Mexico’s Hotel California Owners Reject the Eagles’ Trademark Claims
The owners of a Mexican hotel using the name Hotel California on Wednesday said a trademark infringement lawsuit by the Eagles, whose song “Hotel California” is arguably the band’s most famous, should be dismissed.
Hotel California Baja LLC, which runs the Todos Santos hotel in Baja California Sur, said the band long ago waived its trademark rights, having waited four decades to assert them since releasing the song “Hotel California” on a 1976 album with the same name.
The owner said it “flatly denies” the Eagles’ “baseless contention” that the 11-room hotel seeks to mislead travelers into thinking the property is associated with the band.
“Any alleged use of plaintiff’s trademarks is not likely to cause confusion, deception or mistake as to association, connection, sponsorship, endorsement, or approval of plaintiff,” the owner said in a filing in Los Angeles federal court.
Lawyers for the Eagles were not immediately available for comment.
In their May 1 lawsuit, the Eagles said the defendant encourages guests to believe their hotel is associated with the band, including piping its music through a sound system, to sell T-shirts and other merchandise.
The hotel is located about 1,000 miles (1,609 km) south of San Diego and 48 miles (77 km) north of Cabo San Lucas.
It was named Hotel California at its 1950 opening, underwent some name changes, and later revived the original name after a Canadian couple, John and Debbie Stewart, bought it in 2001.
U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner scheduled a conference in the case for Aug. 21.
The album “Hotel California,” won the 1977 Grammy Award for record of the year.
The case is Eagles Ltd v Hotel California Baja LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 17-03276.
…
Spelling Aces Advance Toward $40K Prize
Some contestants traced letters on their palms, while other word whizzes in the Scripps National Spelling Bee searched the ceiling for inspiration on Wednesday as they edged closer to the $40,000 top prize.
The youngest-ever competitor, Edith Fuller, who turned 6 on April 22, was among the 259 youths still spelling at midday from a starting field of 291.
“It feels really exciting,” Fuller, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, told reporters who asked what it was like to be the youngest speller at the 90th national bee.
Wearing a navy blue dress with a black bow in her wavy blond hair, Fuller said she planned to compete again next year “if I don’t win this time.”
Her mother said she quizzed her daughter on words up to five times a day but limited each session to 20 minutes.
“She does all the work in her mind,” said Annie Fuller, who home-schools her daughter. “The spelling did come as a surprise because we never explicitly tried to teach our children spelling.”
Before the lunch break on Wednesday, Edith Fuller successfully spelled the word nyctinasty, which describes the movement of plants, causing the crowd at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center to burst into applause.
Others who also moved on to the next round at the Washington-area resort correctly spelled words such as gneiss, brachiopods and dactylology, while some struck out on the words quokka and toile.
The competition for the spelling specialists, ages 6 to 15, concludes with finals Thursday.
More than 11 million youths competed in earlier spelling bees in all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several nations, from Jamaica to Japan, contest officials said.
New rules this year are aimed at preventing tie endings like last year’s, when joint winners both got $40,000 cash prizes.
Bee officials will administer a Tiebreaker Test to all spellers in the competition at 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) Thursday. It will consist of 12 spelling words, which contestants will handwrite, and 12 multiple-choice vocabulary questions.
If it is mathematically impossible for one champion to emerge through 25 rounds, officials will declare the speller with the highest tiebreaker score the winner. If there is a tie on the test, judges will declare co-champions.
…
Aerosmith’s Nearing 50 Years But Plans to ‘Keep Going’
Aerosmith may be approaching its 50th anniversary, but its members say the band’s not going anywhere.
Frontman Steven Tyler and Joe Perry both say the band will keep playing. That’s despite the title of their tour, ‘Aero-Vederci Baby!’ — which seems to play on “arrivederci,” Italian for “goodbye till we meet again.”
That appeared to hint it could be a farewell tour for the band after their run of dates in Europe.
“From my point of view, I think that we are going to keep going,” Perry said, adding he wanted to see Aerosmith remaining “pretty active over the next few years.”
Tyler joked that they simply couldn’t think of another name for the tour and added that “as long as the band is playing the way it is right now, it is going to be for a long time.”
Tyler also has joked that he’s taken up smoking.
“I started smoking on this tour because the band sounds so good I have to do something wrong,” he said in an interview last week ahead of the band’s Munich date.
For now, Perry is looking forward to playing Download Festival in Donington in the U.K. on June 11.
“It is kind of like playing Madison Square Garden in New York City,” he said, adding that “you’ve got to bring your A-game.”
Next stop for the tour is Friday in Krakow, Poland.
…
Nest Security Camera Knows Who’s Home with Google Face Tech
Nest Labs is adding Google’s facial recognition technology to a high-resolution home-security camera, offering a glimpse of a future in which increasingly intelligent, internet-connected computers can see and understand what’s going on in people’s homes.
The Nest Cam IQ, unveiled Wednesday, will be Nest’s first device to draw upon the same human-like skills that Google has been programming into its computers — for instance, to identify people in images via its widely used photo app. Facebook deploys similar technology to automatically recognize and recommend tags of people in photos posted on its social network.
Nest can tap into Google’s expertise in artificial intelligence because both companies are owned by the same parent company, Alphabet Inc.
With the new feature, you could program the camera to recognize a child, friend or neighbor, after which it will send you notifications about that person being in the home.
Nest isn’t saying much about other potential uses down the road, though one can imagine the camera recognizing when grandparents are visiting and notifying Nest’s internet-connected thermostat to adjust the temperature to what they prefer. Or it might be trained to keep a close eye on the kids when they are home after school to monitor their activities and send alerts when they’re doing something besides a list of approved activities.
The cost of facial recognition
The new camera will begin shipping in late June for almost $300. You’ll also have to pay $10 a month for a plan that includes facial recognition technology. The same plan will also include other features, such as alerts generated by particular sounds — barking dogs, say — that occur out of the camera’s visual range.
The camera will only identify people you select through Nest’s app for iPhones and Android devices. It won’t try to recognize anyone that an owner hasn’t tagged. Even if a Nest Cam IQ video spies a burglar in a home, law enforcement officials will have to identify the suspect through their own investigation and analysis, according to Nest.
Privacy concerns
Facial recognition is becoming more common on home-security cameras. Netatmo, for instance, introduced a security camera touting a similar facial recognition system in 2015. That camera sells for about $200, or $100 less than the Nest Cam IQ.
