Tech Workers Find Communal Living a Solution for High Rents
Zander Dejah, 25, pays $1,900 a month rent to live in a downtown San Francisco house with at least 40 other people, many of whom sleep in bunk beds.
Dejah is a resident of The Negev, a communal living space that styles itself as a home for millennial tech workers to brainstorm ideas, write code and create apps, even if they have to share toilets and bathrooms with dozens of others.
Houses like The Negev, located in a neighborhood known as “SoMa” or South of Market, have cropped up around San Francisco as an influx of young professionals, many of whom are tech workers, have faced the city’s notoriously high rents and apartment shortages. It has three floors and roughly 50 rooms, filled with bunk beds, beer bottles and laptops, according to residents.
Dejah, born and raised in New York, graduated last year with a degree in computer science and math from McGill University.
Unemployed, he moved to California six months ago and found his room at The Negev on Craigslist.
“I thought New York was expensive,” said Dejah, who quickly landed a job as a virtual reality engineer at consulting firm moBack. “It’s basically an extension of college. We sort of live in a frat house.”
The home is certainly filled with parties on weekends, but the residents make sure to sit down every Sunday for a communal dinner, akin to a traditional family gathering.
While some say communal housing provides a solution for many first-time workers fresh out of college, such housing also has created its share of controversy. Housing advocates have complained that this new dorm-like style of living has pushed up rents and forced longtime residents to move out.
Alon Gutman, who co-founded a company called The Negev and began leasing the building on Sixth Street in 2014, said, “We have never made somebody move out of that building,” adding that his tenants pay 30 percent to 50 percent less than others in the neighborhood.
“We are trying to solve the housing crisis and increase density in a positive way.”
The Negev company runs nine communal properties, three of which are in San Francisco. The others are in Austin, Texas, and Oakland, California.
The Negev properties, generally in run-down, low-income neighborhoods, are restructured to accommodate a large number of tenants, Gutman explained.
Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said housing problems have arisen because occupants leave buildings being converted to communal homes and cannot afford to move back in or the space is no longer suitable for them.
“The Negev house takes affordable housing and makes it unaffordable,” said Sherburn-Zimmer. “All they’ve done is take away housing from people who had it and loved it and pushed them out to make a quick buck.”
Kumar Srikantappa, 31, who also pays $1,900 a month for a single room at The Negev, said he chose the house because of the social experience. After eight months there, the software engineer for Oracle Corp said he would soon be ready to live elsewhere.
“I met a bunch of friends, and I just want to move on to another location and into a bigger place,” he said. “It’s time.”
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Malawi Registers New Cases of Cholera
Malawi has started registering new cases of cholera in areas bordering Mozambique, one week after the government in Malawi warned of a cholera outbreak in the neighboring country.
The disease — an acute diarrheal infection caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacterium — affects children and adults, and can kill within hours if left untreated.
Malawi last registered cholera cases in 2015, but now health authorities in Malawi say they have found new cases at a health center in Nsanje district bordering Mozambique.
“So far we have 11 suspected cases, all in Ndamera health center,” said Alexander Juwa, the district health officer in Nsanje. “Here we did what we call a Rapid Diagnostic Testing, and it came out positive. We have set up a treatment unit there, and nobody has died.”
Juwa said they haven’t confirmed whether the outbreak is a spillover from Mozambique, because none of the cholera patients had contact with anyone from there.
“When we did a follow-up of the cases, it appears communities have clean water supplies,” Juwa said, “but probably we are suspecting issues to do with food preparation and food handling that might have caused the problem.”
Media reports in Mozambique say cholera has infected more than 1,200 people, killing two this month.
The outbreak is believed to have been triggered by Tropical Cyclone Dineo, which hit the country last month.
In Zimbabwe, the health ministry says it has detected three suspected cases of cholera in Chipinge district, which borders Mozambique.
“The area where the cases have been reported is adjacent to the border, where there is an influx of people coming from Mozambique,” said Aldrin Musiiwa, the deputy minister of health. “There are cases of cholera which have been reported in the adjacent Manica province of Mozambique.”
Meanwhile, the governments of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are urging people to practice safe hygiene to prevent further spread of the disease.
Sebastian Mhofu contributed to this report from Harare.
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Vast Beatles Collection Goes on Auction in Paris
A vast collection of rare Beatles vinyl records, photos and other paraphernalia will go on auction in Paris on Saturday.
Beatles aficionado Jacques Volcouve began his collection in 1967 with the album “A Hard Day’s Night.” Decades later, it has grown to include nearly 15,000 records and more besides.
“Starting from 1967, I gave myself an absolutely impossible mission: own everything concerning the Beatles,” Volcouve told Reuters TV, as he was sorting through his collection in December.
The 60-year-old has decided to auction off his collection to fund his retirement.
Among the 332 lots up for auction on Saturday is the disc “Tony Sheridan and the Beatles 7: My Bonnie,” signed by Paul McCartney and George Harrison, with an estimated price of 6,000-10,000 euro ($6,450-10,740).
A lot of 11 alternate cover photos for the Grammy-winning Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club album is expected to go for 10,000 to 15,000 euros.
Volcouve has written books and given radio commentaries about the Liverpool foursome. Letters he received from Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1976, thanking him for articles he had written, could fetch up to 3,000 euros each.
A set of dolls of the Fab Four with their instruments is expected to sell for 200-400 euros.
