US Vice Admiral Calls for Code of Conduct for Space
The deputy commander of the U.S. Strategic Command is calling for the development of a code of conduct for space as dreams of altruistic exploration fade.
Vice Admiral Charles Richard believes establishing norms and practices of behavior in space would help nations better understand each other’s activities.
“We’re still sorting out what constitutes an attack in space,” Richard said at a conference titled “Space Security: Issues for the New U.S. Administration” held last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“What is the indisputable evidence required within the international community to assert violation of sovereign territory in space? What constitutes provocation in space from our point of view?” he asked.
No rules of engagement in space
Conducting exercises with U.S. partners and allies has revealed the difficulty of answering those questions because there are no rules of engagement for space, said Richard.
While acknowledging that “space is different,” said Richard, “Some of the questions we are answering have already been answered in the maritime domain and in the air domain so we have precedent to start from.”
For decades, the roadmap for the arena was the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 signed by Russia and the United States during the Cold War, which has now been signed by 105 nations and signed but not ratified by 24 more.
The agreement bans placing nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, on the moon or on any other celestial real estate. It further forbids, “the establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.”
Over 1,400 satellites orbiting Earth
There are loopholes in the treaty’s language. It did not prohibit the use of conventional weapons or ban military forces from space as long as they undertook non-aggressive activities, such as scientific research or launching satellites for spying and communications. (As of July 2016, there were 1,419 satellites orbiting Earth, about 350 of them for military use, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which maintains a database.)
The wake-up call came in 2007 when China shot down an aging Fengyun-1C weather satellite while testing an anti-satellite (ASAT) device mounted on a ballistic missile. The test shattered the satellite into more than 2,000 pieces and, for many, solidified the notion of space as a theater of war.
In 2015, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission called for more study of China’s counterspace program in its annual report to Congress. On March 22, an official from the U.S. Strategic Command told VOA that the U.S. military and China have had several dialogues on space security and hoped that the dialogue would continue.
Safe, stable and secure
Peter Hays, a professor of space policy at the U.S. Department of Defense and a professor of space policy at the George Washington University Institute of Space Policy, said at the March 22 conference that the U.S. should not be the first country to deploy weapons to space, but it should be prepared.
Richard said that while the U.S. would never want to extend war into space, the question today is “How do we deter our adversaries in space while keeping it safe, stable and secure? … Whether you’re guiding ships, jets, drones or missiles, space is the domain that enables all others.
“If we have an agreed-to set of norms and behaviors, now you start to minimize the chance of miscommunication,” he said, adding that minimizing the chances of misinterpretation also reduced the likelihood of “an inappropriate or disproportionate response.”
Libo Liu contributed to this report which originated in the VOA Mandarin Service.
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Elon Musk’s Latest Target: Brain-computer Interfaces
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is announcing a new venture called Neuralink focused on linking brains to computers.
The company plans to develop brain implants that can treat neural disorders — and that may one day be powerful enough to put humanity on a more even footing with possible future superintelligent computers, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing unnamed sources.
Musk, a founder of both the electric-car company Tesla Motors and the private space-exploration firm SpaceX, has become an outspoken doomsayer about the threat artificial intelligence might one day pose to the human race.
Continued growth in AI cognitive capabilities, he and like-minded critics suggest, could lead to machines that can outthink and outmaneuver humans with whom they might have little in common.
In a tweet Tuesday, Musk gave few details beyond confirming Neuralink’s name and tersely noting the “existential risk” of failing to pursue direct brain-interface work.
Stimulating the brain
Some neuroscientists and futurists, however, caution against making overly broad claims for neural interfaces.
Hooking a brain up directly to electronics is itself not new. Doctors implant electrodes in brains to deliver stimulation for treating such conditions as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and chronic pain. In experiments, implanted sensors have let paralyzed people use brain signals to operate computers and move robotic arms. Last year , researchers reported that a man regained some movement in his own hand with a brain implant.
Musk’s proposal goes beyond this. Although nothing is developed yet, the company wants to build on those existing medical treatments as well as one day work on surgeries that could improve cognitive functioning, according to the Journal article.
Neuralink is not the only company working on artificial intelligence for the brain. Entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who sold his previous payments startup Braintree to PayPal for $800 million, last year started Kernel, a company working on “advanced neural interfaces” to treat disease and extend cognition.
Risk of overhype
Neuroscientists posit that the technology that Neuralink and Kernel are working on may indeed come to pass, though it’s likely to take much longer than the four or five years Musk has predicted. Brain surgery remains a risky endeavor; implants can shift in place, limiting their useful lifetime; and patients with implanted electrodes face a steep learning curve being trained how to use them.
“It’s a few decades down the road,” said Blake Richards, a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto. “Certainly within the 21st century, assuming society doesn’t implode, that is completely possible.”
Amy Webb, CEO of Future Today Institute, pointed out that the Neuralink announcement is part of a much larger field of human-machine interface research, dating back over a decade, performed at the University of Washington, Duke University and elsewhere.
Too much hype from one “buzzy” announcement like Neuralink, she said, could lead to another “AI Winter.” That’s a reference to the overhype of AI during the Cold War, which was followed by a backlash and reduced research funding when its big promises didn’t materialize.
“The challenge is, it’s good to talk about potential,” Webb said. “But the problem is if we fail to achieve that potential and don’t start seeing all these cool devices and medical applications we’ve been talking about then investors start losing their enthusiasm, taking funding out and putting it elsewhere.”
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‘Electric Sands’ Cover Titan
To build a sandcastle here on Earth, the sand needs to be wet so it can stick together. Not so on Saturn’s strange and largest moon Titan, according to a new study.
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology say the moon’s non-silicate sand is “electrically charged” and “resistant to motion.” Researchers liken the charge to the static electricity generated when you rub a balloon on your hair.
“If you grabbed piles of grains and built a sand castle on Titan, it would perhaps stay together for weeks due to their electrostatic properties,” said Josef Dufek, the Georgia Tech professor who co-led the study. “Any spacecraft that lands in regions of granular material on Titan is going to have a tough time staying clean. Think of putting a cat in a box of packing peanuts.”
The electrical charge, according to researchers, can last for days or months.
The charge is likely generated by the winds on Titan, which blow at around 30 kilometers per hour. As the sand moves, it begins to hop and collide, becoming charged.
