Friday marks World Tuberculosis Day, aimed at raising awareness of a disease that kills an estimated 1.8 million people every year. Six countries account for nearly two-thirds of the cases: India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa. As Henry Ridgwell reports, resistant forms of TB bacteria are undermining efforts to roll out new treatments.
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As the internet continues to drive innovative ideas, some scientists envision a world where people can digitize their skills and do their jobs from anywhere in the world with the next generation of optical and wireless technology. How this idea is executed was demonstrated at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition in Los Angeles. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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The Trump administration will approve the Keystone XL pipeline Friday, senior U.S. officials say, ending years of delay for a project that has served as a flashpoint in the national debate about climate change.
The State Department will recommend the pipeline is in U.S. interests, clearing the way for the White House to grant a presidential permit to TransCanada to build the $8 billion pipeline, two officials said. It’s a sharp reversal from the Obama administration, which rejected the pipeline after deeming it contrary to national interests.
The officials, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, said the State Department’s recommendation and the White House’s final approval would occur Friday.
The White House declined to comment, other than to say it would offer an update Friday. State Department spokesman Mark Toner wouldn’t reveal the decision, but said the agency had re-examined Keystone thoroughly after ruling against the proposed project barely two years ago.
“We’re looking at new factors,” Toner said. “I don’t want to speak to those until we’ve reached a decision or conclusion.”
Canada to Texas Gulf Coast
The 1,700-mile pipeline, as envisioned, would carry oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. The pipeline would move roughly 800,000 barrels of oil per day, more than one-fifth of the oil Canada exports to the U.S.
Oil industry advocates say the pipeline will improve U.S. energy security and create jobs, although how many is widely disputed. Calgary-based TransCanada has promised as many as 13,000 construction jobs — 6,500 a year over two years — but the State Department previously estimated a far smaller number. The pipeline’s opponents contend the jobs will be minimal and short-lived, and say the pipeline won’t help the U.S. with energy needs because the oil is destined for export.
President Donald Trump has championed the pipeline and backed the idea that it will prove a job creator. In one of his first acts as president, he invited pipeline company TransCanada to resubmit the application to construct and operate the pipeline. And he had given officials until next Monday to complete a review of the project.
No American steel
A Trump presidential directive also required new or expanded pipelines to be built with American steel “to the maximum extent possible.” However, TransCanada has said Keystone won’t be built with U.S. steel. The company has acquired the steel, much of it from Canada and Mexico, and the White House has acknowledged it’s too difficult to impose conditions on a pipeline under construction.
Portions of Keystone have been built. Completing it requires a permit involving the State Department because it crosses the U.S.-Canada border.
In an unusual twist, the agency’s recommendation won’t come from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The former CEO of oil company Exxon Mobil recused himself after protests from environmental groups who said it would be a conflict of interest for Tillerson to decide the pipeline’s fate.
Instead, Tom Shannon, a career diplomat serving as undersecretary of state for political affairs, will sign off, officials said.
Route under litigation
Even with a presidential permit, the pipeline will still face obstacles — most notably when it comes to the route, which is being heavily litigated in the states. Native American tribes and landowners have joined environmental groups in opposing the pipeline.
Environmental groups also say the pipeline will encourage the use of carbon-heavy tar sands oil which contributes more to global warming than cleaner sources of energy. President Barack Obama reached the same conclusion in 2015 after a negative recommendation from then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
The Trump administration has dropped fighting climate change as a priority and left open the possibility of pulling out of the Paris deal.
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A cluster of Black Lives Matter groups and the organization leading the push for a $15-an-hour wage are joining forces to combine the struggle for racial justice with the fight for economic equality, just as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to do in the last year of his life.
They are launching their first national joint action April 4, the 49th anniversary of King’s assassination, with “Fight Racism, Raise Pay” protests in two dozen cities, including Atlanta; Milwaukee; Memphis, Tennessee; Chicago; Boston; Denver; and Las Vegas.
King was gunned down in 1968 while on a visit to Memphis to support striking black sanitation workers.
“When MLK was assassinated, he was talking to workers who were dealing with union-busting, unfair wages,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director for the Fight for $15. “The bottom line is that every day, workers of color across the country face deep-seated racism that would seem to be out of Dr. King’s era, but sadly it’s still happening today.”
New political reality
Fells said the new political reality requires the groups to band together. After President Donald Trump’s election, some civil rights and social justice organizations are taking an all-hands-on-deck approach against an administration they see as hostile to the working poor and minorities.
By working together, the two groups can reach more people and amplify their messages, activists say.
“What we both realize is we’re stronger when we operate together,” Fells said.
United in Ferguson
Fight for $15 has helped raise the minimum wage in places like New York and Washington. The Black Lives Matter movement grew largely out of the protests over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. The organization has demanded police reforms and an end to killings of unarmed black people.
Fight for $15 and Black Lives first came together in Ferguson. The nearly all-black workforce at the neighborhood McDonald’s had been on strike before Brown was killed. After Brown’s death, those workers used their organizing skills to protest police department practices.
In a controversial 1967 speech titled “Beyond Vietnam,” King made a radical shift in his message, speaking out about the triple evils of war, racism and capitalism and linking economic and racial inequality. That same year, the civil rights leader launched his Poor People’s Campaign to address disparities in employment and housing.
“We’re not simply remembering his assassination,” said the Rev. William Barber II, who will lead the Memphis protest. “We’re remembering why he was there and reimagining that for the 21st century. Dr. King was connecting black and white poverty and saying black and white poor people need to be allies.”
Broadening the coalition
Asha Ransby-Sporn, national organizing chair with the Black Youth Project 100, one of dozens of Black Lives groups that are taking part in the protests, said police harassment and the routine treatment of blacks as criminals are among the biggest barriers to economic justice for black Americans.
