Cameroon Pharmacist Creates Device to Detect Fake Drugs
Each year, tens of thousands of people across Africa die or get sick from ingesting counterfeit drugs. But Franck Verzefé, a Cameroonian pharmacist, has developed a device that uses artificial intelligence to determine if a medicine is fake or the real thing. Moki Edwin Kindzeka narrates this report by Anne Nzouankeu in Douala, Cameroon.
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US Biologists Eye Unusual Deaths of Alaska Seals
U.S. marine mammal biologists have declared an “unusual mortality event” in the deaths of nearly 300 ice seals off Alaska’s northwest coast.The cause of the deaths is not known.The fisheries arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the declaration covers ringed, bearded and spotted seals. All three types of seals use sea ice in varying ways.NOAA Fisheries has received reports of 282 dead seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas since June 1, 2018.That’s nearly five times the average number of reported seal strandings.The deaths have mostly occurred from June to September in both years.Declaration of an unusual mortality event allows the agency to use more resources to investigate the deaths.
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Trump EPA Throws Out Obama-Era Clean Water Protections
The Trump administration has thrown out Obama-era rules that expended federal protection of waterways from pollution, a move environmentalists say they will challenge in court.Getting rid of the 2015 Waters of the United States Act “puts an end to an egregious power grab, eliminates an ongoing patchwork of clean water regulations, and restores a longstanding and familiar regulatory framework,” Environmental Protection Agency Chief Andrew Wheeler said Thursday.He added that it fulfills one of President Donald Trump’s “key promises.”Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks at a news conference in Washington, Sept. 12, 2019.Wheeler made his announcement at the Washington headquarters of the National Association of Manufacturers, whose members have been lobbying against the clean water regulations.The WOTUS rule protected wetlands and streams from pollution by pesticides, mine waste and fertilizers. It solidified what waterways fell under the landmark 1972 Clean Water Act.Opponents of the Obama administration rules say the regulations created confusion, and likened them to a federal land grab of private property. Farmers and others complained the act also applied to small ponds that do not flow anywhere, leaving them wondering whether they could work their land without violating federal law.Wheeler says the EPA will now redefine which waterways are subject to federal regulation.Planned lawsuitEnvironmentalists say they will take the EPA to court. They said Thursday that throwing out the 2015 rule means unsafe drinking water, a higher risk of floods when wetlands are destroyed and less wildlife habitat.”The Clean Water rule represented solid science and smart public policy,” the Natural Resources Defense Council said Thursday.Betsy Southerland, a top EPA official during the Obama years, calls the repeal a “victory for land developers, oil and gas drillers, and miners.”
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Jolting Discovery: Powerful New Electric Eel Found
Researchers report two newly discovered species of electric eels in South America, one of which can deliver a bigger jolt than any other known animal.The researchers collected 107 eels in four countries and found differences in their DNA, along with minor physical variations.One species had the ability to generate 860 volts of electricity, more than the 650 volts discharged by the only previously identified type of electric eel.While 250 species of fish in South America generate electricity, only electric eels use it to stun prey and for self-protection.Study leader C. David de Santana of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History says the discovery illustrates the importance of protecting and studying the Amazon rainforest area.The study was published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
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Facebook Expands New Tool Aiming to Shrink ‘News Deserts’
Facebook is trying to coax “news deserts” into bloom with the second major expansion of a tool that exposes people to more local news and information. But the social network confesses that it still has a lot to learn.The social media giant said Thursday it is expanding its “Today In” service to 6,000 cities and towns across the U.S., up from 400 in its previous iteration . Launched in early 2018, the service lets Facebook users opt into local news and information from local organizations. Such news can include missing-person alerts, local election results, road closures and crime reports.
The tool lives within the Facebook app; turning it on adds local updates to a user’s regular news feed. In areas with scant local news, Facebook will add relevant articles from surrounding areas.The service won’t automatically turn on for people even in the areas it serves, which could limit its reach. So far, Facebook says, 1.6 million people have activated Today In. They receive news from some 1,200 publishers every week.
The service aggregates posts from the official Facebook pages for news organizations, government agencies and community groups like dog shelters. It uses software filters to weed out objectionable content.Facebook employs no human editors for Today In, so tweaking its algorithm to find such good local stories has been a complicated process. Does a road closure matter if it’s 100 miles away? How about a murder?
Some 1,800 newspapers have closed in the United States over the last 15 years, according to research out of the University of North Carolina . Newsroom employment has declined by 45% as the industry struggles with a broken business model partly caused by the success of companies on the internet, including Facebook”
“There is no silver bullet,” said Campbell Brown, head of global news partnerships at Facebook, in an interview. “We really want to help publishers address challenges in local markets.”
