People who survive a stroke often struggle with a range of devastating consequences. It can take months of physical therapy for them to be able to use their limbs or start to feel sensations. That’s why a prototype of an artificial hand has been developed to help survivors experience sensations like cold or hot, and distinguish between different materials like glass or cardboard. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, this innovation was recently revealed at a technology show. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Day: June 13, 2017
They came for the music, the mind-bending drugs, to resist the Vietnam War and 1960s American orthodoxy, or simply to escape summer boredom. And they left an enduring legacy.
This season marks the 50th anniversary of that legendary “Summer of Love,” when throngs of American youth descended on San Francisco to join a cultural revolution.
Thinking back on 1967, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead recalls a creative explosion that sprouted from fissures in American society. That summer marked a pivot point in rock-and-roll history, he says, but it was about much more than the music.
“There was a spirit in the air,” said Weir, who dropped out of high school and then helped form the Grateful Dead in 1965. “We figured that if enough of us got together and put our hearts and minds to it, we could make anything happen.”
San Francisco, now a hub of technology and unrecognizable from its grittier, more freewheeling former self, is taking the anniversary seriously. Hoping for another invasion of visitors – this time with tourist dollars – the city is celebrating with museum exhibits, music and film festivals, Summer of Love-inspired dance parties and lecture panels. Hotels are offering discount packages that include “psychedelic cocktails,” “Love Bus” tours, tie-dyed tote bags and bubble wands.
The city’s travel bureau, which is coordinating the effort, calls it an “exhilarating celebration of the most iconic cultural event in San Francisco history.”
One thing the anniversary makes clear is that what happened here in the 1960s could never happen in San Francisco today, simply because struggling artists can’t afford the city anymore. In the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which was ground zero for the counterculture, two-bedroom apartments now rent for $5,000 a month. San Francisco remains a magnet for young people, but even those earning six-figure Silicon Valley salaries complain about the cost of living.
In the mid-1960s, rent in Haight-Ashbury was extremely cheap, Weir, now 69, told The Associated Press.
“That attracted artists and bohemians in general because the bohemian community tended to move in where they could afford it,” he said.
During those years, the Grateful Dead shared a spacious Victorian on Ashbury Street. Janis Joplin lived down the street. Across from her was Joe McDonald, of the psychedelic rock band Country Joe and the Fish.
Jefferson Airplane eventually bought a house a few blocks away on Fulton Street, where they hosted legendary, wild parties.
“The music is what everyone seems to remember, but it was a lot more than that,” said David Freiberg, 75, a singer and bassist for Quicksilver Messenger Service who later joined Jefferson Airplane. “It was artists, poets, musicians, all the beautiful shops of clothes and hippie food stores. It was a whole community.”
The bands dropped by each other’s houses and played music nearby, often in free outdoor concerts at Golden Gate Park and its eastward extension known as the Panhandle. Their exciting new breed of folk, jazz and blues-inspired electrical music became known as the San Francisco Sound. Several of its most influential local acts – the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, which launched Joplin’s career – shot to fame during the summer’s three-day Monterey Pop Festival.
“Every fantasy about the summer of ’67 that was ever created – peace, joy, love, nonviolence, wear flowers in your hair and fantastic music – was real at Monterey. It was bliss,” said Dennis McNally, the Grateful Dead’s longtime publicist and official biographer who has curated an exhibit at the California Historical Society that runs through Sept. 10.
The exhibit, “On the Road to the Summer of Love,” explains how that epic summer came about and why San Francisco was its inevitable home. McNally uncovered 100 photographs, some never seen publicly, that trace San Francisco’s contrarian roots to the Beat poets of the 1950s, followed by civil rights demonstrations and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s.
The national media paid little attention to San Francisco’s psychedelic community until January 1967, when poets and bands joined forces for the “Human Be-In,” a Golden Gate Park gathering that unexpectedly drew about 50,000 people, McNally said. It was there that psychologist and LSD-advocate Timothy Leary stood on stage and delivered his famous mantra: “Turn on. Tune In. Drop out.”
