The rapid expansion of North Korea’s missile technology has puzzled many around the world. How does a country whose citizens are often on the brink of starvation develop technology for building sophisticated systems like ballistic missiles? VOA’s George Putic explains.
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Month: October 2017
Efforts are underway to modernize Kenya’s agriculture sector after a significant drop in farmers’ earnings last year. Drought and an invasive insect known as fall armyworm played a big role. But poor seed varieties and a lack of equipment, like tractors, are also persistent problems. Lenny Ruvaga reports for VOA.
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Almost the entire cohort of chicks from an Adelie penguin colony in the eastern Antarctic was wiped out by starvation last summer in what scientists say is only the second such incident in over 40 years.
Researchers said Sunday the mass die-off occurred because unusually large amounts of sea ice forced penguin parents to travel farther in search of food for their young. By the time they returned, only two out of thousands of chicks had survived.
“Not only did the chick starve but the partner [who stayed behind] also had to endure a long fast,” said Yan Ropert-Coudert, a marine ecologist with the French science agency CNRS.
Ropert-Coudert, who leads the study of seabirds at the Dumont D’Urville Antarctic research station, said the Adelie colony there numbers about 18,000 pairs who have been monitored since the 1960s. A similar breeding loss was observed for the first time in the 2013/2014.
“It is unusual because of the size of the population concerned,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “Zero breeding success years have been noted before elsewhere, but never for colonies of this size.”
Sea ice extent in the polar regions varies each year, but climate change has made the fluctuation more extreme.
The environmental group WWF, which supported the research, urged governments meeting in Hobart, Australia, this week to approve a new marine protection area off East Antarctica. Rod Downie, head of polar programs for the group’s British branch, said the impact of losing thousands of chicks was dramatic for an otherwise hardy species such as Adelie penguins.
“It’s more like ‘Tarantino does Happy Feet,’ with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adelie Land,” he said.
Ropert-Coudert said creating a protection zone in the D’Urville Sea-Mertz region, where the colony is located, wouldn’t prevent larger-than-usual sea ice, but it might ease the pressure on penguins from tourism and over-fishing.
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After 50 years of sitting in the National Geographic archives, 100 hours of footage on Jane Goodall and her groundbreaking observations of chimpanzees in the African forest of Tanzania have been compiled into a documentary film.
The documentary titled “Jane” starts in 1960 when Jane Goodall was 26 years old.
WATCH: Video Report by Elizabeth Lee
Through interviews with Goodall and National Geographic footage, the film documents Goodall’s early years, as a woman with no university degree, working in a remote part of Tanzania. The film portrays her work and personal life. Her unconventional ways of observing chimps challenged the scientific community’s belief on what it means to be human.
“More than any other documentary that has been made, it does take me back to the actual feeling I had when I was out there in the forest and so it’s very moving,” Goodall said at a screening of the film in Los Angeles.
The music in the documentary was composed by Philip Glass. When Goodall saw the film with the music, she described it as “magical.”
The moment in the documentary that especially moved Glass was when Goodall was sitting with chimpanzees who had accepted her.
“The very intimacy when she is sitting with them [chimps] and they’re like children to her. She’s combing their hair and she talks with them and they’ve accepted her totally,” Glass said.
Goodall remembered her unique relationship with the chimps.
“It’s not quite family but, it’s not quite like friends, but I’m part of their lives. They accept me. I can watch what they do. In the time of the movie, we had a really close touching relationship, which we don’t have anymore,” Goodall said.
With that close relationship, Goodall made headlines by discovering that chimpanzees are intelligent, social animals who used tools to gather food, something the scientific community at the time, believed only humans could do.
When asked whether she would have done anything differently in her research, Goodall said, “Everything worked out perfectly. Were mistakes made? Of course, but one learns from mistakes, and so I wouldn’t have changed anything really.”
Jane features the footage of National Geographic filmmaker Hugo van Lawick, Goodall’s first husband.
“Going through 100 hours of Hugo Van Lawick‘s footage is a dream. You know, Hugo’s one of the greatest wildlife cinematographers in the history of filmmaking,” director Brett Morgen said.
At the Los Angeles screening, Hollywood actor Jamie Lee Curtis described why she is in awe of Goodall.
“She has just, by doing what she loves, has brought us all along on the journey and that’s a message if anything. Be uncompromising in your vision, uncompromising in your attack and attitude of what it is that you do,” Curtis said.
Even in present day, Goodall continues to travel and speak about protecting chimpanzees and being good stewards of the natural world.
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The world economy is the healthiest it’s been in years but could still use a little help from low-interest rates and higher government spending from countries that can afford it, the International Monetary Fund says.
