In the United States, the number of amputees is expected to double by 2050. There are similar statistics for the developing world, but many of those places do not have the infrastructure to support those trying to function with a lost limb. One doctor in Uganda is trying to provide for amputees in his town, person by person. VOA’s Kevin Enochs.
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Venezuelans already struggling to find food, medicine and other basic necessities have a new shortage to worry about: cash.
Troubling shortfalls of Venezuelan bolivars are forcing many in this distressed South American nation to form long lines outside banks several times a week to withdraw what little cash is available. Others are resorting to bartering goods and services to skirt cash transactions.
“As if we didn’t have enough problems already,” said Roberto Granadillo, 37, a watchmaker. “Now we can’t even find bills.”
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blames the cash crunch on mafias moving bills overseas in an attempt to derail the nation’s economy, though he’s presented only scant evidence to back the claim.
What is certain is that the country’s triple-digit inflation continues to skyrocket, meaning Venezuelans must find larger quantities of the scarce bills to purchase even relatively inexpensive items like bread or a cup of coffee — or turn to electronic transfers from their bank accounts.
The Venezuelan government released new, higher denomination bills in values of 500, 5,000 and 20,000 bolivars earlier this year after the currency meltdown left the country’s then-largest note worth around 2 U.S. cents on the black market.
But now even the freshly minted bills, printed in rainbow hues and imported in part from the United States, are quickly dwindling in value. In January, one U.S. dollar was worth 4,578 bolivars on Venezuela’s pervasive black market; by October a U.S. dollar got you 29,170 bolivars, according to DolarToday, a website critical of the government that tracks the black market rate.
Analysts project Venezuela’s inflation could surpass 1,000 percent this year and many Venezuelans worry recently announced sanctions by the Trump administration prohibiting U.S. banks from issuing new credit to the Venezuelan government or its state oil company will deepen the economic crisis. In September, Venezuelan authorities enacted stricter banking and business regulations in an attempt to stem the tide of bolivar bills. Officials are also considering printing bills in even higher values.
The cash shortage is already being felt in the daily lives of Venezuelans like Granadillo, who said his weekly income has slipped more than 50 percent as customers use the bills they are able to obtain to purchase food instead of comparative luxuries like a watch repair.
Instead of cash, he has recently begun accepting a new form a payment: A kilo (2.2 pounds) of ham, chicken or beef in exchange for a newly ticking watch.
“You have to find a way to eat,” Granadillo said.
At the start of 2017, a 20,000 bolivar bill — the equivalent of about $6 and the largest denomination of Venezuelan currency — could easily purchase five basic food products: rice, coffee, corn flour, sugar and pasta. Now Jose Guerra, president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly’s Finance Commission, estimates that a 20,000-bolivar note only has the purchasing power to obtain just one of those and half a standard-sized portion of another. He said the bolivar’s value has crashed 75 percent between January and August, and that banks are limiting the amount of cash they let customers withdraw because the Central Bank is not providing enough bills.
“You need a lot more bills,” Guerra said. “And they aren’t there.”
The escalating cash crunch comes on the heels of four months of political upheaval that left at least 120 people dead in near-daily protests decrying Maduro’s rule. In early August, a new, all-powerful constitutional assembly was installed following a vote boycotted by the opposition. One of the new assembly’s first acts was to declare itself superior to all other branches of government, making the nation’s already weakened legislature an essentially powerless institution.
Jose Gil, director of Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis, said the cash shortfall carries a “very high price” for Maduro’s government but the opposition has not been able to capitalize on the discontent.
Venezuela’s Central Bank injected 849 million bills in varying denominations into the nation’s economy up until August, three times the amount released over the same time period in 2016 — yet still not enough to keep up with inflation. It’s not uncommon to see Venezuelans paying for goods with large wads of cash, and authorities have opened investigations into citizens caught hoarding substantial amounts, even if they add up to relatively small dollar values.
In one high-profile probe, prosecutors last month seized 200 million bolivars — the equivalent of about $8,000 at the black market rate — from activist Lilian Tintori, the wife of Leopoldo Lopez, the country’s most prominent political prisoner. The cash was found in steel-clad wooden boxes in the back of her car. Tintori claimed the investigation was part of a pattern of persecution against her family and that the cash was needed to pay for emergencies including the hospitalization of her 100-year-old grandmother.
Venezuelan Banking Superintendent Antonio Morales recently told Union Radio that bolivar notes leaving banking institutions are not being returned, as typically happens when cash shifts from customers to commercial businesses and back to banks. He said investigators have uncovered evidence that contraband networks are moving paper cash out of Venezuela and into Colombia. Officials recently detained 121 people allegedly involved in currency crimes, though no details on the charges were released.
Morales also blamed some local businesses for hoarding cash.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans like Maria Castillo, who works in the kitchen at a public hospital, are struggling to purchase food to sustain their families with the little cash they are able to obtain. The 70-year-old recently waited in an hour-long line at her bank to take out the maximum allowed: 10,000 bolivars — the equivalent of $3.
A day later, she was back in line at the bank.
“I could only buy a package of rice,” Castillo said. “Now I’m waiting in line again for the same amount.”
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned on Friday that the Trump administration was making “highly dangerous demands” in the North American Free Trade Agreement modernization talks that could erode U.S. business support and torpedo the negotiations.
John Murphy, the chamber’s senior vice president for international policy, said the largest U.S. business lobby was urging the administration to drop some of its more controversial NAFTA proposals, including raising rules of origin thresholds.
“We’re increasingly concerned about the state of play in negotiations,” Murphy told reporters.
Fourth round of talks
U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are preparing for a fourth round of talks to update the 23-year-old trade pact next week in a Washington suburb, Oct. 11-15.
U.S. companies large and small were worried about a proposal by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to add a five-year termination clause to NAFTA, Murphy said.