Broadening the coalition, as King attempted, is important, she said.
“We can’t fight on any of these fronts without fighting on all of them,” Ransby-Sporn said.
Terrence Wise, a $9.50-an-hour McDonald’s employee and Fight for $15 organizer in Kansas City, Missouri, plans to take part in the April 4 protest there.
“It’s one thing to be able to make a living wage, but to go home from work and be harassed by the police or treated differently in our communities, or discriminated against in the workplace … I need to be treated as a human being,” Wise said. “They’re one and the same fight.”
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President Donald Trump told House Republicans the time for negotiations on a crucial health care vote had ended. After a chaotic day of dealmaking, the vote that could shape the future of the Republican Party was scheduled for Friday. VOA’s congressional reporter Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
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A new vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills about 600 children a day, has been shown to have almost 67 percent efficacy in preventing the illness.
“This efficacy of about 70 percent is higher than any other vaccine in similar settings,” said Dr. Emmanuel Baron, director of Epicentre, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, which conducted the trial.
A clinical trial of 3,500 infants in the African country of Niger showed the efficacy of the new vaccine, known as BRV-PV, to be 66.7 percent. Thirty-one cases of rotavirus were reported among children who got the vaccine, compared with 87 cases among those who received a placebo.
Details of the study and the vaccine’s effectiveness were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We saw actually three things,” Baron said. “The first is that this vaccine is efficient. The second is that this vaccine is safe. And we also saw a good acceptability by the care providers and the families.”
An estimated 450,000 young children and babies die each year of diarrheal diseases. One of them is rotavirus, which causes a severe infection of the gastrointestinal tract.
Experts say rotavirus is responsible for about 37 percent of deaths among children younger than 5 who succumb to diarrheal diseases each year, or about 215,000 deaths annually.
There are two existing vaccines, but Baron said they are not widely used, as they are relatively expensive and must be refrigerated. Refrigeration is an obstacle in many African countries where rotavirus is most pronounced because electricity there is unreliable.
Even when children are immunized with the older vaccines, Baron says, hundreds die each day around the world.
The new vaccine does not need refrigeration for up to six months, because it is mixed or reconstituted with liquid before it is given to children in a three-dose schedule, at 6, 10 and 14 weeks of age.
Initially, the BRV-PV is expected to cost $6 dollars for the three shots, a price that is expected to drop as the vaccine gains traction.
Baron said clinicians in countries where rotavirus is a serious health threat are waiting for the green light from the World Health Organization to begin immunizing children with the new vaccine.
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A message of resilience posted online in the wake of the London terrorist attack Wednesday was read in Parliament, it was mentioned on the BBC, and it went viral online.
Unfortunately, the hand written message, which appeared in a photo of a whiteboard commonly seen in the London Underground, was a hoax.
The message read: “All terrorists are politely reminded that THIS IS LONDON and whatever you do to us, we will drink tea and jolly well carry on. Thank you.”
One member of Parliament read the message to Prime Minister Theresa May, who then called the sign a “wonderful tribute” that “encapsulated everything everybody in this house has said today.”
An announcer on the BBC’s Radio 4 recited the sign’s message on the air, while other journalists and politicians shared the image online, The Washington Post reported.
Turns out the sign, which looked quite authentic, was created using one of the many sign generators available online.
Whiteboards are common in the London Underground, usually giving service information and occasionally displaying a joke or something meant to be inspirational.
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On Tuesday, the rusty patched bumblebee became the first wild bee in the continental United States to be placed on the U.S. endangered species list. Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, scientists hope the designation will help safeguard one of the small insects that play a big role in American agriculture and the environment.
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In advance of World TB day (March 24), the World Health Organization is warning the battle to wipe out the global tuberculosis epidemic will not be won unless stigma, discrimination and marginalization of TB patients is brought to an end. VOA was in Geneva at the launch of new WHO ethics guidance for the treatment of people with tuberculosis.
Progress is being made toward achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of ending the global TB epidemic by 2030. The World Health Organization reports 49 million lives have been saved since 2000.
But, much remains to be done.
Data from 2015 show more than 10.4 million people fell ill and 1.8 million died of tuberculosis, with most cases and fatalities occurring in developing countries.
The World Health Organization says stigma and discrimination against TB patients hamper efforts to wipe out this deadly disease.
WHO Global TB Program medical officer Ernesto Jaramillo says vulnerable people, such as migrants, prisoners, ethnic minorities, marginalized women and children are most likely to suffer abuse, neglect and rejection.
He says this prevents them from seeking treatment for tuberculosis.
“Having new tools for diagnosis, and treatment of TB is not sufficient if there are not clear standards to ensure that vulnerable people can have access in a matter of priority to these tools in a way that the end TB strategy can really serve the interest not only of individuals, but also the interests of public health in general ,” said Jaramillo.
WHO Global TB program director Mario Raviglione tells VOA no country, rich or poor, is immune from getting tuberculosis. He warns marginalizing patients with TB is dangerous.
“You cannot eliminate a disease like TB thinking that you build walls or you isolate your country,” said Raviglione. “TB is an airborne disease. It travels by air. So, you have a Boeing 747 that leaves Malawi tonight and it comes to Switzerland tomorrow morning and there you go. So, it has to be faced from a global perspective.”
New WHO ethical guidance includes actions to overcome barriers of stigma, discrimination and marginalization of people with tuberculosis. The agency says protecting the human rights of all those affected will save many lives and will make it possible to end this global scourge.
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New data show U.S. home sales advanced in February while job layoffs rose slightly last week.
Thursday’s Commerce Department report showed home sales rose 6.1 percent to hit a seven-month high in February. If newly-constructed homes sold at last month’s pace for a full year, 592,000 would change hands. That is nearly 13 percent better than the same time last year.
