The United Nations Ocean Conference opens next week in New York and is to call for action to help protect marine life from the threats of global warming, over-fishing and pollution. But in some cases, climate change is already affecting some of the ocean’s iconic species. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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President Donald Trump has chosen a regional banker as his nominee for a key government position in bank regulation.
Trump announced late Monday he is naming Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks. If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administration’s efforts to ease rules written under the Dodd-Frank law that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans. The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many of them working inside the nation’s largest financial institutions, who focus closely on lending practices.
Otting was CEO from 2010 to 2015 of OneWest Bank, where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is now Treasury secretary. Democrats who objected to Mnuchin’s appointment as Treasury chief accused him of running a “foreclosure machine” when he headed the big California-based bank. The bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages.
Mnuchin, who led an investor group that bought the failed IndyMac bank in 2009 and turned it into a profitable OneWest, has defended his actions as the bank’s chairman. He has said he worked hard during the financial crisis to help homeowners with refinancing mortgages so they could remain in their homes.
OneWest was among a number of big banks that signed consent orders with the OCC over alleged mortgage servicing abuses. The bank didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing under the 2011 order but agreed to undertake a plan to correct problems.
“If Mr. Otting didn’t deal fairly with the customers at his own bank, it’s difficult to see why he’s the best choice to look out for the interests of customers at more than 1,400 banks and thrifts across the country,” Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement.
Before he worked at OneWest, Otting was vice chairman of U.S. Bancorp, parent of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.
With Otting’s appointment, Trump continues to fill out his key team of financial regulators, as his administration looks to easing rules and meet his campaign promises. Republicans have long complained that regulations were made too restrictive following the financial meltdown and have hampered economic growth by making it harder for banks to lend.
Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with ties to Goldman Sachs, is now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump has three vacancies to fill on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, including the key slot that holds the portfolio of bank supervision.
Otting would replace Keith Noreika, a financial services lawyer who was installed last month as acting comptroller in an unusual move apparently aimed at avoiding Senate confirmation and normal ethics requirements.
Noreika succeeded Thomas Curry, an Obama appointee, who had been comptroller since 2012 and leaned toward strict bank oversight.
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A decade ago, the first inklings of the coming recession emerged as a housing bubble fueled by scant regulation, low interest rates and easy credit gradually began to crater and soon would take the rest of the economy along for the painful ride.
By the time the Great Recession ended in June 2009, almost no one was spared.
Home prices fell 30 percent on average, the unemployment rate nearly doubled and the S&P 500 lost about half its value. The net worth of U.S. households and nonprofit organizations fell by nearly $14 trillion, about 20 percent.
In the midst of a presidential election, Washington struggled in its response. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the takeover of Merrill Lynch turned the spotlight on Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Senator John McCain even brighter, with McCain’s assertion that the “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” used to depict him as out of touch.
After the economy stabilized, Congress shifted from economic stimulus and bailouts to establishing the kind of regulatory framework that might keep another Great Recession from happening. The result was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
This week, House Republicans will vote on legislation to gut Dodd-Frank and replace it with their own version. A look at the background of the legislation and the GOP plan.
Passed with little GOP support
In June 2010, the House passed the financial regulatory overhaul 237-192. Only three Republicans sided with the vast majority of Democratic members in support of the bill.
Two weeks later, the Senate passed the bill 60-39. This time, only two Republicans voted for the bill, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But that was just enough to overcome procedural hurdles that can stop major legislation in the Senate.
Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law on July 21, 2010: “In the end, our financial system only works — our market is only free — when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system,” Obama said. “And that’s what these reforms are designed to achieve — no more, no less.”
What does it do?
Under the act, large banks undergo “stress tests” to ensure they have enough capital necessary to absorb losses during an economic crisis. The law also put into place strict limits on how commercial banks could invest capital in speculative investments.
Dodd-Frank also established a process by which the federal government could break up and wind down a failing financial company whose failure threatened financial stability in the United States. And it established a new agency with a mission of ensuring that banks and other financial companies don’t abuse consumers.
That’s just a small snapshot of the changes put into place through the nearly 2,300-page bill.
Who were Dodd and Frank?
Representative Barney Frank was the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. When the financial crisis hit, the Massachusetts lawmaker worked closely with the Bush administration to enact a historic bailout of the nation’s financial system so that the government could purchase as much as $700 billion in troubled assets to stabilize banks and get them lending again. Once the crisis began to subside, he turned his attention to an overhaul of the entire financial services industry. Frank was renowned for his knowledge of public policy and parliamentary rules, but also for his gruff, piercing criticism of those who disagreed with him. He declined to seek re-election in 2012 after serving 16 terms.
Senator Christopher Dodd was the chairman of the Senate’s Banking Committee. He announced in January 2010 that he would not seek re-election once his term ended, and he led the debate on the Senate side without fear of how it would harm his political standing. His home state of Connecticut counts several of the insurance companies that were shaken in the crisis.
Republican replacement
Republicans, most notably President Donald Trump, view the regulations associated with Dodd-Frank as increasing compliance costs for financial companies and making it harder to lend money and spur economic growth. Trump calls the law a “disaster.”
The replacement in the House has been authored by Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. At its core, the Financial Choice Act would give banks regulatory relief so long as they meet a strict basic requirement for the capital they build to cover unexpected big losses.
Federal regulators would also lose the power to dismantle a failing financial firm and sell off the pieces if they decide its collapse could endanger the system. The legislation also paints a bull’s eye on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which gained powers to scrutinize the practices of virtually any business selling financial products and services, such as credit card companies, payday lenders, mortgage servicers and debt collectors. Hensarling’s bill would eliminate those powers.
It would allow the president to remove the CFPB director at will, without needing a specific cause. Hensarling is backing off one provision, though, in the face of Republican division: He has promised to pull a provision that eliminates the cap on fees that banks can charge retailers when customers use a debit card.
What people are saying about the bill
House Republicans frequently speak about the need for economic growth.
“This is the Republican plan to reform Wall Street and revitalize Main Street — all while protecting the financial futures of Americans,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said in a statement Monday.
No Democratic lawmaker voted for the bill when it was approved by the Financial Services Committee, saying it would allow a return to the kind of risky practices that crashed the economy nearly 10 years ago.
“It’s an invitation for another Great Recession, or worse,” said Representative Maxine Waters of California, the ranking Democratic member of the committee.
