is voiced … by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.
Khashoggi, a royal insider who became a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and began writing for the Washington Post after moving to the United States last year, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
Khashoggi’s death sparked global outrage. Saudi officials have rejected accusations that the crown prince ordered his death.
The Paris-based body said that the three most dangerous countries for journalists to work in were Afghanistan, Syria and Mexico.
Meanwhile, the shooting of five employees of the Capital Gazette newspaper propelled the United States into the ranks of the most dangerous countries.
The media freedom organization said 348 journalists are being detained worldwide, compared with 326 at this time in 2017. China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold more than half the world’s imprisoned journalists.
…
US Surgeon General Warns of Teen Risks From e-Cigarettes
The government’s top doctor is taking aim at the best-selling electronic cigarette brand in the U.S., urging swift action to prevent Juul and similar vaping brands from addicting millions of teenagers.
In an advisory Tuesday, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said parents, teachers, health professionals and government officials must take “aggressive steps” to keep children from using e-cigarettes. Federal law bars the sale of e-cigarettes to those under 18.
For young people, “nicotine is dangerous and it can have negative health effects,” Adams said in an interview. “It can impact learning, attention and memory, and it can prime the youth brain for addiction.”
Federal officials are scrambling to reverse a recent explosion in teen vaping that public health officials fear could undermine decades of declines in tobacco use. An estimated 3.6 million U.S. teens are now using e-cigarettes, representing 1 in 5 high school students and 1 in 20 middle schoolers, according to the latest federal figures.
Separate survey results released Monday showed twice as many high school students used e-cigarettes this year compared to last year.
E-cigarettes and other vaping devices have been sold in the U.S. since 2007, growing into a $6.6 billion business. Most devices heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable vapor. They have been pitched to adult smokers as a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes, though there’s been little research on the long-term health effects or on whether they help people quit. Even more worrisome, a growing body of research suggests that teens who vape are more likely to try regular cigarettes.
Adams singled out Silicon Valley startup Juul. The company leapfrogged over its larger competitors with online promotions portraying their small device as the latest high-tech gadget for hip, attractive young people. Analysts now estimate the company controls more than 75 percent of the U.S. e-cigarette market.
The surgeon general’s advisory notes that each Juul cartridge, or pod, contains as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes. Additionally, Adams states that Juul’s liquid nicotine mixture is specially formulated to give a smoother, more potent nicotine buzz. That effect poses special risks for young people, Adams says.
“We do know that these newer products, such as Juul, can promote dependence in just a few uses,” Adams said.
Juul said in a statement that it shares the surgeon general’s goal: “We are committed to preventing youth access of Juul products.”
Last month, San Francisco-based Juul shut down its Facebook and Instagram accounts and halted in-store sales of its flavored pods. The flavors remain available via age-restricted online sales. That voluntary action came days before the Food and Drug Administration proposed industrywide restrictions on online and convenience store sales of e-cigarettes to deter use by kids.
Adams recommends parents, teachers and health professionals learn about e-cigarettes, talk to children about the risks and set an example by not using tobacco products.
…
Grocery Store Using Unmanned Vehicles for Delivery
U.S. supermarket chain Kroger Co said on Tuesday it has started using unmanned autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries Scottsdale, Arizona in partnership with Silicon Valley startup Nuro.
The delivery service follows a pilot program started by the companies in Scottsdale in August and involved Nuro’s R1, a custom unmanned vehicle.
The R1 uses public roads and has no driver and is used to only transport goods.
Kroger’s deal with Nuro underscores the stiff competition in the U.S. grocery delivery market with supermarket chains angling for a bigger share of consumer spending.
Peers Walmart Inc and Amazon.com Inc have also invested heavily in their delivery operations by expanding their offerings and shortening delivery times.
Walmart, Ford Motor Co and delivery service Postmates Inc said last month they would collaborate to deliver groceries and other goods to Walmart customers and that could someday use autonomous vehicles.
Kroger said the service would be available in Scottsdale at its unit Fry’s Food Stores for $5.95 with no minimum order requirement for same-day or next-day deliveries.
…
China’s Xi Calls for Reform Implementation, Offers No New Measures
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for the implementation of reforms but offered no new specific measures in a highly anticipated speech that marked the 40th anniversary of China’s move towards market liberalization.
In a speech lasting nearly an hour-and-a-half, Xi called for support of the state economy while also guiding the development of the private sector, and said China will expand efforts at opening up and ensure the implementation of major reforms.
“We must, unswervingly, reinforce the development of the state economy while, unswervingly, encouraging, supporting and guiding the development of the non-state economy,” Xi said during a speech at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Xi was speaking on the day China marked as the 40th anniversary of the start of late leader Deng Xiaoping’s campaign of “reform and opening up,” which led to explosive industrial growth that made China’s economy the world’s second-largest.
“Opening brings progress while closure leads to backwardness,” he added.
