An estimated 44 million people 65 years and older worldwide have Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia. Alzheimer’s is a degenerative brain disorder that causes memory loss, and impairs thinking, judgment and problem solving. So far, scientists have not found a drug that can stop the disease. But a research program in the United States is trying to prevent it by targeting the earliest changes in the brain while memory and thinking skills are still intact. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said that Wednesday’s stock market sell-off was in fact a long-awaited “correction,” and that the Federal Reserve, which has been raising U.S. interest rates, had gone “crazy.”
Trump’s use of the word correction to describe the sell-off could be significant. A stock market correction is defined as a decline of at least 10 percent from the high point of the past 52 weeks, suggesting that major U.S. indices have further to fall.
Despite Wednesday’s sell-off, the S&P 500 would still need to more than double its losses. It has fallen nearly 5 percent from its all-time closing high on Sept. 20. The Nasdaq has fallen 8.5 percent from its record closing high on Aug. 29. An additional 1.5-percentage-point fall would confirm a correction for that index.
Stocks have sold off in recent days on worries about higher borrowing costs. A spike in Treasury yields and solid U.S. economic data have sparked concerns that the Federal Reserve may pick up the pace of its interest rate hikes.
“Actually it’s a correction that we’ve been waiting for a long time, but I really disagree with what the Fed is doing,” Trump told reporters before a political rally in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. stock market sell-off on Wednesday saw the S&P 50 and the Dow marking their biggest daily declines since Feb. 8, and technology stocks were at the center of the carnage. Steve Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco, said he thought the downturn would b short-lived.
“There’s a greater than 50-50 chance there’s a rebound, if not tomorrow, then the day after, given the severity of the move,” he said.
But some investors and analysts expressed concern about the market’s direction.
“It’s probably the beginning of the correction,” said Oliver Pursche, vice chairman and chief market strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York.
‘Fed is making a mistake’
The Fed last raised interest rates in September and left intact its plans to steadily tighten monetary policy, as it forecast that the U.S. economy would enjoy at least three more years of economic growth.
But those actions have drawn scorn from Trump, who has accused the Fed of moving too fast in raising rates when inflation is minimal and government data points to a strong economy.
“I think … the Fed is making a mistake. They’re so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy,” Trump said.
U.S. presidents have rarely criticized the Fed in recent decades because its independence has been seen as important for economic stability. Trump has departed from that practice and has said he would not shy from future criticism should the Fed keep lifting rates.
The Federal Reserve is mandated by Congress to aim for low inflation and low unemployment. U.S. consumer price inflation is currently above 2 percent annually and the unemployment rate is the lowest in about 40 years.
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A characteristic twinkle in his eye, Ronald Reagan waves to a crowd from aboard a rail car in a hologram revealed Wednesday at the late president’s namesake library in Southern California.
“We think we made a good beginning, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” the digital resurrection of the nation’s 40th president says in his steady voice as a flurry of balloons falls in front of him.
Reagan, who died in 2004 at age 93, was speaking about the nation’s future during a 1984 campaign stop but easily could have been referencing the technology that brought him back to life in 2018. The audio used is edited from his real remarks.
’A stunning experience’
“We wanted to make President Reagan as lifelike as possible,” said John Heubusch, executive director of the Reagan Foundation. “It’s a stunning experience.”
In two other holograms, Reagan appears in a suit and tie inside the Oval Office and in horseback riding pants, carrying a lasso alongside his dog, Victory, at his beloved ranch. All three holograms will be on display to visitors of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, west of Los Angeles, starting Thursday.
They will be shown in a specially designed room that will be the first stop for guests. Seats are set up in front of a stage, and a curtain opens up to thunderous applause at Reagan’s campaign stop more than three decades ago.
How it was done
The computer-generated imagery for the holograms was created starting with a silicone cast of Reagan’s head that was photographed from various angles with 300 cameras. His head was then digitally “placed” on the body of an actor portraying the president with full costumes and backdrops for the three scenarios.
Reagan’s face comes to life via specific movements of the mouth, nose, eyes, cheeks and hairline, all manipulated by computers.
The library worked with the same special-effects technicians who helped bring singers like Michael Jackson, Billie Holiday and Roy Orbison back to life on stage.
The Hollywood firm Hologram USA helped create the holograms and the stage on which they’re projected.
A lover of technology
As a radio host, television star and movie actor, Reagan understood and appreciated new technologies, company senior vice president David Nussbaum said.
“He always thought many steps ahead,” he said. “If he was looking down right now on this project, I think he would give us his seal of approval. I think he would totally get this and support it.”
Seeing her former boss “almost in the flesh” was “a little eerie, but at the same time, very comforting,” said Joanne Drake, who served as Reagan’s chief of staff after the Republican left office following his two terms from 1981 to 1989.
“It’s fun to think that he’s standing in front of us,” said Drake, who’s now chief administration officer for the foundation. “Intellectually, you know it’s not him standing there, but you see his facial movements and his arm movements and his body and that twinkle in his eye and that little grin that he always got, and it makes you remember really what he brought to the office.”
Drake said future plans could include bringing the holograms on the road.
“I do think we’re going to see Ronald Reagan back in Washington, D.C.,” she said.
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The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday said that it had awarded a total of $2.3 billion in contracts to develop rocket launch systems for national security missions.
The awards go to Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin; United Launch Services, part of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp; and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.
The three contracts are part of a Department of Defense initiative to assure constant military access to space and curb reliance on foreign-made rocket engines, like ULA’s flagship Atlas V rocket that uses Russian-made RD-180 boosters. The contracts are to develop rockets and carry defense payloads into space.
Centennial, Colorado-based United Launch Services received $967 million to develop its Vulcan rocket; Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin was awarded $500 million to build its New Glenn booster, and Northrop Grumman of Arizona received $791.6 million for its OmegA rocket.
Blue Origin’s and Northrop’s prototype vehicles for military launches are expected to be ready to fly by late 2024 and ULA’s Vulcan rocket development should be completed by March 2025.
Blue Origin said in a statement following Wednesday’s announcement that it will build a launch site at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, although it did not say what rockets would launch from the site. ULA announced in September that its Vulcan rocket will be powered by Blue’s BE-4 liquid rocket engines.
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Mat Beren and his friends used to drive by the vast greenhouses of southern British Columbia and joke about how much weed they could grow there.
Years later, it’s no joke. The tomato and pepper plants that once filled some of those greenhouses have been replaced with a new cash crop: marijuana. Beren and other formerly illicit growers are helping cultivate it. The buyers no longer are unlawful dealers or dubious medical dispensaries; it’s the Canadian government.
On Oct. 17, Canada becomes the second and largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace. Uruguay launched legal sales last year, after several years of planning.
It’s a profound social shift promised by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and fueled by a desire to bring the black market into a regulated, taxed system after nearly a century of prohibition.
It also stands in contrast to the United States, where the federal government outlaws marijuana while most states allow medical or recreational use for people 21 and older. Canada’s national approach has allowed for unfettered industry banking, inter-province shipments of cannabis, online ordering, postal delivery and billions of dollars in investment; national prohibition in the U.S. has stifled greater industry expansion there.
Hannah Hetzer, who tracks international marijuana policy for the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, called Canada’s move “extremely significant,” given that about 25 countries have already legalized the medical use of marijuana or decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot. A few, including Mexico, have expressed an interest in regulating recreational use.