Brown, a former news anchor and host at NBC and CNN, said local reporting remains the “most important” form of journalism today. She said Facebook has a “responsibility” to support journalism, while also noting that the media industry has been in decline “for a very long time.”Local news is just one part of the Today In feature, which also includes posts from local groups along with events and community announcements from schools and governments. A news section within the section shows stories from local newspapers, blogs and TV stations. Facebook isn’t paying licensing fees or sharing ad revenue with these outlets, but says the tool is driving new readers to local news outlets.Already, Facebook says it’s learned from publishers’ input about what doesn’t work. For instance, it now only allows posts from publishers registered with its News page index,'' which means they meet guidelines such as a focus on current events and information, citing sources and including dates and don't have a record of publishing false news and misinformation. This means that obituaries from funeral homes, or real estate posts both of which previously showed up under “news” _ are no longer eligible.critical information need” in the communities it served. This could be helpful for news publishers in determining coverage priorities and for Facebook as it tweaks how it presents news to its users.Facebook has also learned that local news doesn’t work like national news. Political stories, for instance, don’t generate a lot of local interest.When researchers looked at the types of news stories Facebook showed and how users interacted with them, finding that Facebook users interacted the most with stories serving a critical need _ such as information on emergencies, transportation and health. While there were more “non-critical” stories available, on sports, for instance, people didn’t interact with those to the same degree. The researchers Matthew Weber at the University of Minnesota and Peter Andriga and Philip Napoli at Duke University received no funding from Facebook.
The company says publishers featured in Today In see a significant increase ‘referral traffic” to their websites from Facebook, more so than when people see the same stories in their regular news feed, based on data from its test partners.
“(With the) news feed, people scroll through passively,” said Jimmy O'Keefe, a product marketing manager at Facebook. “We see that people engage with articles more than they would in news feed.’Outside researchers studying local news data provided by Facebook found that about half of the news stories in the Today In feature met what they called a
The expansion to 6,000 cities still doesn’t include large metro areas such as New York City, Los Angeles or San Francisco, where the abundance of news and population density makes it more difficult to provide relevant local information. A big local story in Brooklyn, for instance, might be irrelevant on Staten Island just a few miles away.
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Settlement Money Won’t Restore Ohio City Upended by Opioids
The tentative settlement involving the opioid crisis and the maker of OxyContin could mean that thousands of local governments will one day be paid back for some of the costs of responding to the epidemic.But for public officials in Akron, no amount of money will restore the families and institutions that were upended by prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl.“The overwhelming sense of hopelessness that took over this community in 2016, you can’t monetize that,” former Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Greta Johnson told lawyers in a deposition in January. “Every single day the newspaper was reporting on the overdose death rates. You could not go into a community setting where there were not weeping mothers talking about their children.”OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma struck a proposed deal Wednesday with about half the states and thousands of local governments over its role in the crisis. But criticism by several state attorneys general clouded prospects for an end to litigation against the company and the family that owns it.Some people in Akron say the once-proud rubber capital of the world will never be the same. Hundreds of overdose deaths shattered families, orphaned children, exhausted first responders and drained government resources. At one point, city officials needed a mobile morgue to house all the corpses.Ohio’s fifth-largest city, home to NBA legend LeBron James, and surrounding Summit County, population 540,000, were scheduled to be the first of some 2,000 governments scheduled to go to trial against drugmakers next month. Local officials sought damages from the manufacturers they hold responsible.Overdose deaths — which hit 340, or nearly one a day, in 2016 — took a toll on the county medical examiner’s budget and her staff. At the height of the scourge, they often had to perform two or more drug-related autopsies in an average day.Dr. Lisa Kohler, the county’s chief medical examiner, recalled “the mental stress of dealing with repeated cases of having multiple deaths in the same families over a period of weeks to months.”The calls about overdose deaths were constant, and “it just felt like it was never going to stop,” Kohler said.The need for the mobile morgue laid bare the devastating extent of the crisis. The trailers were originally intended for a mass-fatality event, such as a natural disaster, plane crash or terrorist attack.Narcotics detective Will Pfeiffer displays an evidence bag containing methamphetamine before it is destroyed in Barberton, Ohio, Sept. 11, 2019.Akron Fire Chief Clarence Tucker said it sometimes felt as if his community was under attack.“We handle 45,000 calls a year, and it just kept climbing and climbing,” he said. The fire department had to accelerate maintenance schedules on vehicles, mobilize off-duty paramedics and cope with staff burnout.“You can get a call someone has overdosed and you get there, you can bring them back with Narcan. Then you’ll go to the same address in the afternoon,” Tucker said. “Or you go to that address in the morning and the two parents have overdosed and there’s a child there. It’s just horrible. It really is.”Summit County’s estimated payout from the $12 billion tentative Purdue settlement was estimated at $13.2 million. Akron would receive about $3.7 million. Barberton, the county’s second-largest city, would receive $492,000.Those dollars are intended to compensate for the many financial effects of opioids, including not only the demands on fire, police and medical services, but the crowded jails, the bulging foster-care system, the bursting drug-court dockets, the overloaded addiction programs and the inundated emergency rooms.Summit County Common Pleas Judge Joy Malek Oldfield sees about 50 felony offenders in her drug court every Monday morning. It’s one of two drug-court dockets totaling 80 to 100 people, about double the number before the crisis.“We’re nearing capacity for both dockets, and most of them are opiate-dependent,” Oldfield said.In the past, most drug offenders used crack cocaine or marijuana, and “the treatment was tailored to those users,” Oldfield said. “If someone had a bad day and relapsed, they didn’t die.” But opioid addiction requires residential treatment, the judge said.By October 2017, the opioid outlook was so bad that County Executive Ilene Shapiro declared an emergency, noting in her proclamation that “local response efforts have been exhausted and local resources in Summit County have been overwhelmed, and capabilities have been exceeded.” That year, the county saw another 269 overdose deaths.For police officers, the crisis meant a slew of extra duties beyond fighting crime, said Barberton Police Chief Vincent Morber.“They’ve had to be everything. Not just law enforcers, but social workers and drug counselors, trying to hook everybody up with resources,” Morber said. “These poor young officers have done more death notifications in their short time span in 10 years than I have done my whole career.”Thomas Heitic, chef and general manager of the Green Diamond Grille and Pub, said he hoped the settlement would offer more money for addiction counseling.“Any of this money that goes towards awareness to me is a joke. We’re all aware of what’s going on. Our medical examiner had to bring in refrigerated trucks because the bodies were piling up. We’re constantly aware of this problem. We need to focus, use that money to focus on treatment.”
