California Firm Reports Progress on Blood Tests to Detect Cancer
A California company says its experimental blood test was able to detect many types of cancer at an early stage and gave very few false alarms in a study that included people with and without the disease.
Many companies are trying to develop early detection “liquid biopsy” tests that capture bits of DNA that cancer cells shed into blood.
Grail’s new results are from 2,300 people. The test detected 55% of known cancers and gave false alarms for 1%. It also accurately suggested where the cancer may be about 90% of the time.
The company gave results in news release Friday and will report them Saturday at a conference in Chicago. They have not been published or reviewed by other scientists.
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Study: Kids Who Play Violent Video Games May Be More Likely to Handle Guns
Children who either played or watched a video game that included gun violence were more likely afterward to handle a gun and pull the trigger, a new study finds.
More than 200 children were randomly assigned to play either a non-violent video game or a game with firearm violence. Soon after, more than 60% of kids who played the violent game touched a gun, compared to about 44% of those who played a non-violent game, researchers report in JAMA Network Open.
The lessons from the new findings are that: “gun owners should secure their guns,” and “parents should protect their children from violent media, including video games,” said study coauthor Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
“Each day in the United States, nearly 50 children and teenagers are shot with a firearm, often as a result of a child finding one loaded and unsecured,” Bushman and his coauthor Justin Chang, a former graduate student at Ohio State, wrote.
“Among firearm-owning households with children, approximately 20% keep at least one firearm loaded and unsecured.”
Bushman and Chang recruited 242 kids, ages 8 to 12, to look at the impact of violent video games. The children were partnered up and then randomly assigned to one of three groups: a version of Minecraft that included violence with guns, a version that included violence with swords and a non-violent version. No matter which game a pair of children was assigned to, one would play the game and the other would watch.
After playing the games for 20 minutes, the children were moved to another room that contained toys for them to play with as well as two disabled guns with trigger counters that had been tucked away in a cabinet.
Out of the 242 children recruited, 220 eventually found the guns and those kids were included in the study.
Among the 76 children who played video games that included guns, 61.8% handled the weapon, as compared 56.8% of the 74 who played a game including sword violence and 44.3% of the 70 who played a non-violent game.
Children who played violent video games were also more likely to pull the trigger, researchers found.
How many times children pulled the trigger depended on the video game they watched.
It was a median of “10.1 times if they played the version of Minecraft where the monsters could be killed with guns, 3.6 times if they played the version of Minecraft where the monsters could be killed with swords and 3.0 times if they played the version of Minecraft without weapons and monsters,” Bushman said in an email.
“The more important outcome, though, is pulling the trigger of a gun while pointing that gun at oneself or one’s partner [children were tested in pairs],” Bushman said. There, the median was 3.4 times for the game with gun violence, 1.5 times for the game with swords and 0.2 times for non-violent games.
The new study “is the most rigorous design that can be conducted,” said Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.
While “it’s important to recognize certain types of entertainment can be violent, when it comes to firearms, the solution is to store guns safely so that children can’t gain access,” Crifasi said. “That doesn’t mean children won’t engage in other violent play. But we can cut off guns as a source of potential harm.”
Dr. Shari Platt agreed that the best way to protect kids is proper gun storage.
“The study is interesting and I think they are touching on some very real fears parents have around graphically violent video games,” said Platt, chief of pediatric medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and an associate professor of clinical emergency medicine. But in the end, “education and prevention are always the answers.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2EHXw4w and http://bit.ly/2EJslpC JAMA Network Open, online May 31, 2019.
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Nineteen Hours of Ramadan Sunlight for Muslims in Alaska
Muslims in the U.S. state of Alaska face nearly 20 hours of daylight during the fasting month of Ramadan. VOA Hausa reporter Yusuf Harande went to Alaska to see how some Muslims are adjusting to the long days.
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Muslim Americans Run for Charity During Ramadan Fast
During the month of Ramada, millions of U.S. Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. This year, Ramadan has fallen in May. Already temperatures in Washington, D.C., have risen above 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit.) Running while fasting on hot days can be challenging and ill-advised. Still about 70 fasting Muslims took part in a fundraising run to help raise $100,000 for children with special needs. VOA’s Niala Mohammad has more.
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National Spelling Bee Crowns 8 Co-Champions
Eight contestants won the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night, the first eight-way tie in the 94-year history of the competition.
The six boys and two girls ages 12 to 14 and from six states, Alabama, California, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas.
“We’re throwing the dictionary at you, and, so far, you are showing the dictionary who’s the boss,” the bee’s pronouncer, Jacques Bailly, told the remaining eight after 18 rounds of competition.
They were: Rishik Gandhasri (auslaut), Erin Howard (erysipelas), Abhijay Kodali (palama), Shruthika Padhy (aiguillette), Rohan Raja (odylic), Christopher Serrao (cernuous), Sohum Sukhatankar (pendeloque), and Saketh Sundar (bougainvillea).
The self-dubbed “octo-champs” spelled words that included aiguillette, bougainvillea, erysipelas, and pendeloque.
Each winner will receive $50,000 in cash and a trophy.
This year’s tournament at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland began with 562 contestants from across the United States, its territories and six other countries.
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Chinese Scientists Find CO2 Better for Fracking than Water
Chinese scientists have discovered that carbon dioxide is more efficient to use in fracking than water.
Fracking is the controversial process in which water or other fluids are injected into underground rocks at high pressure to release oil and natural gas deposits.