“It’s going to change the global debate on drug policy,” she said. “There’s no other country immediately considering legalizing the nonmedical use of cannabis, but I think Canada will provide almost the permission for other countries to move forward.”
At least 109 legal pot shops are expected to open across the nation of 37 million people next Wednesday, with many more to come, according to an Associated Press survey of the provinces. For now, they’ll offer dried flower, capsules, tinctures and seeds, with sales of marijuana-infused foods and concentrates expected to begin next year.
Overseeing distribution
The provinces are tasked with overseeing marijuana distribution. For some, including British Columbia and Alberta, that means buying cannabis from licensed producers, storing it in warehouses and then shipping it to retail shops and online customers. Others, like Newfoundland, are having growers ship directly to stores or through the mail.
Federal taxes will total $1 per gram or 10 percent, whichever is more. The feds will keep one-fourth of that and return the rest to the provinces, which can add their own markups. Consumers also will pay local sales taxes.
Some provinces have chosen to operate their own stores, like state-run liquor stores in the U.S., while others have OK’d private outlets. Most are letting residents grow up to four plants at home.
Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, won’t have any stores open until next April, after the new conservative government scrapped a plan for state-owned stores in favor of privately run shops. Until then, the only legal option for Ontario residents will be mail delivery — a prospect that didn’t sit well with longtime pot fan Ryan Bose, 48, a Lyft driver.
“Potheads are notoriously very impatient. When they want their weed, they want their weed,” he said after buying a half-ounce at an illicit medical marijuana dispensary in Toronto. “Waiting one or two three days for it by mail, I’m not sure how many will want to do that.”
British Columbia, home of the “B.C. Bud” long cherished by American pot connoisseurs, has had a prevalent marijuana culture since the 1970s, after U.S. draft-dodgers from the Vietnam War settled on Vancouver Island and in the province’s southeastern mountains. But a change in government last year slowed cannabis distribution plans there, too, and it will have just one store ready next Wednesday: a state-run shop in Kamloops, a few hours’ drive northeast of Vancouver. By contrast, Alberta expects to open 17 next week and 250 within a year.
Unlawful operations
No immediate crackdown is expected for the dozens of illicit-but-tolerated medical marijuana dispensaries operating in British Columbia, though officials eventually plan to close any without a license. Many are expected to apply for private retail licenses, and some have sued, saying they have a right to remain open.
British Columbia’s ministry of public safety is forming a team of 44 inspectors to root out unlawful operations, seize product and issue fines. They’ll have responsibility for a province of 4.7 million people and an area twice as large as California, where the black market still dwarfs the legal market that arrived in January.
Chris Clay, a longtime Canadian medical marijuana activist, runs Warmland Centre dispensary in an old shopping mall in Mill Bay, on Vancouver Island. He is closing the store Monday until he gets a license; he feared continuing to operate post-legalization would jeopardize his chances. Some of his eight staff members will likely have to file for unemployment benefits in the meantime.
“That will be frustrating, but overall I’m thrilled,” Clay said. “I’ve been waiting decades for this.”
Licensed growers
The federal government has licensed 120 growers, some of them enormous. Canopy Growth, which recently received an investment of $4 billion from Constellation Brands, whose holdings include Corona beer, Robert Mondavi wines and Black Velvet whiskey, is approved for 5.6 million square feet (520,000 square meters) of production space across Canada. Its two biggest greenhouses are near the U.S. border in British Columbia.
Beren, a 23-year cannabis grower, is a Canopy consultant.
“We used to joke around all the time when we’d go to Vancouver and drive by the big greenhouses on the highway,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh man, someday. It’d be so awesome if we could grow cannabis in one of these greenhouses.’ We drive by now, and we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re here.”‘
Next to Canopy’s greenhouse in Delta is another huge facility, Pure Sunfarms, a joint venture between a longtime tomato grower, Village Farms International, and a licensed medical marijuana producer, Emerald Health Therapeutics. Workers pulled out the remaining tomato plants last winter and got to work renovating the greenhouse as a marijuana farm, installing equipment that includes lights and accordion-shaped charcoal vents to control the plant’s odor. By 2020, the venture expects to move more than 165,000 pounds (75,000 kg) of bud per year.
Some longtime illegal growers who operate on a much smaller scale worry they won’t get licensed or will get steamrolled by much larger producers. Provinces can issue “micro-producer” licenses. But in British Columbia, where small-time pot growers helped sustain rural economies as the mining and forestry industries cratered, the application period hasn’t opened yet.
Sarah Campbell of the Craft Cannabis Association of BC said many small operators envision a day when they can host visitors who can tour their operations and sample the product, as wineries do.
Officials say they intend to accommodate craft growers but first need to ensure there is enough cannabis to meet demand when legalization arrives. Hiccups are inevitable, they say, and tweaks will be needed.
“Leaving it to each province to decide what’s best for their communities and their citizens is something that’s good,” said Gene Makowsky, the Saskatchewan minister who oversees the province’s Liquor and Gaming Authority. “We’ll be able to see if each law is successful or where we can do better in certain areas.”
British Columbia safety minister Mike Farnworth said he learned two primary lessons by visiting Oregon and Washington, U.S. states with recreational marijuana. One was not to look at the industry as an immediate cash cow, as it will take time to displace the black market. The other was to start with relatively strict regulations and then loosen them as needed, because it’s much harder to tighten them after the fact.
Legalization will be a process more than a date, Farnworth said.
“Oct. 17th is actually not going to look much different than it does today,” he said.
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U.S. stocks posted their worst loss since February on Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average finishing the day down more than 800 points.
The losses were widespread as bond yields remained high after steep increases last week. Companies that have been the biggest winners on the market the last few years, including technology companies and retailers, suffered steep declines.
The Dow gave up nearly 828 points, or 3.15 percent, to 25,600. The Nasdaq composite, which has a high concentration of technology stocks, tumbled 316 points, or 4.1 percent, to 7,422.
The S&P 500 index sank 95 points, or 3.3 percent, to 2,786, its fifth straight drop. That hasn’t happened since right before the 2016 presidential election. Every one of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished down for the day.
Microsoft dropped 5.4 percent to $106.16. Amazon skidded 6.2 percent to $1,755.25. Industrial and internet companies also fell hard. Boeing lost 4.7 percent to $367.47 and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, gave up 5 percent to $1,081.22.
After a long stretch of relative calm, the stock market has suffered sharp losses over the last week as bond yields surged.
Squeezed margins
Gina Martin Adams, the chief equity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, said investors are concerned about the big increase in yields, which makes it more expensive to borrow money. She said they also fear that company profit margins will be squeezed by rising costs, including the price of oil.
Paint and coatings maker PPG gave a weak third-quarter forecast Monday, while earlier, Pepsi and Conagra’s quarterly reports reflected increased expenses.
“Both companies highlighted rising costs, not only input costs but increasing operating expenses [and] marketing expenses,” she said.
Insurance companies dropped as Hurricane Michael continued to gather strength and came ashore in Florida bringing winds of up to 155 mph. Berkshire Hathaway dipped 4.8 percent to $213.10 and reinsurer Everest Re slid 5.1 percent to $217.73.
Luxury retailers tumbled. Tiffany plunged 10.2 percent to $110.38 and Ralph Lauren fell 8.4 percent to $116.96.