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Adventure-Loving Dogs Learn to Surf in California
Surfing is an ancient Polynesian art that became a craze in the U.S. and Australia in the 1950s. In the U.S., California and Hawaii were ground zero for surf culture, and surf-based movies and music are still a thing. And these days, people aren’t the only ones surfing. Khrystyna Shevchenko visited a unique surfing school. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Trump Administration to Ban Flavored E-Cigarettes
U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday announced action against flavored electronic cigarettes, which have been linked to breathing problems, lung damage and death. Vaping has become popular, as many considered it healthier than smoking. Flavors such as mint, bubble gum or ice cream attracted young people. But a spike in serious lung problems and deaths linked to vaping have alarmed officials. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the Trump administration is preparing a ban on all flavored e-cigarettes.
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Advertising Executives Point to Five Ways Google Stifles Business
U.S. authorities investigating Alphabet Inc.’s Google for anti-competitive behavior have recently begun probing the company’s $116 billion-a-year advertising business. Attorneys general for 50 U.S. states and territories along with the U.S. Department of Justice appear to be acting on accusations from rivals, lawmakers and consumer advocacy groups that the biggest seller of online ads engages in unfair tactics. Google disputes its dominance. “Ad tech is a very crowded field, and Google competes with hundreds of companies, including household names like Adobe, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, News Corp. and Verizon,” company spokesman Josh Zeitz said. “Publishers and advertisers mix and match technology partners to meet their different needs, creating both competition and innovation.” Later, in response to this story, Google reiterated in a blog post that its services foster competition. “Our tools and platforms make it easy for advertisers and publishers of all sizes to choose whom they want to work with in this open, interconnected ad system,” Google Vice President Sissie Hsiao wrote. Here are five common concerns about Google raised by 10 ad industry executives, most speaking on the condition of anonymity. FILE – Silhouettes are seen in front of a Youtube logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica, Oct. 29, 2014.Search and YouTube About 80% of Google’s ad revenue and most of its profits come from ads within Google search results, YouTube, Gmail and other internet services the company owns. Rivals say that Google controls these properties in a way that hinders advertising competition. For instance, the only technology system for buying ads on YouTube, the world’s largest video streaming website, is Google’s ad buying tool. Services such as Facebook Inc. maintain similar control, in part to keep from sharing users’ data too widely. But as YouTube increasingly dominates online video, rival tools for placing ads in video streams become less attractive to advertisers because they can only access smaller audiences. “It’s incredibly difficult to compete with the monopoly search and video sites,” said Brian O’Kelley, founder and former CEO of ad tech company AppNexus, in an interview in June. Acquisitions The remaining 20% of Google’s ad revenue comes from what is commonly referred to as its “display business.” Google boosted this operation by acquiring seller tools such as DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008 and AdMob for $750 million in 2010 and then buyer services including Invite Media for a reported $81 million in 2010. The combination of deals gave Google unprecedented positioning in every facet of how ads end up on websites and smartphone apps around the world. Though U.S. regulators approved the deals, their worst-case predictions about Google being too powerful have come true, rivals say. To poach big customers from Google, smaller firms say they would need the cash to diversify their businesses and develop a complete suite of services. But drawing investment has been challenging because of the looming threats of Google and increased data privacy regulation. Bundling Google’s variety of ad tools enables it to bundle them in a way that rivals say they cannot afford to match. For instance, websites and app owners, together known as publishers, over the years have become reliant on Google’s DoubleClick ad serving tool. Nearly free to use for publishers, it is the only system of its kind that can receive real-time bids from Google’s ads marketplace, known in the industry as AdX. FILE – Internet users browse at an underground station in Hong Kong.The popular marketplace, which matches up ad buyers with publishers, is where Google collects high fees. Rivals said when using the Google ad-buying tool, advertisers get some key consumer data for free, early access to some purchasing options and potentially additional benefits if transacting through AdX. Google’s packages for buyers and sellers to boost use of AdX are viewed as anti-competitive by rivals. “The ubiquity of Google’s ad server provides virtually total control over which ads are shown and monetized for the majority of the internet,” said Romain Job, chief strategy officer at competitor Smart AdServer. “This control of the ad server is strategically critical to Google.” Last look Google has allowed publishers using DoubleClick to sell ad space on various marketplaces, not just AdX. But for many years, Google’s AdX widely held a special advantage: At the last second it could give its customers the opportunity to outbid competing advertisers trying to purchase through other, non-Google marketplaces. This “last look” was one of several ways rivals allege Google favored itself. Google last week announced the elimination of “last look” as part of move to a new sales system. But publishers and rivals still wonder whether Google may be using its vantage point over the whole ecosystem to keep prices down for advertisers and make itself outperform other marketplaces by analyzing their matchmaking strategies and copying them. Among specific concerns is that just being part of Google enables AdX to glean more information than rival exchanges about consumers, making AdX more attractive to advertisers. FILE – Attendees talk under a logo of Google’s Chrome browser at the Google IO Developers Conference in San Francisco, May 11, 2011.Chrome The newest area of concern is how Google may be using its Chrome internet browser, which has about 50% market share in the United States, to restrict most advertising systems, besides its own, from building profiles on consumers as they browse the web. The restrictions, many of which remain proposals subject to change, largely spare Google because consumers often sign into their Google accounts when using Chrome. That enables a form of tracking. Google has said its initiative is aimed at helping users curb tracking, as they demand greater privacy protections. Other browser makers have adopted more stringent restrictions, but Google has said it’s striving for a middle ground between violating users’ privacy and violating antitrust rules.
