The most decorated Olympian of all time, swimmer Michael Phelps no longer competes, but he’s never far from water. As Earth Day celebrations get underway, Phelps talks to VOA News about water conservation and what he does at home to preserve the precious resource. Tina Trinh reports.
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Friday is April 20, or 4/20. That’s the numerical code for marijuana’s high holiday, a celebration and homage to pot’s enduring and universal slang for smoking.
Festivities are planned worldwide, culminating with a synchronized smoke at 4:20 p.m. local time.
How the marijuana-loving world came to mark the occasion is believed traceable to five Northern California men now in their 60s with bad backs and graying hair. They are the unofficial grandmasters by virtue of the code they created nearly 50 years ago as students at a suburban San Francisco high school in 1971.
“We thought it was a joke then,” said David Reddix, a filmmaker and retired CNN cameraman. “We still do.”
Reddix and his four buddies – Steve Capper, Larry Schwartz, Jeff Noel and Mark Gravich – were a stoner clique who hung out at a particular wall between classes at San Rafael High School. They dubbed themselves “The Waldos,” a term coined by comedian Buddy Hackett to describe odd people.
One fall afternoon in 1971 a non-Waldo classmate came to the wall with an intriguing tale and a crudely drawn map.
The map purported to show the location of a marijuana garden in the forest of nearby Point Reyes National Seashore. The classmate said the pot patch belonged to his brother-in-law, a Coast Guard reservist stationed at Point Reyes.
The classmate explained his brother-in-law, paranoid of exposure and washing out of the reserves, was renouncing ownership of the garden. He handed Capper the map and said The Waldos were welcome to the marijuana.
The five excited friends made plans to find the weed after school and decided to meet in front of the school’s statue of Louis Pasteur at 4:20 p.m., when two of them finished football practice.
They piled into Capper’s 1966 Chevy Impala, popped in a Grateful Dead 8-track tape and passed around joints as they drove the 45 minutes to the coast.
The five, now firmly middle-class fathers dressed in Polo shirts and khaki pants, laugh about tumbling out of a marijuana smoke-filled car when they arrived at their destination.
“It was straight of a Cheech and Chong movie,” Schwartz said.
They didn’t find the patch that day, but vowed to keep searching. They would pass in the halls and whisper “420 Louis” to each other if a new attempt was planned, indicating they should meet at 4:20 p.m. at the Pasteur statue.
The patch was never found.
“We were probably too stoned,” Schwartz said.
But the “420 Louis” stuck as code for “let’s get high at the statue after school.” Soon after, it was shortened to simply 420 and meant “let’s get high anywhere.”
There were myriad reasons for the teens to speak in code about smoking marijuana in 1971. Marijuana’s growing social tolerance was still decades away and people were receiving stiff prison sentences after being caught with even small amounts.
Another big reason: Noel’s father was a narcotics agent for the California Department of Justice.
“He had an inkling we smoked,” Noel said. “But I don’t think he ever caught on to 420.”
The five Waldos never moved far away and all remain close. Gravich’s youngest daughter attends his alma mater and his oldest daughter is a recent graduate. Both say they’ve long been aware of their father’s involvement in creating 420.
“The kids here think it’s pretty cool,” said Sophia Gravich, a sophomore.
The code remained confined to The Waldos’ social circle until they began hanging out backstage at Grateful Dead concerts. Reddix’s older brother was friends with band member Phil Lesh and that led to backstage passes and smoking sessions with the roadies and other crew members, who picked up the code.
The number really took off in the late 1980s when flyers were circulated at Dead concerts proclaiming 420 to be the password of stoner culture. The flyers went on to explain that 420 was California police code for marijuana smoking in progress. It’s not, but that and other origin stories continue to circulate to the point that Capper and Reddix have committed themselves to preserving as much proof as they can that they are the originators.
They tracked down the Coast Guard reservist to record his recollections confirming he grew a marijuana garden and drew the map that launched the treasure hunt. With his permission, they obtained his Coast Guard records, which show him stationed at Point Reyes at the appropriate time.
They keep those records in a rented safe deposit box in a San Francisco bank where they also store other documentation, including postmarked letters they exchanged in the mid-1970s discussing 420. The San Francisco bank’s address, as it happens, is 420 Montgomery Street.
The Oxford English Dictionary added 420 to its lexicon last year after reviewing the Waldo’s records and credits the men as the creators.
Millions of dollars have been made over the years exploiting the number, from T-shirts and hats to cannabis businesses with 420 in their names. Hotels and tour companies advertise themselves as “420 friendly” and dating sites contain listings for people “420 compatible.”
Though dozens of 420-related trademarks have been issued to various companies, The Waldos hold none.
But they are starting to cash in, if only a little.
Lagunitas Brewing Co. in nearby Petaluma is set to release its seasonal “The Wados Special Ale” on April 20. The brewery has given the five lifetime passes for free beer.
The Waldos also struck their first business deal with a cannabis business. They are endorsing a Oakland company’s vaping pen, which of course will be released on Friday at 4:20 p.m. All five plan to be at the company’s release party .
“Everyone has cashed in on 420,” Noel said. “Why not us?”
After 16 years of steady decline, malaria cases are on the rise again globally, and experts warn that unless efforts to tackle the disease are stepped up, the gains could be lost. Henry Ridgwell reports from a malaria summit Wednesday in London, where delegates called for a boost in funding for global anti-malarial programs.
