New research published this week in the journal Brain suggests that the lack of quality sleep could raise your chances of contracting Alzheimer’s disease. And the Centers for Disease Control reports that more than 30 percent of Americans do not get enough sleep. That problem is creating a whole new tech market promising ways to get some sleep. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Month: July 2017
The World Health Organization says that there are over 350 million people worldwide who suffer or have suffered from depression. They classify it as the leading cause of disability around the globe. There are all kinds of therapies, and a lot of drugs, designed to provide relief to people who suffer. One new therapy uses magnets, and seems to work. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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President Donald Trump has personally intervened to allow a team of Afghan women students into the United States for a major global robotics competition, VOA has learned.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul had denied visas for the girls earlier this month, for unknown reasons.
However, VOA’s White House bureau chief, Steve Herman, reported Wednesday that Trump granted the girls what is known as a parole — reversing the earlier decision to bar them from the U.S. — that will allow them to come to Washington for 20 days.
A student team from Gambia also was granted visas last week after initially being rejected.
Former lawmaker behind contest
The president of FIRST Global, which organized the robotics competition, is former Democratic congressman and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Joe Sestak.
“I truly believe our greatest power is the power to convene nations to bring people together in pursuit of a common goal and prove that our similarities greatly outweigh our differences,” Sestak said.
He thanked the White House and the State Department for clearing the obstacles to the Afghan and Gambian students’ travel to the U.S. Teams from all 157 countries that have entered the competition now will be taking part, he added.
Event is held yearly
The three-day robotics competition begins Sunday in Washington.
FIRST Global Challenge holds the yearly contest to build up interest in science, technology, engineering and math across the world.
The group says the focus of the competition is finding solutions to problems in such fields as water, energy, medicine and food production.
Steve Herman contributed to this report
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Working 50 meters (164 feet) under ground with minimal air supply, Uuganbaatar is one of thousands of Mongolians trying to make a living digging for coal.
Although the mining season does not begin until autumn, when the ground freezes and work is safer, the 31-year-old and his colleagues are seeking to gain a head start by digging a shaft in Nalaikh, one of the nine districts of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, in late June.
But their mine could soon be shut by the government, which has launched an unprecedented crackdown on sites that don’t meet safety standards.
That would mean even fewer opportunities for Mongolia’s individual prospectors, who have already been hit hard by the privatization of mines previously open to all.
Miners such as Uuganbaatar dig for coal under loose arrangements with local unions and private companies.
“Things seem really tough for private miners now,” said Uuganbaatar, who, like many Mongolians, goes by one name. “All the licenses have been bought up by influential big shots. Whenever you start to dig somewhere, someone shows up and chases us away. It’s impossible to find a place or mine to dig in.”
A weak economy and particularly harsh winters drove herdsman from across Mongolia to Nalaikh’s private mines in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The district, with a population of nearly 30,000, was home to Mongolia’s first state mining company, which collapsed in the 1990s in the midst of a post-communist economic crisis. The firm’s dilapidated buildings dot the landscape.
With the economy slowing again after a commodities boom earlier in the decade, authorities fear more people could be tempted down the mines.
“More mines will probably be shut down,” said Byambadorj, a woman who ran two private mine shafts with her husband for 13 years until the government closed them in June.
“In Nalaikh, life revolves around mining, and mining is the main means to support our lives,” she says, insisting that her mines were operating according to the safety standards.
The government had tried to get companies to improve safety by issuing licenses. An official said nine companies had been granted licenses, but not all had met the standards.
“People were working in shafts with no air supply,” said S. Battulga, an official whose department is responsible for reviewing mining licenses across the country.
“Therefore, it was requested that the private mining licenses in Nalaikh be cancelled” on health and safety grounds, he added.
Nalaikh authorities would like people to switch from mining to work in brick factories, but no one seems keen to switch despite the danger.
In the past 25 years, the government has recorded 234 fatalities in Nalaikh’s coal mines, although residents say the real number is hundreds higher.
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Spanish companies will commit millions of pounds of investment to Britain on Thursday, the British government said, as it seeks to limit the economic impact of leaving the European Union.
The investment plans, which include building trains and trams in Britain, coincide with a three-day state visit to Britain by Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia.
King Felipe and British trade minister Liam Fox are due to address a U.K.-Spain business forum in London on Thursday, before the Spanish monarch holds bilateral talks with Prime Minister Theresa May at her Downing Street residence.
Britain said the investments would include Spanish manufacturer CAF committing 30 million pounds ($39 million) to build trains and trams at a new factory in Wales, creating 300 jobs, and Spanish infrastructure company Sacyr unveiling plans for a new office in London.
Bilateral trade strong
Bilateral trade between the two countries was worth 40 billion pounds in 2015, and more than 400 Spanish companies are registered in Britain, the government said.
“The sheer scale of Spanish investment in Britain demonstrates Spain’s continued confidence in the strength of the UK economy, and shows that we can and will maintain the closest possible relationship,” May said in a statement.