The way that the Nest and Netatmo cameras are being used doesn’t raise serious privacy concerns because they are only verifying familiar faces, not those of complete strangers, said Jennifer Lynch, who specializes in biometrics as a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital advocacy group.
But Lynch believes privacy issues are bound to crop up as the resolution and zoom capabilities of home security cameras improve, and as engineers develop more sophisticated ways of identifying people even when an image is moving or only a part of a face is visible. Storing home-security videos in remote data centers also raises security concerns about the imagery being stolen by computer hackers. “It definitely could become a slippery slope,” Lynch said.
The privacy issues already are thorny enough that Nest decided against offering the facial recognition technology in Illinois, where state law forbids the collection and retention of an individual’s biometric information without prior notification and written permission.
Further details
Nest’s $10-a-month subscription includes video storage for 10 days. Video can be stored up to 30 days with an upgrade to a subscription plan costing $30 per month.
The high-end camera supplements lower-resolution indoor and outdoor cameras that Nest will continue to sell for almost $200. Neither of the lower-end cameras is equipped for facial recognition.
…
Trump Admonishes Comedian Kathy Griffin for Posting Gruesome Mock Image of Him
U.S. President Donald Trump admonished comedian Kathy Griffin Wednesday for appearing in a brief video holding a reproduction of a severed, bloody head that resembled the president.
In an early morning tweet, Trump said the image is disturbing – particularly to his children.
After seeing negative online reaction, Griffin apologized Tuesday night — saying she “moved the line” and then “crossed it.”
Griffin had shared the image in a tweet that has since been deleted at Griffin’s request.
The photo was taken by Tyler Shields, whose own biography notes he has evolved from Hollywood’s “bad boy of photography.”
The criticism came from liberals and conservatives alike, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and daughter of 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Chelsea Clinton, who called the image “vile and wrong.”
The CNN news channel, which has featured Griffin as a co-host on its New Year’s Eve coverage, said the picture was “disgusting and offensive.”
The cable news network said in a statement it is “evaluating our New Year’s coverage.”
…
Tech Show Displays Ways VR, AI Edging into People’s Lives
Inside the sprawling Acer stall at Computex Taipei, Asia’s largest tech show, staff displayed a laptop computer that’s ready for virtual reality play yet thinner than most PCs for gaming. At the same exhibition, the Taiwanese tech hardware maker showed how its internet cloud uses artificial intelligence to predict what customers will do when shopping and allow the shop to make decisions accordingly.
VR and AI usher in a new world of technology
Acer was riding two major new themes at the annual show: virtual reality, often abbreviated to VR, and artificial intelligence, or AI.
Demand from gamers, a lucrative market of people willing to pay more than $10,000 for a personal computer (PC), is driving the VR side, compelling Acer and its peers to install new lines of processors that support immersive, 3D play with headgear and hand controls.
“You can see that the company is moving into more gaming centric, VR, new experience innovation,” said Vincent Lin, senior director of Acer’s global product marketing. “Not all gaming notebooks or not all notebooks are VR ready. There are certain requirements needed to be VR ready. VR, certainly it’s a growth area. It’s supposed to like grow five times or something over next 3 years.”
Revenue is forecast to rise quickly
Silicon Valley investment advisory firm Digi-Capital forecasts a surge in global revenue from $20 billion this year to $108 billion in 2021 in virtual reality technology and a similar technology known as augmented reality.
The anticipation of growth inspired 60 Computex exhibitors to show games, gear or PCs that support virtual reality. The technology that first popped into public view in the 1980s is normally aimed now at computer gamers, though scientific researchers have used VR as well as the related augmented reality to model processes they can’t duplicate in real life.
Near Acer’s stall, Computex visitors donned thick, black head-mounted goggles to race cars or fire at things, yelling in excitement through the dimly lit booths as they tested new products.
PCs will be thinner, quieter and quicker to support VR
Developers were excited about Nvidia’s newly announced graphics processors that are designed to make PCs thinner and quieter. They also noticed the seventh update of Intel’s Core i5 processor, which stands to make PCs faster.
At one stall, Hong Kong developer Zotac showed off backpacks that can hold a gamer’s VR hardware system to prevent any tripping over wires – which might happen to someone immersed in a 3D scenario and unable to see the real floor.
“Right now the way the virtual reality equipment is made, you’re tethered to a system. That means you have to worry about tripping over cables, wrapping them around yourself as well,” Zotac product marketer Buu Ly said. “With our VR backpack, that removes those barriers so you are more free to experience VR the way it was supposed to be experienced.”
AI attracting much interest this year
Artificial intelligence also made its way into the show, where about 1,600 exhibitors occupied 5,010 booths, this year as companies test a relatively new technology that teaches computers to make decisions based on patterns they detect through analysis of user commands.
Voice-activated assistants on mobile phones use artificial intelligence by searching the phone for requested information, even sending commands across apps to get answers.
Computex organizers have not tallied the number of exhibitors showing AI technology, but analysts in Taipei say a number are pursuing servers that can speed up development of AI functions allowed by the likes of Nvidia’s Jetson TX computer processing module.
With a compound annual growth rate of 63 percent from 2016 to 2022, the artificial intelligence market should be worth $16.06 billion by 2022, according to forecasts by the research firm Markets and Markets.
“AI has caught much of the spotlight in various exhibitions around the world and has become one of major deployment highlights for many companies in recent years,” said Ray Han, industry analyst with the Marketing Intelligence & Consulting Institute in Taipei. “The next battlefield will lie on platforms or chips.”
Internet of things
One contender is Socionext, a Japanese developer that has developed a processor partly for AI and the Internet of things, or IoT, which means using phones or PCs to control other electronic objects. Five customers are evaluating whether to install the chip, said Fumitaka Shiraishi, a Socionext business project management group member.
“Our chip is a processor chip, so not too specific for AI but also suitable for AI because of the low power,” Shiraishi said.
Artificial intelligence can help the Internet of things by picking the most relevant points from vast fields of data collected.
“In the future five years, I think IoT devices also need to judge some information — not just sensing,” Shiraishi said.
