Bill O’Reilly Goes on Vacation Amid Sponsor Backlash
Bill O’Reilly is taking a vacation from his Fox News Channel show amid sponsor defections triggered by sexual harassment allegations.
Announcing the break at the end of Tuesday’s show, O’Reilly made a point of saying it was planned and long in the works. He said he will return April 24.
Around this time of year, “I grab some vacation, because it’s spring and Easter time. Last fall, I booked a trip that should be terrific,” he said.
His vacation announcement comes as about 60 companies said they won’t advertise on his show. The exodus followed a recent report in The New York Times that five women were paid a total of $13 million to keep quiet about harassment allegations.
The amount of advertising time by paying customers on “The O’Reilly Factor” has been cut by more than half since the Times report, according to an analysis issued Tuesday by Kantar Media.
But O’Reilly, cable TV news’ most popular personality, hasn’t been abandoned by his audience. His show averaged 3.7 million viewers over five nights last week, up 12 percent from the 3.3 million he averaged the week before and up 28 percent compared to the same week in 2016.
“O’Reilly Factor” drew an average of just under 4 million viewers for the first three months of 2017, his biggest quarter ever in the show’s 20-year history.
On Tuesday, the host offered his audience some general advice.
“If you can possibly take two good trips a year, it will refresh your life. We all need R&R. Put it to good use,” O’Reilly said.
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Musician J. Geils Dies at Age 71
Musician J. Geils, founder of the J. Geils Band, known for such peppy early ’80s pop hits as “Love Stinks,” “Freeze Frame” and “Centerfold,” has died in his Massachusetts home at age 71.
Groton police said officers responded to Geils’ home about 4 p.m. Tuesday for a well-being check and found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
“A preliminary investigation indicates that Geils died of natural causes,” police said in a statement.
The J. Geils Band was founded in 1967 in Worcester, Massachusetts, while Geils, whose full name was John Warren Geils Jr., was studying at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The band, whose music bridged the gap between disco and new wave, released 11 studio albums before breaking up in 1985. They reunited off and on over the years.
The band had several Top 40 singles in the early 1970s, including a cover song “Lookin’ for a Love” by the family group the Valentinos and “Give It to Me.”
Their biggest hits included “Must of Got Lost,” which reached No. 12 on Billboard’s Top 100 in 1975, and “Love Stinks,” a rant against unrequited love, the title song on their 1980 album. Their song “Centerfold,” from the album “Freeze Frame” was released in 1981 and eventually charted at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in February 1982. It stayed there for six weeks and was featured on MTV.
When news of Geils’ death broke, fans turned to social media to offer condolences and to reminisce about the band’s songs and concerts.
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Woman Who Lived in Former Slave Cabin Visits Smithsonian
It’s been years since Isabell Meggett Lucas has been inside the tiny house she was born in, a former slave cabin where her ancestors sought refuge from the hot South Carolina sun.
But the 86-year-old woman never envisioned that when she finally returned, the wooden two-room house would be viewed by millions of people inside the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture as an example of what home life was like for slaves in the South.
Visiting the new museum, open for a little over six months now — gave Lucas and her family, a chance to share with museum curators a first-hand glimpse of how descendants of African slaves lived in the post-Civil War and Jim Crow South, their joys and pains and how they survived a hardscrabble life without electricity or other modern comforts.
“It’s my home. We all lived there together and we were happy,” said Lucas, speaking softly as she stood outside the weatherboard cabin used during slavery at Point of Pines Plantation on Edisto Island, South Carolina.
Smithsonian officials scoured the countryside looking for representations of slave cabins for years before choosing the Meggett family cabin on the coast of South Carolina, curator Nancy Bercaw said.
Lucas, her sister-in-law Emily Meggett and their family viewed the cabin Monday and Tuesday, where it was rebuilt as part of the “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition in the museum almost exactly as it was when the last occupant lived there in 1981. It is believed to be one of the oldest preserved slave cabins in the United States, and although the exact age of the cabin is not known, it sat on the Point of Pines Plantation from 1851 until it was moved plank by plank to the museum.
But Lucas, who lived there from birth until age 19, remembered something about the cabin that isn’t in the exhibit.
“It had a big long porch on the outside,” she said. “My momma would sit on that porch. The cool wind would be getting ready to blow off the rivers and such. The wind would blow and we’d sit on the porch … when we would get tired, everyone would lay on that porch under blankets and quilts and go to sleep.”
That’s the importance of having access to the people who lived in the house, because the porch was gone by the time the Smithsonian officials first saw the cabin, Bercaw said. People often think of history to be just about objects and things, when there’s so much more they can learn, she said.
“They can give us such insight to what life was like on Edisto Island,” Bercaw said. “Objects hold meaning within them, and as far as we’re concerned, that meaning comes from the family” that lived there.
The museum is still collecting information about the cabin, including the oral history of the Meggett family, recorded during their trip to Washington.
For example, the 84-year-old Meggett said she remembered coming over before she married Lucas’s brother, and remembered Sunday afternoon games of hopscotch, jump rope and baseball in the nearby grass, where a base would be an old brick, and the children could run free through the grass and fields.
But slowly, she said, people moved away and the cabin eventually was abandoned. Meggett said she would occasionally visit, however, and her last visit was only a month or two before they moved the cabin out of South Carolina.