The government also highlighted more than 100 million pounds which is being invested in the expansion of Luton Airport, majority owned Spanish airport operator AENA, and the construction of a 26 million pound factory in the West Midlands by Spanish steel producer Gonvarri Steel Services.
Gibraltar remains issue
Away from the financial deals, the Spanish royal visit comes amid tensions over the post-Brexit future of the British territory of Gibraltar, which Spain wants back.
The future of Gibraltar, a rock on the southern tip of Spain captured by Britain in 1704, and its 30,000 inhabitants, is set to be a major point of contention in the Brexit talks.
During an address to members of both houses of parliament in London on Wednesday, Felipe said he was confident that Spain and Britain could work towards an acceptable arrangement over Gibraltar.
May to meet with King Felipe
The EU and Britain have also yet to agree on guarantees for EU citizens living in the UK and British expats living in other EU countries. More than 300,000 Britons live in Spain, while more than 130,000 Spaniards live in Britain.
On Wednesday, Felipe said these citizens had “a legitimate expectation of decent and stable living conditions” and urged the British and Spanish governments to work to ensure the Brexit agreement provided sufficient assurance and certainty.
May’s office said that during her talks with Felipe she would welcome the contribution that Spanish citizens make to Britain’s economy and society.
Silicon Valley is reeling over a decision this week by the Trump administration to delay and most likely kill a new avenue for entrepreneurs to come to the U.S.
The International Entrepreneurship Rule, which the Obama administration set in motion, was supposed to go into effect this month.
It would have allowed entry into the U.S. of as many as 3,000 foreign entrepreneurs annually for 30-month stays. To qualify, applicants would have to show they would create U.S. jobs and had reputable sources ready to invest $250,000 in their businesses.
This week, the Trump administration said it was delaying the implementation of the rule until March 2018 with the expectation that it would be rescinded.
Even though the administration’s decision was widely anticipated, it still came as a blow to the tech industry.
‘Clearly a mistake’
Silicon Valley leaders frequently tout immigrant founders as key to the region’s success. Many hoped that President Donald Trump, who spoke about finding ways to attract high-skilled talent to the U.S. as a candidate, would allow the Obama-era rule to be implemented.
“This is clearly a mistake,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a tech-industry-backed group focused on immigration reform. He said more than 300,000 jobs would have been created by the program. The rule would have been “an economic win-win-win,” he said.
Some tech executives argue that the entrepreneurship rule would have given the U.S. a boost at a critical time. Silicon Valley has to compete with other regions around the world that are building strong digital economies, they say, and it may one day lose its spot as the top global tech draw. Countries such as Canada and France currently offer special avenues for entrepreneurs.
“If we don’t encourage entrepreneurs to come here from around the globe, they’ll go elsewhere,” said Kate Mitchell, a venture capitalist and past chair of the National Venture Capital Association. “That may be a benefit to the rest of the globe. But it will be a loss to Silicon Valley where there happens to be a special mix between capital and risk taking and understanding what it takes to build great companies.”
Canada has been actively recruiting U.S. tech talent. Last year, it launched a “Go North” campaign with events in San Francisco and Seattle. Last week, the Ottawa government enacted a new visa program that allows companies to bring foreign workers to the country within two weeks.
Critics of the U.S. rule say that Washington should create a legitimate avenue for foreign-born entrepreneurs and not rely on an exception that effectively grants newcomers “parole” from formally entering the U.S., a route that would not lead to citizenship.
In its filing, the administration said it needed to reconcile the entrepreneurship rule with a January executive order that spells out how the Department of Homeland Security can grant parole only on “a case-by-case basis” and only when “an individual demonstrates urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit derived from such parole.”
“The International Entrepreneur Rule has sometimes been referred to as an entrepreneur visa or startup visa, which is inaccurate,” said a spokesman with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Only Congress can create a new visa program, and it has not done so.”
‘We can do better’
Russell Harrison, director of government relations at IEEE-USA, a group that represents American tech workers, said he “sheds no tears with the demise of the rule.”
But Harrison added that the administration should do something to help entrepreneurs get to the United States.
“We have to let them into the country as citizens, not as parolees,” he said. “If we are counting on these people to create jobs for hundreds of Americans, we can do better than that.”
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Researchers have developed a blood test that could help with the early detection of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease.
Doctors usually are unable to diagnose cancer of the pancreas until it is too late. Most patients die within a year.
The new test uses stem cell technology to look for markers in the blood of people who, because of diabetes or family history, are more likely to develop pancreatic cancer.
Scientists took late-stage cancer cells from a patient and used technology to genetically regress those cells to a stem cell state.
They were able to return those cells to an early cancerous state and find what are called biomarkers in the blood to detect the disease early enough for treatment.
The researchers say the new test has an 87 percent accuracy rate in identifying someone with stage 1 or 2 pancreatic cancer, and a 98 percent rate in ruling out the disease in those who are not sick.