Researchers say the electrification of Titan’s sands could explain why dunes on the moon, some of which are more than 90 meters tall, form in the opposite direction of the prevailing winds.
“These electrostatic forces increase frictional thresholds,” said Josh Mendez Harper, a Georgia Tech geophysics and electrical engineering doctoral student who is the paper’s lead author. “This makes the grains so sticky and cohesive that only heavy winds can move them. The prevailing winds aren’t strong enough to shape the dunes.”
To reach their conclusions, researchers built a model to replicate conditions on Titan. For the model, they put grains of “naphthalene and biphenyl — two toxic, carbon and hydrogen bearing compounds believed to exist on Titan’s surface — into a small cylinder.”
The cylinder was then rotated in a nitrogen environment similar to Titan. Then, they measured the electric characteristics of the grains.
“All of the particles charged well, and about two to five percent didn’t come out of the tumbler,” said Mendez Harper. “They clung to the inside and stuck together. When we did the same experiment with sand and volcanic ash using Earth-like conditions, all of it came out. Nothing stuck.”
Sand on Earth also can pick up an electric charge, but the grains are much smaller and dissipate rapidly.
“These non-silicate, granular materials can hold their electrostatic charges for days, weeks or months at a time under low-gravity conditions,” said George McDonald, a graduate student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who also co-authored the paper.
The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
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Twitter to Let Advertisers Buy Video Ads on Periscope
Twitter Inc, trying to boost its sagging advertising revenue, will allow brands to buy commercials on its video streams for Periscope, signaling a major push to make money off the live-streaming platform, the company announced on Tuesday morning.
With sponsors growing more wary of exactly what kind of online videos their ads are being placed against, Twitter is allowing a select group of advertisers to purchase pre-roll videos, meaning those that run prior to the publishers’ content, on Periscope streams.
Twitter acquired Periscope in 2015.
Google’s YouTube, long the dominant force for online video ad dollars, has seen an exodus from brands upset to find their ads running alongside anti-Semitic and other videos that shocked customers. Companies that left included Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc and Johnson & Johnson.
YouTube’s selling process automatically places ads next to videos that meet the criteria for the audience advertisers want to reach, but the Alphabet unit has had difficulty policing the vast array of videos that are uploaded.
Twitter is only offering up a select group of publishers for brands to buy ads against, which will let advertisers know exactly where their ads are showing up. “This is the solution to that problem,” Matthew Derella, Twitter’s vice president of global revenue and operations, told Reuters. “We believe the advertiser should have control.”
The video ads will only be seen when viewed within Twitter’s platform. Twitter allowed for Periscope streams to be integrated within Twitter last year. The advertisers will be able to purchase ads on Periscope videos through Twitter’s Amplify program.
Until now, Twitter has monetized Periscope by relying on brands to purchase Promoted Tweets, which are placed in user feeds, even for those who do not follow the company on Twitter. The goal is to draw more attention whenever the company is live-streaming something on Periscope.
Twitter is looking to turn around its sagging fortunes. Its stock has slumped 8 percent so far this year as investors have worried about slowed user and advertising revenue growth, along with mounting competition from Facebook Inc’s Instagram, and Snap Inc’s Snapchat.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, Twitter posted the slowest revenue growth since it went public four years earlier, and revenue from advertising fell from a year earlier. The company warned that advertising revenue growth would continue to lag user growth during 2017. The company is also considering a paid subscription offering.
your ad hereLeonardo Masterpiece Unveiled After Facelift
Leonardo da Vinci is, simply put, one of the greatest artists of all time. The world still marvels at his genius and some of his most famous works, such as the Mona Lisa. One of his uncompleted works, Adoration of the Magi, had fallen on hard times, but thanks to more than five years of restoration, the painting is back on display. VOA’S Kevin Enochs reports.
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Samsung Plans to Sell Refurbished Galaxy Note 7s
Tech giant Samsung Electronics plans to sell refurbished versions of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, the company said late on Monday, signaling the return of the model pulled from markets last year because of fire-prone batteries.
Samsung’s Note 7s were permanently scrapped in October after some phones self-combusted, prompting a global recall roughly two months after the launch of the near-$900 devices.
A subsequent investigation found manufacturing problems in batteries supplied by two companies — Samsung SDI Co and Amperex Technology.
Analysis from Samsung and independent researchers found no other problems in the Note 7 devices except the batteries, raising speculation that Samsung will recoup some of its losses by selling refurbished Note 7s.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters in January that it was considering the possibility of selling refurbished versions of the device or reusing some parts.
Samsung’s announcement that revamped Note 7s will go back on sale, however, surprised some with the timing – only days before it launches its new S8 smartphone on Wednesday in the United States, its first new premium phone since the debacle last year.
Under pressure to turn its image around after the burning battery scandal, Samsung had previously not commented on its plans for recovered phones.
“Regarding the Galaxy Note 7 devices as refurbished phones or rental phones, applicability is dependent upon consultations with regulatory authorities and carriers as well as due consideration of local demand,” Samsung said in a statement.
South Korea’s Electronic Times newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said on Tuesday that Samsung will start selling refurbished Note 7s in its home country in July or August and will aim to sell between 400,000 and 500,000 of the Note 7s using safe batteries.
Samsung said in a statement to Reuters that the company has not set specifics on refurbished Note 7 sales plans, including what markets and when they would go on sale, though it also said it does not plan to sell refurbished Note 7s in India or the United States.
The company said refurbished Note 7s will be equipped with new batteries that have gone through Samsung’s new battery safety measures.
“The objective of introducing refurbished devices is solely to reduce and minimize any environmental impact,” it said.
The company estimated that it took a profit hit of $5.5 billion over three quarters because of the Note 7’s troubles. It had sold more than 3 million of the phones before taking the model off the market.
Samsung also plans to recover and use or sell reusable components such as chips and camera modules, as well as rare metals such as copper, gold, nickel and silver from Note 7 devices it opts not to sell as refurbished products.
Environment rights group Greenpeace and others had urged Samsung to come up with environmentally friendly ways to deal with the recovered Note 7s. Greenpeace said in a separate statement on Monday that it welcomed Samsung’s decision and that the company should carry out its plans in a verifiable manner.
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From Syria to Detroit, We Are All Migrants, Sings Bluesman Bibb
“Migration Blues”, a new album from veteran bluesman Eric Bibb, uses the sounds of the American South to tell the tale of everyone from 1920s farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl for California to refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe in the 2010s.