“There was a strong consensus that the global outlook is strengthening,” said Agustin Carstens, governor of the Bank of Mexico and outgoing chair of the IMF’s policy committee. “This does not mean we are declaring victory just yet.”
The 189-member IMF and its sister agency, the World Bank, wrapped up three days of meetings Saturday.
Broad recovery, risks
The IMF expects the global economy to grow 3.6 percent this year, up from 3.2 percent in 2016. And three-quarters of the global economy is growing, making this the broadest recovery in a decade.
But IMF and World Bank officials pointed to risks that could derail global growth. Geopolitical risks are rising, including a confrontation between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The income gap between rich and poor is growing, fueling political discontent with the free trade and global cooperation that the IMF and World Bank promote.
So in a communique Saturday, the IMF’s policy committee called on world central banks to protect the fragile global recovery by keeping interest rates down in countries where inflation is too low and economies are performing below potential.
IMF officials have also urged some countries with healthy finances, such as Germany and South Korea, to make investments that will spur growth.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde appealed to countries to enact reforms that will make their economies more efficient and spread prosperity to those who have been left behind. Specifically, Lagarde argued that countries could improve their economies and reduce inequality by putting more women to work, improving their access to credit and narrowing their pay gap with men.
On Saturday, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a White House adviser, appeared with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to launch a World Bank initiative to support women entrepreneurs. The World Bank fund has raised $350 million, which is designed to allow the World Bank to deploy at least $1 billion in capital to finance women-owned businesses.
Ivanka Trump told the audience that she wanted to “spend a lot of time offering any value that I can as a mentor.”
Adjusting to Trump
The World Bank and IMF delegates are still adjusting to the Trump administration, which is skeptical of international organizations and contemptuous of free trade agreements. This week, the United States pulled out of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency. It is has balked at providing additional capital to the World Bank unless the anti-poverty agency rethinks the way it distributes loans. It has scrapped an Asia-Pacific trade deal and is threatening to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he carried in his pocket a list of all the G-20 nations and the size of the trade balances the United States has with each of those nations. With most of the G-20 countries, the United States is running a trade deficit.
In a speech Saturday to the IMF policy group, Mnuchin said he wanted to see the IMF be a more “forceful advocate” for strong global growth by taking a harder look at countries that abuse world trade rules.
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Tesla Motors fired hundreds of workers after completing its annual performance reviews, even though the electric automaker is trying to ramp up production to meet the demand for its new Model 3 sedan.
The Palo Alto, California-based company confirmed the cuts in a Saturday statement, but didn’t disclose how many of its 33,000 workers were jettisoned. The San Jose Mercury News interviewed multiple former and current Tesla employees who estimated 400 to 700 workers lost their jobs.
The housecleaning swept out workers in administrative and sales jobs, in addition to Tesla’s manufacturing operations.
An unspecified number of workers received bonuses and promotions following their reviews, according to the company.
Tesla is under pressure to deliver its Model 3 sedan to a waiting list of more than 450,000 customers. The company so far has been lagging its own production targets after making just 260 of the vehicles in its last quarter.
Including other models, Tesla expects to make about 100,000 cars this year. CEO Elon Musk is aiming to increase production by five-fold next year, a goal that probably will have to be met to support Tesla’s market value of $59 billion, more than Ford Motor Co.
Unlike Ford, Tesla hasn’t posted an annual profit yet.
Despite the mass firings, Tesla is still looking to hire hundreds more workers.
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President Donald Trump’s decision to end a provision of the Affordable Care Act that was benefiting roughly 6 million Americans helps fulfill a campaign promise, but it also risks harming some of the very people who helped him win the presidency.
Nearly 70 percent of those benefiting from the so-called cost-sharing subsidies live in states Trump won last November, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. The number underscores the political risk for Trump and his party, which could end up owning the blame for increased costs and chaos in the insurance marketplace.
The subsidies are paid to insurers by the federal government to help lower consumers’ deductibles and co-pays. People who benefit will continue receiving the discounts because insurers are obligated by law to provide them. But to make up for the lost federal funding, health insurers will have to raise premiums substantially, potentially putting coverage out of reach for many consumers.
Some insurers may decide to bail out of markets altogether.
“I woke up, really, in horror,” said Alice Thompson, 62, an environmental consultant from the Milwaukee area who purchases insurance on Wisconsin’s federally run health insurance exchange.
Thompson, who spoke with reporters on a call organized by a health care advocacy group, said she expects to pay 30 percent to 50 percent more per year for her monthly premium, potentially more than her mortgage payment. Officials in Wisconsin, a state that went for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in decades last fall, assumed the federal subsidy would end when they approved premium rate increases averaging 36 percent for the coming year.