“There were five deer standing up there in the cabin,” she said. “When they saw us, they jumped and ran. We stopped and watched them, and then we went on down to the landing and came back. Then I heard all of a sudden they were going to move the cabin, and when I got back, it was already gone.”
People should know how they had to live in the past, Lucas said. “We had to work so hard,” she said. “I hated it. I hated all farmwork, but I didn’t have a choice.”
But there were good times as well, and wonderful food, she said.
“We ate grits and rice and cornbread, biscuits. When I got big enough I had to cook … one thing I learned was how to fix biscuits. We had a fireplace. You see the fireplace here, they would build a fire in the fireplace and they would cook biscuits,” Lucas said.
The matriarch said she tries to tell her younger relatives about what life was like back then, to share their family’s history. Having the cabin in the museum will help people learn about what life was like in the past, she said.
“People can look at that house and the pictures around it and know that everything didn’t come easy back then,” she said.
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Sheryl Crow Argues for Return to Empathy on New Album
Last year, Sheryl Crow started a petition on Change.org to shorten the U.S. presidential election cycle. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter said she was exhausted by the mudslinging and divisive language that had dominated the discussion about the candidates.
“I felt like it was becoming so hateful that I had to watch to make sure my kids didn’t pick up the remote and turn the TV on,” she said during a recent interview at her home in Nashville.
Crow said what upset her was how technology and social media had changed the conversation.
“Now we have this forum for haters to come out and say the worst thing you could possibly say to someone without having the experience of the reaction,” she said. “We’ve learned to be a society without empathy and without compassion.”
The ways people connect, or fail to connect, became a central theme on her upcoming album, “Be Myself,” to be released on April 21, which brings Crow back to her early roots as a rocker after brief stints exploring Country music and soul music on her last two records.
“The whole album is very informed by the atmosphere, which is very chaotic, very vitriolic, a lot of fear that was really in the ether while we were making this record,” she said.
Crow listened to her early records, including her debut, “Tuesday Night Music Club,” and “The Globe Sessions,” and teamed up with Jeffrey Trott, her longtime songwriting partner and a multi-instrumentalist. She brought in Tchad Blake, a Grammy-winning engineer who worked with her in the late ’90s.
“We wanted to make a really catchy record, but one that had some edge, some grit, in the same way that some of those early recordings had,” Trott said.
Crow, who has often peppered her lyrics with political references, said the album helped her after Donald Trump won the presidential election.
“I started losing faith and not only for our country, but for the people that voted for him,” Crow said.
As she sings on her first single, “Halfway There,” Crow asks for cooperation and compromise as a solution to the discord.
“You may not be an environmentalist and I might be, but at the end of the day, don’t we all want the same thing for our kids?” she said. “We want a healthy future that is secure. And we have to figure out a way to communicate with reason and a modicum of decorum at least.”
As a mother of two children, ages 6 and 9, she favors an unplugged life as reflected in “Roller Skate,” a nostalgic, toe-tapping song about ditching the phone for a good time.
“At the end of the day, you’re missing out on life experiences if you’re constantly checking in with anybody that’s not in the room,” Crow said.
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Research Reveals Huge Burden of Guinea Worm
Guinea worm is on course to become the second human disease to be eradicated, after smallpox, thanks largely to intervention overseen by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Little was known about the infection for decades, as diseases like malaria took priority. However, previously unpublished research from the 1970s, released this month, shows the burden the disease has had on millions of people.
Guinea worm is contracted when people drink water contaminated with tiny crustaceans that contain the worm larvae. A year later, a meter-long female worm emerges through a painful blister, often disabling the infected person for months.
Professor Brian Greenwood, a British scientist, first came across Guinea worm in the 1970s when working in northern Nigeria. He says little was known about the disease, despite millions suffering from it across Africa and India.
“People were much more concerned with malaria, bilharzia and other tropical infections,” Greenwood said. “And part of the reason was that these people were so disabled they never got to the clinic or the hospital. So that if you looked in hospital records, you did not see this as a big problem.”
Greenwood spent four years studying the disease and trying to find out why sufferers often developed repeat infections, without developing immunity.
“We extracted some of the worms,” he said. “And the traditional way is winding them out on a matchstick, just gradually. And the problem is that if the worm then snapped inside, then they got a very severe reaction.”
Greenwood credits the Carter Center, a charitable foundation set up by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, for helping fight the disease to the brink of eradication.
There is no vaccine or treatment. Instead, community education programs teach people to filter drinking water and avoid entering water sources.
Speaking in 2011, Carter described the initial difficulties.
“It was kind of an insult to say ‘this disease comes out of your pond,'” he said. “So we have had to do a lot of diplomacy and convincing the people there to take care of their own problems. Well, it has worked. And now almost every nation on earth has eradicated or eliminated Guinea worm.”
When the Carter Center first became involved in 1986, there were around 3.5 million cases in 21 countries; last year, 25 cases were recorded in only three countries — Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan.
Greenwood’s early study of Guinea worm remained unpublished, as he was directed to focus on malaria and meningitis instead; but last year in London, he met Carter, who persuaded him to publish the research.
“I hope that we have been able to document what a horrible disease this was,” Greenwood said. “And it is really important that people realize that. And if we do get eradication in the next year or two, which I hope will be the case, that this will not just be seen as a minor thing, but to be a really very important public health triumph.”
