Tattoos Talk and Play Music
A tattoo artist in California has created what many of us can’t imagine — a tattoo that also produces sound. Artist Nate Siggard inks audio soundwaves onto the skin that makes it possible to hear music or someone’s voice by using a smartphone app. VOA’s Deborah Block explains how he does it.
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Ethiopian Elected to Head World Health Organization
Ethiopian official Tedros Adhanom Gheybreysus has been elected director-general of the World Health Organization. Tedros won the post in two rounds of balloting Tuesday, defeating Dr. David Nabarro of Britain and Dr. Sania Nishtar, a Pakistani cardiologist. The vote by 185 member states took place by secret ballot after the candidates made last minute pitches.
The candidates have been campaigning for this fiercely contested post for the past year-and-a-half. As they approached the final stretch, each in turn presented his or her most persuasive arguments for becoming the new director-general of the World Health Organization.
Tedros, a former Ethiopian health minister, told the assembly that he has dedicated his whole life to improving health, reducing inequalities, and helping people everywhere to lead more productive lives.
He noted that while the WHO has never had a director-general from Africa, no one should elect him just because he’s from Africa.
“But, there is a real value in electing a leader who has worked in one of the toughest health environments and transformed the health system. I bring a fresh perspective, an angle with which the world has never seen before,” Tedros said.
Others in the running
Not to be outdone, the second candidate, David Nabarro of Britain, put in a vigorous performance. He touted his long experience in global health and described the work he has done in tackling infectious outbreaks and emergencies, such as the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. He said he was the best person to lead the fight against newly emerging diseases and ongoing old diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS.
“Governments and other investors rightly expect value for money in everything that WHO does. As director-general, I will make sure that the organization’s goals are results-focused, transparent and measurable. All staff, myself included, will be held to account for delivering,” said Nabarro.
The third candidate, Pakistani physician Sania Nishtar, said she had a proven record of dealing with hard issues and would make constructive changes to the WHO if elected.
“I promise to run WHO in the same manner in which I ran my campaign – cost-effectively, with full transparency, with a global outlook, with integrity, and respect for all .… I have the ability to accelerate the reforms that you have championed.”
Ethiopia’s Tedros takes over as new WHO director-general, on July 1.
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Alcohol Increases, Exercise Decreases Breast Cancer Risk
One of the largest cancer prevention studies of its kind to date reached a sobering conclusion. Just one alcoholic drink per day can increase the risk of breast cancer in women. But researchers also concluded there are things women can do to decrease their risk of breast cancer.
The study by the American Institute for Cancer Research was a review of 119 prior studies involving 12 million women, 260,000 of who had developed breast cancer.
Lead author Anne McTiernan is a cancer prevention expert at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.
In 10 of the studies involving 4,000 women of childbearing age who developed breast cancer, McTiernan said investigators uncovered a connection between alcohol consumption and increased risk of breast cancer.
“We found that those women who drank an average of just 10 grams of alcohol a day had a five percent increased risk of breast cancer. So, five percent is a small amount but it was statistically significant so it gives us more confidence that it’s probably real,” said McTiernan. She noted, “Ten grams of alcohol is like a small glass of wine.”
In another subset of studies involving 35,000 post-menopausal women who developed breast cancer, McTiernan said alcohol was found to be a greater risk factor.
According to McTiernan, “We found that there was a nine percent increased risk of drinking that same amount of alcohol, drinking 10 grams per day of alcohol. Again, small glass of wine, eight ounce of beer, one ounce of hard liquor.”
McTiernan said the World Health Organization considers alcohol a carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent. It contains a metabolite called acetaldehyde that is damaging to DNA, according to McTiernan.
Lowering risk
On the positive side, investigators found that vigorous exercise, such running or bicycling fast, decreased the risk of breast cancer in young women by 17 percent and 10 percent in post-menopausal women.
Moderate activity, such as walking and gardening frequently, was found to reduce the risk of breast cancer by 13 percent in the most active women compared to the least active.
There was also evidence too that eating a non-starchy, plant-based diet is beneficial.
“That does not mean becoming a vegetarian,” said McTiernan. “It just means eating a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit. Making sure most of the vegetables are non-starchy, not potatoes. Eating dairy products because they are high in calcium and they have some benefit on their own.”
To the extent that being overweight has been found to increase an older woman’s breast cancer risk, McTiernan said eating a diet full of fruits and vegetables can help women keep their weight down.
According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, an organization concerned with cancer prevention, one in three breast cancer cases in the United States could be prevented if women did not drink alcohol, stayed physically active and maintained a healthy weight.
McTiernan said the evidence of “this comprehensive and up-to-date report … is clear: Having a physically active lifestyle, maintaining a healthy weight throughout life and limiting alcohol, these are all steps women can take to lower their risk” of breast cancer.
The American Institute for Cancer Research is part of the World Cancer Research Fund, which collects and analyzes data from around the world on cancer prevention, drawing conclusions on how attention to weight, diet and exercise can reduce the risk of developing cancer.
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Man Dies in California After Being Sickened in Apparent Botulism Outbreak
A botulism outbreak linked to contaminated nacho-cheese dip sold at a Northern California gas station has killed one man and left at least nine other people hospitalized, health officials said.
The San Francisco County coroner’s office identified the dead man as Martin Galindo-Larios Jr., 37.
On Monday, Matt Conens, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health, declined to release further information on the death, the condition of the other victims, or the status and extent of the investigation into the weeks-old outbreak.
Family members of Galindo-Larios did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. An online fundraising page said the man had been married and the father of two small children.