Along the way are Mexicans seeking a future in the United States, families moving from land the government has just seized for corporate expansion, and a Cajun jig reminding listeners of the expulsion of French Canadians south down the Mississippi.
“We are all linked by one migration or another. We are all connected to migrants,” Bibb told Reuters ahead of the album’s release on March 31.
“The hysterical reaction against migrants is really hard to understand. Have we really forgotten our history?”
The album’s most contemporary subject is to be found in “Prayin’ For Shore”, a blues about the plight of millions of Syrians and others who have fled civil wars in the Middle East on sometimes fatal journeys to Europe across the Mediterranean.
“In an old leaky boat, somewhere on the sea/trying to get away from the war/Welcome or not, got to land soon/Oh lord, prayin’ for shore,” run the lyrics.
The song, Bibb writes in an accompanying booklet, is about remembering the drowned.
But the fleeing migrants of today are nothing new.
For Bibb, an African American, another key moment in history was “The Great Migration” of millions of southern blacks away from America’s segregated South.
By some estimates, more than 6 million left the rural areas for industrial places like Detroit, New York and Chicago between 1910 and 1970.
“(They were) not just looking for jobs but fleeing racial terror,” Bibb said.
Such a point is made in his mellifluous rendition of “Delta Getaway” about a man fleeing a lynch mob to Chicago.
“Saw a man hanging from a cypress tree/I seen the ones who done it/now they coming after me”.
The album is being released as anti-immigrant politics is on the rise across much of the world, including the United States where U.S. President Donald Trump wants to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out immigrants.
Bibb said it was all laid down and finished before Trump’s election, but that he was nonetheless “astounded by the synchronicity of it”.
Most of the songs on the album are Bibb’s, although he offers covers of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”, originally an angry riposte from the dispossessed, and Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”, about the merchants of destruction.
Bibb said that apart from “Prayin’ For Shore”, his favorite composition on “Migration Blues” is “Brotherly Love”.
He said it reflected his personal belief.
It offers more hope for the future, one in which people can live in peace.
your ad hereThis Day in History: America’s Worst Nuclear Fears Realized at Three Mile Island Plant
Thirty-eight years ago today — March 28, 1979 — disaster struck at 4 a.m. at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania after its cooling system failed.
It remains the worst nuclear accident in American history.
A simple plumbing failure prevented the main feedwater pumps from sending water to generators that remove heat from the plant’s core reactor.
During those pre-dawn hours, the temperature of the reactor rose steadily even as staffers were unaware that a valve in the emergency cooling system had become stuck in place, allowing cool water to flow through the valve — not reaching the reactor.
Instruments in the control room misled operators, who thought the cooling system was working normally.
As coolant flowed from the primary system through the valve, other instruments available to reactor operators provided inadequate information. There was no instrument that showed how much water covered the core. As a result, plant staff assumed that as long as the pressurizer water level was high, the core was properly covered with water.
As alarms rang and warning lights flashed, the operators did not realize that the plant was experiencing a loss-of-coolant accident — or, rather, the beginnings of a nuclear meltdown. And just after 6:00 am, data indicated the core reactor had overheated so much that radiation was detected inside the control room.
Half the core was later found to have melted.
By the evening of March 28, the core appeared to be adequately cooled and the reactor appeared to be stable.
But new concerns arose by the morning of March 30.
A significant release of radiation from the plant’s auxiliary building, performed by operators to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core, sparked public concerns and consternation among politicians.
In an atmosphere of growing uncertainty and concern, then-Governor Dick Thornburgh, consulted with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about evacuating the population near the plant.
Eventually, he and NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie agreed that it would be prudent for those members of society most vulnerable to radiation to evacuate the area.
Thornburgh announced that he was advising pregnant women and pre-school-age children within a five-mile (8 km) radius of the plant to leave the area.
The national and international media had given the accident at Three Mile Island front page attention for days. Then-President Jimmy Carter decided a frightened nation needed his presence. On April 1, Carter went to inspect the damaged plant.
In the months following the accident, questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal and plant life around the nuclear power plant, although none could be directly correlated to the accident.
Thousands of environmental samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil and foodstuffs were collected by various government agencies monitoring the area.
In 1997, researchers from Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Science concluded increases in lung cancer and leukemia near the Pennsylvania plant suggested a much greater release of radiation during the 1979 accident than had been believed.
The accident sparked sweeping safety regulations. The damaged reactor, on the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, was never restarted. No new commercial nuclear power plant was licensed by the federal government until 2012.
But an article written by Michael Grunwald published in Time magazine in 2009 summed up Three Mile Island this way:
“The TMI fiasco was a scary cultural moment…But there was nothing particularly tragic about it. It didn’t kill people. It didn’t kill nuclear power.”
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Political Atmosphere Gives Cartoonist Plenty of Material
Political satire dates back to the ancient Greeks, 2,400 years ago when Aristophanes made fun of the Peloponnesian War. It’s a staple of late-night American television talk shows and the editorial pages of most newspapers. Successful political cartoonists are able to draw biting commentary with the stroke of a crayon. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan profiles an award-winning cartoonist.
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Exoskeleton Makes Lifting Easier
Lifting boxes by hand, day after day, in places like warehouses can cause muscle strain and other injuries. But now a new exoskeleton — a rigid external body frame that assists with limb movement can help prevent problems associated with repetitive tasks like handling boxes or materials at construction sites. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it.
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Nourishing the World One Little Girl at a Time
In the U.S. and Africa, communities of African descendants are experiencing a high rate of diet related disorders like diabetes and heart disease. A Nigerian American in Washington wants to change that. Nutritionist Tambra Raye Stevenson is on a mission to inspire young girls and women in the diaspora and in Africa to embrace their heritage from farm to fork and become leaders in nutrition. VOA’s June Soh caught up with Stevenson at a recent event to promote her initiative.
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No Wi-Fi, No Internet, No Problem
Broadband access in the United States is not universal, with a longtime digital divide between urban and rural areas.
But in one small town just four hours from Washington, D.C., there’s no internet service at all.
The town of Green Bank, West Virginia, is the site of the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world, so internet connections and anything else that can create electromagnetic waves, such as microwave ovens, are banned.
