Month: September 2017

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Takes ‘Death Dive’ Into Saturn

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the Cassini spacecraft made its final “death dive” Friday into the planet Saturn.

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory received confirmation of the spacecraft’s demise as expected at 7:55 a.m. EDT, when radio signals from Cassini came to an abrupt halt.

“This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft and you’re all an incredible team,” said NASA program manager Earl Maize.

More than 1,500 people, including former project team members, gathered at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for what NASA called This Grand Finale, described by some as both a vigil and a celebration. Others gathered at the nearby California Institute of Technology, which operates the laboratory for NASA.

NASA said it decided to end the life of the spacecraft with a final plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere because of what was found during the mission: the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.

“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s assistant project science systems engineer.

The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.

“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” said Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer.

Instruments on Cassini had been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.

“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.

Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.

“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.

The discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do as it ran out of fuel. They did not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.

“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus, but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.

Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.

“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” Cable said.

As Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere, it continued to send critical data to Earth until the very end. The data will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.

In Photos: Cassini & Saturn
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In Times of Disaster, Some Businesses Rise to the Occasion

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Jim McIngvale was standing in the parking lot of Gallery Furniture, greeting drivers and directing cars as they trickled in one sunny afternoon.

It had been a week and a half since his local furniture store chain opened the doors to its showrooms and offered shelter to hundreds of Houstonians during Hurricane Harvey.

Everyone had since relocated to other shelters, but McIngvale and his employees remained in disaster-relief mode as a long line of men, women and children snaked across the parking lot. On this day, drinking water, cleaning supplies, toiletries, clothing and free pizza were being handed out.

“My parents taught me that the essence of living is giving,” McIngvale said. “That’s who I am, that’s what we do.”

The local businessman and philanthropist is a longtime fixture in the Houston community, and he received national media attention along with an outpouring of public support for his latest efforts.

What about the bottom line?

How businesses respond in times of disaster can either enhance or undermine their public image. But does it affect their bottom line?

McIngvale didn’t seem concerned.

“After this hurricane, we took the people in and we said, ‘to hell with profit, let’s take care of the people,’” McIngvale said. “Profit takes care of itself. If you take care of the people, the people will take care of you.”

“When businesses make public stands and they make public commitments to do good things, consumers take notice,” said Utpal Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University.

According to Dholakia, doing well and doing good don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Businesses are a part of the community in which they operate, and as a result, community members can be seen as stakeholders. Businesses thrive when communities support them and vice versa.

“The company tries to do something good for the community and it actually helps them sell more and also make more money,” Dholakia said.

Employee Juan Rea has worked at Gallery Furniture for more than 30 years and has seen firsthand how McIngvale’s responses over the years have resulted in community members giving back to the business.

Hurricane Harvey evacuees slept on the store’s sofas and mattresses, and later were offered discounts of 20 percent to 40 percent off the same furniture, according to Rea.

“He helps the people and he makes money also,” Rea said.

Or taking advantage

Meanwhile, taking advantage of trying times for the sake of a buck can result in a public relations nightmare.

A local Best Buy electronics store decided to price a case of water at an exorbitant $42.96. After a customer snapped a photo and posted it on Twitter, the resulting public outrage prompted a public apology from company officials.

Why different responses?

In emergency scenarios, why do company responses vary so widely? Dholakia said that can be attributed to differences in management thinking and companies’ corporate cultures.

“Some managers have a very detailed plan of action in place about how to react when something like a hurricane or a similar natural disaster happens. So they’re able to execute their plan of action right away,” Dholakia said. “Other companies react in a slower way because they’re not prepared.”

McIngvale clearly was ready.

“Get prepared, get some sleep,” he told his employees before the hurricane. Rea worked seven consecutive days to aid evacuees, and after a day off, he was ready to keep going.

While it’s hard to quantify how a company’s bottom line benefits from good deeds, Dholakia said giving back can only help boost a brand’s standing in the eyes of its customers.

“It creates a positive knowledge association for the brand, which then feeds into the rest of the things that the customers know about the brand,” Dholakia said.

With so many advertisers vying for our dollars online and offline, good deeds become a way to rise above the noise.

“It is harder and harder to gain consumer attention in this fragmented media landscape,” Dholakia said. “Suddenly, you do something positive for the community and everyone is talking about it.”
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Las Vegas Welcomes Mexico’s Independence Day, Crowds it Brings

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Las Vegas never needs an excuse to party, and as an entertainment oasis a short trip from Mexico, the city will roll out the red, white and green carpet starting Friday to celebrate Mexican Independence Day.

A premier boxing match, a bell-ringing ceremony and more than a dozen performances by Latin megastars, including Ricky Martin and Alejandro Fernandez, were expected to attract tens of thousands of visitors, making the weekend once again one of Sin City’s busiest.