U.S. environmentalists have denounced the process because of the huge amounts of water needed, the contamination of underground water supplies, and small earthquakes it triggers.
In a new report in the journal Joule, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China University of Petroleum discovered that using CO2 instead of water resulted in as much as 20 times more oil.
”These real-world results revealed that as compared to water fracturing, CO2 fracturing is an important and greener alternative,” especially in arid areas where the water has to be trucked in, the report says.
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.
The scientists say the CO2 used in fracking would stay underground and not be released into the atmosphere.
The scientists say further research is needed as well as the winning over of cooperation from the industry.
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CDC: US Reports Most Measles Cases in 25 Years
Government health officials say there have been 971 cases of measles in the United States so far this year, the most cases since 1994, when there were 963 cases for the entire year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday if current outbreaks in and around New York City continue into the fall, the United States could lose its status as a country that has eliminated measles.
“That loss would be a huge blow for the nation and erase the hard work done by all levels of public health,” a CDC statement said.
Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, and the CDC says one of the primary reasons is the availability and widespread use of a safe and effective vaccine.
Fighting anti-vaccine propaganda
The CDC, World Health Organization, and other experts are fighting propaganda from parents and anti-vaccine activists who refuse to inoculate their children, insisting the vaccine is dangerous.
“Again, I want to reassure parents that vaccines are safe, they do not cause autism. The greater danger is the disease that vaccination prevents,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said. “Measles is preventable and the way to end this outbreak is to ensure that all children and adults who can get vaccinated do get vaccinated.”
Before vaccine, 4 million cases
Before 1963, when the measles vaccine was considered perfected, the CDC says as many as 4 million Americans got the disease every year and up to 500 victims died.
The measles virus is highly contagious and is spread primarily by coughing and sneezing.
Along with the refusal of some people to vaccinate their children, the CDC says the current nationwide outbreak is linked to travelers who are suspected of bringing back the virus from countries with their own large outbreaks, including Israel, the Philippines and Ukraine.
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‘Ramy’ Show Depicts Life of Arab American Muslims
In his semiautobiographical comedy “Ramy,” Ramy Youssef satirizes the daily life of a first-generation millennial Arab American Muslim. In an interview with VOA’s Penelope Poulou, he describes his show as funny, darkly satirical and down to earth — aiming to dispel stereotypes about Muslims in America.
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Energy Secretary: US Aims to Make Fossil Fuels Cleaner
The Trump administration is committed to making fossil fuels cleaner rather than imposing “draconian” regulations on coal and oil, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Thursday at an energy conference in Salt Lake City.
Perry previously said the administration wants to spend $500 million next year on fossil fuel research and development as demand plummets for coal and surges for natural gas.
“Instead of punishing fuels that produce emissions through regulation, we’re seeking to reduce those emissions by innovation,” Perry said at the conference.
Fossil fuel emissions have been cited by scientists as a major source of global warming.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said the world must change how it fuels factories, vehicles and homes to limit future global warming.
Perry said the Trump administration has proven it can make energy cleaner, but he provided no details involving coal and other fossil fuels, other than the closing of old, inefficient coal-burning power plants and exporting increasing volumes of natural gas, an alternative to coal.
Department of Energy spokesman Dirk Vande Beek didn’t immediately return an email and voicemail seeking more details about Perry’s claim.
Perry pointed to an overall drop in emissions as proof of progress.
Greenhouse gas emissions dropped 13 percent from 2005 to 2017, according to the most recent report from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Lindsay Beebe of the Sierra Club in Utah said trying to make fossil fuels cleaner is misspent energy.
“I don’t know that it’s possible right now, but what is ready right now are renewables. Wind, solar and geothermal are commercially viable and at scale,” Beebe said.
The summit Thursday was briefly interrupted when 15 protesters took the stage to criticize the administration’s fixation on fossil fuels.
They said the misguided approach ignores climate change. Police then escorted them out.
After they left, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who sponsored the event, said he and other leaders appreciated the “youthful enthusiasm” but their call to immediately discard fossil fuels and shift entirely to renewable energy isn’t realistic.
They would like us to quit by Friday and not take anything out of the ground,'' Herbert said.That obviously doesn’t work from a practical standpoint.”
Americans burned a record amount of energy in 2018, with a 10% jump in consumption from booming natural gas helping lead the way, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.
Fossil fuels in all accounted for 80% of Americans’ energy use.
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Singer Leon Redbone Dies
Singer Leon Redbone, famous for performing folk songs, obscure ragtime tunes and old-time American music, died Thursday after several years of poor health, his family said.
No details of his death were available, and even his age was in question. Redbone was always coy and mysterious about his origins and background.
He was believed to have been 69, but his website said he was 127 when he “departed our world with his guitar, his truest companion Rover, and a simple tip of his hat.”
Redbone was known for performing in a white suit, large hat and dark glasses, strumming a guitar. With his deep, gravelly voice, he sang old tunes that might have been long forgotten if he hadn’t revived them.
Along with performing in concerts and on TV variety shows, Redbone lent his distinctive voice to commercials and theme songs for situation comedies.
He gave up performing in 2015 because of his health.
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NBCUniversal Latest US Media Company Reconsidering Georgia Business over Abortion Law
NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia on Thursday joined a wave of U.S. media companies, including Walt Disney Co, saying they will reconsider working in Georgia if a new law banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected takes effect.
Georgia is one of nine U.S. states that have passed strict new limits on abortion this year, moves activists on both sides of the abortion debate have said were aimed at prompting the U.S. Supreme Court to review and strike down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.