It becomes apparent in Green Bank that visitors have to navigate the old-fashioned way: by reading road signs. That’s because GPS comes to a screeching halt as you approach this West Virginia town, which has two churches, an elementary school, a library and the world’s largest radio telescope.
Sherry, who manages the largest store in Green Bank, was born here so the lack of internet access is normal for her.
“Yes, we are different. Many would say that we live the old-fashioned way, in the past. But for us, it’s just the way of life that we have always lived,” Sherry said.
On her store wall, an artifact from the past … a phone attached to a wall jack … the only way to call someone in Green Bank.
No modern wireless conveniences, such as smartphones, are usable here.
Green Bank is frozen in time, somewhere in the 1950s, because there’s a 33,000-square-kilometer zone of silence due to the telescope. Cellphone towers are forbidden.
But that’s OK for residents because there are several payphones.
The closer you get to the telescope, the greater the restrictions. There’s a 16-kilometer radius around the Green Bank Observatory where radio-controlled items, even toys, cannot be used. Compliance with these conditions is strictly enforced.
Radio frequency technician Jonah Bauserman acts as the observatory’s “technical” policeman. If he suspects there’s an unauthorized signal, he drives to the house and inspects it for prohibited devices.
“This equipment allows me to catch even the weakest signals that could affect the telescope,” Bauserman said.
Telescope employees even work in a special room — much like a sarcophagus — that blocks electromagnetic waves from leaving the interior.
“Here imagine a submarine, water cannot get inside, and so this room is an electric submarine. No electromagnetic waves can get into this room, just as you can’t go beyond it,” Michael Holstine, an observatory officer, said.
The job of these scientists is to minimize the impact of outside interference on the radio telescope.
Only once a week, when there’s regularly scheduled maintenance, some prohibited devices are allowed near the telescope, Holstein said.
The size of a football field, the telescope is so sensitive it could pick up signals sent from an alien world. And scientists can’t wait for that to happen.
“All the signals that we now receive with the help of telescopes are signals that come from cosmic objects — stars, galaxies. We have not yet received anything from intelligent civilizations,” scientist Richard Lynch said.
Local people respect the work of the scientists. And they are more than happy to live life Wi-Fi free.
“When we want to meet friends, we just call each other on a wire phone. And instead of sitting in front of your screen, we talk, we go fishing, to the mountains,” resident Sherry said.
For the latest news, residents read the weekly local newspaper. When she’s looking for a phone number, Sherry reaches for the phone book.
And instead of Facebook, Sherry enjoys daily conversations with her customers. In this town, everyone knows each other and communication is face to face.
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Baltics’ Russian Media Use Online Humor to Combat Propaganda
Russia’s nationalist propaganda machine kicked into high gear after the 2014 annexation of Crimea sparked the worst East-West tensions since the Cold War.
State media quickly fell behind the Kremlin line while Russia’s few independent media came under increasing pressure to conform or self-censor.
As Russian authorities shrank the space for independent reporting, one group of Russian journalists escaped the pressure by relocating to the European Union in Latvia’s capital, Riga.
“Because, you know, a lot of white noise propaganda creates some kind of fake agenda. And, we want to provide [a] real agenda to our readers,” says Meduza Project founder Galina Timchenko.
Timchenko was fired in 2014 as chief editor of Russian news website Lenta.ru after publishing an interview with a far-right Ukrainian nationalist that Russia’s state media regulator called “extremist.”
Timchenko says she ran out of time and energy to fight Russian authorities and can work easier in the EU countries.
Baltic countries are willing hosts
In the Baltics, authorities responded to Kremlin propaganda with temporary suspensions for Russian state media that incited unrest. But also by hosting independent Russian media like Meduza.
“Those Russian journalists who left Moscow, who left [Saint] Petersburg, who left Russia and other cities, and who established their own media outlet here and who are also, to some extent, helping to tackle these propagandas,” says Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics.
Meduza battles increased cynicism about Russian politics and current events by focusing on online content and humor to attract young Russians.
Use of humor
A big focus is using humor to point out absurd politics and alleged corruption.
During a March visit to their office in Riga, reporters were shown an online game Meduza created, one of many on their website, that has players try to purchase more shoes and shirts than Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The game refers to Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny’s investigation of alleged corruption linked to Medvedev. The investigation started by tracing who paid for a pair of Medvedev’s sneakers and ended asking the same question about a massive villa estate in Tuscany that Navalny claims is Medvedev’s. Russian officials have dismissed Navalny’s previous allegations, though Medvedev has yet to comment himself.
Target young Russian internet users
Meduza aims to reach internet-savvy young Russians who, unlike 80 percent of their compatriots, are not yet hooked on state television.
“These people have more chances to see another Russia. These people have more chances to see Russia without the current government, the current president. So, that’s why we think that we have to invest all our resources exactly into this audience,” says Meduza Chief Editor Ivan Kolpakov.
But he says they are not activists or opposition media; just reporters trying to do independent journalism.
“And the main thing we’re trying to do, we’re trying to, you know, make news interesting again, Make News Great Again, for the people in Russia,” says Kolpakov with a slight grin in sarcastic reference to U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Older Russians are harder target
Timchenko acknowledges reaching most older Russians is quite a challenge.
“They want to see themselves, with their beliefs and desires, in media. They just do not want to see different views. It’s the most difficult, difficult thing.”
While in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, a news-comedy program is using a similar strategy.
Political satire
An online show called Laikykites Ten, or “Hang In There,” recently began a Russian-language version making fun of Russian politics.
“Inspiration comes from the — our beloved — Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Also, Jon Stewart, [Stephen] Colbert,” says host of the show and TV journalist Andrius Tapinas.
The show’s name refers to a comment made by Russian Prime Minister Medvedev to a retied woman in annexed Crimea who confronted him in 2016, telling him pensions were too low to keep up with rising costs. Medvedev responded there was no money left in the budget and hastily left shouting “You hang in there. Best Wishes! Cheers! Take care!”
The comments sparked a social media storm.
The crowd-funded, online program uses satire to reach Russian speakers and poke holes in Kremlin propaganda.
“We’re making fun of Russian politics and Russian government. And, that’s where the market is pretty empty, I would say. Because, inside of Russia, it’s not advisable for your health reasons to be very critical or even a tiny bit critical of your government,” says Tapinas.
Like Meduza, Tapinas seeks the next generation of Russians who mainly get their information online, but are fed up with nationalist politics and could use a good laugh.