…
New Graphene Water Filter Makes Salt Water Drinkable
The United Nations predicts that by 2025 nearly two billion people will be living in places where there’s not enough water to go around. And since on average water makes up about 60% of the human body, not having it has a host of devastating effects that go way beyond just being thirsty. That’s why some new technology to turn saltwater into drinkable water holds so much promise, VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
Forget Butterfly Nets; Today’s Naturalists Capture Specimens on Phones
Your smartphone can help scientists keep tabs on changes happening in the natural world. More than one hundred thousand citizen scientists around the globe are snapping pictures of all kinds of plants and animals using the iNaturalist app. It is giving researchers an unprecedented amount of information about what lives where, and how that is changing with humanity’s expanding footprint. Steve Baragona has details.
…
Solar Power Lights Up Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan
Solar power is lighting up the night sky in Jordan and making life easier for the 20,000 Syrian refugees at a camp that once had no reliable source of electricity. Faith Lapidus reports.
…
How ‘Wonder Woman’ Built a World of Women, Onscreen and Off
In a world of only women, there are no phallic structures.
At least that’s how Patty Jenkins imagined the island home of the Amazons and their heroic princess Diana, who grows up to become Wonder Woman.
“Like columns? They didn’t make that much sense to me,” Jenkins said in a recent interview. “They felt like an imposition on landscape, which didn’t feel like something that women are jonesing to do.”
As the director of “Wonder Woman,” Jenkins is creating new worlds for women both onscreen and off. Not only did she help dream up the look of the Amazon island and hire scores of actresses to serve as its resident warriors, she’s the first woman to direct a major superhero movie, and her success could pave the way for others.
As a child, she was inspired by Wonder Woman, describing Lynda Carter’s portrayal on TV as “the embodiment of everything that I wanted to be as a woman.”
“When I was playing Wonder Woman, I was able to do incredible things and save the world,” the 45-year-old filmmaker said.
That’s the feeling she hopes to evoke with viewers of “Wonder Woman,” in theaters Friday. Gal Gadot plays the title character, who discovers her superpowers and fights for justice alongside humans after following a charming spy (Chris Pine) to London during World War I.
‘An important movie’
The Israeli-born Gadot didn’t grow up with Wonder Woman, but she was always on the lookout for powerful characters to play.
“Usually the women are the damsel in distress or the heartbroken woman or the sidekick, but in real life it’s not the case. In real life, we bring life. We have babies. We have careers. We are so many other things,” said Gadot, a 32-year-old married mother of two.
“Wonder Woman symbolizes the magnificence of a woman and how amazing women are. And I think that it’s an important movie not only for women and girls, but it’s also great for boys and men, Gadot said. “You can’t empower women if you don’t educate the men and you don’t teach the boys, so as much as it’s important for girls to be exposed and see this movie, it’s important for boys to have a strong female figure that they can look up to.”
A first for Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman was created in 1941, yet this is her first solo feature film. Jenkins wanted to bring her to the big screen for more than a decade, but studios doubted the appeal of the lasso-wielding super heroine.
“I don’t understand why somebody who has had zero big blockbuster representation for 75 years still has 15 little girls a minute coming to my door dressed as her every Halloween, like how does that not equal dollar signs?” Jenkins said.
Connie Nielsen, who plays Diana’s mother, Amazon queen Hippolyta, also didn’t grow up with Wonder Woman, but had myriad other models of powerful women as a child in Denmark.
“The Denmark I grew up in was a Denmark in which women were, in fact, fully liberated and the whole world had been opened up to us,” she said. “In the magazines in the early ‘80s, it was men who were photographed doing the vacuum cleaning in the ads for vacuum cleaners and women were no longer posing on the Ford Mustang.”
So Nielsen felt entitled to question why, on an island populated by only women, her character would wear high heels. She and Gadot, both statuesque, wear wedges in the film.
“I actually had that conversation several times, and Patty was adamant,” Nielsen said. “She really felt like you stand a different way (in heels), and you do.”
Amazons were best part
The costumes, including the wedges, had to be considered during the physical training, which included horseback riding, archery and swords(wo)manship. For Robin Wright, who was raised on the “Wonder Woman” TV show, training and shooting with the Amazons was the best part.
“I think it was a little daunting for the men because it was very unusual. I think there were like 120 Amazons,” said Wright, who plays the warrior Antiope, Diana’s aunt and teacher. “That’s a different energy on the set, and great for us. We just felt like a team of women that had each other’s backs.”
She called Jenkins “the biggest cheerleader of them all.”
With the film’s arrival this week, Jenkins is thinking about what “Wonder Woman” might mean for a new generation of aspiring superheroes — and filmmakers.
“I am a filmmaker who wants to make successful films, of course. I want my film to be celebrated,” she said. “But there’s a whole other person in me who’s sitting and watching what’s happening right now who so hopes, not for me, that this movie defies expectation. Because I want to see the signal that that will send to the world.”
your ad hereDefeat Was a Motivator for Past Spelling Bee Champs
Three past winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee say losing was the secret to their success.
Early defeats spurred an inner competitive streak that they used to eventually seize the title, said champions from 1985, 1999 and 2010. The 2017 national spelling bee winner will be crowned on Thursday.
“Those were tough losses but they also made me dig deeper and work harder,” said Balu Natarajan, 45, who flamed out on the national stage in 1983 and 1984. He won the next year at age 13 and is now a sports medicine doctor in Chicago.
Nupur Lala, 32, still remembers the word that tripped her up in 1998: commination, which ironically means the act of threatening divine vengeance. She took the title in 1999 at 14.
“It was one of the really healthy moments in my life. Any hubris that I had was eliminated at that point,” said Lala, headed for a 2018 medical school degree with a focus in neurology after conducting research at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Lesson about challenges
For 2010 winner Anamika Veeramani, losing in front of a worldwide audience on live television in 2009 was a seminal lesson in handling life’s challenges.
“In the spelling bee, you really learn how to deal with failure. And dealing with those things gracefully is really important to living a good life,” said Veeramani, 21.
She graduated last week with a biology degree after just three years at Yale University and is applying to medical school. She envisions treating patients as well as launching a broadcast career covering medical stories.
Defeat has fanned the competitive fires within, all three past winners said in separate interviews.
“The competition is not with other spellers but with yourself,” Lala told Reuters. “I don’t think that besting other people is quite as motivating for me.”
Natarajan, who is chief medical officer at Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care, the nation’s largest privately owned hospice provider, agreed he has been his own fiercest rival.
“Some people love to win. Some people want to keep pushing to be their best. I am the latter,” he said.
Natarajan won the title for correctly spelling milieu, Lala for logorrhea and Veeramani for stromuhr, after their opponents had stumbled.