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Swiss Say Facebook’s Digital Currency Plan Will Face Hurdles
Facebook and its partners have asked financial authorities in Switzerland to evaluate their plan to create a new digital currency to be called Libra.Facebook unveiled a proposal in June to create a digital currency similar to Bitcoin for global use. The company said it would set up a nonprofit association headquartered in Geneva with its partners to oversee Libra, putting it under Swiss regulatory authority.The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority said Wednesday that the Libra Association has requested an “assessment” of its plan.The authority, known as FINMA, says the proposal has to meet anti-money laundering requirements and other strict standards. That includes obtaining a “payment-system license” that makes the association responsible for bearing “the returns and risks associated with the management of the reserve.”
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Scientists Create Two Northern White Rhino Embryos
Scientists have created two embryos of the nearly extinct northern white rhino, part of an effort to pull the species back from the brink.
“Today we achieved an important milestone on a rocky road which allows us to plan the future steps in the rescue program of the northern white rhino,” said Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany.
The institute is part of a team of international scientists and conservationists racing to save the rare giants.
The eggs were harvested from the last two living females. They were injected with the frozen sperm of dead males.
The embryos will be transferred into a surrogate mother, a southern white rhino.
The conservationists hope to create a herd of at least five animals that can be introduced back into the wild in Africa.
The last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died last year at age 45. He gained international fame in 2017 when he was named the “The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World” on the Tinder dating app as part of fundraising effort.
“Five years ago, it seemed like the production of a northern white rhino embryo was almost an unachievable goal, and today we have them,” said Jan Stejskal, director of communication at the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, where the last two surviving females were born.
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Climate Change, Inequality Derailing Global Goals, Scientists Tell UN
Growing inequality and climate change will not only derail progress toward global sustainability goals but also will threaten human existence, leading scientists said Wednesday at the United Nations. The world is falling off track on ambitious global development goals adopted by U.N. members, a panel of scientists said in an independent assessment report released at U.N. headquarters. Member nations unanimously adopted 17 sustainable development goals known as SDGs in 2015, setting out a wide-ranging “to-do” list tackling conflict, hunger, land degradation, gender equality and climate change by 2030. The bleak assessment report was released ahead of a
sustainable-goals summit scheduled at the United Nations this month. “Overall, the picture is a sobering one,” said Shantanu Mukherjee, policy chief at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “One element of this is increasing inequality. … Another is the pace at which nature is being degraded by human activity, whether it is climate change or biodiversity loss.” The independent panel of scientists investigated the ways
and systems in which humans and the environment are linked and
interact, said Peter Messerli of the University of Bern,
Switzerland, the co-chair of the group of scientists. “These systems are on a very worrying trajectory,
threatening the very existence of humanity,” he told reporters.
“We have not realized the urgency to act now.” ‘This has to be corrected’Countries must put into practice ways to address vast gaps
in wealth distribution and access to economic opportunities and
technological advances that undermine innovation and economic
growth, the report said. “Each country has to decide,” Jean-Paul Moatti, chief
executive of the French Research Institute for Development and
one of the scientists who compiled the report. “This has to be corrected,” he told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation. The report called on nations to focus on food and energy
production and distribution, consumption and urban growth to
find ways of building sustainable development. The cost of implementing the global goals has been estimated
at $3 trillion a year. These are not the first grim predictions made for the fate
of the goals. Earlier reports have said they were threatened by the persistence of violence, conflict and destabilizing climate
change. Outside assessments have cited nationalism, protectionism
and a need to obtain more funding, ease national debts, boost
wages and expand trade.
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South Korea Wants Japan’s ‘Rising Sun’ Flag Banned at Tokyo Olympics
South Korea has formally asked the International Olympic Committee to ban the Japanese rising sun'' flag at next year's Tokyo Games, calling it a symbol of Japan's brutal wartime past and comparing it with the Nazi swastika. deep disappointment and concern” about Japanese plans to allow the flag in stadiums and other facilities during the 2020 Olympics.
South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Wednesday said it had sent a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach expressing
South Korean Olympic officials last month urged the local organizing committee to ban the flag, but Tokyo organizers responded by saying it was widely used in Japan, was not considered a political statement and it is not viewed as a prohibited item.'' historic scars and pain” for the people of South Korea, China and other Asian countries that experienced Japan’s wartime military aggression, similar to how the
The flag, portraying a red sun with 16 rays extending outward, is resented by many South Koreans, who still harbor animosity over Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The ministry said that in its letter to Bach, it described the flag as an unmistakable political symbol that's embraced by Japanese right-wing protesters who vent anger toward Koreans and other foreigners. It said the flag recalls[swastika] reminds Europeans of the nightmare of World War II.'' Banned by FIFAFurthermore, we emphasized that the use of the rising sun flag during the Tokyo Olympics would be a direct violation of the Olympic spirit promoting world peace and love for humanity, and that the IOC should have the Tokyo organizing committee withdraw its [current] stance on the flag and prepare strict measures to prevent it from being brought to stadiums,” the ministry said.
