Race Plays Huge Role in Cleft Lip/Palate Deformities
A cleft lip or cleft palate is one of the most common birth defects worldwide. Before birth, babies can have a split, or cleft, in their lip and the roof of the mouth. This split normally closes between the 6th to 11th week of pregnancy. If this doesn’t happen, and the baby is born with this split, doctors can usually fix it. But if the cleft isn’t fixed, the baby can have serious health problems and a shortened life.
In the U.S. and other developed countries, corrective surgery is done when a baby is between three months and 18 months old. Surgical intervention is less common in less developed nations.
Dr. Albert Oh, a pediatric plastic surgeon, said he performs one or two corrective surgeries a week at Children’s National hospital in Washington.
“We’re one of the busiest centers in the United States, and so my partner and I, we average over a hundred primary cases per year.”
About one out of every 1,500 babies in the U.S. is born with a cleft palate. One out of every 900 babies is born with cleft lip. Babies of African descent have lower odds — one out of every 1,200 births.
Dr. Yang Chai at the University of Southern California said Asians are most at risk.
“If you look at a patient population worldwide, if you are Asian, the prevalence is about 1 out of 700.”
These children are often stigmatized because of the way they look. But complications from a cleft lip and cleft palate go beyond the cosmetic. They impact speech and cause dental problems. A baby with a cleft palate cannot suck and is at risk of being malnourished. Malnutrition, in turn, causes stunted growth.
Dr. Ben Gitterman, a pediatrician who has worked as a volunteer in low-income countries to help these children, said the experience was life-changing.
“Seeing these kids and thinking, ‘What a cute little 3 or 4 year old,’ and finding that 3 or 4 year old was 7, 8 or 9. And because of the fact that they couldn’t process food, they couldn’t eat well. They had been so stunted … by malnutrition. Not malnutrition from the lack of food in the community, but because they couldn’t feed properly because of the cleft lip and palate situation. These were tiny little kids, and I was in shock.”
Gitterman has volunteered numerous times with Operation Smile, one of the charities that organizes surgical missions to help these children. In a Skype interview with Dr. Bill Magee, Operation Smile’s founder, Magee said his organization’s mission has expanded in the more than 35 years of its existence.
“Up until about 1999, all of our volunteers pretty much came out of the United States. Today, 70 to 80 percent of our missions are done by local people in their countries that we have trained.”
Charitable organizations perform more than 80 percent of cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries in Vietnam, according to a 2016 study issued by Dr. William Magee III and his colleagues at the University of Southern California. Magee III is the son of the founder of Operation Smile.
The report showed how difficult it is for parents to get the surgery their children need in low and middle income countries. It’s common in these countries for medical care to be paid in advance, which many families cannot afford.
Operation Smile is working to change that.
“It’s given us this incredible opportunity to understand how the infrastructure of surgery is so important … and how to advance that infrastructure in countries all over the world,” Magee said.
As for what causes this condition, genetic factors account for about 30 percent of cleft conditions. The mother’s health is a contributing factor, but scientists are still searching for other causes with the hope of one day being able to prevent children from being born with cleft lips or palates.
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RUSADA’s Chief Appeals to Putin Over Doping Data
The head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency has asked for President Vladimir Putin’s help in getting Russian officials to hand over key doping data to World Anti-Doping Agency inspectors.
WADA reinstated the suspended RUSADA in September on the condition Russian authorities hand over lab data, which could help confirm a number of violations uncovered during an investigation that revealed a state-sponsored doping program designed to win medals at the 2014 Olympics and other major events.
WADA officials said earlier this month they were leaving Moscow empty-handed after Russian authorities prevented them from accessing data.
In a letter released Thursday, RUSADA chief Yuri Ganus appealed to Putin to reverse the decision and allow the data to be given to WADA inspectors. Ganus warned that refusal to do so would hurt Russia’s efforts to clean up its sports from doping.
WADA has previously said that Russia unexpectedly demanded its equipment be “certified under Russian law.” The deadline to turn over the data is Dec. 31.
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Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball Gets Some New Sparkle
Preparations for New Year’s Eve in Times Square are taking shape, and some of those shapes are 192 new crystal triangles on the famous ball.
The new Waterford crystal triangles will join about 2,500 others Thursday on the big, sparkling sphere. Some new crystals are swapped in every year.
This year’s additions feature rosette cuts designed to make them appear to flow harmoniously into each other. That’s in keeping with this year’s “gift of harmony” theme.
The ball measures 3.5 meters (12 feet) in diameter and weighs almost 5,450 kg (nearly 12,000 pounds). It’s positioned atop One Times Square.
your ad hereAid Group: 10 Worst Climate-Linked Disasters of 2018 Caused $85B in Damage
From floods to extreme heat, 10 of the worst climate-linked disasters in 2018 caused at least $84.8 billion worth of damage, said a study released by the charity Christian Aid on Thursday.
Extreme weather driven by climate change hit every populated continent this year, the British relief organization said, warning urgent action was needed to combat global warming.
“This report shows that for many people, climate change is having devastating impacts on their lives and livelihoods right now,” said Kat Kramer, who heads Christian Aid’s work on climate issues, in a statement.
Experts say a warming world will lead to sweltering heatwaves, more extreme rainfall, shrinking harvests and worsening water shortages, causing both monetary losses and human misery.
Almost 200 nations are aiming to limit the rise in average world temperatures under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, though some warn progress to meet targets has been slow.
The 20 warmest years on record have been within the last 22 years, the United Nations said last month, with 2018 on track to be the fourth hottest.
The most expensive climate-linked weather events of 2018 were Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which caused at least $32 billion worth of damage as they slammed into the United States, the Caribbean and parts of Central America, the report said.
The United States also suffered at least $9 billion of losses from wildfires that caused dozens of deaths and destroyed thousands of homes in California.
Japan was badly hit by severe floods over the summer, followed by the powerful Typhoon Jebi in autumn, which together caused more than $9.3 billion in damages, said the report.
It also cited droughts in Europe, floods in southern India and Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines and China among the most expensive climate-linked disasters of 2018.