“Every step of reform and opening up is not easy. In the future, we will be inevitably faced with all sorts of risks and challenges, and even unimaginable tempestuous storms,” said Xi, stressing the role the ruling Communist Party.
Xi was speaking amid mounting pressure to accelerate reforms and improve market access for foreign companies as a bitter trade war with the United States weighs on the Chinese economy.
China’s heavy support of its sprawling state sector has been a point of contention with the United States.
The trade war has spurred some Chinese entrepreneurs, government advisers and think tanks to call for faster economic reforms and the freeing up of a private sector stifled by state controls and struggling to gain access to credit.
Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed early this month to a 90-day truce in the trade dispute, which halted the threatened escalation of punitive tariffs while the two sides continue negotiations.
In his speech, Xi enumerated the accomplishments of China’s development.
“Grain coupons, cloth coupons, meat coupons, fish coupons, oil coupons, tofu coupons, food ticket books, product coups and other documents people once could not be without have now been consigned to the museum of history,” he said. “The torments of hunger, lack of food and clothing, and the hardships which have plagued our people for thousands of years have generally gone and won’t come back.”
Numerous luminaries in attendance were cited for their contributions to China’s economic reforms including the heads of online giants Alibaba, Tencent Holdings and Baidu and car maker Geely Automobile Holdings.
…
Emily Blunt’s Terrifying Moment As the New Mary Poppins
She takes on a beloved movie character and dances with penguins, but what really terrified British actress Emily Blunt was descending slowly from the clouds as the new Mary Poppins.
More than 50 years after it first charmed audiences worldwide, Blunt stars in the sequel “Mary Poppins Returns” as the magical English nanny with a no-nonsense demeanor but a twinkle in the eye.
The Walt Disney movie, starting its global roll-out this week, is set 20 years after the musical fantasy that made Julie Andrews a star.
Despite new music, a new cast and new director Rob Marshall, “Mary Poppins Returns” pays homage to the original 1964 film, including the arrival of the singing nanny from the skies above London.
This time, however, Poppins floats down holding a battered kite rather than her parrot umbrella but with her signature carpet bag still in hand.
Blunt said she was “terrified” filming the scene while hoisted high up on a crane. “It’s very high. Rob (Marshall) wanted to do one shot where I start in the air and I come down and the cameras are here and I walk straight into my close-up.”
”We did about four takes and then I was like, ‘Rob – please say you have it now. Have you got it? Just say you have it,'” said the actress, best known for her roles in thriller “A Quiet Place” and comedy “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Like the original, “Mary Poppins Returns” features fantasy sequences, dance numbers, animated dancing penguins. There’s even a cameo for a tap-dancing Dick Van Dyke, 93, who played Bert, the cheery London chimney sweep, in the 1964 film.
However Andrews, 83, who won an Oscar for her performance as Mary Poppins, has placed herself outside the spotlight, with no role in the sequel and no appearances at red carpet events.
Blunt, 35, said Andrews has been supportive of her taking on the role.
“I was very moved that she wanted this just to be my version of Mary Poppins and embraced as that, rather than her coming in at some point and being a distraction,” she said.
“I hear she’s just seen the film and loved it, so that means a lot to us,” Blunt added.
“Mary Poppins Returns,” which has been nominated for four Golden Globe awards, also stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, British actors Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw, and Meryl Streep in a cameo role.
…
With Tensions Rising Between US and China, Silicon Valley Rethinks its Bonds
American tech companies have long looked to China as a key partner to help build and sell cutting-edge devices and services. But tensions are rising between Washington and Beijing, and Silicon Valley may be caught in the middle. Michelle Quinn reports.
…
China Hopes for ‘Orderly’ Brexit, Calls for More Open EU Economy
China hopes Britain’s exit from the European Union can happen in an orderly way and that the bloc will reduce hurdles to Chinese investment and keep its markets open, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, has watched Brexit nervously, worried not only about potential market turmoil from a disorderly departure but about losing Britain’s supportive voice for free trade within the EU.
“China hopes to see Brexit proceed in an orderly fashion and stands ready to advance China-EU and China-UK relations in parallel,” the ministry said in a lengthy policy document on EU ties.
The EU and China are often at loggerheads over trade and other issues, with the EU sharing many of the same concerns as the United States about market access, trade imbalances and intellectual property rights protection.
The bloc is China’s largest trading partner while China is its biggest trading partner after the United States.
The EU has been pressing for better access to the Chinese market for its companies, while China has complained about what it sees as unfair restrictions on Chinese investments in the EU.
Despite events such as Brexit, China said the EU has remained committed to integration, pressed on with reforms and played a major role in regional and international affairs.
Beijing has promised to look at the possibility of reaching a “top notch” free trade deal with Britain post-Brexit.
The Brexit process is currently deadlocked with just over 100 days until Britain is due to leave the EU.
On trade, China’s white paper said the EU should ease high-tech export controls on China and facilitate mutual investment.