The last few cases of Guinea worm remain because they are the most difficult to reach. Many are in conflict areas like South Sudan, but scientists are optimistic this ancient disease can be eradicated within the next few years.
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Second ‘Great Spot’ Found at Jupiter, Cold and High Up
Another “Great Spot” has been found at Jupiter, this one cold and high up.
Scientists reported Tuesday that the dark expanse is 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) across and 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) wide. It’s in the upper atmosphere and much cooler than the hot surroundings, thus the name Great Cold Spot. And unlike the giant planet’s familiar Great Red Spot, this newly discovered weather system is continually changing in shape and size. It’s formed by the energy from Jupiter’s polar auroras.
A British-led team used a telescope in Chile to chart the temperature and density of Jupiter’s atmosphere. When the researchers compared the data with thousands of images taken in years past by a telescope in Hawaii, the Great Cold Spot stood out. It could be thousands of years old.
“The Great Cold Spot is much more volatile than the slowly changing Great Red Spot … but it has reappeared for as long as we have data to search for it, for over 15 years,” the University of Leicester’s Tom Stallard, lead author of the study, said in a statement.
Stallard said Jupiter’s upper atmosphere may hold other features. Scientists will be on the lookout for them while also studying the Great Cold Spot in greater detail, using ground telescopes as well as NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter, he said.
The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
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Canadian Judge in Yahoo Hack Case to Reach Decision on Bail
A Canadian man accused in a massive hack of Yahoo emails has alleged ties to Russian agents and access to significant amounts of cash, making him a serious flight risk if freed on bail, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Karim Baratov, 22, was arrested last month and faces extradition to the U.S. He was indicted in the United States for computer hacking along with three other people, including two alleged Russian intelligence agents.
Officials have said Baratov has the money to leave Canada and the ability to destroy evidence while on the run.
“The evidence of Mr. Baratov’s connections to Russian officials exponentially elevate the flight risk in this case,’’ Prosecutor Heather Graham said.
Graham noted Baratov owned a number of luxury cars and flaunted his lifestyle on social media. She also said he has webmail and PayPal accounts with “large unknown sums of money” accessible anywhere. Graham said police seized about $22,000 ($30,000 Canadian) cash from his home and another $670 ($900 Canadian) from his wallet when he was arrested.
She also said there is evidence Baratov may have been trafficking in identity information. And there are allegations he continued hacking while on vacation in Jamaica.
Graham also noted Baratov faces up to 20 years in a U.S. prison.
Baratov’s parents have agreed to act as their son’s sureties. The young man’s attorney Deepak Paradkar said Tuesday that Baratov will never be alone because his father, Akhmet Tokbergenov, works at home. The father has agreed to turn off the internet in the family home if the court requests.
The breach at Yahoo affected at least a half billion user accounts, but Paradkar said Baratov is only accused of hacking 80 accounts.
In a scheme that prosecutors say blended intelligence gathering with old-fashioned financial greed, the four men targeted the email accounts of Russian and U.S. government officials, Russian journalists and employees of financial services and other private businesses, American officials said.
In some cases using a technique known as “spear-phishing” to dupe Yahoo users into thinking they were receiving legitimate emails, the hackers broke into at least 500 million accounts in search of personal information and financial data such as gift card and credit card numbers, prosecutors said.
The case, announced amid continued U.S. intelligence agency skepticism of their Russian counterparts, comes as American authorities investigate Russian interference through hacking in the 2016 presidential election. Officials said those investigations are separate.
Justice Alan Whitten has said he’ll reach a bail decision Tuesday.
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Cherry Blossoms Lure Admirers Around North Asia
China, Japan and South Korea may have their differences, but they mostly see eye-to-eye on cherry blossoms.
In all three north Asian countries, people flock to parks, gardens and temples to enjoy the beauty of the pinkish-white petals, often in the lingering chill of early spring.
The shared natural heritage has been a minor source of conflict: Japan is the most well-known for cherry blossoms, but researchers in South Korea and China have argued that their country is the birthplace of the cherry tree.
The horticultural disagreement seems far removed from the “oohs” and “ahs” of the admiring crowds, busy taking selfies and photographs.
In a series of triptychs, Associated Press photographers in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo capture the ways people in each country interact with the blossoms. Each set of images focuses on a theme: architecture, children, couples, picnics and others. The combined photos are notable as much for their similarities as their differences.
PHOTOS: Cherry Blossoms from North Asia
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Google Refutes Charges, Says No Gender Pay Gap
Google said it’s “taken aback” by the government’s claim that it doesn’t compensate women fairly.
The company said it conducts “rigorous analyses” that its pay practices are gender-blind and found “no gender pay gap” in 52 major job categories it analyzed last year. Google added that analysts who calculate suggested pay don’t have access to employees’ gender data.
Google also said that beyond gender pay equity, the company recently expanded the analysis to cover race in the U.S., as well.
The U.S. Department of Labor had accused Google of shortchanging women doing similar work to men, saying it found “systemic compensation disparities” across the company’s workforce.
Google responded in a blog post Tuesday that the department’s assertion “came without any supporting data or methodology.” The company said it had already produced hundreds of thousands of documents in response to 18 separate requests, and the government is seeking thousands more, including contact details of employees.
The department had no comment, saying the case is ongoing.