An estimated 4 million people were benefiting from the cost-sharing payments in the 30 states Trump carried, according to an analysis of 2017 enrollment data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of consumers benefiting from cost-sharing, all but one — Massachusetts — went for Trump.
Kentucky, for example
Kentucky embraced former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act under its last governor, a Democrat, and posted some of the largest gains in getting its residents insured. Its new governor, a Republican, favors the GOP stance to replace it with something else.
Roughly half of the estimated 71,000 Kentuckians buying health insurance on the federal exchange were benefiting from the cost-sharing subsidies Trump just ended. Despite the gains from Obama’s law, the state went for Trump last fall even as he vowed to repeal it.
Consumers such as Marsha Clark fear what will happen in the years ahead, as insurers raise premiums on everyone to make up for the end of the federal money that helped lower deductibles and co-pays.
“I’m stressed out about the insurance, stressed out about the overall economy, and I’m very stressed out about our president,” said Clark, a 61-year-old real estate broker who lives in a small town about an hour’s drive south of Louisville. She pays $1,108 a month for health insurance purchased on the exchange.
While she earns too much to benefit from the cost-sharing subsidy, she is worried that monthly premiums will rise so high in the future that it will make insurance unaffordable.
Most beneficiaries in Florida
Sherry Riggs has a similar fear. The Fort Pierce, Florida, barber benefits from the deductible and co-pay discounts, as do more than 1 million other Floridians, the highest number of cost-sharing beneficiaries of any state.
She had bypass surgery following a heart attack last year and pays $10 a visit to see her cardiologist and only a few dollars for the medications she takes twice a day.
Her monthly premium is heavily subsidized by the federal government, but she worries about the cost soaring in the future. Florida, another state that swung for Trump, has approved rate increases averaging 45 percent.
“Probably for some people it would be a death sentence,” she said. “I think it’s kind of a tragic decision on the president’s part. It scares me because I don’t think I’ll be able to afford it next year.”
Double-digit premium increases
Rates were rising in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s decision. Insurance regulators in Arkansas, another state that went for Trump, approved premium increases Friday ranging from 14 percent to nearly 25 percent for plans offered through the insurance marketplace. Had federal cost-sharing been retained, the premiums would have risen by no more than 10 percent.
In Mississippi, another state Trump won, an estimated 80 percent of consumers who buy coverage on the insurance exchange benefit from the deductible and co-pay discounts, the highest percentage of any state. Premiums there will increase by 47 percent next year, after regulators assumed Trump would end the cost-sharing payments.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has estimated the loss of the subsidies would result in a 12 percent to 15 percent increase in premiums, while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has put the figure at 20 percent. Experts say the political instability over Trump’s effort to undermine Obama’s health care law could prompt more insurers to leave markets, reducing competition and driving up prices.
Trump’s move concerned some Republicans, worried the party will be blamed for the effects on consumers and insurance markets.
“I think the president is ill-advised to take this course of action, because we, at the end of the day, will own this,” Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said Friday on CNN. “We, the Republican Party, will own this.”
Dent is not running for re-election.
GOP support
In announcing his decision, Trump argued the subsidies were payouts to insurance companies, and the government could not legally continue to make them. The subsidies have been the subject of an ongoing legal battle because the health care law failed to include a congressional appropriation, which is required before federal money can be spent.
The subsidies will cost about $7 billion this year.
Many Republicans praised Trump’s action, saying Obama’s law has led to a spike in insurance costs for those who have to buy policies on the individual market.
Among them is Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a state Trump won. An estimated 78,000 Arizonans were benefiting from the federal subsidies for deductibles and co-pays.
“While his actions do not take the place of real legislative repeal and revitalization of free-market health care, he is doing everything possible to save Americans from crippling health care costs and decreasing quality of care,” Biggs said.
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The diamond industry has fallen on hard times lately. Sales of the traditional wedding gemstones are sluggish as millennials delay marriage, and expensive diamonds aren’t the go-to proposal gemstone they once were. Another factor is that lab-grown diamonds are slowly moving into the market. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Students are not supposed to “zone out” in class, but that’s a required part of the curriculum in the Healthy Brains, Healthy Bodies course at the University of Vermont. Faith Lapidus tells us about the unusual program.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is promising the company will do a better job weeding out sexual harassment, hateful symbols and violent groups from its short messaging service.
The pledge issued in a series of tweets late Friday followed a boycott organized by women supporting actress Rose McGowan after she said Twitter temporarily suspended her account for posting about the alleged misconduct of film producer Harvey Weinstein. The movie mogul was fired last Sunday by the company he co-founded amid accusations that he sexually harassed or sexually assaulted women.
Dorsey acknowledged Twitter hasn’t been doing enough to ensure voices aren’t silenced on the service despite policy changes made since 2016. He said the new rules will be announced next week, with the changes taking effect soon after.