Among other items up for sale are an “authentic Beatle wig,” a Yoko Ono/John Lennon wedding album box and posters.
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Dark Clouds Hang Over South African Music, yet Silver Linings Shine
About two years ago, blues-folk artist Alice Phoebe Lou gave a performance in a park in Berlin, looking for donations as a street entertainer.
A listener invited her to perform at a function. Her career has since taken off. Last year, she released her debut record, and on Wednesday she played one of the world’s premier music festivals: the South by Southwest event in Texas.
Lou is just one of a growing list of South African musicians who’ve felt compelled to leave their homeland to be rewarded for their art. Another is Josie Field.
“I feel my sound and where I want to go musically, I’ve hit a ceiling in South Africa,” Field said. “The market is extremely niche for what I do.”
As they do for most musicians in South Africa, live gigs provide Field’s staple income. But, in a depressed economy, they’re limited.
Despite the struggles, Field said she’d never regret the past decade of making music in the country of her birth.
‘Take another step’
“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said. “There’s no doubt that there are proper music fans here. But I’m now ready to take another step and hopefully explore how other parts of the world see my music, and also grow as an artist.”
Andre le Roux, director of the Southern African Music Rights Organization, said it’s “natural” for extremely talented artists to leave South Africa.
The Dave Matthews Band “is doing far better in the U.S. than they would have done, ever, in South Africa,” he said. “So when people grow a little bigger [than the South African music scene], it’s time to leave.”
But he added that “what isn’t natural” is that exceptional, and scrupulous, musicians like Field often can’t get airplay in South Africa.
“There is the reality of payola, which is corruption — taking money where you’re not supposed to take money to give people airplay when you’re not supposed to give them airplay,” he said.
Le Roux also said that South Africa’s national broadcaster, the SABC, was failing to fulfill its pledge to play 90 percent local music.
“Was it a policy that was put in place, or was it a statement that was made? In our view, it was very much a statement that was made, because we haven’t seen the policy position,” he said. “Which radio station do you know that has played 70, 80, 95 [percent local music]; who’s done the assessment?”
The SABC insists its stations are playing “mostly locally produced” music.
Lack of support seen
Le Roux is adamant that the state isn’t doing enough for music. Most public schools, for example, don’t teach it.
“Are those institutional tools in place to support an environment in which the arts and the artists can thrive?” he asked. “The honest answer to that is no.”
The government says it’s doing its best with “limited funding” to support arts.
Field said another reason for her leaving is her disenchantment with politics in South Africa — something reflected in her track “Born Under the Stars.”
“It’s a song that has a political edge to it, coming just out of frustration for the future of South Africa and the leaders that aren’t leading,” she said.
Pride in artists’ progress
Le Roux expects more of the cream of local music to leave the country — not necessarily because of politics or corruption, but because they’re simply “too big” for the nation’s small, underfunded music sector.
“We don’t have the ability to absorb them within our cultural space,” he said. “That’s the problem of the state. But do we like to see them grow? Yes. Those that go abroad, good for them. Those that stay here, let’s build an industry together.”
Ultimately, he said, South Africa should be proud that its artists, like DJ and rapper Spoek Mathambo, are successful worldwide, in bigger, ultracompetitive markets.
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Rodin Marble Masterpiece ‘Andromeda’ Up for Auction in Paris
French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s newly re-discovered marble masterpiece titled “Andromeda” will be up for sale in Paris in May, auction house, Artcurial, said on Friday.
The auctioning of the sculpture is of particular importance as it has remained in the hands of the same family for roughly 130 years, according to the director of Artcurial’s impressionist and modern art department, Bruno Jaubert.
Rodin, renowned the world over for works like his bronze “The Thinker” and “The Kiss” made from marble, gave his sculpture of the mythical woman Andromeda to a friend and client, a Chilean diplomat living in Paris in the late 19th Century.
“The family who received it as a present from Rodin in 1888, from generation to generation, conserved it until 2017,” Jaubert explained, proudly adding that he and a colleague found it earlier this year during an inventory in Spain.
The sculpture is estimated to auction for between 800,000 and 1 million euros ($859,400 to $1.07 million U.S. dollars) and will be on exhibition at the auction house from March 18 to 28, coinciding with the centenary of Rodin’s death in 1917.
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‘Beauty and the Beast’ Is Disney’s Latest Mega Production
Beauty and the Beast is a tale for the ages. We’ve read it in fairytale books and watched it in numerous TV and movie adaptations. Maybe the most memorable of this classic was the iconic 1991 Disney animation. With its infectious songs and beautiful graphics, the film entered the popular mainstream worldwide.
Now, Disney is reviving its 1991 Beauty and the Beast rendition with live action heroes, making this Disney’s latest live action fairytale production, but by no means its last.
The film opens the same way as its 1991 predecessor. Emma Watson inhabits the role of Belle, the iconic character from the 1991 animated film. She says live action fairytales are likely to draw people of all ages into the theaters.
Watch: Beauty and the Beast, from Animation to Live Action
“As a child you love Disney, but as an adult you still love Disney because it sort of connects you with that childlike feeling that everything is going to be OK and there’s hope in the world,” Watson said.
$300 million investment
It was this nostalgia that made Disney invest $300 million in this lavish musical, with Oscar winning filmmaker Bill Condon at the helm. The film offers background stories that add depth to their characters, such as Belle.