The biggest driver for the market over the last week has been interest rates, which began spurting higher following several encouraging reports on the economy. Higher rates can slow economic growth, erode corporate profits and make investors less willing to pay high prices for stocks.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.22 percent from 3.20 percent late Tuesday after earlier touching 3.24 percent. It was at just 3.05 percent early last week.
Technology and internet-based companies are known for their high profit margins, and many have reported explosive growth in recent years, with corresponding gains in their stock prices. Adams, of Bloomberg Intelligence, said investors have concerns about their future profitability, too.
That’s helped make technology stocks more volatile in the last few months.
“As stocks go up, tech goes up more than the stock market. As stocks go down, tech goes down more than the stock market,” she said.
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Australia is rejecting the latest U.N. report on climate change, insisting coal remains critical to energy security and lowering household power bills.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its report released Monday that global greenhouse gas emissions must reach zero by the middle of the century to stop global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The authors warned that if warming was allowed to reach two degrees, the world would be on course toward uncontrollable temperatures.
They made special mention of coal, insisting that its use for power generation would have to fall to between zero and two percent of current usage.
The report has received a lukewarm response by Australia’s center-right government. It has said it has no intention of scaling back fossil fuel production because without coal, household power bills would soar.
Canberra also insists it is on target to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement, which attempts to unite every nation under a single accord to tackle climate change for the first time ever.
Australia earns billions of dollars exporting coal to China and other parts of Asia, while it generates more than 60 percent of domestic electricity.
Australia’s Environment Minister Melissa Price believes the IPCC report exaggerates the threat posed by fossil fuel.
“Coal does form a very important part of the Australian energy mixer and we make no apology for the fact that our focus at the moment is on getting electricity prices down,” Price said. “Every year, there is new technology with respect to coal and what its contribution is to emissions. So, you know, to say that it has got to be phased out by 2050 is drawing a very long bow.”
Australia has some of the world’s highest per capita rates of greenhouse gas pollution. A recent government report showed a failure to reduce levels of greenhouse gas pollution. The survey said that between January and March this year, Australia had its most elevated levels of carbon pollution since 2011.
Conservationists argue Australia is doing too little to protect itself from the predicted ravages of a shifting climate.
Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. Scientists warn that droughts, floods, heat waves, brush fires and storms will become more intense as temperatures rise, with potentially disastrous consequences for human health and the environment, including the Great Barrier Reef.
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Google will begin offering its pay-to-carpool service throughout the U.S., an effort to reduce the commute-time congestion that its popular Waze navigation app is designed to avoid.
The expansion announced Wednesday builds upon a carpooling system that Waze began testing two years ago in northern California and Israel before gradually extending it into Brazil and parts of 12 other states.
Now it will be available to anyone in the U.S.
Drivers willing to give someone a ride for a small fee to cover some of their costs for gas and other expenses need only Waze’s app on their phone. Anyone willing to pay a few bucks to hitch a ride will need to install a different Waze app focused on carpooling.
About 1.3 million drivers and passengers have signed up for Waze’s carpooling service, the company says. About 30 million people in the U.S. currently rely on the Waze app for directions; it has 110 million users worldwide.
Waze’s carpooling effort has been viewed as a potential first step for Google to mount a challenge to the two top ride-hailing services, Uber and Lyft.
But Waze founder and CEO Noam Bardin rejected that notion in an interview with The Associated Press, insisting that the carpooling service is purely an attempt to ease traffic congestion.
“We don’t want to be a professional driving network,” Bardin said. “We see ride sharing as something that needs to become part of the daily commute. If we can’t get people out of their cars, it won’t be solving anything.”
Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey also sees Waze’s service as a bigger threat to other carpooling apps such as Scoop and Carpool Buddy than to Uber and Lyft. “Carpooling is a much different animal,” he said.
It’s a form of transportation that Bardin said Waze had difficulty figuring out. Early on, Waze tried to get more drivers to sign up by emphasizing the economic benefits of having someone help cover gas costs for a trip that they were going to make anyway.
But earlier this year, Waze realized it needed a better formula for connecting strangers willing to ride together in a car. Many women, for instance, only want to ride with other women, Bardin said, while other people enjoy commuting with others who work for the same employer or live in the same neighborhood.
“Carpooling is a more social experience,” Bardin said. “A lot of time those of us working in the digital world forget that social connections are often the most important thing in the real world.”
Waze’s app still sets a price for each carpooling trip and transfers payments without charging a commission. That’s something Waze can afford to do because Google makes so much money from selling digital ads on Waze and its many other services.
The carpooling fees are supposed to be similar to what it would cost to take a train or type of public transportation to work, Bardin said. Drivers and riders can agree to adjust the price upward or downward, but the fees can never exceed the rate the Internal Revenue Service allows for business-related mileage — currently 54.5 cents per mile.
Even though Waze’s carpooling service doesn’t appear to be driven by profit motive, Ramsey isn’t convinced that will always be the case. “I do think Google is realizing that it can’t just keep making all its money from selling ads,” he said.
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The Treasury Department has issued new rules on foreign investments into American companies that will give the government more power to block foreign transactions on national security grounds.
The rules represent the latest escalation in an intensifying economic conflict between the United States and China. It will implement a program for tougher reviews of foreign acquisitions that Congress approved this summer.
The new regulations will require foreign investors to alert a Treasury-led interagency committee to all deals that would give the foreign investors access to critical technology covering 27 industries, including semiconductors, telecommunications and defense.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the new rules will “address specific risks to U.S. critical technology.”
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America’s recycling industry is in the dumps.
A crash in the global market for recyclables is forcing communities to make hard choices about whether they can afford to keep recycling or should simply send all those bottles, cans and plastic containers to the landfill.
Mountains of paper have piled up at sorting centers, worthless. Cities and towns that once made money on recyclables are instead paying high fees to processing plants to take them. Some financially strapped recycling processors have shut down entirely, leaving municipalities with no choice but to dump or incinerate their recyclables.
“There’s no market. We’re paying to get rid of it,” says Ben Harvey, president of EL Harvey & Sons, which handles recyclables from about 30 communities at its sorting facility in Westborough, Massachusetts. “Seventy-five percent of what goes through our plant is worth nothing to negative numbers now.”
It all stems from a policy shift by China, long the world’s leading recyclables buyer. At the beginning of the year it enacted an anti-pollution program that closed its doors to loads of waste paper, metals or plastic unless they’re 99.5 percent pure. That’s an unattainable standard at U.S. single-stream recycling processing plants designed to churn out bales of paper or plastic that are, at best, 97 percent free of contaminants such as foam cups and food waste.
The resulting glut of recyclables has caused prices to plummet from levels already depressed by other economic forces, including lower prices for oil, a key ingredient in plastics.
The three largest publicly traded residential waste-hauling and recycling companies in North America — Waste Management, Republic Services and Waste Connections — reported steep drops in recycling revenues in their second-quarter financial results. Houston-based Waste Management reported its average price for recyclables was down 43 percent from the previous year.
“A year ago, a bale of mixed paper was worth about $100 per ton; today we have to pay about $15 to get rid of it,” says Richard Coupland, vice president for municipal sales at Phoenix-based Republic, which handles 75 million tons of municipal solid waste and 8 million tons of recyclables nationwide annually. “Smaller recycling companies aren’t able to stay in business and are shutting down.”