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A mystery hacker who was given the alias of a TV soap opera character has stolen sensitive information about Australia’s multi-billion dollar warplane and navy projects. Intelligence officials say the break was significant, although the Australian government insists that only low-level data was taken. The identity of the cyber criminal is not known.
The virtual break-in saw cyber thieves take illustrations of a major Australian naval project. About 30GB of data was stolen. Details about new fighter planes, submarines and Australia’s largest warships were also compromised. The breach began in July last year, but the Australian Signals Directorate, a domestic spy agency, was not alerted until November. Intelligence officials say the hack, which targeted a private defence contractor in South Australia state, was – in their words – ‘extensive’ and ‘extreme.’
But the government is insisting there was no threat to national security.
Australia’s Defence Industry Minister, Christopher Pyne, says only low-level data was taken.
“I am pleased in a way that it reminds Australian business of the dangers that lurk out there,” said Pyne. “The information that has been stolen is commercial information. It is not classified information, so it is not military information. The government is doing its job. Australian businesses need to be thorough in providing for their cyber security otherwise they will not get contracts with the government.”
It is thought the hacker had exploited a weakness in software being used by the government contractor in the city of Adelaide, which had not been updated for 12 months.
Australian cyber security officials humorously dubbed the mystery attacker “Alf”, after a character on the popular TV soap opera ‘Home and Away’. They haven’t said if they suspect a foreign state was involved.
Earlier this year, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said cyber security was “the new frontier of warfare” and espionage, while announcing new measures to protect Australian governments and businesses from foreign interference.
Last year, a foreign power, reported in sections of the Australian media to be China, installed malicious software on computers at Australia’s national weather bureau.
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Throughout Northern California, where wildfires have raged for almost a week, killing at least 36 people and destroying about 6,000 buildings, residents are taking stock of what they have and what they have lost.
Many are feeling lucky to have survived with their lives. The fire’s path of destruction lacked rhyme or reason, destroying an entire winery in one case but leaving patio furniture outside the tasting room untouched.
Pierre Birebent, who has been a winemaker at the Signorello Estate for the past 20 years, said he feels lucky.
WATCH: Winemakers Vow to Rebuild Destroyed Winery
When the fire came to his winery on the Silverado Trail, the main artery of Napa’s Wine Country, Birebent grabbed a hose and tried to fight the flames himself. One of the winery’s owners, who was in the residence above the winery, had fled after alerting the staff to the fire.
Birebent lost the battle to save the winery, the tasting room, an office and the residence.
“It was like fighting a giant,” he said.
Damage unknown
It’s too early to know the extent of the damage to Northern California’s wine industry. Fires still burn around the hillsides, and pickers hurry to get the grapes off the vine before they are damaged by smoke, a condition known as “smoke taint.”
At Signorello, employees reported for work Friday, their first chance to see the damage.
Ray Signorello, the winery proprietor, went into Napa to rent temporary office space. He planned to keep the business going and rebuild.
“We can continue somewhat business as usual,” Signorello said.
“Our house is gone,” said Jo Dayoan, allocation director at the winery. “Our soul is not. We are family.”
Much to be thankful for
For Birebent, there are many things to be thankful for, among them, the 30-year-old vineyards, which didn’t burn.
“This is very important because it takes five years to plant the vineyard to get the first crop,” Birebent said.
Also spared by the fire was a warehouse where Signorello stored its 2016 vintage, as well as the last of the 2017 cabernet sauvignon grapes, which had been harvested just days before the fire and sat fermenting in 14 tanks at the edge of the parking lot.
But whether the wine inside the tanks is drinkable remains to be seen. Workers cleared leaves and ash from the outside of the tanks.
The wine from each of the tanks will be tasted and tested at a laboratory. The tanks hold 80 percent of the winery’s 2017 reds, which Birebent said was worth millions.
“It was so hot, we don’t know if the wine is still good or no,” he said.
As they take stock of the damage, the winemaker and the staff here are thinking about rebuilding, even as others continue to face wildfire dangers. The winery workers say they are lucky even as they stand in its ruins.
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A groundbreaking treatment for a rare form of hereditary blindness has moved closer to U.S. approval. This week advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended the experimental gene therapy, which replaces a defective gene. If the FDA agrees by mid-January, this would become the first gene therapy in the U.S. for an inherited disease. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us how a breakthrough treatment helped restore vision to a teenager who has his sights on a singing career.
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In its 19th year, the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit brought together women leaders from a variety of industries to discuss the opportunities and pitfalls for companies seeking to grow in a fast-paced business environment. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Clearing forests for farm fields makes room for crops, but often squeezes out natural predators that can help clear the fields of crop-eating rodents. After his neighbors tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the pests by smoking them out and hunting them, one farmer in Indonesia decided to try a natural approach: bringing back owls. Faith Lapidus has his story.