Tests have confirmed the botulism toxin was present in nacho-cheese dip sold at a gas station in the Sacramento suburb of Walnut Grove, the state health agency said Monday in a statement.
The agency said last week the container and cheese dip were removed May 5, and that authorities believe the contamination posed no further risk to the public.
Wisconsin-based food distributor Gehl Foods said in a statement that it had been notified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that the company’s nacho cheese was among the products that inspectors seized at the gas station.
“We immediately retested samples from the relevant lot of cheese, and it remains clear of any contamination,” the company said. The manufacturer said an independent lab also found no sign of the toxin in the samples tested there.
There is no recall of the nacho cheese product, the company said.
Botulism, a comparatively rare kind of food poisoning, can lead to paralysis, breathing difficulty and sometimes death. Survivors often are forced to spend weeks or months on ventilators to help them breathe.
A major outbreak of food-borne botulism stemmed from a church potluck in Ohio in 2015, when at least 29 people fell ill. Authorities blamed potato salad made from potatoes that had been canned improperly at home.
your ad hereAfter Legal Battle, Apollo 11 Moon-rock Bag Up for Auction
A piece of space memorabilia once bought for less than $1,000 is expected to fetch between $2 million and $4 million at an upcoming auction.
The moon-rock bag, which also contains moon dust, is from the first manned mission to the moon, Apollo 11, and could have belonged to the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Sotheby’s also touts the bag as “the only such artifact in private hands.”
Sotheby’s will auction the bag in New York City on July 20, the 48th anniversary of Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind.”
“This seemingly modest bag … played a crucial role in the most important scientific task of the Apollo 11 mission — to bring back the first sample of lunar material ever collected. To be able to see such an object in person is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Cassandra Hatton, vice president and senior specialist in charge of the space exploration sale at Sotheby’s.
“It is one thing to read about going to the moon; it is quite another to hold in one’s hands an object that was actually there and still carries traces of that faraway place,” Hatton added.
The bag was involved in a lot of drama before ending up at Sotheby’s.
It’s unclear how NASA lost the bag, but it eventually ended up in a private museum called the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. The owner of the museum was later convicted of stealing and selling space memorabilia.
In 2015, the U.S. Marshals Service mistakenly put the bag up for bidding, but it took three auctions to finally sell for just $995.
The highest bidder, Nancy Lee Carlson of Illinois, decided to send the bag back to NASA to test its authenticity.
“Scientific tests revealed the dust in the bag to be moon dust, specifically from the Apollo 11 landing site and a part number printed inside of the bag matched up to that of the ‘Contingency Lunar Sample Return Decontamination Bag’ listed in the Apollo 11 stowage list,” Sotheby’s stated.
NASA did not have any records of having released the bag and decided not to return the bag to Carlson. It did offer to reimburse her the $995.
Carlson sued, and in December of 2016, judges ordered the bag returned to her. She took possession on Feb. 27 and consigned the bag for auction at Sotheby’s.
While the bag appears to be a rare case of Apollo memorabilia in private hands, there are other souvenirs from the missions, including patches and medals, most of which were carried by astronauts specifically as souvenirs.
According to Space.com, the highest price paid for an Apollo souvenir was $1.625 million for a Bulova watch worn on the moon in 1971 by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott.
Sotheby’s said Carlson will give some of the proceeds from the moon-rock bag auction to various charities.
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The Benefits of Exercise, in Pill Form
The positive impact of exercise is old news. There really is no downside, mentally or physically, to getting up and moving around in any form from taking walks to lifting weights. But what if a pill could give you all those benefits. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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American Pop Singer Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande is an American pop singer, dancer and actress. Grande was born in Boca Raton, Florida, in 1993 and began performing onstage when she was a child.
A role in a Broadway play at age 15, followed by some small TV roles, helped her land a role on TV’s “Victorious,” which was set in a performing arts high school. Grande was cast as a goofy aspiring singer-actress named Cat Valentine.
Her pop music career was set off by “Victorious,” and she was signed to the Universal Republic Record label. In 2012, her first single “Put Your Hearts Up” gained great attention, debuting at number 25 on the pop charts.
Her debut album, Yours Truly, was released in August 2013. Grande’s 2014 release, “My Everything,” sold 169,000 copies in its first week, debuting at No. 1.
In 2015, Grande released Christmas & Chill, a holiday album, and the single “Focus.” In February 2016, she released her third album Dangerous Woman, and the title track debuted at number 10 on the Hot 100 that March.
With it, Grande became the the first person in the history of that chart to have the lead single from each of her first three albums debut in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Grande’s accolades include three American Music Awards, the Music Business Association’s Breakthrough Artist of the Year, an MTV Video Music Award, three MTV Europe Music Awards and four Grammy Award nominations.
In 2016, Time magazine named Grande one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
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Scandal-plagued Fox News Hit with 3 More Lawsuits
New sexual harassment and racial discrimination lawsuits are rocking the already scandal riddled Fox News Channel.
Three new lawsuits were filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Two allege racial harassment at Fox News, while a third alleges sexual harassment at Fox News Radio.
The cases increase to 23 the number of past or present Fox employees represented by attorney Doug Wigdor, the majority having cases alleging racial hostility by a since-fired financial executive. Fox said Monday that the lawsuits have no legal basis.
Kathleen Lee, a Fox News Radio employee of more than 10 years, alleges that radio anchor Ron Flatter subjected her to “unrelenting sexual harassment” after the network hired him in 2013.