The holiday, often mistaken in the U.S. for Cinco de Mayo, over time has become a star-studded celebration of Hispanic culture.

“It has developed over two decades or more to become a staple. Las Vegas has the ‘ambiente’ — the fun, the excitement — all year long, and then you bring in Alejandro Fernandez, Pepe Aguilar and the ones who have the residencies like Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez,” said Rafael Villanueva, senior director of international business sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Celebration goes beyond Mexico

The celebration is so much wider it includes those superstars who aren’t Mexican, including Martin and Lopez, who both have Puerto Rican roots.

“If you talk to many people in Mexico, they’ll say if we are not going to the Ciudad de Mexico, we are coming to Las Vegas because of all the fun and all the entertainment,” he said.

The Sept. 16 holiday marks Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla’s call to arms that sparked the Mexican uprising against Spanish rulers in 1810. The rebel priest was killed the next year, but his words, known as the “Cry of Dolores” or “Grito de Dolores,” eventually led to independence from Spain in 1821.

What started as private entertainment shows for high rollers from Latin America has evolved into one of the city’s busiest weekends, with companies booking performers a year in advance and airlines adding direct flights from Mexico.

Concerts, boxing match

The concert lineup aims to appeal to a range of musical tastes and generations and includes Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Emmanuel, Enrique Iglesias, Carlos Santana, Mana, Marco Antonio Solis, Jesse and Joy, Gloria Trevi and Alejandra Guzman.

“Probably over the past 15-20 years, we have really embraced the holiday, bringing top-level, A-level acts and fights,” said Sid Greenfeig, vice president of entertainment and booking for MGM Resorts International, which is hosting seven shows and a megaboxing match across its properties. “We look definitely at diversity within the artists, and having arenas and large venues, we also look at acts that can fill these rooms.”

The city’s signature offering is a boxing match. So much so, Floyd Mayweather Jr., before he retired, made Mexican Independence Day his own holiday, fighting multiple times over the years. Promoters have traditionally offered fights featuring Mexican boxers on the El Grito and Cinco de Mayo weekends.

Mexico’s popular Saul “Canelo” Alvarez squares off Saturday against Gennady Golovkin in a long-anticipated middleweight bout at the sold-out T-Mobile Arena.

For the past three years, the tourist bureau’s occupancy rate records show hotels reached above 96 percent capacity during the three-day period associated with the holiday. In 2016, 98.4 percent of the city’s 149,000 hotel and motel rooms were booked, making it the year’s fourth busiest weekend.

On Friday, San Diego resident Esthela Pedrin will see Fernandez’ yearly Mexican Independence Day concert in Las Vegas for the tenth time. With so many options to choose from, she said she’s having a difficult time picking a Saturday concert to attend.

“I love celebrating it in Las Vegas, especially because so many people from all over our country of Mexico gather there,” Pedrin, a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S., said. “(Fernandez) brings out the flag. We all sing.”

The festivities begin Friday night with a celebratory ringing of a bell by Mexican Consul Alejandro Madrigal Becerra at The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. Hidalgo, the rebel priest, rang a bell when he gave his famous speech, and Mexico’s president does it in Mexico City every year.
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Mental Disorders, Poor Diets, Tobacco Make World Ill, Study Says

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Heart disease and tobacco ranked with conflict and violence among the world’s biggest killers in 2016, while poor diets and mental disorders caused people the greatest ill health, a large international study has found.

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, published in The Lancet medical journal, found that while life expectancy is increasing, so too are the years people live in poor health. The proportion of life spent being ill is higher in poor countries than in wealthy ones.

“Death is a powerful motivator, both for individuals and for countries, to address diseases that have been killing us at high rates. But we’ve been much less motivated to address issues leading to illnesses,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, which led the study.

He said a “triad of troubles” — obesity, conflict and mental illness — is emerging as a “stubborn and persistent barrier to active and vigorous lifestyles.”

Diet critical

The IHME-led study, involving more than 2,500 researchers in about 130 countries, found that in 2016, poor diet was associated with nearly one in five deaths worldwide. Tobacco smoking killed 7.1 million people.

Diets low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds, fish oils and high in salt were the most common risk factors, contributing to cases of obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and high cholesterol.

The study found that deaths from firearms, conflict and terrorism have increased globally, and that noncommunicable, or chronic, diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes caused 72 percent of all deaths worldwide.

Heart disease was the leading cause of premature death in most regions and killed 9.48 million people globally in 2016.

Mental illness was found to take a heavy toll on individuals and societies, with 1.1 billion people living with psychological or psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems in 2016.

Major depressive disorders ranked in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries worldwide.

The GBD is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global health charity and gives data estimates on 330 diseases, causes of death and injuries in 195 countries and territories.
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CIA Director Pompeo Cancels Harvard Speech Over Manning

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

CIA Director Mike Pompeo scrapped his appearance Thursday at Harvard University over the school’s decision to make Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of leaking classified information, a visiting fellow.