Others’ errors
And how do the world’s best spellers handle errors in emails, classroom lessons or even romantic love letters? Do they point out corrections or suffer in silence?
“I don’t hesitate,” Natarajan said. “It drives me crazy.”
But Lala and Veeramani hold their tongues.
“I don’t want to be obnoxious. Nobody wants to be that kid,” Veeramani said.
This week, 291 whizzes ages 6 to 15 will descend on a resort in the Washington area to compete in the 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee.
They have made the cut from more than 11 million contenders who faced off in spelling bees in all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several nations from Jamaica to Japan.
The victor on Thursday takes home a $40,000 cash prize. But second place also has its rewards: a $30,000 prize.
Natarajan, a married father of boys 8 and 11, said his elder child just missed competing in the national bee this year, coming in second in a countywide spelling competition. If losing really is the key to winning, that may be great news.
…
Genetic Secrets of Ancient Egypt Unwrapped
DNA from mummies found at a site once known for its cult to the Egyptian god of the afterlife is unwrapping intriguing insight into the people of ancient Egypt, including a surprise discovery that they had scant genetic ties to sub-Saharan Africa.
Scientists on Tuesday said they examined genome data from 90 mummies from the Abusir el-Malek archaeological site, located about 70 miles (115 km) south of Cairo, in the most sophisticated genetic study of ancient Egyptians ever conducted.
The DNA was extracted from the teeth and bones of mummies from a vast burial ground associated with the green-skinned god Osiris. The oldest were from about 1388 BC during the New Kingdom, a high point in ancient Egyptian influence and culture.
Genomes provide a surprise
The most recent were from about 426 AD, centuries after Egypt had become a Roman Empire province.
“There has been much discussion about the genetic ancestry of ancient Egyptians,” said archeogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
“Are modern Egyptians direct descendants of ancient Egyptians? Was there genetic continuity in Egypt through time? Did foreign invaders change the genetic makeup: for example, did Egyptians become more ‘European’ after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt?” Krause added. “Ancient DNA can address those questions.”
The genomes showed that, unlike modern Egyptians, ancient Egyptians had little to no genetic kinship with sub-Saharan populations, some of which like ancient Ethiopia were known to have had significant interactions with Egypt.
The closest genetic ties were to the peoples of the ancient Near East, spanning parts of Iraq and Turkey as well as Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Middle-class mummies
Egypt, located in North Africa at a crossroads of continents in the ancient Mediterranean world, for millennia boasted one of the most advanced civilizations in antiquity, known for military might, wondrous architecture including massive pyramids and imposing temples, art, hieroglyphs and a pantheon of deities.
Mummification was used to preserve the bodies of the dead for the afterlife. The mummies in the study were of middle-class people, not royalty.
The researchers found genetic continuity spanning the New Kingdom and Roman times, with the amount of sub-Saharan ancestry increasing substantially about 700 years ago, for unclear reasons.
“There was no detectable change for those 1,800 years of Egyptian history,” Krause said. “The big change happened between then and now.”
…
UN Chief Urges Trump Administration to Stay in Paris Climate Deal
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday urged the Trump administration not to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, saying the deal would have long-term benefits for the U.S. economy and even its security.
Speaking to an audience of students, civil society and business leaders at New York University, Guterres delivered his subtle pitch to the U.S. administration, which has said a decision about whether to stay in the 2015 agreement will come soon.
“If one country decides not to be present — I’m talking about countries with an important global reach, like it is the case with United States or China — if one country decides to leave a void, I can guarantee someone else will occupy it,” Guterres said in response to a student’s question about dealing with the Trump administration’s skepticism about climate change.
Guterres said he was engaging with the administration and Congress to try to convince them that it is in the United States’ interest to stay in the deal, which seeks to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius.
“There are many good arguments that in my opinion should lead an administration that has a concern to put its own interests first, and the interests of its people and its country first, to invest in what is necessary to preserve the global reach of its economy and to preserve the security of its citizens,” Guterres said, alluding to Trump’s “America First” policy.
“And so my argument today is that it is absolutely essential that the world implements the Paris Agreement, and that we fulfill that duty with increased ambition,” Guterres said during his prepared address.
He said the science was “beyond doubt” and that the effects of global warming already were being felt around the world.
Nearly every country has signed on to the Paris Agreement, and a majority have ratified it. The accord entered into force last November. In addition to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it seeks to mitigate the effects already felt by global warming.
“The sustainability train has left the station,” Guterres said. “Get on board or get left behind. Those who fail to bet on the green economy will be living in a grey future.”
He praised China for its “massive shift to other forms of energy,” saying the country had made a “very strong bet recently in greening its economy.”
Renewable energy
The U.N. chief noted that renewable forms of energy were growing in use and decreasing in cost.
“Last year, solar power grew 50 percent, with China and the United States in the lead,” he said. “Around the world, over half of the new power generation capacity now comes from renewables. In Europe, the figure is more than 90 percent.”
He said 80 percent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — and that would not change overnight. But it is important, he said, to engage the energy industry and governments to use those energy sources as moderately as possible while making the transition to renewable, clean ones.
“I think they are working towards having an answer for that, and so we’ll wait and see what that answer is,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters earlier Tuesday when asked about the administration’s plans.
…
Olivia Newton-John Postpones Tour as Cancer Returns
Singer, actress Olivia Newton-John has revealed that she has breast cancer again, 25 years after recovering from her original diagnosis.
She has postponed upcoming tour dates after discovering that severe back pain she has been suffering is a result of the disease spreading to her spine.
The 68-year-old was due to perform across the U.S. and Canada next month.
Newton-John said she will undergo a short course of radiation, as well as natural therapies, upon the advice of specialists at a cancer research center named after her in her adopted home of Melbourne, Australia.
Newton-John has been a chart-topper since the 1970s with songs that stretch into pop, folk and country but she became best-known for starring in the 1978 musical comedy “Grease” alongside John Travolta.
Newton-John was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, forcing her to halt her schedule.
The experience had a major impact on Newton-John who became an advocate for research into cancer and for early detection.
Last week, the four-time Grammy award winner cancelled several events for the upcoming tour dates due to “severe back pain.”
A statement from her management on Tuesday said: “The back pain that initially caused her to postpone the first half of her concert tour, has turned out to be breast cancer that has metastasized to the sacrum.”