“It really was the first modern Disney heroine,” the filmmaker said. “A Disney princess who doesn’t want to be a princess, who doesn’t care about finding the prince. Someone who’s more interested in books and seeing the world and kind of figuring out who she is than in finding a guy and getting married. She happens to do those things by the end, but it’s not because that’s her main interest.”
Watson says the evolution of the romance between Belle and the Beast also is more complex than it was in its previous incarnations.
“Beast and Belle really dislike each other at the beginning, they really don’t get on, and then they form a friendship and then they fall in love,” she said.
Wealth of talent
Apart from Watson, the film includes a long list of famous actors. Kevin Klein interprets Belle’s quirky father. Ewan McGreggor, who plays the enchanted candelabra, and others lend their voices to digitally generated characters.
New songs were added to the original ones by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. Such a wealth of raw talent in acting, production, costumes and music bolstered Disney’s decision to take the financial gamble. It also helped that the studio tested the market with a 90-second teaser trailer that generated a record 92 million views.
This is not the first time Disney has turned a beloved animated fairytale into a live action version.
Others became live action
The Jungle Book by acclaimed filmmaker Jon Favreau became a box office hit, received broad critical acclaim and won an Academy award. The jungle animals, all computer generated characters, provided a darker nuance to the story of Mowgli, the mancub who is raised by wolves and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
Similarly, Maleficent — the dark fairy who wishes Princess Aurora into an endless sleep in Sleeping Beauty — got her own movie, with Angelina Jolie as the title character in Disney’s live 2014 action film. Scary and alluring, she is the three-dimensional character with an ax to grind that appeals to adults and children alike.
Disney is embracing the darker, more adult formula even at the cost of controversy. In Beauty and the Beast, it inserts a gay character in Le Fou, played by Josh Gad, the sidekick of handsome and conceited Gaston, interpreted by Luke Evans. The character interplay, although completely innocuous, led Malaysia to shelve the film.
Disney seems undaunted by these reactions, however, and continues with plans to turn at least a dozen iconic animated Disney films into live action musicals. Beauty and the Beast will be the most significant testing ground when it opens worldwide March 17.
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Beauty and the Beast, from Animation to Live Action
Beauty and the Beast is a tale for the ages. Maybe the most memorable version of this classic was the iconic 1991 Disney animation. Now, Disney is reviving its animated version rendition with live action heroes, making this Disney’s latest live action fairytale production, but by no means its last. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
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3-D Printing Human Skin Opens Up World of Possibilities
What’s the largest organ in the human body? It’s skin, of course. Ask any doctor about its role in protecting what’s inside us from all kinds of trouble. That’s why it’s such a big deal that university scientists in Spain have learned how to manufacture what they say is fully functional human skin with a 3-D printer. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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3D Printing Human Skin Opens Up World of Possibilities
What’s the largest organ in the human body? It’s skin, of course. Ask any doctor about its role in protecting what’s inside us from all kinds of trouble. That’s why it’s such a big deal that university scientists in Spain have learned how to manufacture what they say is fully functional human skin with a 3D printer. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Carmakers Differ Widely on When Self-driving Cars Arrive
Carmakers and suppliers gave widely differing timelines Thursday for the introduction of self-driving vehicles, showing the uncertainties surrounding the technology as well as a split between cautious established players and bullish new entrants.
Chipmaker Nvidia, facing direct competition with the world’s top chipmaker after Intel’s $15 billion deal to buy Mobileye, an autonomous driving technology firm, this week, gave the most optimistic predictions.
Chief Executive Jens-Hsun Huang said carmakers may speed up their plans in the light of technological advances and that fully self-driving cars could be on the road by 2025.
“Because of deep learning, because of AI [artificial intelligence] computing, we’ve really supercharged our roadmap to autonomous vehicles,” he said in a keynote speech to the Bosch Connected World conference in Berlin.
Germany’s Bosch, however, the world’s biggest automotive supplier, gave a timetable as much as six years longer to get to the final stage before fully autonomous vehicles, and declined even to forecast when a totally self-driving car might take to the streets.
Technology, liability among hurdles
Progress is fraught by issues including who is liable when a self-driving car has an accident, bringing down the costs of sensor technology and guarding against hacking.
“Of course, we still have to prove that an autonomous car does better in driving and has less accidents than a human being,” Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner told a news conference.
Nvidia has applied its market-leading expertise in high-end computer graphics to the intense visualization and simulation needs of autonomous cars, and has been working on artificial intelligence — teaching computers to learn to write their own software code — for a decade.
“No human could write enough code to capture the vast diversity and complexity that we do so easily, called driving,” Huang said.
Together with Bosch executives, Huang presented a prototype AI on-board computer that is expected to go into production by the beginning of the next decade. The computer will use Nvidia’s processing power to interpret data gathered by Bosch sensors.
Degrees of autonomy
On the way to fully self-driving cars, levels of autonomy have been defined, with most cars on the road today at level two, and Tesla ready to switch from level four to five — full autonomy — as soon as it is permitted.
Level three means drivers can turn away in well-understood environments, such as highway driving, but must be ready to take back control, while level four means the automated system can control the vehicle in most environments.
Independent technology analyst Richard Windsor wrote this week that he doubted automakers would have autonomous vehicles leaving factories by a typical self-imposed deadline of 2020, mainly because the liability issue was unresolved.
