Around the world, large cities generate huge amounts of unusable food and other organic waste. While some is recycled into compost, most goes into landfills, and that is wasting a potential source of energy. A pilot project started about three years ago in New York City is adding food scraps to the existing wastewater treatment plant to be turned into biogas, and residents have embraced it with enthusiasm. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The U.S. job market exceeded expectations last month adding 209,000 new workers to the economy in July and lowering the national unemployment rate to 4.3 percent. But wages continue to underperform, as did the nation’s labor participation rate. Economists say that’s because millions of working-age Americans are choosing to remain on the sidelines, some going back to school, others staying at home to take care of their families. Why does that matter? Mil Arcega explains.
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The United States has officially informed the United Nations that it intends to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, but it left open the possibility of re-engaging if terms of the deal become more favorable.
The State Department said Friday that it would continue to participate in international climate change negotiations during the withdrawal process, which is expected to take at least three years.
It said in a statement that U.S. participation in the negotiations would “protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration.”
“The United States supports a balanced approach to climate policy that lowers emissions while promoting economic growth and ensuring energy security,” it said.
The department said President Donald Trump was “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its businesses, its workers, its people and its taxpayers.”
‘Very unfair’
Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the climate accord in June, saying the deal was “very unfair at the highest level to the American people.” He argued the deal would have cost trillions of dollars as well as hurt American businesses and jobs in the energy and manufacturing sectors.
News of the decision was greeted with strong protests from the environmental community, and the mayors of some of the largest U.S. cities vowed to remain faithful to the accord, regardless of what the Trump administration did.
The United States agreed to the 2015 climate agreement under former President Barack Obama. Under the deal, the United States pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
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The U.S. Army has ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.
An Aug. 2 Army memo posted online and verified by Reuters applies to all DJI drones and systems that use DJI components or software. It requires service members to “cease all use, uninstall all DJI applications, remove all batteries/storage media and secure equipment for follow-on direction.”
The memo says DJI drones are the most widely used by the Army among off-the-shelf equipment of that type.
DJI said in a statement that it was “surprised and disappointed” at the Army’s “unprompted restriction on DJI drones as we were not consulted during their decision.”
The privately held company said it would contact the Army to determine what it means by “cyber vulnerabilities” and was willing to work with the Pentagon to address concerns.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Oppenheimer estimated in 2016 that DJI had about 70 percent share of the global commercial and consumer drone market. Goldman analysts estimated the market, including military, to be worth more than $100 billion over the next five years.
The Army was considering issuing a statement about the policy, said Army spokesman Dov Schwartz.
The move appears to follow studies conducted by the Army Research Laboratory and the Navy that said there were risks and vulnerabilities in DJI products.
The memo cites a classified Army Research Laboratory report and a Navy memo, both from May as references for the order to cease use of DJI drones and related equipment.
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Rajeev Sakhuja has kept a hectic schedule in recent months as he makes scores of presentations in Delhi and surrounding towns about why and how to invest in equities.
The investment adviser has an attentive audience as traditional avenues of gold and real estate lose their luster and as stock markets trade at record highs. Tens of thousands of ordinary Indians are now investing more money into mutual funds.
“That old-fashioned investment, people are not interested. So where should they switch, where to invest, what to do, nobody has any clue,” said an upbeat Sakhuja, whose firm, PTIC India, is doing brisk business.
India’s stock markets have been among Asia’s top performers this year. The benchmark BSE Sensex has gained more than 16 percent since the start of the year, buoyed by optimism about the world’s fastest-growing economy. But unlike the past, when foreign investors were at the helm of a bull run, there has been a huge pickup in domestic investment.
That’s good news, say economists. The government has long fretted that most of the country’s household savings go into unproductive assets such as gold and real estate and has been trying to nudge domestic investors toward channeling more of their savings into equities, a source of corporate finance.
There is a huge market to be tapped. The total investment of Indian household savings into stocks is much smaller compared with those in many other countries.
Gaurav Mehta, portfolio manager at Ambit Investment Advisors in Mumbai, said the rising interest of domestic investors is part of a structural shift that signals a more modernizing and transparent economy.
“Till five, six years ago, physical assets were a good two-thirds of all household savings,” Mehta said. “That ratio now has swung in favor of financial assets.”
‘More formalized’ savings
The trend has been accelerated by a crackdown on the black economy. Last November, the government banned high denomination notes in a bid to flush out illegal cash.
“As savings become more formalized, then obviously you don’t need to park them in spurious places like land, real estate, et cetera,” Mehta said. “So a lot of this money is now moving into financial assets.”
And to tap that market, the mutual fund industry is reaching out to potential investors through television advertisements, social media and billboards, pitching the funds as attractive alternatives.