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Recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump have raised fears that NAFTA, the 2-decades-old trade pact between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, may be on its last legs. Proponents of NAFTA warn that scrapping the three-nation deal could cause economic shocks around the globe. But others say that’s just a case of corporate fear mongering. Mil Arcega has more.
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The Trump administration Friday demanded that U.S.-made content account for half the value of the cars and trucks sold under the North American Free Trade Agreement, raising further doubts about any potential deal to renew the pact.
Three sources briefed on the protectionist U.S. proposal, which is in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s goal of shrinking a trade deficit with Mexico and stemming the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, said it also seeks sharply higher North American automotive content overall.
The proposal was made during contentious talks in Washington, in the fourth of seven planned rounds of negotiations to overhaul the treaty. Mexican sources denounced it as absurd and unacceptable, underlining the gaps between NAFTA’s three members as they try to wrap up a deal by a year-end deadline.
Trump, who complains that the original 1994 pact has been a disaster for the United States, is threatening to walk away from the agreement unless major changes are made.
WATCH: Are NAFTA’s Days Numbered?
Sour mood, but no quitting
Washington’s auto industry gambit came hot on the heels of its demand that NAFTA also contain a so-called sunset clause.
That could mean any new deal expires in five years, an idea that Canada and Mexico also strongly oppose.
Although sources briefed on the talks describe the mood as sour, Mexican and Canadian politicians say there is no question of leaving the table for now.
A collapse of NAFTA would wreak havoc throughout the North American economy, disrupting highly integrated manufacturing supply chains and agricultural exports with steep tariffs that would snap back into place. Trade among the three countries has more than quadrupled since 1994 to more than $1.2 trillion annually.
One of the sources close to the talks said Washington wants to increase the North American content requirement for trucks, autos and large engines to 85 percent from 62.5 percent over a period of years. That is in addition to its insistence that 50 percent of content be U.S.-made within the first year of a signed deal.
Proposal seen as unworkable
A Canadian official noted that senior government figures in Ottawa have rejected both ideas as unworkable.
Trump has made clear he prefers bilateral trade deals, and skeptics wonder whether the U.S. demands are part of an “America First” strategy designed to ensure the current talks fail.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has listed the U.S. auto industry demand among a number of “poison pill” proposals that it said would torpedo the talks to renew NAFTA. The chamber says the proposal would cost jobs, because automakers and parts suppliers would likely forgo NAFTA benefits and simply pay the 2.5 percent U.S. tariff for imported cars and many parts.
Unifor, a union that represents most of Canada’s autoworkers, said the U.S. proposals were deliberately untenable.
“Frankly, I think this is a bully move by the American government,” president Jerry Dias said in a statement.
Trump aides say current rules are too lax and allowed auto companies to bring in too many cheap parts from China and other low-wage Asian countries.
Mexico needs NAFTA
Mexico is heavily dependent on the United States and NAFTA for its economic viability, and uncertainty over the outcome of the talks helped push the Mexican peso to near five-month lows this week.
Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, seeking to downplay any setbacks in the latest round of negotiations, said Friday that tension in the talks was only natural.
Canadian officials also said it was too soon to write off the deal-making process. They noted that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo were to meet in Washington on Tuesday to take stock of the negotiations.
Separately, U.S. negotiators Friday formally asked Canada to address a bilateral dispute over dairy pricing, a request the Canadians are set to resist, sources familiar with the talks said.
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Disaster-prone countries that keep rebuilding homes, roads and utilities are in danger of becoming uninsurable unless their new infrastructure is built to survive further catastrophe, experts said Friday at a World Bank conference.
New construction must be low in carbon emissions and built on safe land at less risk of destruction as extreme weather intensifies under global warming, they said.
More infrastructure is about to be built in the next 20 years than was built in the past 2,000 years, said experts at the World Bank conference on infrastructure and resilience held in Washington.
The total cost of that infrastructure is seen at some $5 trillion a year.
“The expense of a constant construct, reconstruct, reconstruct, frankly, no country can afford,” said Christiana Figueres, former United Nations’ climate chief.
“Because we know we will be getting more of these effects, we cannot let ourselves get to a scenario where we are systemically uninsurable,” said Figueres.
Among recent disaster losses, no more than half were covered by insurance, she said.
Extreme weather such as flooding, severe storms and drought is increasing with global warming, experts say.
Mapping risky areas and determining the cost of making infrastructure resilient must be done before rebuilding, said Figueres.
She estimated the cost of making low-carbon infrastructure that can withstand shocks might be an additional 10 percent.