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After 16 years of steady decline, malaria cases are on the rise again globally, and experts warn that unless efforts to tackle the disease are stepped up, the gains could be lost. Henry Ridgwell reports from a malaria summit Wednesday in London, where delegates called for a boost in funding for global anti-malarial programs.
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A bitterly divided House panel Wednesday approved new work and job training requirements for food stamps as part of a five-year renewal of federal farm and nutrition policy.
The GOP-run Agriculture Committee approved the measure strictly along party lines after a contentious, five-hour hearing in which Democrats blasted the legislation, charging it would toss up to 2 million people off food stamps and warning that it will never pass Congress.
The hard-fought food stamp provisions would tighten existing work requirements and expand funding for state training programs, though not by enough to cover everybody subject to the new work and training requirements.
Agriculture panel chair Michael Conaway said the provisions would offer food stamp beneficiaries “the hope of a job and a skill and a better future for themselves and their families.”
Food stamps
At issue is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food aid for more than 40 million people, with benefits averaging about $450 a month for a family of four.
The food stamp cuts are part of a “workforce development” agenda promised by GOP leaders such as Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., though other elements of the agenda have been slow to develop.
“The timing is just perfect, given the fact that we have more than 5 million jobs that are open and available,” said Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., who said the GOP provisions would cement “a pathway to opportunity” for the poor and “give them better access to skills-based education.”
But Democrats said the provisions would drive up to 2 million people off the program, force food stamp recipients to keep up with extensive record keeping rules, and create bulky state bureaucracies to keep track of it all, while not providing enough money to provide job training to all those who would require it.
“This legislation would create giant, untested bureaucracies at the state level. It cuts more than $9 billion in benefits and rolls those savings into state slush funds where they can use the money to operate other aspects of SNAP,” said Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, top Democrat on the panel. “Let me be clear: this bill, as currently written, kicks people off the SNAP program.”
Currently, adults ages 18-59 are required to work part-time or agree to accept a job if they’re offered one. Stricter rules apply to able-bodied adults without dependents between the ages of 18 and 49, who are subject to a three-month limit of benefits unless they meet a work requirement of 80 hours per month.
Under the new bill, that requirement would be expanded to apply to all work-capable adults, mandating that they either work or participate in work training for 20 hours per week with the exception of seniors, pregnant women, caretakers of children younger than 6, or people with disabilities.
Farm safety net
In addition to food stamps, the measure would renew farm safety-net programs such as subsidies for crop insurance, farm credit, and land conservation. Those subsidies for farm country traditionally form the backbone of support for the measure among Republicans, while urban Democrats support food aid for the poor.
The legislation has traditionally been bipartisan, blending support from urban Democrats supporting nutrition programs with farm state lawmakers supporting farm programs.
The measure mostly tinkers with those programs, adding provisions aimed at helping rural America obtain high-speed internet access, assist beginning farmers, and ease regulations on producers.
“When you step away from the social nutrition policy, much of this is a refinement of the 2014 farm bill. So we’re not reinventing the wheel. That makes it dramatically simpler,” said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., a former chairman of the committee. “Most folks are generally satisfied with the fundamentals of the farm safety net.”
That satisfaction has helped fuel speculation that this year’s renewal of food and farm programs will fail because just a short-term renewal of current policies would satisfy many lawmakers. The Senate is taking a more traditional bipartisan approach that’s sure to avoid big changes to food stamps.
The House measure also would cut funding for land conservation programs long championed by Democrats, prompting criticism from environmental groups. At the same time, it contains a proposal backed by pesticide manufacturers such as the Dow Chemical Company that would streamline the process for approving pesticides by allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to skip reviews required under the Endangered Species Act.
The panel adopted by voice vote a proposal by Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., to prohibit the slaughter, trade or import or export of dogs and cats for human consumption in the United States.
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A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Wednesday carrying SpaceX’s first high-priority science mission for NASA, a planet-hunting space telescope whose launch had been delayed for two days by a rocket-guidance glitch.
The Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:51 p.m. EDT, starting the clock on a two-year quest to detect more worlds circling stars beyond our solar system that might harbor life.
The main-stage booster successfully separated from the upper stage of the rocket and headed back to Earth on a self-guided return flight to an unmanned landing vessel floating in the Atlantic.
The first stage, which can be recycled for future flights, then landed safely on the ocean platform, according to SpaceX launch team announcers on NASA TV.
Liftoff followed a postponement forced by a technical glitch in the rocket’s guidance-control system.
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SunPower Corp. on Wednesday said it would buy U.S. solar panel maker SolarWorld Americas, expanding its domestic manufacturing as it seeks to stem the impact of Trump administration tariffs on panel imports.
The White House cheered the deal, saying it was proof that Trump’s trade policies were stimulating U.S. investment.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The news sent SunPower’s shares up 12 percent on the Nasdaq to their highest level since before President Donald Trump imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported solar panels in January.
“The time is right for SunPower to invest in U.S. manufacturing,” chief executive Tom Werner said in a statement.
SunPower is based in San Jose, California, but most of its manufacturing is in the Philippines and Mexico. The company had lobbied heavily against the solar trade case brought last year by U.S. manufacturers, including SolarWorld, which said they could not compete with a flood of cheap imports.