A former Fox employee, Adasa Blanco, said she alerted Fox executives about racially hostile behavior on the part of former Fox controller Judith Slater more than eight years before the executive was let go. Slater has denied charges of racially hostile conduct. Blanco, who is Hispanic, said that Slater made fun of her accent.
In the lawsuit, Wigdor said Fox “knowingly harbored and protected” a racist employee for more than eight years and misrepresented to the public that it fired Slater quickly upon learning of her behavior.
Naima Farrow, another former Fox employee who worked for Slater, said she was fired without warning or explanation in 2015, less than three days after telling superiors she was pregnant. Farrow, who is black, said Slater mockingly referred to her as “girlfriend.”
Fox News said in a statement that it is committed to a diverse workplace free from discrimination, and takes any complaint seriously. In these cases, Fox “took prompt, effective and, when necessary, strong remedial action,” the network said. “We believe these latest claims are without legal basis and look forward to proving that the company at all times has acted appropriately, and lawfully, in connection with these matters.”
The new legal claims come as Fox News is battling a series of lawsuits that led to the resignations of former chief executive Roger Ailes, who died last week, star anchor Bill O’Reilly and network co-president Bill Shine.
Wigdor said he also is representing an unidentified black information technology employee who was subjected to racially insensitive remarks by Bob Beckel, an on-air host who was fired last week, days after the worker complained.
your ad hereRobotics Contest for Youth Promotes Innovation for Economic Growth in Africa
Several hundred middle school and high school students from Senegal and surrounding countries spent last week in Dakar building robots. Organizers of the annual robotics competition say the goal is to encourage African governments and private donors to invest more in science and math education throughout the continent.
The hum of tiny machines fills a fenced-off obstacle course, as small robots compete to gather mock natural resources such as diamonds and gold.
The robots were built by teams of young people gathered in Dakar for the annual Pan-African Robotics Competition.
‘Made in Africa’
The event’s founder, Sidy Ndao, says this year’s theme is “Made in Africa,” and focuses on how robotics developed in Africa could help local economies.
“We have noticed that most countries that have developed in the likes of the United States have based their development on manufacturing and industrialization, and African countries on the other hand are left behind in this race,” Ndao said. “So we thought it would be a good idea to inspire the kids to tell them about the importance of manufacturing, the importance of industry, and the importance of creation and product development.”
During the week, the students were split into three groups.
The first group worked on robots that could automate warehouses. The second created machines that could mine natural resources, and the third group was tasked to come up with a new African product and describe how to build it.
Building a robot a team effort
Seventeen-year-old Rokyaha Cisse from Senegal helped her team develop a robot that sends sound waves into the ground to detect the presence of metals and then start digging.
Cisse says it is very interesting and fun, and they are learning new things, as well as having their first opportunity to handle robots.
As part of a younger team, Aboubacar Savage from Gambia said their robot communicates with computers.
“It is a robot that whatever you draw into the computer, it translates it and draws it in real life,” Savage said. “It is kind of hard. And there is so much competition, but we are trying. I have learned how to assemble a robot. I have learned how to program into a computer.”
The event’s founder, Ndao, is originally from Senegal, but is now a professor at the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln College of Engineering in the United States.
“I have realized how much the kids love robotics and how much they love science,” Ndao said “You can tell because when it is time for lunch, we have to convince them to actually leave, and then [when] it is time to go home, nobody wants to leave.”
Outsourced jobs cost Africa billions
A winning team was named in each category, but Ndao hopes the real winners will be science and technology in Africa.
The organizers of the Next Einstein Forum, which held its annual global gathering last year in Senegal, said Africa is currently missing out on $4 billion a year by having to outsource jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to expatriates.
Ndao said African governments and private investors need to urgently invest more on education in those fields, in particular at the university level.
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Robotics Contest for Youth Promotes Innovation in Africa
Several hundred middle school and high school students from Senegal and surrounding countries spent last week in Dakar building robots, and organizers hoped to encourage African governments and private donors to invest more in science and math education throughout the continent.
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Hackers Hit Russian Bank Customers, Planned International Cyber Raids
Russian cybercriminals used malware planted on Android mobile devices to steal from domestic bank customers and were planning to target European lenders before their arrest, investigators and sources with knowledge of the case told Reuters.
Their campaign raised a relatively small sum by cybercrime standards — more than 50 million roubles ($892,000) — but they had also obtained more sophisticated malicious software for a modest monthly fee to go after the clients of banks in France and possibly a range of other western nations.
Russia’s relationship to cybercrime is under intense scrutiny after U.S. intelligence officials alleged that Russian hackers had tried to help Republican Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency by hacking Democratic Party servers.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegation.
The gang members tricked the Russian banks’ customers into downloading malware via fake mobile banking applications, as well as via pornography and e-commerce programs, according to a report compiled by cybersecurity firm Group-IB, which investigated the attack with the Russian Interior Ministry.
The criminals — 16 suspects were arrested by Russian law enforcement authorities in November last year — infected more than a million smartphones in Russia, on average compromising 3,500 devices a day, Group-IB said.
The hackers targeted customers of state lender Sberbank, and also stole money from accounts at Alfa Bank and online payments company Qiwi, exploiting weaknesses in the companies’ SMS text message transfer services, said two people with direct knowledge of the case.
Although operating only in Russia before their arrest, they had developed plans to target large European banks including French lenders Credit Agricole, BNP Paribas and Societe General, Group-IB said.