The report’s authors collated total cost figures using data from sources including governments, banks and insurance firms, though in some cases the figures only covered insured losses and also failed to take account of the human costs of such events.
They added that rising temperatures would continue to drive extreme weather events as they urged action to prevent further global warming which would impact the poorest and most vulnerable communities hardest.
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” said Michael Mann, professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University, in a statement on the study.
“The world’s weather is becoming more extreme before our eyes – the only thing that can stop this destructive trend from escalating is a rapid fall in carbon emissions.”
your ad hereUS Legal Marijuana Industry Had Banner Year in 2018
The last year was a 12-month champagne toast for the legal marijuana industry as the global market exploded and cannabis pushed its way further into the financial and cultural mainstream.
Liberal California became the largest legal U.S. marketplace, while conservative Utah and Oklahoma embraced medical marijuana. Canada ushered in broad legalization , and Mexico’s Supreme Court set the stage for that country to follow.
U.S. drug regulators approved the first marijuana-based pharmaceutical to treat kids with a form of epilepsy, and billions of investment dollars poured into cannabis companies. Even main street brands like Coca-Cola said they are considering joining the party.
“I have been working on this for decades, and this was the year that the movement crested,” said U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat working to overturn the federal ban on pot. “It’s clear that this is all coming to a head.”
With buzz building across the globe, the momentum will continue into 2019.
Luxembourg is poised to become the first European country to legalize recreational marijuana, and South Africa is moving in that direction. Thailand legalized medicinal use of marijuana on Tuesday, and other Southeastern Asian countries may follow South Korea’s lead in legalizing cannabidiol, or CBD. It’s a non-psychoactive compound found in marijuana and hemp plants and used for treatment of certain medical problems.
“It’s not just the U.S. now. It’s spreading,” said Ben Curren, CEO of Green Bits, a San Jose, California, company that develops software for marijuana retailers and businesses.
Curren’s firm is one of many that blossomed as the industry grew. He started the company in 2014 with two friends. Now, he has 85 employees, and the company’s software processes $2.5 billion in sales transactions a year for more than 1,000 U.S. retail stores and dispensaries.
Green Bits raised $17 million in April, pulling in money from investment firms including Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital. Curren hopes to expand internationally by 2020.
“A lot of the problem is keeping up with growth,” he said.
Legal marijuana was a $10.4 billion industry in the U.S. in 2018 with a quarter-million jobs devoted just to the handling of marijuana plants, said Beau Whitney, vice president and senior economist at New Frontier Data, a leading cannabis market research and data analysis firm. There are many other jobs that don’t involve direct work with the plants but they are harder to quantify, Whitney said.
Investors poured $10 billion into cannabis in North America in 2018, twice what was invested in the last three years combined, he said, and the combined North American market is expected to reach more than $16 billion in 2019.
“Investors are getting much savvier when it comes to this space because even just a couple of years ago, you’d throw money at it and hope that something would stick,” he said. “But now investors are much more discerning.”
Increasingly, U.S. lawmakers see that success and want it for their states.
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. states now have legalized some form of medical marijuana.
Voters in November made Michigan the 10th state — and first in the Midwest — to legalize recreational marijuana. Governors in New York and New Jersey are pushing for a similar law in their states next year, and momentum for broad legalization is building in Pennsylvania and Illinois.
“Let’s legalize the adult use of recreational marijuana once and for all,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week.
State lawmakers in Nebraska just formed a campaign committee to put a medical cannabis initiative to voters in 2020. Nebraska shares a border with Colorado, one of the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana, and Iowa, which recently started a limited medical marijuana program.
“Attitudes have been rapidly evolving and changing. I know that my attitude toward it has also changed,” said Nebraska state Sen. Adam Morfeld, a Democrat. “Seeing the medical benefits and seeing other states implement it … has convinced me that it’s not the dangerous drug it’s made out to be.”
With all its success, the U.S. marijuana industry continues to be undercut by a robust black market and federal law that treats marijuana as a controlled substance like heroin. Financial institutions are skittish about cannabis businesses, even in U.S. states where they are legal, and investors until recently have been reluctant to put their money behind pot.
Marijuana businesses can’t deduct their business expenses on their federal taxes and face huge challenges getting insurance and finding real estate for their brick-and-mortar operations.
“Until you have complete federal legalization, you’re going to be living with that structure,” said Marc Press, a New Jersey attorney who advises cannabis businesses.
At the start of the year, the industry was chilled when then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded a policy shielding state-licensed medical marijuana operators from federal drug prosecutions. Ultimately the move had minimal impact because federal prosecutors showed little interest in going after legal operators.
Sessions, a staunch marijuana opponent, later lost his job while President Donald Trump said he was inclined to support an effort by U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, to relax the federal prohibition.
In November, Democrats won control of the U.S. House and want to use it next year to pass legislation that eases federal restrictions on the legal marijuana industry without removing it from the controlled substances list.
Gardner and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren have proposed legislation allowing state-approved commercial cannabis activity under federal law. The bill also would let states and Indian tribes determine how best to regulate marijuana commerce within their boundaries without fear of federal intervention.
If those provisions become law, they could open up banking for the marijuana industry nationwide and make it easier for cannabis companies to secure capital.
Blumenauer’s “blueprint” to legalize marijuana also calls for the federal government to provide medical marijuana for veterans, more equitable taxation for marijuana businesses and rolling back federal prohibitions on marijuana research, among other things.
“We have elected the most pro-cannabis Congress in history and more important, some of the people who were roadblocks to our work … are gone,” Blumenauer said. “If we’re able to jump-start it in the House, I think there will be support in the Senate, particularly if we deal with things that are important, like veterans’ access and banking.”
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Japan to Leave International Whaling Commission; Resume Commercial Whaling
Japan will withdraw from the International Whaling Commission and resume commercial whaling in July. Wednesday’s announcement was met with opposition from animal rights groups, who say that Tokyo is violating international law. Japan says whaling will only be in its own waters and exclusive economic zone. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Male Campaigner Seeks to End FGM in Kenya’s Maasai Community
Female circumcision — a practice that opponents call female genital mutilation — has been a coming-of-age ritual among the Maasai tribe of Kenya for generations. But it is becoming less common, in part because of one man who is trying to persuade tribe members to abandon the practice. Douglas Meritei began his campaign about 10 years ago. He spoke to Rael Ombuor, who reports for VOA from the Kimana settlement in southern Kenya.