“After the media got hold, it just exploded,” McNally said. “Suddenly, a flood descends on Haight Street. Every bored high school kid – and that’s all of them – is saying, `How do I get to San Francisco?”’
An exhaustive exhibit at San Francisco’s de Young museum, “The Summer of Love Experience,” offers a feel-good trip back in time. There’s a psychedelic light show, a 1960s soundtrack and galleries with iconic concert posters, classic photographs and hippie chic fashions worn by Joplin, Jerry Garcia and others. It runs through Aug. 20.
But that summer’s invasion carried a dark cloud. Tens of thousands of youths looking for free love and drugs flooded into San Francisco, living in the streets, begging for food. Parents journeyed to the city in search of their young runaways. An epidemic of toxic psychedelics and harder drugs hit the streets.
“Every loose nut and bolt in America rattled out here to San Francisco, and it got pretty messy,” Weir said.
The longtimers saw it as the end of an era, but one that shaped history.
“We created a mindset that became intrinsic to the fabric of America today,” said Country Joe McDonald, now 75. “Every single thing we did was adapted, folded into America – gender attitudes, ecological attitudes, the invention of rock and roll.”
Half a century later, McDonald, who lives in Berkeley, feels the rumblings of history repeating itself.
UC Berkeley is again at the center of a free speech debate, albeit of a different nature. Discontent with the U.S. government and President Donald Trump has stirred the largest protests he’s seen since the Vietnam War. In the women’s marches across America, he felt echoes of the Summer of Love.
“I think there’s a similarity,” McDonald said, drawing a parallel to the massive anti-Trump turnout marked by nonviolence, playful pink protest hats, creative signs and a determination to change the country’s political course. “Both were about saying goodbye to the past and hello to the future.”
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Britain’s descent into political crisis just days before Brexit talks begin has sapped confidence among business leaders and infuriated bosses who were already grappling with the fallout from the vote to leave the EU.
The failure by Prime Minister Theresa May to win a parliamentary majority in last week’s election has pushed the world’s fifth largest economy towards a level of political uncertainty not seen since the 1970s.
May called the election to secure a mandate for her vision of a “hard Brexit” – driving down migration by taking Britain out of the single market and the customs union. Instead, she got a hung parliament in which no single party has a majority. Business leaders demanded a re-think.
“The U.K. has had a reputation, earned over the generations, for stability and predictability in its government,” a senior executive at a multi-national company listed on the London FTSE 100 told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “That reputation in 12 months has been destroyed, truly destroyed. First by Brexit and now through this election.”
A survey by the Institute of Directors (IoD) found only 20 percent of its nearly 700 members were now optimistic about the British economy over the next 12 months, compared with 57 percent who were quite or very pessimistic.
The IoD survey, taken after the election, found a negative swing of 34 points in confidence in the economy from its previous survey in May.
“It is hard to overstate what a dramatic impact the current political uncertainty is having on business leaders, and the consequences could — if not addressed immediately — be disastrous for the U.K. economy,” said Stephen Martin, director general of the IoD.
The collapse in confidence, which follows a short-term drop after last year’s Brexit vote, coincides with a slowdown in the wider economy that has taken hold since the start of this year, as rising inflation pushes up the price of goods.
Figures from credit card firm Visa showed British consumers turned more cautious even before the shock election result, with households cutting their spending for the first time in nearly four years last month.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned there was now a risk businesses would cut back on investment which has largely held up since last year’s Brexit vote.
And the trade group that represents manufacturers, the EEF, said its members were having to navigate the most uncertain political territory in Britain for decades.
Both groups called on the government to rethink its approach to Brexit, saying the country needed tariff-free access to the single market and a steady flow of migrant workers.
Some executives hoped the political paralysis would lead to a ‘softer Brexit’, with access to markets prioritized over a clamp down on immigration.