The sales pitch is not difficult: In the last four years, the Sensex has climbed 60 percent, whereas gold has fallen by 5 percent, real estate markets are down sharply and declining bank interest rates cannot keep pace with inflation. And the government is offering favorable tax policy for investors in mutual funds.
Most small investors are opting for mutual funds, hoping to grow their savings to beat inflation.
After hearing from friends about investment avenues in stock markets, Kumar Gautam, 31, opted for a $50 monthly plan. “Bank interest rates were coming down 4, 5, 6 percent … people told me to opt for a monthly plan. I will have tax savings and get better returns,” he said.
Some, like Bharti Gupta, 33, have been bolder and chosen to trade directly in stocks. “I studied some books, there are courses also that I joined, and there is a WhatsApp group that I have joined, which has some 150 to 200 people, so that is also quite helpful.” She said she had been able to make her investment grow quite well.
And whereas most investors lived in big cities in the past, small-town residents are also investing in equities now.
Vidya Bala, head of research at FundsIndia.com, said one-third of the firm’s customers now are from outside the country’s 15 big cities.
According to Bala, even in very remote places where there are no financial firms or mutual fund offices, people are investing online. “People who are away from the happening cities can also have access to good, regulated products as long as they are digitally aware. This is really set to take off,” Bala said.
Reassurance
Economists say the greater participation of domestic investors is also reassuring for a country that has long worried about the predominant role of foreign money in equities, because that used to play a decisive role in the movement of stock markets.
Meanwhile, ordinary, first-time investors are simply keeping their fingers crossed, hoping that stock markets will continue to do well in the long run and that their investments will be safe.
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As many as 100 elephants are being killed every day for their tusks, according to the United Nations. The United States implemented a near-total ban on the commercial trade of African elephant ivory last year, and in New York this week, conservation groups gathered to destroy merchandise that came from the illegal ivory trade. Faith Lapidus narrates this report from VOA’s Kevin Enochs.
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The World Health Organization reports it has provided anti-malaria drugs to nearly 900,000 children in areas in northeast Nigeria formerly held by Boko Haram militants.
The effort is part of a new strategy to tackle malaria, a major killer of children younger than 5 years old. The director of WHO’s Global Malaria Program, Pedro Alonso, tells VOA the agency has completed the first round of an emergency approach to stop the disease.
Alonso estimates about 10,000 lives will be saved by providing anti-malaria drugs to the same 900,000 children every month until November, when the period of high transmission will be over.
He says the drug clears the parasites that might already have invaded a child’s system and provides protection for three to four weeks.
“By repeating this operation to the same children every month over the next four or five months, which is the high transmission area,” Alonso said, “we may potentially — unfortunately, it will not be perfect and therefore we will not be able to stop all deaths — but, we should be able to have a massive impact in terms of prevention of disease and death in that specific population group, which is the highest risk group and where mortality concentrates.”
WHO estimates there are more than 8,000 cases of malaria every week, including seven deaths, among northeastern Nigeria’s population of 3.7 million people. There are an estimated 1.1 million children aged three months to five years in the region.
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The head of German automaker Volkswagen’s engineering and environment office pleaded guilty Friday in a U.S. court to charges connected to an emissions scandal involving the company.
Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges that could land him in prison for up to seven years. He will be forced to pay a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 for his role in a scheme, dubbed Dieselgate, to mislead U.S. environmental regulators.
In March, the company admitted to using software to fool regulators into believing Volkswagen cars complied with U.S. emissions standards. It was ordered to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and another $17.5 billion in civil settlements.
The government said diesel cars that Volkswagen claimed were clean were, in fact, releasing 40 times more nitrogen oxide emissions than is allowed by law.
Schmidt is the second Volkswagen employee to plead guilty to charges related to the scandal. Last year, company engineer James Liang admitted to helping design the devices used to beat emissions tests. The FBI now cites him as a cooperating witness.
Most Volkswagen employees charged in the scheme are in Germany and can’t be prosecuted by U.S. authorities. The company still faces legal issues in countries across the globe and has put aside more than $24 billion to handle costs related to the scandal.
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The U.S. economy had a net gain of 209,000 jobs in July, while the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.3 percent. That matches the lowest jobless rate in 16 years.
Friday’s Labor Department report says job gains were seen in restaurants, business services and health care. The average hourly wage rose nine cents an hour in July, to reach $26.36. That is up 65 cents over the past year, or growth at a 2.5 percent rate.
Boosting Labor Participation Rate for Women Key to Healthy Economy
The chief economist for the job search company “Indeed” says slow wage growth may reflect job gains in low-paying areas like food service. Jed Kolko also says the job gains are well above what is needed to keep up with growth in the workforce.
While Friday’s newest government unemployment report shows strong job growth and rising wages, it also shows 7 million Americans out of work and another 5.3 million who want full-time work but can only find part-time employment.