He said there was also concern about Lighthizer’s proposal to reduce Canadian and Mexican companies’ access to U.S. public procurement contracts, and to include a U.S.-specific content requirement for autos and auto parts.
“We see these proposals as highly dangerous, and even one of them could be significant enough to move the business and agriculture community to oppose an agreement that included them,” Murphy said.
He also voiced similar concerns about U.S. proposals for revamping dispute settlement mechanisms and trade protections for seasonal U.S. produce.
Some U.S. lawmakers and congressional staff are also growing increasingly concerned that the talks can reach a successful conclusion.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, a pro-trade Republican, has invited Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to speak to the tax- and trade-focused panel Wednesday as negotiators return to the table, a committee spokeswoman said.
Auto content
Inside U.S. Trade, a trade publication, stirred concerns among auto industry groups by quoting unnamed sources as saying that the Trump administration was also moving forward with a bid to increase North American content requirements for autos to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent, with a new 50 percent U.S. content requirement.
U.S. Trade Representative spokeswoman Emily Davis declined to comment on the report, but said President Donald Trump had been clear about the need to shake up the agreement governing one of the world’s biggest trade blocs.
“NAFTA has been a disaster for many Americans, and achieving his objectives requires substantial change,” she said. “These changes of course will be opposed by entrenched Washington lobbyists and trade associations.”
Officials from auto industry trade groups said they had not seen a rules of origin proposal with such stringent targets.
“Forcing unrealistic rules of origin on businesses would leave the U.S. unable to compete by increasing the cost of manufacturing and raising prices for consumers,” said Cindy Sebrell, a spokeswoman for the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents auto parts manufacturers.
Karen Antebi, the trade counselor at Mexico’s embassy in Washington, told a forum on Friday that while there were rumors of a 50 U.S. percent content demand for autos, formal texts had not been proposed on rules of origin.
“Mexico has been firm and consistent that country specific rules of origin within the NAFTA would be unacceptable,” she said.
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Howling winds, deadly floods, fire and ice so far this year have pushed the U.S. into a tie for weather disasters that topped $1 billion in damage.
There have been 15 costly disasters through September, tying 2011 for the most billion-dollar weather disasters for the first nine months of a year. The record for a year is 16, and the hurricane season is not over yet.
2017 unprecedented?
The figures released Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration include three hurricanes, three tornado outbreaks, four severe storms, two floods, a drought, a freeze and wildfires.
NOAA climate scientist Adam Smith said 2017 is shaping up to be an unprecedented year. It is likely to tie or break the record for billion-dollar weather disasters that was set in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina and other deadly storms.
NOAA hasn’t calculated the costs from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, but an outside disaster risk company estimates the U.S. damage from the three hurricanes to be around $150 billion. The remaining disasters so far this year have cost more than $21.7 billion and killed 282 people, according to NOAA.
Damage figures are adjusted for inflation; records for billion-dollar disasters go back to 1980.
Climate change
Between 1980 and 2007, the U.S. averaged only four billion-dollar disasters per year. In the decade since, the country has averaged 11 per year.
Experts blame a combination of factors.
“Climate change is impacting extreme weather in ways we hadn’t anticipated,” Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University said in an email.
But an even bigger factor is that more people moving into harm’s way “has created massive amounts of exposure in regions prone to severe weather events,” said Mark Bove, a meteorologist at insurance giant Munich Re.
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A U.S. House of Representatives committee said Friday that it had scheduled a new hearing on Kaspersky Lab software as lawmakers review accusations that the Kremlin could use its products to conduct espionage.
Kaspersky Lab has strongly denied those allegations — which last month prompted the Trump administration to order civilian government agencies to purge the software from its networks — and agreed to send Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky to Washington to testify before Congress.
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced the October 25 hearing a day after reports that Russian government-backed hackers stole highly classified U.S. cybersecrets in 2015 from a National Security Agency contractor who had Kaspersky software installed on his laptop.
The House science committee did not say who would be called to testify at the hearing.
Eugene Kaspersky last month told Reuters that the committee had invited him to testify at a September 27 hearing and that he would attend if he could get an expedited visa to enter the United States.
Classified session
That hearing was later canceled, though the committee held a closed-door classified session on Kaspersky software on September 26.
Kaspersky said in a statement on Friday that he hoped to attend the hearing.
“I look forward to participating in the hearing once it’s rescheduled and having the opportunity to address the committee’s concerns directly,” he said.
An appearance before Congress would mark Kaspersky’s most high-profile attempt to dispel long-standing accusations that his firm may be conducting espionage on behalf of the Russian government.
The investigation into the 2015 NSA hack is focused on somebody who worked at the agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit, a unit that uses computer hacking to gather intelligence, according to two people familiar with the classified probe.
Kaspersky anti-virus software was running on the contractor’s laptop at the time of the hack, and investigators are looking into whether hackers used the software to breach the computer and steal the data, said one of those sources.
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The U.S. Commerce Department said Friday that it is imposing more duties on Canada’s Bombardier C series aircraft, charging that the Canadian company is selling the planes in America below cost.
The 80 percent duty comes on top of duties of nearly 220 percent Commerce announced last month. The case is a victory for U.S. rival Boeing Co.
The U.S. says Montreal-based Bombardier used unfair government subsidies to sell jets at artificially low prices in the United States.
“The United States is committed to free, fair and reciprocal trade with Canada, but this is not our idea of a properly functioning trading relationship,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.
Specifically, Boeing charges that Bombardier last year sold Delta Air Lines 75 CS100 aircraft for less than it cost to build them. But Delta has said Boeing did not even make the 100-seat jets it needed.
“These anti-dumping duties on Bombardier’s C Series aircraft unfairly target Canada’s highly innovative aerospace sector and its more than 200,000 workers, and put at risk the almost 23,000 U.S. jobs that depend on Bombardier and its suppliers,” said Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign affairs minister. “Boeing is manipulating the U.S. trade remedy system to prevent Bombardier’s new aircraft, the C Series, from entering the U.S. market.”