The study appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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It’s nearly midday at the bustling Tegeta bus terminal in Tanzania’s biggest city and Olivia Mbiku is busy preparing ugali – a popular maize meal – beef stew and vegetables for her customers.
“I wake up early, light up the fire and rush to the market to buy meat, cooking oil, tomatoes and everything I need for the day,” said the 25-year-old mother of two.
Shrouded in a cloud of smoke, and with a traditional colorful ‘khanga’ tied round her waist, Mbiku takes some maize flour from a sachet and sprinkles it into boiling water while briskly stirring with a stick to make it stiff.
“I cook ugali every day because most of my customers like it,” Mbiku told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It’s not a lucrative business, but I get enough to feed my family.”
Mbiku is among dozens of food vendors trying to earn a living amid the hubbub of the Dar es Salaam bus terminal, where conductors hoot and yell to attract customers.
She works eight hours and day, earning around 45,000 shillings ($20) to supplement her husband’s income as a mason.
But unlike licensed hawkers who work from rows of wooden stalls, Mbiku cooks in the open air and is often harassed by the city militias for selling food without the proper papers.
“They often seize my cooking pots and sometimes lock me up. I have to pay some money to be released and get my stuff back,” she said.
Mbiku and other women with unlicensed businesses finally have a glimmer of hope after the Tanzanian government last month announced it would recognize them as part of its broader policy of empowering women.
Maria Ezekiel, 31, who has a stall serving chicken soup, chapati and tea along the busy Bagamoyo highway each morning, said the move to formalize micro-enterprises like hers was an important milestone for small-scale entrepreneurs.
A license would allow her to apply for credit to upgrade her business, she said.
“I think it’s a very good opportunity for me. As soon as the identity cards are issued I will start processing my bank loan,” Ezekiel told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I want to borrow at least 500,000 shillings ($225) to modernize my cooking business.”
The roadside chef wants to buy better equipment and switch to a gas stove to replace the smoky firewood she now cooks on.
Unprotected
Operating in the informal sector leaves women without protection and unable to access credit, experts say.
“Urban food vending may be a good tool for creating livelihood security for the urban poor, but to achieve this there has to be better policy initiatives,” said Haji Semboja, economics professor at the University of Dar es Salaam.
Presenting the annual budget in June, Tanzania’s finance minister, Philip Mpango, said all food vendors – most of whom are women – would be brought into the mainstream sector.
The government would work with regional authorities to identify informal businesses and license them before 2020, he said.
“We will issue identity cards and designate special premises for them,” the minister told parliament.
Margareth Chacha, a banker and former chief executive of Tanzania Women’s Bank that supports small-scale women entrepreneurs, said women are held back because of strict loan conditions imposed by banks.
“Most of the women can’t access the loans because the conditions are too tough,” she said. “But if the government can act as a guarantor, I’m sure the banks will be willing to give loans.”
The benefits of thriving women-led businesses are felt throughout the economy, she said.
Back at Tegeta bus terminal, Olivia Mbiku says she is now hoping for a more stable, prosperous future.
“I would very much like to get a bank loan and start a big catering business,” she said.
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The speaker of Brazil’s lower house vowed Wednesday to fight any changes President Michel Temer makes to a labor reform bill passed by the Senate, highlighting new tension between longtime political allies.
The speaker, Rodrigo Maia, would replace Temer if Congress allows the Supreme Court to move ahead with a corruption charge against the president, a vote that Maia has said he wants to have this week.
The bill, a business-friendly measure modernizing labor laws dating from the 1940s, passed by a wide margin in the Senate on Tuesday following approval in the lower house and will be sent to Temer to be signed into law.
Given that any changes in the Senate would have sent the bill back to the lower house for fresh debate, Temer assured senators Tuesday that he would use a decree to tweak the legislation as they suggested after he signed it into law.
Maia rejected any such arrangement.
“The lower house will not accept any change to the law. Any [presidential decree] will not be recognized by the House,” the speaker said in a Twitter post.
Graft scheme
Prosecutors charged Temer last month in a graft scheme involving JBS SA, the world’s biggest meatpacker. Executives said the president took bribes from the company in exchange for resolving tax matters and facilitating loans from state-run banks.
Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The presidential press office said in a statement that Maia has remained loyal to Temer since becoming speaker last year.
“The presidential palace rebuffs the attempts to create a false crisis between the executive and legislative power without connection to facts and reality,” the statement said.
Under Brazilian law, two-thirds of the lower house of Congress must vote to allow a criminal charge against a sitting president to move to the Supreme Court. The vote could happen Friday or possibly be delayed until early August, after a congressional recess.
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A French court annulled a 1.1 billion-euro ($1.27 billion) tax adjustment imposed on Google by France’s tax authorities, saying Wednesday that the way the California firm operates in France allows it to be exempt from most taxes.