Analysts at Wells Fargo Securities said unusually mild weather in February sped up the buying process, so the next few months may see slower sales.
The number of Americans signing up for unemployment assistance rose by 15,000 last week, according to the Labor Department. While the number of layoffs was higher, at 258,000 it is still low enough to show a healthy job market.
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The head of the U.S. central bank says new research strengthens the case for investing in early childhood education.
In a Washington speech Thursday, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said evidence shows “growing up poor makes it harder to succeed as an adult.”
A survey by Fed experts shows childhood poverty makes it less likely that people will be employed as adults, and hurts their chances of having stable jobs and adequate incomes.
Yellen says research also underscores the value of investing in workforce habits and skills like mathematics, literacy, teamwork, communication, and the ability to cope with conflict.
She says giving kids a strong foundation will help build a stronger U.S. economy. She urged politicians to carefully consider the impact of proposed policies on the future of children and the nation.
Curious toddlers find the drugs in a mother’s purse or accidentally dropped on the floor. Sometimes a parent fails to secure the child-resistant cap on a bottle of painkillers.
No matter how it happens, if a 35-pound toddler grabs just one opioid pill, chews it and releases the full concentration of a time-released adult drug into their small bodies, death can come swiftly.
These are some of the youngest victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic — children under age 5 who die after swallowing opioids. The number of children’s deaths is still small relative to the overall toll from opioids, but toddler fatalities have climbed steadily over the last 10 years.
In 2000, 14 children in the U.S. under age 5 died after ingesting opioids. By 2015, that number climbed to 51, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, alone, four children died last year of accidental overdoses. Another 2-year-old perished in January.
Each family who loses a toddler to opioids confronts a death that probably could have been prevented. Here are a few of their stories:
An energetic birthday girl, a methadone mystery
Cataleya Tamekia-Damiah Wimberly couldn’t sit still. She spent most of her first birthday party in Milwaukee dancing and diving into the cake. But her first birthday party was also her last. Nearly three weeks later, she was found dead of a cause her mother never suspected — a methadone overdose.
Helen Jackson, 24, was styling her older daughter’s hair when she got a call from Cataleya’s father, who shared custody of the little girl. He sobbed on the phone as he explained how he found their daughter unresponsive the morning of Feb. 16, 2016.
“I screamed so hard and so loud,” Jackson said. “The screams that came out of me took all my strength, all my wind. It was just terrible.”
Police were puzzled. They looked into whether the toddler was smothered while co-sleeping with her father and his girlfriend. They also investigated carbon monoxide poisoning because of a gas smell. Toxicology tests eventually revealed the methadone in her system.
Jackson said her daughter, while in the care of her father, was at a relative’s house when she swallowed the methadone that took her life.
Police are still investigating how Cataleya got the methadone. The case could be referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of criminal charges, said Sgt. Timothy Gauerke.
Since Cataleya’s death, friends and family have commented on what they perceive as Jackson’s strength in dealing with her loss. In reality, she said, she feels fragile and weak.
“I don’t know when I’m going to fall apart,” she said. “I don’t know when I’m going to explode. It’s all still in there.”
Mother’s prescription proves fatal for daughter
At just 2 years old, Londyn Raine Robinson Sack was protective of her baby brother, Liam.
“She thought she was his mother,” said Londyn’s grandmother, Shauna Etheredge. “She liked to be the boss of her little brother.”
Londyn’s own mother was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and risk of injury to a child in connection with the Oct. 19, 2014, death of her daughter, who ingested an opioid known as Suboxone that was packaged in the form of a dissolving strip.
Prosecutors in New Britain, Connecticut, said the drug was obtained illegally by her mother and was dispensed in a box, not a child-resistant container.
Rebekah Robinson entered a plea in which she did not accept or deny responsibility for the charges but agreed to accept punishment. In June 2016, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 10 years of probation.
Robinson apparently knew Londyn had ingested the opioid but did not call for medical help, according to prosecutors. It was an older sibling who called 911 to say her little sister was not breathing.
The Connecticut Department of Children and Families was cited in a 2015 report for failing to adequately identify risks to Londyn and Robinson’s three other children, given her history of mental health, substance abuse and child-welfare complaints.
Besides her protective nature, Londyn loved making people laugh, Etheredge said.
“She would put underwear on her head and act goofy and silly,” her grandmother said. “She loved to explore.”
Etheredge, of Indian Trail, North Carolina, said one of her lasting memories of her grandchild was a visit to the local park.
“The last time I saw her, she was running around and trying to catch up with the birds,” she said.
Precocious “lil’ Reg” dies, uncle stands accused
Curious and energetic, Reginald Kendall Harris Jr. would hold conversations beyond those of a typical toddler.
“If he was talking to his mom, you would think he was five or six years old,” said his great-uncle Calvin Harris, of Portland, Oregon. “If you would talk to him, you would engage in a full conversation. It was hilarious for his age,” Harris said.
The boy died on Oct. 10, 2016, after swallowing methadone. Portland police soon issued a warning, saying the case was a reminder to keep all prescription drugs away from children.
Reginald’s uncle, Willie Lee Harris Jr., is behind bars, accused of leaving methadone in a place accessible to his nephew. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter.
Harris’ mother, Pamela Harris, of Vancouver, Washington, said her grandson got hold of the drug while riding in her son’s car.
“Lil’ Reg was so touchy and curious,” she recalled. The methadone was in a cup.
The boy whose family affectionately called him “Lil’ Reg” would “say some crazy stuff sometimes, somethings you wouldn’t expect a 2-year-old to say,” great-grandmother Lucy Lee Harris recalled. “He would answer the door: ‘What up, dawg?'”
Instead of the way he died, Pamela Harris chooses to remember how her grandson lived, such as his joy when the family made plans to visit his favorite hangout, a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant with a kid-friendly menu and games.