“When people laugh there is no place for fear,” says Meduza’s Timchenko. “You know, you can make those tough guys silly and stupid and funny and have some joy and to show that news is not boring.”
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‘Fearless Girl’ Extends Face-off with Wall Street’s ‘Charging Bull’
The globally popular statue of a young girl will keep staring down Wall Street’s famed “Charging Bull” through February 2018 instead of being removed this coming Sunday, the mayor said.
She’s “standing up to fear, standing up to power, being able to find in yourself the strength to do what’s right,” said Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who appeared with the “Fearless Girl” statue Monday on the lower Manhattan traffic island where the two bronze figures face each other.
The mayor said the political turmoil surrounding Republican President Donald Trump makes the endearing child particularly relevant.
“She is inspiring everyone at a moment when we need inspiration,” he said.
The 4-foot-tall, 250-pound ponytailed girl in a windblown dress was installed this month to highlight the dearth of women on corporate boards as she stands strong against the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull. The girl became an instant tourist draw and internet sensation.
On Monday morning, Democratic U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, of New York, led a group of prominent women in front of City Hall to honor the artist, Kristen Visbal, and State Street Global Advisors, the asset management firm that commissioned the work and, with the McCann advertising firm, helped Visbal create her sculpture.
“She was created to bring attention to the courage and unrealized power of women in so many fields, and she has clearly struck a nerve,” said Maloney, who is pushing for the statue to become a permanent installation.
Visbal said the positive response to her artwork “renewed my faith in sculpture to make an impact on society, to create a debate the way a good piece of art should.”
She has received more than 1,000 emails from India, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and elsewhere, including one from a mother who wanted to wallpaper her daughter’s room with the girl’s image.
“I see men and women as the ying and yang of society,” Visbal said. “They bring different things to the table. They solve problems in a different way. But we need to work together.”
“Fearless Girl” will stay in place for another 11 months through an art program of the city’s Department of Transportation that manages lower Broadway near Wall Street.
Visbal said one of her models was a friend’s young daughter, whom she asked “to envision staring down a great big bull and, boy, she really had style.” The girl was white, and the creative team then incorporated another girl, a Latina, “to come up with a child that has universal appeal,” Visbal said.
The fictional figure is linked to a very real message: Women make up only about 16 percent of U.S. corporate boards, according to the ISS Analytics business research firm.
Artist Arturo Di Modica’s bull arrived after the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans’ financial resilience and can-do spirit. He wants the girl gone, calling the statue an “advertising trick” fashioned by two corporate giants, while his sculpture is “art.”
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Circus Skills Show Children of Mexico Beach Town How to Fly
With their gravity-defying trampoline flips, graceful acrobatics, juggling and tightrope walking, the children in San Francisco’s circus school are bringing a touch of Cirque du Soleil magic to this bohemian Pacific beach town.
In jewel-colored leotards with feather headdresses and intricate makeup, they romp through seamless routines in an exuberant take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with pumping music and hula-hoops, under the direction of Cirque co-founder Gilles Ste-Croix.
Wearing an ethereal illuminated dress and carried as fairy queen Titania, Juliana Palomares Rodriguez — like many of the 150 children in the Circo de los Ninos school — has set her heart set on joining the world-famous Cirque du Soleil.
“I love it,” said Palomares, 15, from the town of around 3,000 residents, known locally as San Pancho. “It’s really exciting to be in the show — the circus school has taught me how to present myself and work in a team.”
Her dream now is go to circus school in Montreal, Canada, where Cirque du Soleil has its headquarters.
Ste-Croix raided costumes and circus gear from Cirque du Soleil’s warehouses for the children’s circus, which was set up in a converted warehouse six years ago.
Originally it worked with the Entreamigos community center next door, whose projects aim to equip the small town north of Puerto Vallarta to meet the challenges of increased tourism and development.
“Circo has become a project for the town … it’s something more than it was at the beginning, just to train kids in acrobatics,” said Ste-Croix, before walking through the school where girls swung upside down on aerial hoops and stilt-walkers practiced skipping. “It’s not a business plan for the sake of money — it’s more a human resource plan.”
Now aged 21, Jose Luis Herrera Botello graduated from Circo de los Ninos to a professional course in Mexico City. Here he is learning skills such as juggling, contortion, trapeze and acrobatics from Russian, Cuban and other teachers, which he will eventually pass on to the children in San Pancho.
“What I learned from the Circo de los Ninos is do things well or don’t do them. If you really want something, just go for it,” said Herrera, who is sponsored by Circo de los Ninos and Entreamigos.
Ready for change
For American Nicole Swedlow, whose Entreamigos project began at a table set up under a tree, access to good education is key to ensuring children from local families can earn a living, find professional jobs, and lead the town as it rapidly evolves along with an influx of tourists.
Entreamigos is now a vibrant focal point, with around 300 people passing through its shutter doors each day for free activities such as football, technology, English, art and capoeira. Others shop at its gallery and secondhand store.
“The danger for me is that we leave behind some of our most local families because they don’t have access to the resources that you need to live in a growing community,” said Swedlow in the airy library where children sit on the floor playing games and battle noisily over table football.
“Entreamigos is a classic example of resilience,” she added. “We’re asking a community to prepare themselves, or become prepared for everything that’s coming, so they can be active leaders in that process.”
Picking motivated children from low-income backgrounds for Entreamigos’ scholarship scheme is crucial, she said.
Around 90 are now enrolled, with some at local universities, while two brothers with barely literate parents are at a nautical school.
Some women have trained as beauticians, allowing them to earn a living from their front yard while looking after their children, said Swedlow, whose work has been recognized by the Dalai Lama.
New path
One of six siblings, Glenda Ponce said she secretly applied to university and finally got a scholarship through Entreamigos, despite objections from her parents who could not afford to pay and wanted her to get married and work as a cleaner.
She is on the leadership council that will soon take over running Entreamigos, where her parents both now work. Having completed only a couple of years of primary school themselves, they are improving their literacy as part of a deal that all employees study.
“The biggest impact of Entreamigos has been to change patterns — the course of a generation,” said Ponce, 25, sitting in front of a huge banner with photos of scholarship recipients.
Isis del Rosario Vivas Rodriguez, 20, who met Swedlow when she first started classes under a tree, said her scholarship had changed her options, and she is now training to be a teacher while working at Entreamigos.