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Study: Work in Space Does Not Seem to Shorten Astronauts’ Lives
Although space travel exposes astronauts to forms of radiation that are uncommon on Earth, and that are linked to cancers and heart problems, a U.S. study suggests this doesn’t significantly shorten their lives.
Researchers compared nearly 60 years of data on U.S. male astronauts and a group of men who are similarly extra-fit, affluent and receive elite health care: pro athletes. They found that neither group has higher rates than the other of death overall or of early deaths. Both groups do tend to outlast the
rest of us, however.
Astronauts are generally well-educated, more affluent and more physically fit than the typical American, and some previous research has linked this career to a lower risk of premature death, the study team notes in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
But much of the previous research on mortality rates in astronauts hasn’t accounted for the mental and physical demands of this career, or the so-called “healthy worker effect” that leads people with employment of any kind to typically have fewer medical issues than individuals who are unable to work, said study co-author Robert Reynolds of Mortality Research &
Consulting Inc. in City of Industry, Calif.
Comparable group needed
“The challenge has always been to understand if astronauts are as healthy as they would be had they been otherwise comparably employed but had never gone to space at all,” Reynolds said by email. “To do this, we needed to find a group that is comparable on several important factors, but has never
been to space.”
The researchers compared mortality rates for male U.S. astronauts to those of professional athletes from Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association between 1960 and mid-2018.
Both athletes and astronauts had a lower risk of premature death than the general population, the study found. And there was no meaningful mortality difference between NBA and MLB players.
Astronauts were more likely to die of accidents and other external causes, and less likely to die from heart disease and all other natural causes, the study also found.
“We cannot be sure from the data we have, but we speculate that cardiovascular fitness in particular is the most important factor in astronaut longevity,” Reynolds said.
The results suggest that radiation exposure in space might not lead to a premature death for astronauts due to heart problems or certain cancers, the study authors conclude. In fact, astronauts had a lower rate of death from heart disease than the NBA and MLB players, and had cancer mortality similar to the athletes’ rates.
The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how space travel may directly impact human health. It also didn’t examine mortality among female astronauts or athletes.
Lower radiation exposure
Radiation exposure may also have been much lower during early missions to the moon and not reflect what would happen with the current generation of astronauts, said Francis Cucinotta, a researcher at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“The missions in the past were low dose, while in the future the dose would be 50 to 100 times higher for a Mars mission,” Cucinotta said by email.
Astronauts have typically never smoked, leading to a lower risk of heart disease than the general population, Cucinotta added.
Diet and exercise also set astronauts and professional athletes apart from the rest of the population, said Michael Delp, a researcher at Florida State University in Tallahassee who wasn’t involved in the study.
“When physical fitness is a requisite part of a job, such as with astronauts and professional athletes, this is a major determinant of the healthy worker effect,” Delp said by email.
Even for the rest of us, “remaining or becoming physically active and maintaining a well-balanced diet greatly improves overall health and well-being, and can enhance successful aging,” Delp said.
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Serena Voted AP Female Athlete of the Year for 5th Time
She showed up in Paris wearing a black catsuit, a reminder that nobody can command the Grand Slam stage quite like Serena Williams.
She reached the finals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, proving again how well she can play no matter how little she practices.
Williams didn’t win those or any other tournaments, which in every other situation might have made for a forgettable year.
In 2018, it was a remarkable one.
Her rapid return to tennis after a health scare following childbirth was a victory in itself, and for that, Williams was voted The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for the fifth time.
Williams received 93 points in balloting by U.S. editors and news directors announced Wednesday, while gymnast Simone Biles was second with 68. Notre Dame basketball player Arike Ogunbowale was third, while Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim and swimmer Katie Ledecky, the 2017 winner, rounded out the top five.
All of those players won a title or titles in 2018, while Williams had to settle for just coming close a couple of times.
Now 37 and a new mother facing some players who weren’t even born when she turned pro in 1995, Williams isn’t the same person who ruthlessly ran her way to 23 Grand Slam singles titles — the last of which came at the 2017 Australian Open when she was pregnant.
“I’m still waiting to get to be the Serena that I was, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be that, physically, emotionally, mentally. But I’m on my way,” Williams said on the eve of the U.S. Open final. “I feel like I still have a ways to go. Once I get there, I’ll be able to play even hopefully better.”
The Male Athlete of the Year will be announced Thursday.
The women’s award has been won more only by Babe Didrikson Zaharias, whose six wins included one for track and five for golf.
Williams’ previous times winning the AP honor, in 2002, 2009, 2013 and 2015, were because of her dominance.
This one was about her perseverance.
Williams developed blood clots after giving birth to daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. on Sept. 1, 2017, and four surgeries would follow. She returned to the WTA Tour in March and played in just a pair of events before the French Open, where she competed in a skin-tight, full-length black catsuit .
She said the outfit — worn partly for health reasons because of the clots — made her feel like a superhero, but her game was rarely in superstar shape. She had to withdraw in Paris because of a right pectoral injury and didn’t play again until Wimbledon, where she lost to Angelique Kerber in the final.
Williams came up short again in New York, where her loss to Naomi Osaka in the final will be remembered best for her outburst toward chair umpire Carlos Ramos, who had penalized Williams for receiving coaching and later penalized her an entire game for calling him a “thief” while arguing.
That loss leaves her one major title shy of Margaret Court’s record as she starts play next year in a WTA Tour that will look different in part because of new rules coming about after issues involving Williams. Players returning to the tour may use a “special ranking” for up to three years from the birth of a child, and the exemption can be used for seedings at big events. Also, the tour says players can wear leggings or compression shorts at its tournaments without a skirt over them.
Williams insists she is still driven to play and win as much if not more than before she was a mother. That drive is the focus of a Nike ad showing her in action.
“Getting this far, crazy,” it says. “Stopping now, crazier.”
Williams won’t.
