Day: September 13, 2017

Workers on Seasonal US Visas Tell Panel of Abuses

As Congress looks into ways to fix the immigration system, often with the goal of safeguarding job opportunities for U.S. workers, at least one immigration organization argues that current federal regulations fail to protect foreign visa holders from job misrepresentation, recruitment fees, exploitation, fraud and discrimination.

Four women who came to the U.S. on temporary visas were part of a panel discussion Tuesday in Washington to raise awareness of a system they said often treats human beings like commodities.

“In the workplace, there were about 80 of us, women, and we had a hard time,” Adareli Hernandez, a former H-2B worker, said in Spanish during a discussion hosted by the Center for Migrant Rights (CDM), a Mexico-based organization with an office in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hernandez, who is from Hidalgo, Mexico, looked for two years before she was finally able to get a H-2B seasonal non-farm work visa to work at a chocolate packing factory in Louisiana.

Inequality in workplace

While men who worked at the factory earned higher wages by carrying and stacking boxes, women were relegated to packing chocolates on assembly lines with no time off for illness.

“We weren’t able to make complaints, because if we did make complaints, we were threatened by the manager. … We were told we didn’t have a right to file complaints, because we didn’t have rights here in the United States,” she said.

But after four seasons as an H-2B visa worker, Hernandez fought for better labor conditions along with 70 colleagues. She said though work conditions improved, the company decided not to rehire her or co-workers.

Hernandez’s testimony is one of the 34 detailed worker stories featured in a CDM report, Engendering Exploitation: Gender Inequality in U.S. Labor Migration Programs.

Though the report focuses on women migrant workers, CDM policy recommendations say, “All temporary labor migration programs should be subjected to the same rules and protection so that unscrupulous employers and recruiters do not use the patchwork of visa regulations to evade liability.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, about 1.4 million people are recruited to work in the U.S. each year through temporary work visas, including H-1B (specialty occupations), H-2B, J-1 (exchange visitor program) and TN (Canadians and Mexicans in certain occupations under the North American Free Trade Agreement).

The visas may vary, but immigration and labor organizations report that recruited foreign workers face common patterns of abuses.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security cracked down on abuse within the H-2B system, hoping to prevent the exploitation of workers and to ensure U.S. workers’ awareness of available jobs.

Rosa’s story

A licensed veterinarian, who asked to be called only Rosa for fear of retaliation, submitted a statement that was read during CDM’s discussion. Rosa was unable to join the panel because the U.S. government rejected her application for a tourist visa.

“Although the U.S. government had no problem offering me a TN work visa at the employer’s request, it won’t allow me to visit the country as a tourist. Anyway, that’s not going to stop me from sharing my story,” Rosa’s statement said.

Rosa is a former TN visa worker who was hired for an animal scientist position in Wisconsin. She was “thrilled” for the opportunity to work at a place where she would put in practice the skills she acquired as a recent graduate from a top Mexican university.

TN visas were created within NAFTA to allow U.S. employers to hire Canadian and Mexican workers for specialized jobs.

“I was deceived by my employer. They promised me a salary that they failed to pay, a contract they didn’t respect,” Rosa’s statement said.

“The supervisors would yell at us constantly and tell us that our visa was only good for obeying orders. I cleaned animal troughs, unloaded them from trucks. As the only woman, they would also give me jobs they considered ‘women’s work,’ cleaning the bathroom or the kitchen,” she said.

Protecting American workers

Rachel Micah-Jones, CDM’s executive director, said there is a need to ensure workers have basic protections, including the right to understand a contract before entering into an agreement with a U.S. company.

Immigration hard-liners agree about the need to protect visa workers, but they also express concern about the welfare of American workers.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said though she agrees these visa programs “can be beneficial to certain employees for legitimate purposes,” there is a “big problem” with employers abusing the system as a way to bring in “workers who can be paid less, and who end up replacing American and legal immigrant workers.”

“The solution is not necessarily to end the program, but to reform it and for the government agencies that are responsible for these programs to do a better job of oversight to make sure that they are not abused,” Vaughan told VOA.

Vaughan was scheduled to speak about guest worker visa programs at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that had been scheduled for Wednesday. The hearing was postponed because government officials were focused on hurricane response and recovery efforts after two storms struck in Texas and Florida.

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Pittsburgh to Be Site of America’s Largest Urban Farm

Pittsburgh, once a dynamo of heavy industry, will soon become home to the United States’ largest urban farm, part of what advocates say is a trend to transform former manufacturing cities into green gardens.

The Hilltop Urban Farm will open in 2019, consisting of 23 acres (9 hectares) of farmland where low-income housing once stood, two miles (three kilometers) from the city center, designers say.

On top of farmland where winter peas and other fresh produce will be grown by local residents and sold in the community, the farm will feature a fruit orchard, a youth farm and skills-building program. Hillside land will eventually have trails.

The farm is believed to be by far the largest nationwide to be located in an urban area, said Aaron Sukenik, who heads the Hilltop Alliance that is coordinating the initiative.

“The land was just kind of sitting there, fenced and looking very post-apocalyptic,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

After Pittsburgh boomed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a center of coal production, steel and manufacturing, it was hit by industrial decline in the 1950s, its population cut by half over the next half century.

Reinventing itself, the metropolis has since regained much of its economic vigor with the health care industry replacing manufacturing as the city’s powerhouse.

But while “all the areas that you can see from downtown really have turned around,” several neighborhoods on the city’s outer ring have yet to see a similar resurgence, said Sukenik.

“It’s those neighborhoods that are the focus of our work,” he said.

Open to local residents, the farm will help bring fresh food to surrounding areas that often lack such options, he said. Pittsburgh has the largest percentage of people residing in communities with “low-supermarket access” for cities of 250,000 to 500,000 people, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. Treasury Department.