A BNP Paribas spokeswoman said the bank could not confirm this information, but added that it “has a significant set of measures in place aimed at fighting cyberattacks on a daily basis.” Societe General and Credit Agricole declined comment.
The gang, which was called “Cron” after the malware it used, did not steal any funds from customers of the three French banks. However, it exploited the bank service in Russia that allows users to transfer small sums to other accounts by sending an SMS message.
Having infected the users’ phones, the gang sent SMS messages from those devices instructing the banks to transfer money to the hackers’ own accounts.
The findings illustrate the dangers of using SMS messages for mobile banking, a method favored in emerging countries with less advanced internet infrastructure, said Lukas Stefanko, a malware researcher at cybersecurity firm ESET in Slovakia.
“It’s becoming popular among developing nations or in the countryside where access to conventional banking is difficult for people,” he said. “For them it is quick, easy and they don’t need to visit a bank. … But security always has to outweigh consumer convenience.”
Cybercriminals
The Russian Interior Ministry said a number of people had been arrested, including what it described as the gang leader.
This was a 30-year-old man living in Ivanovo, an industrial city 300 km (185 miles) northeast of Moscow, from where he had commanded a team of 20 people across six different regions.
Four people remain in detention while the others are under house arrest, the ministry said in a statement.
“In the course of 20 searches across six regions, police seized computers, hundreds of bank cards and SIM cards registered under fake names,” it said.
Group-IB said the existence of the Cron malware was first detected in mid-2015, and by the time of the arrests the hackers had been using it for under a year.
The core members of the group were detained on November 22 last year in Ivanovo. Photographs of the operation released by Group-IB showed one suspect face down in the snow as police in ski masks handcuffed him.
The Cron hackers were arrested before they could mount attacks outside Russia, but plans to do that were at an advanced stage, said the investigators.
Group-IB said that in June 2016 they had rented a piece of malware designed to attack mobile banking systems, called Tiny.z for $2,000 a month. The creators of the Tiny.z malware had adapted it to attack banks in Britain, Germany, France, the United States and Turkey, among other countries.
The Cron gang developed software designed to attack lenders including the three French groups, it said, adding it had notified these and other European banks at risk.
A spokeswoman for Sberbank said she had no information about the group involved. However, she said: “Several groups of cybercriminals are working against Sberbank. The number of groups and the methods they use to attack us change constantly.”
“It isn’t clear which specific group is being referred to here because the fraudulent scheme involving Android OS [operating system] viruses is widespread in Russia and Sberbank has effectively combated it for an extensive period of time.”
Alfa Bank did not provide a comment. Qiwi did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Google, the maker of Android, has taken steps in recent years to protect users from downloading malicious code and by blocking apps which are insecure, impersonate legitimate companies or engage in deceptive behaviors.
A Google spokesman said: “We’ve tracked this malware family for several years and will continue to take action on its variants to protect our users.”
Fake mobile apps
The Russian authorities, bombarded with allegations of state-sponsored hacking, are keen to show Russia too is a frequent victim of cybercrime and that they are working hard to combat it. The interior and emergencies ministries, as well as Sberbank, said they were targeted in a global cyberattack earlier this month.
Since the allegations about the U.S. election hacking, further evidence has emerged of what some Western officials say is a symbiotic relationship between cyber criminals and Russian authorities, with hackers allowed to attack foreign targets with impunity in return for cooperating with the security services while Moscow clamps down on those operating at home.
The success of the Cron gang was facilitated by the popularity of SMS-banking services in Russia, said Dmitry Volkov, head of investigations at Group-IB.
The gang got their malware on to victims’ devices by setting up applications designed to mimic banks’ genuine apps. When users searched online, the results would suggest the fake app, which they would then download. The hackers also inserted malware into fake mobile apps for well-known pornography sites.
After infecting a customer’s phone, the hackers were able to send a text message to the bank initiating a transfer of up to $120 to one of 6,000 bank accounts set up to receive the fraudulent payments.
The malware would then intercept a confirmation code sent by the bank and block the victim from receiving a message notifying them about the transaction.
“Cron’s success was due to two main factors,” Volkov said.
“First, the large-scale use of partner programs to distribute the malware in different ways. Second, the automation of many [mobile] functions which allowed them to carry out the thefts without direct involvement.”
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Leaked Documents Reveal What Facebook Will Let You Post
Leaked Facebook documents reveal the company walks a fine line between free speech and violent or hateful content.
The Guardian newspaper says it obtained the “more than 100 internal training manuals, spreadsheets and flowcharts” outlining how the social media giant decides what content can stay and what gets taken down.
According to the documents, Facebook does allows certain posts that contain violent language. For example, it’s OK to post “let’s beat up fat kids,” but prohibited to post “someone shoot Trump.”
“People commonly express disdain or disagreement by threatening or calling for violence in generally facetious and unserious ways,” reads one of the documents.
Images showing non-sexual physical abuse or bullying of children as long as there is not a “sadistic or celebratory element.” Live streams of people harming themselves is also allowed, the documents say because Facebook doesn’t want to “censor or punish people in distress.”
A Facebook representative said the company’s top priority is keeping users safe.
“We work hard to make Facebook as safe as possible while enabling free speech,” said Monica Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management. “This requires a lot of thought into detailed and often difficult questions, and getting it right is something we take very seriously.”
Facebook has been under increased pressure to prevent violent content from appearing, as a stream of violent videos have been allowed to stay on the site for hours before being deleted.
One particularly gruesome video showed the brutal murder of Cleveland grandfather Robert Godwin in a crime posted on Facebook Live.