The difference between Google’s and the Labor Department’s claims might come down to how each side defines pay discrimination, Tim Worstall, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, wrote in a recent post for Forbes.
“Google is using a strict definition of ‘same job’ to find no gender pay gap. The Department of Labor is using a looser definition of ‘similar job’ to find that there is one,” he wrote. “Who you think is right here is entirely up to you, but that’s where the disagreement is.”
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Climate Change Could Cause More Turbulent Flights
Climate change could cause stronger turbulence for airline passengers, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Reading in England say “turbulence strong enough to catapult unbuckled passengers and crew around the aircraft cabin” could become two or three times more common.
“For most passengers, light turbulence is nothing more than an annoying inconvenience that reduces their comfort levels, but for nervous fliers even light turbulence can be distressing,” said Paul Williams, who conducted the research. “However, even the most seasoned frequent fliers may be alarmed at the prospect of a 149 percent increase in severe turbulence, which frequently hospitalizes air travelers and flight attendants around the world.”
Specifically, researchers used supercomputer models to look at how wintertime transatlantic clear-air turbulence at an altitude of 12 kilometers will change when there is twice as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which could happen by the end of this century.
The models show light turbulence could increase by 59 percent, light-to-moderate turbulence could jump by 75 percent, moderate-to-severe turbulence could rise by 127 percent and severe turbulence could bounce a whopping 149 percent.
The reason, according to the researchers is that climate change “is generating stronger wind shears in the jet stream.”
“Our new study paints the most detailed picture yet of how aircraft turbulence will respond to climate change,” said Williams.
The study is published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
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Jets Zip Through Narrow ‘Star Wars’ Canyon, Drawing Visitors
Silence and stillness settled over the deep, sun-baked gorge as a pair of photographers sat on a cliff, waiting.
Then the rumbling started. As it grew louder, they scrambled into position.
Within seconds, a thunderous roar reverberated from the steep, narrow canyon as an F-18 fighter jet streaked through it, passing beneath their feet. It came so close they could see the pilots’ expressions.
This deafening show that was over in a flash is a fairly common sight at Death Valley National Park, 260 miles (415 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, where U.S. and foreign militaries train pilots and test jets in the gorge nicknamed Star Wars Canyon.
Photographers — some capturing images for work, others for fun — along with aviation enthusiasts and others have been traipsing to the remote 4,688-square-mile (12,142-square-kilometer) park in growing numbers to see the jets soaring below the rim of what’s officially called Rainbow Canyon, near the park’s western entrance.
It earned its nickname because its mineral-rich soil and rocky walls in shades of red, gray and pink draw to mind a landscape in a galaxy far, far away — Tatooine, the home planet of Star Wars character Luke Skywalker.
The unusually close-up view of military planes zooming through the craggy gorge has become so popular the National Park Service is considering making it an attraction, with informational signs about the training that dates back to World War II.
Park Service officials recently discussed erecting signs and possibly paving a spot for cars, park spokeswoman Abby Wines said.
Wines understands the rush people get from seeing the jets up close. Once she was doing technical canyoneering, hanging from a rope on a 180-foot vertical, when a jet roared over her head but below the canyon rim.
“It’s the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life,” she said. “It was a scary experience since I was holding onto the rope and not anything else.” She also felt a sense of awe.
But on days when one jet passes after another, the noise gets to her.
Elsewhere in the park, the jets also have made it tough when performing the living history show at Scotty’s Castle, a Spanish mission-style villa reflecting early California architecture. The villa recently closed until further notice because of flood damage. But when it was open, it was “disruptive to act like it is 1939 while two military jets are circling, pretending to be in a dogfight above your head,” Wines said.
On a February day, planes careened through Star Wars Canyon 18 times. One pilot performed barrel rolls over the pass.
Jets zip through the gorge at 200 to 300 mph (322 to 483 kph) and can fly as low as 200 feet from the canyon floor. But the canyon’s walls are so steep, the aircraft are still several hundred feet below the rim.
Training at the canyon doesn’t happen every day, so the photographers who make the trek to see them sometimes sit in folding chairs, waiting in the heat, and spy no jets at all.
Jason Watson, who works in information technology at Stanford University’s law school and does freelance photography, recently made his seventh trip to the gorge.
He’s seen as many as 30 photographers spread out across the mile-long rim at different vantage points.
“You can meet anyone from anywhere in the world there,” Watson said.
The photographers develop a comraderie as they share in the thrill of standing above the speedy jets.
The aviators interact with them too, giving a thumbs-up or even flashing a “Hi Mom” sign as they whiz by.
“They know the photographers are there,” Watson said. “They’re aware of the following.”
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US Panel Changes Recommendation on Prostate Cancer Screening
An independent U.S. panel of experts has changed course on its recommendation against routine PSA screening of men for prostate cancer.
In a draft recommendation, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said men between the ages of 55 and 69 should be screened using the prostate-specific antigen test on an “individualized” basis. The panel concluded, in its new guidance, that the potential benefits of screening slightly outweighed the harm.
The new draft guidelines echo those of several leading medical groups, but they don’t make the decision any easier for men: With their doctor’s help, they have to decide whether to take an imperfect PSA test that carries a small chance of detecting a deadly cancer and a larger chance of triggering unneeded worry and treatment with serious side effects.