And local advocates say much of Pittsburgh’s south side, where the farm will be located, is particularly underserved by supermarkets and other retailers of fresh food.

Rust Belt

The Hilltop Urban Farm embodies a trend in cities across America’s Rust Belt from Detroit to Cleveland and Buffalo where manufacturing has died out, said Heather Mikulas, a farm and food business educator for Penn State Extension, an applied research arm of  Pennsylvania State University.

“You just have blight, just so much blight in Rust Belt cities,” she said.

“So you see the long-standing residents of neighborhoods who are used to trying to find their place in the world looking at this blight and just saying, ‘We can do something different, we can do something better,’ ” said Mikulas, who co-authored a report on the feasibility of the Hilltop Urban Farm project in 2014.

What were once often “guerrilla” operations have morphed into projects working hand in hand with municipal authorities to secure land rights and rezone areas to allow for agriculture, Mikulas said.

A common concern with urban farms is their reliance on grants that eventually dry out, said Stan Ernst, a professor of agribusiness development at Penn State.

The $9.9 million Hilltop Urban Farm is funded by foundations, primarily the Henry L. Hillman Foundation.

“Look for ways that you can operate enough like a business that you can hopefully provide a level of sustainability there,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

No comprehensive national study has yet measured the extent of urban farming in the United States, said Michael Hamm, a professor of sustainable agriculture at Michigan State University.

Globally, city dwellers are farming an area the size of the European Union, a 2014 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters found.

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Cameroon Forest People: Land Rights Abuses Threaten Survival

Leaders of Cameroon’s indigenous forest peoples say their survival is at risk if they are further deprived of access to the lands that are the source of their livelihoods.

Speaking in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, indigenous representatives said they had experienced increasingly serious violations of their land rights by palm oil and other agro-industries, mining firms and timber concessions, as well as the process of creating protected areas on their ancestral lands.

“This disturbing situation foreshadows a future where we, as indigenous peoples, will no longer have land,” said Hélène Aye Mondo, president of Gbabandi, an organization of more than 50 indigenous Baka and Bagyeli communities. “If we continue to lose our lands and forests, the very survival of our cultures and peoples is at risk.”

At the meeting on Tuesday, forest community leaders signed a joint declaration calling for recognition and respect of their customary land rights, timed to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Cameroon is a signatory.

Denied access to forest

The U.N. declaration says governments must consult indigenous peoples to gain their consent before approving any decisions that affect how their land and resources are used, and they are entitled to redress for any such activities.

Suzanne Ndjele, a member of the Baka ethnic group from the village of Assoumindelé in south Cameroon, said in a written testimony handed out to journalists that her community no longer has access to the forest they depend on for food and medicine.

Ndjele used to work in the forest, hunting and gathering food and other resources with women from her community. But for the past four years she has not been able to enter it.

“Eco-guards came and told us ‘nobody can go into the forest anymore.’ If we continued to enter the forest we were threatened. I went in and was beaten,” she said.

Not enough land

The forest in question was incorporated into the Ngoyla-Mintom Reserve, created in 2014. Access to parts of the forest was restricted and local people were instead given “community forests,” smaller parcels of land which they say are not enough.

The community forest for Assoumindelé is located 10 km (6.2 miles) away from the village, which inhabitants say is not practical for their everyday activities.

Lydie Essissima, an official with Cameroon’s social affairs ministry who attended the meeting, said the government was aware of the problem, and stands by its commitments made in the 2007 U.N. declaration. Cameroon was one of 144 countries that voted in favor of its adoption in 2007.

 

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Olympic Double: IOC Says Yes to Paris in 24, and LA for 28

This was one of those rare Olympic moments where everyone walked away a winner.

 

Paris for 2024. Los Angeles for 2028. And the International Olympic Committee for transforming an unruly bidding process to lock down its future by choosing not one, but two Summer Olympics hosts at the same time.

 

The IOC put the rubber stamp on a pre-determined conclusion Wednesday, giving Paris the 2024 Games and LA the 2028 Games in a history-making vote.  

 

The decision marks the first time the IOC has granted two Summer Olympics at once. It came after a year’s worth of scrambling by IOC president Thomas Bach, who had only the two bidders left for the original prize, 2024, and couldn’t bear to see either lose.

Both cities will host their third Olympics.

 

The Paris Games will come on the 100th anniversary of its last turn — a milestone that would have made the French capital the sentimental favorite had only 2024 been up for grabs.  

 

Los Angeles moved to 2028, and those Olympics will halt a stretch of 32 years without a Summer Games in the United States. In exchange for the compromise, LA will grab an extra $300 million or more that could help offset the uncertainties that lie ahead over an 11-year wait instead of seven.

 

Doing away with the dramatic flair that has accompanied these events in years past, there were no secret ballots and no dramatic reveals to close out the voting.

 

Bach simply asked for a show of hands from the audience, and when dozens shot up from the audience, and nobody raised their hand when he asked for objections, this was deemed a unanimous decision.

 

A ceremony that has long sparked parties in the plazas of winning cities — and crying in those of the losers — produced more muted, but still visible, shows of emotion. Paris bid organizer Tony Estaguent choked up during the presentation before the vote.

 

“You can’t imagine what this means to us. To all of us. It’s so strong,” he said.

Later, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo stood by Bach’s side and dabbed away tears as the vote was announced and the IOC president handed the traditional — but now unneeded — cards to she and LA mayor Eric Garcetti. One read “Paris 2024,” and the other “Los Angeles 2028.”

But there was no real drama. As if to accentuate that, the LA delegation wore sneakers to the presentation.

 

Bid chairman Casey Wasserman said the footwear “reflects who we are, and the unique brand of California-cool that we will bring to the 2028 Games.”