On Twitter Friday, President Donald Trump called the official government job numbers “Excellent” and wrote that cutting regulations helped job growth.
During the campaign, when the official jobless rate was around 5 percent, candidate Trump called the job numbers “phony” and said they should not be believed. Back then, he insisted that the actual unemployment rate was far higher, perhaps as high as 42 percent.
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Myanmar’s government has repeatedly appealed for calm in recent weeks as the death toll from an outbreak of swine flu, or H1N1 influenza, has risen to 14 since the first cases were reported last month.
Officials have pointed to the fact that the strain of the virus, which was part of a global pandemic in 2009 that originated in pigs, is now considered a normal seasonal flu, and infections – if not deaths – have occurred in the country as recently as last year.
But a lack of faith in the Myanmar government’s ability to handle a health crisis and a seemingly slow initial response have nevertheless created a disconnect, allowing an atmosphere of mistrust to prevail and pushing many to take matters into their own hands.
Companies have given surgical face masks to employees, while some entrepreneurs are even selling them on the internet.
Educating the public
Activist Thet Swe Win was one of many volunteers to take part in an awareness effort over the weekend on the streets of Yangon that consisted informing members of the public to wash their hands and wear masks when outdoors.
“The reason for doing this campaign is that our government is not announcing any accurate information about this and people are afraid,” he said.
The government, however, disputes allegations of passivity and obfuscation.
Dr. Than Htun Aung, the deputy director of the public health department with Myanmar’s Ministry of Health and Sports, said the government has made announcements and continued to share protection methods while collaborating with the World Health Organization.
“We did risk assessments about this, and responded rapidly to the patients, whether they were severely diagnosed or not,” he said. “We have to wait and see to tell whether it will get larger or disappear.”
The government has also recommended avoiding crowded places, hand washing and recognizing tell-tale symptoms as some of the first lines of defense rather than emphasize the use of face masks, which have not proven to be an always reliable safeguard against the virus.
Dr. Than Htun Aung said that people don’t understand how influenza is spread, and they panicked because “they didn’t get correct information about this.”
He did not specify what details were wrong or where they were being disseminated, except to say that “social media and media are responsible for providing correct information to people.”
Response to outbreak
The ministry says in the last 10 days of July there were 62 confirmed cases of H1N1, with 12 deaths. The heightened sense of alert led the city of Mandalay to cancel an annual spirit festival that was supposed to start a few days ago. Local media reported a 14th fatality this week and a slight uptick in infections. Adding to some of the confusion there was a separate outbreak of bird flu on a farm in southern Myanmar late last month.
But the disconnect in information and urgency surrounding H1N1 is understandable, perhaps even expected.
Myanmar’s health system was neglected for decades under military rule, and some services today, from ambulance drivers to burials, rely on an army of volunteers or NGOs to make up for a lack of human resources and emergency response.
Anthony Quick, an executive advisor to M-EMS, a company that works on pre-hospital care and training in Myanmar, said in an email that “as is the case with almost any type of outbreak or disease in Myanmar, the current health facilities are not yet fully adequate to meet the demands of the general population,” which could cause some “difficulties and mistrust.”
“This is not to say that the current providers we have now are not doing their job to the best of their ability,” he said, adding that they can feel overwhelmed.
Dr. Amaya Maw Naing, a public health specialist and one of the advisers to the Myanmar Red Cross Society, said that uncertainty around government awareness efforts is common in similar circumstances.
“In every country we are very worried that people will also think there is something they [the government] are hiding and they are not telling us,” she said.
She described the government’s activity as proactive, citing knowledge of cross-coordination efforts in Yangon and other states and divisions.
“So if these kind of measures continue I think that we will be able to overcome higher numbers of deaths,” she said.
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Japanese automakers Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. said Friday they plan to spend $1.6 billion to set up a joint-venture auto manufacturing plant in the U.S. — a move that will create up to 4,000 jobs.
The plant will have an annual production capacity of about 300,000 vehicles and will produce Toyota Corollas for the North American market. Mazda will make cross-over models there that it plans to introduce to that market, both sides said.
The companies will split the cost for the plant equally.
Toyota said that it changed its plan to make Corollas at a plant in Mexico, now under construction, and instead will produce Tacoma pickups there.
EV rumors
The Japanese automakers were reportedly planning to work together to develop electric vehicles.
EVs have become an increasingly competitive market segment because of concerns about global warming and the environment.
Japanese rival Nissan Motor Co., which is allied with Renault SA of France and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., is the global leader in electric vehicles.
Better batteries
In the past, Toyota, which makes the Prius hybrid, Camry sedan and Lexus luxury models, was not overly bullish on electric vehicles, noting the limited cruise range of the technology. But recent breakthroughs in batteries allow for longer travel per charge.
In 2015, Toyota and Mazda agreed to find new areas where they can work together, but they had not announced specifics.