“This is good news for the automotive industry, which is notoriously slow to adapt to and implement new technology as it will have more time to defend its position against the new entrants,” he wrote.
But Nvidia’s Huang said he expected to have chips available for level three automated driving by the end of this year and in customers’ cars on the road by the end of 2018, with level four chips following the same pattern a year later.
That is at least a year ahead of the plans of most carmakers that have an autonomous-driving strategy.
BMW says market will decide
The head of autonomous driving at BMW told the conference the luxury carmaker was on its way to deliver a level three autonomous car in 2021, but could produce level four or five autonomous cars in the same year.
“We believe we have the chance to make level three, level four and level five doable,” he said. He told Reuters the decision on which levels to release would depend in part on the market, and that cars with more autonomy might first be produced in small batches for single fleets.
Bosch said it saw level three vehicles being released with its on-board computer at the end of the decade, and level four driving not before 2025.
Uber, Baidu and Google spin-off Waymo are testing self-driving taxis, while carmakers including Volvo, Audi and Ford expect to have level four cars on the road by 2020 or 2021.
Nvidia’s Huang predicted those plans would speed up: “In the near future, you’re going to see these schedules pull in.”
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‘Beauty’s’ Beast Dan Stevens Breaks Out Behind the Effects
When Dan Stevens met his “Beauty and the Beast” co-star Emma Watson in pre-production, she wanted to get to work analyzing the story and the themes. He just wanted to talk about her U.N. speech about gender inequality.
“It was so impressive and so mighty in its message. I was so blown away by it,” Stevens said recently.
He quickly realized that her ideas actually did apply to the film too. Between the spoiled Beast, the sleazy Gaston, the gracious Maurice and others, Stevens began to think about just how many different types of masculinity are on display in the film, which opens in theaters Friday.
“Looking at these little elements of the patriarchy that she can smash through on her quest through the movie and the challenges presented to her as a girl, they tally so beautifully with Emma’s project,” Stevens said. “I love storytelling and fairy tale and myth and getting to grips with those fundamental elements is something that I really get a kick out of.”
At 34, Stevens is perhaps still best known for his role as Matthew Crawley on the PBS period series “Downton Abbey,” which he somewhat infamously left five years ago to pursue other things stateside. In the interim, the English actor has found roles in edgy indies, like the home invasion thriller “The Guest,” and even in campier family fare like “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” as the overconfident Lancelot.
Now Stevens is on the verge of becoming a household name with a leading role on FX’s edgy comic book series “Legion” and, of course, “Beauty and the Beast” – by far his highest profile role since “Downton.” Ironically it’s also one where his face is largely hidden for most of the film.
“It’s still my face driving it,” Stevens said, insisting that his friends and family have said they can definitely tell its him behind the facial capture technology that turns the blonde-hair blue-eyed human male into a horned and hairy beast.
Besides, it allowed him to focus on the performance in the eyes – something he studied in Jean Marais’ performance in Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version of “”Beauty and the Beast” to prepare.
“It was very important to me to preserve the beast’s soul through the eyes,” Stevens said. “It’s kind of the last human quality that he has shining through.”
As a father to three children with wife and singer Susie Hariet – Willow (7), Aubrey (4), and Eden (10 months) – Stevens has an added interest in balancing hard R-rated genre work with more family-friendly fare.
“I almost certainly would have said yes to this whether I had kids or not, but it is a big factor and informs some of my choices for sure these days,” the actor said.
He would often bring his kids to the “Beauty and the Beast” set to see him in action.
“I love it when crew members or other cast members bring their kids on,” he said. “It helps you remember why you’re making it and who you’re making it for.”
It also made for some amusing observations from his children. Stevens’ costume consisted of stilts and a cumbersome grey muscle suit that the visual effects people would eventually use to morph him into the Beast in post-production.
“My daughter said I looked like a hippo,” he said. “It helped with that Beast feeling of feeling monstrous and like he didn’t fit in.”
With four other projects in various stages of post-production, from a role in a historical drama about Thurgood Marshall to the rom-com “Permission” and “Legion’s” renewal for a second season, Stevens is doing what he’s always wanted.
“I’m having a great time just exploring a number of different areas that I never dreamed I’d get to explore,” Stevens said. “And, hopefully, slipping into some quite unrecognizable roles.”
The Beast isn’t a bad start.
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Chinese Artist Ai Brings New Refugee-themed Piece to Prague
Chinese conceptual artist and political activist Ai Weiwei has placed his latest refugee-themed installation — a black rubber boat with 258 figures onboard — in Prague, the capital of a European Union country that has opposed the bloc’s efforts to redistribute migrants among member nations.
The giant piece, titled “Law of the Journey,” attests to Ai’s concern with the plight of migrants who embark on the dangerous journey to Europe by sea. He visited 20 refugee sites across the world, including the Greek island of Lesbos, an entry point for many migrants trying to reach western Europe from Turkey.
“To refuse somebody so desperate is almost a crime,” Ai told The Associated Press. “It’s immoral, it’s short-sighted, and it is not going to benefit this nation. We cannot lose our fundamental beliefs in human rights and human dignity.”
His largest piece so far, the 70-meter (230-foot)-long black rubber boat hangs from the ceiling at the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace. The site-specific installation that went on exhibit Thursday was made in a Chinese factory that produces dinghies used by actual refugees, Ai said.