While the bill is expected to pass the House, its prospects are uncertain in the Senate, where Democrats have the votes to block it.
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A study gives reassuring news for breast cancer survivors who want to have children. Those who later became pregnant were no more likely to have their cancer come back than those who did not have a baby.
It’s a big issue — the average age of moms has been rising in the United States, and more women are being diagnosed with breast cancer in their childbearing years. About 11 percent of new breast cancer cases in the U.S. are in women under 45.
The study, done in Europe, is the largest so far on women whose cancers were fueled by hormones, which rise in pregnancy and, theoretically, might spur a recurrence.
“Having a family is one of the most important achievements in a person’s life,” said study leader Dr. Matteo Lambertini of the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels, Belgium. These results show that “pregnancy after breast cancer can be considered safe.”
The research involved more than 1,200 breast cancer survivors. More than half had tumors whose growth was fueled by estrogen. After treatment, 333 became pregnant, about two and a half years after their cancer diagnosis, on average. Researchers compared them to 874 other survivors, matched for tumor type and other things, who did not.
More than 12 years after conception, recurrence rates were similar in both groups. Abortion had no impact on the rates either.
There was information on breast-feeding for 64 of the moms, with 25 reporting doing so successfully, suggesting it’s possible for some women even after breast surgery.
The results show “fairly convincingly” that women don’t have to worry, said Dr. Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer for the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The group featured the study at its annual conference that ended Tuesday in Chicago.
A big study under way in the U.S. and other countries is taking this research one step further, testing whether it’s safe for breast cancer survivors who want to get pregnant to temporarily suspend taking the hormone-blocking drugs like tamoxifen usually recommended for five years after initial treatment.
If they wait until all five years are past, they might be too old to have a baby, said Dr. Ann Partridge, who specializes in treating young women with breast cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She is helping enroll patients in the study, called POSITIVE.
Participants must have used the hormone blockers for at least 18 months before stopping, and can suspend treatment for up to two years to enable pregnancy, delivery and breast-feeding.
Sarah Murray of Bridgeport, Connecticut, is the first U.S. woman in the study to have had a baby. She was 29 and planning her wedding when her breast cancer was found in 2013.
“We had just set the date when I got diagnosed, the same week. So obviously, children was on our minds,” she said.
Worries about triggering a recurrence if she got pregnant “did weigh on me quite a bit,” she said, but “I didn’t want the fear to have power over a decision that would bring so much joy.”
Her son, Owen, was born in December.
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Drinking even moderate amounts of alcohol is linked to changes in brain structure and an increased risk of worsening brain function, scientists said Tuesday.
In a 30-year study that looked at the brains of 550 middle-aged heavy drinkers, moderate drinkers and teetotalers, the researchers found people who drank more alcohol had a greater risk of hippocampal atrophy — a form of brain damage that affects memory and spatial navigation.
People who drank more than 30 units a week on average had the highest risk, but even those who drank moderately — between 14 and 21 units a week — were far more likely than abstainers to have hippocampal atrophy, the scientists said.
“And we found no support for a protective effect of light consumption on brain structure,” they added.
The research team — from the University of Oxford and University College London — said their results supported a recent lowering of drinking limit guidelines in Britain, but posed questions about limits recommended in the United States.
U.S. guidelines suggest that up to 24.5 units of alcohol a week is safe for men, but the study found increased risk of brain structure changes at just 14 to 21 units a week.
A unit is defined as 10 milliliters (ml) of pure alcohol. There are roughly two in a large beer, nine in a bottle of wine and one in a 25 ml spirit shot.
Harder to justify
Killian Welch, a Royal Edinburgh Hospital neuropsychiatrist who was not directly involved in the study, said the results, published in the BMJ British Medical Journal, underlined “the argument that drinking habits many regard as normal have adverse consequences for health.”
“We all use rationalizations to justify persistence with behaviors not in our long-term interest. With [these results], justification of ‘moderate’ drinking on the grounds of brain health becomes a little harder,” he said.
The study analyzed data on weekly alcohol intake and cognitive performance measured repeatedly over 30 years between 1985 and 2015 for 550 healthy men and women with an average age of 43 at the start of the study. Brain function tests were carried out at regular intervals, and at the end of the study participants were given an MRI brain scan.
After adjusting for several important potential confounders such as gender, education, social class, physical and social activity, smoking, stroke risk and medical history, the scientists found that higher alcohol consumption was associated with increased risk of brain function decline.
Drinking more was also linked to poorer “white matter integrity” — a factor they described as critical when it comes to cognitive functioning.
The researchers noted that with an observational study like this, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect.
They added, however, that the findings could have important public health implications for a large sector of the population.
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The World Health Organization published a new classification of antibiotics Tuesday that aims to fight drug resistance, with penicillin-type drugs recommended as the first line of defense and others for use only when absolutely necessary.
The new “essential medicines list” includes 39 antibiotics for 21 common syndromes, categorized into three groups: “Access,” “Watch” and “Reserve.”
Drugs on the “Access” list have lower resistance potential and include the widely used amoxicillin.
The “Watch” list includes ciprofloxacin, which is commonly prescribed for cystitis and strep throat but “not that effective,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, told reporters.
Its use should be “dramatically reduced,” the WHO said.
“We think that the political will is there, but this needs to be followed by strong policies,” Kieny said.
The “Reserve” category antibiotics such as colistin should be seen as a last resort. That prompts questions about how producers of such antibiotics could make money, said Suzanne Hill, WHO’s director of essential medicines and health products.
‘Keep it in reserve’
“What we need to do is stop paying for antibiotics based on how many times they are prescribed, to discourage use. We don’t want colistin used very frequently. In fact, we don’t want it used at all,” Hill said. “What we need to do as a global community is work out how we pay the company not to market colistin and not to promote it and to keep it in reserve.”
The WHO classification takes into account the use of antibiotics for animal health use, and was developed together with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health.
Other changes to the list included the addition of two oral cancer treatments, a new pill for hepatitis C that combines two medicines, a more effective treatment for HIV, and new pediatric formulations of medicines for tuberculosis.
But the WHO also said Roche’s well-known flu drug oseltamivir, marketed as Tamiflu, may be removed from the list unless new information supports its use in seasonal and pandemic influenza outbreaks.
“There is an updated data set compared to when the committee evaluated this product last, and what that suggests is that the size of the effect of oseltamivir in the context of pandemic influenza is less than previously thought,” Hill said.
