Twelve years after the inaugural Earth Hour observance in Australia, countries around the world continue joining the grassroots gesture against manmade CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions. This year in the Philippines, armed with lightsabers, fans of the movie Star Wars joined the world with a nod to a galaxy far, far away. Arash Arabasadi has more.
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The spread of invasive water hyacinths in and around Cameroon’s port city of Douala is causing problems for residents. The hyacinths’ stubborn growth hampers shipping, reduces fish catches, blocks streams and invades houses. But local NGOs are working to clean them up and artists are finding new uses for the hyacinths. Moki Edwin Kindzeka narrates this report by Anne Mireille Nzouankeu from Cameroon’s port city of Douala.
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Several Republican-led state legislatures are advocating for women to gain over-the-counter access to birth control in what they say is an effort to reduce unplanned pregnancies and abortions.
State legislatures in Arkansas and Iowa, for example, are working on legislation that would allow women older than 18 the ability to receive birth control from a pharmacist rather than going first to a doctor for a prescription. The measures are seeing bipartisanship support in those states and come after similar laws have passed in nearly a dozen other states.
Arkansas legislation
Arkansas state Representative Aaron Pilkington, a Republican, said he started working on the bill after seeing “about a 15 percent decrease of teen births” after other states passed similar legislation. Arkansas consistently has one of the highest birth rates among teenagers in the country.
Pilkington said support for the bill “in many ways, it’s very generational. … I find that a lot of younger people and women are really in favor of this, especially mothers.”
According to the Oral Contraceptive (OCs) Over the Counter (OTC) Working Group, a reproductive rights group, more than 100 countries, including Russia, much of South America and countries in Africa, allow access to birth control without a prescription.
Women are required to get a doctor’s prescription to obtain and renew birth control in most of the U.S., much of Europe, Canada and Australia, according to the reproductive rights group.
Pilkington, who identifies as a “pro-life legislator,” said he brought the bill forward partly as an effort to counter unwanted pregnancies and abortions. The bill would require a doctor’s visit about every two years to renew the prescription.
Rural residents
Arkansas has a population of about 3 million people, a third of whom live in rural areas. Pilkington said the bill would likely benefit women who reside in rural areas or those who have moved to new cities and aren’t under a doctor’s care yet.
“A lot of times when they’re on the pill and they run out, they’ve gotta get a doctor’s appointment, and the doctor says, ‘I can’t see you for two months,’” he said. “Some people have to drive an hour and a half to see their PCP (primary care physician) or OB-GYN (obstetrician-gynecologist), so this makes a lot of sense.”
What Pilkington is proposing is not new. In 2012, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorsed the idea of making birth control available without a prescription. Today, at least 11 other states have passed legislation allowing for patients to go directly to the pharmacist, with some caveats.
In October, ahead of a tight midterm race, Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds raised a few eyebrows when she announced she would prioritize over-the-counter access to birth control in her state. Like Pilkington, she cited countering abortion as a main driver behind the proposed legislation. The bill closely models much of the language used in another Republican-sponsored bill In Utah that passed last year with unanimous support.
The planned Iowa legislation comes after the Republican-led state Legislature passed a bill in 2017 that rejected $3 million in federal funds for family-planning centers like Planned Parenthood.
The loss of federal funds forced Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that provides health care and contraception for women, to close four of its 12 clinics in the state.
Since then, Jamie Burch Elliott, public affairs manager of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Iowa, said that anecdotal evidence shows that sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies have gone up.
“With family planning, it takes time to see the impacts, so there are long-term studies going on to really study the impact of this,” said Burch Elliott. “Right away, we saw STI (sexually transmitted infections) and STD (sexually transmitted diseases) rates go up, particularly chlamydia and gonorrhea. As far as unintended pregnancy rates, we are hearing that they are rising, although the data is not out yet.”
Pro-life pushback
So far the Iowa legislation has received some pushback, mostly from a few pro-life groups.
The Iowa Right to Life organization has remained neutral on the issue of birth control, but the Iowa Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the bishops of Iowa, and Iowans for LIFE, a nonprofit anti-abortion organization, have come out against the bill, citing concerns that birth control should not be administered without a visit to a physician.
Maggie DeWitte, executive director of Iowans for LIFE, also pointed out that oral contraception can be an “abortifacient [that] sometimes cause abortions,” challenging Reynolds’ motivation for introducing the bill.
On the other hand, Iowa family-planning organizations and Democratic legislators are mostly on board.
“Policywise, I think this is really good,” said Heather Matson, a state representative of a district located just outside the state capital, Des Moines. She appreciated that insurance will still cover birth control, but took issue with the age restriction, saying she would like to see an option for people younger than 18. “Is it exactly the bill that I would have written, if given the opportunity? Not exactly.”
While Matson represents one of the fastest-growing districts in the country, she pointed to the number of “health care deserts” in rural Iowa, where a shortage of OB-GYNs is leading to the closure of some maternity wards.
Like Planned Parenthood’s Burch Elliott, Matson agreed that this bill would be just one step in providing more access to birth control for women in rural parts of the state.