“This isn’t a one-size-fits-all” recommendation, said the panel’s chair, Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a San Francisco internist who already follows the advice and discusses the potential pros and cons with her patients.
Men whose greatest concern is reducing their chances of dying from cancer are sometimes willing to face the consequences and choose testing. “Other men will realize the likely benefit is small and aren’t willing to risk the harms,” she said.
Controversial call
In a 2012 recommendation that caused controversy within the medical community, the task force expressed concern that routine use of the PSA test was leading to unnecessary biopsies and other tests in men suspected of having prostate cancer.
Critics of that recommendation worried that as a result of any reduction in testing, prostate cancer might be diagnosed at a more advanced stage in some men.
According to new data released by the task force, the test would let three men out of 1,000 avoid metastatic cancer and would prevent one to two prostate cancer deaths in 1,000.
The revised guidance is based on the findings of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer.
A longer follow-up period revealed that slightly more men in the 55-69 age group benefited from screening when the disease was suspected.
‘Thoughtful’ policy
The American Urological Association is hailing the proposed new recommendation as “thoughtful and reasonable.” But the association expressed concern that, under the guidelines, men 70 and older would not be screened for prostate cancer.
A statement issued by the association said, “We believe that selected older healthier men may garner a benefit from prostate cancer screening,” even though the group acknowledged there is limited evidence that men in this age group benefit from the PSA test.
The revised draft recommendation is open to public comment before a final recommendation is issued.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a national independent volunteer panel of medical experts created in 1984. It is funded, staffed and appointed by an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The task force is charged with making “evidence-based” recommendations about clinical preventive services, including health screenings, counseling services and preventive medications.
Some information for this report came from AP.
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High Consumption, Trade Shift Harmful Effects of Pollution
Industrial air pollution causes nearly 3.5 million deaths a year, and international trade is shifting some of the harmful effects from consuming nations to producing nations, according to a study in the journal Nature.
The authors say high consumption in the United States and Western Europe harms health in manufacturing countries such as China, and the pattern is continuing among developing nations in Asia.
“Take an example of a toy,” says Steve Davis, an Earth system scientist with the University of California, Irvine, and one of the report’s authors. He explains that toys sold in America are most often made in China, displacing the emissions that would otherwise be released in the United States.
“We’re effectively outsourcing the pollution that comes from the manufacture of that product,” he said.
750,000 premature deaths
Worldwide, the scientists estimate air pollution produced by exported goods and services caused more than 750,000 premature deaths in the baseline year of the study, 2007.
The report by Davis and his colleagues at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and other institutions found the cross-border effects of trade-related pollution is greater than the cross-boundary impact of industrial pollution caused by weather patterns.
Particulate matter from China was linked to 65,000 premature deaths outside of China, largely in Japan and the Korean peninsula, and including 3,100 deaths in the United States and Western Europe. But U.S. and European consumption of goods produced in China was linked to nearly 110,000 premature deaths in China.
The researchers say that as China becomes a consuming society, its manufacturing is shifting, but the pattern is similar, as production and pollution are “outsourced by China into other up-and-coming industrialized countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, India,” said Davis.
Those countries are bearing the health costs.
The study examined 13 regions of the world and Davis said researchers were surprised levels of harm from emissions that were displaced from one country to another by outsourcing.
Trump order criticized
Davis notes that China’s industrial cities are plagued with pollution, and the country is working to clean up its air. Yet as China expands its use of “scrubbers” that remove fine particulate matter from industrial emissions, environmentalist are accusing President Donald Trump of reversing the U.S. commitment to clean air. On March 28, Trump signed a sweeping executive order to increase America’s energy independence and boost American jobs by reducing the federal government’s role in controlling emissions.
“There’s a concern that in the pursuit of economic gains, we’re maybe willing to now sacrifice our environmental quality,” Davis said, noting the United States has long “pointed a finger at China” for its emissions.
The study’s authors say environmental pollution caused by manufacturing, and by worldwide trade, requires a global response that balances the need for clean air and economic growth.
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This Week in History: The Breakup of The Beatles, 20th Century’s Most Successful Rock Band
“At the actual breakup of the Beatles, it was painful,” Paul McCartney said during a 1990 television interview. “We likened it to a divorce.”
Twenty years earlier on April 10, McCartney signaled the end of the Fab Four during his unveiling of his solo album “McCartney.”
On April 9, McCartney released a Q&A package to the British press in which he explained his reasons for making his solo album. Compiled with the help of Apple executives, the self-interview also contained questions McCartney imagined he would be asked regarding the possibility of the Beatles splitting up.
While stopping short of saying that the band was finished, McCartney stated that he did not know whether his “break with the Beatles” would be temporary or permanent.
It didn’t quite feel real, in part, because of the way McCartney phrased it — and also, the Beatles’ final album “Let It Be” was yet to be released.
From the group’s first studio contract in 1962, it was clear that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were something special.
The Ed Sullivan Show
In February 1964, the group made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” during their first American tour. It took no time at all for “Beatlemania” to overtake America.
As Billboard Magazine put it in its 2016 year end issue, under the section called “Greatest of All Time:”
“It’s hard to convey the scope of The Beatles’ achievements in a mere paragraph or two.
They synthesized all that was good about early rock n’ roll, and changed it into something original and even more exciting. They established the prototype for the self-contained rock group that wrote and performed its own material.