Bombardier can appeal any sanctions to a U.S. court or to a dispute-resolution panel created under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Canadian government can also take the case to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
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In Orlando, Florida, where tourists come for the palm trees, shopping and theme parks, 18,000 women converged recently on the city’s giant convention center to talk about technology.
Amid technical sessions on artificial intelligence and augmented reality, the main theme of the Grace Hopper Celebration, the largest gathering of women in technology worldwide, was simple: How to make the tech industry more welcoming to women.
With women making up nearly 23 percent of the U.S. tech industry’s workforce, women should be playing a bigger role than they currently do in the industry, said Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“It’s time the world recognizes that the next Bill Gates may not look anything like the last one and that not every great idea comes wrapped in a hoodie,” said Melinda Gates, who worked at Microsoft earlier in her career.
This isn’t your typical technology conference.
First, its namesake “Grace Hopper” was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy and a groundbreaking computer programmer.
The conference also provided childcare and all-gender bathrooms. At some of the career booths, women were offered lip balm embossed with a corporate name. At one booth, they were invited to vamp it up, while promoting a new cloud computing service.
Chinyere Nwabugwu, a machine learning researcher at IBM Research in San Jose, California, said what she liked most was hearing about what successful women have done to get ahead.
“I’m just encouraged to work hard in my field, to be known for something, to put in my best, to be a good role model to others, mentor other people coming after me,” Nwabugwu said.
Town hall conference
Voice of America held a town hall at the conference where female leaders in technology talked about the progress that has been made and how far it has yet to go. There are concrete steps companies can take that will bring more women into the industry, the speakers said.
One simple thing companies can do is publicly announce job openings, rather than fill jobs from managers’ personal connections, said Danielle Brown, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Google.
Paula Tolliver, chief information officer at Intel, recently left one male-dominated industry — she was an executive at Dow Chemical — for the tech industry. But she said she was drawn by tech’s promise.
“Being CIO of Intel, and being at the middle of the ecosystem of Silicon Valley and working across many industries, it’s exciting,” Tolliver said. “And I personally, want more women to be more representative of that.”
Deborah Berebichez, a data scientist and co-host of the Discovery Channel’s Outrageous Acts of Science, said that she pursued science despite the lack of support from her parents.
Gatherings, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration, are solving two important problems in the tech industry, Berebichez said: How to interest more women in tech and how to help women already in tech to advance their careers.
Gender diversity issues
Both issues came to the forefront in August after a memo written by a male engineer at Google questioned the need for gender diversity programs in the industry.
In a 10-page internal memo that was leaked on social media, James Damore suggested fewer women are employed in the technology field because women “prefer jobs in social and artistic areas” due to “biological causes.”
Brown, who joined Google two weeks prior to the notorious memo, said that it upset both men and women at the company and didn’t reflect Google’s values. Damore was fired.
Berebichez’s message to women?
“You’re the only one that can make your future,” Berebichez said. “Nobody else will do it for you so seek mentors, do whatever you have to do, study like crazy, be very entrepreneurial and craft your path, because you will be the only one that gets the fruits of your own labor.”
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The Trump administration says it will broaden the scope of an opt-out provision in the Affordable Health Care Act, allowing nonprofits and publicly traded companies to stop offering birth control coverage in the insurance they provide their employees.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued the new set of rules Friday, effective immediately, that expands the privilege previously given to privately-owned companies that say they have religious objections to birth control.
The rules published Friday in the Federal Register, the government’s public archive of official documents, broaden the range of employers allowed to opt out of birth control insurance coverage if they have a “sincerely held religious or moral objection” to the practice. That rule will force women who work for those companies to pay for contraceptive pills and devices themselves.
Health and Human Services officials have told reporters they expect the companies taking advantage of the new rules will be few — perhaps only about 200 companies that have filed suit in objection to Obamacare’s birth control coverage requirement.
“This provides an exemption and it’s a limited one,” said Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights. “We should have space for organizations to live out their religious identity and not face discrimination.”
Health care providers and activists who oppose the new rules, however, say they could provide opportunities for many employers to end the coverage just to save money.
Haywood Brown, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told National Public Radio that “reducing access to contraceptive coverage threatens to reverse the tremendous progress our nation has made in recent years in lowering the unintended pregnancy rate.”
Brown added that the change also could affect the maternal mortality, community health, and economic stability of women and families.
Dania Palanker, professor at Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reform, told NPR that “it is a huge loophole for any employer that does not want to provide birth control coverage to their employees.”
Move follows Trump executive order
Friday’s announcement follows an executive order in May vowing to “protect and vigorously promote religious liberty.” President Trump made the order in response to a lawsuit by the religious order The Little Sisters of the Poor, who filed their suit during the Obama administration, when the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, went into effect.
The Act required employer-provided health insurance policies to include coverage for preventative care, including birth control using all contraceptive methods approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
The act included a loophole for churches and other religious employers to opt out of that requirement, in which case the government arranged the coverage directly with the employer’s insurance company without employer involvement.
A challenge to that requirement led to the famous Hobby Lobby ruling of 2014, which allowed privately held companies to object to the coverage on religious grounds and deny the Obamacare workaround to their employees.
Reports say HHS is expected to tighten restrictions further in the coming months by cracking down on enforcement of a requirement that federal subsidies not be used for insurance policies that cover abortions. The agency is issuing guidelines for insurers that specify they have to charge women who want abortion coverage at least $12 a year for that coverage.
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In Orlando, Florida this past week, 18,000 women from around the world gathered to talk about technology and how women can play a bigger role in shaping the industry’s future. VOA’s Michelle Quinn went to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the largest meeting of women in technology worldwide, to find out what women in tech want to change.
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As an outbreak of pneumonic plague worsens in Madagascar, the World Health Organization and other international agencies are working with the Ministry of Health to stop the spread of the deadly disease. The latest official figures put the number of cases at 231, including 33 deaths.