Although governments are increasingly aware of the need for resilient infrastructure, residents need incentive and encouragement to rebuild wisely, said Kamal Kishore, member of India’s National Disaster Management Authority.
“If you have a bridge across the River Ganges and you stop it for a day … the economic impact is huge,” he said. “We really have to make the case of life-cycle costs and benefits, not just the upfront costs of infrastructure.”
India has made considerable progress in reducing deaths from cyclones due to a combination of resilient infrastructure, community networks and scientific advances, he said.
Data indicating possible risk must be easily available to ensure infrastructure is not built on land prone to floods or other disasters, said Aris Papadopoulos, former chief executive of cement company Titan America. Papadopoulos recently set up a private-sector risk reduction network with the U.N.’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“We build in vulnerable locations to the same standards as were built in the safer location, and what’s the result? We have disaster,” he said.
Urging a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the Caribbean devastated by recent hurricanes, British businessman Richard Branson said the islands need more hurricane-proof homes and stronger electricity systems.
The original Marshall Plan was a multibillion-dollar U.S. program that helped rebuild Western European after World War II.
Cutting dependency on costly fossil fuels and switching to solar or wind energy would free up resources for islands that spend as much as a quarter of their national expenditures on fuel, said Branson.
Branson is trying to set up a fund to help Caribbean nations replace fossil fuel-dependent utilities with low-carbon renewable energy sources.
“How much more destruction is needed to show that the way we treat our planet is having serious consequences and sadly will have even more serious consequences?” he asked.
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California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency to combat a hepatitis A outbreak that has killed 18 people in San Diego.
Brown said Friday that the proclamation would allow the state to increase its supply of vaccines. The state can now purchase vaccines directly from manufacturers and distribute them.
California is experiencing the largest hepatitis A outbreak in the United States transmitted from person to person — instead of by contaminated food — since the vaccine became available in 1996.
There have been 576 cases reported throughout California, the vast majority in San Diego
Eighteen U.S. states vowed Friday to sue President Donald Trump’s administration to try to stop him from scrapping a key component of Obamacare — subsidies to insurers that help millions of low-income people pay medical expenses — even as Trump invited Democratic leaders to negotiate a deal.
One day after his administration announced plans to end the payments next week, Trump said he would dismantle Obamacare “step by step.”
His latest action raised concerns about chaos in insurance markets. The subsidies cost $7 billion this year and were estimated at $10 billion for 2018, according to congressional analysts.
“As far as the subsidies are concerned, I don’t want to make the insurance companies rich,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They’re making a fortune by getting that kind of money.”
Trump’s action took aim at a critical element of the 2010 law, his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. Frustrated by the failure of his fellow Republicans who control both houses of Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump has taken several steps to chip away at it.
Democrats accused Trump of sabotaging the law.
Democratic attorneys general from the 18 states as well as the District of Columbia planned to sue in federal court in California late in the day. The states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington — will ask the court to force Trump to make the next payment.
Legal experts said the states were likely to face an uphill battle in court.
‘Breathtakingly reckless’
“His effort to gut these subsidies with no warning or even a plan to contain the fallout is breathtakingly reckless,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. “This is an effort simply to blow up the system.”
The new lawsuit would be separate from a case pending before an appeals court in the District of Columbia in which 16 Democratic state attorneys general are defending the legality of the payments.
If the subsidies vanish, low-income Americans who obtain insurance through Obamacare online marketplaces would face higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. It would particularly hurt lower-middle-class families whose incomes are still too high to qualify for certain government assistance.
About 10 million people are enrolled in Obamacare through its online marketplaces, and most receive subsidies. Trump’s action came just weeks before the period starting November 1 when individuals have to begin enrolling for 2018 insurance coverage through the law’s marketplaces.
The administration will not make the next payment to insurers, scheduled for Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York expressed optimism about chances for a deal with Republicans to continue the subsidies.
“We’re going to have a very good opportunity to get this done in a bipartisan way” during negotiations in December on broad federal spending legislation, “if we can’t get it done sooner,” Schumer told reporters.
Trump offered an invitation for Democratic leaders to come to the White House, while also lashing out at them. “We’ll negotiate some deal that’s good for everybody. But they’re always a bloc vote against everything. They’re like obstructionists,” Trump told reporters.
The Senate failed in both July and September to pass legislation backed by Trump to repeal Obamacare because of opposition by a handful of Republican senators. One of them, Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who had been contemplating running for governor next year, on Friday said she planned to remain in the Senate and would use her voice in reforming the health care system.
Insurer, hospital shares drop
Hospitals, doctors, health insurers, state insurance commissioners and patient advocates decried Trump’s move, saying consumers would ultimately pay the price. They called on Congress to appropriate the funds needed to keep up the subsidy payments.