‘This is great news’
The deal is a win for the Trump administration’s efforts to revive U.S. solar manufacturing through the tariffs. SunPower will manufacture its cheaper “P-series” panels, which more directly compete with Chinese products, at the SolarWorld factory in Hillsboro, Oregon, it said. It will also make SolarWorld’s legacy products.
“This is great news for the hundreds of Americans working at SolarWorld’s factory in Oregon and is further proof that the president’s trade policies are bringing investment back to the United States,” White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said in an emailed statement.
The announcement comes as SunPower is seeking an exemption from tariffs on its higher-priced, more efficient panels manufactured overseas. It has argued to the U.S. trade representative, which will make a decision on exemptions in the coming weeks, that those products should be excluded because there is no U.S. competitor that makes a similar product.
In a note to clients, Baird analyst Ben Kallo said the SolarWorld deal would enable the company to compete against Chinese imports should SunPower’s products not receive an exemption. But he added that skeptics “may question the company’s ability to generate profits with U.S. manufacturing.”
Capital injection
The deal will inject much-needed capital into SolarWorld’s long-suffering manufacturing plant and give it the support of a major market player. SunPower is one of the largest solar companies in the world and is majority owned by France’s deep-pocketed oil giant Total SA.
The U.S. arm of Germany’s SolarWorld AG opened the Hillsboro factory in 2008 as it sought to capitalize on surging solar demand in the United States. But its start coincided with a dramatic increase in the production of cheaper solar products in Asia, and SolarWorld struggled to compete.
Twice, in 2012 and 2014, trade cases brought by SolarWorld prompted the U.S. Commerce Department to slap import duties on solar products from China and Taiwan. Yet prices on solar panels continued their free fall, and in 2017, the company joined rival Suniva in asking for new tariffs.
SolarWorld called the outcome “ideal” for its hundreds of employees in Hillsboro.
Suniva’s future in doubt
During the trade case and after the tariffs were announced, the solar industry’s trade group, the Solar Energy Industries Association, argued that the tariffs would not be enough to keep SolarWorld and Suniva afloat.
Indeed, Suniva’s future remains uncertain after a U.S. bankruptcy court judge this week granted a request by its biggest creditor that will allow it to sell a portion of the company’s solar manufacturing equipment through a public
auction.
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Britain plans to ban the sale of plastic straws and other single-use products and is pressing Commonwealth allies to also take action to tackle marine waste, the office of Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May said.
It said drink stirrers and cotton buds would also be banned under the plans.
May has pledged to eradicate avoidable plastic waste by 2042 as part of a “national plan of action.”
“Plastic waste is one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world, which is why protecting the marine environment is central to our agenda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting,” May said in a statement ahead of a Commonwealth summit Thursday.
Leaders from the Commonwealth — a network of 53 countries, mostly former British colonies — are meeting in London this week.
May is looking to deepen ties to the Commonwealth as Britain seeks to boost trade and carve out a new role in the world ahead of the country’s departure from the European Union in March next year.
Britain will commit 61.4 million pounds ($87.21 million) at the summit to develop new ways of tackling plastic waste and help Commonwealth countries limit how much plastic ends up in the ocean.
“We are rallying Commonwealth countries to join us in the fight against marine plastic,” May said.
“Together we can effect real change so that future generations can enjoy a natural environment that is healthier than we currently find it.”
The statement said environment minister Michael Gove would launch a consultation later this year into the plan to ban the plastic items. It gave no details who the consultation would be with.
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has invested billions of dollars into tackling malaria. It has paid off. Deaths from the disease fell by more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2015, meaning 7 million lives were saved.
In 2016, however, that trend was reversed. There were more than 216 million reported cases in 91 countries — an increase of 5 million from the previous year.
On the sidelines of this week’s London Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Gates told delegates, including several African leaders, the fight against malaria must be stepped up.
“If we do not keep innovating, we will go backwards,” he said. “If we do not maintain the commitments that we are making here today, malaria would go back up and kill over a million children a year, because the drugs and the insecticides are evaded by the mosquito and the parasite.”
WATCH: Fears Grow as Malaria Resurges; London Summit Urges Global Action
Malaria is estimated to cost the African economy more than $12 billion per year and consumes up to 40 percent of national health care budgets on the continent. Children and pregnant women are most severely affected.
Several factors
The increase in cases is caused by a number of factors, professor Alister Craig of the University of Liverpool’s School of Tropical Medicine said via Skype.
“We are seeing quite dramatic increases in the resistance to the insecticides that we use to control the insect vector populations, and that has been really the mainstay of the gains, and very remarkable gains, that we have seen over the last few years,” he said. “And we are just beginning to see that the parasites are starting to develop resistance to the drugs that we use to treat them.”
Craig added that the fight against malaria would most likely become harder.
“We have gained what might be called the easier gains, and now we have got the harder ones to do,” he said. “And they take even greater implementation and newer tools to allow us to look at where transmission is taking place.”
Such new tools cost money, but funding has plateaued. At the Commonwealth conference, Britain pledged more than $2 billion to fight the disease, while Gates put forward another $1 billion and urged the international community to do more.
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Malawi, which has one of the highest rates of the deadly HIV/AIDS infections, is on course to eradicate the virus, Jay Levy who co-discovered the AIDS virus 35 years ago said.
Most of the AIDS cases globally are in poorer countries, where access to testing, prevention and treatment is limited.