“I’m still on the way up,” she said. “There’s still much more that I plan on doing.”
The rest of the top five:
Simone Biles, gymnastics . The American won four golds and six medals overall in the world championships in Qatar, giving her 20 in her career to tie Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina for the most by a female gymnast.
Arike Ogunbowale, women’s basketball . She hit one jumper to knock off previously unbeaten Connecticut in the Final Four, then a 3-pointer in the championship game to lift Notre Dame over Mississippi State.
Chloe Kim, snowboarding . At 17, the Californian won the halfpipe Olympic gold medal in South Korea, where her parents were from before they immigrated to the United States.
Katie Ledecky, swimming . The 21-year-old U.S. Olympian tuned up for the 2020 Games in Tokyo by winning five medals in the city at the Pan Pacific Championships.
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Indian Casinos Across US Wary of Betting on Sports Books
Two dozen large-screen TVs showing football and other sports line the walls. There’s beer on tap, bar top seating and leather chairs. Chicken wings are on the menu. And at this American Indian casino in the heart of college-football mad Mississippi, you can legally bet on the games.
The sports book owned by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is the first to open on tribal lands outside of Nevada following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, a no-brainer business decision given the sports fans among its gambling clientele.
“We are basically two hours from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and then, we are just an hour from Mississippi State. We have Ole Miss just to the north of that, and we have Southern Miss — they’re not SEC, but they are a player. We are not that far from Louisiana,” said Neal Atkinson, the tribe’s director of gaming.
The book at Pearl River Resort is packed every college football Saturday, but remains an outlier months after the high court opened the door for expanded sports gambling across the United States by striking down a federal ban.
Tribes enthusiastically welcomed the decision in May but since then, the regulatory challenges and low-margin nature of the business have sunk in. Few Indian casinos have an enviable location like the Choctaw and many need state approval to add sports betting to their offerings.
Indian casinos started small three decades ago, but they have grown to be an annual $32.4 billion segment of the U.S. gambling industry. The roughly 475 casinos operated by nearly 240 tribes create jobs for tribal members and profits that help pay a variety of services, including health care and housing.
Some casinos only have games like bingo or pull tabs that don’t need state approval. But the majority of them also have state-authorized slot machines, blackjack and other table games, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission.
Many tribes share a portion of casino profits with state governments in exchange for exclusive rights to conduct gambling operations within their states.
To offer sports betting, the majority of tribes would have to renegotiate compacts that vary widely in cycles and the issues covered, though some tribes believe their existing agreements already give them the right to offer the new wagers.
“There’s a broad spectrum in Indian Country covering two extremes: Tribal nations that would not benefit at all, and on the other end, tribal nations that would significantly benefit,” commission chairman Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri said. “Those are largely business decisions that each tribe will have to make given its own economic landscape and its unique market realities.”
Some federal lawmakers have also proposed regulating sports gambling more widely, adding yet another layer to a complex debate already involving commercial casinos and lotteries, plus sports leagues themselves.
So far, only the Santa Ana Pueblo near Albuquerque, New Mexico, has followed the Choctaw’s effort into sports gambling. Neither tribe was required to obtain additional state approvals.
Contrary to popular belief, sports betting is a low-profit business that requires highly skilled employees. In Nevada, sportsbooks last year contributed only 2.4 percent of the gambling revenue of casinos statewide — dwarfed by the proceeds from table games and slots. The limited payoff has tribal casinos balancing the allure of a Las Vegas-style amenity with the risks of opening compacts for negotiations.
“Tribal leadership is extremely protective of what they have because it’s meant so much to us, and there’s always a risk of upsetting the apple cart,” Washington State Gambling Commission member Chris Stearns said. “Is this going to help us? Is this going to hurt us? That’s really at the heart of why you see Indian tribes gently venturing into sports betting. … In a lot of states, tribes write a check out to the state in exchange for exclusivity. So, any time there’s a new gambling product, and you ask the state to authorize it, there is a risk the state will say ‘Sure, but it is going to cost you.’”
The only sports book in New Mexico, inside the Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel, began taking wagers in October. It offers bets on professional and college sports, but not for games involving two public in-state universities.
In Washington state, all casinos are tribally operated. Changing the state’s laws to allow betting on sports would require a 60 percent supermajority vote in the legislature or a ballot initiative. Only then could sports betting be added to a tribal-state compact.
In California, where tribes have exclusivity on casino-style gambling, voters would have to approve a change to the state constitution.
Casinos are operated on and off reservations in South Dakota. Before the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe can try to to edge out its nearest competition across the state line in Iowa, South Dakota’s constitution will have to be amended through a public vote.
The legislature could choose to put the question before voters or supporters could gather enough signatures to add the measure to the 2020 ballot. If the measure passes, it would open the opportunity for tribes to negotiate their compacts with the state.
Tribal councilman Kenny Weston said a sports book could attract new patrons who may also choose to play games already offered and spend nights at the hotel for big sporting events, like MMA fights.
“Normally, with the brick-and-mortar casino like we have, we attract a lot of older crowds and retired people,” Weston said. “I think with sports betting we can bring a different age demographic and different people … and have the opportunity to do the same that they do in Vegas.”
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‘Tech Addicts’ Seek Solace in 12 Steps and Rehab
We like to say we’re addicted to our phones or an app or some new show on a streaming video service.
But for some people, tech gets in the way of daily functioning and self-care. We’re talking flunk-your-classes, can’t-find-a-job, live-in-a-dark-hole kinds of problems, with depression, anxiety and sometimes suicidal thoughts part of the mix.
Suburban Seattle, a major tech center, has become a hub for help for so-called “tech addicts,” with residential rehab, psychologists who specialize in such treatment and 12-step meetings.
“The drugs of old are now repackaged. We have a new foe,” Cosette Rae says of the barrage of tech. A former developer in the tech world, she heads a Seattle area rehab center called reSTART Life, one of the few residential programs in the nation specializing in tech addiction.
Use of that word — addiction — when it comes to devices, online content and the like is still debated in the mental health world. But many practitioners agree that tech use is increasingly intertwined with the problems of those seeking help.