“Even before Planned Parenthood was defunded, there wasn’t great access to birth control in Iowa to begin with,” Burch Elliott said. “Having said that, [this bill] is not a solution. Pharmacists are never going to be a replacement for Planned Parenthood, for example, where you’ll get STI and STD screenings, and any other cancer screenings or other preventive care that you might need.”
Regardless of whether the bills pass in Des Moines or Little Rock, Arkansas Representative Pilkington expects other states to follow suit.
“As the times have changed and you have a lot of conservative states like Tennessee, Arkansas, Utah (pass this legislation), I think it makes it way less of a partisan issue” and more of a good governance issue, he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see other states kind of pushing this as well. Especially when they see the success that other states are having with this.”
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The environment in a neonatal intensive care unit can be overwhelming, as staff care for infants who are ill or were born premature. Many exhausted parents and loved ones can’t be with their newborns around the clock, but at one Long Beach, Calif., hospital, trained volunteers are stepping in to help. Known as NICU cuddlers, they give infants the human touch that is so vital to every baby. For VOA, Angelina Bagdasaryan visited the hospital and has this story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Sydney Opera House, the Brandenburg Gate, the Acropolis and many more iconic landmarks went dark at 8:30 p.m. local time, Saturday night, for Earth Hour, an annual call for local action on climate change.
Earth Hour is the brain child of the World Wildlife Fund.
“By going dark for Earth Hour, we can show steadfast commitment to protecting our families, our communities and our planet from the dangerous effects of a warming world,” said Lou Leonard, WWF senior vice president, climate and energy. “The rising demand for energy, food and water means this problem is only going to worsen, unless we act now.”
Individuals and companies around the world participated in the hour-long demonstration to show their support for the fight against climate change and the conservation of the natural world.
WWF said Earth’s “rich biodiversity, the vast web of life that connects the health of oceans, rivers and forests to the prosperity of communities and nations, is threatened.”
The fund also reports that wildlife populations monitored by WWF “have experienced an average decline of 60 percent in less than a single person’s lifetime, and many unique and precious species are at risk of vanishing forever.”
“We have to ask ourselves what we’re willing to do after the lights come back on,” Leonard said. “If we embrace bold solutions, we still have time to stabilize the climate and safeguard our communities and the diverse wildlife, ecosystems and natural resources that sustain us all.”
“We are the first generation to know we are destroying the world,” WWF said. “And we could be the last that can do anything about it.”
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An Ebola treatment center located at the epicenter of the current outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has resumed operations after it was attacked last month, the country’s health ministry said Saturday.
The center run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the district of Katwa was set on fire Feb. 24 by unknown attackers, forcing staff to evacuate patients.
It reopened Saturday, the ministry said in a statement.
“For now it is managed by the ministry in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF,” it said, referring to the U.N. children’s fund.
Aid workers have faced mistrust in some areas as they seek to contain the Ebola outbreak, which has become the most severe in Congo’s history. The WHO has said the distrust is fueled by false rumors about treatments and preference for traditional medicine.
Another MSF center in Butembo was also attacked in late February but reopened a week later.
MSF has pulled out from the area since the two attacks and has not said when it might resume medical activities.
The current Ebola epidemic, first declared last August, is believed to have killed at least 561 people so far and infected over 300 more.
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For techies and phone geeks, Digital Cambodia 2019 was the place to be.
More than a dozen high school students clustered at the booth for Cellcard, Cambodia’s leading mobile operator. Under the booth’s 5G sign, they played video games on their phones.
Hak Kimheng, a ninth grade student in Phnom Penh, said his mom bought him a Samsung smartphone a few months ago, when he moved to the capital city from nearby Kandal province to live with his uncle while attending school. Like moms everywhere, she thought the smartphone would help her stay in touch with her son.
But smartphones being smartphones and kids being kids, Hak Kimheng, 16, has used it to set up an account on Facebook, Cambodia’s favorite social media platform. He’s also downloaded Khmer Academy, a tutoring app filled with math, physics and chemistry lessons.
And for one hour a day, Hak Kimheng watches soccer on the YouTube app he downloaded. While it’s better than nothing, the internet connection is “slow … and the video image is not clear,” he said. “I want it to be faster. … It’ll be good to have 5G.”
Not far from the Cellcard booth, Cambodian government officials, ASEAN telecom and IT ministers, businesspeople, telecom and tech company representatives gathered for the opening ceremonies of Digital Cambodia 2019. The event, which ran from March 15 to March 17, attracted more than 100 speakers from throughout Southeast Asia, high level officials, businesspeople, researchers and telecom company representatives.
The discussions focused on 5G, which, with speeds as much as 100 times faster than 4G, will mean better soccer viewing for Hak Kimheng and faster connections for all users. But 5G will also be central to a world of smart cities filled with smart homes and offices replete with devices connected to the “internet of things” humming along amid torrents of personal, business and official data.
‘A milestone year’
David Li, CEO of Cambodian operations for the Chinese company, Huawei, which is facing challenges over security from the U.S., spoke first, promising to “help Cambodia obtain better digital technology to improve social productivity and national economy.”
Government ministers, one from finance and economy and one from posts and telecommunication, listened as Li continued, pointing out that Huawei Technologies Cambodia launched in 1999. “We have been operating 2G, 3G, 4G, and now we’re heading toward 5G,” he said.