Harris said his death was almost too much to bear after losing her home in Hurricane Katrina and receiving a breast cancer diagnosis.
“Now I’ve got a grandson that’s not here and a son that’s being charged,” Harris said. “I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was being smothered.”
A photo published on social media reveals Elon Musk’s SpaceX Corporation is close to fielding a rocket robot.
According to Florida Today newspaper, Stephen Marr got a good view of the bot sitting on top of a SpaceX drone ship at Port Canaveral, Florida.
“I knew there was something different there,” Marr, 34, told the paper.
Marr posted the photo on Reddit where it was widely agreed to be a robot, and users on the site nicknamed it “Optimus Prime,” after a character from the movie Transformers.
The robot is expected to work on the drone ships, securing the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, which will land on the drone ships, Florida Today reports. The robot is expected to save the company money and increase safety.
Ricky Lim, of SpaceX, told Florida Today that the robot is in a “testing phase” as a “future capability.”
“I don’t think it’s very far away” from being used, Lim told the paper. “But it’s new.”
He added that the robot has not been officially named.
SpaceX has recovered eight first stages of Falcon 9 rockets, starting in 2015. Three of those stages landed on pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and five times on drone ships at sea.
SpaceX is expecting to launch another rocket from Kennedy Space Center in coming months. That mission is expected to be the first use of a used or “flight tested” Falcon 9 rocket.
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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has technology capable of infecting “factory fresh” iPhones and has been bugging the devices since at least 2008, WikiLeaks claimed Thursday.
In a statement released on its website, the whistleblowing organization said the technology developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB) was designed to be physically installed onto new iPhones.
“It is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments [opening, infecting, and resending] leaving the United States or otherwise,” the statement read.
Another alleged CIA tool, exposed in the WikiLeaks release Thursday, has the ability to execute code from a USB stick while a Mac computer is still booting up, allowing a user to bypass firmware passwords and load the attack software.
Thursday’s release is the latest batch of documents published by WikiLeaks alleging to show espionage programs used by the U.S. spy agency. A previous WikiLeaks release purported to expose a massive hacking program employed by the CIA.
Among the revelations in the previous release came accusations that the CIA possesses a library of hacking malware employed by other states, including Russia, that it can use to leave behind false “fingerprints” to cover up its exploits and mislead investigators.
A spokesman for the CIA said at the time the agency does not comment “on the authenticity of purported intelligence documents.”
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Amputees with prosthetic limbs may soon have much a better sense of touch, temperature and texture, thanks to the energy-saving power of the sun, British researchers said on Thursday.
While prosthetics are usually fully powered using batteries, a new prototype from University of Glasgow researchers opens up the possibility for so-called “solar-powered skin,” which would include better sense capabilities than current technology.
“If an entity is going out in a sunny day, then they won’t need any battery” to activate their senses, said Ravinder Dahiya, a research fellow at the university and a leader of the study. “They can feel, without worrying about battery.”
The technology involves installing a thin layer of pure carbon around a prosthetic arm, hand or leg. This allows light to pass through it and be easily used as solar energy, the researchers said in a research paper.
The sun can provide up to 15 times more energy than is usually needed to power a prosthetic limb, Dahiya said.
This extra — and renewable — energy can be used to power sensors that increase sense and feeling in a limb, so much so that the prosthetic can feel pressure, temperature and texture like natural skin, the paper said.
“The skin is sensitive to touch and pressure, so when you touch the skin there you will know what point you are contacting and how much force you are applying,” Dahiya said, describing the prototype.
The scientists are the first to develop a model for solar-powered prosthetic skin, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The technology could also increase the functionality of robots, allowing them to have a better understanding of what they touch and interact with, according to Dahiya.
If robots had limbs that are sensitive to touch and pressure they would be less likely to make errors or injure humans, he said.
The researchers hope to further develop the prototype in the next two years, Dahiya said. Eventually, he hopes to power the limb’s motors with the renewable energy as well – rather than just the skin.
“Because we are saving a lot of energy, our vision is that … if we store this energy in some way we will be able to also power the motors with the energy,” he said.
“The prosthetic will be fully energy autonomous.”
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Neda Saiyyada was among a handful of women in India whose company gave her six months of maternity leave last year instead of the mandatory three months. The extended leave helped the young mother enormously.
“When I was pregnant, my biggest worry was that I will not be able to leave my child,” she said. “In three months the child is nothing, can’t even hold the neck straight, and my child was eating and sitting up straight when I joined back, so it was a blessing in disguise.”
About 1.8 million women working in India’s formal sector will soon be legally entitled to get the extended maternity leave that Saiyyada was so grateful for after parliament passed a landmark bill earlier this month doubling maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks.
WATCH: India maternity leave
India is joining a handful of countries, such as Canada and Norway, that give women generous paid leave of six months or more.
Besides boosting maternal and child health, experts hope the longer maternity leave will encourage more women to return to work and help close a growing gender gap in a country where women account for about one-quarter of the workforce.
Women in workforce
Shachi Irde, executive director of the nonprofit Catalyst India Women’s Research Center, worried that the number of women in the workforce is not only small, it has been declining.
“In 2004 to 2005 there were about 37 percent women in the workforce, now it has dropped to 29 percent,” she said.
Pointing out that India is the only country facing this downward trend, she said “there are many reasons, but one of them is child care.”
According to a study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, 25 percent of new mothers in India quit their jobs after having their first child. And research by Catalyst shows that family responsibilities make it tougher for women to climb the career ladder: About half of working women do not go beyond junior or midlevel positions.
India has few quality child care facilities and most women fall back on the family to take care of children.
The new law tries to address that problem by making it compulsory for workplaces employing more than 50 people to set up day care facilities.
The extended leave itself also will be a huge help, said Neda Saiyyada, who added, “It will encourage women to stay connected with the workplace.”