As composers, their craft and melodic inventiveness were second to none, and key to the evolution of rock from its blues/R&B-based forms into a style that was far more eclectic, but equally visceral.”
During a 1971 interview on The Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon addressed the non-stop controversy that Yoko Ono, John’s partner and wife, was responsible for the group’s demise.
“She didn’t split the Beatles because how could…one woman? The Beatles were drifting apart on their own.”
Business disagreements had much to do with the split, which led to an awkward legal suit filed by Paul dissolving the group’s business partnership.
And McCartney himself has said there were ill feelings on all sides.
In the May 14, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone, John Lennon lashed out.
“He ((McCartney)) can’t have his own way, so he’s causing chaos,” John said. “I put out four albums last year, and I didn’t say a f***ing word about quitting.”
All of the Beatles had begun working on their solo careers before the official split.
McCartney went on to form the wildly successful band “Wings;” Lennon moved to New York City with Yoko, had a son, and recorded his one collaboration with his wife, “Double Fantasy;” Harrison also made recordings as did Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.
In December 1980, Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment. He was 40 years old.
Lung cancer killed 58-year-old Harrison in 2001.
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Investigation of Trump’s Charity Wins Pulitzer Prize
The biggest U.S. news story of 2016 — the tumultuous presidential campaign — yielded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for the Washington Post reporter who not only raised doubts about Donald Trump’s charitable giving but also revealed that the candidate had been recorded crudely bragging about grabbing women.
David A. Fahrenthold won the prize for national reporting, with the judges citing stories that examined Trump’s charitable foundation and called into question whether the real estate magnate was as generous as he claimed.
Fahrenthold’s submission also included his story about Trump’s raunchy behind-the-scenes comments during a 2005 taping of “Access Hollywood.” His talk about groping women’s genitals rocked the White House race and prompted a rare apology from the then-candidate.
In another election-related prize, Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal won the Pulitzer for commentary for columns that “connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.”
The judges said Fahrenthold’s reporting “created a model for transparent — journalism,” a model he built partly by using Twitter to publicize his efforts and let Trump see what he was doing. The president “can expect to see more of me on Twitter,” said Fahrenthold, now part of a team looking at Trump businesses.
American journalism’s most distinguished prizes also recognized work that shed light on international financial intrigue and held local officials accountable.
The New York Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer in public service for uncovering how authorities used an obscure law, originally enacted to crack down on prostitution in Times Square in the 1970s, to evict hundreds of people, mostly poor minorities, from their homes.
“Thanks to this investigation, New York now sees how an extremely muscular law, combined with aggressive policing, combined with a lack of counsel, combined with lax judges produced damaging miscarriages of justice,” Daily News Editor in Chief Arthur Browne said. The Daily News reporter credited with most of the work was Sarah Ryley.
ProPublica’s managing editor, Robin Fields, said the project was “the type of collaboration that ProPublica had in mind” when the independent, nonprofit organization was launched nine years ago.
The New York Times’ staff received the international reporting award for its work on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Moscow’s power abroad. The award in feature writing went to the Times’ C.J. Chivers for a story about a Marine’s descent into violence after returning home from war.
Winners ranged from partnerships spanning hundreds of reporters to newspapers as small as The Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly, 3,000-circulation family-owned paper in Iowa. Co-owner Art Cullen won the editorial writing award for challenging powerful corporate agricultural interests in the state.
Cullen said he was stunned by the win. “Nobody’s ever heard of us before,” he said with a laugh.
The prize for explanatory reporting went to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, McClatchy and the Miami Herald, which amassed a group of over 400 journalists to examine the leaked “Panama Papers” and expose the way that politicians, criminals and rich people stashed money in offshore accounts.
Meanwhile, the Herald’s Jim Morin won the award for editorial cartooning. He also won in 1996.
Eric Eyre of The Charleston Gazette-Mail received the investigative reporting prize for articles showing that drug wholesalers had shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in six years, as 1,728 people fatally overdosed on the painkillers. Eyre obtained Drug Enforcement Administration records that leading drug wholesalers had fought in court to keep secret.
The staff of the East Bay Times in Oakland, California, received the breaking news reporting award for its coverage of a fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party and for its follow-up reporting on how local officials hadn’t taken action that might have prevented it.
Executive Editor Neil Chase said the award was “tremendously humbling,” but “you have to pause and realize that 36 people died in the fire, and this story should have never happened.”
The staff of The Salt Lake Tribune received the local reporting award for its work on how Brigham Young University treated sexual assault victims. The series prompted the Mormon school to stop conducting honor code investigations into students who reported being sexually assaulted.
Hilton Als, a theater critic for The New Yorker, won in the criticism category. The judges praised how he strove to connect theater to the real-world, “shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.”
Freelancer Daniel Berehulak received the breaking news photography award for his images, published in The New York Times, documenting Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on drug dealers and users. Berehulak won the feature photography Pulitzer in 2015 for his work on the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
This year’s feature photography winner was E. Jason Wambsgans of the Chicago Tribune, for his portrayal of a 10-year-old boy who had been shot.
Amid concern about fake news and the role of the media, “it’s just a very important time to try to help people see the importance of great journalism in their lives and in the democracy,” prize administrator Mike Pride said as the awards were announced at Columbia University .