Kirkwood, Missouri, announced plans this summer to end curbside recycling after a St. Louis-area processing facility shut down. Officials in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were surprised to learn that recyclables collected at curbside were being dumped because of a lack of markets. Lack of markets led officials to suspend recycling programs in Gouldsboro, Maine; DeBary, Florida; Franklin, New Hampshire; and Adrian Township, Michigan. Programs have been scaled back in Flagstaff, Arizona; La Crosse, Wisconsin; and Kankakee, Illinois.
Other communities are maintaining recycling programs but taking a financial hit as regional processors have raised rates to offset losses. Richland, Washington, is now paying $122 a ton for Waste Management to take its recycling; last year, the city was paid $16 a ton for the materials. Stamford, Connecticut, received $95,000 for recyclables last year; the city’s new contract requires it to pay $700,000.
A big part of the problem, besides lower commodity prices overall, is sloppy recycling.
In the early days of recycling, people had to wash bottles and cans, and sort paper, plastic, glass and metal into separate bins. Now there’s single-stream recycling, which allows all recyclables to be tossed into one bin. While single-stream has benefited efficiency, and customers like it, it’s been a challenge on the contamination side.
A tour of Republic’s facility in Beacon, about an hour’s drive north of New York City, makes the challenges clear. A third of the material dumped by collection trucks is non-recyclable “contaminants” such as garden hoses, picnic coolers and broken lawnmowers. Workers have to pull that out and truck it to a landfill, adding to overall costs. Plastic bags contaminate bales of other materials and tangle machinery. Spilled ketchup and greasy pizza boxes turn otherwise marketable material into garbage.
“The death of recycling was completely avoidable and incredibly easily fixed,” says Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, which advocates standardized labeling on recycling bins so people understand what goes in and what doesn’t.
A range of initiatives have been launched to get people to recycle right. Chicago is putting “oops” tags on curbside recycling bins with improper contents and leaving them uncollected. Rhode Island is airing “Let’s Recycle Right” ads.
While some recyclables have been diverted to other Asian markets since China’s closure, there are also signs of market improvement in the U.S. to offset the lost business, said David Biderman, CEO and executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America. He noted Chinese paper manufacturers that had relied on recyclables imported into their country have recently purchased shuttered mills in Kentucky, Maine and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, recyclable materials processors are re-negotiating contracts with municipalities to reflect the fact that prices paid for recyclables no longer offset the cost of collecting and sorting them.
“What we’re advocating is to step back and re-look at recycling,” Republic’s Coupland said. “This is the new normal. The model no longer funds itself.”
A new U.N. report finds a dramatic increase in the amount of economic loss incurred from natural disasters during the past 20 years, with climate-related disasters driving expensive property and infrastructure damage to new heights.
The report finds so-called geophysical disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis are deadliest, but climate-related disasters such as droughts, floods and heat waves cause economic losses to soar.
Between 1998 and 2017, disaster-hit countries have reported $2.9 trillion in direct economic losses, with 77 percent resulting from climate change. Data show the United States has suffered the greatest economic losses, nearly $1 trillion, followed by China, Japan, India and Puerto Rico.
Rich countries bear the brunt of economic losses, while low and middle-income countries are disproportionately affected by disasters, said Ricardo Mena, a senior official with the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“The report shows that because of much higher vulnerability, people in low and middle-income countries have seven times greater probabilities of being killed by a disaster than people in developed nations,” he said.
Those who suffer most from climate change are people in poor countries who contribute least to greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, the report warns. It predicts heat waves will be the biggest problem in the future, and will be much harder to manage than storms and floods in rich and poor countries alike.
The report urges countries to invest in disaster risk reduction, calling that the most cost-effective way to reduce the growing risks from climate change.
The report was jointly produced by the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
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Nearly 77 years after repeated torpedo strikes tore into the USS Oklahoma, killing hundreds of sailors and Marines, Carrie Brown leaned over the remains of a serviceman laid out on a table in her lab and was surprised the bones still smelled of burning oil from that horrific day at Pearl Harbor.
It was a visceral reminder of the catastrophic attack that pulled the United States into World War II, and it added an intimacy to the painstaking work Brown and hundreds of others are now doing to greatly increase the number of lost American servicemen who have been identified.
It’s a monumental mission that combines science, history and intuition, and it’s one Brown and her colleagues have recently been completing at ramped-up speed, with identifications expected to reach 200 annually, more than triple the figures from recent years.
“There are families still carrying the torch,” said Brown, a forensic anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s lab near Omaha, Nebraska. “It’s just as important now as it was 77 years ago.”
Officials believe remains of nearly half of the 83,000 unidentified service members killed in World War II and more recent wars could be identified and returned to relatives. The modern effort to identify remains started in 1973 and was primarily based in Hawaii until a second lab was opened in 2012 at Offutt Air Force Base in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue.
With an intensified push, the identifications climbed from 59 in 2013 to 183 last year and at least 200 and possibly a few more this year.
The increase has led to a surge of long-delayed memorial services and burials across the country as families and entire communities turn out to honor those killed.
Joani McGinnis, of Shenandoah, Iowa, said her family is planning a service Friday at the national cemetery in Omaha now that they have finally learned what happened to her uncle, Sgt. Melvin. C. Anderson.
Piecing together bits of history and DNA, the Omaha lab confirmed that remains found in 1946 in Germany were Anderson’s and that he died when his tank was hit in the rugged Hurtgen Forest during a battle that lasted for months and left tens of thousands of Americans killed and wounded.
Besides returning the remains, McGinnis said the agency gave her a thick file with details about how he died and how researchers unraveled the mystery.
“I wish my mom and my grandma were here to know all this information,” said McGinnis, who recalled a framed picture of Anderson that hung in her grandmother’s home in Omaha. “My grandmother was very sad about it. She just wanted to know what happened, and she never knew.”
In Kentucky, thousands of people lined roads for miles on a steamy August day to see a hearse carrying the remains of Army Pfc. Joe Stanton Elmore from the Nashville, Tennessee, airport to the small city of Albany.
Elmore was reported missing in action in December 1950 after an intense battle at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea and as deceased in 1953, but his great-niece April Speck said even decades later, her family would tell stories of “Joe going off to war and never coming home.” Speck said she knew her family would feel a sense of relief that his remains were finally returned, but she didn’t realize what it would mean to her community.
“There were people standing out with their signs and there were retired soldiers in their uniforms saluting, and then we get into Albany and it like was a sea of people with all the American flags,” she recalled. “The county did an awesome job of showing respect.”
The soaring number of identifications followed years of complaints about a cumbersome process, typically resulting in about 60 completed cases annually. Congress responded by setting a goal of 200 identifications annually, and it supported a reorganization and increased funding that saw spending climb from $80.8 million in the 2010 fiscal year to $143.9 million in 2018.
The effort now employs about 600 people.
Officials have streamlined the work of determining which remains should be disinterred. Historians focus on where clusters of servicemen died, and examine troop movements and conduct interviews with local residents.
“This work is very different from what most historians do,” said Ian Spurgeon, an agency historian in Washington. “This is detective history.”
Spurgeon’s focus is on battles in Europe and the Mediterranean, with a goal of disinterring 50 service members annually, up from fewer than five.
At Offutt, inside a lab built in a former World War II bomber factory, bones are arranged by type on black-topped tables. In another room, buttons, fabrics, coins and other items found alongside remains are studied for hints about a service member’s role or hometown.