Will hiring drop?
However some human resource professionals fear the new bill could discourage employers from hiring women, particularly small companies that would see the extended maternity leave as an additional burden.
“For businesses, it is just not easy to not have an employee for six months,” said Sairee Chahal, founder of SHEROES, a portal for women job seekers. “Instead of saying we will hire you as an employee, they will hire you for noncore roles or for more modular roles so this does not fall on them.”
She pointed out that maternity leave has been doubled at a time when the organized sector is facing multiple challenges and shorter business cycles.
“It (companies) is also under churn of a different kind, under churn of automation, under churn of globalization. So all those trends are overpowering it at this stage,” she said.
Others say the government should also have looked at involving both parents in the extended leave period instead of only making the provision for the mother.
Caveats
But in a country that is coping with a huge population of 1.3 billion people, the 26 weeks of leave will only be given for the first two children, and women would only be entitled to 12 weeks for a third child.
The bill also brings no benefits to women working in the informal sector, which employs as much as 90 percent of the female workforce. That includes housemaids, laborers or workers in small workshops, who do not get entitlements such as paid leave.
But for the time being, those who stand to get six months off are celebrating.
Traptika Chauhan who is expecting a baby in August was “extremely, extremely relieved” when she heard about the passage of the bill. She pointed out that with more and more people staying in nuclear families, child care is a challenge for working couples.
“I don’t have my parents who stay here or my in-laws who stay here. Then it is really difficult to leave such a small baby all by himself or herself and leave for work,” she said. “Plus your own body is trying to cope up so extremely, extremely great news and perfect for me.”
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Grumbling Venezuelans were lining up for scarce gasoline across the OPEC nation on Wednesday, due to mounting oil industry woes in the country with the world’s largest crude reserves.
Venezuela, which also has the world’s cheapest gasoline, has wrestled with intermittent gasoline shortages in recent months, especially in the central coastal area.
Long lines were reported in capital Caracas, which is unusual, and the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz on Wednesday.
Dozens of cars could be seen snaking into streets and some service stations were shuttered.
“I can’t find 95 octane gasoline anywhere. And we’re an oil-producing country! It’s pathetic,” said Jose Paredes in Caracas’ wealthy Altamira district.
The waits heap extra hardship on the nation of 30 million, where many already jostle for hours in hot lines for food and medicines amid product shortages caused by a brutal economic crisis under leftist president Nicolas Maduro.
State oil company PDVSA’s new head of trading blamed the shortages on problems with internal shipping of products and vowed the issue would be solved soon.
“We’re strengthening deliveries to the center of the country to stabilize gasoline supplies,” Ysmel Serrano tweeted.
Industry Woes
The gasoline shortage comes as new top executives are appointed at PDVSA, largely from political and military quarters, and increasing problems in Venezuela’s oil industry.
As of March 22, about a dozen tankers were waiting around PDVSA ports in Venezuela and the Caribbean to discharge refined products, components, and diluents crucial for oil blending, Reuters vessel tracking data showed.
Backlogs and payment delays to PDVSA’s suppliers, which are now demanding to be prepaid, sometimes mean shippers wait weeks to deliver oil products.
And many tankers are idle because PDVSA cannot pay for hull cleaning, inspections, and other port services, according to internal documents and Reuters data.
Union leader Ivan Freites, a PDVSA critic, said Venezuelan refineries, which have been at around half capacity for months amid outages, only had oil inventories for around two days versus a standard of 15.
“To solve this immediately, we would need deliveries from at least 10 tankers,” he said.
In Venezuela’s industrial city of Puerto Ordaz, the problem has been increasing this week and National Guard soldiers were trying to maintain order at operational service stations.
“We’ve been working extra hours, opening before 6 a.m and closing after 11 p.m. because of the lines,” said Caura service station manager Felix Rodriguez, tired and with blood-shot eyes, adding he had not been given a reason for the slow deliveries.
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Dozens of German companies including Siemens attended meetings in Bolivia this week to discuss building a coast-to-coast railway through Brazil, Bolivia and Peru that could speed up the export of corn and soybeans to Asia, German and Bolivian officials said on Wednesday.
The massive, $10-billion project would involve building a 3,700-kilometer (2,299 miles) rail line across the continent, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, through mountains and jungles.
“This is the project of the century,” said Germany’s State Secretary of German Transport, Building and Urban Development Rainer Bomba.
Representatives from Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia as well as Germany and Switzerland are still studying the feasibility of the train route, which would drastically shorten shipping routes from Brazil’s coast to Asian markets for key commodities.
Siemens, Europe’s top engineering group, participated in the meetings “to get more information about the project,” spokesman Dennis Hofmann said in an email.
“The project is at an early stage and questions have to be clarified,” he wrote.
The discussions, on Tuesday and Wednesday, come after a similar, Chinese-led project build a trans-South America railway ran into roadblocks late last year due to cost and environmental concerns.
Bolivian and German officials did not name other companies that attended the meetings, but Bomba said: “The presence of 40 German companies here demonstrates that Germany is not only in the planning phase, but also in the realization phase.”
Bolivia’s Public Works Minister Milton Claros told Reuters Bolivia and Germany had signed agreements for technical assistance and financing for the project. The ministry said the project would connect the Brazilian port of Santos to the Peruvian port of Ilo and had a preliminary cost estimate of $10 billion.
Brazil is expected to export 28 million tons of corn and 61 million tonnes of soybeans in the 2016/17 crop year according to the USDA. It is the world’s largest soybean exporter and second-largest corn exporter.
China and Peru agreed in 2015 to study a 3,000-mile-long railway through the Andes, but Peru balked when China estimated its cost at $60 billion. Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski later said the rail should go through Bolivia.