But oseltamivir was the only listed antiviral, and was still useful for pregnant women and patients with complications, so the drug should be restricted to the most critical patients, she added.
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The U.S. and Mexican governments reached a new agreement to significantly shift their sugar trade mix, but U.S. sugar producers have failed to endorse the deal, leaving question marks over whether it could still sour broader trade relations.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the “agreement in principle” with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo calls for Mexico to reduce the share of refined sugar in its exports to the United States, while increasing the share of raw sugar.
He said Mexico met nearly every request by the U.S. sugar industry to fix problems with a 2014 sugar trade agreement.
“Unfortunately, despite all of these gains, the U.S. sugar industry has said it is unable to support the agreement in its present form,” Ross said without elaborating on their objections.
He added that the agreement would go through a final drafting stage in which he hoped that the U.S. producers could come on board with it.
Asked how long this would take, Ross said, “It should be days, not weeks or months.”
The deal cut by Ross and Guajardo leaves Mexico’s overall access to the U.S. sugar market unchanged but refined sugar must fall to 30 percent of overall imports from Mexico from a previous limit 53 percent.
It also lifts the U.S. price paid for Mexican raw sugar to 23 cents per pound from 22.25 cents, while, the price for refined sugar will rise to 28 cents per pound from 26 cents.
These prices exclude shipping and packaging costs, the Commerce Department said in a summary.
An agreement was expected to help avoid potential retaliation from Mexico on imports of U.S. high-fructose corn syrup, a trade battle that would heighten U.S.-Mexico tensions as both countries along with Canada prepare to begin renegotiating the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement in August.
Ross on Monday extended the deadline for the negotiations by 24 hours to complete what he called “final technical consultations” for a deal.
Sources on both sides of the border said on Monday that the U.S. sugar industry had added new demands outside of the terms agreed on earlier in the day by the two governments.
U.S. refiners have complained that high-quality Mexican raw sugar was going straight to sugar consumers, rather than passing through U.S. refineries.
The deal would mark the culmination of a years-long dispute between the countries over sugar, after U.S. groups three years ago asked the government for protection from dumping of subsidized imports from Mexico.
In 2014, the U.S. government slapped large duties on Mexican sugar but hammered out a deal with Mexico that suspended those levies. Factions of the U.S. industry have said that the deal has failed to eliminate harm from Mexican imports.
The U.S. industry involved in the dispute include a coalition of cane and beet farming groups as well as ASR Group, the maker of Domino Sugar that is owned by the politically connected Fanjul family.
ASR and fellow cane refiner Imperial Sugar, owned by commodities firm Louis Dreyfus Company BV, have said they are being starved of raw supplies under the current deal.
They have asked the U.S. government to terminate the pact.
The latest talks began in March, two months after U.S. President Donald Trump took office vowing a tougher line on trade to protect U.S. industry and jobs.
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More international visitors came to the U.S. than expected in April 2017, according to a new report released Tuesday in Washington.
The U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index shows that international travel to the U.S. grew by about 4 percent in April, compared with data for April 2016.
The strong showing contradicted fears that tourism from abroad would slow in reaction to President Donald Trump’s proposed travel bans, which have been blocked by court challenges.
The Trump administration’s first ban on travel from a handful of mostly Muslim countries was issued Jan. 27. The Travel Association said any fallout from the travel bans would have begun to show up in April travel data.
“Are we surprised by this data? The honest answer is yes,” U.S. Travel Association CEO Roger Dow said in a statement. “There have been many claims that the administration’s actions on travel have tarnished America’s brand abroad, but we’re seeing hard economic evidence of the U.S. travel sector’s remarkable resilience.”
The U.S. Travel Association statistics also suggest that a slowdown in international arrivals that began in the spring of 2016 may be moderating.
Data from the U.S. Commerce Department has been showing a decline in international arrivals over the second and third quarters of last year. Those statistics take months to compile and will not reflect 2017 arrivals until next year. The government data is also more comprehensive, including, for example, border crossings by car from Canada and Mexico, which the U.S. Travel Association data does not include.
It’s also not unusual for travel spending and arrivals numbers to fluctuate month to month due to seasonal tourism and other economic factors.
The Travel Trends Index is compiled in partnership with Oxford Economics, using multiple sources including hotel and airline data.
The U.S. Travel Association is a national nonprofit organization representing the travel industry, dedicated to increasing travel within and to the U.S.
A large team of international researchers has found 30 percent of HIV positive individuals in nearly a dozen countries delay starting life-saving drugs.
A study spearheaded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the prevalence of HIV in Haiti, Vietnam, Nigeria, Namibia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
Investigators reviewed more than 694,000 treatment records from 2004 to 2015, from nearly 800 clinical facilities, focusing on patients age 15 and older.
HIV expert Andrew Auld, Malawi Country Director at the CDC, is lead author of the study. He said in eight of the countries, the percentage of people receiving early treatment increased, in Haiti, Mozambique and Namibia by 40 percent or more during the time period.
But Auld said treatment is still not reaching a significant portion of HIV positive people.
“So some of the key things that still need to be done in these countries to further reduce the prevalence of advanced disease and HIV treatment initiation are to scale up testing strategies and facilitate HIV diagnosis at earlier disease stages, and also treatment policies that mean that patients once they are diagnosed are eligible to start HIV treatment the same day,” he said.
HIV infects and destroys the immune system’s CD-4 T-cells, so the body gradually loses its ability to fight off infections, eventually with lethal consequences in untreated individuals.
Ambitious target
UNAIDS has set a 90-90-90 target in dealing with the HIV epidemic.
By 2020, it’s hoped that 90 percent of all people with HIV will know their status, 90 percent will receive antiretroviral therapy and 90 percent of those receiving treatment will have viral suppression.
Not only does immediate antiretroviral treatment mean avoiding life-threatening complications, Auld said it reduces the risk of transmission.
Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016, found treatment reduces the risk of spreading HIV to a sexual partner by up to 96 percent. The risk of vertical transmission, from pregnant women to their newborn babies, is also reduced if the mother is treated with antiretroviral drugs.
Despite advances in treatment and care of people infected with the AIDS virus, the NEJM article noted that there were more than two million HIV infections reported worldwide in 2014.
Auld said the main reason people wait until they are very sick to go for treatment is they are unaware that quick action increases their chances of survival.
Men with more advanced cases, according to Auld, point to work demands that keep them from seeking treatment earlier in the course of the disease. For women, childcare and family obligations are often cited. Among infected children, Auld said the problem is access to testing and treatment.
“HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence,” he stressed. “Excellent HIV treatment is available and people can live long, healthy, productive lives if they adhere to the HIV treatment. And it will increase demand for both testing and treatment services.”
The study by Auld and colleagues is published in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly.
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A Chinese company has unveiled a driverless bus-train hybrid that uses white lines painted on the road to navigate.
The company, CRRC, called the electric vehicle a “smart bus.”
The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit is made up of three cars, is 30 meters long and is capable of carrying about 500 passengers. It can reportedly reach speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour and can travel 25 kilometers on one 10-minute charge.
It uses sensors to stay on the white line.
The smart bus is much cheaper than building a rail track. This makes it ideal for cities that have growing demand for public transit, but not enough money to build subways.
According to state media, Xinhua, it costs $102 million to build a kilometer of subway and only $2 million for the ART.
The first line will be a 6.5 kilometer route expected to start running in 2018 in Zhuzhou.
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South Africa’s economy – one of Africa’s biggest – is in recession.
A 0.7 percent decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year followed a 0.3 percent contraction in the last quarter of 2016, meeting the definition of a recession as two or more quarters of negative growth, the South African government said Tuesday.
The country’s economy was already struggling with official unemployment of 27.7 percent, as well as financial fallout from scandals surrounding President Jacob Zuma.
This year, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s lowered South Africa’s credit rating to below investment grade after Zuma fired Pravin Gordhan, a finance minister seen by many South Africans as a bulwark against alleged corruption at top levels of government. Calls for Zuma to resign have increased within the ruling African National Congress party, fueling uncertainty about the country’s leadership.
Citing leaked emails, South African media have reported on the alleged influence of the Gupta family, Indian immigrant businessmen with close ties to Zuma who have been accused of trying to manipulate the government for financial gain.
“It is a toxic combination of policy uncertainty and grand corruption which has led us to this point,” Mmusi Maimane, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance party, said after the recession was announced.
Trade fell by 5.9 percent and manufacturing declined by 3.7 percent in the first quarter of 2017, said Statistics South Africa, a government agency. The sector comprising finance, transport, trade, government and personal services logged its first quarter of decline since 2009, when South Africa was swept up in the global financial crisis, it said.
Agriculture posted growth in a possible sign of recovery from a harsh drought, and mining grew partly because of a production increase in gold and platinum, according to the agency.
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The number of job openings advertised in the United States hit a record high of six million in April.
Tuesday’s report from Labor Department said the pace of hiring went down at the same time.
Analysts say the apparent contradiction may show that employers are having difficulty finding workers with the right skills.
Data about job openings and the recently reported U.S. unemployment rate (4.3 percent), and new information on inflation will be part of the discussion next week when leaders of the U.S. central bank gather to set interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s goal is to reach full employment and keep prices stable.
The Fed is widely-expected to raise interest rates slightly to fend off inflation without stalling economic growth.
The tiny nation of Lesotho is one of the few countries in the world, including the United States, and one of just two in Africa, without mandated paid leave for new mothers. International watchdogs and activists say maternity leave is often poorly enforced, especially since so many African women work in the informal sector.
When Makhopotsohad Letsie had her youngest child, she took a three-month break from her job as a riveter to care for her baby boy.
Her employer, a large factory in Lesotho’s capital, paid her during that time. She got a grand total of just more than $23.
It was not enough to meet her needs, she says, but she had no choice.
That amount was not even a quarter of her monthly salary. But she was grateful, she says, because she lives in one of the few countries that does not mandate maternity benefits.
Parliament Member and All Basotho Congress spokesman Moeketsi Majoro says paid leave is not a kindness, it is a necessity. He says his party wants to implement a three-month maternity leave policy.
“We want everybody to participate, and participate fully in the economy and without the insecurity or the difficult choices of having to raise the future of Lesotho and having to go to work for a minimum wage,” said Majoro. “It is, in fact, an empowerment process that we need to put in place, as a policy.”
The International Labor Organization recommends maternity leave of at least 18 weeks. But in a survey, the organization found no African government offers that to all mothers, South Africa leads with its law mandating 17 weeks.
Other African nations are trying to expand their policies. Rwanda last year expanded benefits to 12 weeks. Nigeria’s government recently expanded leave for civil servants to six paid months, but the private sector is only required to give three months.
In Kenya, employers have strongly objected to a recent proposal to offer at least six months leave, the last three unpaid and voluntary. They say they can not afford such a plan.
The ILO estimates a universal maternity cash benefit would cost low- and lower-middle income countries less than 0.5 percent of their economy. But the organization acknowledges, cash-strapped countries, like Lesotho, struggle in the face of more urgent needs.
Professor Anita Bosch, who researches gender and workplace issues at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, says societies cannot afford to deny newborns the bonding and formative experiences that will set them up for life.
But she says few women in Africa benefit from maternity leave, because these laws only apply to the formal sector. The ILO estimates worldwide less than a third of women hold formal employment.
“In the informal sector, people are so desperate for work, remember our unemployment levels are at extreme levels. People are just desperate to have a job and to hang on to a job. And so for that, they will do whatever, and that makes them highly exploitable,” said Bosch.
In most African nations, the law puts the burden on employers to pay maternity benefits. For mothers without jobs, there is often little help from the state.
Letsie says that worries her. Her 18-year-old daughter just married and like a quarter of Lesotho’s population can not find a job. Letsie is the breadwinner for her extended family and says she desperately needs help. She wonders what they will do when her first grandchild comes along?
Poland and Ukraine said Tuesday they are working toward developing a regional gas hub that would end Central and Eastern Europe’s dependence on Russian supplies and keep prices in line with European standards.
The region still relies to some extent on Russian natural gas and has been exposed to political pressure from Moscow, which has at times in the past limited supply volumes or hiked gas prices. Governments in the region have been reducing their imports of gas from Russia and seeking other sources. They have also been trying to become more energy-efficient, a task Ukraine still needs to fully undertake.
Poland is increasingly importing gas from other regions. Its new liquefied natural gas port has received deliveries by sea from Qatar and is expecting a delivery from the United States this week. Poland is also proceeding with a project to bring in North Sea gas.
Poland is sending some of resources on to Ukraine, after the country cut imports from Russia in 2015.