The company recently hired 3,000 more humans to help curb objectionable material, and The Guardian documents reveal the moderators are overwhelmed with requests to review material.
“These reviewers will also help us get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook, like hate speech and child exploitation, “ Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post about the hiring. “And we’ll keep working with local community groups and law enforcement who are in the best position to help someone if they need it – either because they’re about to harm themselves, or because they’re in danger from someone else.”
The company also employs algorithms to mark objectionable content.
Facebook also faces criticism when it does take down material deemed offensive.
Last fall, the company removed an iconic photo showing a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Facebook later allowed the image to be posted.
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Chinese Online Retailer Developing One-ton Delivery Drones
China’s biggest online retailer, JD.com Inc., announced plans Monday to develop drone aircraft capable of carrying a ton or more for long-distance deliveries.
The company said it will test the drones on a network it is developing to cover the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi. It said they will carry consumer goods to remote areas and farm produce to cities.
JD.com, headquartered in Beijing, says it made its first deliveries to customers using smaller drones in November. Other e-commerce brands including Amazon.com Inc. also are experimenting with drones for delivery.
“We envision a network that will be able to efficiently transport goods between cities, and even between provinces, in the future,” the chief executive of JD’s logistics business group, Wang Zhenhui, said in a statement.
JD.com operates its own nationwide network of thousands of delivery stations manned by 65,000 employees. The company says it has 235 million regular customers.
Drones are part of the industry’s response to the challenge of expanding to rural areas where distances and delivery costs rise.
Drone delivery in China and other countries faces hurdles including airspace restrictions and the need to avoid collisions with birds and other obstacles. In the United States, regulators allow commercial drone flights only on an experimental basis.
A 1-ton payload is heavier than what most drones available now can carry, though some can carry hundreds of kilograms and major drone makers are working on devices able to carry more.
China is home to the world’s biggest manufacturer of civilian drones, DJI, in the southern city of Shenzhen.
JD.com said its planned drone delivery network in Shaanxi would cover a 300-kilometer (200-mile) radius and have drone air bases throughout the province.
The company said it will set up a research-and-development campus with the Xi’an National Civil Aerospace Industrial Base to develop and manufacture drones.
JD.com earlier reported first-quarter revenue rose 41.2 percent over a year ago to 76.2 billion yuan ($11.1 billion). It reported profit of 843.1 million yuan ($122.4 million) compared with a loss of 864.9 million yuan a year earlier.
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Race, Gender, Fame All Issues As Cosby Jury Selection Starts
Thirteen years after a Temple University basketball team manager went to famous alumni Bill Cosby’s nearby home for career advice, her complaint that Cosby drugged and molested her that night will soon be a task for a Pennsylvania jury.
Lawyers this week hope to find a dozen jurors and six alternates willing to spend two weeks or more sequestered nearly 300 miles (482 kilometers) from home.
The case has attracted worldwide publicity the judge hopes to shield from jurors when the trial starts June 5 in suburban Philadelphia. Jurors are being chosen in Pittsburgh starting Monday. Cosby arrived at the courthouse Monday morning, holding onto the arm of an assistant and ignoring reporters’ questions.
“You want to see if they’re a celebrity-conscious person – if they read celebrity stuff, if they worship celebrity,” trial consultant Howard Varinsky said. “Prosecutors have to be very worried about fans.”
The lawyers also will be weighing a potential juror’s race, gender, age, occupation and interests as the questioning gets underway. They hope to tease out whether they relate more to the beloved actor who brought the world Fat Albert, Dr. Cliff Huxtable and bemused quips about family and fatherhood, or a woman who was rebuffed when she first filed a police complaint, only to relive the case a decade later after Cosby’s testimony from her lawsuit became public and dozens of other accusers came forward to support her.
“In a normal case, juries are all banging the door to get out, bringing up every hardship in the world,” Varinsky said. “But on this case, you’re going to see people that may lie to get on, and people who convince themselves that they can be fair, but they can’t.”
“Whatever side you’re on, you have to really weed through this,” he said. “I’m looking [as a consultant] for every single micro-expression, each body movement.”
Jurors will be dismissed “for cause” if they admit to strong views about the case or persuade the judge they have family, health or financial situations that prevent them from serving. After that, each side can strike seven people during jury selection and three more when they choose alternates.
Accuser Andrea Constand went to police in January 2005 to report that Cosby had sexually assaulted her a year earlier. She had left Temple the previous March and was back home in the Toronto area, setting aside a life in basketball to retrain as a massage therapist.
Then-District Attorney Bruce Castor declined to press charges. Constand then sued the comedian, negotiating a settlement after he gave sworn testimony about a string of sexual liaisons with young women. Cosby admitted giving some of them pills or alcohol beforehand.
New prosecutors read that testimony and reopened the case in mid-2015. Cosby was arrested on Dec. 30, 2015, days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired. He has pleaded not guilty and remains free on $1 million bail.
He told a talk show host this week that he hopes to beat back the charges and resume his career.
“I want people to understand my work as an artist and a performer,” he said. “I want to get back to the laughter and the enjoyment of things that I’ve written and things that I perform on stage.”
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Ringling Brothers Circus Comes to an End
The circus billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth” has come to an end after 146 years.
The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus gave its final performance Sunday in Uniondale, New York, 50 kilometers east of New York City.
Ringling Brothers has its origins in the 19th century with showman P.T. Barnum.
Circus executives said the wild animals, acrobats, clowns and other circus acts that had entertained audiences for over a century could not withstand the 21st century competition of IPhones, the internet and video games.