Arts prizes are awarded in seven categories, including fiction, drama and music. Among the arts winners, Colson Whitehead took the fiction prize for “The Underground Railroad,” a novel that combined flights of imagination with the grimmest and most realistic detail of 19th-century slavery. Playwright Lynn Nottage won her second drama Pulitzer, for “Sweat.”
This is the 101st year of the contest, established by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Public service award winners receive a gold medal; the other awards carry a prize of $15,000 each.
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Havana Named Host City for 2017 International Jazz Day
Herbie Hancock has twice before visited Havana to perform intimate solo-duet concerts with his Cuban counterpart Chucho Valdes, but at the end of April the two renowned jazz pianists will be collaborating on a grander scale.
Hancock and Valdes will be serving as artistic directors for the 6th International Jazz Day.
On Monday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced that Havana will be the global host city for the event, culminating with an all-star concert on April 30 at the recently renovated 19th-century Gran Teatro de La Habana.
The concert will be broadcast live on Cuban television and live streamed by UNESCO.
Last year, Washington was the host city with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hosting the global concert at the White House.
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US, Russian Crew Lands After Six-month Stay on Space Station
A U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts made a parachute landing in Kazakhstan on Monday, wrapping up a nearly six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed.
The Russian Soyuz capsule, which left the station shortly before 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT), touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 7:20 a.m. EDT (1120 GMT).
Seated in the capsule were returning station commander Shane Kimbrough of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko from Russian space agency Roscosmos.
“It’s really neat to be part of something this big, something bigger than ourselves … even bigger than a nation,” Kimbrough said during a change-of-command ceremony on Sunday.
“We get the ability up here to interact with things that actually benefit all of humanity. It’s really humbling.”
Three crew members remain aboard the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. In command is NASA’s Peggy Whitson, who on April 24 will break the 534-day record for the most time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut.
Whitson, a veteran of two previous missions on the station, is the first woman to hold the post of commander twice.
Whitson, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and France’s Thomas Pesque will be joined by two new crew members on April 20.
The U.S. and Russian space agencies agreed last week to extend Whitson’s mission by three months.
Russia is reducing its station cadre to two from three members until its new science laboratory launches to the space station next year, the head of Roscosmos said last week at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Whitson will return to Earth in September, having amassed a career U.S. record of 666 days in orbit. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who has 878 days in orbit, is the world’s most experienced space flier.
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Scientists Link El Nino to Increase in Cholera in Eastern Africa
Researchers are reporting a link between a climate phenomenon know as El Nino and the number of cholera cases in eastern Africa. Predicting when there’s going to be an El Nino event could improve public health preparedness.
El Ninos are a global climate phenomenon that occurs at irregular times, approximately every two to seven years.
During an El Nino, surface ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America become warmer than usual. The warming trend begins around Christmas time.
The following year, in the fall, sea surface temperatures also warm, if somewhat less, in the western Pacific, leading to extreme weather events like flooding and droughts, conditions that are ripe for cholera outbreaks.
Approximately 177 million people reside in areas where the incidence of cholera increases during El Nino.
But there’s been scant evidence of El Nino’s health impact in Africa.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the incidence of cholera increased in countries in East Africa.
“Because they can either lead to surface flooding that washes contamination into drinking water in areas where there’s open defecation,” said epidemiologist Sean Moore, who led the study. “It also can lead to overflowing of sewer systems in urban areas which again can lead to contamination of drinking water.”
There are approximately 150,000 cases of cholera per year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Moore, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore.
But during El Ninos, researchers found the incidence swelled by some 50,000 cholera cases in eastern Africa, although the overall number of cases on the continent did not change — for reasons that are not completely understood, said Moore.
Patterns of shift in the number of cholera cases were measured during El Ninos between the years 2000 and 2014. There also were 30,000 fewer cases reported in southern Africa during El Nino years compared to non-El Nino years, researchers found..
Scientists also saw a slight increase in the number of cholera cases in areas hit by drought due to El Nino.
Moore said that’s because when water becomes scarce, available drinking water can become contaminated by bacteria in human waste.
Without treatment, mortality rates from cholera can climb as high as 50 percent.
To the extent that the climate phenomenon can be predicted six to 12 months ahead of time, Moore said public health officials can prepare for outbreaks, which tend to occur early on.
“An advance warning could, even if it doesn’t prevent outbreak, it could at least prevent the deaths that tend to occur during the early part of an outbreak,” he said.
With oral rehydration therapy, Moore said the risk of death from cholera drops to 1 percent. He said there are now cheap cholera vaccines that could be used to prevent the disease when it’s known that an area is going to be hit by an El Nino.
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Symantec Attributes 40 Cyber Attacks to CIA-linked Hacking Tools
Past cyber attacks on scores of organizations around the world were conducted with top-secret hacking tools that were exposed recently by the Web publisher Wikileaks, the security researcher Symantec Corp said on Monday.
That means the attacks were likely conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The files posted by WikiLeaks appear to show internal CIA discussions of various tools for hacking into phones, computers and other electronic gear, along with programming code for some of them, and multiple people
familiar with the matter have told Reuters that the documents came from the CIA or its contractors.
Symantec said it had connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA.
The CIA has not confirmed the Wikileaks documents are genuine. But agency spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak said that any WikiLeaks disclosures aimed at damaging the intelligence community “not only jeopardize U.S. personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm.