Pneumonic plague is a lung infection, transmitted through flea bites or from person to person through droplets in the air when someone coughs or sneezes. A person can die within 48 hours of the disease’s onset if not treated with antibiotics.
In response to the crisis, the World Health Organization sent 1.2 million doses of antibiotics to Madagascar this week.
“These antibiotics are being given to health facilities and they are enough to treat 5,000 patients and protect up to 100,000 people who may have been exposed to disease,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the WHO. “We are also filling critical shortages in disinfection materials and personal protective equipment for health professionals and safe burials.”
While plague is a recurring problem in Madagascar, this particular outbreak has triggered a nationwide panic because it has moved from remote rural areas into the cities, including the capital, Antananarivo.
To contain the spread, the International Red Cross Federation is releasing emergency funds to support the Malagasy Red Cross, which is mobilizing more than 700 community volunteers in response to the outbreak.
The volunteers will scale up community surveillance and contact tracing, and tell their communities about steps they must take to protect themselves.
“Getting the messages out into the community that treatment is available, that treatment is possible, but you need to receive the antibiotics as quickly as possible after developing symptoms is vital,” said Julie Hall, the Red Cross director of health care. “In addition to that, if someone has had contact, close contact with someone with the symptoms, it is vital that they get the antibiotics as quickly as possible because that can stop them developing any symptoms.”
Symptoms of pneumonic plague include coughing, fever, chest pain and difficulty breathing.
Despite the gravity of the outbreak, the World Health Organization does not advise any travel or trade restrictions on Madagascar. However, travelers are encouraged to educate themselves about the disease and, if they have any symptoms, go immediately to the nearest health facility.
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A global conference organized by the European Union aimed at better protecting marine life has raised more than $7 billion.
During the Our Ocean conference that concluded Friday in the Maltese capital of Valletta, the EU committed $645 million to improve marine governance. Representatives from businesses, 112 countries and others pushed the total up to the unprecedented level.
The Our Ocean conference has accumulated some 8.7 billion euros ($10.2 billion) since it started in 2014, but the 2017 commitments exceeded expectations.
The conference focuses on funding and leading projects as varied at combating plastics pollution to countering illegal fishing and looking at the effects of climate change.
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The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine to Bangladesh to help prevent a major outbreak of cholera in the crowded Rohingya refugee camp that sits on the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar.
At least a half-million Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have crossed the border to escape a military crackdown in their villages.
In Yemen, a massive and deadly cholera epidemic has affected almost 800,000 people, and the World Health Organization expects that number to climb to 1 million by year’s end. Worldwide, about 100,000 people die from cholera each year.
WATCH: WHO, Others Pledge to End Cholera
End cholera by 2030
On Tuesday, the WHO, along with governments, aid agencies and donors announced a roadmap to end cholera by 2030. It’s the first global pledge to end this disease.
Dr. Amesh Adalja said it’s not possible to eliminate cholera because cholera is a bacteria that exists naturally. Adalja is an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. He is also a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Adalja told VOA it is possible to make cholera as rare in Bangladesh and in Yemen as it is in the United States and the rest of North America. He said sanitation is the key to eliminating cholera.
The disease is “not something that should happen in 2017,” Adalja said. “This is something that can be fixed by development and the civilizing effect of sanitation.”
Cholera is a diarrheal disease. The bacteria that causes cholera lives in coastal waters and in brackish rivers. It thrives where there is poor water treatment, poor toilet sanitation and poor hygiene. It’s caused by eating or drinking contaminated food and water.
Malnutrition plays a role
Malnutrition is also a factor. Jesse Hartness is the senior director of emergency health and nutrition at Save the Children, an agency that has been working to control the cholera outbreak in Yemen.
“There’s a cycle of illness and malnutrition where you have a child who is sick, and they lose their appetite,” Hartness said. “They are dehydrated from having diarrhea, they lose weight, and, once they are malnourished, that also drives their vulnerability to additional illness.”
Anyone can get cholera, but children, pregnant women and the elderly are most at risk.
Yet, cholera is not difficult or expensive to treat. Hartness said it is simple if the disease is caught early and if you can provide hydration to the less severe patients so they don’t become severe patients who require more intensive treatment.
But in places ravaged by flooding and other natural disasters, or by manmade disasters like war, or in crowded refugee camps, sanitation is hard to maintain. Water can’t be treated properly. Human waste can’t easily be disposed of hygienically, so in addition to providing aid, organizations like Save the Children find themselves trying to rebuild sanitation systems.
The WHO says about 2 billion people globally lack access to clean water.
Vaccine available
Vaccines can help. Adalja said the oral vaccines the WHO uses to manage cholera outbreaks have about a 65 percent effectiveness rate over five years. He adds that “65 percent isn’t 100 percent, but it is very good.”
Hartness said in order to end cholera in Yemen, the war that Yemen has been mired in for three years has to end.
“In order to really look at ending this outbreak, we have to look at ending the war,” he said. “And if that can’t happen immediately, we have to look at negotiating access to these communities … that are the hardest to reach.”
Adalja added, “It’s basically a poverty trap for some of those countries which they can never get out of. … This is something that can be fixed by development and the civilizing effect of sanitation.”
Forty-seven countries are affected by cholera, and the WHO expects the global cholera situation to get worse, which is behind its urgency to end the disease.
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The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine to Bangladesh to help prevent a major outbreak of cholera. On Oct. 3, the WHO said it could have acted faster to fight a massive, deadly cholera epidemic in Yemen. The announcements came after the agency announced a plan to end cholera in the near future. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson.
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Water flows a long and winding path from the sink to the ecosystem, but not before making an all-important stop at a waste water treatment plant. It’s more than just cleaning out dirt and debris we can see; it’s about removing invisible contaminants that could poison nearby waters. Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington.
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Tropical Storm Nate is being blamed for more than 20 deaths across Central America even as it tracks toward a likely U.S. landfall this weekend as a hurricane.