Shares of U.S. hospital companies and health insurers closed down on Friday after the subsidies announcement. Centene Corp. closed down 3.3 percent and Molina Healthcare closed down 3.4 percent. Among hospital shares, Tenet Healthcare finished 5.1 percent lower and Community Health Systems declined 4.0 percent.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that erasing the subsidies would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion over the next decade because the government still would be obligated under other parts of Obamacare to help lower-income people pay for insurance premiums.
Trump, who as a candidate last year promised to roll back the law formally called the Affordable Care Act, received applause for his latest action during an appearance on Friday before a group of conservative voters.
“It’s step by step by step, and that was a very big step yesterday,” Trump said. “And one by one, it’s going to come down, and we’re going to have great health care in our country.”
Earlier on Twitter, he called Obamacare “a broken mess” that is “imploding,” and referred to the “pet insurance companies” of Democrats.
Failed repeal efforts
Republicans for seven years had vowed to get rid of Obamacare, but deep intraparty divisions have scuttled their efforts to get legislation through the Senate, where they hold a slim majority.
Since taking office in January, Trump threatened many times to cut the subsidies. Health insurers that planned to stay in the Obamacare market prepared for the move in many states by submitting two sets of premium rates to regulators: with and without the subsidies.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said the change would drive up premium costs for consumers by at least 12 to 15 percent in 2018 and cut more than $1 billion in payments to insurers for 2017.
The White House announced the cutoff just hours after Trump signed an order intended to allow insurers to sell lower-cost, bare-bones policies with limited benefits and consumer protections.
Republicans have called Obamacare an unnecessary government intrusion into the American health care system. Democrats have said the law needs some fixes but noted that it had brought insurance to 20 million people.
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The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization run by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said Friday that it had helped eliminate elephantiasis, a disfiguring tropical disease, from two states in Nigeria where the problem was at its worst.
Dr. Yisa Saka of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health said in the Carter Center’s announcement, “This is a great day for the people of Plateau and Nasarawa states, and all of Nigeria.” He called the disease, also known as lymphatic filariasis, “a terrible disease that has plagued good people for far too long.”
The World Health Association classified elephantiasis as a “neglected tropical disease.” In areas threatened by the disease, people must take annual doses of preventive drugs to keep the parasitic infection from spreading.
Damages lymphatic system
Elephantiasis, transmitted by mosquitoes, causes damage to the lymphatic system, often in childhood, where it can remain hidden for years. Years later, the resulting swelling, which can be significant, can cause physical disability as well as social stigma. Asymptomatic infection can remain invisible but cause damage to the lymphatic system and kidneys, affecting the body’s immune system.
Experts say more than 120 million people in Nigeria live in at-risk areas. Only India has more people at risk of catching the disease, which often causes its victims social isolation and poverty.
“Eliminating lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem in Plateau and Nasarawa states is a significant achievement that challenges everyone to broaden their appreciation of what is possible,” said Dr. Frank Richards of the Carter Center. “Success in these two states not only protects the 7 million people who live there, but it also sets a pattern for similar success throughout the rest of Nigeria, as well as in other highly endemic countries.”
Dr. Gregory Noland of the Carter Center said health professionals have been working for years to eradicate the disease in Plateau and Nasarawa, through drug treatment and use of bed nets to ward off mosquitoes at night. Testing of more than 14,000 children over the past two years has not discovered any new infections.
The milestone is seen as a step toward eradicating the disease altogether. It is one of seven diseases the Carter Center has named as potentially eradicable.
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The euro zone economy may be building up an impressive head of steam that shows no signs of cooling, but what policymakers at the European Central Bank really want – higher inflation – is still largely absent.
Industrial output in the bloc rose faster than anyone polled by Reuters expected in August, according to data on Thursday which followed a slew of forecast-beating releases and after the International Monetary Fund upgraded its outlook for global growth.
“Although the industrial sector only accounts for a quarter of GDP it has been the euro zone’s most cyclical sector historically, and so is an important indicator of the economy’s wider health,” said Christian Jaccarini at CEBR.
“With the economy gathering momentum, the European Central Bank should feel confident about starting to taper its asset purchase program at the beginning of next year.”
The economy is performing stronger than at any time since the global financial crisis so speculation the ECB will soon begin scaling back its massive stimulus program has been rife.
Policymakers at the Bank will announce on Oct. 26 a six-month extension to its asset purchase program but will cut how much it buys each month to 40 billion euros from January, a September Reuters poll predicted.
Five people with direct knowledge of discussions told Reuters the ECB is homing in on extending its stimulus for nine months at the next meeting while scaling it back.