DNA is key to identifications, but it can’t be extracted from all bones, and without a match from potential relatives, it has little value.
In some cases, lab workers refer to standard chest X-rays of World War II servicemen taken when they enlisted, focusing on the traits of the collarbones shown. An algorithm developed by the University of Nebraska-Omaha helps workers make comparisons of remains in minutes.
For Patricia Duran, the result has been finally learning what happened to her uncle, Army Air Forces Sgt. Alfonso O. Duran, who died in 1944 when his B-24H Liberator bomber was shot down. His remains were disinterred from a grave in Slovenia and identified this spring.
Duran had for years sought information about her uncle’s remains, and she said she clutched her cousin’s hand while watching him be buried Aug. 22 at Santa Fe National Cemetery, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his childhood home in the small mountain community of El Rito, New Mexico.
“We felt such a sense of closure about it because the whole family heard the stories” about him. “We felt we knew Alfonso,” she said. “We felt he’d come home.”
Dark, dirty and slow, Zimbabwe’s trains, like much else in the impoverished southern African country, have seen better days.
Once the preferred mode of transport for most Zimbabweans, the state-run rail service mirrors the decline in the country’s economic fortunes during the last two decades under the leadership of former President Robert Mugabe.
Gilbert Mthinzima Ndlovu, a veteran of Zimbabwe’s 1970s independence war and a security guard at the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) for 35 years, yearns for the old days when trains were full and arrived on time.
“Times are different now as we have few passengers,” the off-duty Ndlovu told Reuters as he rested in a badly lit first class cabin during the journey from the capital Harare to his home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.
Now the 10-hour journey can take 16 hours, he said.
Not surprising, then, that many Zimbabweans prefer to make the 440 km (273 mile) journey by bus or public taxi in around five hours than have to endure a cold overnight train ride – even if at $10 the train ride costs only half as much.
The train carriages often lack lighting and water, and the toilets are filthy. The signalling and information systems are often vandalized and some tracks overgrown with grass and weeds because they have not been used in years.
NRZ is now trying to improve its fortunes.
Last year South African logistics group Transnet won a $400 million joint bid to recapitalize NRZ and fix some of the problems, including acquiring and refurbishing carriages.
But for now passengers have to make do with a broken train service.
“Today you can’t even buy food from the train and all the coaches are filthy, with no water and the lights are not working,” said one passenger who declined to give his name.
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Mental health disorders are on the rise in every country in the world and could cost the global economy up to $16 trillion between 2010 and 2030 if a collective failure to respond is not addressed, according to an expert report released Tuesday.
The Lancet Commission report by 28 global specialists in psychiatry, public health and neuroscience, as well as mental health patients and advocacy groups, said the growing crisis could cause lasting harm to people, communities and economies worldwide.
While some of the costs will be the direct costs of health care and medicines or other therapies, most are indirect — in the form of loss of productivity, and spending on social welfare, education and law and order, the report’s co-lead author, Vikram Patel, said.
The wide-ranging report did not give the breakdown of the potential $16 trillion economic impact it estimated by 2030.
“The situation is extremely bleak,” Patel, a professor at Harvard Medical School in the United States, told reporters.
Lack of investment
He said the burden of mental illness had risen “dramatically” worldwide in the past 25 years, partly because societies are aging and more children are surviving into adolescence, yet “no country is investing enough” to tackle the problem.
“No other health condition in humankind has been neglected as much as mental health has,” Patel said.
The World Health Organization estimates that 300 million people worldwide have depression and 50 million have dementia. Schizophrenia is estimated to affect 23 million people, and bipolar disorder around 60 million.
The Lancet report found that in many countries, people with common mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia routinely suffer gross human rights violations — including shackling, torture and imprisonment.
Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the medical journal The Lancet, which commissioned the report, said it highlighted the “shameful and shocking treatment of people with mental ill health around the world.”
It called for a human rights-based approach to ensure that people with mental health conditions are not denied fundamental human rights, including access to employment, education and other core life experiences.
It also recommended a wholesale shift to community-based care for mental health patients, with psychosocial treatments such as talking therapies being offered not just by medical professionals but also by community health workers, peers, teachers and the clergy.
The report was published ahead of a first global ministerial mental health summit in London this week.
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Companies race to make self driving automobiles, but there’s another race going on to create robots that can roam through neighborhoods, to deliver food and other purchases. Michelle Quinn reports on one robotic fleet in Berkeley, California.
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Last month, Patrick Ho, a former Hong Kong official fighting foreign bribery charges in New York, thought he had finally received a break.
In a dramatic move in the high-profile bribery case, prosecutors on Sept. 14 dropped all criminal charges against Cheikh Gadio, a former Senegalese foreign minister they had accused of helping Ho bribe African officials.
Arguing that the government’s move undermined its case against Ho, Ho’s lawyers urged a federal judge in New York to release their client from a federal jail.
But the presiding judge, Loretta Preska, wasn’t buying it. She dismissed the motion, Ho’s fifth unsuccessful request for bail. And prosecutors said Gadio has agreed to cooperate, expressing confidence that his testimony against Ho will strengthen their case.
“(Far) from weakening the case, Gadio’s testimony will provide substantial evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Left largely unnoticed in the U.S., the corruption case against Ho has sent shockwaves across Asia, putting the spotlight on an open secret in global business circles — rampant bribery of foreign governments by Chinese companies seeking business deals around the world.
China has largely ignored the problem, according to China experts. While the government of President Xi Jinping has launched a much-publicized domestic anticorruption campaign, experts say Chinese authorities have yet to bring a single foreign bribery case against a Chinese company or executive.
Ho has denied any wrongdoing.
Ho, 69, and Gadio, 62 were arrested in New York last November and charged as part of a conspiracy to bribe African officials on behalf of CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based energy conglomerate with ties to the country’s military.
At the time, Ho headed China Energy Fund Committee, a Virginia and Hong Kong-based NGO funded by CEFC China Energy, while Gadio ran a business consulting firm when he was a member of Senegal’s parliament.
In one of two bribery schemes, prosecutors alleged that Ho and Gadio met on the sidelines of the United Nations in late 2014 to engage in a conspiracy to pay a $2 million cash bribe to Idriss Deby, the president of Chad.The payment was offered in exchange for helping CEFC Energy’s entry into Chad’s rich energy sector, according to prosecutors.
Gadio allegedly introduced Ho to Deby and served as a middleman during discussions between the Chinese executives and Chadian officials. The complaint did not make clear whether any payment was made to Deby, but it did say that Gadio received $400,000 for his services.
In the second scheme, Ho allegedly paid a bribe of $500,000 to Sam Kutesa, the Ugandan foreign minister, in 2016 in exchange for Kutesa’s help in helping CEFC Energy gain business contracts in Uganda’s financial and energy sectors, according to the criminal complaint.The bribe was paid after Kutesa finished his one-year term as president of the U.N. General Assembly and returned to Uganda.
While the charges against Gadio were never presented to a grand jury, Ho was indicted on multiple counts of foreign bribery and money laundering.
Ho pleaded not guilty.
Timothy Belevetz, a former federal prosecutor now a partner at the Holland & Knight law firm, said bribery cases under the foreign bribery law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act rarely go to trial.
“This is an opportunity for law to be made,” Belevetz said.
FCPA was passed in 1977 in response to disclosures that U.S. companies were bribing foreign officials to secure business deals. The law has since been amended, giving the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission broad jurisdiction over foreign companies that have subsidiaries in the United States or trade on U.S. stock exchanges.