Comcast Corp’s NBCUniversal unit said that it expects that many of the laws will face court challenges, but added, “If any of these laws are upheld, it would strongly impact our decision making on where we produce our content in the future.”
AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia cited similar concerns. “If the new law holds we will reconsider Georgia as the home to any new productions,” WarnerMedia said. “As is always the case, we will work closely with our production partners and talent to determine how and where to shoot any given project.”
On Wednesday, Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger told Reuters it would be “very difficult” to keep filming in Georgia if the new law went into effect. Netflix Inc on Tuesday said it would “rethink” its investment in Georgia if the law goes into effect.
The Georgia law, which Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed on May 7, is due to take effect on Jan. 1 if it survives court challenges. It would ban abortions at about six weeks into a pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant.
Abortion is one of the most socially divisive issues in U.S. politics, with opponents often citing religious beliefs to call it immoral, while abortion-rights advocates say the bans amount to state control of women’s bodies.
Georgia has attracted film and TV productions with tax credits and currently employs over 92,000 people in the entertainment business, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
The media companies’ words echoed a parallel case in North Carolina, which in 2016 repealed a law restricting bathroom use by transgender people after a boycott that cost its economy hundreds of millions of dollars and saw the NCAA pull championship games and the NBA its All-Star Game from the state.
While most of the abortion restrictions passed this year have been signed by Republican governors, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, on Thursday was preparing to sign a six-week abortion ban authored by a fellow Democrat and passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature, making it the ninth state to pass such a law this year.
Missouri court fight
Women’s health services provider Planned Parenthood on Thursday was warning that Missouri’s sole abortion clinic could be forced to stop providing them as the result of a license dispute that could make Missouri the sole U.S. state without a legal abortion provider.
Attorneys for the group were due in a St. Louis courtroom to ask a judge to block the state health department from not renewing the clinic’s license on Friday.
Hundreds of abortion rights protesters, including singer Amanda Palmer, some carrying “I Stand with Planned Parenthood” or “Stop the Ban” signs, gathered near the courthouse on Thursday during the hearing, according to videos of the scene posted online by Missouri media.
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Fracking With CO2, Not Water, Could Be More Efficient, Study Says
Carbon dioxide appears to be more efficient than water for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract oil and natural gas, according to a study led by scientists in China published Thursday.
Fracking is a process by which high-pressure fluids are injected into underground rock to create cracks to release oil and gas.
In the United States, fracking has fueled an oil boom since the early 2000s.
Currently, the most widespread method involves using large quantities of water mixed with chemicals.
But the method is controversial because the fluids are suspected of contaminating the aquifer — the underground layer of permeable rock that bears water — and of triggering mini-earthquakes.
The use of carbon dioxide instead of water to reduce the environmental impact of fracking has been the subject of studies for years.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China University of Petroleum in Beijing tested the method in a lab and in five wells at the Jilin oil field in northeastern China.
“To our delight, oil production increased by [around] four- to 20-fold after the entire CO2 fracturing process,” compared with the use of a water-chemical mix, wrote the authors of the study published in the American journal Joule.
The experts said carbon dioxide is better at breaking up the shale.
‘Greener alternative’
“These real-world results revealed that as compared to water fracturing, CO2 fracturing is an important and greener alternative, particularly for reservoirs with water-sensitive formations, located at arid areas, or other conditions that making water fracturing less applicable,” the authors added.
This would hold especially true in arid regions, where water currently needs to be transported by tanker trucks.
The scientists argue that this technique would allow CO2 — the main greenhouse gas emitted by human activity blamed for global warming — to be trapped in the ground, thereby removing it from the atmosphere.
However, injecting CO2 to extract hydrocarbons whose combustion would lead to more carbon emissions can seem counterproductive.
“CO2 fracking might ultimately have environmental benefits compared to fracking with water, but this study does not include the analysis that is needed to establish whether CO2 fracking is likely to lead to an overall reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions,” said Hannah Chalmers, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.
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Superman Building Makes National List of Endangered Places
Providence’s iconic Superman Building is included on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s annual list of the nation’s most endangered historic places.
The 2019 list highlights 11 architectural and cultural sites the private nonprofit deems at risk because of neglect, development or other threats.
The 91-year-old vacant skyscraper is Rhode Island’s tallest building at around 430 feet (131 meters). Formally the Industrial Trust Building, it resembles the Daily Planet headquarters in the old TV show.
Katherine Malone-France, the National Trust’s interim chief preservation officer, says few buildings in Providence are as iconic or beloved, but the Superman Building has deferred maintenance needs after six years of vacancy.
The National Trust says the list can mobilize support for preservation. This year’s list also includes Nashville’s Music Row and the National Mall Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.
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Telecoms Giant EE Launches Britain’s First 5G Services
British mobile phone operator EE on Thursday became the first in the country to launch a high-speed 5G service, but without smartphones from controversial Chinese technology giant Huawei.
EE, which is a division of British telecoms giant BT, has launched 5G in six major cities comprising Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and Manchester — and more hubs will follow.
“From today, the U.K. will be able to discover 5G for the first time thanks to EE,” it announced in a statement, after an official launch featuring a performance from chart-topping grime act Stormzy on a boat on London’s River Thames.
Next-generation 5G mobile networks offer almost instantaneous data transfer that will become the nervous system of Europe’s economy in strategic sectors like energy, transport, banking and health care.