Government officials participating in a Poland-Ukraine Gas Conference on Tuesday said the planned hub should be in place by 2022 on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
“We now have enough infrastructure to move onwards with the hub,” said Serhiy Makohon, deputy head of Ukraine’s oil and gas company, Ukrtrans’haz.
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Most Americans believe the United States should take “aggressive action” to fight climate change, but few see it as a priority issue when compared with the economy or security, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.
The June 2-4 opinion poll suggests American voters may not penalize President Donald Trump too harshly for walking away from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, even if they would have preferred he keep the country in the deal.
The poll found 68 percent of Americans want the United States to lead global efforts to slow climate change, and 72 percent agree “that given the amount of greenhouse gases that it produces, the United States should take aggressive action to slow global warming.”
Even so, Americans rank the environment near the bottom of their list of priorities for the country. Only about 4 percent of Americans believe that the “environment” is a bigger issue than health care, the economy, terrorism, immigration, education, crime and morality, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.
“I just kind of feel helpless about it,” Dana Anderson, 54, of Mesa, Arizona, said about climate change. “If something happens to the environment, it is what it is, right?”
Anderson, who has multiple sclerosis, said that whatever Trump says about health care will matter to her much more than his thoughts on global temperatures.
The poll was conducted after Trump announced on Thursday that the United States would abandon the landmark agreement with 195 countries to slash carbon emissions and curb global warming.
The Republican president, who had previously called climate change a “hoax” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, said he thought the pact would harm the U.S. economy without providing a tangible benefit.
The decision drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and business chiefs, many of them worried a U.S. exit would put the planet at risk and leave the United States behind in a global shift away from fossil fuels.
The poll found the U.S. public split along party lines over the move to withdraw from the global climate pact, with most Republicans supporting it and most Democrats opposing it.
Overall, 38 percent agreed with Trump’s decision, 49 percent disagreed and 13 percent were undecided.
The poll also showed 50 percent of Americans believe global temperatures will rise faster as a result of the U.S. withdrawal from the climate deal, and 64 percent think U.S. relations with other countries will suffer.
The public was split over the decision’s economic impact, too, with 41 percent saying it will strengthen the economy and 44 percent saying it will not.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,398 Americans, including 459 Republicans and 635 Democrats. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points for the entire group and 5 percentage points for the Republicans and Democrats.
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The U.S. military’s biggest base on American soil has begun drawing nearly half of its power from renewable energy, days after President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a global agreement to fight climate change.
Fort Hood, in Texas, has shifted away from fossil fuels to wind- and solar-generated energy in order to shield the base from its dependence on outside sources, a spokesman said.
“We need to be autonomous. If the unfortunate thing happened and we were under attack or someone attacked our power grid, you’d certainly want Fort Hood to be able to respond,” Chris Haug, a spokesman for Fort Hood, said in a phone interview.
The project brings the Army base, home to 36,500 active-duty personnel and some 6,000 buildings, in line with the Department of Defense’s decade-long effort to convert its fossil fuel-hungry operations to renewable power.
It comes in the wake of Trump’s decision last week to withdraw the United States from a landmark global agreement to fight climate change, the Paris accord, a move that drew condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.
The project is already fully operational. Its 63,000 solar panels, located on the base’s grounds, and 21 off-base wind turbines provide a total of some 65 megawatts of power, according to an Army statement.
Previously, some 77 percent of base’s energy was generated by fossil fuels, a 2015 draft report assessing the renewable energy plan shows.
Burning fossil fuel generates greenhouse gases that are blamed by scientists for warming the planet.
The Paris accord aims to reduce such emissions, including by encouraging a shift to clean energy.
Fort Hood’s new solar field and wind farm will result in savings of more than $100 million over some 30 years, the Army said.
Over the last decade, the U.S. military and intelligence officials have developed a broad agreement about the security threats that climate change presents, in part by threatening to cause natural disasters in densely populated coastal areas, damage American military bases worldwide and open up new natural resources to global competition.
The number of military renewable energy projects nearly tripled to 1,390 between 2011 and 2015, a Reuters analysis of Department of Defense data previously showed.
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), a Department of Defense agency assisting the Army in its renewable-energy shift, is also working with the U.S. Air Force on long-term renewable energy projects, a DLA spokeswoman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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A massive and deep circular pit on Mars has NASA officials stumped.
The image of the hole on the Martian surface was taken by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) as it scanned the planet’s south pole region.
The hole, which is surrounded by a “Swiss cheese terrain” of frozen carbon dioxide, is likely hundreds of meters across and quite deep.
The image also captures a glimmer of light coming from the bottom of the hole, likely a reflection of the Sun off the ice.
According to Science Alert, there are several possible ways the hole formed, including a meteorite impact, collapsing lava tubes, floods or some kind of volcanic activity.
The “Swiss cheese terrain” is believed to be caused by the sublimation, going directly from solid to gas, of the frozen carbon dioxide.
The image was snapped with the MRO’s “High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment,” which allows NASA to see objects on the Martian surface that are larger than one meter from between 200 and 400 kilometers above the Red Planet.
MRO has been circling Mars since 2006 and has captured many interesting images, including dust devils and moving sand dunes.
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Qatar’s currency came under pressure on Tuesday as Gulf Arab commercial banks started holding off on business with Qatari banks because of a diplomatic rift in the region.
Banking sources said some banks from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain delayed letters of credit and other deals with Qatari banks after their governments cut diplomatic ties and transport links with Doha on Monday, accusing Qatar of backing terrorism.
Saudi Arabia’s central bank advised banks in the kingdom not to trade with Qatari banks in Qatari riyals, the sources told Reuters. The central bank did not respond to a request for comment.
Qatar has dismissed the terrorism charge and welcomed a Kuwaiti mediation effort. Doha, the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas exporter, says it has enough reserves to support its banks and its riyal currency, which is pegged to the dollar.
Qatari banks have been borrowing abroad to fund their activities. Their foreign liabilities ballooned to 451 billion riyals ($124 billion) in March from 310 billion riyals at the end of 2015, central bank data shows.
So any extended disruption to their ties with foreign banks could potentially threaten a funding crunch for some Qatari banks. Banks from the UAE, Europe and elsewhere have been lending to Qatari institutions.
Gulf banking sources, who declined to be named because of political sensitivities, said Saudi Arabian, UAE and Bahraini banks were postponing deals until they received guidance from their central banks on how to handle Qatar.