“The system is forecast to strengthen over the Gulf of Mexico, and could affect portions of the northern Gulf Coast as a hurricane this weekend, with direct impacts from wind, storm surge, and heavy rainfall,” the National Hurricane Center said Thursday. “However, it is too early to specify the timing, location or magnitude of these impacts.”
Nate is expected to reach the northern Gulf Coast at hurricane strength this weekend before making landfall early Sunday somewhere between southeast Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle.
Residents in part of Louisiana’s coastal St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, have been ordered to evacuate as the state prepares for Nate. The evacuation for areas outside of the parish levee system was set to begin Thursday evening.
A state of emergency was declared for 29 Florida counties and the city of New Orleans.
Even as the threat of Nate draws near, several parts of the country are still struggling to recover from previous storms.
Hurricane Maria
A group of Puerto Ricans who recently arrived in Florida met Thursday with Vice President Mike Pence as he prepared to go to Puerto Rico to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Maria.
Everlinda Burgos, who flew into Orlando from her home in Naranjito, told Pence, “Don’t go to San Juan. Go inside the country like where I live.’’ Burgos told Pence that President Donald Trump went to “another part’’ earlier this week. But she says the vice president should “go to the center’’ Friday “because that’s where the disaster is.’’
Some two weeks after the catastrophic Category 5 Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory is still reeling from its devastating effects.
Governor Ricardo Rossello Nevares said just 8.6 percent of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority clients have had their power restored; 365 of 1,619 telecommunication towers have been repaired, but landlines are functioning at 100 percent.
The government’s hope is to have the power back on for a quarter of the island within a month’s time, and for the entire territory of 3.4 million people by March.
While 63.3 percent of the San Juan metropolitan region has safe drinking water, just 14 percent in the northern part of the island and 30 percent in the west region has such access.
As part of his daily news briefing on recovery efforts, the governor reported that 76 percent of island gas stations are open and 70 percent of the supermarkets are reported open.
Hurricane Irma
The Florida Keys, devastated by Hurricane Irma last month, have reopened just in time for prime tourist season. The keys, which stretch about 200 kilometers off Florida’s southern tip, were closed after Irma made landfall Sept. 10 as a Category 4 hurricane.
Tourism-related jobs account for about 50 percent of the workforce in the area.
Meanwhile, the last shelter used for Hurricane Irma evacuees closed in Miami-Dade County Wednesday.
As Irma approached Florida, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez issued evacuation orders covering 600,000 residents. The county opened 43 shelters capable of housing about 100,000 people. Some 32,000 people ended up taking shelter in county facilities.
Hurricane Harvey
Texas lawmakers, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, urged Congress to approve $18.7 billion more in funding for relief and recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey. The request came a day after the Trump administration sent Congress a proposal for $29 billion in disaster aid to Puerto Rico, Florida, Texas and Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
While some Federal Emergency Management Agency money has reached Texas, the substantial funds needed for extensive home repairs or rebuilds, could take up to 32 months to work their way through several layers of government agencies.
The Houston Chronicle reports the bulk of the requested funds, $10 billion, would go to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for repairs and upgrades to dams, waterways and ports. Another $7 billion would be allocated for Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery funds, doubling the amount that was allocated in September.
Another $800 million would go to state educational agencies for repairs to schools and colleges, and rest of the funding would be applied toward small businesses, economic aid and transportation infrastructure.
More than 185,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by the Category 4 hurricane.
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A new party led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Friday it hopes to pursue policies to revive the economy that do not rely excessively on fiscal and monetary stimulus steps in a party platform unveiled ahead of a national election on Oct. 22.
Koike’s Party of Hope said it would seek to boost Japan’s potential growth through deregulation in a package of measures dubbed “Yurikonomics.”
Taxing companies’ huge cash-pile and using the proceeds to create jobs would be among its proposed steps, along with increasing capital expenditure and revitalizing Japan’s stock market, according to the platform.
The party, which is challenging Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition, also vowed to end nuclear power by 2030 amid public safety worries after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Abe announced the snap election last week in the hope his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition would keep its majority in parliament’s lower house, where it held a two-thirds “super majority” before the chamber was dissolved.
However, Koike’s new party — launched last week as a “reformist, conservative” alternative to Abe’s equally conservative LDP — has clouded the outlook amid signs voters are disillusioned with Abe after nearly five years in power.
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Experts met in Stockholm this week to assess progress on securing land rights for indigenous people and local communities and how businesses connect to them.
More than half of land rights conflicts in the developing world are not resolved, pitting companies, governments and businesses against indigenous communities, according to research published at the conference.
Here are the views of 10 experts interviewed by Reuters during the two-day conference on the role of local communities, technology and business in ensuring secure land rights.
Boubacar Diarra, Pilot Coordinator, Helvetas
“Tenure rights, in a country like Mali that has just experienced a crisis, are very important for … development because more than 60 percent of the population is rural and lives from the land and … more than 50 percent of them are women. So the issue of land rights, especially women’s land rights, is very important.
The issue of land rights is also strongly linked to the question of climate change. The more people have rights over their lands, the better they protect them, the better they manage them to fight against climate change.”
Candido Mezua Salazar, Executive Board Member, Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests
“For indigenous people, having secure land rights means securing their lives now and for future generations. It is also very important for protecting our climate, it contributes to maintaining forests and in general it contributes to the development of indigenous people. … If there is no legal recognition, our forests are more likely to disappear.
Unfortunately, the reality is still that the dollars that are invested in indigenous lands still count more than the well-being of our communities.”
Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation
“We have two existential threats to the planet. The first is climate change, and the second is inequality. By working on land rights, secure tenure for indigenous people and local communities, we can achieve first a reduction of inequality in the world by providing these people with the assets and resources that improve their economic well-being.
At the same time, as the research shows that by giving land to indigenous people, they protect their forest and reduce deforestation, which in turn contributes to a better climate.”