The French tax administration had argued that Google was required to pay taxes in France for 2005-2010 because the American company and its Irish subsidiary sold a service for inserting online ads to clients in France through its Google search engine.
But the Paris administrative court ruled that Google Ireland Limited doesn’t have a “permanent establishment” in France via the French company Google France, another subsidiary of California-based Google Inc.
The court added that Google France doesn’t have the human resources or the technical means to allow it to carry out the contentious advertising services on its own.
The French government can appeal the decision.
Ireland gives Google tax advantage
Google has minimized its tax bill in France and other European countries by keeping its headquarters in Ireland, where rates are lower. The strategy has helped Google boost its profits and stock price.
In their ruling, the judges noted that the ads ordered by French clients could not be put online by the employees of Google France themselves because any ad orders ultimately needed approval from Google Ireland Limited.
During a hearing in the tax case last month, an independent magistrate proposed that the most fitting solution for the dispute was wiping out, but pointed to the “shortcomings of the current legal basis.”
Others countries have issues
France is not the only European country where Google has been at odds with national tax authorities. The company agreed to pay 306 million euros ($349 million) to settle an ongoing dispute with Italy and 130 million pounds ($167 million) to settle a case in Britain. A U.K. parliamentary committee has said the settlement seemed disproportionately small given the size of the company’s operations in Britain.
Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon — a group of firms known by the acronym GAFA — have been criticized for their tax-optimizing practices.
Wednesday’s ruling comes amid mounting criticism that the tech firms and other major U.S. companies have scrimped on their tax bills through a variety of accounting maneuvers that have rankled governments around the world. Google has said it never broke any laws.
Novartis AG’s pioneering cancer drug won the backing of a federal advisory panel Wednesday, paving the way for the first gene therapy to be approved in the United States.
An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration voted 10-0 that the drug, tisagenlecleucel, should be approved to treat patients with relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of U.S. childhood cancer.
The FDA is not obliged to follow the recommendations of its advisers, but typically does so. The agency is expected to rule on the drug by the end of September.
Approval of tisagenlecleucel would have significant implications not only for Novartis but for companies developing similar treatments, including Kite Pharma Inc, Juno Therapeutics Inc and bluebird bio Inc.
All four are developing chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR-T), which harness the body’s own immune cells to recognize and attack malignant cells.
If approved, the drugs, which are infused just once, are expected to cost up to $500,000 and generate billions of dollars for their developers. Success would also help advance a cancer-fighting technique that scientists have been trying to perfect for decades and lift the broader field of cell therapy.
“In the last five years, there have been a significant number of cell therapy companies that have gone public or gotten investment in hopes of moving this type of therapy forward,” said Reni Benjamin, an analyst at Raymond James. “This is our first glimpse from a commercial and regulatory perspective about how the FDA is thinking about this space.”
A clinical trial of Novartis’ drug showed that 83 percent of patients who had relapsed or failed chemotherapy, achieved complete or partial remission three months post-infusion.
Patients with ALL who fail chemotherapy typically have a 16 to 30 percent chance of survival.
Novartis is also testing the drug in diffuse large b-cell Lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as is Kite. Part of the competitive landscape will include which company is best able to manufacture its product most efficiently and reliably.
The products are made by extracting and isolating a patient’s T cells, genetically engineering them to recognize and target specific cancer cells, and then infusing them back into the patient.
Novartis said the entire process will take 22 days by the time it is launched.
More than half of patients experienced a serious complication known as cytokine release syndrome (CRS), which occurs when the body’s immune system goes into overdrive.
Doctors were able to manage the condition, and the syndrome caused no deaths.
The FDA expressed concern that the drug could cause new malignancies over the long term, but panelists generally felt that risk was low.
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Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet and dozens of other major technology companies protested online on Wednesday against proposed changes to U.S. net neutrality rules that prohibit broadband providers from giving or selling access to certain internet services over others.
In support of the “Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality,” more than 80,000 websites – from big social media platforms like Facebook to streaming services like Netflix and matchmaking website OkCupid — are displaying banners, alerts, ads and short videos to urge the public to oppose the overturn of the landmark 2015 net neutrality rules.
Net neutrality is a broad principle that prohibits broadband providers from giving or selling access to speedy internet, essentially a “fast lane,” to certain internet services over others. The rule was implemented by the Obama administration in 2015.
Changes to the rule are being proposed by the head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commision (FCC), Ajit Pai, appointed by President Donald Trump in January.
Pai wants the commission to repeal the rules that reclassified internet service providers as if they were utilities, saying the open internet rules adopted under former President Barack Obama harm jobs and investment. The FCC voted 2-1 in May to advance a Republican plan to reverse the “net neutrality” order.
During a speech in April, Pai asked: “Do we want the government to control the internet? Or do we want to embrace the light-touch approach” in place since 1996 until it was revised in 2015.