“Here we are again: another bolt from the blue, a political earthquake that we didn’t think used to happen in the U.K.,” CBI Director General Carolyn Fairbairn said at a conference hosted by the Resolution Foundation. “But I do think there are opportunities in this, and it is an opportunity to refocus back on the economy to talk about jobs, growth, future prosperity.”
Having slid to its lowest for nearly two months against the dollar on Friday, the pound fell broadly again on Monday.
Left in limbo
Business executives warned the political uncertainty could be felt across a wave of sectors.
Leaders of the drugs industry warned of the hazards of government limbo at a critical time for the highly regulated sector as companies seek clarity on the rules that will govern their business after Brexit.
Andy Bruce, the CEO of Lookers, one of Britain’s biggest car dealerships, said the lack of a clear result meant the highly successful industry had now entered “uncharted waters” in terms of how many new cars it could sell.
And Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, told Reuters he feared increased economic uncertainty, which meant “weak investment and postponement of decision making.”
“Now it seems that we could have no deal because of the short time fuse and lack of decisive government decision making, or a soft Brexit, the latter with more movement and membership of the single market,” he said.
Bankers, at the heart of London’s huge financial center, cautioned of the impact on takeover activity.
“So long as uncertainty is there I don’t see that as particularly positive for M&A in the short term,” Karen Cook, chairman of investment banking at Goldman Sachs said at the Reuters Global M&A summit.
Gareth Vale, marketing director at recruitment group Manpower, said its clients were very apprehensive, and had not yet fully grasped the impact that Brexit would have.
“I think the uncertainty around Brexit, and more recently the general election, has created a sense of almost inertia, which has prevented them from considering some of the bigger seismic shifts that are on the horizon.”
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The Trump administration has a backup plan to keep the government from defaulting on its financial obligations even if Congress misses an August deadline to raise the debt limit, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told a congressional panel Monday.
Mnuchin had previously set an August deadline for the federal government to avoid a catastrophic default. Mnuchin said he still prefers that Congress increase the government’s authority to borrow before lawmakers leave on a five-week break in August.
However, he said he is “comfortable” that the Treasury Department can meet the government’s financial obligations through the start of September. Private analysts say Mnuchin probably has even greater leeway.
“If for whatever reason Congress does not act before August, we do have backup plans that we can fund the government,” Mnuchin said without elaborating. “So I want to make it clear that that is not the timeframe that would create a serious problem.”
The federal government technically hit the debt limit in March, but Treasury has been using accounting steps known as “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default.
Shortly before Mnuchin testified, a Washington think tank projected that despite the slowdown in revenues, the government will have enough cash to pay its bills until October or November.
The Bipartisan Policy Center says that revenue results from this month’s quarterly tax payments could clarify the deadline, but for now it forecasts that Mnuchin has sufficient maneuvering room to keep the government solvent into the fall. The policy center says a big Oct. 2 payment into the military retirement trust fund could trigger default.
As of Friday, the Treasury had a cash balance of $148 billion, down from $204 billion a month ago. The national debt is nearly $20 trillion, including money owed to several federal programs.
Vote on debt limit
Raising the debt limit has become a politically-charged vote in Congress, even though economists believe that an unprecedented default would be catastrophic for the economy. Republicans, who control Congress and the White House, are struggling to come up with a strategy to raise the debt limit, with some GOP members demanding spending cuts in exchange for their vote.
But since Republicans have many members who simply refuse to vote for a debt increase, GOP leaders such as Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin may have no choice but to seek help from Democrats, who are demanding that any debt limit hike be “clean” of GOP add-ons.
Lawmakers are trying to deal with the debt limit while at the same time a House panel is beginning work on spending bills to fund the government.
Republicans controlling the House are taking the first steps to approve President Donald Trump’s big budget increase for veterans’ health care and the Pentagon.
Spending bill
At stake is an $89 billion spending bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs and Pentagon construction projects that’s scheduled for a preliminary panel vote on Monday. The bill would give the VA a 5 percent budget hike for the budget year beginning in October as the agency works to improve wait times and correct other problems.