More than one million people in Malawi have the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, the U.N. AIDS agency (UNAIDS) says.
However, according to official figures, Malawi’s national HIV/AIDS prevalence dropped to 8.8 percent in 2016 from 30 percent in 1985 when the first HIV/Aids case was registered in Malawi.
Levy cited the Malawian government’s efforts in increasing access to treatment, mother to child transmission interventions, and awareness on prevention and treatment as some of the steps that are helping to fight the disease.
“Malawi is not a rich country, but has done a remarkable job of reducing HIV infections and deaths from AIDS,” Levy, a University of California researcher and renowned virologist and infectious disease expert told Reuters on a visit to Malawi.
“Malawi could be one of the countries in Africa on target to eradicating infection,” he added.
Levy delivered a lecture at College of Medicine in Blantyre, the nerve center for HIV/AIDS research in Malawi, and is touring HIV testing centers in the countryside.
Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, and the country’s economy depends on substantial inflows of economic assistance from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and individual donor nations.
In 2016, Malawi started testing the use of drones to speed up the time it takes to test infants living in rural areas for HIV, where poor roads and high transport costs often result in delays in testing that can prevent access to treatment.
Early diagnosis is important with HIV because it allows people to start treatment with AIDS drugs sooner, increasing their chances of living a long and healthy life.
Malawi now has a much lower HIV prevalence than some of its neighbors, UNAIDS says. South Africa has the biggest HIV epidemic in the world, with 7.1 million people living with HIV.
HIV prevalence is high among the general population at 18.9 percent.
Swaziland, a small landlocked country in southern Africa, has the highest HIV prevalence in the world, with 27.2 percent of their adult population living with HIV.
“There are still no real heroes to point at in Africa. But Senegal was the first country to really focus on the epidemic and reduce infections to a lower level,” he said. “South Africa is now catching up with the fight.”
Levy called on African governments to continue lobbying for more funding to direct towards eradicating HIV/AIDS.
“But let’s not also forget that if you can prevent infection, you don’t need more drugs for AIDS,” he said.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported aluminum and steel are disrupting business for hundreds of American companies that buy those metals, and many are pressing for relief.
Nearly 2,200 companies are asking the Commerce Department to exempt them from the 25 percent steel tariff, and more than 200 other companies are asking to be spared the 10 percent aluminum tariff.
Other companies are weighing their options. Jody Fledderman, chief executive of Batesville Tool & Die in Indiana, said American steelmakers have already raised their prices since Trump’s tariffs were announced last month. Fledderman said he might have to shift production to a plant in Mexico, where he can buy cheaper steel.
A group of small- and medium-size manufacturers are gathering in Washington to announce a coalition to fight the steel tariff.
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Facebook Inc’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg came under pressure from EU lawmakers on Wednesday to come to Europe and shed light on the data breach involving Cambridge Analytica that affected nearly three million Europeans.
The world’s largest social network is under fire worldwide after information about nearly 87 million users wrongly ended up in the hands of the British political consultancy, a firm hired by Donald Trump for his 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.
European Parliament President Antonio Tajani last week repeated his request to Zuckerberg to appear before the assembly, saying that sending a junior executive would not suffice.
EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, who recently spoke to Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, said Zuckerberg should heed the lawmakers’ call.
“This case is too important to treat as business as usual,” Jourova told an assembly of lawmakers.
“I advised Sheryl Sandberg that Zuckerberg should accept the invitation from the European Parliament. (EU digital chief Andrius) Ansip refers to the invitation as a measure of rebuilding trust,” she said.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. Zuckerberg fielded 10 hours of questions over two days from nearly 100 U.S. lawmakers last week and emerged largely unscathed. He will meet Ansip in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Another European lawmaker Sophia in’t Veld echoed the call from her colleagues, saying that the Facebook CEO should do them the same courtesy.
“I think Zuckerberg would be well advised to appear at the Parliament out of respect for Europeans,” she said.
Lawmaker Viviane Reding, the architect of the EU’s landmark privacy law which will come into effect on May 25, giving Europeans more control over their online data, said the right laws would bring back trust among users.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel backs the idea of a European Monetary Fund, provided national governments have sufficient oversight, sources close to her said before a visit by the French president.
President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet Merkel in Berlin on Thursday, is pushing hard for bold euro zone reforms to defend the 19-member currency bloc against any repeat of the financial crisis that took hold in 2009 and threatened to tear it apart.
His vision includes turning Europe’s existing ESM bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund (EMF). At one point, Macron also suggested the zone should have its own budget worth hundreds of billions of euros, an idea that does not sit well with Germany.
Merkel told lawmakers from her conservative bloc on Tuesday that she favored the EMF concept as long as member states retain scrutiny over the body, participants at the meeting said.
“It’s not that one side is putting the brakes on and the other pushing ahead,” one of the participants at Tuesday’s meeting said. “We want to find a good reform path together.”
German conservatives worry that an EMF could fall under the purview of the European Commission and could use German taxpayers’ money to fund profligate states. They also fear the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, would lose its ability to veto euro zone aid packages.
Merkel told the meeting that an EMF should be incorporated into European law via a change in the EU treaty, though she did not make this a stipulation for creating it, participants said.
European treaty change is a tricky feat that could take time to achieve, but by not categorically insisting on it Merkel leaves wiggle room for her talks with Macron.