“We will not take action without central bank guidance, but it is wise to evaluate what you give to Qatari clients and hold off until there is further clarity,” said a UAE banker, adding that trade finance had stalled for the time being.
The sources said the UAE and Bahraini central banks had asked banks under their supervision to report their exposure to Qatari banks. The UAE and Bahraini central banks did not reply to requests for comment.
Reserves
With an estimated $335 billion of assets in its sovereign wealth fund and its gas exports earning billions of dollars every month, Qatar has enough financial power to protect its banks.
“We are watching the financial sector very closely. If the market needs liquidity, the central bank will definitely provide liquidity,” a Qatari central bank official told Reuters.
Nevertheless, losing some of their foreign business links could be uncomfortable for Qatari banks because they have been expanding their loans faster than other banks in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. To fund this, they have been seeking loans and deposits from the rest of the GCC.
Among large banks, Doha Bank and Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) are the most exposed to GCC deposits, with QIB obtaining a quarter of its deposits from the GCC, said Olivier Panis, analyst at Moody’s Investors Service.
“We need to look into the maturity of those deposits but if they’re short-term deposits, this could expose the banks rapidly to reduced confidence from GCC institutions,” he said.
Doha Bank and QIB did not respond to requests for comment.
Because of such worries, the Qatari riyal fell in the spot market on Tuesday to 3.6470 against the U.S. dollar, its lowest level since June 2016, although it later rebounded to 3.6405, almost equal to its official peg of 3.64.
It also fell slightly in the one-year forwards market, where traders bet on rates 12 months from now.
The riyal’s drop “is based on speculation,” the Qatari central bank official said, adding Doha had a “huge cushion” of foreign currency to support the riyal if necessary.
A commercial banker in fellow GCC state Kuwait, which did not sever diplomatic ties with Qatar, said on Tuesday that business with Qatari institutions was continuing as normal.
But there were signs that Qatar’s financial ties might be damaged well beyond the Gulf. Some Sri Lankan banks stopped buying Qatari riyals, saying counterpart banks in Singapore had advised them not to accept the currency.
In Egypt, which also cut diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar, some banks resumed dealing in Qatari riyals after halting trade on Monday, but others appeared to be continuing to limit transactions with Doha.
Banks reducing their business with Qatar could lose out financially, but the damage looks likely to be relatively minor.
Panis at Moody’s estimated under 2 percent of Saudi banking sector assets were related to Qatar and the figure was around 5 percent for Bahrain, while the UAE’s exposure was also small.
Cities are pushing back on the possibility of losing millions of dollars in U.S. anti-terrorism grants under President Donald Trump’s spending plan — the third straight White House that has moved to cut the funding.
The proposed budget would cut cash for the program from $605 million to nearly $449 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and require cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas to pay 25 percent of the grants.
The administration says it is proposing the cost-share system, similar to other grant programs, to “share accountability” with states and cities.
But lawmakers and local officials argue that reducing funding for the Urban Area Security Initiative would undercut efforts to maintain safe communities. Cities have spent the money on command centers, active-shooter training and personnel to patrol airports, transit hubs and waterways.
Big cities have been down this road before, with funding fluctuating over the years.
President George W. Bush created the grant program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but scaled it back in his second term. President Barack Obama’s proposed 2017 budget suggested slashing the funding from $600 million to $330 million.
In each instance, local politicians reacted with outrage and questioned the wisdom of taking away money in the fight against terrorism. This year, Congress ignored Obama’s guidance and increased funding by $5 million.
But some cities that have received grants in previous years have not spent all the money, another reason the White House says the changes are needed.
The proposed cuts came a day after the deadly Manchester, England, concert bombing and the same day authorities in Las Vegas tried to ease concerns about the city being targeted in a recent Islamic State propaganda video. It encouraged knife and vehicle attacks and featured images of Sin City, Times Square in New York and banks in Washington, D.C.
Law enforcement officials in Orlando, Florida, told a congressional committee weeks after a nightclub became the site of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history that central Florida had missed out on needed training and opportunities to buy equipment because it had not made the cut to receive funding.
Grants are awarded to the highest-ranked urban areas on a list determined by risk of terrorist threats based on past plots or a known presence; whether its infrastructure is a valuable target; and the consequence of an attack on the population, economy or national security.
Last year, the 29 highest-ranked metro areas that applied for a grant received funding.
The Las Vegas area has spent the money on training and equipment for bomb and hazardous-material squads along with computer software and hardware at a law enforcement command center.
Las Vegas received almost $3 million in fiscal year 2016. Irene Navis, planning coordinator and assistant emergency manager in Nevada’s Clark County, said the area would be able to meet the proposed 25 percent cost-share requirement.
“Fortunately, not one agency is going to get the whole amount; it’s split up,” Navis said. “So, for one agency, it might be that they get $25,000 for equipment and the match is really small. Agencies that get a large amount of money, that’s something that they would have to consider. But, in general, in our urban area, it would not be a problem.”
U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat whose district includes the Las Vegas Strip, called the funding change a “pay-to-play scheme.”
“It is unimaginable that the administration believes southern Nevada’s security will be improved by cutting vital programs that protect residents and travelers in our community,” she said.
But the government questions why state and local governments aren’t spending all the money if it’s so important.
“The federal government cannot afford to over-invest in programs that state and local partners are slow to utilize when there are other pressing needs,” according to a written justification from the Trump administration.
The office of Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who has sparred with Obama and Trump on the grants, says that because of government procurement rules, it can take time for cities and states to spend the money. But he says that does not mean they have not allocated the money or don’t need it.
New York City received the largest grant last year at more than $178 million, followed by Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
“America’s cities are critical partners in the fight against terrorism — and taking away this funding would undermine the national priority to secure the homeland,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, said in a statement.
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A Chinese city is using big data provided by a phone company to track the movement of its migrant worker population, expanding the many ways China is using big data to not just enhance performance but also track the daily lives of its citizens.
“When you buy a mobile phone SIM card, you need to register your identity information,” said an officer of China Mobile designated at the company’s booth during the recent Big Data Expo in southwest China’s Guiyang city. He was explaining how the mobile phone company is assisting Guiyang police about the movement of migrants in the city on a real-time basis.
“So, we can obtain information about the people in a given area and details like whether they are men or women, their age, and where they come from,” he said.
Very suddenly, big data is set to take up many of the responsibilities of the Communist Party’s feedback mechanism. It is also expected to act as feedstock for the anti-corruption campaign, which has been using information about spending on wines and luxury buying for the purpose of investigations.