The Defense Department, meanwhile, would receive a $2 billion, 10 percent increase for military construction projects at bases in both the U.S. and abroad.
“This legislation includes the funding and policies necessary to deliver on our promises to our military and our veterans,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, a Republican from New Jersey.
Republicans are still struggling to come up with a broader budget that would dictate spending levels for other agencies. Trump has proposed sharp cuts to many domestic agencies and foreign aid as a means to pay for increases for the military. But many GOP lawmakers have already signaled that they disagree with Trump.
Under Washington’s arcane budget rules, lawmakers are first supposed to pass an overall fiscal blueprint called a budget resolution before tackling the annual round of spending bills. This year, that budget plan is also the key to unlocking action later this year on legislation to overhaul the tax code, a top GOP priority.
Instead, Republicans are split into three camps on spending: defense hawks who want even more money for the military than proposed by Trump; pragmatists who are defenders of domestic programs; and conservatives who agree with Trump’s plan to cut domestic agencies and deliver the proceeds to the Pentagon.
For now, those GOP divisions have meant an impasse for Trump’s overall budget and tax agenda.
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Israel will reduce electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian Authority limited how much it pays for power to the enclave run by Hamas, Israeli officials said Monday.
The decision by Israel’s security cabinet is expected to shorten by 45 minutes the daily average of four hours of power that Gaza’s 2 million residents receive from an electricity grid dependent on Israeli supplies, the officials said.
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed Hamas’ failure to reimburse it for electricity for the reduction in power supplies.
But PA spokesman Tareq Rashmawi coupled that explanation with a demand that Hamas agree to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ unity initiatives, which include holding the first parliamentary and presidential elections in more than a decade.
“We renew the call to the Hamas movement and the de facto government there to hand over to us all responsibilities of government institutions in Gaza so that the government can provide its best services to our people in Gaza,” he said.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Israel and the Palestinian Authority “will bear responsibility for the grave deterioration” in Gaza’s health and environmental situation.
Any worsening to Gaza’s power crisis — its main electrical plant is off-line in a Hamas-PA dispute over taxation — could cause the collapse of health services already reliant on stand-alone generators, many of them in a poor state of repair, said Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza.
Israel charges the PA 40 million shekels ($11 million) a month for electricity, deducting that from the transfers of Palestinian tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Authority.
Israel does not engage with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group.
Last month, the Palestinian Authority informed Israel that it would cover only 70 percent of the monthly cost of electricity that the Israel Electric Corporation supplies to the Gaza Strip.
At the security cabinet session late on Sunday, ministers decided that Israel would not make up the shortfall, the officials said.
“This is a decision by [Abbas] … Israelis paying Gaza’s electricity bill is an impossible situation,” Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Army Radio.
Israeli military and security chiefs backed the move, despite concern Hamas could respond by increasing hostilities with Israel.
Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas’s Fatah movement in 2007, and several attempts at reconciliation, most recently in 2014, have failed. Hamas has accused Abbas of trying to turn the screw on them to make political concessions.
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Work longer hours. Get fewer benefits. Retire years later. Those are the ingredients of the bitter medicine Brazilians are being asked to swallow as a cure for the country’s moribund, overregulated economy.
It would be a tough sell under any conditions, but it’s even harder because few trust the politicians trying to pour it down their throats. And a wave of corruption scandals that threaten to topple even the president could water down, if not sink, any cure.
President Michel Temer finds himself in a dilemma: He needs the economic reforms to boost his credibility — and perhaps even to avoid being ousted over a flurry of corruption allegations. But his credibility and that of his allies is so low that few Brazilians trust them to do what’s necessary to expand the job market and get people back to work.
Temer’s future is unclear
Congress — and action on the reforms — has all but come to a halt in recent weeks after a recording emerged in which Temer apparently endorses the payment of hush money to a former lawmaker imprisoned on money laundering and corruption charges. He has also been accused of accepting bribes. He denies wrongdoing, but he could soon face formal charges.