“It’s helped find a path to follow. … In my generation, hardly anyone studies. Normally they work in a little grocers’ or stationery shop,” she said.
Entreamigos also generates jobs and a chunk of its income from a town-wide recycling program, selling upcycled products such as glasses in its gallery.
More than 1,000 people come to volunteer with the organization each year, many of them U.S. and Mexican university students, while others visit to work out how to replicate parts of its model elsewhere.
“We’ll educate anybody and everybody to give them the ability to do this in their own communities,” Swedlow said.
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Facebook’s Messenger App to Allow Live Location-sharing
Facebook Inc will add a feature to its Messenger app Monday to allow users to share their locations, the company said, ramping up competition with tools offered by Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google Maps.
The company has found that one of the most used phrases on Messenger as people talk to friends and family is “How far away are you?” or some variation, Stan Chudnovsky, head of product for Messenger, said in an interview.
“It happens to be what people are saying, what they’re interested in the most,” he said.
Sharing location information will be optional, he said, but it will also be live, so that once a user shares the information with a friend, the friend will be able to watch the user’s movement for up to 60 minutes.
Messenger was once part of the core Facebook smartphone app, but the company broke it out as a separate app in 2014 and has since invested in frequent changes to build a service distinct from the massive social network.
Google Maps said last week that it was adding a similar feature, an attempt to boost engagement on a product of increasing strategic importance to that company.
The close proximity of the announcements tells Facebook “that we’re working on the right things,” Chudnovsky said.
The Messages app on Apple’s iPhone has such a feature, too.
Facebook has been testing its change in Mexico, he said. It was ready as long ago as October, he added, but the company worked on it for five more months to minimize the impact on the battery life of phones.
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Houston Student Dies Days After FaceTiming with Beyonce
A Houston high school student has lost her battle with terminal cancer days after having a dream come true in a talk with Beyonce over a video chat.
Alief Independent School District spokeswoman Kimberly Smith says senior Ebony Banks died late Saturday night.
The teen’s Hastings High School classmates started an online campaign before her death to give her a chance to meet her favorite singer, Beyonce. Banks received a FaceTime call Wednesday from the star.
The school gave Banks her diploma during a graduation ceremony in the hospital last week.
Students gathered at a candlelight vigil Sunday to remember Banks. Video posted on social media shows students raising candles to Beyonce’s “Halo.”
your ad hereUber Resumes Self-Driving Car Program in San Francisco After Crash
Driverless vehicles operated by Uber Technologies Inc. were back on the road in San Francisco on Monday after one of its self-driving cars crashed in Arizona, the ride-hailing company said.
Uber’s autonomous vehicles in Arizona and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, remained grounded but were expected to be operating again soon, according to a spokeswoman for the company, who refused to be identified.
“We are resuming our development operations in San Francisco this morning,” she said in an email.
Uber’s San Francisco program is currently in development mode. It has two cars registered with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, but is not transporting passengers.
The spokeswoman said because of this, the company felt confident in putting the cars back on the road while it investigates the collision in Arizona.
On Friday, Uber suspended its pilot program in the three states. A human-driven vehicle “failed to yield” to an Uber vehicle while making a turn in Tempe, Arizona, said Josie Montenegro, a spokeswoman for the city’s police department.
“The vehicles collided, causing the autonomous vehicle to roll onto its side,” Montenegro said in an email. “There were no serious injuries.”
Two “safety” drivers were in the front seats of the Uber car, which was in self-driving mode at the time of the crash, Uber said on Friday, a standard requirement for its self-driving vehicles. The back seat was unoccupied.
Photos and a video posted on Twitter by Fresco News showed a Volvo SUV flipped on its side after an apparent collision involving two other, slightly damaged cars. Uber said the images appeared to be from the Tempe crash scene.
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Britain Wants Social Media Sites Cleared of Jihadist Postings
Islamic State propagandists are seeking to capitalize on last week’s terror attack in London, which left five people dead and 40 injured, by flooding YouTube with hundreds of violent recruitment videos.
The online propaganda offensive comes as Britain demands social media companies scrub their sites of jihadist postings.
Amber Rudd, the country’s interior minister, has vowed to “call time” on internet firms allowing terrorists “a place to hide” and has summoned some of the leading social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, for what is being dubbed by British officials as “showdown talks” later this week.
Rudd says she is determined to stop extremists “using social media as their platform” for recruitment and for operational needs.
Britain’s security services are in a standoff with WhatsApp, which has refused to allow them access to the encrypted message the London attacker sent three minutes before he used an SUV to mow down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and stabbed to death a policeman outside the House of Commons.
British security services are powerless to read that final message, which might cast light on whether the attack was a “lone wolf” or one aided and directed by others. Police investigators believe the terrorist acted alone and have seen no evidence that he was associated with IS or al-Qaida.
WhatsApp, which has a billion users worldwide, employs “end to end encryption” for messages, which the company says prevents even its own technicians from reading people’s messages.
Officials want voluntary action
Rudd and other government ministers have launched a media onslaught, saying they are considering legislation to require online companies to take down extremist material. They argue this wouldn’t be necessary if the companies recognized their community responsibilities.
Rudd told the BBC that Facebook, Google and other companies should understand they are not just technology businesses, but also publishing platforms. “We have to have a situation where we can have our security services get into the terrorists’ communications,” she argued. “There should be no place for terrorists to hide.”
British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson joined in the condemnation of social media and online companies. “I think it’s disgusting,” he told The Sunday Times. “They need to stop just making money out of prurient violent material.”
At a security conference last week in the United States, Johnson called for action.
“We are going to have to engage not just militarily, but also to stop the stuff on the internet that is corrupting and polluting so many people,” he said. “This is something that the internet companies and social media companies need to think about. They need to do more to take that stuff off their media — the incitements, the information about how to become a terrorist, the radicalizing sermons and messages. That needs to come down.”
Recruiting criminals
The furor over extremist use of the internet was fueled Monday by front-page articles in the Times and Daily Mail newspapers highlighting the IS propaganda videos posted on YouTube since last Wednesday’s slaughter in the British capital. The high-definition videos, some of which contained references to the London attack, include gory scenes of beheadings and “caliphate violence” carried out by child adherents of the terror group.