Bach asked the 94 IOC members to allow the real contests to play out at the Olympics themselves and turn the vote into a pure business decision — not a bad idea considering the news still seeping out about a bid scandal involving a Brazilian IOC member’s alleged vote-selling to bring the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro.

 

 More than that, Bach needed to ensure stability for his brand.

 

The public in many cities, especially those in the Western democracies that have hosted the majority of these games, is no longer eager to approve blank checks for bid committees and governments that have to come up with the millions simply to bid for the Olympics, then billions more to stage them if they win.

 

That reality hit hard when three of the original five bidders for 2024 — Rome, Hamburg, Germany, and Budapest, Hungary — dropped out, and the U.S. Olympic Committee had to pull the plug on its initial candidate, Boston, due to lack of public support.

“This is a solution to an awkward problem,” said longtime IOC member Dick Pound of Canada. “Many of the (candidate) cities are not prepared. They say, ‘Let’s have an Olympics,’ but they haven’t done the background work, checked the finances. But I guess we have to share it and say, ‘Have you done A, B, C, and D?’”

Only two candidates made it to the finish line — Paris and Los Angeles, each with a storied tradition of Olympic hosting and an apparent understanding of Bach’s much-touted reform package, known as Agenda 2020. It seeks to streamline the Games, most notably by eliminating billion-dollar stadiums and infrastructure projects that have been underused, if used at all, once the Olympics leave town.

 

Can they deliver?

 

Paris will have the traditional seven-year time frame to answer that.

 

Only one totally new venue is planned — a swimming and diving arena to be built near the Stade de France, which will serve as the Olympic stadium. Roland Garros, which will host tennis and boxing, will get a privately funded expansion. In all, the projected cost of new venues and upgrades to others is $892 million.

 

To be sure, Paris already has much to work with. Beach volleyball will be played near the Eiffel Tower; cycling will finish at the Arc de Triomphe; equestrian will be held at the Chateau de Versailles. And what would an Olympics be without some water-quality issues? There will be pressure to clean up the River Seine, which is where open-water and triathlon will be held.

 

Los Angeles, meanwhile, will get an extra four years, though the city claims it doesn’t need them. All the sports venues are built, save the under-construction stadium for the NFL’s Rams and Chargers, which will host opening ceremonies. Los Angeles proposed a $5.3 billion budget for 2024 (to be adjusted for 2028) that included infrastructure, operational costs — everything. A big number, indeed, though it must be put into perspective:

 

 Earlier this summer, organizers in Tokyo estimated their cost for the 2020 Games at $12.6 billion. The London Games in 2012 came in at $19 billion.

 

Traffic could be a problem — it almost always is in LA — but the city will be well along multi-decade, multibillion-dollar transit upgrade by 2028, and those with long memories recall free-flowing highways the last time the Olympics came to town, as locals either left the city or heeded warnings to use public transportation or stay home.

 

Those 1984 Games essentially saved the Olympic movement after a decade of terror, red ink and a boycott sullied the brand and made hosting a burden. The city points to its Olympic legacy to explain a nearly unheard-of 83 percent approval rating in a self-commissioned poll — not an insignificant factor when the IOC picks a place to hold its crown-jewel event.

 

Along with Paris, LA is stepping in again to try to change the conversation about what hosting the Olympics can really be.

 

“It’s a unique opportunity to do two at the same time,” Wasserman said. “Hopefully, it’s an interesting paradigm for the world going forward. We’re two great cities, it’s two great Olympic hosts and it’s going to be two great games.”

 

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Gambia Turns to Private Maritime Policing

Gambia is negotiating deals with three private companies to crack down on rampant illegal fishing in its territorial waters, a senior official with the fisheries ministry told Reuters.

Made possible by poor monitoring capacity and, in some cases, corrupt local officials, illegal fishing costs West Africa’s coastal nations about $2.3 billion a year, according to a recent study.

Regional coast guards regularly seize Chinese fishing boats for fishing illegally. An investigation published by marine conservation group Oceana this week found that European vessels had also broken European Union law in West Africa.

“Fighting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing requires continuous monitoring and surveillance of our waters, and we don’t have the resources to do that,” Bamba Banja, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Fisheries and Water Resources, said late Tuesday.

A former ruler of Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, fled the country earlier this year amid accusations of widespread corruption. President Adama Barrow is now seeking to bring order to a sector neglected by the old regime.

Despite its narrow coastline, Gambia possesses particularly rich waters, caused by the merging of fresh water from the Gambia River with the Atlantic Ocean.

Banja said the government was in talks with Dutch shipbuilding group Damen and two other companies, from the United States and South Africa, to provide monitoring and surveillance of Gambia’s exclusive economic zone.

“The South African and Dutch companies will provide patrol boats while the American company is for aerial surveillance to complement the patrol boats,” he said.

A spokesman for the Damen Group said it would not comment on negotiations.

Banja said the names of the two other companies would be announced following talks to complete the deal next month.

Operations are expected to begin in January.

He added Gambia was also seeking to reactivate a fishing agreement with the EU, which would probably include support for local monitoring. An existing access agreement is considered dormant because its requirements are not being met. That means EU member states cannot authorize their vessels to fish there.

Oceana’s researchers nevertheless found that vessels from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece illegally spent nearly 32,000 hours in Gambian waters from April 2012 to August 2015.

Banja said the vessels also appeared to be violating a prohibition on industrial fishing enacted under Jammeh. While the ban did little to curb illegal activity, it was only lifted in March.

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US Orders Federal Agencies to Remove Kaspersky Products

U.S. security officials on Wednesday ordered government agencies to get rid of products and services from Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm.

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Elaine Duke issued the directive, giving agencies 90 days to comply.

“This action is based on the information security risks presented by the use of Kaspersky products on federal information systems,” according to a DHS statement.

The department said the key concerns were ties “between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies.”