Toyota already provides hybrid technology to Mazda, which also makes compact cars for Toyota at its Mexico plant.
Mazda, based in Hiroshima, Japan, used to have a powerful partner in Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co., which bought 25 percent of Mazda in 1979, and raised it to 33.4 percent in 1996. But Ford began cutting ties in 2008, and has shed its stake in Mazda.
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According to the Pacific Institute, more than 2 million tons of all kinds of waste are poured into the world’s waters every day. Scientists have gotten good at detecting it, but not so good at finding where it’s coming from. Swiss researchers are working on a solution to that problem: a swimming robot that can patrol waterways 24-7 and locate pollution at its source. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. Cultivating curiosity and recognizing its value in those kids might be what cures today’s incurable diseases in the future, or prevents them altogether. So what drives and inspires a 12-year-old to think about researching a cure for cancer when he’s picking a science fair project? Bronwyn Benito has the story.
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One of the most deprived suburbs in Paris is expected to be a big winner now the French capital is in line to host the 2024 Olympics with thousands of homes and a new swimming center to be built in Seine-Saint-Denis for the games.
The poorest of France’s 101 mainland departments, Seine-Saint-Denis sprawls east and north from Paris, much of it a drab expanse of grey buildings, abandoned factories and poverty.
Paris learned on Monday that it was a near certainty to be the IOC’s chosen host for the 2024 games when its only remaining rival, Los Angeles, agreed to wait another four years. Budapest, Boston, Hamburg and Rome had all pulled out of the race.
“La Joie est Libre! (Joy Ahead!),” said the front-page headline of L’Equipe sports newspaper, welcoming the news with a play on words. A series of Islamist militant attacks frightened away many visitors from the French capital and city officials hope winning the bid will boost tourism.
Organizers of the games say their aim to lift Seine-Saint-Denis’s fortunes helped their case with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
“Bearing in mind the symbolic and real divides which there sometimes still are between Paris and its suburbs, this young, working class place, with young people of all colors and all origins allows us to say to the IOC that these games are a wonderful opportunity to show that Paris is bigger than Paris,” Stephane Troussel, president of Seine-Saint-Denis, told Reuters.
Tony Estanguet, co-chair of the Paris bid, said: “We looked at the success of the games in London and for sure, the fact that London succeeded in leaving a strong legacy, a physical legacy in the east of London, was very important for us.”
Not Convinced
Not all locals are sure of the benefits however. Some have half an eye on Stratford, a swath of east London that was redeveloped for the 2012 games, but where rising rents have pushed locals out of similarly created new housing there.
“When there is a lot of investment landlords will also take advantage by adding a bit, increasing the rents,” said Fode Abass Toure, a 45-year-old resident of Bobigny.
“And even the restaurants will try to increase prices of products because a lot of tourists will come,” he said.
Seine-Saint-Denis has a reputation as a Socialist bastion where the French Communist Party and hard-left have a strong presence. It was in the area where the deaths of two youths who were hiding from police in a power station set off 2005 riots.
Unemployment in and around its main towns of Saint-Denis and Bobigny is approaching double the national average at more than 18 percent. Three out of 10 of its 1.5-million-strong population are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, mostly from Africa, a similar proportion are classed as living in poverty.
The Paris games – which have a relatively modest budget by recent standards at around 7 billion euros ($8.27 billion), will leave behind two permanent new developments, both of them in Seine-Saint-Denis.
They are the Olympic Village itself, which will be converted after the games to provide more than 3,500 homes, and a swimming center to stand alongside the Stade de France stadium, built for the 1998 football World Cup, now to be reborn as the Olympic Stadium where track and field athletes will compete.
“Same in Sport”
At a run-down local pool that will be transformed into a water polo venue, children splashed as they played during a visit by Reuters.
“Sport brings people together,” said sports activity leader Jose Defaria, aged 22.
“Even if we don’t come from the same social background, I think we’re the same in sport, we are brought closer together and we make links and it’s good for everyone. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
Paris 2024 – enthusiastically backed by the country’s tennis-playing new President Emmanuel Macron – plans to make the most of the city’s existing sports facilities and take full advantage of its landmarks.
Boxers will compete alongside tennis players at the clay court French Open tennis venue, Roland Garros, on the city’s western fringe, while the nearby clubs Paris Saint Germain and Stade Francais will host respective sports of soccer and rugby.
Distance races on foot and bicycle will start and finish at the Eiffel Tower, in whose shadow the ever-popular beach volleyball competition will play out.
Fencing and taekwondo will be held under the majestic steel and glass of the Grand Palais near the Champs Elysees, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has bet her reputation on the Seine river being clean enough for open water swimming in time for the games.