Carin Jamtin, Director-General, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
“Land rights matter in different ways, in the fight against climate change, but also … in eradicating poverty and in reaching the [United Nations’] Sustainable Development Goals. It matters because knowing who has the right to use a forest, the land, et cetera in different ways … gives indigenous people and local communities possibilities to support themselves, to build their own capacity … their own present but also their own future.
Therefore, land rights are important to make a clear distinction of who has the responsibility of actually combating and stopping climate change and the possibility of eradicating poverty.”
Mikhail Tarasov, Global Forestry Manager, Ikea
“Land rights are a very important issue. It’s really critical to secure that businesses are responsible. … Securing land rights is critical for addressing the biggest challenges we are facing today. It’s deforestation, it’s climate change, it’s gender equality, it’s rights of people.
But it’s also about the livelihoods and the rights of those people living in rural areas who own the resources.”
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples Rights
“Land rights are very crucial for the continuing survival, dignity and well-being of indigenous peoples. If their lands are taken away from them, it really means their identities, their cultures are also going to be destroyed.
So it’s not a simple matter of land as an asset or a means of production. It’s really land that is the source of life, of identity, culture. Not recognizing those land rights basically means ethnocide. In some cases, it’s genocide and will lead to the disappearance of the people.”
Adam Klaptocz, Co-Founder, We Robotics
“Technology is always a tool that can be used to scale the work of organizations working on land rights issues. Drones can capture aerial data in a much faster, more efficient and higher quality way to provide a basis for land rights organizations to show the current state of land.
In a very accurate way, [drones can] demarcate people’s own property and lands of communities and provide a specific proof of what the current state of land looks like that can then be used to provide people with rights to the land on which they live.”
Kate Mathias, Group Development Consultant, Illovo Sugar
“As an agribusiness, land and people are very much at the foundations of our business. … We can’t operate in an unhealthy environment. We need to investigate land rights on our own estates and in our supply chain and need to identify and understand the challenges to find sustainable solutions.
We’re also looking at assisting farmers to address their own land rights challenges to improve the transparency and sustainability of our supply chain and enable them to take better control of their livelihoods, make better choices on how they use their land and feel more secure in how they engage with us or with anybody else they choose to engage with.”
Nonette Roca, Executive Director, Global Tenure Facility
“Humans are the stewards of the earth, of the land and the natural resources. To be able to be good stewards, we have to recognize [indigenous people’s] land rights. This is the purpose of our work: We assist them and help them in the process of recognizing these rights, so they can do the work they do so well. Stewardship is part and parcel of their lifestyle. … It is their contribution to the earth. Ours is the recognition and assistance to help them in the recognition of [their] land rights.”
Jean De Dieu Wasso Milange, Coordinator, Africapacity, Democratic Republic of Congo
“Forests are vital for communities. It’s where they live, where they find their food, their culture, their education and it is in these forests that they find everything that is indispensable for their lives. If we chase them from their traditional forests, they become beggars, they become people without roots and they lose their culture and their way of life. And so they are condemned to die.”
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Microsoft said Thursday that it would team up with communities in six U.S. states to invest in technology and related jobs in rural and smaller metropolitan areas.
Company President Brad Smith launched the TechSpark program Thursday in Fargo, a metropolitan area of more than 200,000 people that includes a Microsoft campus with about 1,500 employees. Smith said the six communities are different by design and not all have a Microsoft presence.
Smith says TechSpark is a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investment to help teach computer science to students, expand rural broadband, and help create and fill jobs, among other things. The other programs will be in Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
“This is really a blueprint for private-public partnerships,” said North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, himself a former Microsoft executive.
Microsoft announced in July that it hoped to extend broadband services to rural America. The company said then that it would partner with rural telecommunications providers in 12 states with a goal of getting 2 million rural Americans high-speed internet over the next five years.
Microsoft planned to use “white space” technology, tapping buffer zones separating individual television channels in airwaves that could be cheaper than existing methods such as laying fiber-optic cable. The company had originally envisioned using it in the developing world, but shifted focus to the U.S. this summer.
Being ‘more present’
“We are a very diverse country,” Smith said. “It’s important for us to learn more about how digital technology is changing in all different parts of the country. So we are working to be more present in more places.”
Smith said there are 23.4 million Americans living in rural communities who don’t have broadband coverage and the TechSpark program is going to focus on bringing coverage to these six regions.
“The good news in North Dakota … is that it is in one of the strongest positions nationally in terms of the reach of broadband coverage,” he said. “But it still doesn’t reach everyone everywhere.”
Microsoft officials say there are nearly 500,000 unfilled computing jobs in the U.S. and that number is expected to triple by the end of next year. North Dakota currently has more than 13,000 job openings, many in computer software and engineering.
“The private sector doesn’t post a job unless they think they can make more money with the job filled than unfilled,” Burgum said. “So when we’re filling those jobs, we’re actually helping those companies become more profitable, which should help create more jobs. There’s no chicken-or-the-egg thing here.”
Microsoft on Thursday also selected Appleton, Wisconsin, as one of the six sites. The other communities will be announced later.
Smith said the success of the program would be measured first by how it provided digital skills to students and then by the job creation, economic growth and “making a difference in the lives of real people.”
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When black rats invaded Lord Howe Island after the 1918 wreck of the steamship Makambo, they wiped out numerous native species on the small Australian isle in the Tasman Sea including a big, flightless insect that resembled a stick.
But the Lord Howe Island stick insect, once declared extinct, still lives.
Scientists said on Thursday DNA analysis of museum specimens of the bug and a similar-looking one from an inhospitable volcanic outcrop called Ball’s Pyramid 14 miles (23 km) away confirmed they are the same species. The finding could help pave the way for its reintroduction in the coming years.
“The Lord Howe Island stick insect has become emblematic of the fragility of island ecosystems. Unlike most stories involving extinction, this one gives us a unique second chance,” said evolutionary biologist Alexander Mikheyev of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan.