A decline in ticket sales increased when the circus removed the elephants in May 2016, following years of protests from animal rights activists who said forcing animals to perform and transporting them around the country was abuse.
In January, Feld Entertainment, Ringling’s parent company, announced the unthinkable – the circus would close.
Sunday night the circus received a standing ovation, prompting ringmaster Jonathan Lee Iverson to say, “I thought the circus was antiquated? You mean you love the circus?” He led the circus performers, crew and audience through an emotional rendition of Auld Lang Syne.
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WHO Optimistic on Controlling DRC Ebola Outbreak
The World Health Organization’s regional chief for Africa reports prospects for rapidly controlling the spread of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo are good.
While not underestimating the difficulties that lie ahead in bringing this latest outbreak of Ebola to an end, Matshidiso Moeti told VOA she is “very encouraged” by the speed with which the government and its national and international partners have responded to this crisis.
“I am quite optimistic because this is a government that is experienced at this, and which has got off to a very quick start and we are already on the ground with the partners.
“We are getting logistic support from WFP (World Food Program) and from the U.N. mission. So, I am quite optimistic,” Moeti said.
WHO has reported 29 suspected cases, including three deaths since Ebola was discovered in a remote region of DRC on April 22. This deadly virus causes fever, bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. It spreads easily through bodily fluids and can kill more than 50 percent of its victims.
This is the eighth recorded outbreak of Ebola in DRC since 1976. The outbreak was first detected in Bas-Uele Province, a densely-forested area in northeastern Congo near the border with the Central African Republic.
Outbreak isolated
Moeti calls the remoteness of the area “a mixed blessing.”
She said that there was little likelihood of a “rapid expansion of the outbreak to other localities due to population movement as happened in West Africa. Although, we are keeping a close eye on the Central African Republic … where we are concerned that there is insecurity there.”
She said it was difficult to operate and carry out surveillance or investigations in this area because the road network leading there was not very well developed and “we have to drive long distances, not in a car, but have to use a motorbike.”
To remedy this, she said the government had fixed up a landing strip to enable helicopters to fly in the experts and material needed to deal with this crisis.
Moeti, a South African physician, replaced Luis Gomez Sambo of Angola as WHO regional head for Africa in January 2015 after he was criticized for his lackluster leadership in handling the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The World Health Organization has come under scathing criticism by the international community for its slow and inept response to that unprecedented epidemic. By the time WHO declared the Ebola epidemic at an end in January 2016, the deadly virus had killed 11,315 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
Experience put to use
During a recent visit to Kinshasa, Matshidiso Moeti said she saw how the hard lessons that have been learned from this tragic experience were being applied in DRC.
“What I observed was that the government itself was very quick in getting out to this remote area from the central level.
“So, they sent a team from Kinshasa within a day or two of getting this alert to go and investigate and from the provincial level very rapidly, the government got down into this local area,” she said.
Moeti is leading a reform process to transform the WHO in the African Region into what she called a “more responsive, accountable, effective and transparent organization.”
She told VOA that this process was a component of WHO’s global reform effort and she would be rolling out the plan during a side-event on May 22, the opening day of this year’s World Health Assembly.
She said the reform program focused largely on how to improve measures for more quickly and efficiently tackling emergencies and communicable diseases.
“Clearly, as we saw very starkly with the Ebola outbreak, an outbreak can quickly transform into a big humanitarian crisis with all sorts of impacts.”
While the job of health reform is far from complete, Moeti said, “I am really pleased to say that we are starting to see how those changes that we have made are making a difference in how we operate.”
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Exhibit Illustrates Extreme Adaptations of Mammals Over Millennia
A giant rhinoceros the size of three African elephants once grazed on treetops in Tibet, but succumbed to climate change more than 20 million years ago.
The high treetops disappeared, along with its food source, says Xiaohong Wang of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Wang has done field research on the long-legged rhino, more formally called the Indricotherium, one of the stars of a new exhibit that shows how radical adaptations that aid survival in one setting can spell disaster in another.
Through fossils and reconstructions, the exhibit tells the story of Mother Nature’s radical gambits to keep organisms alive in changing conditions. The show was built around an earlier exhibit from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which also included ice age remains from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
Mammals that have adapted in the extreme include an ancient whale that walked on land and more recent pygmy mammoths on California’s Channel Islands, whose small size is illustrated with side-by-side jaw bones of a Columbian mammoth and its pygmy relative, which shrunk to cope with limited food resources on the islands.
Many species challenged
Climatic variations over the ages and the more recent incursion of humans have challenged many species, said Emily Lindsey of the La Brea Tar Pits, a site rich with fossils from the mammoths and giant cats that once roamed California, but died out more than 10,000 years ago.
Seen in the exhibit are the extinct American lion, “which along with the cave lion in Europe was the biggest cat that ever lived,” Lindsey said.
There are fossils from a scimitar cat, also extinct, and a long-gone subspecies of jaguar.
“And then we have the mountain lion, which is the only one of those five big cats that’s still alive today,” she notes.
Also known as the cougar, panther or puma, the species is represented with a photo of a celebrated cat that continues to roam through the hills above Los Angeles.
“People thought he would just spend a couple of days there, then continue to move on or attempt to move on,” said Miguel Ordenana, who coordinates the amateur citizens scientists who make wildlife observations to help scientists better understand the region. Mountain lions, he said, typically do not survive crossing busy freeways, but this intrepid mountain lion is a survivor, as is his species.