…
Stronger Tobacco-control Measures Vital, WHO Warns
The World Health Organization warns that more than 7 million people die prematurely every year from tobacco-related causes, and it’s a costly drain on national economies.
In advance of World No Tobacco day, to be observed Wednesday, the global health agency urged governments to implement strong tobacco control measures for the health of their people and their economies.
WHO calls tobacco a threat to development. Besides the heavy toll in lives lost, global estimates show that “tobacco costs the global economy $1.4 trillion a year,” or 1.8 percent of global gross domestic product. The WHO notes this estimate takes into consideration “only medical expenses and lost productive capacities.”
Despite effective tobacco control measures, WHO reports the number of people dying from smoking is increasing because those dying today have mostly been long-term smokers and it takes time for tobacco control policies to make an impact.
Vinayak Prasad, program manager of the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative, told VOA, “What we are seeing is that if the policies were not in place, the number of 7.2 million would have been higher. We are seeing a reduction of tobacco use prevalence in most countries. The only regions now which are seeing higher growth are the African continent and Middle Eastern region. The rest of the world is seeing a decline.”
Diseases, disabilities
Besides leading to premature death, the WHO has found, countless millions of people who smoke suffer from a wide variety of tobacco-related diseases and resultant serious disabilities, including blindness, amputation, impotence and poor oral health.
Andrew Black of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Secretariat noted that smoking is an addiction largely taken up in childhood and adolescence, “so it is crucial to reduce the number of young people taking up smoking in the first place. We must stop the tobacco industry’s powerful advertising and promotion, which can all too often be oriented toward young people.”
Black said tobacco widens social inequalities and is a driver of poverty around the world.
“We know that those living on lower incomes in virtually all countries are likely to smoke, and therefore more likely to suffer the consequences of tobacco use,” he said.
Black said that by 2030, about 80 percent of the world’s tobacco-related mortality will be in low- and middle-income countries.
“High rates of tobacco use being promoted by aggressive strategies from the tobacco industry are projected to lead to a doubling of the number of tobacco-related deaths in low- and middle-income countries between 2010 and 2030,” he said.
Study issued
To mark World No-Tobacco Day, the U.N. Development Program and the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control issued a study that focuses on the harmful effects of tobacco on both health and on efforts aimed at achieving the U.N.’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Dudley Tarlton, UNDP program specialist on health and development, told VOA that tobacco undermines the SDGs because “household consumption on tobacco displaces consumption on other goods and services that might lead to a better end.
“So, it affects poverty. It affects hunger. Education is affected. Children get ear infections because they are exposed to household smoke in the home,” he said.
For the first time, the WHO and UNDP released a joint report showing the bad impact tobacco has on the environment.
Prasad acknowledged that the data received from the tobacco industry and from governments were relatively weak. Nevertheless, he said, “the evidence is really astounding as to how tobacco is extremely dangerous and harming the environment.”
He said using land to grow tobacco “can lead to severe damage because of the widespread use of agrochemicals.”
Use of trees
Prasad noted that more than 11 million metric tons of wood was required to cure and dry tobacco, “which essentially means deforestation is already happening.”
The report found that tobacco waste contains over 7,000 toxic chemicals that poison the environment, including human carcinogens, and that tobacco smoke contributes “thousands of tons of human carcinogens, toxicants and greenhouse gases to the environment.”
Prasad said that cigarettes are bad news for tree lovers because “for every 300 cigarettes, we need to cut a tree. … Even conservatively, if we are looking at 6 trillion cigarettes, we are looking at almost 15 to 20 billion trees to cut.
“We have 6 trillion trees in the world, so we are almost looking at a big cut, which is going to happen, if we do not hold this,” he said.
And regarding the sullying of the world’s environment, he noted that cigarette butts “account for 30 to 40 percent of all items collected in coastal and urban cleanups.”
…
Indie Bookstores Hold Steady in Tough US Retail Market
With retail stores shutting down at the fastest pace since the crash of 2008, the head of the American Booksellers Association is grateful to see business holding steady.
After seven straight years of growth, core membership in the independent sellers’ trade group has dropped slightly since May 2016, from 1,775 to 1,757. At the same time, the number of actual locations rose from 2,311 to 2,321, reflecting a trend of owners opening additional stores.
The association’s CEO, Oren Teicher, says sales from reporting outlets are up around 2 1/2 percent in the first four months of 2017 over the same time period last year. Sales increased 5 percent from 2015 to 2016.
“We’re pleased that the sales and presence of independent stores continues to grow at a time when thousands of other stores are closing,” he told The Associated Press during a recent interview.
Teicher said he was also encouraged by a bump in “provisional members,” those intending to open a store, from 103 to 141. During the association’s prolonged decline, when the rise of superstores and e-books helped cut membership from around 5,000 in the 1980s to just 1,401 in 2008, the market looked so dire that some profitable stores closed because the owner wanted to retire and no buyer could be found. In recent years, independent stores have been helped by a variety of factors, from the fall of Borders and the struggles of Barnes & Noble to the leveling off of e-book sales.
Concerns do remain for independent sellers as they prepare to join thousands of publishers, authors, agents and librarians at the industry’s annual national convention, BookExpo, which begins Wednesday at New York’s Jacob Javits Center.
Closed stores of any kind can reduce foot traffic in a shopping district and hurt booksellers among others. And one company expanding on the ground is the online giant Amazon.com, which has been cited as a factor in closings for everyone from J.C. Penney to American Apparel.
Amazon just opened its first bookstore in Manhattan and seventh overall. One outlet is within 1 1/2 miles of Third Place Books in Amazon’s hometown Seattle, where Third Place managing partner Robert Sindelar says sales initially dropped after the Amazon store opened in November 2015, but had bounced back by the end of last year.
“So it feels that their larger impact on us was short-lived,” said Sindelar, the booksellers association’s new president. “However, any bookstore — Amazon, indie or chain store — that close is going to impact our sales to some degree.”
BookExpo runs Wednesday to Friday and will be immediately followed by the fan-based BookCon, which ends Sunday. Profits have long been narrow or nonexistent in publishing and BookExpo/BookCon is one way to limit costs.
For much of its century-plus history, the convention rotated locations, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., in the spirit of fairness and of spotlighting different parts of the country. But since 2008, New York publishers have preferred staying home. The 2016 show in Chicago, once a favorite setting for BookExpo, was notable for a drop in attendance and floor space and a lack of high-profile guests.