An American Academy of Pediatrics review of worldwide research found that excessive use of video games alone is a serious problem for as many as 9 percent of young people. This summer, the World Health Organization also added “gaming disorder” to its list of afflictions. A similar diagnosis is being considered in the United States.
It can be a taboo subject in an industry that frequently faces criticism for using “persuasive design,” intentionally harnessing psychological concepts to make tech all the more enticing.
One addict’s story
One 27-year-old man, found through a 12-step program for tech addicts, works in the very industry that peddles the games, videos and other online content that has long been his vice. He does cloud maintenance for a suburban Seattle tech company and constantly finds himself fending off temptation.
“I’m like an alcoholic working at a bar,” he laments. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified, fearing he might harm his career in an industry he’s long loved.
As a toddler, he sat on his dad’s lap in their Seattle area home as they played simple video games on a Mac Classic II computer. By early elementary school, he got his first Super Nintendo system and spent hours playing Yoshi’s Story, a game where the main character searched for “lucky fruit.”
As he grew, so did one of the world’s major tech hubs. Led by Microsoft, it rose from the nondescript suburban landscape and farm fields here, just a short drive from the home he still shares with his mom, who split from her husband when their only child was 11.
As a teen, he took an interest in music and acting but recalls how playing games increasingly became a way to escape life. “I go online instead of dealing with my feelings,” he says.
He’d been seeing a therapist for depression and severe social anxiety. But attending college out of state allowed more freedom and less structure, so he spent even more time online. His grades plummeted, forcing him to change majors, from engineering to business.
After graduating in 2016 and moving home, he’d go to a nearby restaurant or the library to use the Wi-Fi, claiming he was looking for a job but having no luck.
Instead, he was spending hours on Reddit, an online forum where people share news and comments, or viewing YouTube videos. Sometimes, he watched online porn.
’Detox’
Others who attend a 12-step meeting of the Internet & Tech Addiction Anonymous know the struggle.
“I had to be convinced that this was a ‘thing,”‘ says Walker, a 19-year-old from Washington whose parents insisted he get help after video gaming trashed his first semester of college. He agreed to speak only if identified by first name, as required by the 12-step tenets.
Help is found at facilities like reSTART. Clients “detox” from tech at a secluded ranch and move on to a group home.
They commit to eating well and regular sleep and exercise. They find jobs, and many eventually return to college. They also make “bottom line” promises to give up video games or any other problem content, as well as drugs and alcohol, if those are issues. They use monitored smartphones with limited function — calls, texts and emails and access to maps.
The young tech worker didn’t go to reSTART. But he, too, has apps on his phone that send reports about what he’s viewing to his 12-step sponsor, a fellow tech addict named Charlie, a 30-year-old reSTART graduate.
At home, the young man also persuaded his mom to get rid of Wi-Fi to lessen the temptation.
He still relapses every couple months, often when he’s tired or upset or very bored. He tells himself that his problem isn’t as bad as other tech addicts.
“Then,” the young man says, “I discover very quickly that I am actually an addict, and I do need to do this.”
Having Charlie to lean on helps. “He’s a role model,” he says.
“He has a place of his own. He has a dog. He has friends.”
That’s what he wants for himself.
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Israel to Allow Medical Marijuana Exports
Israel’s Parliament has unanimously approved a law to permit exports of medical marijuana, allowing Israel to tap the lucrative global market.
Israel will become the third country, after the Netherlands and Canada, to take its medical cannabis global.
The Israeli medical cannabis company iCAN predicts the global industry will reach $33 billion in the next five years, as stigma fades and demand grows for the few countries certified to export.
The law was approved late Tuesday, sending cannabis company shares rising by about 10 percent.
The law was stalled for years over fears from security officials that medical marijuana would leak into the black market. To assuage concerns, the law empowers police to supervise licensing.
The Israeli Cabinet must give final approval — a step seen as a formality.
your ad hereAt New Museum of Black Civilizations, a Call to Come Home
The Museum of Black Civilizations in Senegal opened this month amid a global conversation about the ownership and legacy of African art. The West African nation’s culture minister isn’t shy: He wants the thousands of pieces of cherished heritage taken from the continent over the centuries to come home.
“It’s entirely logical that Africans should get back their artworks,” Abdou Latif Coulibaly told The Associated Press. “These works were taken in conditions that were perhaps legitimate at the time but illegitimate today.”
Last month, a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron recommended that French museums give back works taken without consent, if African countries request them. Macron has stressed the “undeniable crimes of European colonization,” adding that “I cannot accept that a large part of African heritage is in France.”
The new museum in Dakar is the latest sign that welcoming spaces across the continent are being prepared.
The museum, with its focus on Africa and the diaspora, is decades in the making. The idea was conceived when Senegal’s first president, internationally acclaimed poet Leopold Sedar Senghor, hosted the World Black Festival of Arts in 1966.
At the museum’s vibrant opening, sculptors from Los Angeles, singers from Cameroon and professors from Europe and the Americas came to celebrate, some in tears. “This moment is historic,” Senegalese President Macky Sall said. “It is part of the continuity of history.”
Perhaps reflecting the tenuous hold that African nations still have on their own legacy objects, the museum will not have a permanent collection. Filling the 148,000-square-foot circular structure, one of the largest of its kind on the continent, is complicated by the fact that countless artifacts have been dispersed around the world.
Both the inaugural exhibition, “African Civilizations: Continuous Creation of Humanity,” and the museum’s curator take a far longer view than the recent centuries of colonization and turmoil. Current works highlight the continent as the “cradle of civilization” and the echoes found among millions of people in the diaspora today.
“Colonization? That’s just two centuries,” curator Hamady Bocoum told the AP, saying that proof of African civilization is at least 7,000 years old, referencing a skull discovered in present-day Chad.
Like others, Bocoum is eager to see artifacts return for good. The exhibition includes 50 pieces on loan from France, including more than a dozen from the Quai Branly museum in Paris.
More than 5,000 pieces in the Quai Branly come from Senegal alone, Bocoum said.
“When we see the inventory of the Senegalese objects that are found in France, we’re going to ask for certain of those objects,” Bocoum said. “For the moment, we have not yet started negotiations.”