Pompeo called Manning an “American traitor.” He said he agreed with military and intelligence officials who believe Manning’s leak endangered the lives of CIA personnel.

Pompeo was scheduled to appear at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to discuss allegations of Russian involvement in last year’s presidential election, the nuclear standoff with North Korea and other global security concerns.

Pompeo letter released

Minutes after the event was to begin, Douglas Elmendorf, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, took the stage and told the audience Pompeo was not there and would not speak.

“We will try to reschedule it as soon as we can, but the CIA director, is obviously, in charge of his schedule,” Elmendorf said. “We are not in charge of his schedule and he gets to decide when and where he speaks, of course.”

Several hours later, the CIA released a letter that Pompeo wrote to a Harvard official.

Pompeo, who has a law degree from Harvard, said he didn’t make the decision lightly. He wrote that he would betray the trust of CIA employees if he appeared.

 

Manning was released from a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on May 17 after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, which was commuted by former President Barack Obama in his final days in office. Obama said in January he felt justice had been served.

Manning, a 29-year-old transgender woman, formerly known as Bradley Manning, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in a recent interview that she was prompted to give the 700,000 military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks because of the human toll of the “death, destruction and mayhem” she saw as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Morell resigns position

 

In his letter, Pompeo reiterated his earlier claim that WikiLeaks is a U.S. adversary “akin to a hostile foreign intelligence service.” He stressed that his decision had nothing to do with Manning’s transgender identity.

 

“It has everything to do with her identity as a traitor to the United States of America and my loyalty to the officers of the CIA,” Pompeo said.

 

“Harvard’s actions implicitly tell its students that you too can be a fellow at Harvard and a felon under United States law,” he wrote.

 

Earlier in the day, Mike Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, sent a resignation letter to Elmendorf. Morell told Elmendorf he was resigning immediately over the school’s decision to invite Manning to be a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

Morell said he could not be part of an organization that “honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information.” Pompeo said Morell’s exit was “Harvard’s loss.”

Harvard also has invited former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Harvard says Manning will be among fellows who will visit the campus for a “limited” number of events meant to spark campus discussion.

 
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Director Channels Fury at State of the World into ‘mother!’

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Darren Aronofsky does not just want audiences to watch his new film mother! He wants to shake them up and leave them thinking about his genre-defying, surreal apocalyptic thriller.

“It’s very much a scary film. It’s very much a film that we want to shake audiences,” Aronofsky told Reuters.

“This is definitely a film that we want people to be talking about and giggling about and analyzing and thinking about for times to come,” he added.

An allegorical tale

Aronofsky, 48, mined the depths and descent of the human psyche in films such as Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.

With mother!, released in U.S. theaters Friday, Aronofsky channels his fury with the state of the world into an allegorical story that reflects mankind’s selfish relationship with nature, gender, politics and religion.

The film centers on Jennifer Lawrence, a beautiful, naive young woman newly married to an older writer (Javier Bardem) suffering from writer’s block, and the two settle down into the writer’s secluded home.

As Lawrence’s character, an embodiment of Mother Nature, slowly renovates the property, two strangers, played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris, turn up at their doorstep and kick off a series of events that blur the lines of reality and escalate into chaos.

“I was interested in the home invasion genre — the kind of feeling of people coming into your home that won’t leave,” the director said.

“Turning that into a nightmare was the journey we wanted to take audiences on, and then we had this other big idea of like trying to capture what it feels like to be in 21st century America, which is a crazy time right now,” he added.

Reviews mixed

The film sharply split critics as it made the rounds at festivals in Venice and Toronto earlier this month, receiving both boos and cheers at screenings.

Aronofsky said he welcomed the mixed reaction because it meant the film had caught people’s attention.

“We wanted to make something big and loud and also something that’s immediate,” he said.

“I want everyone to know, ‘hey man, you only come if you want to go on the roller coaster and hold your arms up and scream into the abyss.’ That’s why it’s (the film title) got an exclamation point,” he added.
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Research Points to Ecological Costs of ‘Unethical’ Chocolate

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Your afternoon chocolate bar may be fueling climate change, destroying protected forests and threatening elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in West Africa, research suggests.

Well-known brands, such as Mars and Nestle, are buying through global traders cocoa that is grown illegally in dwindling national parks and reserves in Ivory Coast and Ghana, environmental group Mighty Earth said.

“Every consumer of chocolate is a part of either the problem or the solution,” Etelle Higonnet, campaign director at Mighty Earth, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“You can choose to buy ethical chocolate. Or you’re voting with your dollar for deforestation.”

Mars and Nestle told the Thomson Reuters Foundation they are working to tackle deforestation.

“We take a responsible approach to sourcing cocoa and have committed to source 100 percent certified sustainable cocoa by 2020,” Mars said in an email.