U.S. and European officials have long complained online companies are, in effect, aiding and abetting terrorism. A year ago in January, much of the U.S. national security leadership of the Obama administration sat down with Silicon Valley chiefs to discuss jihadist use of the internet to recruit and radicalize people and plot attacks.
Also last year, British spy chief, Robert Hannigan, singled out messaging apps as especially worrisome for the security services, saying they had become “the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals — precisely because they are highly encrypted.”
Some cooperation
After initial resistance to complaints from Western governments, Facebook, Google and Twitter have in recent months been more cooperative with authorities and have removed large amounts of extremist material. Twitter said in the second half of 2016 it suspended 376,890 accounts for violations related to promotion of terrorism.
But some services have resisted providing governments with encryption keys, or so-called back doors.
Apple has developed encryption keys that message users can use that are not possessed by the company. Apple’s chief executive, Timothy Cook, argued last year, “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too.”
Silicon Valley chiefs say they fear violations of privacy and their priority is their customers, not national security, an argument that has resonated since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of electronic surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Last year, WhatsApp was blocked several times in Brazil for failing to hand over information relating to criminal investigations.
Messages sent on a rival service by Telegram are also encrypted, but after bad publicity and immense pressure from Western governments, the company does provide a backdoor for security and law-enforcement agencies.
Not that access to encrypted communications always helps.
Sunday, it emerged that German police knew the Christmas market attacker in Berlin who drove a truck into a crowd of shoppers was planning a suicide attack. Police had intercepted his Telegram messages nine months before the attack.
A police recommendation that he be deported was declined by state government prosecutors because they feared the courts would reject the request.
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Human Heart Cells Grown on Spinach Leaves
Spinach is known as a super food for its nutritional value, but a new experiment reveals another power of the green leaf.
Researchers say they’ve grown beating human heart cells on spinach leaves, using the vascular network of the plant to transport fluids. The finding could eventually lead to being able to grow working human cardiac tissue that could one day be used to replace heart cells damaged by heart attacks.
“Plants and animals exploit fundamentally different approaches to transporting fluids, chemicals, and macromolecules, yet there are surprising similarities in their vascular network structures,” said researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro. “The development of decellularized plants for scaffolding opens up the potential for a new branch of science that investigates the mimicry between plant and animal.”
The breakthrough is important because so far, bioengineering such as 3-D printing, can’t replicate the complex system of blood vessels in the human body that deliver the oxygen, nutrients, and essential molecules required for proper tissue growth.
For the experiment, researchers first stripped plant cells from spinach leaves and passed beads the size of human blood cells through the leftover vascular system and seeded the spinach veins with human cells that line our blood vessels.
“We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising,” said Glenn Gaudette, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at WPI and corresponding author of the paper. “Adapting abundant plants that farmers have been cultivating for thousands of years for use in tissue engineering could solve a host of problems limiting the field.”
Researchers added that other plants have been shown to offer the same kind of promise, including parsley, Artemesia annua (sweet wormwood), and peanut hairy roots.
“The spinach leaf might be better suited for a highly vascularized tissue, like cardiac tissue, whereas the cylindrical hollow structure of the stem of Impatiens capensis (jewelweed) might better suit an arterial graft. Conversely, the vascular columns of wood might be useful in bone engineering due to their relative strength and geometries,” the authors wrote.
Using plants could also be economical.
“By exploiting the benign chemistry of plant tissue scaffolds,” researchers wrote, “we could address the many limitations and high costs of synthetic, complex composite materials. Plants can be easily grown using good agricultural practices and under controlled environments. By combining environmentally-friendly plant tissue with perfusion-based decellularization, we have shown that there can be a sustainable solution for pre-vascularized tissue engineering scaffolds.”
The paper, “Crossing kingdoms: Using decelluralized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds” is published online in advance of the May 2017 issue of the journal Biomaterials.
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Matthew, Otto Being Retired as Atlantic Tropical Storm Names
The names Matthew and Otto have been retired for Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes following the deadly 2016 season.
According to a statement Monday from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the World Meteorological Organization will use Martin and Owen for future Atlantic storms. The new names might first be used in 2022.
Names get retired when a storm is so deadly or destructive that future use of its name would be insensitive.
Hurricane Matthew caused 585 deaths, including over 500 deaths in Haiti before it made landfall in Cuba, the Bahamas and South Carolina. It was the strongest Atlantic hurricane since 2007 and the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since 2005.
Heavy rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Otto caused 18 deaths in Central America.
your ad hereTrump to Roll Back Obama-era Environmental Rules
White House officials say President Donald Trump will sign executive orders Tuesday that would effectively dismantle Obama era environmental regulations, rekindling the highly-charged partisan debate about how human activity affects the earth’s climate, and deepening concern decades of work on global climate treaties may be unraveling.
“Many agree that would be disastrous,” Dutch Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen told VOA in a telephone interview. “Whatever has been achieved could be destroyed, so I don’t think many scientists would be pleased with this,” said Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for work explaining the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.
Trump has repeatedly signaled disdain for his predecessor’s climate policy. On the campaign trail he called President Obama’s Clean Power Plan “stupid”, largely because it puts in place what he calls “job killing” regulations. The executive orders he is set to sign Tuesday directs the Environmental Protection agency to thoroughly revise regulations outlined in the Clean Power Plan.
Trump’s 2018 budget proposal slashes EPA funding by 31 percent, including an almost total cut of climate research funds. Trump’s Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told a White House briefing, “We’re not spending money on that any more.”
International effect
Less clear is the president’s commitment to international agreements such as the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, signed by Obama. Trump has an aversion to treaties that cede U.S. authority to global bodies, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, speaking Sunday on ABC’s This Week, called the Paris treaty a “bad deal.”
Early drafts of the executive orders were said to have included language critical of the Paris deal. News reports, however, say two of his closest confidants, daughter Ivanka and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a former chief of the global energy giant ExxonMobil, intervened to have references to the Paris Accord dropped from the final draft.
The EPA’s Pruitt said Sunday that revising the Clean Power Plan is aimed at unshackling American industry. “This is about making sure we have a pro-growth and pro-environment approach to how we do regulation in this country,” he said.
A hot issue
Leaked details of the executive orders have ignited a firestorm among climate scientists.
Tim Barnett, emeritus research geophysicist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California says even he, a Trump supporter, would find it “unconscionable” to roll back regulations contained in the Clean Power Plan. “Global warming is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue,” he said. “If you look at what’s going on the Arctic, the Antarctic, by continuing to put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we’re making the oceans more acidic. It is thought that by 2040 half the planktonic creatures will be under stress.”