At a Capitol Hill press conference, Democrats and internet companies vowed to fight the changes and suggested internet companies could slow internet speeds. Senator Edward Markey said the internet “is under attack.”
“We will not let this takeover happen,” Markey said. “A free and open internet is our right and we will fight to defend it.”
Major broadband providers, including AT&T and Verizon Communications, acknowledged the public support for net neutrality. They emphasized they are in favor of an “open internet”— but made clear they oppose the 2015 net neutrality reclassification order that they say could lead to government rate regulation.
FCC spokesman Brian Hart declined to comment.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the sole Democrat on a commission with two current vacancies, said in a statement on Wednesday she supports “those who believe that a free and open internet is a foundational principle of our democracy.”
The public will have until mid-August to send comments to the FCC before the final vote.
More than 550,000 comments have been filed in the last day with the FCC and more than 6.3 million filed to date and thousands of people called Capitol Hill offices to express concerns.
Online protest
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the social media platform, “Right now, the FCC has rules in place to make sure the internet continues to be an open platform for everyone. At Facebook, we strongly support those rules.”
Twitter expressed support for the existing rules, encouraging users to protest while promoting the hashtag #NetNeutrality.
“Net Neutrality is foundational to competitive, free enterprise, entrepreneurial market entry — and reaching global customers. You don’t have to be a big shot to compete. Anyone with a great idea, a unique perspective to share, and a compelling vision can get in the game,” Twitter said in a blog.
Online forum Reddit displayed a pop-up message that slowly loads the text, “The internet’s less fun when your favorite sites load slowly, isn’t it?”
Netflix displayed banners on top of the home page while Amazon.com posted a short video explaining net neutrality, urging consumers to send comments to the FCC.
A pop-up banner on The American Civil Liberties Union’s website read: “Trump’s FCC wants to kill net neutrality. This would let the cable and phone companies slow down any site they don’t like or that won’t pay extra.”
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A new report finds more than two billion people lack access to safe drinking water and more than twice that number or 4.5 billion people lack safe sanitation. The report by the World Health Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund is the first global assessment of water, sanitation and hygiene for the Sustainable Development Goals.
The United Nations reports nearly 850,000 people die every year from lack of access to good water, sanitation and hygiene. This includes more than 360,000 children under age five who die from diarrhea and many others from diseases such as cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
The joint report by the World Health Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund finds people living in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are most at risk of disease and death from poor water and sanitation-related sources.
WHO Coordinator for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Bruce Gordon says this report is the first to assess the importance of hygiene to good health. He says many homes, healthcare facilities and schools have no soap and water for handwashing.
“The one figure I would kind of like to emphasize here is that in sub-Saharan Africa, 15 percent of the population only has access to a hand-washing facility with soap and water,” he said. “And, as we know, good hygiene is one of the simplest and most effective ways to stop the spread of disease.”
One of the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals calls for universal and equitable access to safe water and sanitation for all by 2030. UNICEF Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Sanjay Wijesekera says such progress would have a knock-on effect on other development areas.
“For children, access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene not only keeps them alive and healthy, but it gives them a chance to go to school and gain an education. It reduces inequality … and it just gives them a fair start to life,” said Wijesekera.
The SDGs are calling for an end to open defecation, which perpetuates a vicious cycle of disease and poverty. Open defecation is practiced by more than 890 million people, mainly in rural areas, who have no toilet or latrine.
Zambia’s parliament has imposed a 90-day state of emergency, after the president last week declared the need for one. The situation is likely to deepen the political crisis in the country, and analysts say it also could scare away much needed investors to the copper-dependent, landlocked nation.
The president called for the state of emergency after a fire destroyed the capital’s main market earlier this month. He described the fire as an arson attack by “a few unpatriotic citizens” and said, in a speech to the nation, that this and other fires were “premeditated acts, which if left unchecked could have serious socio-economic consequences capable of drawing the country backwards.”
Parliament unanimously passed the measure Tuesday. No opposition lawmakers voted, as 48 of them were suspended last month for boycotting a speech by President Edgar Lungu. Their leader, Hakainde Hichilema, has been in jail since April, facing a treason charge. The few opposition who remained Tuesday boycotted the vote.
Opposition spokesman Charles Kakoma says his opposition United Party for National Development would have voted against the measure, which he says limits citizens’ essential freedoms. Additionally, he says he fears it will scare away visitors.
“People obviously, investors and even tourists will be scared to come to a country that has just declared a threatened state of emergency,” he told VOA. “They are not sure about their investments, and about their safety once they are in Zambia.”
Falling copper prices and an energy crisis had already sent Zambia’s economic growth downward in 2015. That was well before the disputed 2016 poll that pitted Lungu against Hichilema and led to today’s bitter political landscape.
Martyn Davies, managing director of emerging markets and Africa at Deloitte, says local business owners expressed heightened concern to him during his recent visit to Zambia. He notes, though, that Zambia has never quite lived up to its promise.