The ministry said it also pointed out that FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, had banned the flag in international matches.
Tokyo’s Olympic organizing committee didn’t immediately react to South Korea’s request to the IOC to ban the flag at the games.
The IOC confirmed it had received the Korean request and said that “sports stadiums should be free of any political demonstration.” Concerns at the games are examined on a case-by-case basis, the Olympic body said in a statement.
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Malaria Could Be Wiped Out in Generation, Experts Say
LONDON — Malaria could be wiped out in a generation if $2 billion more every year is invested in tackling the disease, according to a report published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet.Malaria kills around 435,000 people every year, most of them children. Significant progress has been made this century in fighting the disease, with the number of deaths cut in half since 2000. But, eradicating malaria won’t be easy, says Professor Jake Baum, who leads the malaria research network at Imperial College London.”You might think that right now, that’s the trajectory. The challenge is in the last couple of years things have stagnated,” he said.FILE – A health worker prepares to vaccinate a child against malaria, at Mitundu Community Hospital, in Malawi’s capital of Lilongwe, April 23, 2019.Just five African countries account for half of the global malaria burden. Burundi is in a malaria outbreak, with doctors there noting an urgent need for investment in health care.”Everyone should know that malaria is a disease of the poor and in terms of national health policy, malaria remains the leading cause of death,” said Dr. Albert Mbonerane, founder of the Saint François d’Assise Anti-Malaria Center in Burundi.The report — written by 41 of the world’s leading malaria experts — estimates that $4.3 billion is spent globally on fighting the disease each year, and that another $2 billion will be needed annually to wipe it out by 2050.Eradication of malaria — which is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito — will also require new tools, which might include so-called “gene drives” that could make mosquito populations collapse or render them resistant to the malaria parasite.”We need every piece of the jigsaw puzzle,” Baum said. “So to say that just controlling vector would be the magic bullet, or just coming up with a new drug would be the magic bullet, I think most would agree that’s naive. I think we need the new frontier of tools that maybe don’t even exist yet.”A malaria eradication program was attempted in the 1950s, but abandoned a decade later. New focus and investment in recent decades, particularly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have given renewed impetus. However, there are some concerns.”The last thing we want is to say we’re marching toward eradication but then you get that donor fatigue and stakeholder fatigue of ‘we’re just not getting there, we’re just not making progress; this is failing,'” Baum said.The United Nations’ global malaria director, Dr. Pedro Alonso, says better overall health care is critical.”Without adequate health care, people-centered, properly financed systems, we will not achieve eradication,” Alonso said.The report’s authors say malaria eradication will require a huge commitment, but the social rewards will be worth the investment.
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Malaria Could Be Wiped Out In Generation, Experts Say
Malaria could be wiped out in a generation, if $2 billion more every year would be invested in tackling the disease, according to a major new report launched Wednesday. However, there is a debate over whether the global community should make eradication its primary goal — or if this is a setup for failure, risking donor fatigue in the future. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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France Eliminates USA from Basketball World Cup in Major Upset
Rudy Gobert scored 21 points and grabbed 16 rebounds as France handed the United States their first loss in the FIBA World Cup in 13 years on Wednesday to advance to the semi-finals in China with an 89-79 win.France will play next on Friday against Argentina, who advanced by defeating Serbia on Tuesday night.Shooting guard Donovan Mitchell of the NBA’s Utah Jazz scored 29 points as he helped the Americans to cut down a 10-point French advantage in the third quarter and seize back the lead in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan.But the French came back, led by the imposing Gobert and sharp-shooting small forward Evan Fournier of the Orlando Magic.Fournier slashed to the hoop for a driving lay-up to give France the lead again at 78-76 and they held off the Americans through the final minutes.The writing has been on the wall for the USA squad, which sent a team of second-tier stars to the competition and promptly suffered a shock loss to Australia in a warm-up exhibition two weeks ago.The loss in Melbourne was the first for the United States in 78 consecutive games in major competitions and exhibition games.
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Big Sean, Halsey, Migos Rock Rihanna’s Lingerie Fashion Show
Big Sean, A$ap Ferg, Halsey and Migos rocked Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty crowd Tuesday from a color-saturated stage at the Barclays Center as Normani and Laverne Cox joined an army of supermodels and dancers in a showcase of her latest loungewear and lingerie.But don’t look for the juicy new collection on social media, at least not in a big way. The curated audience heavy on young influencers had their phones locked in cases for the New York Fashion Week show, which was filmed for streaming Sept. 20 exclusively on Amazon Prime.Rule-breakers spent the rest of the evening posting blurry and dimly lit clips taken with sneaked-in phones.Rihanna did right by her fans by putting her latest teddies and other lacy pieces immediately on sale, at Amazon, and by setting up photo booths outside the Brooklyn stadium after the 40-minute show.Model Bella Hadid poses on the red carpet of Rihanna’s new Savage X Fenty collection show for New York Fashion Week at the Barclays Center in New York, Sept. 10, 2019.On stage, her white, multilevel backdrop evoked a small city bathed in purple, yellow and red light. Her legion strutted and danced on platforms and in large windows as she dressed some of the biggest names in modeling, sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid included, harem-style in looks of pink and yellow. She also enlisted 21 Savage as a model and Fat Joe and Tierra Whack to perform.At one point during the show, a small simulated water pool at center stage rippled as Migos moved. At another point, the crowd threw up their arms as DJ Khaled instructed.