“Currently we are the only industry vendor that can provide the intertwined 5G system. I believe this year 2019 will be a milestone year for 5G in Cambodia,” Li said.
While this next generation of mobile networks will take years to roll out, the U.S. and China are in a race over whose technology will set the standards for 5G networks, something which will have immediate commercial value and carry longer term strategic implications for developing the dominant platform for 6G.
Citing concern that Huawei is, like all Chinese companies, linked to the Beijing government, the U.S. has been urging allies not to let Huawei build their 5G networks. But in countries like Thailand, which is Cambodia’s neighbor and a U.S. ally, Huawei is building and testing a 5G network because authorities said its low cost trumped U.S. pressure.
Huawei has long maintained it doesn’t provide back doors for the Chinese government, pointing out the lack of evidence to support the allegations, according to Bloomberg.
William Carter, deputy director of the Technology Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said earlier this month that any country doing business with Huawei on 5G will have to deal with the risk of Chinese influence.
“And the question will be to what extent is that concern enough to overcome the price advantage and the service advantages and the integrated financing advantages doing business with Huawei,” he said.
Rich market
As more private businesses and government services move toward cashless payment and online data access, Cambodia is emerging as a rich market for 5G telecoms. Approximately 13.6 million people, or 82 percent of Cambodians, use the internet, and about 7 million use Facebook, the number of mobile subscriptions is around 19.5 million by January 2019, or 120 percent penetration, according to the Ministry of Posts.
Sok Puthyvuth, secretary of state at the posts and telecommunication told VOA Khmer that Cambodia is eager for 5G, urging private companies, including mobile operators and internet companies, “to make 5G available across the country.”
Thomas Hundt, CEO of Smart Axiata, one of Cambodia’s mobile telecommunications operators, told VOA Khmer only that the company is preparing for a 5G rollout, because users’ data consumption is overwhelming the 4.5G network. “We see an immediate need to come out with the next evolution of technology … at some point this year.”
Cellcard CEO Ian Watson, said the company is targeting a commercial launch of 5G services in the second quarter of 2019.
Tram IvTek, Cambodia’s minister of Posts and Telecommunications said at the opening ceremony of Digital Cambodia that the government “is strongly committed to connecting the country and to ensure the benefits of ICT (information and communications technology) reach the remotest corners as well as the most vulnerable communities” by 2020.
Aun Pornmoniroth, minister of economy and finance in a March 12 workshop on Cambodia’s digital economy, suggested it will take “five to 10 years or more to set up a complete digital economy and turn Cambodia’s economy into a technological leader.”
Meas Po, undersecretary of state at Ministry of Post, said the government has yet to decide which company it will partner with for building the 5G infrastructure but it has not ruled out Huawei or other Chinese companies. “In our country, we have our protective system, in other countries, they have theirs. We don’t allow anyone to just freely hack our data.”
Protecting privacy
Smart Axiata’s Hundt said his company wanted to a partner that would “guarantee to us that the equipment is solid and sound [and] our users’ data is safeguarded and the network is fully secured from cyber-security perspectives.”
Nguon Somaly, who earned a master’s degree in law and technology at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, has written extensively on data privacy in Cambodia. She contends Cambodian social media users don’t have the data privacy concerns of users in the U.S. and Europe.
“Cambodian youths don’t really care about privacy [on social media], but people in [the] EU are concerned about their data privacy,” said Somaly, referring to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which restricts how personal data is collected and handled.
“That is money and it can be analyzed and generate income,” Somaly said. “China is not a free country and privacy is not their priority. Their priority is to generate business opportunities and income.”
Xu Ning, a reporter with VOA’s Mandarin Service, contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
For decades, it was virtually unknown outside a small circle of investors, corporate lawyers and government officials.
But in recent years, the small interagency body known as the Committee for Investment in the United States has grown in prominence, propelled by a U.S. desire to use it as an instrument of national security and foreign policy.
This week, the panel made headlines after it reportedly directed Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech to divest itself of Grindr, a popular gay dating app, because of concern the user data it collects could be used to blackmail military and intelligence personnel.
Operating out of the Treasury Department, the nine-member CFIUS (pronounced Cy-fius) reviews foreign investments in U.S. businesses to determine whether they pose a national security threat.
Notification was voluntary
Until last year, notifying the panel about such investments was voluntary, something Kunlun and California-based Grindr took advantage of when they closed a deal in 2016.
But given growing U.S. concern about Chinese companies with ties to Beijing buying businesses in sensitive U.S. industries, the committee’s rare intervention to undo the deal was hardly a surprise, said Harry Broadman, a former CFIUS member.
“I think anyone who was surprised by the decision really didn’t understand the legislative history, legislative landscape and the politics” of CFIUS, said Broadman, who is now a partner and chair of the emerging markets practice at consulting firm Berkley Research Group.
The action by CFIUS is the latest in a series aimed at Chinese companies investing in the U.S. tech sector and comes as the Trump administration wages a global campaign against telecom giant Huawei Technologies and remains locked in a trade dispute with Beijing. The U.S. says the state-linked company could gain access to critical telecom infrastructure and is urging allies to bar it from participating in their new 5G networks.