“The country always had this perennial word which is used for many countries in the region, ‘potential,’” he told VOA from Johannesburg. “The potential doesn’t quite trickle down, didn’t quite result into real strong robust growth and real trickle down economics, i.e. creating a competitive private sector.
“And I think this is something which a small economy — a small, arguably vulnerable economy like Zambia, landlocked as it is, dependent on a single economy source — you have to be stable. You can’t have these sort of swings in policy and fiery political rhetoric. That just undermines the confidence of capital, both domestic and foreign, in your economy,” said Davies.
Analyst Nicole Beardsworth, of the Johannesburg-based Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, notes that parliament enacted Article 31 of the constitution, the milder “Declaration Relating to Threatened Emergency,” instead of Article 30, “Declaration of Public Emergency.” She says the effect is the same, however, and Lungu’s soft-pedaling of the situation could be making things worse.
“He’s trying to play a very dangerous game, which is he is imposing legislation that curbs, or has the potential to curb, the freedoms of Zambians,” she told VOA. “But he is trying to sell it as not being a state of emergency, and not legislation that will curb the freedom of Zambians. I don’t think that anyone really believes him in the statements that he made where he said Zambia is a democracy and people’s rights and freedoms will be respected. Because to be quite honest, his behavior over the last 18 months has proven that to not be the case.”
A spokesman for Zambia’s president told VOA last week that the emergency measure is not intended to curb liberties, but to keep Zambians safe.
Lungu now has three months to apply his new powers to solve the case of the fire that gutted the country’s busiest market and destroyed the livelihoods of some 1,900 traders. Officials have estimated it will take one year and cost $20 million to rebuild.
Scientists say an iceberg the size of Bali has broken away from the continent of Antarctica.
The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, measures 5,800 square kilometers and weighs over one trillion tons, making it one of the biggest on record. It is slightly larger than the Indonesian island of Bali, which has a population of well over 4 million people.
Iceberg calving, when bergs break away from a larger ice sheet, is a natural process, although global warming is believed to have accelerated the trend. This new mass of free-floating ice has been separating from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf for months.
Scientists say there is no immediate impact on global sea levels, but the huge iceberg is a risk to ships in the area. The extreme south Atlantic is outside major maritime trade routs, but Antarctica is is a popular destination for cruise ships, most of them traveling from South America.
The Larsen C ice shelf is still attached to land, but already largely afloat off the coast of northwestern Antarctica. It is one in a series of three connected formations that grew out from the Antarctic mainland over tens of thousands of years.
Larsen A, the most northern and smallest of the three segments, broke free of the mainland in 1995. The Larsen B Ice Shelf, somewhat larger at about 3,200 square km, with an average ice thickness of 220 meters, disintegrated into the sea in 2002.
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Iraq says it will offer new oil and gas exploration rights as it looks to boost energy revenues to fund its war against the Islamic State group and shore up its finances amid low oil prices.
Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said late Tuesday that his ministry plans to put nine border exploration blocks up for bidding by international energy companies. Five are shared with Iran, three with Kuwait and one is in the Persian Gulf.
He did not provide a timetable.
Iraq has the world’s fourth largest oil reserves. This year, it added 10 billion barrels, bringing its total reserves up to 153.1 billion. Low oil prices have taken a heavy toll, as some 95 percent of the country’s revenues come from the energy sector.
When Janet Yellen delivers her testimony on the Federal Reserve’s semiannual report to Congress on Wednesday, investors may listen as much for clues to her own future – and the Fed’s – as they will to what she says about interest rate policy.
The Fed chair is likely to repeat a message she has been sending about rates: That further gradual increases will follow the three rate hikes the Fed has made since December. She is expected to say that even though inflation has slowed further below the Fed’s target level, the job market appears healthy enough to justify slightly higher borrowing costs.
But lawmakers may prod Yellen about her own plans and about the potential reshaping of the Fed itself resulting from a forthcoming influx of new board members selected by President Donald Trump. During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump was critical of the central bank for its low-rate policies, which he said were helping Democrats, and for its efforts to enact tougher regulations on banks in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
On Monday, the administration announced that it had chosen Randal Quarles, a Treasury Department official under two Republican presidents, to serve as vice chairman for supervision, the Fed’s top bank regulatory post.
Including the post Quarles would fill, the Fed has three vacancies on the seven-member board. Trump has yet to announce his other choices, though at least one person – Marvin Goodfriend, an economist, a former staffer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and now a professor at Carnegie Mellon University – is considered a leading candidate for one of the spots. All of Trump’s nominations will require Senate approval.
Yellen so far has deflected questions about whether she would accept a second four-term term as chairman if Trump asked her to remain after her term ends in February. But lawmakers may try to glean some insight into her own wishes and about how the Fed could potentially change under the influence of Trump’s nominees.