The 59-year-old artist has exhibited similar works elsewhere. He used 14,000 discarded life vests collected from the beaches of Lesbos to wrap the columns of Berlin’s Konzerthaus and to create lotus blossoms floating on a pond in Vienna’s Belvedere park.
The artist also posed as Alan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler whose lifeless body was famously photographed lying face-down on a Lesbos pebble beach. Ai was criticized for exploiting the child’s tragic death.
More than 1.2 million people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since 2015, data from the International Organization for Migration show. According to the European Commission, the Czech Republic has so far accepted 12 migrants for relocation.
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Demi Lovato Celebrates 5 Yrs of Sobriety
Demi Lovato is celebrating five years of sobriety.
The 24-year-old singer celebrated with an Instagram post on Wednesday. She writes that “it’s been quite the journey,” adding, “so many times I wanted to relapse but sat on my hands and begged God to relieve the obsession.”
Lovato’s personal struggles have been well-documented. In 2010, she left a tour with the Jonas Brothers and entered rehab for an eating disorder and self-mutilation. She has also said that she used drugs and alcohol to self -medicate.
Lovato says she has bipolar disorder and has been an advocate for mental health awareness.
your ad herePuppy Love: Therapy Pooches Bring Peace of Mind at Spanish Psychiatric Center
Tucked away in Spain’s Pyrenees mountains, patients at psychiatric facility Benito Menni stretch out across floor mats and stroke greyhound puppies Atila and Argi.
Puppy love is part of the treatment for conditions such as schizophrenia.
The facility, based in a town near the border with France, uses the dogs to help patients with intellectual disabilities and mental health conditions develop social skills and a sense of autonomy.
Alongside misty views of green rolling mountains, petting sessions with the eight-month-old puppies have a calming effect serving as an emotional outlet for patients who struggle to connect with others.
Playing with those who are more active and sitting still with those who find moving a daily challenge, the dogs tailor their behavior according to the needs of their patient.
For a Reuters photo essay, click http://reut.rs/2ntcZeA
Unlike other centres, Atila and Argi live on the grounds and are cared for by patients. “They are in charge of the dogs 24 hours a day,” said head nurse of Benito Menni Uxua Lazkanotegi.
“The dogs are now part of the center.”
In an effort to promote good habits like self-control and personal hygiene, patients groom and feed their furry companions taking them for daily walks to the nearby village where the dogs are icebreakers facilitating conversation with the locals.
Center residents who struggle to express themselves because of a range of cognitive and behavioral disabilities referred to their feelings for the dogs using words like “calmness,” “companionship” and “affection.”
The dogs also work with those unable to feed or walk the animals, sitting with severe dementia patients in an effort to combat isolation and depression by stimulating their senses of touch.
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Canine Shelter Takes on Tehran Stray Dog Problem — Humanely
On a cold winter morning in the Iranian capital recently, a homeless dog lay basking in the sun’s rays for warmth. Suddenly, the canine moaned — it had been shot with an anesthetic dart from a blowpipe. It ran several steps, then fell immobilized.
The cream-and-gray colored dog was collected by a worker for a new shelter where it will be given a medical check, neutered and microchipped — the first such initiative in this country where strays in the street are usually killed.
The Aradkouh Stray Dogs Shelter has been hired by the Tehran city government to take a new, more humane approach to deal with the burgeoning problem of stray dogs in the capital. It’s a sign of changing attitudes among officials in a country where Islamic authorities have long seen dogs as “un-Islamic” and at times still confiscate them from people who have dogs as pets and walk them in public or drive with them in their cars.
Although there are no official numbers, in some Tehran neighborhoods — especially in poorer districts — strays are rampant and a nuisance and the shelter captures 30 to 40 dogs per day. District 18, for example, a poor neighborhood in Tehran’s southwest known for its farmland, brick furnace towers, junkyards and factories, has some of the most stray dogs in the city.
“This area has a countless number of dogs and sometimes they pass by in hordes,” said Einollah Ardalanisaid, a garage owner in southern Tehran who hailed the initiative that began less than a year ago. “I think it is great if these dogs can be collected in a managed way so that neither the dogs nor the citizens are harmed.”
The shelter, located near the small town of Kahrizak, caters to the captured dogs’ needs, including feeding them and examining them for disease. Shelter workers vaccinate the dogs and sterilize them to control the stray population. After about two weeks, the dogs are microchipped and registered in a data bank so they can be tracked down later. The facility is equipped with surgery rooms, sonography machines and a kitchen.
On a recent day, there were 500 mature dogs and 145 puppies being looked after by the shelter’s staff. All the dogs are available for adoption.
Urban animal control vehicles set off in the mornings to hunt for strays, their destination determined by reports from citizens or places where the population of the animals is conspicuously large. The staff’s hunting tools are blowpipes or guns armed with dart syringes filled with anesthetic drugs.
The workers are trained to try to catch the animals as gently as possible and are advised not to use force.
In Islam, dogs are seen as unclean. However, police dogs, shepherd dogs and rescue dogs are common, and there have been no reports of clerical backlash against the shelter’s operations.
Prior to the shelter’s arrival, the preferred method of dealing with stray animals was to shoot them dead.