In recent years, the Justice Department, working with international law enforcement agencies, has brought a growing number of corruption cases against foreign companies and executives paying bribes to foreign government officials.
While the Justice Department has previously charged U.S. and European companies with paying bribes to Chinese officials, never before has it tried the representative of a Chinese company on charges of bribing foreign officials in exchange for business contracts.
At the heart of the Ho bribery case is the question of whether any payment promised or made to the African officials was a bribe, as prosecutors call it, or a charitable donation, as defense lawyers put it.
As Ho’s Nov. 5 trial approaches, prosecutors have revealed how Gadio’s testimony, as well as evidence of Ho’s business dealings with Iran and alleged arms sales to African nations, will help their case at trial.
In a recent court filing, prosecutors wrote that Gadio will testify that Ho handed $2 million in cash, hidden in a gift box, to Deby, and only after Deby “refused to accept this obvious bribe” did Ho draft a letter pledging $2 million to “charitable causes” in Chad.
Gadio will also tell a jury that Ho never asked him about the status of the donation, indicating Ho had no “interest in doing charitable works in Chad.”
“This expected testimony considerably strengthens the government’s proof beyond the already-strong case reflected in the detailed Complaint,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors have also indicated in recent days that they intend to introduce evidence of Ho’s involvement in other corrupt actions.
In a court filing last week, prosecutors disclosed they have evidence that shows Ho had offered a bribe to John Ashe, a diplomat from Antigua and Barbuda who served as president of the U.N. General Assembly the year before Kutesa held the post. (Ashe was implicated in another corruption case involving a Chinese national but he died in 2016 before the case went to trial).
Prosecutors also plan to introduce evidence of Ho’s interest in doing business with Iran while the country was under U.S. sanctions, and brokering arms sales to Libya and Qatar.
In an October 2014 email, one of several cited in court documents, Ho suggested that CEFC China serve as a “middleman” to help Iran access funds it kept in a Chinese bank under U.S. sanctions to pay a Hong Kong bank for precious metals.
The complaint had hinted at Ho’s willingness to help Chad procure weapons from China, but new government filings allege that Ho’s interest in arms dealing extended beyond Chad.
In March 2015, according to an intercepted email, Ho asked an unidentified intermediary to send him a list of weapons and military equipment requested by Libya so that “we can execute that right away.”
A month later, Ho emailed the intermediary. “Qatar needs toys quite urgently. Their chief is coming to China, and we hope to give them a piece of good news.”
Prosecutors say they want to introduce the emails as background evidence “to show the development and nature of the relationship” between Ho and Gadio.
Belevetz said that as with other white-collar criminal cases, the case against Ho will turn more on documents such as emails and wire transfer records than testimonies of witnesses.
In white-collar cases, “you often have a paper trail that shows what was said,” Belevetz said.
Edward Kim, one of Ho’s lead attorneys, declined to comment.
Sean Hecker, Gadio’s lawyer, said in a statement to VOA, “Dr. Gadio looks forward to continuing to cooperate with U.S. authorities before returning to Senegal to continue his service to the Senegalese people and the important pursuit of establishing peace and security across the Sahel Region.”
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Ireland’s finance minister boosted budget day spending for the second year in a row as the government warned of economic “carnage” if neighboring Britain crashes out of the European Union without a divorce deal.
Having already pre-committed 2.6 billion euros ($2.99 billion) on increased public sector and planned infrastructure spending for next year, Paschal Donohoe, in Tuesday’s annual budget speech, almost doubled the remaining pot to 1.5 billion euros to dish out on further tax cuts and spending increases.
The state’s fiscal watchdog warned ahead of the budget that the booming economy did not need such additional stimulus.
But with an election potentially looming and the fast-growing economy exacerbating deficits in areas such as housing, a scrapping of a reduced VAT rate for the hospitality sector mostly funded the extra 700 million euro of spending.
That allowed the government to keep giving workers a small annual tax break it has promised to continue in future budgets, reverse welfare cuts imposed during a series of austerity budgets a decade ago, and boost infrastructure spending.
“The shared progress we have made is real. However the risks and challenges that we now face are equally real,” Donohoe told parliament in a speech that went long past the allotted hour as he reeled off measure after measure but also struck a tone of caution with 25 different mentions of Brexit.
Donohoe said the government’s “central case” was that Britain and the European Union would reached a Brexit deal in the coming weeks, but the possibility of a no deal had influenced the financial decisions made.
Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warned of “carnage” if Britain crashed left without a deal, though he said that would mostly be felt by Britain, with Ireland likely to benefit from “huge solidarity” from fellow EU member states.
A further round of “Brexit-proofing” measures, which have had mixed results to date, were announced in the budget, including a 300 million euro loan scheme for small and medium sized businesses and the agriculture and food sectors to invest in future growth.
Balanced budget
Donohoe said the best preparation for Brexit was responsible budgeting and he intended to balance the state’s books for the first time in more than a decade next year, an improvement on the tiny deficit originally planned but still not the surplus the central bank says should already be running.
The state’s independent fiscal watchdog, set up in response to the years of reckless spending that left the exchequer massively exposed when the 2008 financial crisis hit, voiced concerns over the “not very good budgetary practice” of recent years.
It is particularly worried by successive years of spending coming in over budget, which it fears will happen again next year.
Hotel and restaurant owners were unhappy at their return to the standard 13.5 percent VAT from the 9 percent rate introduced in 2011 to boost the then struggling sector. In a report in July, Ireland’s finance department said the lower rate had become a “significant deadweight.”
“#Budget19 will be known as an election budget paid for by the tourism industry,” Adrian Cummins, head of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, tweeted.
Ireland’s betting tax was also doubled to 2 percent, hitting the country’s largest operator, Paddy Power Betfair, which said it would have cost it 20 million pounds ($26 million) this year. Its shares closed down 5 percent.
Donohoe outlined his planned “exit tax” for firms that move assets or migrate their tax residence from Ireland, setting it in line with the corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent but surprising business by introducing it immediately and not by 2020 when Ireland was obliged to come in line with EU rules.
A company would be liable to pay the exit tax on gains built up in Ireland from any asset — such as intellectual property — it planned to move out of the scope of the Irish tax authorities. The measure is part of a new EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive.
The budget will be the last before the next parliamentary election if Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael-led minority government cannot agree an extension to its “confidence and supply” deal with the largest opposition party, Fianna Fail.
They agreed to open talks on Tuesday but while Varadkar said he wanted to complete the review and potential renewal by the end of the month, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin saw talks lasting until until Christmas.
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The Trump administration is moving to allow year-round sales of gasoline with higher blends of ethanol, a boon for Iowa and other farm states that have pushed for greater sales of the corn-based fuel.
President Donald Trump was expected to announce he will lift a federal ban on summer sales of high-ethanol blends during a trip to Iowa on Tuesday.
“It’s an amazing substance. You look at the Indy cars. They run 100 percent on ethanol,” Trump said at the White House before he left for Iowa.
He said he wanted more industry and more energy and he wanted to help farmers and refiners.
‘I want low prices’
“I want more because I don’t like $74,” Trump said referring to the current price of a barrel of crude oil. “It’s up to $74. And if I have to do more — whether it’s through ethanol or another means — that’s what I want. I want low prices.”