On Wednesday, Yellen will address the House Financial Services Committee and on Thursday the Senate Banking Committee. She will be testifying on the Fed’s Monetary Policy Report, with one wrinkle this time: For the first time, the Fed released the report five days before Yellen’s testimony. In the past, the two had occurred the same day.
The central bank explained the change by saying Fed officials wanted to give lawmakers more time to review the semiannual monetary report before Yellen addressed questions about it.
The report said the Fed “expects that the ongoing strength of the economy will warrant gradual increases in the federal funds rate,” referring to its benchmark short-term rate.
The Fed had slashed that rate to a record low near zero in December 2008 to combat the worst economic downturn since the 1930s – and kept it there for seven years until nudging it up modestly in December 2015. It then left the rate unchanged for another year until raising it again in December of last year, followed by increases in March and June this year. Even so, the rate remains in a still-low range between 1 percent and 1.25 percent.
The Fed’s report noted that officials had affirmed at their June meeting that they foresee a total of three rate increases in 2017, if the economy performs as they expect. If so, that would mean one additional increase before year’s end. The Fed also expects to raise rates three times in 2018 if economic conditions evolve as they expect.
This week, Yellen will surely face questions about sticking to that pace, given that while job growth has been solid, inflation has slowed this year rather than edging closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target.
In a speech Tuesday, Lael Brainard, a Fed board member who has often argued for a go-slow approach to rate hikes, said she wanted to “monitor inflation developments carefully and to move cautiously on further increases” in the Fed’s key rate.
Brainard suggested that she would support a move soon to begin paring the Fed’s $4.5 trillion balance sheet, which swelled to five times its previous size after the Fed bought Treasury and mortgage bonds to hold down long-term borrowing rates in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
At its June meeting, the Fed signaled that it could begin shrinking its balance sheet later this year, a step that could put gradual upward pressure on longer-term rates for such items as home mortgages.
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Environmentalists promote solar energy as an option to reduce pollution, but in places without a central electricity supply solar panels can be a practical solution. They are frequently used by nomads moving through the desert, and people living in remote villages. In recent years solar panels have come to serve as a source of energy in places affected by war and conflict. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports solar panels are now a common sight in villages across Syria.
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Not all the action now underway at Wimbledon is on the tennis court. In back rooms on the tournament site, technology is taking the matches to a whole new level. It offers the most immersive view to tennis fans, whether they are in the stands, or following the play on screens around the world. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe.
The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years.
Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe.
However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180.
Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well.
U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe.
“We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December 2019 deadline. … If even more are found to be defective, it will take us from being the biggest recall ever to something that could become mind-boggling,” Nelson said.
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Three years ago, at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigerian soldiers stopped all fishing activities in the country’s section of Lake Chad. Militants had infiltrated the ranks of the fishermen, the army said, and were using the guise to fund arms purchases and launch surprise attacks on innocent people.
The local fishermen’s union said it understood the army’s actions but pushed for an easing of the ban, because its members had no other way to earn a living in the largely dry and remote area.
Relief came to the local fishermen over the weekend, when the Nigerian Army commander in charge of the area, Major General Ibrahimn Attahiru, addressed the fishermen and said they could return to work based on some guidelines the army had reached with their leaders.
Fishermen support changes
The president of the Lake Chad Fishermen Association, Alhaji Abubakar Gamande, confirmed the development in an interview Monday with VOA’s Hausa Service and pledged that fishermen will follow the new rules.
“Based on what happened in the past, we will not continue to operate as we used to, where everyone did as he deemed fit,” he said. “We and the army will watch the activities of the fishermen and anyone whose work requires entering the lake. We will not let him operate as he wishes. We will screen all our members. We have to know where they are coming from and where they are going.”
In normal times, the fishermen can still make a decent living off Lake Chad despite the lake’s radical shrinkage over the past 50 years, which scientists believe is a result of overuse and shifting rainfall patterns brought on by climate change.
Local authorities back in control
But Boko Haram’s takeover of northeastern Nigeria severely disrupted a fishing industry that draws traders from Nigeria’s Lake Chad neighbors Chad, Cameroon and Niger and enables many locals to support themselves. By early 2015, the well-armed militants had seized effective control of the areas along the lake, and there was little the fishermen could do to stop Boko Haram activity.
Local authorities are now back in control, following a 30-month regional offensive by the army and a multi-national task force that includes soldiers from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin.
Gamande was full of praise for the army, which he said has worked tirelessly to restore peace to the area.
Quiet on new rules
Asked how the new rules will prevent Boko Haram activity, the union leader said he cannot reveal all the details for security reasons.
“On our own part as a union we have laid down guidelines that enable us to know who comes for fishing, those who buy, and those who come to sell,” Gamande said.
“We will do all we can to ensure that what happened in the past will never happen again. Enough is enough.”
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Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced a new line of microprocessors for data centers, setting up a battle with Advanced Micro Devices and others for the lucrative business of supplying the chips that power cloud computing.