The chancellor’s remarks to her parliamentary bloc tread a careful line between Macron’s drive for bold euro zone reform and her conservatives’ push to retain scrutiny of any EMF.
A succession of bailouts for Greece aroused stiff opposition in Germany. The Bundestag approved them all, but the rise of the anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) – now the main opposition party – has since heightened the conservatives’ wariness of going too far with euro zone reforms.
“Angela Merkel must not become Macron’s assistant,” the AfD’s leader in parliament, Alexander Gauland, said in a statement, urging her to distance the government from the French leader’s plans.
Reform road map
One participant at Tuesday’s meeting of lawmakers with Merkel said she wanted an EMF to act with conditionality – the same approach taken by the International Monetary Fund, which attaches strict reform conditions to aid.
In line with leading members of her conservatives in parliament, she also rejected plans floated by the European Commission to make use of a specific EU legal provision to develop the existing euro zone bailout fund into an EMF.
Merkel’s coalition partners, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), sympathize with Macron and want him to be rewarded for his efforts to reform the French economy, well aware that a large chunk of French voters remains susceptible to far-right and far-left populists skeptical about the EU.
France and Germany, which account for around 50 percent of euro zone output, are essential to the reform drive. But while they often put on a strong show of political unity and shared intent, the devil is often in the detail.
On Tuesday, Merkel said creating a euro zone banking union was a priority for her, but she also broadened out the reform question to include a European asylum system, as well as foreign, defense and research policy.
Framing reform as such a broad issue risks diluting Macron’s drive to beef up the euro zone with extra funding fire power.
In Brussels, senior EU officials are playing down expectations for rapid and substantial progress. They hope the next couple of months can lay the groundwork for what will be agreed over the coming years.
“We hope to get an early harvest in June and a road map for the rest,” said one senior official, describing the Commission’s hopes for a Franco-German deal to conclude some euro zone reforms at a summit on June 28-29 and agree a schedule for further moves.
Iran’s presidency has banned all government bodies from using foreign-based messaging apps to communicate with citizens, state media reported Wednesday, after economic protests organized through such apps shook the country earlier this year.
Chief among those apps is Telegram, used by over 40 million Iranians for everything from benign conversations to commerce and political campaigning. Iranians using Telegram, which describes itself as an encrypted message service, helped spread the word about the protests in December and January.
Telegram channels run on behalf of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri were already shut down Wednesday.
A report on the website of Iran’s state television broadcaster said the ban affected all public institutions. It was not clear if the ban applied to civil servants outside of work hours. The report did not elaborate on penalties for violating the ban.
Last month, officials said Iran would block Telegram for reasons of national security in response to the protests, which saw 25 people killed and nearly 5,000 reportedly arrested.
Authorities temporarily shut down Telegram during the protests, though many continued to access it through proxies and virtual private networks.
The move against Telegram suggests Iran may try to introduce its own government-approved, or “halal,” version of the messaging app, something long demanded by hard-liners. Already, Iran heavily restricts internet access and blocks social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.
Iran has said foreign messaging apps can get licenses from authorities to operate if they transfer their databases into the country. Privacy experts worry that could more easily expose users’ private communications to government spying.
Khamenei, however, has stressed that invading people’s privacy is religiously forbidden.
Iran’s move also comes after a Russian court on Friday ordered Telegram to be blocked after the company refused to share its encryption data with authorities.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov responded to the ruling by writing on Twitter: “Privacy is not for sale, and human rights should not be compromised out of fear or greed.”
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The chief of the Russian communications watchdog acknowledged Wednesday that millions of unrelated IP addresses have been frozen in a so-far futile attempt to block a popular messaging app.
Telegram, the messaging app that was ordered to be blocked last week, was still available to users in Russia despite authorities’ frantic attempts to hit it by blocking other services.
The row erupted after Telegram, which was developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, refused to hand its encryption keys to the intelligence agencies. The Russian government insists it needs them to pre-empt extremist attacks but Telegram dismissed the request as a breach of privacy.
Alexander Zharov, chief of the Federal Communications Agency, said in an interview with the Izvestia daily published Wednesday that Russia is blocking 18 networks that are used by Amazon and Google and which host sites that they believe Telegram is using to circumvent the ban.
Countless Russian businesses – from online language schools to car dealerships – reported that their web services were down because of the communication watchdog’s moves to bloc networks.
Internet experts estimate that Russian authorities have blocked about 16 million IP addresses since Monday, affecting millions of Russian users and businesses.
In the interview, Zharov admitted that the authorities have been helplessly trying to block Telegram and had to shut down entire networks, some of which have over half a million IP addresses that are used by unrelated, “law-abiding companies,” he said.
Russia’s leading daily Vedomosti in Wednesday’s editorial likened the communications watchdog’s battle against Telegram, affecting millions of users of other web-services, to warfare.
“The large-scale indiscriminate blocking of foreign IP addresses in Russia in order to close the access to the messaging app Telegram is unprecedented and bears resemblance to carpet bombings,” the editorial said.
Zharov also indicated that Facebook could be the next target for the government if it refuses to comply with Russian law.
Authorities previously insisted that Facebook store its Russian users’ data in Russia but has not gone through with its threats to block Facebook if it refuses to comply.
Zharov said authorities will check before the end of the year if the company is complying with its demands and warned that if it does not, “then, obviously, the issue of blocking will arise.”