Social profiling
China has already introduced a system data-driven social credit rating system in 40 towns and cities, which will be expanded to the entire country by 2020.
Information about a person buying expensive wine, foreign luxury goods or an air ticket would be fed into a giant system which will analyze blocks of data to keep the government informed about the situation on the ground.
The tracking of people posting critical comments in social media is already going on and social media data will also be fed into the system, which goes far beyond financial credit ratings practiced in developed countries. Here, the system isn’t focused entirely on debts and earnings, but on economic and social behaviors with an intention to allocate rewards and punishments.
China’s Internet-based companies are eagerly joining the government’s grand experiment. Mobike, a bike hiring company is giving out award points for bicycle users to voluntarily inspect parked bikes and inform the company about the misbehavior of other bikers.
A big data based information system might help improve the working of the police force in some respects. Officials in the government’s education and health departments said big data is being introduced as a tool improve delivery systems.
Risks for many
But it can also help authorities in tracking the movement of political dissidents, journalists, NGO workers, foreign companies and individuals, analysts said.
“For international companies operating in China, the Social Credit System poses significant challenges,” Mirjam Meissner, an expert with Mercator Institute of China Studies in Berlin, said. “They will probably be fully integrated into the system’s mechanisms and could see their freedom of decision-making in China significantly constrained,” she said.
At the same time, the rating system could create a more level playing field, since both domestic and international companies would be subject to the same rating mechanisms, Meissner said.
Kweichow Moutai Group, which produces high-end wines, has introduced a mobile phone app and encourages buyers to make online purchases.
“We monitor online sales to analyze the proportion of our potential users and our actual users. So, we can allocate our promotion efforts in different regions based on the information,” an official posted at the company’s booth at the Guiyang Big Data Expo said.
“The data is only for decision-making support to our company, and our data is not being made public,” he said.
However, officials from several companies confirmed that they routinely share data with government departments. For instance, the government’s tourism department collects data from online ticket selling companies and airlines to determine the flow of Chinese tourists to specific countries, and judge which destination is attracting high-spenders.
This information is seen as a major asset for the government, which is anxious about the movement of money and talent out of China. In addition, China is widely believed to use tourism as a political lever in dealing with foreign governments.
For instance, it is believed to have actively discouraged the movement of Chinese tourists to South Korea during the recent controversy over the installation of the U.S.-made THAAD anti-missile system. China and South Korea are now discussing the resumption of tourist flows as part of a new effort to mend forces.
To celebrate the June 5 World Environment Day, diplomats from more than a dozen foreign embassies and international organizations Monday joined the U.S. State Department to plant underwater seagrass in the Potomac River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.
Diplomats told VOA their participation in “green diplomacy” is to help raise awareness of the challenges of clean water here and at home.
Underwater grasses growing in shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay add oxygen to the water, provide wildlife with food and habitat, absorb nutrient pollution, trap sediment and reduce erosion, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Representatives from China, Costa Rica, Finland, Germany, Indonesia, Iraq, Malta, Pakistan, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the European Union and the World Bank, have been growing seagrasses in their chanceries or ambassadors’ residences since January 2017.
After six months of grow-out, diplomats gathered at the Mason Neck State Park in Lorton, VA to plant their grasses to bolster grass populations and help restore the Chesapeake Bay.
Nursing the grasses is a challenge.
“My gosh, it is very difficult,” Anggarini Sesotyoningtyas from Embassy of Indonesia’s Economic Affairs office told VOA.
“It’s not just like regular plant ‘cause I think it really needs a careful maintenance and care,” said Sesotyoningtyas, adding that the first few days were making sure grass-growing kits were set up correctly, then checking constantly that the seeds were growing.
By working with the CBF’s “Grasses for the Masses” program, diplomats are demonstrating the commitment to environmental protection.
“Underwater grasses are great to protect the natural ecosystem. They offer a lot of benefits for the water. One of the neat things about grasses is they provide shade for some of the river critters or the bay critters. They also provide oxygen to the water, bring in more oxygen, they help trap pollution,“ said Rebecca LePrell, Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Virginia executive director.
Addressing the challenge of clean water is part of the State Department’s green diplomacy initiative.
“It’s certainly something that many other countries, most other countries, struggle with as well. And so it’s something that we share in common and can work around a simple product that can be taken to other countries to use. Just simple six months of growing grasses makes a huge benefit to waterways,“ the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions director Cliff Seagroves told VOA.
Some diplomats say the U.S. decision to leave the Paris agreement will affect their partnerships. Instead of country-to-country relationships, they will instead focus on cooperation with local governments and communities.
“My job here at the embassy is environmental cooperation with the United States.That might take a different form going forward. We might focus more on state local actors, on the business community who have been very loud in their opposition to the pulling out with the Paris agreement and want to continue to fight climate change,” said Anton Hufnagl from the Germany Embassy.
By helping restore seagrass in the Chesapeake Bay, the State Department said it aims to raise awareness of the challenge of clean water, both in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and around the world.
It also is an opportunity for the U.S. to work with the foreign diplomatic community to address an environmental challenge that people face globally.
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Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg submitted a statement to the United Nations on Monday that over 1,000 U.S. governors, mayors, businesses, universities and others will continue to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement abandoned by President Donald Trump last week.
Bloomberg, who is the U.N. Secretary-General’s special envoy for Cities and Climate Change, submitted the “We Are Still In” declaration to U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa.
He also launched a process to work with local governments and non-state entities to formally quantify the combined – and overlapping – emissions reduction pledges, which will be known as “America’s Pledge,” and submit the report to the United Nations.
“Today, on behalf of an unprecedented collection of U.S. cities, states, businesses and other organizations, I am communicating to the United Nations and the global community that American society remains committed to achieving the emission reductions we pledged to make in Paris in 2015,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
Signatories to the new initiative include 13 Democratic and Republican governors, 19 state attorneys general, over 200 mayors, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and small businesses.
Trump on Thursday pulled the United States from the landmark 2015 agreement designed to fight climate change, fulfilling a major campaign pledge despite entreaties from U.S. allies and corporate leaders.
Although the formal process to withdraw from the Paris agreement takes four years, Trump said the United States will not honor the pledge the Obama administration submitted, known as the nationally determined contribution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025.
To fill the void, “America’s Pledge” will be submitted to the UNFCCC as a “Societal NDC.”