The glossy-black insect that grow up to six inches (15 cm) in length is nicknamed the “land lobster.” Other stick insects are found around the world, so named because their appearance lets them blend in with trees and bushes to evade predators.
As adults, the wingless Lord Howe Island stick insects shelter in trees during daytime and come out at night to eat shrubbery. The bright-green babies are active during daytime.
By about 1930, they had vanished on Lord Howe Island, which was thought to be their only home. There were no land-dwelling mammals there when the rats arrived, and they also vanquished five bird species and 12 other insect species.
A rock-climbing ranger made a curious discovery in 2001 on Ball’s Pyramid: a similar-looking insect. Since then, captive breeding programs have begun at the Melbourne Zoo and elsewhere.
Because of certain differences between the Ball’s Pyramid insects and the Lord Howe Island insect museum specimens, there was some question about whether they were the same species.
“We found what everyone hoped to find, that despite some significant morphological differences, these are indeed the same species,” said Mikheyev, who led the research published in the journal Current Biology.
Officials are planning a program to eradicate the invasive rats on Lord Howe Island, which could allow the stick insects to return.
“I imagine that maybe a decade from now, people will travel to Lord Howe Island and take night walks, hoping to glimpse this insect,” Mikheyev said. “In maybe 20 years, they could become a ubiquitous sight.”
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Seated before the grounded space shuttle Discovery, a constellation of Trump administration officials used soaring rhetoric to vow to send Americans back to the moon and then on to Mars.
After voicing celestial aspirations, top officials moved to what National Intelligence Director Dan Coats called “a dark side” to space policy. Coats, Vice President Mike Pence, other top officials and outside space experts said the United States has to counter and perhaps match potential enemies’ ability to target U.S. satellites.
Pence, several cabinet secretaries and White House advisers gathered in the shadow of the shuttle at the Smithsonian Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to chart a new path in space — government, commercial and military — for the country. It was the first meeting of the National Space Council, revived after it was disbanded in 1993.
But details, such as how much the new ideas will cost, were scant and outside experts said they’ve heard grandiose plans before only to see them fizzle instead of launch.
“We will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond,” Pence said.
Timelines
Space industry leaders say they and NASA are building the spaceships to get there. And they’re promising that in five years, astronauts could be working around the moon.
David Thompson, president of the space company Orbital ATK, said NASA’s Orion capsule and super-sized Space Launch System rocket should be ready in a couple years, so flying around the moon and even making a lunar orbiting outpost is within reach. But he said a lunar landing would take longer. Blue Origin rocket company chief executive officer Bob Smith said his firm could have a lunar lander program ready within five years.
Past presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and to a lesser extent Barack Obama have proposed spectacular missions to the moon or Mars or both, only to have funding trouble keep them from coming true, said space expert Brian Weeden of the Secure World Foundation. He wasn’t part of the council meeting.
“Is it going to happen? Who knows? I feel like I’ve been disappointed so many times I refuse to get excited,” said Roger Launius, a longtime space historian.
And Gwynn Shotwell, president of SpaceX, said her company next year will launch astronauts to the International Space Station, the first American launch of people since 2011. After the 2003 space shuttle Columbia broke apart on descent, then-president George W. Bush announced the phasing out of the space shuttle program. Eventually, NASA started building new multibillion dollar ships, the Orion capsule and the SLS mega-rocket.
Pence several times bemoaned a U.S. space program that had fallen behind, asking space executives what they thought.
“America is out-innovating the world in space launch,” Shotwell said, noting that her company had launched 13 rockets this year, more than any other nation.
Weaponizing space
After talking about how “we will blaze new trails into that great frontier” Pence turned the discussion to the dangers of space and how much of the U.S. intelligence system and day-to-day life are dependent on commercial satellites operating safely. And he and others outlined threats to those satellites from potential enemies that could cripple American security and daily life.
Experts worried that satellites could be destroyed and debris in orbit could ruin others.
Pence asked if the U.S. should “weaponize” space.
“The choice whether or not to weaponize space is not one that we can make. We can only decide to match and raise our adversaries who are already weaponizing space,” former NASA chief Michael Griffin said. “That horse is already out of the barn.”
White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the country needs to “deter and when necessary defeat adversaries’ counter-space efforts. … We may not start it, but we will finish it.”
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Students who attended for-profit colleges were twice as likely or more to default on their loans than students who attended public schools, according to a federal study published Thursday.
The report by the National Center of Education Statistics looks at students who began their undergraduate education in 2003 and defaulted on at least one loan over the next 12 years. Fifty-two percent of the students who attended for-profit schools defaulted on their loan. That’s compared to 17 percent for those who attended a four-year public institution and 26 percent at community college.
The report also finds that the for-profit students defaulted on their federal student loans in greater numbers than their predecessors eight years before.
The report comes as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rewrites rules that had been put in place by the Obama administration to protect students who said they were defrauded by their for-profit colleges.
The study also found that this group of students is defaulting on their federal student loans in greater numbers than their predecessors eight years before.
Default rate
Of the students who started college in 2003, 27 percent had defaulted on at least one loan after 12 years, the study found. For those who started their undergraduate education in 1995, the default rate was 18 percent. The rate of full repayment was 20 percent in the younger group, compared to 24 in the older group.
Robert Kelchen, a professor of education at Seton Hall University, suggested that the higher rate among the 2003 freshmen might be due to them entering the labor market at the height of the Great Recession.
Default rates were higher for those students who never completed their education, the study said.
“Degree completion is a key component of a student’s ability to repay their loan,” said Joshua Goodman, a professor of public policy at Harvard University. “Simply attending college without completion doesn’t really pay off.”
Among borrowers in the 2003 group, the median amount owed after 12 years was $3,700 for those who earned undergraduate certificates, $11,700 for students getting associate’s degrees and $13,800 for bachelor’s degrees or higher.