The country’s political and business class has been distracted, when not terrified, by a stream of revelations about bribery, kickbacks and general corruption centered on the national oil company, Petrobras, that has led to the jailing of dozens of the country’s elite. The politicians also face an impending deadline: next year’s October elections.
“The only thing that appears certain is that the reform agenda has been compromised,” said Silvio Campos Neto, an economist at Tendencias, a Sao Paulo-based consultancy. “The survival of this government is uncertain, and this has a negative impact on the resumption of investments.”
Reforms are a must
Business leaders and top economists argue that reforms are needed to convince investors to start pouring money again into Latin America’s largest economy, which is tentatively emerging from a deep recession.
They’ve been backing Temer’s proposed reforms that would lengthen the legal work day, let agreements negotiated between employees and bosses override some labor laws and allow companies to outsource more work and hire temporary workers for longer — potentially reducing the number of jobs with full benefits.
Temer also wants workers to contribute longer before they receive pension benefits. Many public workers in Brazil now can retire at age 54 with nearly full benefits. The reforms would set a minimum retirement age for the first time in Brazil, at 65 for men and 62 for women.
Approval rating under 10 percent
The proposed cuts are one reason Temer’s approval rating is below 10 percent in many polls, giving him no political leverage beyond the doors of congress, where his nervous allies hold a majority.
Unions staged an April 28 general strike that brought much of the country to a halt, and they promise more action.
If Temer doesn’t listen, “we will once again stop Brazil and then maybe Brasilia will hear the voice of the people,” said Joao Cayres, director of the Central Workers Union, which represents over 7 million people.
Business-minded economists argue that current labor laws discourage hiring. And the generous benefits for retirees are taking an increasing chunk of the country’s gross domestic product.
“The economy won’t collapse if Congress fails to approve the reforms, but its recovery will be slow and full of uncertainty,” said Ricardo Ribeiro, of Sao Paulo’s MCM Consultancy.
Temer won’t step down
Temer, who denies wrongdoing, argues he can still deliver the reforms.
At a meeting of business leaders on May 30, he insisted the economy was “on the right track” and promised to leave “the house in order” for the next president.
Two days later, he got a rare piece of good news: The country’s gross domestic product expanded by 1 percent in the first quarter of this year as compared to the last quarter of 2016 thanks in part to bumper harvests of soy and corn.
It was the first time GDP had grown after eight consecutive quarters of contraction, ending Brazil’s worst recession in decades. The economy has been dragged down in large part by a slump in global prices for its commodities.
Ruling favors Temer
Temer also notched a victory last week when Brazil’s top electoral court voted narrowly to reject allegations of illegal financing in the 2014 presidential campaign. He could have been ousted if it had ruled otherwise.
Risk consultancy Eurasia said Temer’s breaks wouldn’t be enough to get the existing pension reform measure through. “A stripped-down version of it is likely, although even then close to a toss-up,” wrote Christopher Garman, head of Brazil analysis for the group.
Some 14 million Brazilians are unemployed, or 13.7 percent of the workforce, up from 10.9 percent at the same period last year.
Thousands of public workers are not being paid on time, or at all. Among them are the chorus, orchestra and ballet at the Municipal Theatre of Rio de Janeiro. They plan to ask theater-goers for donations of canned food and household goods as they enter for the season-opening opera “Carmina Burana.”
Ballet dancer has backup plan
Renata Gouveia, a 19-year-veteran ballet dancer at the company, spends her nights making truffles to sell and is designing and selling her own dancewear.
“Out of something terrible, I’m trying to take out the positive, working in things I never saw myself doing,” she said.
“Talk that the economy is improving is “a joke,” said Jose Augusto, a 53-year-old handyman who came to the Ministry of Labor in Rio de Janeiro recently looking for work. “In order to hit the restart button, Brazil needs to employ its workers first. We are millions.”
“Our politicians are shameless thieves,?” added Augusto. “Everything’s rotten, starting with the president and all of the congressmen.”
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