Elsewhere in Moscow, a court on Wednesday sentenced a member of the punk collective Pussy Riot, who spent nearly two years in prison for a protest in Russia’s main cathedral, to 100 hours of community work for a protest against the Telegram blocking. Maria Alekhina and a dozen activists were throwing paper planes outside the communications watchdog’s office on Monday.
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Since 2000, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave approval to the world’s first robotic surgical system, almost 4,000 of these sophisticated machines have been deployed in operating suites around the world. Recognizing that the proficiency of the surgeons who use them can be subjective, a group of surgeons at the University of Southern California, in cooperation with the manufacturer Intuitive Research, is developing a system for more objective evaluation. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The European Commission will put forward a proposed free-trade agreement with Japan for fast-track approval Wednesday, hoping to avoid a repeat of the public protests that nearly derailed a trade pact with Canada two years ago.
The European Union and Japan concluded negotiations to create the world’s largest economic area in December, signaling their rejection of the protectionist stance of U.S. President Donald Trump. Now they want to see it go into force.
The agreement would remove EU tariffs of 10 percent on Japanese cars and the 3 percent rate for most car parts. It would also scrap Japanese duties of some 30 percent on EU cheese and 15 percent on wines, and secure access to large public tenders in Japan.
Canada deal memories
The commission, which negotiates trade agreements for the EU, will present its proposals to the 28 EU members, along with another planned trade agreement with Singapore. EU countries, the European Parliament, and the Japanese parliament will have to give their assent before the trade pact can start.
The EU is mindful of protests against and criticism of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2016, which culminated in a region of Belgium threatening to destroy the deal. It provisionally entered force last September.
Both Brussels and Tokyo want to ensure the agreement can enter force early in 2019, ideally before Britain leaves the EU at the end of March. If it does, it could apply automatically to Britain during a transition period until the end of 2020.
Otherwise, it might not.
Before Brexit
Many of Japan’s carmakers serve the EU from British bases, and it has said having a deal in force during the transition would buy it more time to establish a separate trade agreement with Britain.
One reason the Japan deal may get rapid approval is that it does not deal with investment protection, which critics say allows multinational companies to influence public policy with the threat of legal action.
The agreement could then enter force after approval by the national governments and the European Parliament, rather than also having to secure clearance from national and even regional parliaments.
In fact, EU and Japanese negotiators have not agreed on the way in which foreign investors should be protected.
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The city of Yanan, a major wind power base in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, has introduced a lottery system to decide which wind projects will go ahead this year, a sign that grid constraints are forcing local governments to restrict capacity.
China has been aggressively developing alternative power as part of its efforts to cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Grid-connected wind power reached 163.7 gigawatts (GW) last year, up 10.1 percent on the year and amounting to 9.2 percent of total generating capacity.
But capacity expansion has outpaced grid construction, and large numbers of wind, solar and hydropower plants are unable to deliver all their power to consumers as a result of transmission deficiencies, a problem known as curtailment.
Grid constraints
According to a Yanan planning agency notice seen by Reuters, the city was given permission to build 900 megawatts of wind capacity this year, but 1,300 megawatts (or 1.3 GW) have already been declared eligible for construction, forcing authorities to whittle the total number of projects.
“After study it was decided that the lottery method should be used to determine what plans will be submitted (for approval) to the provincial development and reform commission,” it said.
The authenticity of the document was confirmed by a local municipal government official. He declined to give his name or provide details.
China aims to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in its total energy mix to around 15 percent by the end of the decade, up from 12 percent in 2015.
Renewable power grows
But while renewable power has grown rapidly, around 80 GW of wind capacity was still unable to transmit electricity to consumers in 2015. Wasted wind power amounted to around 12 percent of total generation in 2017, according to the energy regulator.
An environmental group is suing grid companies in the northwest for failing to fulfill its legal obligation to maximize purchases of local renewable power.
To try to prevent waste, China has drawn up guidelines aimed at preventing new plant construction in regions suffering from surplus capacity.
It also released draft guidelines last month for a new renewable energy certificate system that will force regions to meet mandatory clean electricity utilization targets. The plan is expected to help alleviate curtailment.
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Chevron said on Tuesday two of its executives were arrested in Venezuela, a rare move likely to spook foreign energy firms still operating in the OPEC nation stricken by hyperinflation, shortages and crime.
Venezuelan Sebin intelligence agents burst into the Petropiar joint venture’s office in the coastal city of Puerto La Cruz on Monday and arrested the two Venezuelan employees for alleged wrongdoing, a half-dozen sources with knowledge of the detentions told Reuters.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry and state oil company PDVSA did not respond to a request for information about the detentions, which come amid a crackdown on alleged graft in the oil sector.
One of the detainees, Carlos Algarra, is a Venezuelan chemical engineer and expert in oil upgrading whom Chevron had brought in from its Argentina operations. The other, Rene Vasquez, is a procurement adviser, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Arrests comfirmed
The U.S. company confirmed the arrests, which are believed to be the first to affect a foreign oil company’s direct employees.
“Chevron Global Technology Services Company is aware that two of its Venezuelan-based employees have been arrested by local authorities,” Chevron said in a statement.
“We have contacted the local authorities to understand the basis of the detention and to ensure the safety and wellbeing of these employees. Our legal team is evaluating the situation and working towards the timely release of these employees.”