This year, the names have returned, although floor space continues to decline and side programs have been cut back. Hillary Clinton will speak at an hour-long event billed as “An Evening With Hillary Clinton” and is expected to promote a book of essays coming this September that will touch upon her loss to Donald Trump in 2016. Daughter Chelsea Clinton will be autographing her picture book “She Persisted” and Stephen King will make a joint appearance with son Owen King. Other featured speakers include Dan Brown, Kevin Hart and Sen. Al Franken, promoting his memoir “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.”
Events director Brien McDonald says that the convention will address issues within and beyond book publishing. A First Amendment “resistance” panel organized by PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, will include Scott Turow and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. A discussion sponsored by the grassroots organization We Need Diverse Books is called “Real Talk About Real Apologies.”
The panel’s moderator, Laura M. Jimenez, noted that Rick Riordan apologized for inappropriately using the term “spirit animal,” a sacred creature for some American Indians, in his novel “The Sword of Summer.” Little, Brown and Co., publisher of Lemony Snicket’s (aka Daniel Handler’s) picture book “The Bad Mood and the Stick,” promised to remove images of blacks by illustrator Matt Forsythe that were criticized as racist.
Jimenez said she wanted the panel to emphasize how “the overwhelming whiteness of publishing makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible for them to see the problematic representations.”
“It seems the insular world of children’s literature publishing creates a space where white people are unaware of their own privilege and, historically, have been unwilling to hear us,” said Jimenez, a lecturer at Boston University’s School of Education. “That is changing with Twitter and other social media outlets and blogs. … I think an all-out drive for diversity in publishing is needed.”
…
Android Creator Unveils New Phone, Home Assistant Device
Andy Rubin, the co-creator of the Android mobile phone operating system, has launched a new company called Essential Products to sell a high-end smartphone and a home assistant device.
Palo Alto-based Essential said the new Essential Phone features an edge-to-edge screen, a titanium-and-ceramic case and dual cameras. The phone sells for $699 and will run the Android operating system. The price pits it against high-end smartphones including Apple Inc’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S8.
Essential also launched a household assistant called Home that looks like an angled hockey puck with a screen. The device will compete against the Amazon.com Echo and Alphabet’s Google Home speaker, which are powered by the Alexa and the Google Assistant voice services respectively.
Essential confirmed the Home device will let the user choose between Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri. It was not immediately clear how Siri would be available on Essential. While Amazon and Google have released the software needed to embed their assistants on devices they do not make, Apple has not done so.
Essential declined to elaborate on how it plans to embed Siri on the device, and Apple declined to comment.
The Essential Home takes a page from Apple’s privacy play book. Like an iPhone, the Home will do much of the processing for voice and image recognition on the device itself rather than sending data to remote servers.
Essential also said the Home device will communicate with home appliances like lights and thermostats directly over the home network, rather than sending data to remote servers.
Apple’s HomeKit system takes similar approach. Rubin, Essential’s CEO, co-founded Android and sold it to Google in 2005. He ran Google’s mobile efforts until 2013 before a brief stint running the firm’s robotics division. He left Google in 2014 to focus on starting hardware companies. Investors in Essential include Chinese tech company Tencent Holdings, iPhone contract manufacturer Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures and Altimeter Capital.
Essential plans to announce a ship date for the devices in the next few weeks. The company did not say whether it planned to sell the phone directly to customers online or in physical stores.
Essential for the first time revealed its staff on its website, listing Wolfgang Muller as head of channel sales.
Muller previously ran North American retail operations for phone maker HTC, according to his LinkedIn profile, suggesting that Essential plans to sell phones through retail stores, carriers or both.
…
Woods Was Asleep at Wheel Prior to Arrest, Florida Police Say
Tiger Woods, once the world’s top golfer, was asleep at the wheel of his car and didn’t know where he was before he was charged with driving under the influence earlier this week, according to a police report released Tuesday.
Police in Jupiter, the oceanside Florida city where Woods lives, said he exhibited “extremely slow and slurred speech” after they awakened him when they found him sitting in his stopped car in the right lane of a roadway with the motor running. Police said he struggled with several roadside tasks they asked him to do.
The police report listed four prescription medications Woods said he was taking as he recovers from his latest back surgery, his fourth since 2014.
Two tests showed Woods’ blood-alcohol content to be zero, supporting his claim that the incident occurred because of an “unexpected reaction to prescription medications,” and not alcohol.
In a statement hours after he was released by police, Woods said he understood the severity of his actions and took full responsibility.
“I didn’t realize the mix of medications had affected me so strongly,” he said.
Woods added that he fully cooperated with police and thanked them for their professionalism.
The greatest player of his generation and one of the best of all time, Woods, 41, has not won a major tournament since 2008. He was the world’s top-ranked golfer for nearly 700 weeks but is now ranked at number 876.
Woods has been plagued in recent years by multiple back surgeries that have forced him to withdraw from recent tournaments. He has won 14 major golf championships and had been pursuing the record of 18 held by retired U.S. golfer Jack Nicklaus.
…
Scientists ‘Supercharge’ Powerful Antibiotic
Scientists have tweaked a powerful antibiotic, called vancomycin, so it is once more powerful against life-threatening bacterial infections. Researchers say the more powerful compound could eliminate the threat of antibiotic resistance for many years to come.
Antibiotic resistance, in which microbes no longer respond to drugs, is quickly becoming a global health emergency. Of particular concern are so-called “superbugs,” a handful of pathogens that patients acquire in hospitals and other health care settings. Patients recovering from surgery are particularly vulnerable to the resistant, hospital-borne infections, which put them at high risk of death.
Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, modified vancomycin, invented 60 years ago and considered a last resort treatment against many of these infections. They made a key change to its molecular structure, interfering with how the bacterium, enterococcus, makes protective cells walls.
In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigators describe how the change made vancomycin 1,000 times more effective against both drug-resistant enterococci and the original forms of the microorganism.
‘Total cures’
The modification is in addition to two previous changes made by the Scripps team that improved the drug’s potency, so less of it is needed to treat an infection.
Lead researcher Dale Boger, who co-chairs the institution’s Department of Chemistry, said it is difficult for enterococcus to find a way around three independent mechanisms of action. “Even if they found a solution to one of those,” said Boger, “the organisms would still be killed by the other two.”
The challenge now for researchers is to reduce the number of steps it takes in the lab to boost vancomycin’s effectiveness. Having redesigned the antibiotic’s molecular structure, Boger called streamlining its production the “easy part.”