While the administration has yet to formulate a policy on Huawei, the world’s largest supplier of telecom equipment, the latest CFIUS action underscores how the U.S. is increasingly turning to the body to restrict Chinese investments across a broad swath of U.S. technology companies.
“CFIUS is one of the few tools that the government has that can be used on a case-by-case basis to try to untangle [a] web of dependencies and solve potential national security issues, and the government has become increasingly willing to use that tool more aggressively,” said Joshua Gruenspecht, an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Washington, who represents companies before the committee.
CFIUS’s history has long been intertwined with politics and periodic public backlash against foreign investment in the U.S.
OPEC investments
In 1975 it was congressional concern over the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) investments in U.S. stocks and bonds that led President Gerald Ford to set up the committee through an executive order. It was tasked with monitoring the impact of foreign investment in the United States but had little other authority.
In the years that followed, backlash against foreign acquisitions of certain U.S. firms led Congress to beef up the agency.
In 1988, spurred in part by a Japanese attempt to buy a U.S. semiconductor firm, Congress enshrined CFIUS in law, granting the president the authority to block mergers and acquisitions that threatened national security.
In 2007, outrage over CFIUS’s decision to approve the sale of management operations of six key U.S. ports to a Dubai port operator led Congress to pass new legislation, broadening the definition of national security and requiring greater scrutiny by CFIUS of certain types of foreign direct investment, according to the Congressional Research Service.
But by far the biggest change to how CFIUS reviews and approves foreign transactions came last summer when Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018.
Slated to be fully implemented in 2020, the new law vastly expanded CFIUS’s jurisdiction and authority, requiring foreign companies that take even a non-controlling stake in a sensitive U.S. business to get the committee’s clearance.
While the new law did not mention China by name, concern about Chinese investments and national security dominated the debate that led to its enactment.
“There is no mistake that both the congressional intent and the executive intent has a clear eye on the role of China in the transactions,” Broadman said.
Threats to ‘technological superiority’
Under interim rules issued by the Treasury Department last fall, investments in U.S. businesses that develop and manufacture “critical technologies” in one or more of 27 designated industries are now subject to review by CFIUS. Most of the covered technologies are already subject to U.S. export controls. The designated industries are sectors where foreign investment “threatens to undermine U.S. technological superiority that is critical to U.S. national security,” according to the Treasury Department. They range from semiconductor machinery to aircraft manufacturing.
The new regulations mean that foreign companies seeking to invest in any of these technologies and industries must notify CFIUS at least 45 days prior to closing a deal. CFIUS will then have 30 days to clear the deal, propose a conditional approval or reject it outright. If parties to a transaction do not withdraw in response to CFIUS’s concerns, the president will be given 15 days to block it.
To date, U.S. presidents have blocked five deals — four of them involving Chinese companies. One was blocked by the late President George H.W. Bush in 1990, two by former President Barack Obama in 2012 and 2016, and two by President Donald Trump.
The number is deceptively small. A far greater number of deals are simply withdrawn by parties after they don’t get timely clearance or CFIUS opens a formal investigation. According to the Treasury Department, of the 942 notices of transactions filed with CFIUS between 2009 and 2016, 107 were withdrawn during the review or after an investigation.
In recent years, CFIUS has reviewed between 200 and 250 cases per year, according to Gruenspecht. But the number is likely to exceed 2,000 a year under the new CFIUS regime, he added.
The tighter scrutiny has raised questions about whether the new law strikes the right balance between encouraging foreign investment and protecting national security.
“I think the short answer is it’s too early to tell,” Gruenspecht said. However, he added, if the new law “becomes a recipe for taking foreign investment off the table for whole realms of new emerging technology, that crosses a lot of boundaries.”
Concern in Europe
The U.S. is not the only country toughening screening measures for foreign investment. In December, the European Union proposed a new regulation for members to adopt “CFIUS-like” foreign investment review processes.
Gruenspecht said that while foreign investors are not “thrilled” about the additional CFIUS scrutiny, “a lot of Western nations are also saying, actually, ‘We totally understand the rational behind CFIUS and we’re looking to implement our own internal versions of CFIUS ourselves.’ ”
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Facebook said Friday it is further tightening requirements for European Union political advertising, in its latest efforts to prevent foreign interference and increase transparency ahead of the bloc’s parliamentary elections.
However, some EU politicians criticized the social media giant, saying the measures will make pan-European online campaigning harder.
Under the new rules, people, parties and other groups buying political ads will have to confirm to Facebook that they are located in the same EU country as the Facebook users they are targeting.
That’s on top of a previously announced requirement for ad buyers to confirm their identities. It means advertisements aimed at voters across the EU’s 28 countries will have to register a person in each of those nations.
“It’s a disgrace that Facebook doesn’t see Europe as an entity and appears not to care about the consequences of undermining European democracy,” Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the parliament’s liberal ALDE group, said on Twitter. “Limiting political campaigns to one country is totally the opposite of what we want.”
The response underscores the balancing act for Silicon Valley tech companies as they face pressure from EU authorities to do more to prevent their platforms being used by outside groups, including Russia, to meddle in the May elections. Hundreds of millions of people are set to vote for more than 700 EU parliamentary lawmakers.
Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, said it will start blocking ads that don’t comply in mid-April.
The company will ask ad buyers to submit documents and use technical checks to verify their identity and location.
Facebook statement
“We recognize that some people can try and work around any system but we are confident this will be a real barrier for anyone thinking of using our ads to interfere in an election from outside of a country,” Richard Allen, Facebook’s vice president of global policy solutions, said in a blog post.
Facebook said earlier this year that EU political ads will carry “paid for by” disclaimers. Clicking the label will reveal more detailed information such as how much money was spent on the ad, how many people saw it, and their age, gender and location.
The ad transparency rules have already been rolled out in the U.S., Britain, Brazil, India, Ukraine and Israel. Facebook will expand them globally by the end of June.
Twitter and Google have introduced similar political ad requirements.
Facebook is also making improvements to a database that stores ads for seven years, including widening access so that election regulators and watchdog groups can analyze political or issue ads.
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Lyft Inc shares on Friday opened up 21.2 percent at $87.24 in its market debut on the Nasdaq after the company was valued at $24.3 billion in the first initial public offering (IPO) of a ride-hailing startup.
On Thursday, Lyft said it priced 32.5 million shares, slightly more that it was offering originally, at $72, the top of its already elevated $70-$72 per share target range for the IPO.
After a few minutes of trading, shares were up 18.6 percent at $85.42.
Instead of celebrating the first day of trading at the Nasdaq in New York, Lyft opted to mark the occasion at a defunct auto dealership in downtown Los Angeles.
A couple hundred people – Lyft staff, family and friends, stakeholders and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti – gathered before dawn for the kick-off event.
Lyft has recently bought the facility to turn it into a driver services center, the first of several it plans to open across the U.S. in the coming months, where drivers can get discounted services like help with taxes or charging electric vehicles.
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Most of us don’t give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks – like buttoning a shirt – can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. Tina Trinh reports.
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Officials in cyclone-stricken Mozambique say the number of cases of cholera has skyrocketed from five Wednesday to 139 by late Thursday.
Cholera is a bacterial disease spread by contaminated food or drinking water. It causes severe diarrhea and subsequent dehydration, and can kill within hours if not treated.
Squalid living conditions — contaminated water and lack of sanitation — in the country following Cyclone Idai are the perfect breeding grounds for the spread of the disease.
The World Health Organization said earlier this week that it is sending 900,000 cholera vaccines to the region.
AFP, the French news agency, reports that a cholera prevention publicity campaign has been mounted via radio and loudspeakers throughout affected towns and villages.
UNICEF has warned there is “very little time to prevent the spread of opportunistic diseases.”
Cyclone Idai clobbered most of Mozambique nearly two weeks ago with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains.
It also walloped eastern Zimbabwe and Malawi.
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Once stigmatized and banned across the United States, marijuana is now legalized in many parts of the country, primarily for medicinal use, but increasingly also for recreation. As cannabis becomes mainstream, Americans in their 70s and 80s who used to get high on marijuana in their youth, are now using cannabis-infused products to relieve old age aches and pains. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has this report.
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At one atom thick, graphene is one of those miracle materials that many say is the stuff of the future. The future may be now as graphene’s potential is being realized as the key to quick efficient 5G networks, and the future of telecommunications. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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For the first time, a person living with HIV has donated a kidney to a transplant recipient also living with HIV.
A team from Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore performed the surgery March 25.
“A disease that was a death sentence in the 1980s has become one so well-controlled that those living with HIV can now save lives with kidney donation,” Dr. Dorry Segev, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said Thursday at a news conference.
Organs have been transplanted from an HIV-positive cadaver to an HIV-positive patient; however, HIV is known to cause kidney disease, so people living with HIV have not previously been able to donate kidneys.
Segev said he and his colleagues researched more than 40,000 people living with HIV, looking specifically at kidney health. They found that people whose HIV was under control have the same health risks as those without HIV, and are healthy enough to donate kidneys.
In addition, antiretroviral therapy allows people with HIV to have a normal lifespan.
Stigma of HIV
Dr. Christine Durand, an infectious disease and cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins, said the transplant procedure advances medicine while helping defeat the stigma associated with HIV.
“It challenges providers and the public to see HIV differently,” she said. “Every successful transplant shortens the waitlist for all patients, no matter their HIV status.”
Durand and Segev are leading HOPE in Action, an effort that encompasses multiple national studies exploring the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of HIV-to-HIV transplantation. Currently, HIV to non-HIV organ donations are not legal.
The donor
The kidney donor, Nina Martinez, has had HIV since early childhood. She decided she wanted to be a donor after watching a TV drama about the first living kidney donor with HIV.
“Some people believe that people living with HIV are sick, or look unwell,” said Martinez, who works to eliminate the stigma surrounding HIV. “As a policy advocate, I want people to change what they believe they know about HIV. I don’t want to be anyone’s hero. I want to be someone’s example, someone’s reason to consider donating.”
After corresponding with Segev, Martinez traveled to Baltimore last year for an evaluation. The surgical team at Johns Hopkins found that Martinez had healthy kidneys and a very low amount of HIV in her blood.