He brushed off concerns that African institutions might be unable to care for their own heritage, pointing to the new museum’s humidified, air-conditioned storage space.
The history of some of the objects in the opening exhibition is grim. Pointing to the saber of El Hadj Umar Tall, a 19th-century West African thinker who fought against French colonialism, Bocoum described how French troops fighting him stripped local women of their elaborate jewelry by cutting off their ears.
Contemporary works in the exhibition touch on both triumph and tragedy. There are black-and-white photographs of African nightclubs in the 1960s shot by famous Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, and a stark mural by Haitian artist Philippe Dodard depicting African religions and the middle passage.
Works by Yrneh Gabon Brown, based in Los Angeles, reference slavery and contemporary race relations in America.
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” Brown told the AP. “And here, as a member of Africa’s English-speaking diaspora, I am proud, reaffirmed.”
France, whose president in recent weeks has pledged to return 26 pieces to Benin, is just one of many countries loaning works for the new museum’s opening exhibition. Bocoum now is working with dozens of institutions around the world to plan future exhibits.
“This museum is celebrating the resilience of black people,” professor Linda Carty, who teaches African American studies at Syracuse University, told the AP at its opening. “This is a forced recognition of how much black people have brought to the world. We were first. That’s been taken away from us, and we now have reclaimed it.”
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Futuristic Fun House Transforms Traditional Games into High Tech Wonders
Technology is very quickly changing entertainment as we know it. While some worry that people are spending too much time on video games and not enough time with other people, there is a place in Los Angeles where visitors can interact with both. It’s called the Two Bit Circus – a funhouse that incorporates technology and games with group play for people of all ages. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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Chicano Author, Illustrator Collaborate on Animal Adventure
The 81-year-old author is often called a dean of Chicano literature. The illustrator is a younger muralist steeped in the visual traditions of Mexican-American pop culture and low-rider cars.
Together, novelist Rudolfo Anaya and painter Moises Salcedo — who goes by El Moises — have created a bilingual children’s book with parallel texts in Spanish and English about the adventures of a tiny owl named Ollie who longs to read on his own, even as he skips school and tangles with a cast of conniving animal characters in the hills and skies of northern New Mexico.
Anaya achieved lasting literary fame with the novel Bless Me, Ultima in 1972 about a boy’s coming of age in post-World War II New Mexico under the guidance of a traditional spiritual healer. The book became a movie — and recently an opera.
Local, traditional references
The new children’s book from the Museum of New Mexico Press — titled Owl in a Straw Hat, or El Tecolote del Sombrero de Paja — is chock-full of references to northern New Mexico geography and homespun Hispanic tradition — from posole soup and pinon nuts to the “acequia” organizations that help irrigate fields and lend a special order to local rural life.
Anaya said the work is a heartfelt effort to encourage shared family reading in English or Spanish, with eye-grabbing imagery.
The book’s illustrations spring from the brush of Mexican-born, Arizona-raised El Moises — who made New Mexico his adopted home nearly a decade ago. His other recent commissions include urban murals, a tequila logo, CD covers and more.
The 45-year-old illustrator is a father of five who often paints at a weathered living-room table amid the bustle of family. El Moises says people call him a Chicano artist, but it’s really just his take on everyday life.
“Bold and bright has always been my thing,” he said. “I love low-riders because I grew up around them. … I just think that I’m an artist who is narrating his life.”
One of the new book’s characters — a hungry and untrustworthy wolf in sunglasses named Luis Lobo — is adapted from a self-designed tattoo on the artist’s upper arm. Other characters include a young raven and crow who prefer video games to school. There are positive role models, too — a disciplined roadrunner who drives a dazzling low-rider car and a loving grandmother “Nana” owl.
El Moises and Anaya already are working on a sequel that explores concerns about childhood bullying, something the illustrator and a 13-year-old son have been grappling with recently in Albuquerque, culminating in the decision to do home schooling.
Anaya, a widower who lives in Albuquerque with a dachshund at his side, continues to work steadily on essays and novels for grown-up readers.
He said Owl in a Straw Hat is an outgrowth of his enduring concern for children, including children living far away in war-torn countries.
‘Something positive’
“Maybe that’s why I write books for children — to get a lift, to think there is something positive on Earth that might offset the evil that we see,” Anaya said, on a day where violence in Syria dominated news headlines. “As I’m writing, I’m speaking to a child, to children. I’m kind of telling them, ‘Look at Oli and Raven and Crow.’ The children are always there, they’re always there wanting to hear a story.”
The English text of the new book contains a smattering of colloquial Spanish words and phrases — such as “mi’jito” for my little son. A Spanish-English glossary at the back of the book resolves any mysteries.
That aims to help young readers from various cultures feel comfortable, according to Enrique Lamadrid, who wrote the book’s full Spanish translation.
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UK Royal Christmas: Church, Lunch and the Queen’s Message
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II wove personal reflections into her annual Christmas message, offering the customary wishes for peace and saying she hoped she had attained a measure of wisdom during her 92 years.
“Some cultures believe a long life brings wisdom,” Elizabeth said in a pre-recorded message broadcast Tuesday. “I’d like to think so. Perhaps part of that wisdom is to recognize some of life’s baffling paradoxes, such as the way human beings have a huge propensity for good and yet a capacity for evil.”
On a lighter note, the queen noted that 2018 was a busy year for her family: two weddings, two new babies and another due next year.
“It helps to keep a grandmother well occupied,” she said.
The annual message was broadcast to many of the 53 Commonwealth countries after the queen and senior royals attended a church service on the outskirts of one of her country estates.
Elizabeth and other members of the British royal family received cheers from a Christmas crowd when they arrived.
A chauffeured limousine delivered the 92-year-old Elizabeth to St. Mary Magdalene Church, while younger royals walked from nearby Sandringham House.
Prince Charles led the way, followed by his sons: Prince William and his wife, Catherine, and Prince Harry and his pregnant wife, Meghan.
Harry and Meghan, who are expecting their first child in the spring, walked arm in arm next to William and Catherine. Many in the crowd wished them “Merry Christmas” as they strolled to the church in the English countryside on a cold, wintry morning.