Plus-size model Paloma Elsesser joined the Hadids, Joan Smalls, Alek Wek and Cara Delevingne for Rihanna’s second fashion week foray of her fledgling brand, this collection for fall-winter. Like her models and dancers, her line ranges in sizes 32A-42H in bras and XS-3X for the rest of the body.Among Rihanna’s guests were Kacey Musgraves, Kehlani, the pregnant Ashley Graham and Diplo. They joined others for photos ahead of the performance.Nobody does fashion week quite like Rihanna.
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Apple Introduces New iPhone as it Seeks to Keep Up with Competitors
Facing growing competition from less expensive smartphone providers, Apple introduced its new versions of its iconic iPhone Tuesday at its annual product launch event in California. Along with their latest upgrades and new offerings, Apple also caught the attention of both consumers and critics for something they didn’t do. VOA’s Richard Green has more on the tech giant’s newest strategy
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Apple Takes on Netflix With a $5-a-month Streaming Service
Apple is finally taking on Netflix with its own streaming television service and, uncharacteristically for the company, offering it at a bargain price — $5 a month beginning on Nov. 1.Walt Disney Co. is launching its own assault on Netflix the same month, for just $7.It may be sheer coincidence that the cost of paying for both Apple and Disney subscriptions will still be a dollar less than Netflix’s main plan, priced at $13 a month. But the intent to disrupt Netflix’s huge lead in the streaming business couldn’t be clearer.Apple delivered the news Tuesday while also unveiling three new iPhones that won’t look much different than last year’s models other than boasting an additional camera for taking pictures from extra-wide angles.The aggressive pricing is unusual for Apple, which typically charges a premium for products and services to burnish its brand. Most analysts expected Apple to charge $8 to $10 per month for the service, which will be called Apple TV Plus.But Apple is entering a market that Netflix practically created in 2007 — around the same time as the first iPhone came out. And Netflix has amassed more than 150 million subscribers, meaning that Apple needed to make a splash.“You have to expect they’re going to do something, considering how hyper competitive the streaming video space is,” said Tim Hanlon, CEO of Vertere Group.Apple CEO Tim Cook did not have much new to say about the TV service beyond its pricing and debut date, although he did show a trailer for a new Jason Momoa-led series called “See.”Netflix declined to comment. In the past, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has depicted the increased competition as a positive for everyone, allowing consumers to create their own entertainment bundles instead of accepting bundles put together at higher prices by cable and satellite TV services.Like Netflix and similar services from Amazon and Hulu, Apple has been spending billions of dollars for original programs. The most anticipated so far seems to be “The Morning Show,” a comedy starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell. The service will launch with nine original shows and films, with more expected each month. It will only carry Apple’s original programming and will be available in 100 countries at launch.Since it began focusing on exclusive shows and movies six years ago, Netflix has built a huge library of original programming and now spends upward of $10 billion annually on its lineup.Apple also announced a new videogame subscription service that will cost $5 a month when it rolls out Sept. 19. Called Apple Arcade, the service will allow subscribers to play more than 100 games selected by Apple that are exclusive to the service.Disney, one of the most hallowed brands in entertainment, is also muscling its way into the market with a streaming service featuring its treasured vault of films and original programming.That means both Apple and Disney will be undercutting the industry leaders. Besides Netflix, there is Amazon at $9 per month and Hulu at $6 per month.The price war is unfolding as Netflix tries to bounce back from a rough spring in which it suffered its first quarterly drop in U.S. subscribers since 2011. Apple’s pricing tactics caught investors’ attention. Netflix’s stock fell 2% on Tuesday.Each new entry into the crowded video subscription market stretches the limits of just how many monthly plans viewers are willing to pay for.The Apple streaming service will, at least for now, offer fewer viewing options than Netflix or Disney but also at a significantly lower price.Apple’s pricing shows it is serious, and the company will probably take a loss “as it plays catch-up,” said Colin Gillis, director of research at Chatham Road Partners.Hoping to propel its streaming service to a fast start while also boosting iPhone sales, Apple will give a year of free TV access to anyone who buys an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Mac.The new iPhones were accompanied by an unexpected price cut for the cheapest model, which underscored the company’s efforts to counteract the deepest slump in sales for its flagship product since the phone was unveiled 12 years ago.IPhone shipments are down 25% so far this year, according to the research firm IDC, putting pressure on Apple to generate revenue from services such as music, video streaming, games and its App Store. Revenue from services rose 14% to nearly $23 billion during the first half of this year.Apple is cutting the price of the iPhone 11 to $700 from $750, the price of last year’s XR. The lower prices reverse a trend in which premium phones get more expensive as people upgrade them less often.The new phone models resemble last year’s iPhone XR, XS and XS Max. And they have the same design — with more display space, less bezel and no home button — that Apple switched to with the iPhone X in 2017.Unlike some of the other devices coming out this year, the new iPhones won’t support upcoming ultrafast cellular networks known as 5G. Apple paid billions of dollars to settle a royalty dispute with chipmaker Qualcomm in April to gain the technology it needs for 5G iPhones, but those models will not be ready until next year.