People with well-controlled HIV who don’t have a history of diabetes, uncontrolled high blood pressure, or protein in their urine could be healthy enough to donate.
Segev said both the donor and the recipient are doing well. The recipient has asked to remain anonymous.
About 113,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the United States. The longest wait is for a kidney. About 20 Americans die each day while waiting.
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Influential figures in Washington are calling for the establishment of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan, even as U.S. and Chinese officials move toward a resolution of their long-running trade dispute.
“We have a lot of issues with Beijing, and a lot of opportunities with Taiwan,” said Edwin J. Feulner in an interview with VOA. Feulner is the founder and former president of the Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank in Washington known for its conservative views and ties with the Republican Party.
Feulner thinks trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing will most likely conclude within 60 days, at which point a full-force push for a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan could begin. Those talks would be “more or less independent of what’s going on with bilateral negotiations with Beijing,” he said.
WATCH: Feulner: Taiwan Not Seen by Administration as ‘Bargaining Chip’
Feulner predicted “huge bipartisan support on Capitol Hill” for such an agreement. “Both Republican and Democrat, both House and Senate members, are overwhelmingly positive that a free China can exist, and can be there in the world community today,” he said.
WATCH: Feulner: ‘We Intend to Strengthen Our Friends’
However, any such deal could be expected to anger authorities in Beijing, who see Taiwan as a renegade Chinese province and adamantly oppose any initiatives that treat the island as an independent country.
The international community has seen how Beijing tries to make Taiwan pay for any inroads it makes toward international recognition, said Scott W. Harold, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a global policy research group. But Beijing’s problem, he said, “is that they’ve dialed the pain up so high, so often, that it’s hard to see what more they can do.”
On Wednesday, Feulner invited Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to participate by Skype in a conference at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Tsai, on a stopover in Hawaii after visiting three Indo-Pacific nations that still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, told the audience her government was enthusiastic about the prospect of bilateral trade talks with the U.S.
“If we can have a breakthrough in trade with the U.S., this will be very helpful in terms of encouraging many other trading partners to do the same,” she said, adding that a trade deal with the United States would reduce Taipei’s reliance on China “as they increase their political influence in Taiwan, primarily using economic actors.”
Tsai expressed hope that talks with Washington will include discussion about Taiwan’s role in the global high-tech supply chain “amid concerns of technology theft and control over 5G networks” by Beijing.
Two prominent members of the U.S. Congress joined Feulner in welcoming Tsai to the U.S. and expressed their support for a bilateral free-trade agreement. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a Republican and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the pursuit of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan “imperative.”
Common values
Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the most senior Republican on its subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation, told Tsai and the audience that “trade is important between our nations, but more important than that is our common belief in the values we hold, the democracies that we have together. That in itself is the thing that really binds us together.”
Steve Yates, former U.S. government official and longtime observer of U.S.-Taiwan relations, told VOA that President Donald Trump has “unhesitatingly signed” a series of resolutions and bills in support of closer ties between Washington and Taipei. He said that signaled that it might be time “for the administration and Congress to be able to cross that bridge and get some results.”
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Facebook was charged with discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because of its ad-targeting system.
HUD said Thursday Facebook is allowing advertisers to exclude people based on their neighborhood by drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map and giving advertisers the option of showing ads only to men or only to women.
The agency also claims Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude people that the social media company classified as parents; non-American-born; non-Christian; interested in accessibility; interested in Hispanic culture or a wide variety of other interests that closely align with the Fair Housing Act’s protected classes.
HUD, which is pursuing civil charges and potential monetary awards that could run into the millions, said Facebook’s ad platform is “encouraging, enabling, and causing housing discrimination” because it allows advertisers to exclude people who they don’t want to see their ads.
The claim from HUD comes less than a week after Facebook said it would overhaul its ad-targeting systems to prevent discrimination in housing , credit and employment ads as part of a legal settlement with a group that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Fair Housing Alliance and others.
The technology at the heart of the clashes is what has helped turned Facebook into a goliath with annual revenue of close to $56 billion.
It can offer advertisers and groups the ability to direct messages with precision to exactly the crowd that they want to see it. The potential is as breathtaking as it is potentially destructive.
Facebook has taken fire for allowing groups to target groups of people identified as “Jew-haters” and Nazi sympathizers. There remains the fallout from the 2016 election, when, among other things, Facebook allowed fake Russian accounts to buy ads targeting U.S. users to enflame political divisions.
The company is wrestling with several government investigations in the U.S. and Europe over its data and privacy practices. A shakeup this month that ended with the departure of some of Facebook’s highest ranking executives raised questions about the company’s direction.
The departures came shortly after CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out a new “privacy-focused” vision for social networking. He has promised to transform Facebook from a company known for devouring the personal information shared by its users to one that gives people more ways to communicate in truly private fashion, with their intimate thoughts and pictures shielded by encryption in ways that Facebook itself can’t read.
However, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said Thursday there is little difference between the potential for discrimination in Facebook’s technology, and discrimination that has taken place for years.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” Carson said. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday.
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Britons desperately wanting some clarity in the country’s interminable Brexit saga were disappointed Wednesday when lawmakers plunged the country’s proposed exit from the European Union, after half-a-century of membership, into further disarray, failing to find a majority for any way forward after a series of so-called indicative votes.