During the service, the congregation sang the traditional carols “O Little Town Of Bethlehem,” ″Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “O Come All Ye Faithful.”
After the 45-minute service, people gave them flowers as they headed back for a traditional Christmas lunch.
The queen’s husband, Prince Philip, who is 97 and largely retired from public life, did not attend the service. Charles’ wife Camilla, who is recovering from flu, also missed church.
William and Catherine’s three children — Prince George, 5, Princess Charlotte, 3, and 8-month-old Prince Louis, also stayed home.
Prince Andrew, the queen’s son, arrived by car with his mother. Princess Eugenie, another of the queen’s grandchildren, arrived with husband Jack Brooksbank.
Britain’s royals usually exchange small gifts on Christmas Eve, a practice popularized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The queen typically frowns on extravagant gifts, and many of the presents are novelty items.
When the queen was younger, Christmas meant a brisk family walk through the woods on Christmas or an excursion on horseback.
Elizabeth made her first Christmas Day broadcast on the radio in 1952, the year she ascended to the throne. She made the move to television in 1957.
She has broadcast the message each year since, with the exception of 1969. The queen felt the royal family had gotten enough TV exposure that year while allowing unusual access for a TV documentary.
That year, the message only appeared in writing.
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Disabled Venezuelans Reach New Heights Through Dance
A stray bullet crushed Iraly Yanez’s aspirations of becoming a professional dancer eight years ago as it ruptured two of her vertebrae and left her paraplegic.
But now the young Venezuelan dancer is pursuing her lifelong passion in a wheelchair — and hoping to put her career back on track — thanks to a contemporary dance company that is helping disabled people perform.
Caracas based AM Danza works with 50 young Venezuelans who are pursuing their passion for dance despite limitations like broken spines, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome or blindness.
Yanez, 34, joined the group three months ago and recently performed in her wheelchair in an emotional hour-long show that the dance troupe put together for its followers.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime” Yanez said after the contemporary dance review, “Ubuntu,” was held in one of the Venezuelan capital’s most prestigious theatres. “I can’t allow external issues to affect me any longer.”
During the show, disabled dancers performed alongside fully abled professional dancers to demonstrate that art knows no barriers. Some members of the audience shed tears.
Dancers with limited mobility in their legs lifted their crutches in the air in unison. A dancer hoisted Yanez from her wheelchair and lifted her above her shoulders to perform complex moves.
“Dancing is all about passion” said AM Danza’s director, Alexander Madriz. “You have to enjoy your possibilities and use your body to express emotions.”
Madriz has worked for two decades with dancers who have disabilities and says that thanks to them he has learned that corporal expression has no limits.
“Not everything has to be the perfect lines and symmetry that you see in contemporary classical dance” he said.
Madriz, 47, said that the students’ love for dance has helped them overcome the numerous obstacles faced by disabled people in Venezuela, where public transport is still mostly inaccessible to people on wheelchairs and ramps on sidewalks and public buildings are few and far between.
In addition, like everyone else in Venezuela, they have to cope with rampant medical shortages and hyperinflation that has devastated their incomes.
Yanez says that on weekdays she can spend up to three hours waiting for one of the few wheelchair-friendly buses that pass through her humble neighborhood in the suburbs of Caracas to take her to AM’s dance studio.
But that doesn’t seem to diminish her will to train.
She said that the dance company has allowed her to come to terms with the accident that changed her life and make feel like she can now “fly through the sky.”
The ballerina was hit by a stray bullet on New Year’s eve in 2010 as she entered her home in a crime-ridden slum. That was the end of her dancing until she joined AM Danza in September.
As 2018 comes to a close, Yanez says she is looking forward to participating in more performances.
In the kitchen of her small apartment, she glanced at a drawing of dancers posted on the refrigerator by her 10-year-old niece, who also now practices ballet.
“She’s one of the reasons that I am keeping up my struggle” Yanez said. “I see her, and I also see myself.”
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Scandal-Plagued Facebook Goes on Charm Offensive in Vietnam
Before Facebook, Vu Kim Chi thought something was lacking in her job, which is to promote the economy in and around Vietnam’s famed Ha Long Bay. Posting updates to her department’s website, or photocopying missives to send to constituents, she said, was mostly one-sided.
But after she set up an official Facebook page for Quang Ninh province, the conversations started to flow in both directions, between Chi and the local residents or businesses. That’s why, when it comes to social media, she thinks more civil servants need to catch up with the rest of the country.
“Social media, especially the Facebook application, is really used a lot in Vietnam,” said Chi, who is deputy head of the province’s investment promotion and support office. “But for public agencies that use it as a tool to interact with people and businesses, it’s still not necessarily used a lot.”
Facebook on charm offensive
Even as governments around the world are demanding more accountability and transparency from Facebook, public officials in Vietnam are looking for more ways to use the website. And Facebook is happy to oblige.
The company is on something of a charm offensive in Vietnam, where it has roughly 42 million members, nearly half the country. Besides sending top officials to visit Vietnam last year, Facebook has been instructing small businesses on how to sell their products on the site, and now it is giving civil servants like Chi advice for engaging with the public.
The chance to win some good will in Vietnam comes at a time when pressures are piling up on Facebook both inside the country and abroad. Globally, it has been accused of complicity in plots to convince voters to vote for Brexit or for candidate Donald Trump, as well as in what the United Nations calls ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The company reportedly paid for research that could damage its critics’ and competitors’ reputations, as well as gave users’ data to dozens of other firms without consent.
New cyber law
In Vietnam, the government told advertisers to boycott Facebook and other sites in response to users’ postings that criticized the one-party state. Next month, the country will enact a cyber law requiring firms to store data domestically, which Facebook opposes.
But those troubles were not front and center at a workshop in Ho Chi Minh City this month where a company representative gave bureaucrats tips on making a Facebook page.
“We have to understand and put more attention to the social aspect of the platform,” said Noudhy Valdryno, who handles government outreach for Facebook. “That means you have to understand your followers, who are they, where do they live, what are their interests? Then you can formulate an accurate strategy to engage with your followers.”