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How Major Traumas Like 9/11 Impact Nation’s Psyche
Eighteen years ago, more than TV viewers said the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack was the all-time most memorable moment shared by television viewers during the past 50 years, according to a 2012 study.Cohen Silver, who studies the impact of collective trauma, says some individuals with no direct connection to the 9/11 attacks exhibited symptoms that experts had previously assumed were the result of direct exposure to trauma.“Individuals who watched a great deal of television in the first week after 9/11 were more likely to exhibit post-traumatic stress symptomatology and physical health ailments years later,” she says.Those symptoms often included anxiety and fear, as well as the onset of physical health ailments such as cardiovascular issues. “We learned from 9/11 that large-scale events could impact people beyond the directly affected communities, that the events that occurred in New York could impact people in Kansas,” Cohen Silver says. “The second message we’ve learned from 9/11 was the important role of the media in transmitting that awareness and that potential anxiety.”Students and others watch live television coverage of the 9/11 attacks on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, Sept. 11, 2001.In the 18 years since 9/11, the rise of social media and smartphones has resulted in increased access to images of mass violence. In addition, there are no news editors or other middlemen to weed out potentially disturbing content. The speed with which these images reach people has also escalated. Young Americans born after 9/11 have grown up in a world where acts of mass violence are increasingly commonplace.More than 230 school shootings have occurred since 1999, when 13 people were killed at Columbine High School near Denver. A man cries on Sept. 11, 2001 after witnessing the collapse of the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.Mass attacks continue to occur in places that Americans commonly view as safe spaces, from the 2016 Orlando nightclub attack that killed 49; the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting where 58 people were killed and hundreds more wounded; to last month’s shooting at a Texas Walmart that left 22 people dead. “We’re so consumed with new events, you know, current events, hurricanes, mass violence events. And there are many of these that occur, and they’re all tragic,” says Cohen Silver. “But the psychological effects of September 11, 2019, cannot be directly linked to the 9/11 attacks without considering all of the rest of the things that have occurred.”While the average American cannot control the violence around them, they can protect their mental health by not inundating themselves with images of the tragedies, which can be psychologically unhealthy.”I believe that people can be informed without becoming immersed in the media. There’s no obvious benefit to repeated exposure to images and sounds of tragedy,” says Cohen Silver. “And so, once people are informed, I would say to practice caution in the amount of media attention that they engage and the amount of media exposure that they engage in.”
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Renée Zellweger Felt a ‘Sense of Responsibility’ in ‘Judy’
Renée Zellweger said she felt a “sense of responsibility” to portray the late singer Judy Garland as authentically as possible in the movie “Judy,” which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival on Tuesday to a standing ovation.The film depicts the last six months of Garland’s life, arriving in London in 1968 as part of a sold-out concert tour meant to refurbish her financial state.Amidst a rocky custody battle with her fourth husband and accompanied on the tour by her fifth and final husband, Micky Dean, played by Finn Wittrock, Garland struggles with depression, anxiety and addiction.Zellweger called her portrayal of Garland a “continued sort of exploration” between the famous actress and singer’s public persona and her private experiences.”There are many parameters that are non-negotiable that have been said on the public record and through Judy’s own words and things. So you kind of feel a sense of responsibility to represent that as authentically as possible,” Zellweger said.”And then the rest was pretty difficult to know because we’re talking about very private moments that haven’t been shared and it’s sort of an interpretation of what the experiences of the person who was living under those circumstances at that time might be like.”Zellweger is known for method acting, where she doesn’t break character even when a scene is finished filming – a trait that helped her fellow cast members inhabit Garland’s world too.Actor Finn Wittrock poses as he arrives at the Canadian premiere of “Judy” at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Sept. 10, 2019.Wittrock didn’t even recognize his co-star the first time he saw her in character.”From kind of that point on until the end, I very rarely saw this Renée Zellweger, you know? I hung out with Judy,” he told Reuters Television.Zellweger’s performance has received positive reviews.”Renée was perfect because she’s a great actress, but also she sings, she’s very funny and she has a big heart,” said Rupert Goold, the director of the film. “Audiences feel they know Renée at a certain level, that she’s one of them. And I think that’s a very Garland-like quality.””Judy” is released in the U.S. on September 27.