The hope had been a majority might emerge from the eight different options they voted on, which included staying in the EU, leaving with no withdrawal agreement, remaining in the bloc’s customs union and/or single market or holding a second Brexit referendum.
“Parliament Finally Has Its Say: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” Britain’s Guardian newspaper announced on its front-page Thursday.
“In summary: the Commons has now overwhelmingly rejected every single type of Brexit, and no Brexit,” tweeted Michel Deacon, the Daily Telegraph’s parliamentary sketch-writer. The option of leaving without a deal was defeated by a huge margin. So, too, was a motion that would see Brexit cancelled altogether.
It wasn’t what the organizers of the indicative votes in the House of Commons had hoped would be the upshot. Backed by the opposition parties and pro-EU Conservative rebels they seized control of the parliamentary agenda from the government, the first time in 140 years that Downing Street hasn’t called the shots on what can be debated and when on the floor of the House of Commons.
“This is going well. Putting the Commons in charge was clearly a brilliant idea,” tweeted Andrew Neil, the arch-Brexiter presenter of a BBC politics show. The EU’s chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said Britain’s intentions had become more mysterious than those of the mythological sphinxes guarding ancient tombs.
More confusion
To add to the confusion in London, just before the indicative voting, an exhausted Prime Minister Theresa May told her Conservative lawmakers she would relinquish the party leadership and resign as prime minister, but only if her contentious Brexit withdrawal agreement, which parliament has twice rejected, is passed.
May’s announcement was a last-ditch bid to persuade Conservative Brexiters to back her withdrawal agreement, a deal they disapprove of because it would keep Britain closely aligned with the European Union and obedient to its rules while a longer-term trade relationship is negotiated.
A hardcore of Conservative Eurosceptics and ten lawmakers from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, who May has to rely on because her government is a minority one, have adamantly refused to back her deal. They say the plan poses a risk to the integrity of the union of the United Kingdom. The DUP believes if it took effect, it would cause trade differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and create in effect a “border down the Irish Sea.”
There were no signs Thursday that May will be able to persuade enough holdouts to vote for her deal, if it is put before the Commons for a third time, leaving Britain on course to crash out of the EU without a deal on April 12, unless the British government requests, for the second time, a Brexit postponement.
EU negotiators have indicated they might be open to another delay, but only if it is a lengthy one of a year or more.
It remains unclear how the political deadlock in London can be broken. The idea of leaving without a transition deal has strong opposition in the Commons and would likely be blocked by a majority of lawmakers.
Frustration on EU side
EU negotiators, out of exasperation, could decide to raise the stakes and decline another Brexit postponement, hoping to force the Commons to stop Brexit altogether, say some analysts. But it is unlikely they would risk such a high stakes gamble, fearing that might push Britain into crashing out by accident as much as by design.
European Council President, Donald Tusk, said last week in Brussels that the European Union will work with Britain for as long as it takes and on Wednesday he urged European lawmakers to be open to a long delay in Britain’s departure.
That leaves Britain trapped — paralyzed by a deadlocked House of Commons, itself a reflection of a country split down the middle over staying a member of the EU or quitting. With all avenues seemingly leading to dead-ends, there is more talk now in the British parliament of the need to hold an general election, hoping that returns a parliament that is not so undecided.
Behind-the-scenes Cabinet ministers and Conservative party officials are war-gaming calling an election three years ahead of schedule. David Davies, a pro-Brexit Conservative MP who quit as Brexit minister, says “a general election is a lot more likely now.” He added: “I don’t say it’s going to happen, but clearly if a government can’t get through on the one issue which we were really elected to deal with at the last election it puts us all in a very difficult situation.”
The problem in calling a snap election is the British public doesn’t want another one so soon after the Conservatives called another early poll two years ago, according to opinion surveys, with just 12 percent backing the idea.
The other problem for the Conservatives is that they would be fighting an election with a leader who has announced she intends to step down soon and heading a party that’s even more deeply and rancorously divided than the main opposition Labour party.
In the division lobbies on Wednesday some Conservative lawmakers on different sides of the Brexit question were spotted cursing each other and one clash prompted the intervention of colleagues, who feared a brawl might break out.
Commons in charge
Organizers of Wednesday’s indicative voting are placing some hopes that the Commons can still break the deadlock. They say clarity could be reached on Monday when lawmakers are due for another session of indicative voting, this time on the options that attracted the most support.
Labour’s Stephen Doughty said they never expected the votes on Wednesday to reveal a majority for one option. The whole idea was to narrow down the alternatives that have the most support and for parliament then to reconsider.
The two closest votes Wednesday were for staying in the EU’s customs union and another for a second referendum confirming any Brexit departure. Both attracted more votes than May’s deal has got the two occasions it was voted on in parliament. Campaigners for a second referendum appear buoyed.
They believe Britons have shifted their attitudes on Brexit since the 2016 referendum, pointing to a new polling study by veteran pollster John Curtice, which indicates voters are becoming increasingly doubtful about Brexit. The study suggests two and half years after the plebiscite, leaving the European Union may not now reflect majority thinking.