The workshop included suggestions for government officials, such as posting updates on Facebook at regular intervals, shooting videos vertically to retain the attention of mobile users, and encouraging conversations among followers on the page.
Tech companies welcome
The event was an example of how Vietnamese officials are open to working with the tech company. It is so ubiquitous in the Southeast Asian country that when Vietnamese people say “social media” they mean Facebook, and when asked what newspapers they read, they give the answer: Facebook.
“What we’re talking about is effective use of technology in this day and age to achieve our goals,” said Le Quoc Cuong, vice director of the Ho Chi Minh City department of information and communications. “What we’re looking for is being effective, being engaging and enhancing cooperation between the government and the people.”
Chi says more Facebook data would help her better engage with residents around Quang Ninh, a northeastern province that hugs the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Chinese border on another. She would like regular reports, perhaps every month, with information to help analyze the province’s fan page, from key words to number of “likes.” So as many people worldwide have begun to decry tech companies for abusing and cashing in on users’ data, there are those who still continue to see untapped potential in gathering further data.
your ad hereActor Kevin Spacey to Face Charge in Sexual Assault of Teen
U.S. actor Kevin Spacey is facing a felony charge for allegedly sexually assaulting the teenage at a Nantucket, Massachusetts, restaurant more than two years ago.
The Oscar-winning actor is set to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery on January 7.
In November last year, Boston-based news anchor Heather Unruh held a news conference to share her son’s allegation of sexual assault against Spacey.
She said her then-18-year-old son was was sexually assaulted by Spacey in a late-night encounter at the Club Car restaurant and bar in Nantucket on July 7, 2016. She said her son didn’t report the assault right away because he was embarrassed.
On Monday, soon after the charge became public, Spacey posted a video on YouTube titled “Let Me Be Frank,” breaking his year-long silence on the accusation.
On the video, Spacey delivers a monologue in the voice of Frank Underwood, his character on Netflix’s House of Cards, who was written off the show after the sexual misconduct allegations emerged.
He tells his audience, ““Of course some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all, they’re just dying to have me declare that everything they said is true and I got what I deserved. … I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.”
It is unclear whether Spacey is referring to the charge he faces.
Spacey is also being investigated for an alleged assault in Los Angeles in 2016. He had also faced accusations of sexual misconduct while he was the artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre.
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US SpaceX First National Security Mission
SpaceX continues making news in 2018. The company first broke its own record from 2017 when it passed 18 launches in year. On Sunday, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX launched another record-setting rocket… this one for U.S. national security. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Justice Ginsburg’s Exceptional Life
As Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers from surgery on Friday for early stage lung cancer, two new films are paying tribute to her life and many accomplishments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports how the senior justice of Court’s liberal wing is being portrayed on film.
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Russian Law Enforcement Investigate ISS Capsule Hole
A Russian cosmonaut who explored a mysterious hole in a capsule docked to the International Space Station says Russian law enforcement agencies are investigating what caused the opening.
Sergei Prokopyev said Monday investigators were looking at samples he and crewmate Oleg Kononenko collected during a December 12 spacewalk. Prokopyev and two other astronauts returned to Earth last week after 197-day space station mission.
The hole was spotted on August 30 in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station. The crew located and sealed a tiny leak that was creating a slight loss of pressure.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said in September the hole could have been drilled when the capsule was built or in orbit. Rogozin stopped short of blaming crew members, but the statement has caused friction between Roscosmos and NASA.
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Films on Iconic Justice Ginsburg Detail Exceptional Life and Contributions
As Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers from surgery on Friday for early stage lung cancer, two new films are paying tribute to her life and many accomplishments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports how the senior justice of Court’s liberal wing is being portrayed on film.
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World’s Most Popular Dinosaur Transforms at Chicago’s Field Museum
You don’t often get a second chance to make a first impression, unless, of course, you’re one of the world’s most popular dinosaurs.
“It’s a different profile, a much more impressive profile in many ways, a pretty scary large animal, as opposed to a lighter, swifter animal,” says the Field Museum’s Director of Exhibitions, Jaap Hoogstraten, who has courted the leading lady of the dinosaurs since she arrived in Chicago nearly twenty years ago.
“Since we put her up in 2000, we’ve made discoveries about the pose. We’ve added the gastralia, which are the belly ribs which changes the outline of Sue quite a bit. Sue is much bulkier.”
The belly ribs are not a new discovery… they’ve existed since the fossil was recovered from obscurity in the rock formations of South Dakota in the early 1990s. That was the beginning of a long legal and physical journey for the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Known as Sue, named for paleontologist Sue Hendrickson who discovered it, the well-preserved specimen arrived as the star attraction in Stanley Hall at the Field Museum in 2000.
But scientists only recently learned how the belly ribs fit onto the overall specimen, which now fundamentally changes what we know about the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
After a nearly year-long transition to a new exhibit specifically designed for her, Sue will look different to the millions who have seen the dinosaur before.
“I didn’t really realize that Sue weighed nine tons in real life,” says Hilary Hansen, project manager at the Field Museum. “I think really adding this gastralia, these belly ribs, really changes the profile for Sue, and you can get a sense of how formidable and imposing it must have been to share an environment with this animal.”
Hansen explains that the new exhibit doesn’t just change our understanding of the animal itself, such as the fact it probably couldn’t run, but it also show visitors Sue’s natural environment, and place in history.
“What we’re trying to do is bring together everything about Sue that was all over the museum into one space so our visitors can see this as a one stop shop for all things Sue.”
“It pushes what we know about T-Rex forward,” says Hoogstraten, including possible answers to how Sue met her fate.
“One possibility is that there was an infection, and that she possibly starved to death.”
The Field museum typically welcomes over one million visitors a year, a number Hilary Hansen expects to spike when the new Sue exhibit opens to the public just in time for the holiday rush.
“For the next three weeks or so, we’re expecting between seven to ten thousand visitors coming through a day.” Some, revisiting an old friend with a new look.
But even though science marches on, one mystery about Sue remains.
Despite the name, experts are still not sure if the dinosaur behind this fossil was male or female.
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