Even if researchers are unable to simplify the way the improvements are made, Boger said efforts to supercharge vancomycin are worth it for the antibiotic’s lifesaving powers, calling the drugs “total cures” against bacterial infection.
Given the growing failure of antibiotics to treat common infections, Boger said making the super-charged vancomycin molecule is important, even if it’s labor-intensive.
…
Ariana Grande to Perform at Benefit for Manchester Bombing Victims
U.S. pop star Ariana Grande will perform at a benefit concert in Manchester for victims of last week’s deadly bomb attack in the city, her publicist announced Tuesday.
The “One Love Manchester” show, to be held Sunday at the city’s Old Trafford cricket ground, will also feature artists such as Justin Bieber and Katy Perry.
A May 22 suicide bombing in the lobby of Manchester Arena just after a concert by Grande killed 22 people and injured more than 100 others. Many of the victims were young girls, a large part of Grande’s fan base. Others were parents who had gone to meet their children after the concert.
Police have identified the attacker as 22-year-old Salman Abedi, a Manchester native, and are working to piece together his movements in the final weeks before the bombing as well as who else may have been involved.
More than a dozen people have been arrested in connection with the attack.
Abedi’s brother and father also were arrested in Libya last week where they are being held. A spokesman said that the brother, Hashim, was aware of Abedi’s plans to attack.
your ad hereCould Big Data Help Solve Hunger in Africa?
Computer algorithms power much of modern life from our Facebook feeds to international stock exchanges. Could they help end malnutrition and hunger in Africa? The International Center for Tropical Agriculture thinks so.
The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture has spent the past four years developing the Nutrition Early Warning System, or NEWS.
The goal is to catch the subtle signs of a hunger crisis brewing in Africa as much as a year in advance.
CIAT says the system uses machine learning. As more information is fed into the system, the algorithms will get better at identifying patterns and trends. The system will get smarter.
Information Technology expert Andy Jarvis leads the project.
“The cutting edge side of this is really about bringing in streams of information from multiple sources and making sense of it. … But it is a huge volume of information and what it does, the novelty then, is making sense of that using things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and condensing it into simple messages,” he said.
Other nutrition surveillance systems exist, like FEWSnet, the Famine Early Warning System Network which was created in the mid-1980’s.
But CIAT says NEWS will be able to draw insights from a massive amount of diverse data enabling it to identify hunger risks faster than traditional methods.
“What is different about NEWS is that it pays attention to malnutrition, not just drought or famine, but the nutrition outcome that really matters, malnutrition especially in women and children. For the first time, we are saying these are the options way ahead of time. That gives policy makers an opportunity to really do what they intend to do which is make the lives of women and children better in Africa,” said Dr. Mercy Lung’aho, a CIAT nutrition expert.
While food emergencies like famine and drought grab headlines, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture says chronic malnutrition affects one in four people in Africa, taking a serious toll on economic growth and leaving them especially vulnerable in times of crisis.
Senior policy officer Olufunso Somorin is with the Africa Development Bank.
“In 2030, 13 years from now, Africa is going to have 200 million children below the age of five. Now once a child is stunted or misses a level of nourishment at that age, it affects that child psychologically, economically, socially. So a stunted child in the future is actually a stunted economy. So linking issues of nutrition at individual level to Africa’s development and transformation on a broader scale is important,” said Somorin.
CIAT says African governments will be able to access NEWS via “nutrition dashboards” where they can get risk assessments, alerts, and recommendations.
The system is expected to become operational in four African countries, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Nigeria, by year’s end.
…
Could Big Data Help End Hunger in Africa?
Computer algorithms power much of modern life from our Facebook feeds to international stock exchanges. Could they help end malnutrition and hunger in Africa? The International Center for Tropical Agriculture thinks so.
The International Center for Tropical Agriculture has spent the past four years developing the Nutrition Early Warning System, or NEWS.
The goal is to catch the subtle signs of a hunger crisis brewing in Africa as much as a year in advance.
CIAT says the system uses machine learning. As more information is fed into the system, the algorithms will get better at identifying patterns and trends. The system will get smarter.
Information Technology expert Andy Jarvis leads the project.
“The cutting edge side of this is really about bringing in streams of information from multiple sources and making sense of it. … But it is a huge volume of information and what it does, the novelty then, is making sense of that using things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and condensing it into simple messages,” he said.
Other nutrition surveillance systems exist, like FEWSnet, the Famine Early Warning System Network which was created in the mid-1980s.
But CIAT says NEWS will be able to draw insights from a massive amount of diverse data enabling it to identify hunger risks faster than traditional methods.
“What is different about NEWS is that it pays attention to malnutrition, not just drought or famine, but the nutrition outcome that really matters, malnutrition especially in women and children. For the first time, we are saying these are the options way ahead of time. That gives policy makers an opportunity to really do what they intend to do which is make the lives of women and children better in Africa,” said Dr. Mercy Lung’aho, a CIAT nutrition expert.
While food emergencies like famine and drought grab headlines, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture says chronic malnutrition affects one in four people in Africa, taking a serious toll on economic growth and leaving them especially vulnerable in times of crisis.
Senior policy officer Olufunso Somorin is with the Africa Development Bank.
“In 2030, 13 years from now, Africa is going to have 200 million children below the age of five. Now once a child is stunted or misses a level of nourishment at that age, it affects that child psychologically, economically, socially. So a stunted child in the future is actually a stunted economy. So linking issues of nutrition at individual level to Africa’s development and transformation on a broader scale is important,” said Somorin.
CIAT says African governments will be able to access NEWS via “nutrition dashboards” where they can get risk assessments, alerts, and recommendations.
The system is expected to become operational in four African countries, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Nigeria, by year’s end.
…
Overlooked and Insidious: Back-bay Flooding Plagues Millions
Marty Mozzo gets a gorgeous show each night when the sun sets over wetlands near his property on the bay side of a barrier island.
When he and his wife bought the house in 2008, she looked at the marsh, where the only sign of water was a tiny trickle nearly a half mile away.
“Do you think this will flood?” she asked.
“How could it?” he replied. “Look how far away the water is.”
Within weeks of moving in, a storm stranded them for two days with water on all sides. Theirs is one of several neighborhoods in Ocean City, New Jersey, where residents have adopted unofficial flood etiquette: Don’t drive too fast through flooded streets or you’ll create wakes that slam into houses, scatter garbage cans, and damage lawns and gardens.