Disagreements lead to arrests
A Chevron spokeswoman declined to provide further details on the case or the status of its operations. The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The executives were arrested after disagreements with their PDVSA counterparts over procurement processes, two of the sources said.
The arrests highlight risks for foreign companies in Venezuela, home to the world’s biggest crude reserves but heaving under a fifth straight year of recession. Some insiders say a fracturing ruling elite is using the purge to wage turf wars or settle scores.
“Our view has been that oil industry companies would do well to be cautious and stop assuming that good relations with PDVSA can last forever due to a common interest in pumping oil,” said Raul Gallegos, associate director with the consultancy Control Risks. “The level of corruption in PDVSA, especially under a military administration, can and will trump production logic.”
Other oil executives jailed
President Nicolas Maduro since last year has overseen the arrest of dozens of oil executives, including the former energy minister and PDVSA president.
The purge comes years after industry analysts began criticizing PDVSA for widespread graft. The government long decried such accusations as “smear campaigns.” But last year, Maduro changed his tone and started blaming “thieves” for rampant graft in the oil sector and an economic crisis that has spawned malnutrition, disease and emigration.
Vowing a cleanup, Maduro replaced many jailed executives with soldiers, but the unpopular management has spurred a wave of resignations.
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Renewed action and boosted funding to fight malaria could prevent 350 million cases of the disease in the next five years and save 650,000 lives across commonwealth countries, health experts said Wednesday.
Seeking to reignite efforts to wipe out the deadly mosquito-borne disease, philanthropists, business leaders and ministers from donor and malaria-affected countries pledged 2.7 billion pounds ($3.8 billion) to drive research and innovation and improve access to malaria prevention and treatments.
Spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, the leaders warned against complacency in fighting malaria — a disease that kills around half a million people, mainly babies and young children, each year.
While enormous progress has been made over the past 20 years in reducing malaria cases and deaths, in 2016, for the first time in a decade, the number of malaria cases was on the rise and in some areas there was a resurgence, according to the World Health Organization.
The disease’s stubbornness is partly due to the fact that the mosquito that transmits the disease and the parasite that causes it have developed resistance to the sprays and drugs used to fight them, health experts say. It is also partly due to stagnant global funding for fighting malaria since 2010. Climate change and conflict can also exacerbate malaria outbreaks.
“History has shown that with malaria there is no standing still — we move forward or risk resurgence,” Gates said in a statement ahead of a “Malaria Summit” in London on Wednesday.
$1 billion extra pledged
His multibillion-dollar philanthropic fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is co-convening the summit, pledged an extra $1 billion through to 2023 to fund malaria research and development to try to end malaria for good.
“It’s a disease that is preventable, treatable and ultimately beatable, but progress against malaria is not inevitable,” Gates said. “We hope today marks a turning point.”
The malaria summit was designed to coincide with a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London this week. The 53 Commonwealth countries, mostly former British colonies, are disproportionately affected by malaria — accounting for more than half of all global cases and deaths, although they are home to just a third of the world’s population.
Among new funding and research commitments announced at the summit, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said $2 billion would be invested in 46 countries affected by malaria between 2018 and 2020.
Pharmaceutical firms GSK and Novartis also increased investment into malaria research and development — of 175 million pounds ($250 million) and $100 million, respectively. And five agrichemical companies launched a joint initiative to speed up development of new ways to control mosquitoes.
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Americans who waited until the last day to file their federal taxes faced a major hurdle hours before the midnight deadline.
The Internal Revenue Service website’s “Direct Pay” page, which allows filers to pay their taxes directly from their bank account free of charge, crashed Tuesday.
The IRS still expects Americans to pay their taxes but U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said extensions would be granted to those affected when the site was up again.
“We’ll make sure taxpayers have extensions once the system comes up to make sure they can use it and it in no way impacts people paying their taxes,” Mnuchin told reporters in New Hampshire. “It was just a technical issue we’re working through — a high-volume technical issue that impacted the system.”
For most of Tuesday, the message on the Direct Pay page described a “Planned Outage: April 17, 2018 – December 31, 9999.”The IRS removed the link to that page later in the day.
Pages on the IRS website used to view account information, make a direct payment or set up a payment plan were all not functioning most of the day Tuesday.
It’s unclear when and why the failure occurred.
President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, offered a deadpan reaction when asked about the failure.
“The IRS is crashing? Sounds horrible. Really bad,” he said during a briefing with reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida. “I hope it gets fixed.”
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The U.S. government on Tuesday proposed tightening rules governing the amount of prescription opioid painkillers that drugmakers can manufacture in a given year, in hopes of reining in the deadly opioid epidemic.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposed changes to regulations covering addictive-drug manufacturing quotas. The plan could sharply reduce the annual production of painkillers.
“Under this proposed new rule, if DEA believes that a company’s opioids are being diverted for misuse, then they will reduce the amount of opioids that company can make,” Sessions said in prepared remarks.
The plan could affect opioid makers such as Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Mallinckrodt, as well as companies that distribute the drugs.
Hours before the announcement, federal, state and local law enforcement officials in West Virginia announced a crackdown on an opioid trafficking ring in Huntington, known as “ground zero” for the epidemic.
West Virginia sued the DEA in December over drug quota rules, arguing the agency’s policy wrongfully sets manufacturing quotas based on amounts of pills drugmakers expect to sell, not legitimate medical needs.