In Washington views on climate change generally split along party lines. With Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, the views of climate skeptics, largely marginalized during the Obama years, are finding fresh voice.
EPA chief Pruitt was known for numerous legal challenges to EPA regulations when he was attorney general of Oklahoma. His official biography describes him as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”
On Capitol Hill, the House Science Committee has scheduled hearings this week to look into the methods of climate scientists, as Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) pushes forward a bill to require the EPA to make public the data it uses to justify environmental regulations. The hearing will feature three prominent academics who question the scientific consensus, alongside Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and author of the “hockey stick” graph that suggests a steep rise in the earth’s temperature since fossil fuels came into wide use.
Speaking to VOA, Mann said the rising profile of climate change doubters in Washington is part of a well-funded campaign by big energy industry interests, mainly Charles and David Koch, who are major contributors to conservative political and policy groups.
“Trump’s administration has been filled with individuals who have close ties to polluting interests, ExxonMobil obviously, but the Koch brothers, the largest privately owned fossil fuel interests in the country,” Mann said. “… and their agenda has long been to gut all government regulations so they can increase their own profits from the sale of fossil fuels.”
Climate skeptics agree money has corrupted the scientific debate, but they differ on its effect. The dissenters argue that fierce competition for the billions of dollars in government research grants has forced academics to exaggerate the danger of climate chance.
Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, represents the small minority of scientists who find fault with the overwhelming consensus on climate change. He argues universities have given in to the temptation to exaggerate climate change as they have become increasingly dependent on billions of dollars in government research funding, effectively making bureaucrats the real judges of science.
“We went way backward in studying climate and replaced it with this single variable, (CO2) and increased funding by 1500% and created a whole new community that had never studied climate but was willing to attribute everything to it,” he said.
Lindzen supports Trump’s initiative to limit funding for climate change research. “Then only people interested in the physics of climate change would remain,” he said.
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Actress Shailene Woodley Reaches Deal in Pipeline Protest Arrest
Hollywood actress Shailene Woodley has reached a plea deal that calls for no jail time over her involvement in protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota.
The “Divergent” star was among 27 activists arrested Oct. 10. She livestreamed her arrest on Facebook.
Woodley initially pleaded not guilty to criminal trespass and engaging in a riot, misdemeanors carrying a maximum punishment of a month in jail and a $1,500 fine.
She signed a court document Friday agreeing to plead guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, serve one year of unsupervised probation and forfeit $500 bond. The agreement is awaiting a judge’s approval. Woodley was scheduled to stand trial this Friday.
Opponents of the $3.8 billion pipeline worry about potential environmental damage. About 750 protesters have been arrested since August.
your ad hereDevastated by War or Disaster, Children Find Healing in New York
Elissa Montanti can rattle off the stories without hesitation of the hundreds of wounded children who have come through the doors of her small New York charity to get medical help.
Marci, a five-year-old from Afghanistan, was shot in the face in a Taliban ambush. She lost her eye, and her father died trying to shield her.
Hamandani, nine, was hanging from a tree, trying not to be swept away in Indonesia’s 2004 tsunami when he fell and crushed his arm.
And Sarki stumbled into a wood stove as a toddler living high in the Himalayas, a six-hour trek from the nearest passable road. Her burned arm healed into a frozen position, with a web-like hand.
They are among the more than 200 children injured in disaster or conflict and brought to the United States for surgery, prosthetics and other medical treatment, courtesy of Montanti’s Global Medical Relief Fund (GMRF).
Almost all come more than once, especially when growing children need larger prosthetics, bringing the number of follow-up visits to about a thousand.
“All the kids are in my head and in my heart,” said Montanti, who founded GMRF 20 years ago. “I love all of them.
“People say, ‘Do you have kids?’ and I say, ‘Yeah, 200,'” she said with a laugh. “I look good for 200 kids.”
Actually, those 200-plus children take a toll on Montanti, who puts them up in a four-bedroom house down the street from her own in the New York City borough of Staten Island.
“It’s not 9 to 5,” she told Reuters in a recent interview. “I’m up the street at 12, 1, 2 in the morning seeing who has a fever, who’s got a cold.”
And she gets some criticism.
“People say why don’t you help kids here,” she said. “These kids have no resources. Why shouldn’t we help them? They don’t have half of what we have.”
GMRF has hosted children from the United States as well as 40 other countries, their lives shredded by war or calamity.
Some are missing limbs, and others are severely burned or disfigured. Some must be carried off airplanes when they arrive, she said.
Staying in New York City with Montanti, they are treated at no cost by the Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia. Some also have been treated by New York’s Northwell Health hospital.
‘Healing and love’
The first to be helped by Montanti was a boy who lost both arms and a leg stepping on a landmine in Bosnia. Word spread, especially among U.S. soldiers who befriended young war victims and sought her help for them.
That brought her children like Ahmed, who lost his vision and an arm in an explosion in Iraq as he walked home from school at age seven.
This week, Montanti has four children with albinism from Tanzania who lost limbs in brutal attacks and need prosthetics.
Albinos in Tanzania are targeted for body parts, which are highly valued in witchcraft and can fetch a high price.
The four children are on a return visit, having first come to the United States and Montanti two years ago for care.
At the same time, she has three amputee children from Nicaragua — two teenage boys who lost limbs in car accidents and the mischievous seven-year-old Alexis Pineda who was born missing one arm below the elbow.
Alexis likes to show off that he is adept at tying his shoes without his prosthetic but with it, he can grab things and use scissors, his mother said through an interpreter.
“”There are a lot of bullies. In Nicaragua, they look at him. It’s hard,” said his mother, Cristian Marcela Pineda, who accompanied him to New York from Managua. “Now they can look at him but at least he has another hand.”
Daniel Solis, 14, who lost his leg in a hit-and-run accident in his Nicaraguan hometown of Masaya, grabbed Montanti in a hug as he practiced walking on his prosthetic.
“We are best friends,” he said in Spanish.
As the children grow up and move on, they stay in touch, often on Facebook, where Montanti said she recently got birthday greetings from children she helped from Bosnia in 1998.
“In this little house with four bedrooms, there’s a lot of healing and love that goes on under the roof,” she said.
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