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As electric-powered cars are rapidly gaining popularity, the last frontier in private transportation is also opening up to alternative, eco-friendly power. Thanks to advances in battery and electric motor technology, several manufacturers are experimenting with light planes that are quiet, easy to maintain and cheap to fly. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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General Motors’s self-driving unit, Cruise Automation, has more than doubled the size of its test fleet of robot cars in California during the past three months, a GM spokesman said on Wednesday.
As the company increases the size of its test fleet, it has also reported more run-ins between its self-driving cars and human-operated vehicles and bicycles, telling California regulators its vehicles were involved in six minor crashes in the state in September.
“All our incidents this year were caused by the other vehicle,” said Rebecca Mark, spokeswoman for GM Cruise.
In the past three months, the Cruise unit has increased the number of vehicles registered for testing on California streets to 100 from the previous 30 to 40, GM spokesman Ray Wert said.
Cruise is testing vehicles in San Francisco as part of its effort to develop software capable of navigating congested and often chaotic urban environments.
Investors are watching GM’s progress closely, and the automaker’s shares have risen 17 percent during the past month as some analysts have said the company could deploy robot taxis within the next year or two.
A U.S. Senate panel approved legislation on Wednesday that would allow automakers to greatly expand testing of self-driving cars. Some safety groups have objected to the proposal, saying it gives too much latitude to automakers.
As Cruise, and rivals, put more self-driving vehicles on the road to gather data to train their artificial intelligence systems, they are more frequently encountering human drivers who are not programmed to obey all traffic laws.
In filings to California regulators, Cruise said the six accidents in the state last month involved other cars and a bicyclist hitting its test cars.
The accidents did not result in injuries or serious damage, according to the GM reports. In total, GM Cruise vehicles have been involved in 13 collisions reported to California regulators in 2017, while Alphabet Inc’s Waymo vehicles have been involved in three crashes.
California state law requires that all crashes involving self-driving vehicles be reported, regardless of severity.
Most of the crashes involved drivers of other vehicles striking the GM cars that were slowing for stop signs, pedestrians or other issues. In one crash, a driver of a Ford Ranger was on his cellphone when he rear-ended a Chevrolet Bolt stopped at a red light.
In another instance, the driver of a Chevrolet Bolt noticed an intoxicated cyclist in San Francisco going the wrong direction toward the Bolt. The human driver stopped the Bolt and the cyclist hit the bumper and fell over. The bicyclist pulled on a sensor attached to the vehicle causing minor damage.
“While we look forward to the day when autonomous vehicles are commonplace, the streets we drive on today are not so simple, and we will continue to learn how humans drive and improve how we share the road together,” GM said in a statement on Wednesday.
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At 52 years old, with two grown children, Newton Gunathileka thought he should be working less by this point. Instead he has never worked so hard — and earned so little.
Gunathileka, from the Sri Lankan village of Periyakulam, in the North Western Puttalam District, is among hundreds of thousands of rural Sri Lankans who have borne the brunt of the worst drought in four decades.
He has not seen any substantial rains on his farm in at least a year and has lost two harvests, resulting in a loss of more than 200,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($1,325) — and growing debts. He has now abandoned his two acres of rice paddy land and spends his time looking, mainly unsuccessfully, for other work in 40 degree Celsius heat.
“There is no work. Everyone, big or small, has lost out to the drought,” he said.
According to data released in September by the United Nations, there are hundreds of thousands of households like Gunathileka’s facing serious food security issues in Sri Lanka.
With rice production for 2017 expected to be the lowest in a decade, “over 300,000 households (around 1.2 million people) are estimated to be food insecure, with many households limiting their food intake and in some cases eating just one meal a day,” the United Nations update said.
The worst affected areas are the North Western, North Central, Northern and South Eastern Provinces that rely heavily on agriculture. The U.N. Office in Colombo said that affected households were in some cases limiting their food intake, which was hampering people’s day-to-day lives.
Eating their seed
Gunathileka, who hails from the North Western Province, said his family was now eating some of the rice that he had put away to use as seed for the next growing season.
“For the next month or two we are okay with rice, but we have been limiting eating meat, eggs and vegetables we buy from outside. The other big problem I have is my children’s higher education. If we can’t get a harvest at least by the end of the year both of them will have to work,” he said.
His daughter is taking a course in secretarial work while the son is getting ready to sit university entrance exams. The family now survives on about Rs 800 ($5) or less a day, and both Gunathileka and his wife earn cash doing whatever work they can find.
The U.N report also said that household debt was rising due to the drought. A World Food Program survey released in August said that debts of surveyed families had risen by 50 percent in the last year.
“Households reported that the amount of money owed in formal loans has not increased, indicating that families are turning to informal lenders for credit,” the WFP survey said.
Gunathileka said that he was thinking of using the deeds to his paddy rice land as collateral and seeking a small loan from local money lenders.
“The banks will not lend because I can’t show any income. [But] if I don’t get to pay back the money lenders, I lose my land,” he said.
Rain and aid
Government officials said they anticipated the island had weathered the worst of the drought, and rains expected in late October would bring more relief.
Recent rains have dropped the overall number of people affected by drought from 2.2 million a month ago to 1.7 million now, said G.L. Senadeera, director general of the government Disaster Management Center.
He said the government planned to distribute relief food packs worth Rs 5000 ($34) to about 200,000 drought-hit families and provide compensation up to Rs 8500 ($56) per acre for harvest losses this year.
The government’s drought relief efforts, which began in August and were accelerated in September, officials say, are expected to cost about Rs 2.5 billion (about $16 million), according to the Treasury department.
The World Food Programme said in its August report that of 81,000 families surveyed in the 10 worst-hit districts, only 22 percent had access to government relief by early August.
For now, Gunathileka and his wife look up to the sky each time they step out looking for work.
“All we see are clear skies. All we want to see are dark clouds over the horizon,” he said.
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