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Graffiti That Jumps, Technology Makes Art Come to Life
Artists are bringing their artwork into a new dimension using augmented reality. Deana Mitchell gets in on the action
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A Hotter World Faces the Risk of ‘Cooling Poverty’
As climate change brings more frequent and extreme heat waves around the world, demand for air conditioners is soaring, with 10 new units sold every second on average, but the poor may be left to swelter, said a University of Oxford researcher.By 2050, energy use for cooling is projected to triple, while in hot countries like India, China, Brazil and Indonesia, it is expected to grow five-fold, the World Bank has said.“By the end of the century, global energy demand for cooling will be more than it is for heating,” said Radhika Khosla, who leads an Oxford Martin School program on future cooling.But not everyone will be able to afford to beat the heat.“Traditionally, energy poverty has been defined as people not having heating. Now that is potentially going to shift, and we could have cooling poverty,” Khosla warned on the sidelines of a conference on efforts to slash planet-warming emissions.Health risks of heat wavesRising heat is having a huge impact on health — deaths and hospital admissions jump in heat waves — but also on productivity as workers struggle to cope, climate scientists say.A 2018 report from Sustainable Energy for All, a U.N.-backed organization, said more than 1.1 billion people globally faced immediate risks from lack of access to cooling.On a warming planet, cooling is not a luxury but “essential for everyday life,” said the organization’s CEO Rachel Kyte.Better buildingsBut because air conditioners use 20 times as much power as running a fan, their growing popularity could fuel demand for fossil fuel-based electricity that exacerbates climate change.Rather than relying entirely on air conditioning, buildings should be designed so they are easier to keep cool, which is still rare, said Khosla, who also directs research at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development.Her modern apartment has windows that open just a few inches, making it hard to keep cool on hot days, she said.“Net zero” buildings, designed partly to stay cool without heavy use of air conditioning, are popping up around the world, from Southeast Asia to the United States and Europe, but remain the exception, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Khosla, who has herself lived in a range of hot cities from New Delhi to Chicago, predicted that in the future, housing that cannot be kept cool or have air conditioning installed could see a drop in value, even in relatively cool places such as Britain.New technologyIn some developing nations with rising incomes, buying an air conditioner is also a status symbol, which could make any push for lower-energy alternatives challenging, she said.Making less power-hungry, affordable air conditioners will be crucial, Khosla believes.Most machines for sale now, the majority built in China, are half as energy-efficient as they could be, she said.But researchers are working on more efficient cooling technologies that could hit the market in as little as two years, Khosla said.Judges are now looking at entries for a $3 million global cooling prize, launched by the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, aimed at developing an affordable window air conditioning unit that is at least five times more efficient than current models.Amory Lovins, co-founder of the institute, said designing cheaper, greener air conditioning was “extremely important.”Getting manufacturers to ramp up production fast, partly by putting in place policies that require greater energy efficiency, will also be key, Khosla said.Greener coolingGreener cooling is “one of the levers we have left” to hold the line on climate change, and using less energy for cooling would help avert power blackouts in cities on sizzling days, she said.Cities face an “awful feedback loop” as air conditioners churn out hot exhaust, boosting temperatures further, she said.All these risks mean smarter cooling must be figured out quickly, before the world gets even hotter and more families rush to appliance shops, she said.“It’s a future we can’t afford to get wrong,” she warned.
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US Vaping Illness: What We Know so Far
U.S. health officials are investigating what might be causing hundreds of serious breathing illnesses in people who use e-cigarettes and other vaping devices. They have identified about 450 possible cases in 33 states, including six deaths.A look at what we know so far about the outbreak as the investigation continues:What are the symptoms?Patients are coming into hospitals with cough, chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue and vomiting.How serious are these illnesses?Many of the reports involve severe, life-threatening illnesses in previously healthy people. Many patients received oxygen. Some needed to be put on breathing machines before they recovered. Antibiotics didn’t work, and it’s not clear yet whether steroid drugs helped.FILE – A man exhales while smoking an e-cigarette in Portland, Maine, Aug. 28, 2019.What vaping products are involved?No single device, ingredient or additive has been identified. Most of the patients say they vaped products containing THC, the high-producing ingredient in marijuana. Others say they vaped only nicotine and others say they vaped both THC and nicotine.Is there a common thread?Doctors don’t believe this is caused by a germ. Instead, they suspect chemical exposure. And vape juice contains many possible culprits.After testing products, New York has focused its investigation on vitamin E acetate, which recently has been used as a thickener, particularly in black market vape cartridges. Suppliers say it dilutes vape oils without making them look watery. Vitamin E is safe as a vitamin pill or to use on the skin, but inhaling oily vitamin E droplets into the lungs can trigger pneumonia.Immune cells containing oily droplets have been found in the lungs of some patients. These large cells, called macrophages, are the cleanup crew of the immune system. University of Utah doctors think this could be a marker for vaping injury. They wrote up their findings about six patients in the New England Journal of Medicine.What else is in vape liquids?Most e-cigarettes contain colorless, flavorless chemicals such as propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, which create an inhalable vapor when heated. The chemicals are considered safe as food additives but their long-term effects when inhaled have not been studied.Researchers have found cancer-causing chemicals in e-cigarette vapor, such as formaldehyde. However, it’s not yet clear whether those chemicals are present in high enough amounts to cause harm.E-cigarette vapor contains tiny particles that carry flavorings. Some early-stage laboratory and animal studies suggest these flavor particles can damage the lungs, airways and blood vessels, but more research is needed to better understand how human bodies react to them.Much less is known about the contents of THC oils and how those chemicals behave when heated.“I wouldn’t rule anything out at this point because we know so little,” said Dr. David Christiani of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.Is this brand new?There have been occasional reports of similar illnesses, including one from 2000 that was tied to inhaling homemade marijuana-infused oil vapor. The large number of cases is new and alarming to public health officials.Who is investigating and what are they doing?State and federal health officials are testing products and analyzing cases for clues.New York is issuing subpoenas to three companies that sell vaping additives made from vitamin E acetate. The state wants to know more about the ingredients, the quality of the raw materials, any safety testing performed, sales of the products during the past three years and what other additives the companies sell.Are products from state-licensed dispensaries safe?Most of the cases involve products purchased on the street, not in dispensaries in states with legal sales of medical or recreational weed. One person who died in Oregon had used an e-cigarette containing marijuana oil purchased from a dispensary. Health officials there don’t know whether the product was contaminated or whether the victim may have added something to the liquid in the device after buying it.What’s the best advice right now?Health officials are urging people to stop vaping and to get medical care if they have trouble breathing or chest pain after vaping.
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