‘Unacceptable risk’

“This is a risk-based decision we need to make,” said White House cybersecurity coordinator Robert Joyce, speaking at the Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington.

“The company must collaborate with the FSB [Russian intelligence], and so, for us in the government, that was an unacceptable risk,” Joyce said.

The U.S. said it would give Kaspersky an opportunity to address its concerns in writing.

Kaspersky has repeatedly denied it helps Russia with espionage efforts. On Tuesday, company founder Eugene Kaspersky took to Twitter to try to calm fears.

“Despite geopolitical turbulence we remain committed to American customers,” he said.

The DHS directive came hours after the top U.S. intelligence official warned that Russia has been ramping up the pace of its operations against the United States.

“Russia has clearly assumed an ever more aggressive cyberposture by increasing cyberespionage operations, leaking data stolen from those operations,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said at the cybersecurity summit.

‘Echo chamber’

Coats did not elaborate on the scope or target of Russia’s cyberoperations, but warned that a range of enemies were increasingly seeking to weaponize public opinion.

“Adversaries use the internet as an echo chamber in which information, ideas or beliefs get amplified or reinforced through repetition,” Coats said. “Their efforts seek to undermine our faith in our institutions or advance violence in the name of identity.”

The top U.S. intelligence official also said hackers were increasingly targeting the U.S. defense industry.

“Such intrusions, even if intended for theft and espionage, could inadvertently cause serious if not catastrophic damage, where an adversary looking for small-scale destructive cyberaction against the United Sates could miscalculate,” Coats said.

In an unclassified report released in January, top U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin waged an unprecedented “influence campaign” in an effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump.

As president, Trump has repeatedly questioned those assessments, suggesting at times it was unclear whether Russia was responsible.

Just last week, however, an internal Facebook investigation found 470 Russian-linked accounts paid for thousands of political ads to appear during last year’s presidential campaign.

Facebook said further investigation revealed another 2,200 ads “might have originated in Russia,” including ads purchased by accounts with IP addresses in the United States but set to Russian in the language preferences.

Other manipulation

Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told a security conference last week that the revelations might just be “the tip of the iceberg,” and that Russia also most likely had manipulated messages via other social media platforms, such as Twitter.

Despite the doubts raised by Trump and some of his supporters, former officials have remained steadfast that Russia was responsible for hacking into  Democratic National Committee computers in an effort to discredit Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.

“We personally reviewed every single piece of intelligence that went into that ICA [intelligence community assessment] and spent hours and hours talking to the analysts,” said former National Security Agency Deputy Director Richard Ledgett.

“I am as certain of this as I’m as certain as gravity: that the Russian government directed this activity with the intent to influence the election,” he said.

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iPhone X Shipping Delay May Dampen Apple’s Holiday Quarter

Apple Inc’s highly anticipated iPhone X features a slew of innovations but delayed availability could hurt holiday-quarter sales.

The much-hyped event on Tuesday unveiled three new phones, an advanced watch that can take calls and a new Apple TV, but die-hard fans will not be able to get their hands on the iPhone X until Nov. 3 – much later than iPhone 8’s shipping date of Sept. 22.

The delay in shipping of the iPhone X could hurt Apple’s seasonally-strong fiscal first quarter as orders get pushed to the following quarter. The phone will start at $999 for the 64 GB version.

Apple’s shares were down 1 percent at $159.35 in early trading on Wednesday.

Although decked out with facial recognition technology, front and back glass, a 5.8-inch edge to edge display, wireless charging and animated emojis, some analysts said the delay tempers near-term sales and a few adjusted their estimates.

“Given one month less sales for the iPhone X during the December quarter, we have reduced our December quarter iPhone sales estimates from 84 million to 79 million units,” Canaccord Genuity analysts wrote in a client note.

The company’s iPhone 8 and 8 Plus did not veer far away from previous models, sporting modest new features such as a glass body, wireless charging, better camera and a faster processor.

This could lead consumers to wait for the iPhone X.

“None of the features in the version 8 product will likely accelerate demand,” Mizuho analysts wrote in a note.

Apple typically launches new iPhones in September and a big jump in sales usually follows in the holiday quarter, as users tend to upgrade devices when new phones sport significant design changes.

Apple last saw a significant uptick in sales with the introduction of iPhone 6 in 2015.

While the delay of the iPhone X could hurt near-term sales, analysts still think Apple’s loyal and hungry fans would lap up the new phone, boosting sales for fiscal 2018.

Brokerage UBS said it continues to estimate 246 million phones in fiscal 2018 will be up 15 percent.

Apple, which is trying to energize sales in China, could hit a wall selling the pricey new phones there. The 8 and 8 plus start at $699 and the iPhone X is Apple’s most expensive phone.

The high price of the iPhone X may not affect sales in the United States, where telecom carriers subsidize phone ownership, but it might dent sales in China and India.

But even with the lack of major surprises, Apple’s phones are still expected to sell well.

“It will still sell in enormous volumes because Apple has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to persuade consumers to shift their overall spending to place a greater share of their disposable income towards a smartphone purchase,” IHS Markit analyst wrote in a note.

 

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Stars Turn Out to Push for Donations for Hurricane Relief

Urged on by dozens of stars who turned out to sing, tell stories and plead for support for hurricane victims in a one-hour televised benefit, organizers said more than $44 million was raised Tuesday and donations are still being accepted.

With Stevie Wonder singing “Lean on Me” and Usher and Blake Shelton joining for “Stand By Me,” the message was clear: Americans were being asked to help those whose lives were upended by wind and rain.

Justin Bieber, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Lupita Nyong’o, Jay Leno and dozens of others sat at phone banks to accept donations. Beyonce, Will Smith and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sent in taped pleas for support during the event, shown on more than a dozen television networks and online simultaneously.

Originally conceived as a benefit for victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the “Hand in Hand” telethon was expanded to help people in Florida and the Caribbean devastated in recent days by Irma.