Land-locked Bolivia has long pined for a corridor to the Pacific, blasting Chile for taking its coastline in a war in the late 19th century and maintaining its Navy on Lake Titicaca.
Brazil had also questioned the Chinese project and would likely back the Bolivian route, a member of the Brazilian delegation said.
“We identified problems in the reports made by the Chinese group. We communicated the points of disagreement to Chinese authorities and we are seeing how we can continue the studies,” said Joao Carlos Parkinson, coordinator of economic affairs at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, who attended the meetings.
Brazil’s Ambassador to Bolivia Raymundo Santos said talks would continue.
“Our delegation confirmed Brazil’s interest in participating,” he said. “The political side has been resolved, but now the technical work has to move forward.”
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Google Maps users will soon be able to broadcast their movements to friends and family — the latest test of how much privacy people are willing to sacrifice in an era of rampant sharing.
The location-monitoring feature will begin rolling out Wednesday in an update to the Google Maps mobile app, which is already installed on most of the world’s smartphones. It will also be available on personal computers.
Google believes the new tool will be a more convenient way for people to let someone know where they are without having to text or call them. The Mountain View, California, company has set up the controls so individuals can decide with whom they want to share their whereabouts and for how long — anywhere from a few minutes to indefinitely.
But location sharing in one of the world’s most popular apps could cause friction in marriages and other relationships if one partner demands to know where the other is at all times. Similar tensions could arise if parents insist their teenagers turn on the location-sharing option before they go out.
Some share concerns
It could also be turned into a way to stalk someone entangled in an abusive relationship, warned Ruth Glenn, executive director for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “It has the potential to be another tool in an abuser’s toolkit,” she said.
Similar tracking is already available on other apps; Glympse, founded by former Microsoft employees, has offered this function for years. Although it isn’t as wide-ranging, Apple also offers a tracking option called “Find My Friends” on its iPhone, iPad and Watch.
That’s one of the reasons Google isn’t expecting a lot of complaints about adding the option to Maps, especially since everyone can decide when to turn it on and who can monitor them.
“We don’t feel like we are changing the game,” said Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s vice president of maps.
Tracking only a tap away
Maps users will be able to activate the location-sharing feature by tapping a button near the search bar and then picking a person from their contact list to text with the information. If the recipient doesn’t have the Google Maps app on their phone, it will text them a link to open the location on the map in a browser.
The settings also allow users to determine how long their movements can be tracked each time a location is shared. If no time limit is selected, Google will periodically send people email reminders that they’re still sharing their location, a step that Glenn said may help anyone who didn’t know an abusive partner was still following them.
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Tyrannosaurus rex and his buddies could be on the move as a new study proposes a massive shake-up of the dinosaur family tree.
Scientists who took a deeper look at dinosaur fossils suggest a different evolutionary history for dinosaurs, moving theropods such as T. rex to a new branch of the family tree and hinting at an earlier and more northern origin for dinosaurs.
The revised dinosaur tree makes more sense than the old one, initially designed more than a century ago based on hip shape, said Matt Baron, a paleontology doctoral student at the University of Cambridge in England. He is the lead author of the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
“If the authors are correct, this really turns our longstanding understanding of dinosaur evolution upside down!” Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at Macalaster College in Minnesota who wasn’t part of the study, wrote in an email.
Dinosaurs are split into two groups. One group has bird-like hips and is called Ornithischia. It includes the stegosaurus. The group with reptile-like hips is called Saurischia, and includes the brontosaurus.
Theropods, which include T. rex and the type of dinosaurs that later evolved into modern-day birds, were considered an offshoot from the group that includes the brontosaurus. The new study moves them to the group that includes the stegosaurus, but on a different branch.
“It means that animals that we’ve always thought were very closely related to each other might not be,” said Rogers, who praised the study, saying it prompts a whole bunch of new questions.
Baron and colleagues looked at 450 characteristics of 75 dinosaur species. They used computer simulations to try to group together those with similar characteristics, creating tens of thousands of potential dinosaur family trees. The proposed one combines the 80 most likely scenarios, he said.
It may sound like an academic exercise, but it’s important to understand how big animals changed with time, Baron said, noting that the dinosaurs ruled Earth for more than 150 million years.
His research suggests that dinosaurs popped up 247 million years ago — 10 million years earlier than the standard theory says — with a dinosaur from Tanzania in East Africa. It’s called Nyasasaurus, was 6 to 10 feet tall and a plant-eater.
He also found an animal that’s not quite a dinosaur, but as close as you can get, that is a reptilian ancestor. And it was in Scotland. Previous theories pointed to dinosaurs first evolving out of the Southern Hemisphere, and many outside scientists said there wasn’t enough evidence to support Baron’s northern concept.
The paper is already dividing dinosaur experts. Famed dinosaur expert Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago called the basis of the Baron family tree “weak” and said “the central question the paper leaves unanswered for me is ‘Why?'”
Matthew Carrano, dinosaur curator at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, said it’s hard to side with any theory because early dinosaur fossil records are so incomplete.
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The big snowstorm in the U.S. Midwest and East last week was a respite for some small-business owners whose revenue took a hit from the generally mild winter and who now are rethinking their cold-weather strategies.
Retailers who sell winter clothing or snow shovels have had fewer customers this season. Plumbers who expected to fix frozen pipes have had less work, and people who make money removing snow have had idle equipment. On the flip side, better weather means more business for companies that cater to people who want to be outdoors.
The period from December through February was the sixth-warmest winter on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that compiles statistics about the weather. The average January temperature in the lower 48 states, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, was 33.6 degrees Fahrenheit (less than 1 degree Celsius). That’s a few degrees above the 20th-century average. And February was downright hot in some places — nearly 12,000 local warm records were set or tied, including a 99-degree (37-degree Celsius) reading in Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, snow was sparse in many places. Chicago, which has often had 1 foot (0.3 meter) or more in February, was virtually snowless last month. The temperate weather meant dog owners didn’t need warm coats and protective booties for their pooches. Hope Saidel, co-owner of the retailer Golly Gear in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, had half the normal amount of sales during January.