EE had announced last week that it would make its 5G network available to the public — but would not sell Huawei’s first 5G phone, the Mate 20 X 5G.
However, the Chinese company still provides 5G network infrastructure equipment to EE.
“We are very pleased to be one of the partners supporting EE with a new era of faster and more reliable mobile connectivity over 5G in the U.K.,” a Huawei spokesperson told AFP on Thursday.
Rival British mobile phone giant Vodafone will launch its own 5G services on July 3 in seven UK cities — but it has also paused the sale of the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G smartphone.
Vodafone does not use Huawei in its core UK network but uses a mixture of Ericsson and Huawei technology in its radio access network or masts, according to a company spokesman. He added that there are “multiple” layers of security between the masts and the core network.
Huawei faces pushback in some Western markets over fears that Beijing could spy on communications and gain access to critical infrastructure if allowed to develop foreign 5G networks.
The Chinese company flatly denies what it describes as “unsubstantiated claims” about being a security threat.
US internet titan Google has meanwhile started to cut ties between its Android operating system and Huawei, a move that affects hundreds of millions of smartphone users, after the U.S. government announced what amounts to a ban on selling or transferring technology to the company.
Earlier this week, Huawei asked a U.S. court to throw out US legislation that bars federal agencies from buying its products.
The U.S. moves against Huawei come as the Washington and Beijing are embroiled in a wider trade war.
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Should Facebook Delete Fake Pelosi Video?
When a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — one altered to show the Democratic leader slurring her words — began making the rounds on Facebook last week, the social network didn’t take it down. Instead, it “downranked” the video, a behind-the-scenes move intended to limit its spread.
That outraged some people who believe Facebook should do more to clamp down on misinformation. Pelosi derided Facebook Wednesday for not taking down the video even though it knows it is false.
But the company and some civil libertarians warn that Facebook could evolve into an unaccountable censor if it’s forced to make judgment calls on the veracity of text, photos or videos.
Facebook has long resisted making declarations about the truthfulness of posts that could open it up to charges of censorship or political bias. It manages to get itself in enough trouble simply trying to enforce more basic rules in difficult cases, such as the time a straightforward application of its ban on nudity led it to remove an iconic Vietnam War photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack. (It backed down after criticism from the prime minister of Norway, among others.)
But staying out of the line of fire is harder than it used to be, given Facebook’s size, reach and impact on global society. The social network can’t help but run into controversy given its 2.4 billion users and the sorts of decisions it must make daily — everything from which posts and links it highlights in your news feed to deciding what counts as hate speech to banning controversial figures or leaving them be.
Facebook has another incentive to keep its head down. The deeper it gets into editorial decisions, the more it looks like a publisher, which could tempt legislators to limit the liability shield it currently enjoys under federal law. In addition, making judgments about truth and falsity could quickly become one of the world’s biggest headaches.
For instance, Republican politicians and other conservatives, from President Donald Trump to Fox News personalities, have been trumpeting the charge that Facebook is biased against conservatives. That’s a “false narrative,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. But as a result, he said, “any effort to clean up Facebook now would spark tremendous fury.”
Twitter hasn’t removed the doctored Pelosi video, either, and declined comment on its handling of it. But YouTube yanked it down, pointing to community guidelines that prohibit spam, deceptive practices and scams.
Facebook has a similar policy that prohibits the use of “misleading and inaccurate” information to gain likes, followers or shares, although it apparently decided not to apply it in this case.
None of these companies explicitly prohibit false news, although Facebook notes that it “significantly” reduces the distribution of such posts by pushing them lower in user news feeds.
The problem is that such downranking doesn’t quite work, Vaidhyanathan said. As of Wednesday, the video shared on Facebook by the group Politics Watchdog had been viewed nearly 3 million times and shared more than 48,000 times. By contrast, other videos posted by this group in the past haven’t had more than a few thousand views apiece.
Further complicating matters is the fact that Facebook is starting to de-emphasize the news feed itself. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a broad strategy that will emphasize private messaging over public sharing on Facebook. And Facebook groups, many of which are private, aren’t subject to downranking, Vaidhyanathan said.
Facebook didn’t respond to emailed questions about its policies and whether it is considering changes that would allow it to remove similar videos in the future. In an interview last week with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Facebook’s head of global policy, Monika Bickert, defended the company’s decision , noting that users are “being told” that the video is false when they view or share it.
That might be a stretch. When an Associated Press reporter attempted to share the video as a test, a Facebook pop-up noted the existence of “additional reporting” on the video with links to fact-check articles, but didn’t directly describe the video as false or misleading.
Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former security chief, tweeted Sunday that few critics of the social network’s handling of the Pelosi video could articulate realistic enforcement standards beyond “take down stuff I don’t like.” Mass censorship of misleading speech on Facebook, he wrote, would be “a huge and dangerous increase in FB’s editorial power.”
Last year, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook that the company focuses on downranking so-called “borderline content,” stuff that doesn’t violate its rules but is provocative, sensationalist, “click-bait or misinformation.”
While it’s true that Facebook could just change its rules around what is allowed — moving the line on acceptable material — Zuckerberg said this doesn’t address the underlying problem of incentive. If the line of what is allowed moves, those creating material would just push closer to that new line.
Facebook continuously grapples with the right way to deal with new forms of misinformation, Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a February interview with the AP. The problem is far more complex than carefully manipulated “deepfake” videos that show people doing things they never did, or even crudely doctored videos such as the Pelosi clip.