“We’re here to raise money, lift some spirits,” said Jamie Foxx, standing with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “When tough times hit, this is who we are. We’re compassionate. We’re unstoppable.”

Hollywood talent manager Scooter Braun, who organized the event with Houston rap artist Bun B, said that after the show, all the celebrities manning the phone banks stayed to take more calls. “No one left,” he said. “Everyone just kept answering phones and answering phones and answering phones. People want to give. Like, people want to help. And you don’t have to be a celebrity to do it.”

For many of the stars, the storms hit close to home.

“I have family in Puerto Rico, I have family in Miami. I’ve been on the road. I haven’t been able to be there. So you can imagine how it’s been,” “Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi said after the show, adding that all his family, including his wife and young children in Miami, survived the storm and are safe.

“”Helpless – helpless is an understatement,” Fonsi said of being on tour and unable to be with his family. He noted that his experience paled in comparison to the pain the storms have caused for many.

“You can imagine how frustrating it is to not be able to sort of protect your own family,” he said. “Imagine all of these people that have nothing to do. The videos that you see online. So as an artist, as a singer, I think it’s part of our job, it’s part of our resume, to take time off and come together and do these kind of things.”

The quick-moving show took a form familiar to viewers since a sad template was set in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Celebrities requested donations, told heartwarming survival stories involving people caught in the storm and sang songs. Several organizations will benefit, including the United Way and Save the Children.

Stages in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, Tennessee, were filled simultaneously, although the night’s final performance – a tribute to Texans by George Strait, Robert Earl Keen, Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert and Lyle Lovett – originated from San Antonio.

Fonsi and Tori Kelly sang “Hallelujah” together. Dave Matthews picked his guitar from a studio above New York’s Times Square, and Darius Rucker, Brad Paisley, Demi Lovato and Cece Winans sang the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Wonder, backed by a gospel chorus, opened the show with the Bill Withers classic.

“Natural disasters don’t discriminate,” Beyonce said. “They don’t care if you’re an immigrant, black or white, Hispanic or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, wealthy or poor.” Cher and Oprah Winfrey told the story behind a frequently seen picture of strangers forming a human chain to save someone from flooding in Houston.

Usually competitive network morning personalities Matt Lauer, Norah O’Donnell and Michael Strahan stood before a satellite image of an ominous Irma to describe devastation the storm had caused.

Donations were announced from some deep pockets. Computer maker Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, pledged to match the first $10 million in donations Tuesday. They’ve given a total of $41 million to the Rebuild Texas Fund. Basketball star Chris Paul gave $20,000 and said the NBA Players Association would match donations of up to the same amount given by any NBA player.

Announcing Apple’s promise to give $5 million, comic Stephen Colbert quipped said it was coincidentally “also the price of the new iPhone.”

ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, MTV, BET and Univision were among the networks carrying the program, which was also streamed online.

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Serena Williams Shows Off Baby Alexis in Photos, Video Diary

American tennis star Serena Williams on Wednesday announced the name and released first pictures of her baby girl, revealing that they had spent a week in the hospital following the Sept. 1 birth in Florida because of unspecified complications.

“Meet Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.” the former world No. 1 and 23-time Grand Slam champion said in postings on her social media sites that included a video diary of her pregnancy.

Williams, 35, who is engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, said the baby was born Sept. 1 and weighed 6 lbs 14 oz (3.1 kg).

“So we’re leaving the hospital after six days. It’s been a long time.  We had a lot of complications, but look what we got!” Williams said in the video, cradling the baby who has a mass of black hair.

The video showed Williams dancing, hitting tennis balls as her pregnancy progressed, selfies of her expanding belly, and home video of the couple putting together the baby’s crib.

Williams confirmed her pregnancy in April hours after triggering speculation when she accidentally posted a short-lived selfie on social media with the caption: “20 weeks.”

Williams, the world’s highest-paid female athlete, was about two months pregnant when she captured her 23rd grand slam singles title at the Australian Open.

She has not competed since announcing her pregnancy but she told Vogue magazine last month that she intends to defend her title next year in Australia, where the year’s first grand slam will be played from Jan. 15-28.

Reddit was among the first to congratulate the couple on Wednesday.

“Congrats to two of our all-time favorite redditors who just welcomed a new baby Snoo into their family: u/Kn0thing and u/serenawilliams!,” the social news and discussion website posted on Twitter.

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Self-Driving Boats: The Next Tech Transportation Race

Self-driving cars may not hit the road in earnest for many years – but autonomous boats could be just around the pier.

Spurred in part by the car industry’s race to build driverless vehicles, marine innovators are building automated ferry boats for Amsterdam canals, cargo ships that can steer themselves through Norwegian fjords and remote-controlled ships to carry containers across the Atlantic and Pacific. The first such autonomous ships could be in operation within three years.

One experimental workboat spent this summer dodging tall ships and tankers in Boston Harbor, outfitted with sensors and self-navigating software and emblazoned with the words “UNMANNED VESSEL” across its aluminum hull.

“We’re in full autonomy now,” said Jeff Gawrys, a marine technician for Boston startup Sea Machines Robotics, sitting at the helm as the boat floated through a harbor channel.

“Roger that,” said computer scientist Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik, as he helped to guide the ship from his laptop on a nearby dock.

The boat still needs human oversight. But some of the world’s biggest maritime firms have committed to designing ships that won’t need any captains or crews — at least not on board.

Distracted seafaring

The ocean is “a wide open space,” said Sea Machines CEO Michael Johnson.

Based out of an East Boston shipyard once used to build powerful wooden clippers, the cutting-edge sailing vessels of the 19th century, his company is hoping to spark a new era of commercial marine innovation that could surpass the development of self-driving cars and trucks.