‘Devastating’ drop
“When we heard the 10-day forecast was going to be up in the 60s [Fahrenheit], we thought, ‘This is not going to be good,’ ” Saidel says. “It was devastating.”
Saidel quickly changed her strategy to focus on warm-weather items like leashes, harnesses and bicycle baskets that can carry small dogs, and moved the coats and booties away from the front of the store. That helped salvage the season.
The warmer weather saved homeowners from frozen and burst pipes, but their good fortune has curtailed business for Ted Puzio’s plumbing and electrical company in Roanoke, Virginia. The average low temperature in the area this winter has been several degrees above normal, according to the government figures. Southern Trust Home Services, whose business is entirely residential, also isn’t getting as many service calls as usual for heating system repairs.
Puzio’s overall business is growing, but he notices the shortfall from the plumbing side of the company.
“We’re not getting the bump-up we typically do,” Puzio said.
Atlantic Westchester, a Bedford Hills, New York, company that services commercial heating and air-conditioning systems, makes more money when it’s colder and heating systems have to work harder. But this has been the second mild winter in a row, and President Bud Hammer estimates revenue is down 15 percent from a typical season.
Maintenance work
To make back some revenue, the company has sought work at buildings that hadn’t maintained their heating systems during and after the Great Recession that began nearly a decade ago. Hammer’s salespeople are contacting building managers and keeping watch for potential customers with telltale signs of trouble — like a building that has open windows because the heating system is in overdrive.
Temperatures that the U.S. government said have been several degrees higher than normal have hurt both of Tara Saxton’s businesses in the Fremont, New Hampshire, area. Saxon’s contracting company, KTM Exteriors & Recycling, has missed out on cold-weather work like clearing snow off roofs. It also has been unable to start on warmer-weather projects like replacing roofs and siding, because temperatures that made it into the 60s (more than 15 degrees Celsius) have also quickly nose-dived. Although Saxton has been doing more interior work like kitchens, revenue is still down more than $200,000 this winter.
Saxton’s other business, Maple Rock Racing, a promoter of snowmobile races, was hurt when several races had to be postponed because of the lack of snow — the second straight year a mild weather has disrupted the schedule. For the races that were held, attendance was in the hundreds, not thousands. Some sponsors already withdrew after last winter, and Saxton is uneasy about the future.
“I’m sure after this year, we’ll be in a similar situation when we go calling [sponsors] this summer,” she said.
But some companies got a revenue boost this winter.
At Sunnyland Furniture in Dallas, a patio furniture retailer whose sales usually slow in winter, warmer weather enticed people to buy fire pits and seating so they can sit outside when the temperature is in the 50s (more than 10 degrees Celsius), Vice President Brad Schweig said. Shoppers are also looking ahead to spring.
“We’ve seen things ramp up earlier than usual,” Schweig said.
Swimming in customers
Jason Askins’ pool remodeling and repair franchise had an 80 percent increase in business the first two months of this year because of the warmer weather in Edmond, Oklahoma.
“People are starting to think about getting the pool ready,” said Askins, whose phone at America’s Swimming Pool doesn’t usually start ringing until April. The extra business allowed Askins to hire seasonal workers early; he’s already brought in five and expects six more, giving him a staff of 15.
When Michelle and Frank Griffith started their food truck business, Firehouse Grilling Co., last year, they expected to take the winter off, as Cleveland usually has high temperatures around 37 (3 degrees Celsius). But the average since December has been several degrees above that, with February’s highs around 50 (10 degrees Celsius), according to government figures — warm enough to bring people outdoors to get something to eat.
“The snowblower hasn’t been even taken out,” Michelle Griffith said. She estimated that the couple picked up an extra 20 percent in revenue because they kept the converted firetruck operating through the winter. But they did change the menu to fit the calendar.
“We’ve done chili, hot chocolate, warm comfort foods,” Griffith said. “I wouldn’t sell chili in the middle of the summer at an amusement park.”
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A discovery involving a rare California frog has researchers hopping for joy.
Nine egg masses from the California red-legged frog were discovered on March 14 in a creek in the Santa Monica Mountains, which stretch from Los Angeles westward along the Malibu coast into Ventura County.
The endangered species hasn’t been seen naturally in the mountains since the 1970s and the National Park Service has been trying to rebuild the population by transplanting eggs from a population in the nearby Simi Hills.
The discovery of new egg masses suggests that after four years of effort, the population is showing signs of sustaining itself without human help, although transplants will continue, the park service indicated.
“I was literally crying when the stream team showed me the photos of egg masses,” Katy Delaney, a National Park Service ecologist with Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said in a statement. “The years of work we’ve put in is showing amazing progress. There’s still plenty of work to be done, but this is a major moment for the project.”
Red-legged frogs famously appear in the Mark Twain story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
At 2 to 5 inches long, they are the largest native frogs in the West and once were found throughout the state. However, habitat loss, pollution and the rise of nonnative species such as crayfish and predatory bullfrogs have vastly shrunk the population.
Efforts are under way to restore the species in other areas. Last year, thousands of tadpoles were released in Yosemite National Park, where the natural population vanished more than 40 years ago.
Thousands more tadpoles and adult frogs are being bred at the San Francisco Zoo & Gardens for release in the park.
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Feel down about getting older? Wish your life was better? Worried about all the problems that come with age?
A new survey suggests you need only wait: Many pessimistic feelings held by people earlier in life take an optimistic turn as they move toward old age. Even hallmark concerns of old age — about declining health, lack of independence and memory loss — lessen as Americans age.