Attacks Scared Tourists
Official confirmation due in September would mean one of the world’s most visited cities can mark the centenary of the 1924 Paris Olympics with a repeat showing. Amongst the stars of those games was U.S. swimming gold medalist Johnny Weismuller who later became known for his role in the Tarzan films.
Hoteliers are keen for a much-needed shot in the arm.
Although hotel occupancy rates are rising, up 7.2 percent at 76.9 percent in the first half of this year, they are short of the 80 percent rate hoteliers enjoyed in 2014 before Islamist militant attacks scared off tourists.
A successful Olympic legacy is far from assured for any city, with recent hosts enjoying contrasting fortunes.
The legacy of the Athens Games left derelict, run-down arenas and unused stadiums. Four years earlier, Sydney used the Games to develop an Olympic Park which is now a thriving commercial, residential and sporting suburb.
Four years after Athens, Beijing aimed to use the games to showcase itself as a progressive world power. London’s 2012 evoked a feelgood factor before domestic politics reversed that optimism. In 2016, while Rio’s games lacked a certain luster they underlined the South American nation’s ability to deliver in the face of economic and social adversity.
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Researchers in England are hoping to help root out modern-day slavery in northern India by using detailed satellite imagery to locate brick kilns — sites that are notorious for using millions of slaves, including children.
A team of geospatial experts at the University of Nottingham use Google Maps and dozens of volunteers to identify potential sites of exploitation and report them to authorities.
“The key thing at the moment is to get those statistics right and to get the locations of the brick kilns sorted,” said Doreen Boyd, a co-researcher on the “Slavery from Space” project.
“There are certainly activists on the ground that will help us in terms of getting the statistics and the locations of these brick kilns to [government] officials.”
Anti-slavery activists said the project could be useful in identifying remote kilns or mines that would otherwise escape public or official scrutiny.
“But there are other, more pressing challenges like tackling problematic practices, including withheld wages, lack of transparent accounting … no enforcement of existing labor laws,” said Jakub Sobik, spokesman at Anti-Slavery, a London-based nongovernmental organization.
Millions of people in India are believed to be living in slavery. Despite a 1976 ban on bonded labor, the practice remains widespread at brick kilns, rice mills and brothels, among others.
The majority of victims belong to low-income families or marginalized castes like the Dalits or “untouchables.”
Nearly 70 percent of brick kiln workers in South Asia are estimated to be working in bonded and forced labor, according to a 2016 report by the International Labor Organization. About a fifth of those are underage.
The project relies on crowdsourcing, a process where volunteers sift through thousands of satellite images to identify possible locations of kilns. Each image is shown to multiple volunteers, who mark kilns independently.
The team is currently focused on an area of 2,600 square kilometers in the desert state of Rajasthan — teeming with brick-making sites — and plans to scale up the project in the coming years.
Researchers are now in talks with satellite companies to get access to more detailed images, rather than having to rely on publicly available Google Maps.
The project is one of several anti-slavery initiatives run by the university, which include research on slave labor-free supply chains and human trafficking.
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In a change from chocolates and fizzy drinks, the French are starting to offer fresh oysters from vending machines in the hope of selling more of the delicacy outside business hours.
One pioneer is Tony Berthelot, an oyster farmer whose automatic dispenser of live oysters on the Ile de Re island off France’s western coast offers a range of quantities, types and sizes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
French oyster farmers are following in the footsteps of other producers of fresh food who once manned stalls along roadsides for long hours but now uses machines.
“We can come at midnight if we want, if we have a craving for oysters. It’s excellent; they’re really fresh,” Christel Petinon, a 45-year-old client vacationing on the island, told Reuters.
The Ile de Re’s refrigerated dispenser, one of the first and with glass panels so customers can see what they are buying, is broadly similar to those that offer snacks and drinks at railway stations and office buildings worldwide.
Customers use their bank card for access, opening the door of their choice from a range of carton sizes and oyster types.
Berthelot, 30 years an oyster breeder, sees it as an extra source of revenue rather than an alternative to normal points of sale like food markets, fishmongers and supermarkets.
“We felt as though we were losing lots of sales when we are closed,” he said.
“There was a cost involved when buying this machine, of course, but we’re paying it back in installments … And today, in theory, we can say that the calculations are correct and it’s working.”
Selling oysters from a machine bets on more than just open-mindedness among consumers. Live mollusks not kept cool enough or stored too long out of seawater can cause food poisoning when opened.
The Berthelots say the machine has an appeal to a younger generation accustomed to buying on the internet and unperturbed by the absence of a shopkeeper.
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Nigeria will legalize illegal mini refineries in the Niger Delta oil hub by the end of the year and supply them with crude at a reasonable price, the presidency said Thursday, fulfilling a demand from community leaders.
On Monday, Niger Delta leaders threatened to pull out of peace talks with the government unless their demands were met by Nov. 1.