Any consistent policy, Gleicher said, would have to account for edited images, ones presented out of context (such as a decade-old photo presented as current), doctored audio and more. He said it’s a huge challenge to accurately identify such items and decide what type of disclosure to require when they’re edited.
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Word Whiz Kids Tap Memory Tricks at Spelling Bee
Spelling savants traced letters onto their palms or gazed at the ceiling on Wednesday while racking their brains in hopes of advancing to the next level of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The field shrunk considerably throughout the day, from 490 down to 50 finalists who are competing for the $50,000 cash jackpot. Some competitors wiped away tears after leaving the stage, while others took their defeat in stride.
“I bid you adieu,” said Eleanor Tallman, 14, from Flower Mound, Texas, with a smile, after misspelling “impermissible.”
Most of the starting field of 562 challengers aged 7 to 15 easily aced common words such as “ambition” and “fatality” on the second of three days of competition to stay in the running But some tripped over “telenovela,” “junket” and “gracility.”
Joshua Brown, 13, was too upset to speak after failing to spell the word “equitable” on Wednesday afternoon.
“He is just accustomed to winning everything,” said his mother, Camille Brown, 44, of Bennettsville, South Carolina, “but he has to learn defeat also.”
The final round of the tournament in Maryland is on Thursday night and will be televised live on ESPN.
Jackie Meador, 13, of Marbelton, Wyoming, was among those who made it to the second day of competition on Wednesday after correctly spelling “duomo,” an Italian-originated word for cathedral, late on Tuesday.
“It’s kind of nerve-wracking,” said Meador, who won his first spelling bee in third grade.
Spellers had to ace everyday words, such as “intolerable” and “detrimental,” with more obscure ones, such as “annus mirabilis” and “hibernaculum.”
This year’s bee drew spelling aces from all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories and six other countries: the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.
Standing 4 feet 4 inches (1.32 m) tall, Akash Vukoti, 9, sparked smiles from fans on Tuesday afternoon when he commented on the microphone stand as it automatically lowered to his height.
“I like this mic!” he exclaimed, before successfully spelling “ranunculus,” a flowering plant, with seconds to spare.
Vukoti, of San Angelo, Texas, tied for 323rd place last year. He is competing this year alongside his sister, Amrita Vukoti, 11.
“Even before kids come to this bee, they are already winners because they have acquired a lot of knowledge,” said their father, Krishna Vukoti, who enrolled his son in his first spelling bee at age 2.
“It’s a lot of dedication from our side, combined with his talents,” he said.
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S. African Athlete Semenya Appeals Testosterone Ruling
South African runner Caster Semenya filed an appeal Wednesday against the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision to uphold testosterone regulations for some female athletes in track and field.
Attorneys for the two-time Olympic 800-meter champion said she lodged an appeal with the Swiss Federal Tribunal, Switzerland’s supreme court. CAS, sport’s highest court, is based in Switzerland.
Semenya’s appeal focuses on “fundamental human rights,” the attorneys said.
Under the International Association of Athletics Federations’ new rules, upheld by the CAS this month, Semenya is not allowed to run in international races from 400 meters to one mile unless she medically lowers her natural testosterone levels. She said after the CAS decision that she would not take medication and repeated her defiance in Wednesday’s statement announcing her appeal.
I am a woman and I am a world-class athlete,'' Semenya said.The IAAF will not drug me or stop me from being who I am.”
Semenya, 28, who is also a three-time world champion, is one of a number of female athletes with medical conditions known as differences of sex development that cause high levels of natural testosterone. The IAAF says that gives them an advantage over other female athletes because of testosterone’s ability to help athletes build muscle and carry more oxygen in their blood.
Hormone-suppressing medication
The IAAF requires Semenya and others affected by the rules to take hormone-suppressing medication or have surgery if they want to compete in the restricted events. That’s been labeled unethical by leading medical experts, including the World Medical Association, which represents doctors across the world.
Semenya’s attorneys said that “the Swiss federal supreme court will be asked to consider whether the IAAF’s requirements for compulsory drug interventions violate essential and widely recognized public policy values, including the prohibition against discrimination, the right to physical integrity, the right to economic freedom and respect for human dignity.”
Decisions made by CAS can be appealed to the Swiss Federal Tribunal on only a very limited number of grounds. One of them is a ruling that possibly violates a person’s human rights.
Semenya’s attorneys could also seek a temporary suspension of the IAAF rules, which came into effect May 8, to allow her to defend her 800 title at the world championships in Doha, Qatar, in September. The testosterone regulations specify that athletes must reduce their testosterone levels to a level decided by the IAAF for six months consistently before being allowed to run in international events.
Under the current regulations, Semenya can’t run the 800 or 1,500 meters, her favorite events, at any Diamond League meets this season or the world championships.
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DRC’s Ebola Battle Fraught With Security Risks
The World Health Organization says success in ending the Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo hinges upon improving security in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The region has been engulfed in conflict for many years, and many locals do not trust outsiders, even the ones trying to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
The U.N. health agency reports security incidents in eastern DRC have increased dramatically in the past few months. So far this year, it reports 174 attacks by armed groups in North Kivu on health care facilities, workers and patients. These include five deaths and 51 injuries.
In mid-April, Cameroonian Dr. Richard Mouzoko was shot and killed while working in a hospital in Butembo, North Kivu. This incident was seen as a big setback to the Ebola operation.
This past Saturday, villagers killed a health worker in the health sector of Mabalako.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, says health workers are being intimidated and threatened by armed men and live in fear, not knowing when the next violent attack may occur.