Arctic island was once like Florida
Other mammals in the exhibit include the Batodonoides, a long-extinct shrewlike mammal from 50 million years ago so tiny that it could have perched on a pencil. The South American Macrauchenia, with a camellike body and giraffelike neck, had a flexible trunk, like an elephant. It went extinct a mere 10,000 years ago, but is represented here in a reconstruction.
Earth’s extreme changes can be seen in a diorama of Ellesmere Island in the Arctic.
Just 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, it was home to warm swamps 50 million years ago and a host of animals adapted to a Floridalike climate.
Those intense changes served many species well, but presented extreme problems. Especially as environmental conditions caused the Arctic freeze over, leaving Ellesmere Island one of the coldest and driest locations on Earth.
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Exhibit Shows Extreme Adaptations of Mammals
The challenges of adaptation and survival are the themes of a new exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Mike O’Sullivan reports that the the exhibit, Extreme Mammals, shows the radical changes in animal species over millions of years and the extinctions of species that failed to adapt.
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Russian Ship Brings Medical Care to Isolated People
Recent studies suggest that as many as 400 million people around the world do not have access to basic health care. In some cases it’s because of conflict, but in some cases it’s just geography: humans live in some very far away places, Siberia for instance. That’s where the medical ship comes in handy. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Fans Grateful for One Last Time at the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’
Lions, tigers and clowns, no more. Oh my. It’s curtains for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
This weekend is the last chance for fans to see death-defying acrobats, exotic animals and flashy costumes as the circus ends its 146-year reign as one of the world’s biggest big tops.
Ringling’s parent company, Feld Entertainment, announced in January that it would take its final bow this year. On Saturday afternoon, under cloudy skies, fans streamed into the Nassau Coliseum in suburban New York to pay their last respects to the iconic show.
‘An adult today’
“I’m becoming an adult today,” said 46-year-old Heather Greenberg, of New York City. “I can’t go to the circus with my daddy anymore.”
Greenberg and her parents, and her three children, along with her sister and extended family — 12 in all — clowned around, laughing and joking, as they walked into the show.
Her sister, Dawn Mirowitz, 42, of Dix Hills, New York, sobered as she pondered a future without the Ringling Brothers circus.
“We’ll never get a chance to take our grandchildren to the circus,” she said.
Higher costs, smaller crowds
Feld executives say declining attendance and high operating costs are among reasons for closing.
Ringling had two touring circuses this season, one ending its run earlier this month in Providence, Rhode Island.
The final shows of what was long promoted as “The Greatest Show on Earth” are being staged at the Nassau Coliseum in suburban New York. There are three scheduled shows Saturday and three Sunday. For those who can’t make it, the final circus show Sunday night will be streamed live on Facebook Live and on the circus’ website.
One last show
Clarissa Williams, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom from West Hempstead, New York, was taking her 8-year-old daughter, Nylah, to the show.
“I’m thankful we get to see it before it leaves,” she said. “I pray that when they end, they take the animals and put them in a safe, sacred place.”
A spokesman for the circus says homes have been found for the animals that were owned by Ringling, including the tigers, horses and camels.
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G20 Health Ministers Take on Antibiotic Resistance
Health ministers of the G20 leading economies, meeting for the first time Saturday, agreed to work together to tackle issues such as a growing resistance to antibiotics and to start implementing national action plans by the end of 2018.
Germany, which holds the G20 presidency this year, said it was an “important breakthrough” that all nations had agreed to address the problem and work toward obligatory prescriptions for antibiotics.
Pandemics
Saying that globalization caused infectious diseases to spread more quickly than previously, the 20 nations also pledged to strengthen health systems and improve their ability to react to pandemics and other health risks.
“By putting global health on the agenda of the G20 we affirm our role in strengthening the political support for existing initiatives and working to address the economic aspects of global health issues,” the communique said.
The results of the meeting will feed into a G20 leaders’ summit in Hamburg in July.
Overprescription
While the discovery of antibiotics has provided cures for many bacterial infections that had previously been lethal, overprescription has led to the evolution of resistance strains of many bacteria.
An EU report last year found that newly resistant strains of bacteria were responsible for more than 25,000 deaths a year in the 28-member bloc alone.
Germany has argued that even having a discussion about it will help raise public awareness about the problem. The G20 also said they agreed to help improve access to affordable medicine in poorer countries.
your ad hereEastern US Trees Shift North, West With Climate Change
A warmer, wetter climate is helping push dozens of Eastern U.S. trees to the north and, surprisingly, west, a new study finds.
The eastern white pine is going west, more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) since the early 1980s. The eastern cottonwood has been heading 77 miles north (124 kilometers), according to the research based on about three decades of forest data.
The northward shift to get to cooler weather was expected, but lead author Songlin Fei of Purdue University and several outside experts were surprised by the move to the west, which was larger and in a majority of the species.
New trees tend to sprout farther north and west while the trees that are farther south and east tend to die off, shifting the geographic center of where trees live.
86 tree species
Detailed observations of 86 tree species showed, in general, the concentrations of eastern U.S. tree species have shifted more than 25 miles west (45 kilometers) and 20 miles (33 kilometers) north, the researchers reported in the journal Science Advances Wednesday.
One of the more striking examples is the scarlet oak, which in nearly three decades has moved more than 127 miles (205 kilometers) to the northwest from the Appalachians, he said. Now it’s reduced in the Southeast and more popular in the Midwest.
“This analysis provides solid evidence that changes are occurring,” former U.S. Forest Chief Michael Dombeck said in an email. “It’s critical that we not ignore what analyses like these and what science is telling us about what is happening in nature.”