“It is important to note that CIA is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans, and CIA does not do so,” Horniak said.
She declined to comment on the specifics of Symantec’s research.
The CIA tools described by Wikileaks do not involve mass surveillance, and all of the targets were government entities or had legitimate national security value for other reasons, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said ahead of Monday’s
publication.
In part because some of the targets are U.S. allies in Europe, “there are organizations in there that people would be surprised were targets,” Chien said.
Symantec said sectors targeted by operations employing the tools included financial, telecommunications, energy, aerospace, information technology, education, and natural resources.
Besides Europe, countries were hit in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. One computer was infected in the United States in what was likely an accident – the infection was removed within hours. All the programs were used to open back doors, collect and remove copies of files, rather than to destroy anything.
The eavesdropping tools were created at least as far back as 2011 and possibly as long ago as 2007, Chien said. He said the WikiLeaks documents are so complete that they likely encompass the CIA’s entire hacking toolkit, including many taking advantage of previously unknown flaws.
The CIA is best-known for its human intelligence sources and analysis, not vast electronic operations. For that reason, being forced to build new tools is a setback but not a catastrophe.
It could lead to awkward conversations, however, as more allies realize the Americans were spying and confront them.
Separately, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers on Saturday released another batch of pilfered National Security Agency hacking tools, along with a blog post criticizing President Donald Trump for attacking Syria and moving away from his conservative political base.
It is unclear who is behind the Shadow Brokers or how the group obtained the files.
your ad hereDrake, The Chainsmokers Lead Billboard Award Nods
Rapper Drake and EDM duo The Chainsmokers are the top contenders at the Billboard Music Awards with 22 nominations each.
Dick clark productions announced Monday that the performers set a record for most nominations in a year. The 2017 awards show will air live May 21 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Other big contenders include twenty one pilots (17 nominations) and Rihanna (14).
Nominees for the biggest award, top artist, include Adele, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, the Chainsmokers, Drake, Ariana Grande, Shawn Mendes, Rihanna, twenty one pilots and the Weeknd.
Albums from Beyonce, Drake, Rihanna, twenty one pilots and the Weeknd are up for top Billboard 200 album.
The Billboard Awards have 52 categories. The show will air live on ABC.
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Nearly 5M Children in War-torn Yemen Get Polio Vaccine
Nearly five million children under age five have been successfully vaccinated against polio in war-torn Yemen almost two-months after a nationwide immunization campaign was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank.
The campaign, which began on February 20, has taken much longer than usual to complete because of security challenges. The logistics involved in reaching millions of children with life-saving vaccines in war-torn Yemen are immense and complicated.
WHO spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, told VOA different parts of the country are controlled by different warring parties. He said informing them of the campaign, organizing health teams and transporting the polio vaccines takes a lot of time.
“For this campaign, more than 5,000 vehicles have been rented, more than 40,000 health workers were mobilized…. This is a big operation, obviously. But, with the support of local religious leaders, political leaders, that element is absolutely crucial that it is being accepted by the population and that vaccination teams are being trained and prepared in advance,” he said.
Jasarevic said health workers only recently were able to bring the campaign to Yemen’s Sa’ada governorate. Despite intensifying violence, he said more than 150,000 children under age five were vaccinated against polio and nearly 370,000 children between the ages of six months and 15 years were immunized against measles there.
He said the war has made routine immunizations in Yemen impossible, making nationwide immunization campaigns against polio and other killer diseases necessary.
“We have seen for example in Syria that polio came back because there were areas where children were not immunized for some time. We do not want this to happen in Yemen. Yemen is still polio-free and we want to keep it polio-free and these campaigns are one of the ways to make sure that the virus cannot find a host,” Jasarevic said.
The United Nations reports Yemen’s two-year-long conflict has all but destroyed the country’s health system. It says the situation of Yemen’s children continues to worsen and many are dying from preventable diseases.
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Researchers Close to Injection-free Vaccine
Getting a vaccine without the shot has always been one of the greatest hopes of medicine. For people in the developed world it means getting a vaccine can be as simple as taking an aspirin. For people in the developing world, or in isolated rural areas, it means they can get vaccines without a doctor or nurse. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Malaysian Rhino Horn Seizure Worth Over $3 Million
Malaysian customs officials said Monday they have confiscated 18 rhino horns, weighing more than 51 kilograms, and valued at over $3 million.
Customs said they found the horns in a crate Friday at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport cargo terminal after receiving an anonymous tip.
The haul had been shipped from Mozambique via a Qatar Airways flight with false documentation, classifying the the horns as “obre de arte” — or work of art.
Rhino horn global trade is banned under a United Nations convention.
Malaysian officials say the case is under investigation and no suspects have been arrested.
Rhino horns have been used for centuries in traditional Asian medicine, but they have not been proven to cure any illnesses.
The wild rhino population at the start of the 20th century was 500,000, but has since dwindled to 29,000.
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US, Canada, Mexico Announce Joint Bid to Host 2016 World Cup
The United States, Mexico and Canada will make a bid to jointly host FIFA’s 2026 World Cup. Held every four years, the U.S. last hosted the prestigious event in 1994 and Mexico in 1986. Canada has never hosted a men’s World Cup, and no World Cup has ever been jointly staged in three countries.
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