“The UNFCCC welcomes the determination and commitment from such a wealth and array of cities, states, businesses and other groups in the United States to fast forward climate action and emissions reductions in support of the Paris Climate Change Agreement,” said Espinosa.
The coalition will align a number of different efforts to how U.S. support for the Paris agreement, including a commitment of over 260 corporations including Kellogg, Pepsi Co. and Walmart to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the latest science.
Thirteen governors have also pledged to continue to honor the Paris pledges.
“It will be up to the American people to step forward-and in Virginia we are doing just that,” said Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
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The remote South Pacific island of Henderson hit the headlines recently not for its pristine natural beauty, but for the 38 million tons of accumulated plastic and other debris that ocean currents had landed on its shores.
The uninhabited island is a UNESCO heritage site and one of the world’s biggest marine reserves. It is also a victim of the pollution that is slowly killing our oceans.
“Conserving our oceans and using them sustainably is preserving life itself,” declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the opening Monday of a week-long Ocean Conference at the United Nations.
That is not an understatement. The ocean provides nearly half of the oxygen produced on Earth and its marine bounty feeds billions.
Some 4,000 leaders from the worlds of politics, science, academia, business and civil society have gathered for the conference, which kicked off on World Environment Day.
They hope to draw attention to the effects of pollution, plastics, climate change, over-fishing and other factors that are affecting all marine life, with potentially disastrous consequences.
WATCH: Pollution, plastics damaging the earth’s oceans
Plastics: A Top Offender
“Marine plastic debris is a slow motion catastrophe waiting to happen,” warned Indonesia’s Maritime minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
Plastics and microplastics plastic particles under 5mm in diameter are among the biggest threats to the ocean and marine life. A World Economic Forum study warns that by 2050 the oceans could contain more plastics than fish.
The ocean is overflowing with manmade items, including water bottles, plastic shopping bags, cigarette butts, and larger items from fishing nets to sunken vessels. It all presents a danger to marine life through entanglement, ingestion or leakage of harmful chemicals.
“The ultimate way to keep marine debris from becoming a threat is by preventing it from entering the ocean in the first place,” said Nancy Wallace, Director of the Marine Debris Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the United States. “Changing behaviors is a particularly important aspect of prevention,” she added.
That includes getting the public to cut back or eliminate its use of plastic shopping bags, cutlery and bottled beverages.
In the Pacific, where the ocean covers 90 percent of the region and land is only two percent, leaders are striving for cleaner seas by 2025.
Kosi Latu of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program said his group did a recent study that examined 215 species of marine life. They found 136 types had ingested plastic, and in fish, the figure was 97 percent.
“That gives you a sense of how big this problem is,” Latu said. He noted that in the Pacific the rate is about 30 percent higher than the global average of about 67 percent.
“The challenge is implementing, enforcing policies; it is enforcing legislation,” Latu said.
He said his region is also looking at innovative policies, not just banning plastics. “But looking at policies that will put the onus on those who produce the plastics, so making sure there is some way they contribute to the solution.”
Call to Action
This week, conference attendees will discuss a range of other problems confronting the oceans. On Friday, they will formally adopt a Call to Action. So far, they have more than 700 voluntary commitments to improve the health of the ocean, and they are growing.
The commitments include agreeing to implement long-term strategies to reduce the use of plastics and microplastics, as well as to develop and implement mitigation measures to help the ocean recover from other harmful impacts, such as climate change.
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A smartphone app lets citizen scientists help professional scientists track changes in the natural world as urbanization, habitat loss, invasive species and climate change shake up ecosystems worldwide.
More than 100,000 users on all seven continents are snapping pictures of plants and animals they find and uploading the images using an app called iNaturalist. Those geotagged photos are giving researchers an unprecedented amount of information about what lives where, and how that’s changing with humanity’s expanding footprint.
On a spring afternoon in Arlington, Virginia’s Barcroft Park, a half-dozen eager onlookers huddle around a plywood board on the forest floor, waiting for the big reveal. Spray-painted on the board are the words, “wildlife study.”
As one volunteer lifts the plywood board, Arlington natural resources manager Alonso Abugattas spots a pair of snakes coiled underneath.
“Northern brown, northern brown,” he calls.
Another volunteer leans in with smartphone clicking. He uploads the photos to iNaturalist, where crowdsourcing soon confirms Abugattas’ identification.
WATCH: App lets citizen scientists help professional scientists
That observation, tagged by date, time and location, is now part of a growing database of nearly 5 million species finds all over the world.
“Everyone knows that if you want to protect something, you’ve got to know what you have,” Abugattas said.
Visitors to the iNaturalist website can search an annotated Google map for what lives in their neighborhood. Or search for where others have found a particular species.
As he works to protect Arlington County’s natural spaces, Abugattas will be looking for how iNaturalist data gathered on this day-long photo safari compare with earlier surveys.
“Are some things that we had then no longer here? Are some things that we never knew we had now popping back up?” he asks. “That will give us a gauge of how good or how poorly we’re doing as far as being stewards.”
Data + excitement
The app came about as a collaboration between biologist and software developer Ken-ichi Ueda and environmental scientist Scott Loarie.
Loarie was studying methods to gather more data for wildlife conservation, while Ueda “was looking for a way to connect people to nature and find ways to use technology to get people excited about the outdoors,” Loarie said.
“That’s one of the great things about citizen science. It achieves both those goals,” he said.
And it comes at an important time.
“Species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate,” he said. “We’ve only begun to understand exactly how those ecosystems contribute to our food system, or human health, all these things that we depend on.”
There’s a popular analogy in the field: it’s like pulling rivets off the wing of an airplane while it’s in flight.
“We don’t know exactly which rivet is going to cause the wing to fall off, but it’s probably not a good idea to go around popping rivets off the plane,” Loarie said.
Butterflies, snails and mushrooms
So far, iNaturalist data has been a part of studies on monarch butterflies, bats that may carry Ebola, and more.
An iNaturalist user snapped a picture of a rare snail on an island off the coast of Vietnam.
“It’s never been collected. It’s never been photographed. It’s only been drawn. And it was drawn on one of Captain Cook’s voyages,” when the 18th-century explorer sailed around the world, Loarie said.
Back in Arlington, the group logged more than 450 species, including some rare plants and the biggest puffball mushroom anyone had seen, as big as a mid-sized dog.
“If you just open up your eyes to the natural world, you’d be amazed at what’s out there,” Abugattas said.
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