That approach, the state argued, has contributed to the growing addiction problem and the illegal diversion of pain medication.
“We must end senseless death in West Virginia,” said the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey. West Virginia is among the states that have suffered most from the crisis.
National emergency declared
The Trump administration has made combating the opioid epidemic a top priority.
Last year, Trump declared it a national emergency, in a move to shore up more resources to expand access to treatment and give the government more flexibility in waiving rules and restrictions to expedite action.
Sessions has created an opioid task force and deployed prosecutors to hard-hit areas of the country with a mandate to bring more cases against traffickers.
While some enforcement efforts have focused on illicit traders and doctors who overprescribe, the government has also increasingly been taking aim at the drug companies themselves.
Recently, it sought permission from a federal court to participate in settlement negotiations aimed at resolving lawsuits by state and local governments against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
The DEA proposal calls for quotas to be set after considering the potential for diversion of the drugs into illicit channels, and weighing input from states and other federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Sessions said the DEA has also entered into a prescription drug information-sharing arrangement with 48 state attorneys general to help them sniff out criminals peddling dangerous painkillers.
According to the CDC, 42,000 people died nationwide from opioid overdoses in 2016, the last year with publicly available data.
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Concerned by a rise in near misses by unmanned aircraft and commercial jets, the world’s airlines back development of a U.N.-led global registry for drones, an executive of their trade group said Tuesday.
The International Air Transport Association backs efforts by the U.N. aviation agency to develop such a registry, which could also help track the number of incidents involving drones and jets, said Rob Eagles, IATA’s director of air traffic management infrastructure.
IATA would consider collaborating with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) with using the registry for data analysis to improve safety.
ICAO is developing the registry as part of broader efforts to come up with common rules for flying and tracking unmanned aircraft.
“One of the important things we would like to see on a registry as well is the compilation of data which would include incident and accident reporting,” Eagles said in an interview on the sidelines of IATA’s Safety and Flight Ops Conference in Montreal.
Airlines and airport operators are looking to drone registries, geo-fencing technology and stiffer penalties for operating drones near airports. They hope these steps will ensure flying remains safe as hobbyists and companies like
Amazon.com use more drones.
More close calls
In Britain, the number of near misses between drones and aircraft more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, with 92 incidents recorded last year, according to the U.K. Airprox Board.
Air New Zealand said last month that a flight from Tokyo with 278 passengers and crew on board encountered a drone estimated to be just 5 meters away from the Boeing 777-200 jet during its descent into Auckland.
A single registry would create a one-stop shop that would allow law enforcement to remotely identify and track unmanned aircraft, along with their operators and owners.
It’s not yet clear what kind of drones would be listed in the registry, although IATA would support inclusion of most drones, including large unmanned aircraft and smaller ones used for commercial and industrial purposes, Eagles said.
“The intention at present is to merge this activity into the ICAO registry for manned aircraft, so that the sector has a single consolidated registry network,” ICAO spokesman Anthony Philbin said by email.
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Wildlife managers in the American Southwest say a once-rare bat important to the pollination of plants used to produce tequila has made a comeback and is being removed from the U.S. endangered species list.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s announcement Tuesday made the lesser long-nosed bat, which ranges from Mexico to southern Arizona and New Mexico, the first bat ever removed from the nation’s list of threatened and endangered species.
The decision comes a year after first being proposed and three years after Mexico delisted the animal, which depends on the nectar of agaves, cactuses and other flowering plants.
It has taken 30 years of conservation efforts by biologists and volunteers in both countries as well as tequila producers and agave growers in Mexico to rebuild a healthy population.
There were once thought to be fewer than 1,000 lesser long-nosed bats in 14 known roosts throughout the region. Now, there are about 200,000 of the nectar-feeding animals and dozens of roost sites.
With the population trending upward, regional officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service say the science shows threats to the bat have been eliminated or reduced to the point where they can consider the species recovered.
In Mexico, tequila producers who rely on agaves are integrating more harvest and cultivation practices in recognition of the bats being key pollinators. Some are marketing “bat-friendly tequila.”
In southern Arizona, residents for a decade have monitored bats’ nighttime use of hummingbird feeders. It provided biologists with a clearer understanding of migration timing and allowed for the opportunity to capture bats and affix radio transmitters that aided in finding roost sites.
Scientists and state wildlife managers describe the delisting as a conservation success that resulted from decades of work.
“The story of the lesser long-nosed bat shows that conservation and science can work together to provide species the chance to recover and persist,” Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, said in a statement.
To ensure the bats continue to thrive, the Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing a monitoring plan that will focus on roosting sites and availability of forage.
Federal land managers in New Mexico and Arizona, including at the U.S. Army’s Fort Huachuca, already are including forage plants such as agaves, saguaros and other cactuses in their resource management plans to help the species.
Limiting human access to caves with roost sites and abandoned mines in the U.S. also has benefited bat populations.
Recovery efforts have included education aimed at changing attitudes about bats and improving identification of different species. Historically, the lesser long-nosed bat was a victim of campaigns to control vampire bats over rabies concerns and their effects on livestock.
In reviewing the species, biologists considered the potential effects that climate change may have on the “nectar trail” that the bats follow as they migrate. They say the bat is flexible and adaptive enough to remain viable under changing conditions.
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