Yet the ECB’s key focus is inflation and numbers due on Tuesday will probably confirm prices only rose 1.5 percent in September on a year ago, still a lot weaker than the just below 2 percent rate-setters would like.
According to Reuters polls taken throughout 2017, which have been correct about how low it would remain this year, inflation won’t hit that ECB target for years.
“There is likely to be only a limited pick-up in inflationary pressures, meaning that interest rate hikes can be kept on hold until 2019 – later than markets seem to expect,” economists at Capital Economics wrote.
British dilemma
Across the Atlantic, U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers have already begun tightening but had a prolonged debate about the prospects of a pickup in inflation and slowing the path of future interest rate rises if it did not, according to minutes of the central bank’s last policy meeting.
“Many participants expressed concern that the low inflation readings this year might reflect… the influence of developments that could prove more persistent, and it was noted that some patience in removing policy accommodation while assessing trends in inflation was warranted,” the Fed said in the minutes.
Britain, however, has the opposite problem.
Since the vote in June 2016 to leave the European Union, the pound has lost around 13 percent of its value against the dollar, driving up the costs of imports and caused inflation to run well above the 2 percent the Bank of England would like it at.
In the referendum’s aftermath the Bank cut 25 basis points from borrowing costs, taking them to a record low 0.25 percent, hoping to stave off a predicted economic meltdown after the leave vote.
That meltdown never happened and Britain’s economy was one of the best performers last year although growth has since slowed sharply.
Still, at its November meeting the BoE will raise interest rates for the first time in a decade, according to economists in a recent Reuters poll taken after a barrage of hawkish rhetoric from BoE policymakers. However, most of them also said raising rates now would be a policy mistake.
“On the strength of the MPC’s rhetoric and current market expectations, we continue to look for a November hike. But this assumes no significant downside surprises in the inflation and wage data next week,” said Allan Monks at JPMorgan.
“If the MPC is minded to back out of tightening in November – in response to the data or the Brexit process – we would expect at least some hint of this in any commentary between now and the next meeting on Nov. 2.”
Britain’s economy shows little sign of breaking out of its lethargy and it is “extraordinary” the BoE is considering raising interest rates, the British Chambers of Commerce said on Friday.
“We’d caution against an earlier than required tightening in monetary policy, which could hit both business and consumer confidence and weaken overall UK growth,” said Suren Thiru, BCC head of economics.
Divorce talks have this week ended in deadlock over a British refusal to clarify how much it will pay on leaving, EU negotiator Michel Barnier said on Thursday.
But EU leaders could hand beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May an olive branch in Brexit negotiations next week by launching their own internal preparations for a transition to a new relationship with Britain, giving her some hope.
America’s weight problem isn’t getting any better, according to new government research.
Overall, obesity figures stayed about the same: About 40 percent of adults are obese and 18.5 percent of children. Those numbers are a slight increase from the last report but the difference is so small that it could have occurred by chance.
Worrisome to experts is the rate for children and teenagers, which had hovered around 17 percent for a decade. The 2-to-5 age group had the biggest rise.
The years ahead will show if that’s a statistical blip or marks the start of a real trend, said the report’s lead author, Dr. Craig Hales of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bad news is that the numbers didn’t go down, experts say. In recent years, state and national health officials have focused on obesity in kids, who were the target of the national Let’s Move campaign launched by former first lady Michelle Obama in 2010.
The report released Friday covers 2015 and 2016.
“This is quite disappointing. If we were expecting the trends to budge, this is when they would be budging,” said Andrew Stokes, a Boston University expert on tracking obesity.
The new figures are from an annual government survey with about 5,000 participants. The survey is considered the gold standard for measuring the nation’s waistline, because participants are put on a scale to verify their weight.
Obesity means not merely overweight, but seriously overweight, as determined by a calculation called body mass index . Until the early 1980s, only about 1 in 6 adults were obese. The rate climbed dramatically to about 1 in 3 around a decade ago, then seemed to level off for years.
More details from the report:
– The 40 percent rate for adults is statistically about the same as the nearly 38 percent in the 2013-2014 survey.
– By age, the fattest adults are in their 40s and 50s. The obesity rate for that age group is 41 percent for men and 45 percent for women.
– By race and gender, the problem is still most common in black and Hispanic women; more than half are obese.
– Among children, the rate for the 12-to-19 age group was the same at nearly 21 percent. For kids 6 to 11, it rose to 18 percent, from 17 percent.
– But for children ages 2 to 5, the rate jumped to 14 percent from about 9 percent.
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Bigger and more powerful flying drones are slowly entering everyday life. At this year’s international technology show in Dubai, a number of drone manufacturers displayed machines that could substantially increase the mobility of various public services, from police and firefighters to taxis. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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