“The younger generation is less optimistic,” said Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer at West Health, a nonprofit focused on aging issues whose related research institute released the poll Wednesday with the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. “Perhaps as they age they will build resilience and they build the capacity that will help them cope better.”
Generally speaking, optimism about growing older increased steadily with age, the poll found. Among people in their 30s, 46 percent described themselves as mostly or somewhat optimistic about aging, compared with 66 percent of people 70 and older. Likewise, respondents showed a decade-by-decade increase in feeling confident, not helpless, about aging, and in assessing their household finances positively.
When asked to rate their quality of life, people noted an improvement as they moved from their 50s to their 60s and beyond. Among respondents 70 and older, two-thirds rated their life excellent or very good, compared with about half of 30-somethings.
Least likely to fret about health
Among some metrics, pessimism appears to grow as people move out of their 30s into middle age before falling late in life. Those 70 and older were least likely to express worry about age bringing poor health, a move into a nursing home or memory loss. They also were least likely to fear old age could prompt them to be disrespected or become a burden on their families. People in their 60s and beyond had the lowest fear of losing their independence.
Other research has pointed to greater satisfaction, happiness and optimism among older people.
Agha said the latest survey reflected the idea that people often find in their later years a growing appreciation for facets of life they may have focused on less when they were younger, including spirituality and personal relationships. Fulfillment from those things can help bolster overall happiness, even in the face of potential physical decline.
The NORC-West Health poll also found those 70 and older were also less likely than younger people to feel that seniors are forgotten in America today or that they receive too little respect. Not surprisingly, older people were less likely to see the age of 65 as a marker of old age. About four in 10 people in their 30s regarded that number as symbolic of reaching old age, twice as large a share as those in their 70s or beyond.
The poll was based on online and telephone interviews of 3,026 adults age 30 and older who were members of NORC’s nationally representative AmeriSpeak panel. It was conducted September 19 through October 21 and had a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
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Sears, once the monolith of American retail, says that there is “substantial doubt” that it will be able to keep its doors open.
Company shares, which hit an all-time low last month, tumbled more than 12 percent Wednesday.
Sears has been a member of the retail dead pool for years, but until this week the company had not openly acknowledged its tenuous existence, said Ken Perkins, who heads the research firm Retail Metrics LLC.
Sears has long maintained that by balancing the sale of key assets while at the same time enticing customers with loyalty programs, it would eventually turn the corner.
Yet industry analysts have placed the staggering sums of money that Sears is losing beside the limited number of assets it has left to sell, and concluded that the storied retailer may have reached the point of no return.
The company has lost $10.4 billion since 2011, the last year that it made a profit. Excluding charges that can be listed as one-time events, the loss is $4.57 billion, Perkins says, but how the losses are stacked no longer seem to matter.
“They’re past the tipping point,” Perkins said. “This is a symbolic acknowledgement of the end of Sears of what we know it to be.”
For Sears to survive, Perkins believes it would need to do so as a company running maybe 200 stores. It now operates 1,430, a figure that has been vastly reduced in recent years.
Analysts see not much of a future
As for Kmart, which Sears also owns, Perkins does not see much of a future.
Millions of dollars have been funneled through the hedge fund of Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert to keep Sears afloat but with sales fading, it is burning through cash. Lampert combined Sears and Kmart in 2005, about two years after he helped bring Kmart out of bankruptcy
According to a regulatory filing late Tuesday, Sears Holdings Corp. lost more than $2 billion last year. Adjusted for one-time charges, its loss was $887 million.
Sears has been selling assets, most recently its Craftsman tool brand. But it says its pension agreements may prevent the spin-off of more businesses, potentially leading to a shortfall in funding.
“Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” Sears said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Sears, which employs 140,000 people, announced a major restructuring plan in February with hopes of cutting costs by $1 billion through the sale of more stores, jobs cuts and brand asset sales. And it’s reconfiguring its debts to give itself more breathing room.
But it has to get more people through the doors or shopping online for what it’s selling.
Sales at Sears and Kmart locations that have been open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, dropped 10.3 percent in the final quarter of 2016.
The company plans to use a big portion of the $900 million it got for Craftsman to shore up its pension plan. It will put $250 million in cash and some income from annual payments toward the plan as part of a deal with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., a federal agency that protects private pension plans.
The company said in its regulatory filing, however, that its agreement with the agency might stand in the way of more asset sales that would buy it more time.
Lampert has long pledged to return Sears to greatness, leveraging best-known brands like Kenmore and DieHard, as well as its vast holdings of land.
Failing to reach new kind of consumer
Those aspirations have been scrambled by a new consumer that has ripped up the decades-old playbook that the industry has relied upon for years.
There are also new and dynamic players that have also revolutionized the market, namely Amazon.com.
Department stores have been among the hardest hit by those seismic changers as Americans spend money on their homes or on dinners out, rather than on clothing. When they do buy clothes, they’re not spending much, hitting up places like T.J. Maxx for fat discounts.
Sears has upped its presence online, but is having a hard time disguising its age. Its stores are in need of a major redo.
Longtime rivals like Wal-Mart and Target are spending heavily to revitalize stores and they’re intensely focused on a new consumer that goes online before stepping into a store. Meanwhile, J.C. Penney has been hitting Sears hard by bringing back major appliances to its stores. Penney, Macy’s and others have been shuttering locations as well. But real estate research firm Green Street Advisors says about 800 stores, or 20 percent of all U.S. mall anchor space, would need to close to match the inflation-adjusted sales productivity of 2006.
Sears in January said it would close 108 additional Kmart and 42 more Sears locations.
In its most recent quarter, Sears, based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just northwest of Chicago, lost $607 million. Revenue declined to $6.05 billion from $7.3 billion during the same period the year before.
It was the sixth consecutive quarter of losses.
“They’ve been delusional about their ability to turn around the business,” said Perkins.
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