The long-expected announcement is something of a reward to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman led a contentious but successful fight to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The veteran Republican lawmaker is the Senate’s leading ethanol proponent and sharply criticized the Trump administration’s proposed rollback in ethanol volumes earlier this year.
At that time Grassley threatened to call for the resignation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s chief, Scott Pruitt, if Pruitt did not work to fulfill the federal ethanol mandate. Pruitt later stepped down amid a host of ethics investigations.
A senior administration official said Monday that the EPA would publish a rule in coming days to allow high-ethanol blends as part of a package of proposed changes to the ethanol mandate. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Trump’s announcement.
The change would allow year-round sales of gasoline blends with up to 15 percent ethanol. Gasoline typically contains 10 percent ethanol.
The EPA currently bans the high-ethanol blend, called E15, during the summer because of concerns that it contributes to smog on hot days, a claim ethanol industry advocates say is unfounded.
In May, Republican senators, including Grassley, announced a tentative agreement with the White House to allow year-round E15 sales, but the EPA did not propose a formal rule change.
The senior administration official said the proposed rule intends to allow E15 sales next summer. Current regulations prevent retailers in much of the country from offering E15 from June 1 to Sept. 15.
Lifting the summer ban is expected to be coupled with new restrictions on trading biofuel credits that underpin the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, commonly known as the ethanol mandate. The law sets out how much corn-based ethanol and other renewable fuels refiners must blend into gasoline each year.
Production misses mark
The Renewable Fuel Standard was intended to address global warming, reduce dependence on foreign oil and bolster the rural economy by requiring a steady increase in renewable fuels over time. The mandate has not worked as intended, and production levels of renewable fuels, mostly ethanol, routinely fail to reach minimum thresholds set in law.
The oil industry opposes year-round sales of E15, warning that high-ethanol gasoline can damage car engines and fuel systems. Some carmakers have warned against high-ethanol blends, though EPA has approved use of E15 in all light-duty vehicles built since 2001.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, many from oil-producing states, sent Trump a letter last week opposing expanded sales of high-ethanol gas. The lawmakers called the approach “misguided” and said it would do nothing to protect refinery jobs and “could hurt millions of consumers whose vehicles and equipment are not compatible with higher-ethanol blended gasoline.”
The letter was signed by 16 Republicans and four Democrats, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a key Trump ally. New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, whose state includes several refineries, also signed the letter.
A spokeswoman for the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry trade group, said allowing E15 to be sold year-round would give consumers greater access to clean, low-cost, higher-octane fuel while expanding market access for ethanol producers.
“The ability to sell E15 all year would also bring a significant boost to farmers across our country” and provide a significant economic boost to rural America, said spokeswoman Rachel Gantz.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says he hasn’t read an ominous report by a U.N. panel that warned of a dire future for the planet if global warming is not kept to a minimum.
But he said he will.
“It was given to me and I want to look who drew it, you know — which groups drew it, because I can give you reports that are fabulous and I can give you reports that aren’t so good,” he said Tuesday at the White House. “But I will be reading it, absolutely.”
The comments were his first regarding the report released Monday by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report lists how Earth’s weather, health and ecosystems would be better off if world leaders could figure out how to limit future human-caused warming to 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) between 2030 and 2052, instead of the globally agreed upon goal of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
In June 2017, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. His administration has also dismantled emissions reduction policies domestically.
According to the U.N. report, some of the benefits of limiting global warming to the lower goal would include:
- Half as many people would suffer from lack of water.
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There would be fewer deaths and illnesses from heat, smog and infectious diseases.
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The West Antarctic ice sheet might not kick into irreversible melting.
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It could be enough to save most of the world’s coral reefs from dying.
The panel met in South Korea recently to finalize the report.
The world’s governments asked for the report in 2015, when a global pact to tackle climate change was agreed upon.
German biologist Hans-Otto Portner, one of the panel members, said some of the panelists were engaged in “wishful thinking” if they thought the gloomy report would encourage governments and people to act quickly and forcefully to counteract the report’s predictions.
Portner warned, however, “If action is not taken, it will take the planet into an unprecedented climate future.”
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Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 33 percent to $55.6 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, a U.S. administration official told Reuters on Tuesday.
The increase in foreign military sales came in part because the Trump administration rolled out a new “Buy American” plan in April that loosened restrictions on sales while encouraging U.S. officials to take a bigger role in increasing business overseas for the U.S. weapons industry.
There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: Direct commercial sales, negotiated between a government and a company; and foreign military sales, where a foreign government typically contacts a Department of Defense official at the U.S. embassy in their capital. Both require approval by the U.S. government.
About $70 billion worth of foreign military sales notifications went to Congress this year, slightly less than the year before, the administration official said.
The $55.6 billion figure represents signed letters of agreement for foreign military sales between the United States and allies.
The largest U.S. arms contractors include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
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It was during her first year of high school in rural western Kenya that Mary Kuket says she was “sacrificed to tradition” and her dreams of becoming a doctor shattered forever.
With no explanation, the 15-year-old was given away to another family, who forced her to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), then married her off to their middle-aged son.
“I kept asking my parents why I was being taken and begged them not to send me away, but my father pushed me away, saying that soon I would understand,” Kuket, now 46, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Baringo county. “They never told me I was going to be cut. They never told me I was going to be married to a 45-year-old man. They never told me that I would not go back to school.”
From the fear of being ostracized or killed to the prestige associated with entering womanhood, girls in Kenya are under a barrage of societal pressures to undergo FGM, often with a devastating impact on their education, say campaigners.
A study by the charity ActionAid Kenya published Monday said despite the fact that FGM is illegal in the east African nation, deep-rooted myths supporting the ancient ritual persist.
Violence ‘normalized’
The survey, based on interviews with almost 400 girls and women in eight Kenyan counties, found that FGM affected not only their health but also their schooling.
“Despite efforts to curb FGM, this type of violence against women and girls is so normalized in some communities. Girls are socialized into believing they must undergo the procedure,” said Agnes Kola, women’s rights coordinator for ActionAid Kenya. “But it is stifling their ability to participate in society, as once they undergo FGM, their schooling is impacted and many never complete their education and progress in life.”
Girls missed school to recover after the procedure and suffered medical complications and trauma that affected their class attendance and performance, the report said.
Seen as a rite of passage in many communities, FGM also acted as a trigger for girls as young as 11 to become sexually active and married off as they were perceived as women — often ending with child pregnancy.
As a result, fewer girls than boys in Kenya’s FGM-prevalent counties were finishing their primary education, and even fewer were transitioning to high school, the study said.
While national figures show secondary enrollment of boys and girls in year one to be almost equal, in some FGM-prevalent counties, enrollment of girls in the same group is less than half that of boys, according to government data.
‘Ticket for marriage’
An estimated 200 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM, which usually involves the partial or total removal of the genitalia, the United Nations says.
Despite being internationally condemned, it is practiced in at least 27 African countries and parts of Asia and the Middle East, and is usually carried out by traditional cutters, often with unsterilized blades or knives.
In some cases, girls can bleed to death or die from infections. FGM can also cause lifelong painful conditions such as fistula as well as fatal childbirth complications.
Kenya outlawed the practice in 2011, but it continues as communities believe it is necessary for social acceptance and increasing their daughters’ marriage prospects.
One in five females aged 15 to 49 in Kenya has undergone FGM, according to U.N. data.