“The Federal Government has started the process of replacing illegal refineries in the region with modular ones,” the presidency said in a statement as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo met Niger Delta community leaders in Abuja.
Each of the Niger Delta states would receive two modular refineries to start up in the fourth quarter, the statement said.
Swampland poverty
The government has been in talks with community leaders since last year to end militant attacks on oil production facilities, which cut the OPEC member’s output by 700,000 barrels a day for several months last year.
But a military crackdown on thousands of illegal refineries in the southern swamps, which process crude oil stolen from oil majors and state oil firm NNPC, has raised tensions.
The refineries process stolen crude in makeshift pipes and metal tanks hidden in oil-soaked clearings deep in the southern swampland’s thick bush land.
Working on other demands
The Niger Delta leaders had presented President Muhammadu Buhari a list of 16 demands last November to drag the southern swampland out of poverty. The militants then halted attacks to give the talks a chance.
The presidency said it was also discussing with oil majors to move their regional headquarters to the Niger Delta, another demand from communities complaining they do not benefit from the crude in their region.
Osinbajo was appointed by Buhari to head Nigeria while Buhari is on medical leave in Britain for an undisclosed ailment.
Oil exports are now set to exceed 2 million barrels per day (bpd) in August, the highest in 17 months, up from just more than 1 million bpd at certain points last year, thanks to a steady decline in attacks on pipelines.
While President Donald Trump has thrust transgender people back into the conflict between conservative and liberal values in the United States, geneticists are quietly working on a major research effort to unlock the secrets of gender identity.
A consortium of five research institutions in Europe and the United States, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center, George Washington University and Boston Children’s Hospital, is looking to the genome, a person’s complete set of DNA, for clues about whether transgender people are born that way.
Two decades of brain research have provided hints of a biological origin to being transgender, but no irrefutable conclusions.
Now scientists in the consortium have embarked on what they call the largest study of its kind, searching for a genetic component to explain why people assigned one gender at birth so persistently identify as the other, often from very early childhood.
Researchers have extracted DNA from the blood samples of 10,000 people, 3,000 of them transgender and the rest cisgender (people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth). The project is awaiting grant funding to begin the next phase: testing about 3 million markers, or variations, across the genome for all of the samples.
Knowing what variations transgender people have in common, and comparing those patterns to those of cisgender people in the study, may help investigators understand what role the genome plays in everyone’s gender identity.
“If the trait is strongly genetic, then people who identify as trans will share more of their genome, not because they are related in nuclear families but because they are more anciently related,” said Lea Davis, leader of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute.
Political arena
The search for the biological underpinnings is taking on new relevance as the battle for transgender rights plays out in the U.S. political arena.
One of the Trump administration’s first acts was to revoke Obama-era guidelines directing public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice.
Last week, the president announced on Twitter he intends to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
Texas lawmakers are debating a bathroom bill that would require people to use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate. North Carolina in March repealed a similar law after a national boycott cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business.
Currently, the only way to determine whether people are transgender is for them to self-identify as such. While civil rights activists contend that should be sufficient, scientists have taken their search to the lab.
That quest has made some transgender people nervous. If a “cause” is found, it could posit a “cure,” potentially opening the door to so-called reparative therapies similar to those that attempt to turn gay people straight, advocates say. Others raise concerns about the rights of those who may identify as trans but lack biological “proof.”
“It’s an idea that can be wielded against us, depending on the ideology of the user,” said Kale Edmiston, a transgender man and postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in neuroimaging.
Dana Bevan, a transgender woman, psychologist and author of three books on transgender topics, acknowledged the potential manipulation of research was a concern but said, “I don’t believe that science can or should hold back from trying to understand what’s going on.”
No genetic test sought
Davis stressed that her study does not seek to produce a genetic test for being transgender, nor would it be able to.
Instead, she said, she hopes the data will lead to better care for transgender people, who experience wide health disparities compared with the general population.
One-third of transgender people reported a negative health care experience in the previous year, such as verbal harassment, refusal of treatment or the need to teach their doctors about transgender care, according to a landmark survey of nearly 28,000 people released last year by the National Center for Transgender Equality.
About 40 percent have attempted suicide, almost nine times the rate for the general population.
“We can use this information to help train doctors and nurses to provide better care to trans patients and to also develop amicus briefs to support equal rights legislation,” said Davis, who is also director of research for Vanderbilt’s gender health clinic.
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee has one of the world’s largest DNA data banks. It also has emerged as a leader in transgender health care with initiatives such as the Trans Buddy Program, which pairs every transgender patient with a volunteer to help guide the person through a health care visits.
The study has applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health and is exploring other financial sources to provide the $1 million needed to complete the genotyping, expected to take a year to 18 months. Analysis of the data would take about another six months and require more funding, Davis said.