The government will significantly ease market access and endeavor to foster a “stable, fair, transparent, law-based and predictable business environment that protects the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment and treats Chinese and foreign firms registered in China as equals,” it said.
“China hopes that the EU will keep its investment market open, reduce and eliminate investment hurdles and discriminatory barriers, and provide Chinese companies investing in Europe a fair, transparent and predictable policy environment and protect their legitimate rights and interests.”
The EU last month provisionally agreed on rules for a far-reaching system to coordinate scrutiny of foreign investments into Europe, notably from China in the wake of a surge in Chinese investments, to end what a negotiator called “European naivety.”
…
Rediscovering Truth: African Storytellers Tap Into Rich Tradition
Why don’t chickens fly? When did the moon learn to be kind?
Those and other mysteries were unravelled by dozens of African storytellers in Nairobi on Saturday, helping keep alive oral traditions increasingly under threat in the internet and smartphone age.
“To have that storyteller in front of you with an audience being able to interact is something very precious that we are in danger of losing,” said Maimouna Jallow, who organized the one-day Re-Imagined Storytelling Festival in Kenya’s capital.
Although written history has existed for centuries in West Africa, elsewhere on the continent knowledge and morality have mostly been transmitted through performance art, including the spoken word.
Tales from East African villages
For her research, Jallow collected folk tales from East African villages. “Nearly everywhere I went people had no recollection of their own stories, and the generation who used to tell these stories are now in their 80s,” she told Reuters.
“For me it was really important to see how we preserve not only the stories but in particular the culture of telling (them).”
With nods to giants of African culture such as Thomas Sankara and Fela Kuti, those narrated in Nairobi addressed issues common to African societies, ranging from war and materialism to humility and respect for children, often with a contemporary twist.
Storytelling relevant for rapper
For Alim Bamara, a rapper from Sierra Leone who grew up in London, storytelling has never been more relevant or topical.
“There’s a story about truth, and how truth knocked on people’s doors, and was always rejected and turned away,” he told Reuters.
“One day, parable took truth home, and fed truth and clothed truth in story. “Now truth… knocked on those people’s doors and this time was readily welcomed.”
Accompanying some performances was Gambian kora (African harp) player Sanjally Jobarteh, whose family has kept alive oral histories for over seven centuries.
Why chickens don’t fly?
For Usifu Jalloh, from Sierra Leone, storytelling can help validate existence.
“When Africans were enslaved, and when invaders came in, the first thing they did was wipe out the identity of the people that they conquered and superimposed theirs on top,” he said. “When you know your story, you have a lot of power. When you forget your story you are just like a sheep.”
So why don’t chickens fly? Because chicken squandered all the wealth given to him as king of the sky. When the other birds found out, he was banished from the air and became man’s favorite food.
…
Wondrous Extinct Flying Reptiles Boasted Rudimentary Feathers
A microscopic examination of fossils from China has revealed that the fur-like body covering of pterosaurs, the remarkable flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs, was actually made up of rudimentary feathers.
The surprising discovery described by scientists on Monday means that dinosaurs and their bird descendants were not the only creatures to boast feathers and that feathers likely appeared much longer ago than previously known. Pterosaurs were only distantly related to dinosaurs and birds.
Birds need feathers to fly. That was not the case with pterosaurs. Short, hair-like feathers covered their bodies and wings but lacked the strong central shaft of avian flight feathers, the researchers said. They may have provided insulation and other benefits, as hair does for mammals.
“They were not flight feathers,” said paleontologist Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University, who led the research published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. “They looked fuzzy, and they didn’t have complicated feathers.”
The researchers examined beautifully preserved Jurassic Period fossils roughly 160 to 165 million years old of two small pterosaurs called anurognathids from northeastern China.
Apparently forest dwellers and insect eaters, they possessed 18-inch (45 cm) wingspans, short tails and superficially frog-like faces.
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to master flight, followed much later by birds and bats. Scientists have known since the 19th century that pterosaurs had a fur-like body covering and there has been a long-running scientific debate about how to classify it.
Many of the filaments, under the microscope, showed branching like in feathers but not hair.
University of Bristol paleontologist and study co-author Mike Benton said four types of pterosaur feathers were observed: downy feathers; single filaments; bundles of filaments; and filaments with tufts at the end. Tiny pigment-related structures indicated these feathers were ginger-brown in color.
Birds, many meat-eating dinosaurs and some plant-eating dinosaurs are known to have had feathers, though these looked different from those seen on the pterosaurs.
“We feel the simplest thing for the present is to call them all feathers because they show branching, the fundamental distinguishing character of a feather,” Benton said.
Pterosaurs and dinosaurs both appeared roughly 230 million years ago during the Triassic Period. The researchers said the appearance of feathers in both groups suggests feathers first evolved perhaps 250 million years ago in a common ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosaurs.
Pterosaurs, the biggest of which had 35-foot (10.7-meter)wingspans, went extinct along with the dinosaurs after an asteroid impact 66 million years ago.
…