British cybersecurity inspectors have found significant technical issues in Chinese telecom supplier Huawei’s software that they say pose risks for the country’s telecom companies.
The annual report Thursday said there is only “limited assurance” that long-term national security risks from Huawei’s involvement in critical British telecom networks can be adequately managed.
The report adds pressure on Huawei, which is at the center of a geopolitical battle between the U.S. and China.
The U.S. government wants its European allies to ban the company from next-generation mobile networks set to roll out in coming years over fears Huawei gear could be used for cyberespionage.
The report noted that Britain’s cybersecurity authorities did not believe the defects were a result of “Chinese state interference.”
Iceland’s budget carrier WOW Air said it had ceased operations and cancelled all flights on Thursday, potentially stranding thousands of passengers.
The collapse of the troubled airline, which transports more than a third of those traveling to Iceland, comes after buyout talks with rival Icelandair collapsed earlier this week.
“All WOW Air flights have been cancelled. Passengers are advised to check available flights with other airlines,” the carrier said in a statement.
“Some airlines may offer flights at a reduced rate, so-called rescue fares, in light of the circumstances. Information on those airlines will be published, when it becomes available.”
WOW Air, founded in 2011, exploited Iceland’s location in the middle of the North Atlantic to offer a low-cost service between Europe and North America as well as tapping into a tourist boom to the volcanic island.
However it had flown into financial trouble in recent years due to heightened competition and rising fuel prices, and had been searching for an investor for months.
On Monday WOW Air said it was in talks to restructure its debt with its creditors after Icelandair ended brief negotiations over buying a stake in the no-frills airline.
WOW Air was left needing $42 million to save the company, according to the Frettabladid newspaper.
The privately-owned airline has undergone major restructuring after posting a pre-tax loss of almost $42 million for the first nine months of 2018.
It has reduced its fleet from 20 to 11 aircraft, eliminating several destinations, including those to the US, and cutting 111 full-time jobs.
A report by a governmental work group has warned that a WOW Air bankruptcy would lead to a drop in Iceland’s gross domestic product, a drop in the value of the krona and rising inflation.
So far this year, more than 300 people have contracted measles in 15 states in the U.S. Almost half of those cases occurred in Rockland County, just north of New York City.
Because of the outbreak, which has lasted nearly six months, county officials have declared a state of emergency and are banning anyone who is unvaccinated from frequenting public places.
“Anyone who is under 18 years of age and is not vaccinated against the measles will be prohibited from public places until the declaration expires in 30 days or until they receive their first shot of MMR,” said Ed Day, county executive.
WATCH: New York County Declares Emergency Over Measles
Public places include shopping malls, restaurants, buses and trains. Police will not be asking for vaccination records, but parents can face a fine of $500 and as much as six months in jail if they refuse to vaccinate their children.
The outbreak is concentrated in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
‘Roll of the dice’
The county executive says it is a matter of getting parents to understand how dangerous measles is.
“Every new case is a roll of the dice,” Day said. “It could bring on pneumonia, encephalitis, the swelling of the brain, or cause premature birth, which can lead to complications and even death.”
And, he said, it’s a matter of keeping those who can’t get vaccinated safe.
“What about the infants who are out there with mom and dad? My newborn grandson is an infant. What about those who are pregnant and those with compromised immune systems like cancer patients and survivors? These are the people we all need to step up for,” Day said.
Vaccine rates vary
Vaccine rates in the U.S. are still high. A CDC study found that 94 percent of children in the U.S. receive the first dose of vaccines that protect against measles, mumps, rubella and other vaccine preventable diseases.
But vaccines that require boosters, including the vaccine against measles, had lower rates of coverage.
Some states allow parents who oppose vaccinating their children for religious or philosophical reasons to opt out. Vaccination rates in these states have dropped steadily. And as they have dropped, cases of measles have increased.
Vaccines proven safe
Some parents wrongly believe vaccines can cause autism in children. Study after study has shown that not to be true. Dr. Frank Esper, a pediatrician with the Cleveland Clinic, defends vaccinating children.
“These vaccines are well shown to be safe,” he said. “We have tested them. We have followed children who have received these vaccines. We know how safe they are.”
Still, some parents remain unconvinced. Rockland County is offering free measles vaccinations in an effort to end the outbreak.
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So far this year, more than 300 people have had measles in 15 states in the U.S. Almost half have occurred in Rockland County just north of New York City. County officials are now banning anyone who is unvaccinated from frequenting public places. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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Most of us don’t give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks like buttoning a shirt can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports.
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Facebook has announced it is banning praise, support, and representation of white nationalism and separatism on its platform and on Instagram, which it also owns.
The company made the announcement Wednesday in a blog post, saying, “It’s clear that these concepts are deeply linked to organized hate groups and have no place on our services.”
The post says Facebook has long banned hateful speech based on race, ethnicity and religion, though it had permitted expressions of white nationalism and separatism because it seemed separate from white supremacy.
“But over the past three months,” the post read, “our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world … have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups.”
“Going forward,” it continued, “while people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.”
It said people searching for terms associated with white supremacy will be directed to information about the group “Life After Hate,” which is an organization that helps violent extremists leave their hate groups through intervention, education, support groups and outreach.
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