The new Xeon Scalable Processor chips provide far greater support for next-generation computing applications such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars, said Naveen Rao, vice president of Intel’s artificial intelligence products group, in an interview with Reuters.
The chips are aimed at companies including Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com and others that operate data centers with thousands of computers, both to power their own services and to provide computing horsepower for customers who don’t want to own and maintain their own computer systems.
Google Cloud Platform was the first data center to adopt the new Intel processors. Paul Nash, project manager for Google Compute Engine, called the deal an “expansion and deepening of our partnership” with Intel.
But Intel will face stiff competition from historic rival AMD, which recently launched its own next-generation data center processor.
The big Internet companies are also doing more of their own hardware design and experimenting with chips based on technology from ARM Holdings and others, partly as a way of pushing Intel to keep prices in line.
Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner, said the new Intel processor is a step up from its previous generation with better power efficiency, improvement on artificial intelligence workload and more advanced storage.
Reynolds noted that the biggest risk for Intel may be its dependence on a relatively small number of big data center operators.
“The challenge now is so much of our their work is going to these big internet guys,” he said, and thus demand for chips is subject to how successful the companies are in the fierce battle for customers who are moving their computing to the cloud.
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Donor countries at a London summit pledged Tuesday to increase funding for family planning, but proposed cuts to family planning programs by the U.S. government overshadowed the conference.
The largest boost in donations announced at the Family Planning Summit came from the U.S.-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sought to improve women’s access to contraceptives.
“The $375 million that the foundation announced today, that is absolutely not a reaction to President [Donald] Trump,” Melinda Gates said. “There is not anything anyone can do to fill the bucket of the money that the U.S. has committed to family planning.”
The United States is by far the biggest donor to global family planning programs, giving $600 million this year. But Trump announced in April that he planned to withdraw financial support for the U.N. Population Fund, accusing it of using what he called “coercive” family planning practices, including providing abortions. The United Nations strongly rejected the claims.
Nigeria’s minister of health, Isaac Adewole, told VOA the cuts would have an impact.
“Every country in the developing world will be worried, because it really signifies an increase in the [funding] gap,” he said. “We know family planning is one of the strongest anti-poverty strategies the world has ever known. It is a low-hanging fruit for reducing maternal mortality. It will contribute to shared prosperity.”
Call for action
By 2050, Nigeria is on course to be the third most populous country, with more than 400 million people. Nigeria’s minister of budget and national planning, Zainab S. Ahmed, said action was needed fast.
“Our economy cannot grow fast enough to be able to sustain that size of population,” Ahmed said, “so it is a very significant challenge and we need to address it now.”
Nigeria is budgeting $3 million for family planning programs in 2017 and says more is needed. Ministers say reaching young people is key.
The African MTV drama “Shuga” weaves messages around sexual health, contraception and HIV, and it reaches an estimated 720 million people. It’s currently partly funded by the U.S. government.
Georgia Arnold, executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, said, “It is much harder for governments and organizations to be able to speak openly about sex. That is where we come in. We can use our brand. We can use our access to young people and all of the media platforms that they use.”
Delegates expressed hope that partnering between the private sector and governments can provide improved access to contraceptives and family planning advice.
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The Trump administration on Tuesday removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from two lists of approved vendors used by government agencies to purchase technology equipment, amid concerns the cybersecurity firm’s products could be used by the Kremlin to gain entry into U.S. networks.
The delisting represents the most concrete action taken against Kaspersky following months of mounting suspicion among intelligence officials and lawmakers that the company may be too closely connected to hostile Russian intelligence agencies accused of cyberattacks on the United States.
Kaspersky products have been removed from the U.S. General Services Administration’s list of vendors for contracts that cover information technology services and digital photographic equipment, an agency spokeswoman said in a statement.
The action was taken “after review and careful consideration,” the spokeswoman said, adding that GSA’s priorities “are to ensure the integrity and security of U.S. government systems and networks.”
Government agencies will still be able to use Kaspersky products purchased separate from the GSA contract process.
Kaspersky’s anti-virus software is popular in the United States and around the world, and the firm has been a leading player in the cybersecurity market for decades.
In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said it had not received any updates from GSA or any other U.S. government agency regarding its vendor status.
“Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts,” the company said.
It added that it had been “caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight where each side is attempting to use the company as a pawn in their political game.”
The delisting was done the same day that ABC News reported the Trump administration was considering implementing a broader ban that would block agencies from using Kaspersky software.
Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a defense spending policy bill that would ban Kaspersky products from use in the military.
The move came a day after the FBI interviewed several of the company’s U.S. employees at their private homes as part of a counterintelligence investigation into its operations.
In May, senior U.S. intelligence officials said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that they were reviewing government use of software from Kaspersky Lab.
Lawmakers raised concerns that Moscow might use the firm’s products to attack American computer networks, a particularly sensitive issue given allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked and leaked emails of Democratic Party political groups to interfere in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Russia denies the allegations.
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