The other consortium members are Vrije University in Amsterdam and the FIMABIS institute in Malaga, Spain.
Probing the brain
Until now, the bulk of research into the origins of being transgender has looked at the brain.
Neurologists have spotted clues in the brain structure and activity of transgender people that distinguish them from cisgender subjects.
A seminal 1995 study was led by Dutch neurobiologist Dick Swaab, who was also among the first scientists to discover structural differences between male and female brains. Looking at postmortem brain tissue of transgender subjects, he found that male-to-female transsexuals had clusters of cells, or nuclei, that more closely resembled those of a typical female brain, and vice versa.
Swaab’s body of work on postmortem samples was based on just 12 transgender brains that he spent 25 years collecting. But it gave rise to a whole new field of inquiry that today is being explored with advanced brain scan technology on living transgender volunteers.
Among the leaders in brain scan research is Ivanka Savic, a professor of neurology with Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and visiting professor at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Her studies suggest that transgender men have a weakened connection between the two areas of the brain that process the perception of self and one’s own body. Savic said those connections seem to improve after the person receives cross-hormone treatment.
Her work has been published more than 100 times on various topics in peer-reviewed journals, but she still cannot conclude whether people are born transgender.
“I think that, but I have to prove that,” Savic said.
A number of other researchers, including both geneticists and neurologists, presume a biological component that is also influenced by upbringing.
But Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has emerged as the leading voice challenging the “born-this-way” hypothesis.
He encourages psychiatric therapy for transgender people, especially children, so that they accept the gender assigned to them at birth.
McHugh has gained a following among social conservatives, while incensing LGBT advocates with comments such as calling transgender people “counterfeit.”
Last year he co-authored a review of the scientific literature published in The New Atlantis journal, asserting there was scant evidence to suggest sexual orientation and gender identity were biologically determined.
The article drew a rebuke from nearly 600 academics and clinicians who called it misleading.
McHugh told Reuters he was “unmoved” by his critics and said he doubted additional research would reveal a biological cause.
“If it were obvious,” he said, “they would have found it long ago.”
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Finding underground gas leaks is now as easy as finding a McDonalds, thanks to a combination of Google Street View cars, mobile methane detectors, some major computing power and a lot of ingenuity.
When a city’s underground gas lines leak, they waste fuel and release invisible plumes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. To find and measure leaks, Colorado State University biologist Joe von Fischer decided to create “methane maps,” to make it easier for utilities to identify the biggest leaks, and repair them.
“That’s where you get the greatest bang for the buck,” he pointed out, “the greatest pollution reductions per repair.”
Knowing that Google Maps start with Google Street View cars recording everything they drive by, along with their GPS locations, von Fischer’s team thought they would just add methane detectors to a Street View car. It turned out, it was not that simple.
“Squirrelly objects”
The world’s best methane detectors are accurate in an area the size of a teacup, but methane leaks can be wider than a street. Also, no one had ever measured the size of a methane leak from a moving car.
“If you’ve ever seen a plume of smoke, it’s sort of a lumpy, irregular object,” von Fischer said. “Methane plumes as they come out of the ground are the same, they’re lumpy squirrelly objects.”
The team had to develop a way to capture data about those plumes, one that would be accurate in the real world. They set up a test site in an abandoned airfield near campus, and brought in what looked like a large scuba tank filled with methane and some air hoses. Then they released carefully measured methane through the hose as von Fischer drove a specially equipped SUV past it, again and again.
They compared readings from the methane detectors in the SUV to readings from the tank.
“We spend a lot of time driving through the plumes to sort of calibrate the way that those cars see methane plumes that form as methane’s being emitted from the ground,” von Fischer explained.
With that understanding, the methane detectors hit the road.
Turning data into maps
But the results created pages of data, “more than 30 million points,” said CSU computer scientist Johnson Kathkikiaran. He knew that all those data points alone would never help people find the biggest leaks on any map. So he and his advisor, Sanmi Peracara, turned the data into pictures using tools from Google.
Their visual summaries made it easy for utility experts to analyze the methane maps, but von Fischer wanted anyone to be able to identify the worst leaks. His teammates at the Environmental Defense Fund met that challenge by incorporating the data into their online maps. Yellow dots indicate a small methane leak. Orange is a medium-size one. Red means a big leak – as much pollution as one car driving 14,000 kilometers in a single day.
Von Fischer says that if a city focuses on these biggest leaks, repairing just 8 percent of them can reduce methane pollution by a third.
“That becomes a win-win type scenario,” he said, “because we’re not asking polluters to fix everything, but we’re looking for a reduction in overall emissions, and I think we can achieve that in a more cost effective way.”
After analyzing a methane map for the state of New Jersey, for example, the utility PSE&G has prioritized fixing its leakiest pipes there first, to speed the reduction of their overall pollution.