The startup has signed a deal with an undisclosed company to install the “world’s first autonomy system on a commercial containership,” Johnson said this week. It will be remotely-controlled from land as it travels the North Atlantic. He also plans to sell the technology to companies doing oil spill cleanups and other difficult work on the water, aiming to assist maritime crews, not replace them.

Johnson, a marine engineer whose previous job took him to the Italian coast to help salvage the sunken cruise ship Costa Concordia, said that deadly 2012 capsizing and other marine disasters have convinced him that “we’re relying too much on old-world technology.”

“Humans get distracted, humans get tired,” he said.

Global race

Militaries have been working on unmanned vessels for decades. But a lot of commercial experimentation is happening in the centuries-old seaports of Scandinavia, where Rolls-Royce demonstrated a remote-controlled tugboat in Copenhagen this year. Government-sanctioned testing areas have been established in Norway’s Trondheim Fjord and along Finland’s western coast.

In Norway, fertilizer company Yara International is working with engineering firm Kongsberg Maritime on a project to replace big-rig trucks with an electric-powered ship connecting three nearby ports. The pilot ship is scheduled to launch next year, shift to remote control in 2019 and go fully autonomous by 2020.

“It would remove a lot of trucks from the roads in these small communities,” said Kongsberg CEO Geir Haoy.

Japanese shipping firm Nippon Yusen K.K. — operator of the cargo ship that slammed into a U.S. Navy destroyer in a deadly June collision — plans to test its first remote-controlled vessel in 2019, part of a wider Japanese effort to deploy hundreds of autonomous container ships by 2025. A Chinese alliance has set a goal of launching its first self-navigating cargo ship in 2021.

Cars vs. Boats

The key principles of self-driving cars and boats are similar. Both scan their surroundings using a variety of sensors, feed the information into an artificial intelligence system and output driving instructions to the vehicle.

But boat navigation could be much easier than car navigation, said Carlo Ratti, an MIT professor working with Dutch universities to launch self-navigating vessels in Amsterdam next year. The city’s canals, for instance, have no pedestrians or bikers cluttering the way, and are subject to strict speed limits.

Ratti’s project is also looking at ways small vessels could coordinate with each other in “swarms.” They could, for instance, start as a fleet of passenger or delivery boats, then transform into an on-demand floating bridge to accommodate a surge of pedestrians.

Since many boats already have electronic controls, “it would be easy to make them self-navigating by simply adding a small suite of sensors and AI,” Ratti said.

Armchair captains

Researchers have already begun to design merchant ships that will be made more efficient because they don’t need room for seamen to sleep and eat. But in the near future, most of these ships will be only partly autonomous.

Armchair captains in a remote operation center could be monitoring several ships at a time, sitting in a room with 360-degree virtual reality views. When the vessels are on the open seas, they might not need humans to make decisions. It’s just the latest step in what has been a gradual automation of maritime tasks.

“If you go back 150 years, you had more than 200 people on a cargo vessel. Now you have between 10 and 20,” said Oskar Levander, vice president of innovation for Rolls-Royce’s marine business.

Changing rules of the sea

There are still some major challenges ahead. Uncrewed vessels might be more vulnerable to piracy or even outright theft via remote hacking of a ship’s control systems. Some autonomous vessels might win public trust faster than others; unmanned container ships filled with bananas might not raise the same concerns as oil tankers plying the waters near big cities or protected wilderness.

A decades-old international maritime safety treaty also requires that “all ships shall be sufficiently and efficiently manned.” But The International Maritime Organization, which regulates shipping, has begun a 2-year review of the safety, security and environmental implications of autonomous ships.

 

 

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Dwarfs Meet at Festival in South African Town

A recent South African festival for people with dwarfism featured dancing, a tug-of-war contest, stand-up comedy, talks on health issues facing dwarves and a Mr. and Ms. Dwarf competition.

The event this past weekend in Modimolle town in Limpopo province drew dwarfs from around the country and was an opportunity to share experiences, and discuss challenges and ways to overcome them.

Bernadine Coetzee, 19, won the Ms. Dwarf competition and hopes to be a clothes designer after finishing school at the end of 2018.

Festival organizer Marinda Calitz, who is married to a dwarf, says there is a widespread view that small people can only find work in a circus. She says, however, that people with dwarfism work as dentists, bank managers and truck drivers.

“Don’t judge them,” Calitz says.

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China Plans Nationwide Ethanol Use by 2020

China plans to expand use of ethanol in gasoline nationwide by 2020 to curb smog and fossil fuel demand, the government said Wednesday, joining United States, Brazil and other nations that use blended fuel.

 

The announcement adds to a series of initiatives to clean up smog-choked Chinese cities and control surging demand for imported oil. The government is spending heavily to develop an electric car industry and has raised sales taxes on vehicles with larger engines.

 

Plans call for China to develop a demonstration facility by 2020 that can make 50,000 tons of ethanol a year from cellulose, according to the Cabinet’s National Energy Administration. It said that would expand to commercial scale by 2025.

 

“It is an ideal alternative to fossil fuel,” said an unidentified NEA official quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.

 

China is the world’s biggest energy consumer and auto market. It started producing ethanol from corn in 2004 but banned use of food crops in 2007, prompting suppliers to switch to straw stalks and other materials. About one-fifth of gasoline produced in China has added ethanol, according to Xinhua.

 

Regulators later eased the ban on use of food crops in some areas. Xinhua said the latest plan is intended in part to use up aging stockpiles of corn.

 

Other governments including Brazil and the United States require gasoline to contain from 10 percent to as much as 85 percent ethanol to curb emissions and reduce petroleum demand.

 

The NEA gave no indication what level of ethanol would be required, but Xinhua said it would be 10 percent.

 

On Saturday, a deputy industry minister said Beijing is developing a timetable to phase out production and sales of traditional fuel cars. France and Britain announced similar plans in July. 