She says this insecurity is leading to a lack of access and driving the increase in cases.
“When the response cannot reach people,” she said, “they do not get the chance to be vaccinated or to receive life-saving treatment if they do fall ill.
“The technical means to stop this Ebola outbreak are available,” she added. “But without access or a secure operating environment, they cannot be deployed optimally and effectively enough. …This is why the response is one of the most complex health emergencies the world has faced.”
The latest WHO figures show 1,920 Ebola cases in the region, including 1,281 deaths. A new structure for coordinating and strengthening the Ebola response was presented at the World Health Assembly this week.
WHO Executive Director of Health Emergencies Michael Ryan says key partners will have to scale up their operations and take charge of crucial aspects of the new strategy.
“We believe the work on security, the work on non-humanitarian interventions and the work on sustainable financing are the things that need to happen to provide the environment in which public health operations can continue to progress and be successful,” he said.
However, he warns if there are further large-scale security incidents than all bets are off. He says the likely impact of this ongoing instability will have on the Ebola emergency operation is unpredictable, but worrisome.
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Amid Health Care Shortage, Immigrants Are Rural America’s Saving Grace
Roberta Boltz keeps her doors unlocked at night. The former coal mine worker says it is just one perk of living in the small Pennsylvania town of Hegins.
But last Christmas morning, she had her first epileptic seizure, and her only worry about rural life took center stage: access to health care. There is no hospital in her community of 812 residents, and she says she does not trust the one closest to her.
“I’ve heard people say they wouldn’t send their dog to that hospital,” Boltz said. “They’re so understaffed.”
Seated upright in a platinum nightgown, with gauze covering her thin forehead, Boltz recently made the one-hour commute to Danville, Pennsylvania’s, eight-story, 559-bed Geisinger Medical Center to receive care, as she has done during several critical life moments. Geisinger treated her son’s Crohn’s disease when he was a child, and more recently, after her husband suffered a heart attack.
Located beside a 300-acre forest, Danville is not much more urban than Hegins. With a population of 4,631, it could not by itself support a hospital this size that serves all of central Pennsylvania and has grappled with its own issue of filling medical staff positions.
Geisinger has tried to solve its own staffing problem by hiring immigrants from Jamaica, India, the Philippines, South Korea, Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and others — many of whom have come to live in a borough (town) that is 94% white.
In interviews with VOA, Geisinger staff referred to the nursing shortage crisis as one of its biggest supply-and-demand challenges. Despite being the region’s “employer of choice,” they say local talent recruitment alone has fallen short of their needs.
Big shortage
The entire United States faces a massive shortage of health care professionals over the next decade, including up to 120,000 physicians by 2030. One-third of currently active doctors in the country will reach retirement age during that span.
Unless the health care workforce gap is addressed, rural areas are likely to bear the brunt of its effects, says Andrew Lim, director of quantitative research at New American Economy, a bipartisan research organization.
“If you look at urban areas, there are over 200 doctors per 100,000 people. But if you look at rural counties, the number of doctors to go around is much less — something like 82 for every 100,000,” Lim told VOA.
The population of Danville more than doubles when Geisinger — with its 6,200 employees — is fully staffed. Among the workers: 415 internationally trained physicians and 57 foreign-born registered nurses.
“Not only is Geisinger trying to recruit (international nurses), many other health systems are,” Julene Campion, vice president of human resources at Geisinger, told VOA. “We could probably use another 100 easily (across the Geisinger network), but there aren’t enough available.”
“We’ve outgrown our ability to supply,” added Crystal Muthler, Geisinger’s vice president of nursing — a 30-year veteran.
The community’s needs, combined with an aging workforce, she says, are ultimately what led Geisinger to reevaluate its staffing model and implement an international nurse initiative in 2018.
“We have to look at how we attract people to the area,” Muthler said.
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, health care is projected to be the largest-growing sector of new job creation over the next decade, accounting for more than 1.3 million new jobs, roughly one-third of them for registered nurses.
But for those looking to find opportunity in the United States, while helping fill a critical shortage, obstacles remain.
Doctors have been impacted by the Trump administration’s travel ban, while some health aides and nursing assistants could be barred from getting a green card.
It is unclear whether Trump’s new immigration plan, announced on May 16, will help health care staffing. The merit-based system would favor immigrants who fall into broad “high-skill” categories, including “professional and specialized vocations,” at the cost of family-based and humanitarian immigrant visas.
‘Kindness is my language’
Even now, foreign-born health care professionals represent more than their share of the overall U.S. population; 14.7% of nurses and 22.7% of health aides are immigrants, according to NAE, compared to 13.7% of the population as a whole.
Thirty-five-year-old Hemoy Drummond, a recent Geisinger hire from Jamaica, has an EB-3 employment-based immigrant visa. She has 13 years of experience as a registered nurse.
“I was very nervous. It was a new setting, new expectations,” Drummond said. “But when I got here, I realized that people are kind. … I said, ‘That’s my language.'”
Danville, with its lush hillsides and nearby cornfields, reminds her of the sugar cane fields her father harvested in her native Clarkstown, Jamaica. Her community is safe. The mother of two can walk home alone after a late shift.
The nursing work is easier in Danville than in a short-staffed Montego Bay hospital.
“It’s easier to care for four to six (patients at Geisinger) than 18 (in Jamaica),” Drummond said. “I love to talk with (patients) that extra minute.”
Willing to stay
In town, locals generally welcome — or at least tolerate — their new international neighbors.