In one horrific case in 2015, dogs were injected with a deadly substance, presumably acid. Videos were published on social media showing dogs dying while moaning in agony. The videos quickly went viral, sparking widespread outrage and prompting protests by animal rights activists and celebrities.
An animal activist who filmed the dog killings in the city of Shiraz in central Iran claimed that private contractors were paid about $4 for each dog they killed. Local authorities denied having any role in the incident.
Since the advent of the shelter, municipal authorities claim that not a single dog is killed inhumanely and that the animals are being treated in a far more civil manner.
Hassan Heidari, director of Tehran’s Urban Animal Control Department, told The Associated Press that killing dogs or any other animals is against Islamic teachings and animal rights.
“From a moral and Islamic point of view, we are not allowed to treat these animals violently,” he said. “Observance of animal rights was another motive that made us stop killing dogs.
“We are now catching them alive despite its costs and troubles,” he added. “Today, with God’s grace, we have accomplished a very useful and pleasant achievement.”
After shooting the dogs with the darts, the animals are placed in the air-conditioned rear compartments of the dog-catcher vehicles.
Upon arrival at the shelter, after being fed and checked for illness, some dogs are neutered or treated with medicine in the facility’s clinic and can spend 15 to 45 days there recovering. The dogs are then given to animal supporters who adopt them, or they are released into the wild.
Dogs that are not adopted receive a collar and a microchip that contains the dog’s full history.
Dr. Hamid Ghahremanzadeh, the Canadian-educated veterinarian who runs the shelter, says staffers make an effort to find the dogs a home.
“We make arrangements to give [adopters] a registered dog with an ID,” he said. “If there is no adopter, we will release the sterilized dog at the same spot where we took them.”
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US Nuclear Weapons Test Videos Released on YouTube
During the Cold War, the films were highly classified, but now anyone can watch a newly released treasure trove of U.S. nuclear weapons tests on YouTube.
Greg Spriggs, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the 750 movies were in danger of becoming degraded to the point that they were no longer useful.
“We got to this project just in time,” he said in a three-minute recording introducing the nuclear test videos. “We know that these films are on the brink of decomposing to the point where they become useless.”
The videos were taken in the 1950s and 1960s as part of tests on types of atomic blasts and to make predictions about damage during a potential nuclear war.
Data and observations from many of the tests are still valuable to researchers today.
“We’ve scanned a little over 4,200 films,” said Spriggs. “The only data we have are these old tests.”
The United States and then-Soviet Union tested thousands of nuclear bombs, including in the atmosphere, on the ground, underground and underwater during the Cold War. The U.S. conducted its last test in 1992 after the fall of the USSR.
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SXSW Sets Stage for International Entrepreneurs and Breakthrough Products
Each year, aspiring tech entrepreneurs from all over the world head to the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, to prove their worth. VOA reporter Tina Trinh met with the latest wave of tech disrupters to learn what it takes to stand apart from the competition.
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Prince William’s Ski Holiday Sparks Media Criticism
Britain’s Prince William is taking flak for going on a ski holiday instead of attending a major royal engagement with his family.
Criticism mounted after footage emerged of 34-year-old William busting late-night dance moves in the Verbier, Switzerland, this week.
It has fueled claims from the tabloid press that the second in line to the throne does not work hard enough. The tabloid Sun used the headline “Throne Idle.”
William was skiing while his 90-year-old grandmother Queen Elizabeth II and other senior royals attended a Commonwealth Day service in London on Monday.
An official record of royal engagements says William has carried out royal duties on 13 days this year, compared with 18 for Prince Harry and 24 for the queen.
William also works part-time as an air ambulance pilot.
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Issa Hayatou Voted Out as African Soccer Head After 29 Years
Issa Hayatou was voted out as president of the African soccer confederation on Thursday after 29 years in charge, losing to challenger Ahmad of Madagascar in a major shakeup for the sport on the continent.
The 70-year-old Hayatou had ruled African soccer since 1988 and was FIFA’s most senior vice president because of his status as the longest-serving executive at the world soccer body. He also lost that position Thursday, and his place on FIFA’s ruling council.
Ahmad won 34-20 in the vote of Africa’s 54 member federations. He will become a FIFA vice president and join the council.
Hayatou left the congress room in Addis Ababa when the result was announced without commenting.
“This is sweet victory,” said Ahmad, who was held aloft by officials when his victory was announced and then hugged people around him. “When you work hard for years and months and you succeed, that is great.”
Ahmad takes over on an initial four-year term, and has promised to modernize CAF and make it more transparent.
His first job, he said earlier Thursday, would be to introduce a new code of ethics for the African soccer body. He has also pledged to extend ethics checks on African soccer officials.
Hayatou’s departure is the end of an era in African soccer. The Cameroonian, who took power when Ronald Reagan was still president of the United States, was seeking an eighth term in office.
As the result became apparent, Ahmad’s campaign manager shouted out “We won!”
The campaign manager, Zimbabwe Football Association president Phillip Chiyangwa, predicted that Ahmad had won over 35 national federations to his cause, a credible claim in the end. Chiyangwa also fiercely criticized Hayatou in the run-up to the election, saying he was too old and had led CAF for too long.
“This was coming. He [Hayatou] knew it was coming,” Chiyangwa said following Ahmad’s victory.
Underlining his complete control over CAF for three decades, Hayatou had only been challenged in a re-election campaign twice before, and he won both of those votes in landslides. He was re-elected unchallenged in 2013 after engineering rule changes that favored his candidacy.