They are among millions of people worldwide whose lives and land are being dampened by back-bay flooding — inundation of waterfront areas behind barrier islands where wind and tides can create flooding during storms or even on sunny days. It’s a type of flooding that tends to be overshadowed by oceanfront storm damage that grabs headlines — and government spending — with dramatic video of crashing waves and splintered houses.
“This insidious flooding is increasing, and it is an important social issue, but it is not getting enough attention paid to it,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “Flooding is happening with increasing frequency in back-bay areas. It happens very rapidly; it’s just not as dramatic.”
Williams, who lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, said back-bay flooding is happening just as frequently, if not more so, than oceanfront flooding.
“Over the last 15 or 20 years I have seen, especially when you get a full moon and a high tide, roads, backyards and parks all get flooded, much more so than we ever had before,” he said.
Nearly five years after Superstorm Sandy delivered a wake-up call, the problem of back-bay flooding is coming into sharper focus. Studies are under way, money is starting to flow toward the problem, and the realization that destruction of wetlands for development along such shores is partly to blame is leading to discussion about building codes.
Sandy created a vast swath of destruction along the coasts of New Jersey and New York in 2012. But it also wreaked havoc along the back bays, where miles of lagoons exposed thousands of waterfront homes to flooding damage.
Property owners in Toms River, New Jersey, received more than $568 million in payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Sandy. Neighboring Brick Township received more than $267 million. Both towns have limited oceanfront exposure but extensive back-bay exposure, and they represented the largest damage totals in Ocean County, the region of New Jersey that took the hardest hit from Sandy.
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, released last week, would cut a combined $452 million from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the Homeland Security department for research grants, flood mapping and analysis. If enacted by Congress, many environmental groups worry, less money will be available to study back-bay flooding.
‘Complicated’ solutions
Jeff Gebert, chief of coastal planning for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia division, acknowledged that before Sandy, back-bay flooding was not as high on the agency’s radar, due in part to the lack of easy engineering solutions.
As of January, the Army Corps map of recent storm protection and navigation projects in New Jersey showed 10 either completed or under way, with six more planned. But none were done in back bays.
The picture is largely the same nationwide, he said, “because the solution to back-bay flooding is much more complicated” than simply pumping sand onto oceanfront beaches.
A 2010 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that more than 123 million people — or about 39 percent of the U.S. population — lived in coastal zone counties, a number projected to grow by 8 percent by 2020. The greater proportion of those people live on or near the bay sides of barrier islands, scientists say, than on the oceanfront.
Unlike oceanfront flooding, where crashing waves from storm-driven seas pound the beaches, back bays flood gradually and comparatively quietly as water levels rise. The effect is worsened during storms that continue through numerous tide cycles in which water piles up in the back bays without being able to drain out to sea.
Tides and wind can inundate some of these areas even when the sun shines.
“The water sneaks up the backside of barrier islands and the flooding you get is sometimes actually greater than on the ocean sides due to the topography of the islands,” said Guy Nordenson, a structural engineer specializing in climate change adaptation whose firm has worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on flood prevention projects. “That is the case all the way up and down the East Coast to Miami Beach.”
New Jersey has funded some smaller resiliency projects in areas including back bays, but none was designed specifically for flood control. It hopes the study under way will identify a range of possible solutions.
Sandy, Gebert said, “woke people up. It galvanized attention on the vulnerability of back-bay areas.”
The Army Corps and state officials began a three-year study of back-bay flooding in December in New Jersey that seeks cost-effective solutions that can be replicated elsewhere. Similar studies are under way or were recently completed in New York, Virginia, Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Many traditional engineering solutions that are used along the oceanfront are of limited benefit against back-bay flooding. Houses are being elevated and roadways repaved to make them higher. But the bulkheads, sea walls and sand dunes used along the ocean can’t be replicated in many back-bay areas because of limited space and resistance from homeowners who prize waterfront views.
“There’s just not as much you can do,” said the Geological Survey’s Williams. “We used to have broad wetlands that could absorb this water, but we’ve built right up to the edge of the water in many places. Now you’re faced with armoring the waterfront or relocating, and relocating is popular with no one.”
New rules as sea levels rise
Any new homes need to be built in these areas with sea level rise in mind, said Princeton geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer.
“They need to design buildings that are essentially floodable, where it’s OK that the first floor gets flooded every now and again,” he said. “These places do get wet on a regular basis.”
Globally, sea levels have been rising over the past century, NOAA says, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In New Jersey, seas have risen by 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) over the past 100 years, said Benjamin Horton, a Rutgers University professor and leading expert on climate change and sea level rise. That is a faster pace than for the past 2,000 years combined, he said.
Horton and other Rutgers researchers project that by 2050, seas off New Jersey will rise by an additional 1.4 feet (0.4 meters).
Jim and Maryann O’Neill moved from Philadelphia to a section of Stafford Township, New Jersey, in 1994 for a quiet existence near the water. But they’re now much nearer to it than they bargained for.
In January 2016, a coastal storm inundated the O’Neills’ neighborhood; a March 2017 storm submerged the roads and deposited fish on the pavement in front of their house. And that was two years after the town raised the road by their house by 8 inches.
They’ve had to build a boardwalk from their back stairs to the edge of their property because the yard has been underwater or muddy — “like quicksand,” said Jim O’Neill — virtually every day for the past five years.
Maryann, 75, recently learned how to use an app that notifies her when the tides are rising. The O’Neills routinely have to move their car to the highest spot around — the bridge leading to their neighborhood. They have already rusted through three pickup trucks and three cars in the past 13 years.
In Ocean City, officials will spend $40.3 million over the next five years on drainage improvements and road work that includes elevating roadways, new pipes and pumping stations. Such work in his neighborhood has cut down on flooding, Mozzo acknowledged.
“We put $20 million into back-bay dredging for five years,” Mayor Jay Gillian said. “When you talk about $20 million in one seaside resort for just one thing, that speaks volumes about how much these coastal places need.”
…
Scientists Figure Out How Mosquitoes Fly
Those pesky mosquitoes— not only do their bites itch, they can carry life-threatening diseases like malaria, Zika virus and yellow fever. Now some researchers have figured out the dynamics behind how mosquitoes fly, which may help scientists find ways to stop them from spreading illnesses in the future. VOA’s Deborah Block has a report.
…
ePUMB skype chat