“They’re magnificent!” remarked one woman on Danville’s Mill Street. “We’d be stupid not to let them into our country.”
Two hours southeast of Danville, along the Susquehanna River in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, views are more mixed. A foreign-born doctor described Chambersburg as “where blue meets red.”
Yet Chambersburg Hospital, too, has been trying to solve its health care staffing problems with immigrants.
In Chambersburg, population 20,878, VOA spoke with 10 foreign-born doctors from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Poland and Hungary. Nine of them expressed a willingness to remain in rural Pennsylvania long term, including Indian physicians affected by a per-country green card backlog that has placed their families’ future in limbo.
U.S.-born physicians do not want to go to Chambersburg, much less stay, explained Dr. Golam Mostofa, chairman of the department of hospital medicine at Chambersburg Hospital.
“Fifty percent of our hospital medicine physicians are foreign graduates,” Mostofa said. “If we interview 10 American graduates, maybe one shows up.”
Dr. Muhammad Khokhar, a gastroenterologist from Lahore, Pakistan, has been in Chambersburg for 16 years. He remains committed to the town, even after his sixth grade daughter’s classmates at a Montessori school accused her of making bombs.
“(When) you have invested so much in the community, and you have built up relationships with your partners and the practice, it’s difficult,” Khokhar said.
“I’m here,” he added. “This is my retirement place.”
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How One Pollution-Weary Asian Island Adopted Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles have struggled to gain mass appeal in much of the world despite the fanfare surrounding Tesla Motors, the world’s best-selling brand of plug-in cars last year. Drivers worry about prices, comfort and what happens when a battery expires in the middle of a trip.
But in Taiwan, scooter vendor Gogoro doubles its sales every year largely because of a widespread battery exchange network supported by a central government that’s keen to control emissions. Gogoro designs what it describes as ride-able scooters as well as engines for other brands, filling what the chief executive officer calls earlier market voids.
“People say we’re the two wheels of Tesla, and in some ways, we are,” CEO and co-founder Horace Luke said. “We do a little bit of everything.”
The company, which launched in 2011, first had to prove that it could all be done.
“Nobody could believe that an electric vehicle could be cool and fun to ride, so we built that,” said Horace Luke, founder of Gogoro. “Nobody believed that you could swap batteries, so we enabled that.”
Battery swaps
Gogoro stands out among other electric scooter developers by working with Taiwan’s central government plus the city of Taipei to locate and pay for 1,300 battery swap stations. Those alleviate rider fears of running out of juice in mid-trip, a barrier to development of the world’s $17.43 billion electric vehicle industry.
Battery swap sites are placed every 500 meters in urban Taiwan, usually in obvious roadside locations. They turn up every two to five kilometers in other parts of the island. The central government pays half the cost of building the swap stations and offers publicly accessible land, Luke said. The government’s National Development Fund invested venture capital in Gogoro in 2014.
“You should have seen how hard it was for first 50 stations; it was almost impossible,” recalled Luke, 49, a Seattle native and former software designer who moved to Taiwan for the engineering talent and supply chain. He co-founded Gogoro in 2011.
“And our consumers are the ones voicing out. They go to the government and say ‘I want this here’,” he said.
Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration has set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent from 2005 levels by 2025 and hacking them by 20 by 2030.
For the government now, Luke added, “it’s a win-win situation for them to adopt electric.”
Gogoro’s stations do 90,000 swaps per day. Those transactions give Gogoro the data it needs to know where it should resupply batteries.
Worldwide, just “a handful” of countries have “significant market share” of electric cars, the independent, intergovernmental International Energy Agency says. Norway led in 2017 with 39 percent of new sales in 2017, followed by Iceland at 11.7 percent and Sweden at 6.3 percent.
Taiwanese still want to know more about their next battery, said Paul Hsu, co-founder of Okgo.life, a fellow Taiwanese electric scooter brand with an app that lists types and prices of batteries at the swap sites on its roster.
“Every rider has a plan for every trip. The riders know where they’re going but not how much money it will take to get there,” Hsu said. For example, he said, “a short trip should have a short-distance vehicle and a short-distance price.”
‘Fun to ride’
Gogoro has raised its sales as well by designing scooter models attractive to men who like bigger motorcycles along as well as vehicles aimed at female riders. Sales doubled last year and they’re on track to double again this year, Luke said.
Total sales are about 160,000, or 16 percent of the total Taiwan scooter fleet. Tesla, by comparison, sold about 532,000 cars worldwide from 2012 to 2018.
Taiwanese adapted especially fast because of the earlier prevalence of gas-powered scooters. Riders were comfortable with the idea of scooters in general – just not the noise and pollution they kick up.
Tsai Cheng-yang, 36, an urban designer of the southern Taiwan city Tainan, has five electric scooters in his household. Compared to gas-powered scooters, he said, electric ones a quieter, give off less heat and lack the stench of fuel, he said. Operation costs are about the same, he said.
“If all vehicles were an electric powered, you’d feel it was quite peaceful, with no odors either, quite happy and a different experience,” Tsai said.
Gogoro plans to overcome competitors such as Yamaha and Aeon by selling motors to them, giving it a cross-brand presence, Luke said. “The idea is to create a platform allowing others to create their own vehicles,” he said.
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MacKenzie Bezos Pledges to Give Away Half Her Fortune
MacKenzie Bezos, who just months ago divorced the world’s richest man, has pledged to give away half her fortune to charity.