Hayatou served as acting FIFA president following the world body’s 2015 corruption scandal and had been touted as a possible candidate for the head of FIFA. He eventually decided not to stand.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino was present for CAF’s general assembly, and raised speculation that he was backing Hayatou’s challenger when he appeared at a party hosted by Chiyangwa last month.
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UK Grants 1st License to Make Babies Using DNA From 3 People
Britain’s Newcastle University says its scientists have received a license to create babies using DNA from three people, the first time such approval has been granted.
The license was granted by the country’s fertility regulator on Thursday, according to the university.
In December, British officials approved the “cautious use” of the techniques, which are intended to prevent women from passing on fatal genetic diseases to their children. The new procedures fix problems linked to mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell’s nucleus. Faulty mitochondria can result in conditions including muscular dystrophy and major organ failure.
Last year, U.S.-based doctors announced they had created the world’s first baby using such techniques, after traveling to Mexico to perform the methods, which have not been approved in the United States.
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Author Examines Adoption, Mother-Daughter Ties in Latest Novel
Expanding ties between China and the United States form the backdrop of Lisa See’s latest novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, a book about China’s growing prosperity, cross-cultural adoption and, the author says, the enduring bond between mothers and daughters.
See chronicled the Chinese experience in California in a 1995 book, On Gold Mountain, and she says the West Coast state remains a cultural crossroads. It is also the source of ideas for fictional stories like that in her new novel.
“My husband and I were walking to the movies,” See said, “and we saw ahead of us an older white couple with their teenaged Chinese adopted daughter walking between them.”
The image of a carefree family, with the daughter’s long pony tail swaying back and forth, would lead to a tale of inter-cultural adoption amid growing commercial ties between the United States and China.
See is the author of such best-selling novels as Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Shanghai Girls.
Precise research
Her books are all based on on-the-ground research. A tea-tasting demonstration in the United States would inspire her to visit Yunnan Province, China, a tea-growing region near the Burmese border, which also led to the writing of this novel.
“They have more varieties of plant life in that one province of China than all together in the rest of the northern hemisphere,” she said. “They have more species of animals in that one province of China, which is only 4 percent of China’s overall land mass.”
The biodiversity also applies to human beings: Yunnan is home of half of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, and includes a tea-growing hill tribe called the Akha. See met an Akha family whose daughter collected stories from village elders, and the writer was fascinated.
“She just told us these unbelievable stories about her family, about the neighbors, about her own experience,” See said. By the end of one day, she knew that she wanted to write about the Akha.
Not ‘precious enough’
See’s novel concerns an Akha woman named Li-yan who gives birth to a daughter out of wedlock. Defying a local custom that calls for the child’s death, she takes the infant to an orphanage, and the girl, renamed Haley, is adopted and raised by an American family. Over time, Haley questions her identity, as do the real-life adoptees that See met in her research.
“There was one girl who summed it up for me when she said, ‘I know I’m lucky and I know my parents love me and I know I’m the most precious person in our family, but I wasn’t precious enough for my birth parents to keep.’”
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane explores this tension as the story unfolds in both America and China, where Haley’s birth mother rides a wave of prosperity when Chinese products, including a rare local tea, find a worldwide market.
The separate paths of mother and daughter bring both to Los Angeles, where See says she is inspired in her writing by her own family connections and her partial Chinese background.
“I have red hair and freckles,” she said, “but I actually grew up in a very large Chinese American family here in Los Angeles. I have about 400 relatives here,” she said, “about a dozen that look like me. The majority are still full Chinese.”
See’s books tell the stories of Chinese and Chinese Americans, and her fiction focuses on women. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane follows these themes as it looks at changes that prosperity has brought to one ethnic community in China.
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No Better Time to Be an Entrepreneur, Says Key Investor
Under the Trump administration, there will likely be challenges for the U.S. tech industry when it comes to attracting foreign talent.
But it’s never been a better time to start a company, said Dave McClure, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
“The general trend for start-ups under Trump or anyone else is still fantastic,” according to McClure, who was interviewed on stage this week at South by Southwest, the tech, music, gaming and film conference and festival in Austin, Texas.
McClure is a founding partner of 500 Startups, a global venture capital seed fund firm. Since its inception in 2010, the firm has invested in more than 1,500 technology companies in more than 60 countries.
It also takes investors, start-up founders and Silicon Valley executives on several tours each year – dubbed “Geeks on a Plane” – to burgeoning high-growth technology markets. Its next trip will be later this month to four cities in Africa — Lagos, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
Some aspects of 500 Startups’ work have become more uncertain since President Donald Trump took office, such as whether the firm can bring foreign entrepreneurs to the United States, as it does for its four-month seed program, McClure said. The United States is “shooting ourselves in the head by limiting immigration,” he said.
But when McClure looks out across the world, he sees entrepreneurship as a global phenomenon not relegated just to U.S. tech industry hubs or even hot spots such as China and Western Europe.
One sign of whether a region has the potential to take off is whether there are large investors beyond those offering an entrepreneur initial funding. Another sign is whether there have been successful “exits,” which can be when a company is bought by a larger firm or has a successful public offering.