The study in eight counties found fear of being rejected for marriage, ostracized by the community or even killed was pushing girls to undergo FGM.
In the eastern county of Garissa, Muslim communities were cited as saying anyone who was not circumcised was not permitted to worship and could easily be killed.
“Religiously, we are told that circumcision makes girls to be clean before God, and it is only after undergoing this practice that the girls can be allowed to read the Quran or to worship,” said a woman from Garissa, cited in the report.
Elsewhere, girls and women said they were expected to undergo FGM to comply with cultural expectations of marriage.
“FGM is considered as the community-given ticket for marriage, thus it results in automatic suitors or bidders, which is absolutely the parent’s choice,” said the report. “Young men will ensure their wives get circumcised at the time of marriage.”
Progress hindered
Soon after being cut, the girls, who are drawn from communities in which up to 98 percent of women and girls have undergone FGM, said they struggled to continue with school.
They were absent for weeks to heal and also suffered infections and trauma, according to the report.
The practice also provides social sanction for girls to be married off or have sex, often resulting in pregnancy.
Tony Mwebia of the Men End FGM campaign said visits to primary schools show that even as early as age 10, there are far fewer girls than boys. “Sometimes it’s just one or two girls compared to a whole lot of boys,” he said.
Campaigners said government and civil society had neglected remote, insecure regions where FGM was most prevalent. They called for specific budgets to be allocated to these areas, using positive messaging to engage with communities, and for better coordination between charities.
For Kuket, however, all is not lost.
After 20 years of marriage and seven children, she went back to school, finished her secondary education and has enrolled to work toward a degree in community development.
She is also a prominent human rights activist in her community in western Tangulbei, where she rescues girls who are being forced to undergo FGM and pushed into child marriage.
“I don’t want any other girl to go through what I did,” she said. “FGM is a barrier to a girl’s progress in life — it ruins their lives.”
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Wasteless, an Israeli firm seeking to reduce food waste and save consumers money, won $2 million in funding Tuesday, as more businesses seek to cut food losses amid rising global hunger.
The two-year-old firm sells software to supermarkets so that they can manage their stocks and reduce food prices as shelf life dwindles, reducing waste and boosting profits.
“We inspire customers to be better citizens of the world and to take part in the war against food waste, while at the same time enjoying better prices,” Ben Biron, one of the founders of Wasteless, said in a statement.
Food waste is increasingly viewed as unethical, as well as environmentally destructive, dumped in landfills where it rots, releasing greenhouse gases, while fuel, water and energy needed to grow, store and carry it is wasted.
A growing number of impact investors — who aim to bring social or environmental change as well as making a profit — are putting their money into businesses responding to political and consumer pressures to address climate change and waste.
Globally, one third of all food produced — worth $1 trillion — is binned every year, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, and researchers fear annual food waste could rise by a third to 2.1 billion tons by 2030.
World leaders pledged to halve food waste by then under the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in 2015.
Wasteless said it will use the investment from Slingshot Ventures, a Dutch venture capital firm, to focus on West European food retailers.
In a trial with a Spanish food retailer earlier this year, Wasteless said its algorithm, which allows customers to choose between older or fresher food at different prices, cut food waste by a third and increased revenue by 6 percent.
Many experts say changing business practices and consumer behavior, rather than giving away excess food, is key to reducing waste.
“There isn’t any more land or any more water. One of the things that has to happen is the food that is grown has to get eaten,” Oliver Wyncoll, a partner at Bridges Fund Management, a U.K.-based impact investor, told Reuters.
“In the next few years, you will see an increasing level of investment in food waste. … The difficulty of the philanthropic charity type model is it’s not scalable unless you have a bottomless pit of donations.”
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Facebook on Tuesday hosted its first global summit spotlighting a growing Workplace platform launched two years ago as a private social network for businesses.
While Facebook would not disclose exact figures, it said Workplace – a rival to collaboration services like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft – has been a hit and that ranks of users have doubled in the past eight to 10 months.
The list of companies using Workplace included Walmart, Starbucks, Spotify, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic.
“It is growing very fast,” Workplace by Facebook vice president Julien Codorniou told AFP.
“We started with big companies, because that is where we found traction. It is a very good niche.”
Workplace is a separate operation from Facebook’s main social network and is intended as a platform to connect everyone in a company, from counter or warehouse workers to chief executives, according to Codorniou.
Workplace claimed that a differentiator from its competitors is that it connects all employees in businesses no matter their roles, even if their only computing device is a smartphone.
“That really resonates with a new generation,” Codorniou said of Workplace’s “democratic” nature.
“Millennials want to know who they work for and understand the culture of the company.”
He cited cases of top company executives using Workplace to get feedback from workers at all levels, bringing a small company feel to big operations.
Workplace is rolled out to everyone in companies, which then pay $3 monthly for each active user.
No ‘Candy Crush’
The software-as-a-service business began as an internal collaboration platform used at Facebook and was launched as its own business in 2016.
Workplace is used by 30,000 companies and has its main office in London, according to Codorniou.
Interaction with the platform plays off how people use Facebook, and Workplace adopts innovations from the leading social network. But, it is billed as a completely separate product.
“This is coming from Facebook Inc., but has nothing to do with Facebook,” he said.
“You cannot play ‘Candy Crush’ on Workplace, but people ask. We just take what makes sense.”
The conference was used to announce new Workplace features including a version of Facebook safety check designed as a way for companies to quickly determine the status and well-being of workers in event of disaster or tragedy.
Workplace also introduced the ability to have group voice or video chats with people routinely worked with outside a company.
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The head of the U.S. space agency said Tuesday he’s sure that investigators will determine the cause of a mysterious hole that appeared on the International Space Station, which his Russian counterpart has said was deliberately drilled.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also said collaboration with Russia’s Roscosmos remains important, despite recent comments by agency head Dmitry Rogozin that Russia wouldn’t accept a “second-tier role” in a NASA-led plan to build an outpost near the moon.
The hole that appeared in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS caused a brief loss of air pressure in August before being patched. The incident sparked wide speculation and consternation.
“I strongly believe we’re going to get the right answer to what caused the hole on the International Space Station and that together we’ll be able to continue our strong collaboration,” Bridenstine said. “What we’ve got to do is we’ve got to very dispassionately allow the investigation to go forward without speculation, without rumor, without innuendo, without conspiracy.”
Although the U.S. is working toward commercial launches to the ISS, Russia shouldn’t regard itself as sidelined, he said.
“There is coming a day when we’re going to have our own access to the International Space Station through a commercial crew. I want to be really clear — that is not a replacement for the Russian Soyuz capabilities. We see it as redundancy and we want to make sure that even when a commercial crew is up and running we are still going to be launching American astronauts on Soyuz rockets and we would love to have Russian cosmonauts launching on commercial crew rockets in the United States,” Bridenstine said.
Regarding the NASA-led Gateway project to build an orbiting moon outpost, Rogozin said recently that Russia couldn’t afford to participate in other countries’ projects in a secondary role. But Bridenstine said international involvement in the project was key.
“We’re going to build an architecture between the earth and the moon where we can go back and forth a lot with robots and landers and rovers and humans … the entire architecture between the Earth and the moon requires reusability. It requires international partners,” he said.
Bridenstine met with Rogozin in Moscow on Tuesday and both will attend the Thursday launch of a manned capsule to the space station from Russia’s space complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
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