The former wife of Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos is one of the 19 new signatories to the Giving Pledge who have promised to donate more than 50% of their wealth, the organization said.
“I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” MacKenzie Bezos said in a letter released Tuesday. “My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”
Bezos’ personal fortune is worth nearly $37 billion, making her the 22nd-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Giving Pledge was created by billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010. It asks the world’s wealthiest people to promise to give away half their wealth during their lifetimes or in their wills.
Bezos’ former husband, who is worth an estimated $114 billion, has not yet signed the pledge but tweeted his support for his ex-wife’s decision.
“MacKenzie is going to be amazing and thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I’m proud of her,” he said on Twitter.
Other billionaires who have signed the Giving Pledge include Elon Musk, oil baron T. Boone Pickens, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton and his wife, Tegan.
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Sneezing a Lot? Handheld Allergen Detector Can Help
Whether you live in a city of somewhere more rural, there are always things in the air, invisible to the naked eye that could make you sneeze or cause major illness. Detecting these microscopic materials such as pollen, mold and pollutants could be time consuming and costly. A lab at the University of California, Los Angeles is trying to solve that problem by developing a handheld allergen detector for consumers. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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50th Annual World Series of Poker Opens in Las Vegas
The annual World Series of Poker opened Tuesday in Las Vegas with dozens of scheduled card tournaments and a special event to celebrate the 50th run of a series known for minting millionaires each year.
The seven-week poker festival is expected to again draw tens of thousands of players seeking a piece of a projected combined prize pool of more than $200 million. Buy-ins for the series’ 89 championship events range from $400 to $100,000.
To celebrate the milestone, owner Caesars Interactive Entertainment has scheduled an awards ceremony and a $500 buy-in, rake-free tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million. The company is allowing fans and others to choose some of the players who will be recognized at the ceremony.
“It’s absolutely a way to make them a part of it,” tournament spokesman Seth Palansky said. “The 50th year was a good time to reflect back on sort of where we’ve come both in poker and the World Series of Poker, but we wanted the fans and the players to decide what moments from our 50 years stood out to them.”
People can vote on seven categories, including fan favorite player, the series’ “favorite bad boy” and the four most important players in the tournament’s history. A panel will also put together a list of the 50 greatest poker players.
Casino owner Benny Binion started the series in 1970 as an invitation-only event. Johnny Moss was declared the winner by the other men at the table and was given a trophy.
Poker’s popularity in the U.S. erupted in 2003, when Tennessee accountant Chris Moneymaker entered a $39 online poker satellite contest, won an entry to the series’ famed no-limit Texas Hold `em main event and emerged victorious, winning $2.5 million and inspiring other amateur players.
The series this year will run through July 16 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, west of the Las Vegas Strip. Champions go home richer and with gold bracelets.
The tournament saw a record 123,865 entrants in 2018. The prize pool of over $266 million was divided among 18,105 participants. Twenty-eight of them earned at least $1 million.
Palansky said the tournament keeps going strong because organizers have been open to changes and feedback from players.
“Poker is a unique game. We are just the operator — we deal the cards, we provide the chips and the setup — but they play amongst each other. It’s a peer-to-peer game,” he said. “So, ultimately, the WSOP, we look at it as sort of in the trust of the players, and it’s our job to just listen to their feedback and provide the schedule that meets their needs and demands.”
The tournament’s famed main event starts July 3 with players staking $10,000 to buy in. ESPN and PokerGO will again provide live coverage.
Indianapolis resident John Cynn won the main event last year after playing more than 440 hands at the final table. His cut of the prize pool was $8.8 million.
your ad hereSmithsonian Appoints Lonnie Bunch as Its 14th Secretary
David Byrd contributed to this report
The founder of the Smithsonian Institution’s newest museum, which focuses on African-American history, has been selected to lead the institution’s entire system of museums and parks.
Tuesday, the Smithsonian Board of Regents appointed Lonnie Bunch as its 14th secretary, becoming the museum’s first African-American leader in its 173-year history.
The 66-year-old Bunch will guide the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, overseeing a $1.5 billion annual budget that helps fund 19 museums, nine research centers and the National Zoo.
Bunch told the Associated Press that he is humbled and excited at taking over as Secretary.
“It is humbling, exciting. It is something that had never crossed my mind to do,” he said. ” But it also makes me feel good because I get to give back to the institution I care the most about – the Smithsonian.”
Board of Regents chairman David Rubenstein said Bunch’s experience at three museums, reputation and fundraising skills separated him from other candidates.
However, Bunch says he was still surprised to get the Secretary’s job.
“I wasn’t even sure, when they ask you to go for this job, that they’d hire someone like me, that they’d hire an insider, they’d hire a curator. They’d hire a historian,” he said.
The appointment comes less than three years after the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
As its first director, Bunch oversaw an 11 year effort to collect more than 40,000 items before the museum opened on the National Mall in 2016.
The museum immediately became one of Washington’s most popular attractions, drawing more than four million people in its first two and one-half-years.
The new Secretary says he does not want people to think of the Smithsonian as only looking at the past. He wants the public to see it as suited to serving a 21st-century audience.
“And so in a way, this is also a wonderful day for the Smithsonian to sort of say it’s a place that embraces all of what America is and is comfortable with diversity of leadership and vision. So for me, this is less about a triumph for me and more about the Smithsonian recognizing what it takes to lead in the 21st Century,” he said.
George Mason University history professor Spencer Crew will serve as the NMAAHC’s interim director.
Lonnie Bunch will assume his new duties on June 16.
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