Some countries might tout their number of entrepreneurs or point to high tech industrial parks as signs of a growing innovation ecosystem. But McClure looks at another measurement – the number of venture capitalists per capita. The United States and China have the most venture capitalist per capita, he said, whereas countries such as Brazil and Mexico have just a handful.
But as the U.S. government helped plant the seeds of Silicon Valley, foreign governments can step in and help a region’s start-up culture take root, he said.“Get that cycle going,” he said. “And that’s what gets the cycle going in other parts of the world.”
As for people interested in investing globally, by all means, write the checks, he said. The key is patience.
“If you are going to do international investing, you have to do it for the long haul,” McClure said. “You need to wait three to five years before it takes off.”
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Report: North Korean Hackers Behind Global Attacks
A North Korean hacking group known as Lazarus was likely behind a recent cyber campaign targeting organizations in 31 countries, following high-profile attacks on Bangladesh Bank, Sony and South Korea, cybersecurity firm Symantec Corp said Wednesday.
Symantec said in a blog that researchers have uncovered four pieces of digital evidence suggesting the Lazarus group was behind the campaign that sought to infect victims with “loader” software used to stage attacks by installing other malicious programs.
“We are reasonably certain” Lazarus was responsible, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said in an interview.
North Korea denies involvement
The North Korean government has denied allegations it was involved in the hacks, which were made by officials in Washington and Seoul, as well as security firms. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
Symantec did not identify targeted organizations and said it did not know if any money had been stolen. Nonetheless, Symantec said the claim was significant because the group used a more sophisticated targeting approach than in previous campaigns.
“This represents a significant escalation of the threat,” said Dan Guido, chief executive of Trail of Bits, which does consulting to banks and the U.S. government.
History of hacks
Lazarus has been blamed for a string of hacks dating back to at least 2009, including last year’s $81 million heist from Bangladesh’s central bank, the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment that crippled its network for weeks and a long-running campaign against organizations in South Korea.
Guido, who reviewed Symantec’s finding, said that it was troubling to see a hacking group focus on attacking banks using increasingly sophisticated techniques.
“This is a dangerous development,” he said.
Symantec, which has one of the world’s largest teams of malware researchers, regularly analyzes emerging cyberthreats to help defend businesses, governments and consumers that use its security products.
Latest attacks surfaced in Poland
The firm analyzed the hacking campaign last month when news surfaced that Polish banks had been infected with malware. At the time, Symantec said it had weak evidence to blame Lazarus.
Reuters has been unable to ascertain what happened in that attack. Poland’s biggest bank lobbying group, ZBP, in February said the sector was targeted in a cyberattack but did not provide further details. Government authorities declined comment on the incident.
Authorities in Poland could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Symantec said the latest campaign was launched by infecting websites that intended victims were likely to visit, which is known as a “watering hole” attack.
The malware was programmed to only infect visitors whose IP address showed they were from 104 specific organizations in 31 countries, according to Symantec. The largest number were in Poland, followed by the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Chile.
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Malawi Announces It Will Pull Out of International Football Competitions
Malawi’s football governing body, the Football Association of Malawi, or FAM, says it is pulling out of the 2018 African Nations Championship, as well as the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations because of lack of funds.
The announcement this week came after the Malawi government turned down FAM’s request to employ a foreign coach and provide funds for the national football team to prepare for the two international competitions.
The Malawi government rejected the football governing body’s proposals soon after parliament’s midterm budget review cited a reduced allocation to the Ministry of Sports, from $3 million to $1 million.
“They are looking for the government to sponsor the hiring of an expatriate coach who will be costing the government $14,000 every month for the next three years,” Henry Mussa, the Minister of Sports, told VOA. “So we simply said, ‘No, currently let’s continue with our professional local coaches we do have.'”
But FAM officials said in a statement they expected the expatriate coach to drill the current crop of players to international levels for a better team performance. They also said the expatriate coach would mentor local coaches so that they can take over the team at the end of his contract.
Charles Nyirenda, a sports analyst and former General Secretary of Football Association of Malawi, told VOA that foreign coaches have never changed anything about Malawi’s football.
“We have had several foreign coaches here who have flopped,” he said. “Malawi’s best-ever results at continental level were a bronze medal in All African Games in 1987. At that time, it was Mathews Mwenda [a local coach] who got us to that level and we have never performed that good ever since.”
Malawi would face a fine from the Confederation of African Football for withdrawing from the continental games, according to Nyirenda.
“You can’t come in, and then go out,” he said. “They fine you and also they put a period of two to three years’ suspension, which is the lost time in terms of the development of the game. And the rest of the world will laugh at us.”
Local freelance sports journalist Patrick Lunda disagreed, saying withdrawal was the only way for FAM to make government authorities listen.
“It’s a good move because these competitions are very costly and involving,” he said. “They need to travel, they need allowances, preparations; if they are not sure for funding from government, what’s the point of participation.”
Sports minister Mussa says the government has yet to make its final decision on the matter.
“Look, the withdraw is not due yet,” he said. “It is only at the end of March. The other one is sometime in April. As a parent ministry, I have requested for a second round of discussions [with FAM officials] earmarked for Friday, this week.”
FAM’s president and the general secretary were reportedly outside the country. Its vice president, James Mwenda, told VOA he cannot comment on anything unless delegated.
“I am not mandated to speak,” Mwenda said.
Malawians hope government will reconsider its decision and meet FAM’s requests for the betterment of football in the country.
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