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Study Prompts Call to Examine Flu Vaccine and Miscarriage

A puzzling study of U.S. pregnancies found that women who had miscarriages between 2010 and 2012 were more likely to have had back-to-back annual flu shots that included protection against swine flu.

Vaccine experts think the results may reflect the older age and other miscarriage risks for the women, and not the flu shots. Health officials say there is no reason to change the government recommendation that all pregnant women be vaccinated against the flu. They say the flu itself is a much greater danger to women and their fetuses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reached out to a doctor’s group, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, to warn them the study is coming out and help them prepare for a potential wave of worry from expectant moms, CDC officials said.

“I want the CDC and researchers to continue to investigate this,” said Dr. Laura Riley, a Boston-based obstetrician who leads a committee on maternal immunization. “But as an advocate for pregnant women, what I hope doesn’t happen is that people panic and stop getting vaccinated.”

Past studies have found flu vaccines are safe during pregnancy, though there’s been little research on impact of flu vaccinations given in the first three months of pregnancy.

Flu and its complications kill thousands of Americans every year. The elderly, young children and pregnant women are especially at risk. When a new “swine flu” strain emerged in 2009, it killed 56 U.S. pregnant women that year, according to the CDC.

The study’s authors, two of whom are CDC researchers, saw a big difference when they looked at women who had miscarried within 28 days of getting a shot that included protection against swine flu, but it was only when the women also had had a flu shot the previous season.

They found 17 of 485 miscarriages they studied involved women whose vaccinations followed that pattern. Just four of a comparable 485 healthy pregnancies involved women who were vaccinated that way.

The first group also had more women who were at higher risk for miscarriage, like older moms and smokers and those with diabetes. The researchers tried to make statistical adjustments to level out some of those differences but some researchers don’t think they completely succeeded.

Other experts said they don’t believe a shot made from killed flu virus could trigger an immune system response severe enough to prompt a miscarriage. And the authors said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that exposure to swine flu itself was a factor in some miscarriages.

Two other medical journals rejected the article before a third, Vaccine, accepted it. Dr. Gregory Poland, Vaccine’s editor-in-chief, said it was a well-designed study that raised a question that shouldn’t be ignored. But he doesn’t believe flu shots caused the miscarriages. “Not at all,” said Poland, who also is director of vaccine research at the Mayo Clinic.

Though this study may cause worry and confusion, it is evidence “of just how rigorous and principled our vaccine safety monitoring system is,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University vaccine policy expert.

Some of the same researchers are working on a larger study looking at more recent data to see if a possible link between swine flu vaccine and miscarriage holds up, said James Donahue, a study author from the Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic Research Institute. The results aren’t expected until next year at the earliest, he said.

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Bill Gates: Strides in Global Health at Risk if Rich Nations Pull Back

The world is making enormous strides in areas such as child mortality, HIV and extreme poverty, but if the U.S. and other countries pull back funding, that progress could slow, said Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft.

 

When it comes to HIV, for example, “if we had a 10 percent cut in the funding, we’d have 5 million more deaths by 2030,” said Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “What happens matters here.”

On Wednesday, the Gates Foundation issued its first annual report card on 18 indicators of global health and well being. The report looks out to 2030 and projects what will happen on these key markers depending on factors such as global funding.

Great progress

The report, “Goalkeepers: The Stories Behind the Data,” which the Gates Foundation produced in partnership with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, shows great progress being made in key areas:

· Six million fewer children under five die annually than did in 1990, thanks mostly to increased use of vaccines and better newborn care.

· AIDS- related deaths have fallen by almost half since the peak in 2005.

· Nine percent of the population is at the international poverty line compared to 35 percent in 1990, a trend mostly credited to gains made by people in China and India.

During a telephone press conference, Gates attributed some of the success to world governments coming together to address problems, as well as medical innovations.

Country success stories

Gates called out several countries for their great strides on health issues:

· Ethiopia – Maternal deaths have been cut more than half since 1990, due to efforts to encourage women to give birth in health facilities rather than at home.

· Senegal – 15 percent of women use modern contraceptives compared to three percent in 1990.

· Peru – Stunting (or low height) in children dropped to 18 percent, down from 39 percent in 1990.

The 0.7 percent commitment

In 1970, the U.N. created a target — governments would spend 0.7 percent of their annual gross domestic income in international aid. While the U.S. is the largest international aid contributor, it hasn’t reached the 0.7 mark. Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates are among countries that have met or exceeded the 0.7 target.

Gates said he is concerned that some wealthy nations appear to be reconsidering their commitment to global humanitarian funding.

“Are people looking out internationally?” he said. “And willing to continue to back these improvements?”

Retrenchment on global aid?

Gates specifically addressed the Trump administration’s proposed budget, which has “fairly substantial cuts, including to things like polio, HIV and malaria.”

Congress doesn’t appear to be willing to accept those cuts, he noted, and would likely “maintain pretty close to the same level in most areas.”

The world’s commitment to tackling health and poverty issues is as important as ever, Gates said, because there’s a shift in more children being born in poor countries. A child born in Angola has a 75 percent higher chance of dying before age five than one born in Finland, he said.

“We’re saying that progress is not inevitable,” he said. “The counter trends are that if countries do not think about these global problems, and you get cuts, or if you have setbacks, in terms of pandemics and things like that, you can have reversals.”

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With Ginseng Festival, Wisconsin Growers Aim to Cultivate Broader Taste for Root

In this upper Midwestern state known for dairy, beer and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, ginseng growers want to make sure that the bitter root also gets its due.

So they’ve organized the first International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival. Set for Friday through Sunday in this mid-state river town, it will feature the root’s role in culinary, health and beauty products and local history. The event, just before the fall harvest, is expected to draw at least several hundred ginseng aficionados from Asia and from U.S. cities with large ethnic Asian populations.