Dryer South, wetter West
The westward movement helped point to climate change, especially wetter weather, as the biggest of many culprits behind the shift, Fei said. The researchers did factor in people cutting down trees and changes to what trees are planted and where, he said.
With the Southeast generally drying and the West getting wetter, that explanation makes some sense, but not completely, said Brent Sohngen at Ohio State University, who was not involved in the study.
“There is no doubt some signature of climate change,” he said in an email. But given the rapid rates of change reported, harvesting, forest fires and other disturbances, are probably still playing a more significant role than climate change, he wrote.
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‘Doomsday’ Seed Vault Entrance Repaired After Arctic Ice Thaw
Norway is repairing the entrance of a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world’s food supplies.
The water, limited to the 15-meter (50-foot) entrance hall in the melt late last year, had no impact on millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat that are stored more than 110 meters inside the mountainside.
Still, water was an unexpected problem for the vault on the Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the North Pole. It seeks to safeguard seeds from cataclysms such as nuclear war or disease in natural permafrost.
“Svalbard Global Seed Vault is facing technical improvements in connection with water intrusion,” Norwegian state construction group Statsbygg, which built the vault that opened in 2008, said in a statement on Saturday. “The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened.”
Spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim said Statsbygg had removed electrical equipment from the entrance — a source of heat — and was building waterproof walls inside and ditches outside to channel away any water.
The number of visitors would be reduced to limit human body heat, she said. Some of the water that flowed in re-froze and had to be chipped out by workers from the local fire service.
An underlying problem was that permafrost around the entrance of the vault, which had thawed from the heat of construction a decade ago, has not re-frozen as predicted by scientists, Aschim said.
Temperatures in the Arctic region have been rising at twice the global average in a quickening trend that climate scientists blame on man-made greenhouse gases. Svalbard has sometimes had rain even in the depths of winter when the sun does not rise.
“There’s no doubt that the permafrost will remain in the mountainside where the seeds are,” said Marie Haga, head of the Bonn-based Crop Trust that works with Norway to run the vault. “But we had not expected it to melt around the tunnel.”
Haga said the trust had so far raised just over $200 million toward an $850 million endowment fund to help safeguard seeds in collections around the globe. “That is an extremely cheap insurance policy for the world,” she said.
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Pentagon Displays Technology of the Future
Robot teammates and “snake” arms that can find a crack .005 millimeter long were just two of the U.S. military’s latest technological innovations on display at the Pentagon this week.
The Defense Laboratory Enterprise showcased more than 80 exhibits on its biennial Lab Day on Thursday. The enterprise is a network of 63 defense laboratories, warfare centers and engineering centers that operate across the United States, and the event provided the Defense Department community with an up-close look at projects in various stages of development and readiness.
Here are some of VOA’s favorites:
Soldier Visual Integrated Technology
Imagine a soldier comes across a suspicious object that she has never seen before. As she stops to explore, she immediately sees an enemy fighter and has to spring into action without time to fully raise her weapon’s sight up to her eye. And she’s unable to see another enemy lurking around the corner.
With Soldier Visual Integrated Technology, the soldier can better see her surroundings and needs less time to react to dangers accurately.
Ronald Geer, a staff sergeant assigned to the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, says SVIT wirelessly links three pieces of technology on the soldier: a reticle eyepiece, a thermal device on the gun and a communications system attached to the chest.
“What this is going to do is increase my speed and lethality on the battlefield, especially in a close combat situation,” Geer said. “I don’t have to worry so much about raising my weapon to an exact point where I’m able to view through this [his thermal device], because as I raise the weapon, what this is looking at, I’m able to immediately see pulled into the reticle device.”
The connectivity also allows soldiers to use their guns to see what’s around a corner without having to move their bodies into harm’s way.
SVIT updates in real time as well, providing a way to virtually “mark” obstacles or enemy weaponry so that other soldiers can see what the SVIT user views.
Remote Access Nondestructive Evaluation
Jokingly called a “snake on a plane” by some at the Air Force Research Laboratory, R.A.N.D.E. (pronounced Randy) is a robotic arm that can wriggle through an opening as small as 7 centimeters to inspect the interior of aircraft wings or other structures without dismantling them.
Senior Materials Engineer Charles Buynak told VOA that any sensing device can be attached to R.A.N.D.E. to look for minute structural defects.
“We’re looking for things on the order of 1/50,000th of an inch [.00508mm] — before a crack becomes a major thing … and becomes a serious problem to the aircraft,” Buynak said.
The system is driven by a controller from an Xbox 360 home video game console. Buynak said that makes R.A.N.D.E. easy for young operators to use. Another reason is that the Air Force wanted to take advantage of technologies already available.
“Why go spend money developing something that’s easily available that we can adapt to our application here?” he said.
Robots as teammates
The U.S. Army is developing ways to use robots not as tools but as teammates. The Army Research Laboratory displayed several robots this week that can be used as hosts for developing software algorithms for artificial intelligence and machine learning purposes.
Stuart Young, chief of the Asset Control and Behavior Branch, told VOA the goal is to protect soldiers by using technology to “manipulate unknown objects in an unknown world.”
His team is trying to develop AI algorithms that can generalize and understand what’s going on in a robot’s environment. “And then once we have that information,” Young said, “we can manipulate it to accomplish the mission that the robot needs to accomplish.”
Such robot missions could range from breaching an enemy’s defensive position to removing improvised explosive devices, or just moving large objects out of the way while soldiers are in a safer location.
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