“To me that was a real victory, to be able to help the utility find which parts were leakiest, and to make a cost effective reduction in their overall emissions,” von Fishcher said.
Von Fischer envisions even more innovation ahead for mapping many kinds of pollution… to clean the air and save energy.
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U.S. security agents have arrested the British hacker known for discovering a “kill switch” that nullified a widespread ransomware attack earlier this year.
Marcus Hutchins, a 23-year-old malware researcher who uses the name Malware Tech, was detained by the FBI on Wednesday at the Las Vegas airport, where he was preparing to return to Britain after attending two hacking conferences in the city.
Court documents unsealed on Thursday indicated Hutchins was arrested on hacking charges unrelated to the ransomware attack known as WannaCry.
Reuters news agency reports Hutchins is accused of advertising, distributing and profiting from malware code known as Kronos that stole online banking credentials and credit card data between July 2014 and July 2015.
Hutchins has not made a public statement, but his mother told London’s Telegraph newspaper that she expected to be “rather busy tonight,” trying to find out where her son is being held.
Hutchins became an overnight hero in May after disabling the WannaCry worm, which infiltrated software in hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, factories and shops in more than 150 countries. Parts of Britain’s National Health Service were infected, as well as the FedEx delivery company, German rail Deutsche Bahn and Spain’s Telefonica.
The attack first became evident May 12, 2017, and continued over the weekend. By May 15, Hutchins had discovered a so-called “kill switch” that disabled the worm.
The malware operators demanded the owners of the computers pay a fee of $300 to $600 to regain control of their computers.
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Facebook is to send more potential hoax articles to third-party fact checkers and show their findings below the original post, the world’s largest online social network said on Thursday as it tries to fight so-called fake news.
The company said in a statement on its website it will start using updated machine learning to detect possible hoaxes and send them to fact checkers, potentially showing fact-checking results under the original article.
Facebook has been criticized as being one of the main distribution points for so-called fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The issue has also become a big political topic in Europe, with French voters deluged with false stories ahead of the presidential election in May and Germany backing a plan to fine social media networks if they fail to remove hateful postings promptly, ahead of elections there in September.
On Thursday Facebook said in a separate statement in German that a test of the new fact-checking feature was being launched in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
“In addition to seeing which stories are disputed by third-party fact checkers, people want more context to make informed decisions about what they read and share,” said Sara Su, Facebook news feed product manager, in a blog.
She added that Facebook would keep testing its “related article” feature and work on other changes to its news feed to cut down on false news.
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Under a best-case scenario, a newly negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would not be implemented before the end of next year or the start of 2019, Mexico’s economy minister said Thursday.
Among other issues, NAFTA talks would focus on how to provide more certainty in dispute resolutions, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said in a radio interview.
“According to the possible calendars of approval, the best of the scenarios that we could have … would be the start of implementation almost at the end of 2018 or the start of 2019,” Guajardo said.
Mexico has set out the goals of prioritizing free access for goods and services, greater labor market integration and a strengthening of energy security.
Last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said during a visit to Mexico that he hoped farm business with Mexico would not suffer due to President Donald Trump’s drive to get a better deal for manufacturers.
Speaking in Japan on Thursday, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said the best way to calm Trump’s worries about commerce with Mexico were through more trade, not less.
Videgaray said negotiators would need to be careful not to tweak trade rules on sourcing components too much or they could risk driving up the costs of goods like electronics.
“The important thing that we are not going to do is hurt the region’s competitivity, and much less the region’s consumers,” Videgaray said, according to a transcript.
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In an email to HBO staff Wednesday, CEO Richard Plepler said the company’s email system likely was not affected in Monday’s hacking of the cable network.
“We do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised,” Plepler wrote, warning his staff to be wary of media speculation about the breach.
A script outline for the next episode of Game of Thrones, along with episodes of Ballers, Barry and Room 104, were published online Monday.
A company called IP Echelon reportedly submitted a request to Google on behalf of HBO to take down the leaked material.
HBO has not publicly commented on specifically what material has been hacked, but the request claimed that “thousands of Home Box Office [HBO] internal company documents” had been leaked in addition to the video content.
According to Variety, the initial leak was much larger than first reported, and personal information about one senior HBO executive, as well as access information to dozens of online accounts, have been published since Monday.
The hackers, who claimed to have accessed 1.5 terabytes of information,
said more is coming.
If the claim is true, it would make this hack even larger than the crippling cyberattack on Sony in 2014, which the FBI has blamed on the North Korean government. North Korea denied the allegation.
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Women in the United States are starting bushiness at one and a half times the rate of their male peers. Effective entrepreneurship could help cut the economic gap between women and men, which the World Economic Forum says could otherwise take decades to close around the globe. As VOA’s Jim Randle reports, experts say more than one-third of U.S. businesses are headed by women and they expect that percentage to grow.
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