Organizers hope the visitors’ appetite for Wisconsin ginseng will catch on with a broader consumer base. Even state residents, mostly of northern European descent, have limited experience with the plant beyond seeing vast “gardens” shaded with black fabric canopies.

With the festival, “we’re creating awareness,” said Tom Hack, the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin’s international marketing director for several years ending last month.

Leading U.S. production

The state produces about 700,000 pounds or 317,500 kilos a year of cultivated ginseng – roughly 95 percent of the entire U.S. crop, which still totals less than 10 percent of the global yield. The vast majority goes to China and Hong Kong, where it has been used for thousands of years as a tonic to reduce stress, boost energy, focus attention and even treat male sexual dysfunction. A 2012 Mayo Clinic study found American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) eased fatigue among cancer patients.

American ginseng has alleged “cool” or restorative properties. The Wisconsin-grown root, considered especially potent, last year commanded a wholesale price ranging from the low $30s to $55 a pound – roughly double that of Chinese-grown root, Hack said. American wild ginseng root, the most prized, can command hundreds of dollars per pound.

But growers like Will Hsu worry that consumers may not be familiar enough with the root to differentiate.

“It’s global competition,” said Hsu, whose family’s ginseng farm and sales operation near Wausau is among the country’s largest. “If you do not educate consumers on the difference in taste and yield from Wisconsin, they’ll view it as a commodity that’s interchangeable.”

Accommodating climate

The area’s long, cold winters and mineral-rich topsoil provide favorable conditions for ginseng, which takes at least three years to mature. It took off as a commercial crop in 1904 when four brothers – the Fromms – started cultivating the root as well as collecting it in the wild. Production peaked in the early 1990s, when 1,500 growers – mostly hobbyists with full-time jobs – produced over 2.2 million pounds or almost 100,000 kilos.

But some growers sold seed to Canada and China, setting up competition that flooded the market, depressed prices and drove out many Wisconsin growers. Their numbers have dwindled to fewer than 200 today. Their 317,500-kilos yield is dwarfed by output abroad, Hack said. “Canada is, like, 4.5 million pounds” or just over 2 million kilos. “China’s at least 5 million” pounds or 2.26 million kilos.  

“Seeds that came from our industry came to really haunt us,” added Hack, a hobbyist himself.

Growers face two related problems: product fraud and trademark infringement. Shady dealers misrepresent foreign-grown ginseng as American, Hack said. His board introduced a seal in 1991 to certify roots or products made entirely of Wisconsin ginseng, but “we’ve got companies using our logo that are not authorized to do that. Our industry has now started taking legal action” and alerting various regulatory agencies.  

The commodity group also reviews international shipping records and has its handful of worldwide distributors look out for suspect products.

“We have a monitoring program in place in China,” Hack said, “so we can address infringers there.”

Educating consumers

The more challenging task, Will Hsu argues, is cultivating discerning consumers of ginseng root, berries, and the resulting teas, powders, extracts and herbal supplements.

“The biggest problem for our industry, not only with labeling, is now you’re going to have some countries like Taiwan where [there’s] a whole generation of consumers who really only consume Canadian ginseng or Chinese-grown,” he said.

“They don’t even know Wisconsin ginseng,” lamented his father, Paul Hsu.

The Hsus and Hack discussed that quandary last October at the headquarters of Hsu’s Ginseng Enterprises Inc., where workers in the adjoining processing facility sorted and packaged freshly harvested roots. Paul Hsu, who emigrated from Taiwan, began the business in the 1970s. Now Will Hsu, in his early 40s, oversees daily operations.

A marketing ground game  

Armed with a Harvard MBA and sales experience at food giant General Mills, the son promotes the concept of “terroir,” which links an agricultural product to the land on which it’s grown. Just as the French province of Champagne is known for fine sparkling wine, he wants to ensure that central Wisconsin retains global recognition for premium ginseng. The company’s 2017 calendar and other printed materials showcase “Terroir at N45th Parallel” – the area’s latitude.

Wisconsin’s dark loam lends the ginseng a distinctive, earthy taste, Will Hsu said: “It’s bitter, it’s herbal. That is not a taste kids look fondly upon.”

As with beer, it’s an acquired taste, he added. For the festival, the Hsus are partnering with the local Bull Falls Brewery to make a limited-release ginseng brew.

Festival vendors will peddle other items made with ginseng – such as wine, macaroons, teas, muffins and stir fries – and offer cooking demonstrations to show the plant’s versatility.

Visitors also will be able to dig their own roots at certain gardens.

Generational issues

The generational challenge affects both labor supply and consumer demand.    

On a mild day early last October, three dozen workers harvested ginseng, some kneeling in freshly turned soil to gather ginseng roots, others lugging filled buckets to a waiting truck. Almost all were Hmong, who began emigrating from Laos and Thailand to the state four decades ago, after the Vietnam War, and many were advanced in years.

“People in my age group don’t want to do the work,” said Aaron Kaiser, 28, whose family owns the garden. A third-generation grower, he fits in ginseng duties – including as a director on the marketing board – around his job as a math teacher. 

As for demand, young ethnic Chinese don’t necessarily share their forebears’ enthusiasm for the herb.

“It’s not good for young people, it’s for old people,” said Yongcheng Kuang, a student at the nearby University of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood County campus who hails from Shenzhen in China’s Guangdong province. Nonetheless, it was among the gifts he brought home to relatives during summer break.

Hack, the marketer, acknowledged that “the younger generation has different buying trends. But there are 1.3 billion people in the country of China, and the majority do recognize TCM – traditional Chinese medicine.”

While the board continues its focus on international markets, “we’ve never taken into consideration the market potential right here in the United States,” Hack added.

With the festival, Wisconsin growers hope to make inroads.

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