Both companies have committed to join the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, a major effort to end deforestation in the global cocoa supply chain, launched in March.

“We will be working to ensure human rights are given a high priority alongside the environmental aims of this initiative,” Nestle said in emailed comments.

Conversion to plantations

Almost one-third of 23 protected natural areas in Ivory Coast that researchers visited in 2015 had been almost entirely converted to illegal cocoa plantations, the report said.

Researchers said the practice is so widespread that villages of tens of thousands of people, along with churches and schools, have sprung up in national parks to support the cocoa economy.

Ivory Coast, Francophone West Africa’s biggest economy, is the world’s top cocoa grower.

While the bulk of its 1 million cocoa farmers ply their trade legally, Washington-based Mighty Earth estimates about a third of cocoa is grown illegally in protected areas.

Deforestation for cocoa happens in sight of authorities and chocolate traders are aware of it, they said.

Loss of natural forests is problematic because they act as a home for the region’s wildlife and a key weapon against climate change, absorbing carbon dioxide — a major driver of climate change — as they grow.

Available land for new cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast ran out long ago, so farmers have moved into parks and reserves, taking advantage of a decade of political crisis that ended in 2011.

Ivory Coast’s now has about 2.5 million hectares (6 million acres) of natural forest, a fifth of what it had at independence in 1960, according to European Union figures. Most of the losses have been caused by expanding agriculture.

The government has struggled to evict farmers from forest reserves amid accusations in 2013 of human rights abuses by security forces.

Details of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, which is initially focusing on Ivory Coast and Ghana, will be announced by November’s global climate talks in Bonn.
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‘A Fantastic Woman’ Could Lead to Trans History at Oscars

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

A transgender Chilean actress has turned in one of the most buzzed-about performances of the year and some are hoping she could be the first trans actor to land an Oscar nomination.

Daniela Vega, 28, stars in Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman. She plays Marina, a transgender woman whose partner (Francisco Reyes) dies, after which Marina is subjected to harsh treatment by the family of her deceased lover and by police investing the death.

Chile has selected the film as its Academy Awards submission this year. But the bigger spotlight may be on whether Vega’s breakout performance — one of stirring strength and compassion — could make Oscar history. Reviewing the movie at its Berlin Film Festival premiere, Variety called her performance “a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting,” that deserves “so much more than political praise.”

While several transgender musicians have been Oscar-nominated, no trans performer has ever earned an acting nod.

“It’s too early to talk about that, to think about it. I have lots of festivals to attend, lots of dresses to wear,” Vega said with a grin in an interview. “The Oscars are a little bit beyond the timeline I’m thinking about right now. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Vega and A Fantastic Woman will not have an easy road to the Oscars. Performances in foreign-language films rarely break into the acting categories, and this year, like most, the field of potential contenders boasts plenty of heavyweight, bigger-name performers like Meryl Streep (The Post) and Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game).

But Vega has two things going for her: the depth of her performance and the possibility of a long-awaited Oscar landmark. Such a result could have great meaning for a trans community that President Donald Trump recently banned from entering the military.

“If we broaden our gaze, it will be more interesting, more beautiful. If we can make more diverse colors, people, stories, it will be interesting,” Vega said. “Uniforms are for the military and the police, not for our thinking.”

Hollywood has far from shied away from telling transgender stories, but the industry has come under increasing criticism for not casting them in high-profile parts. Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) have taken home awards, and movies like 2015’s The Danish Girl, with Eddie Redmayne, and 2005’s Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman, have garnered nominations.

While those films and the Amazon series Transparent have been widely applauded, pressure has mounted urging producers to cast trans actors for trans parts. Progress has instead come in smaller, offbeat productions like Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the much-lauded 2015 film Baker shot with iPhones. It starred a pair of transgender performers, Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez. Taylor last year won an Independent Spirit Award for her performance.

“There is very beautiful transgender talent,” Taylor said, accepting the supporting actress award. “You better get out there and put it in your movie.”

Transgender people have been nominated in other Oscar categories. The composer Angela Morley received two nods, for 1974’s The Little Prince and 1976’s The Slipper and the Rose.

Most recently, singer Anohni, formerly known as Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, became the first transgendered performer ever nominated. She collaborated with J. Ralph on the nominated song Manta Ray for the documentary Racing Extinction. But when the category’s other nominees — Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, the Weeknd — were given performing slots during the 2016 broadcast, Anohni was not, and she opted to boycott the ceremony.

In a fiery essay announcing her refusal to attend, Anohni declared: “They are going to try to convince us that they have our best interests at heart by waving flags for identity politics and fake moral issues.” 

Whether Vega — and Oscar voters — can change history won’t be decided for months. Sony Picture Classics, which has guided performers to dozens of Academy Award nominations, will release the film on Nov. 17. For now, Vega is soaking up her moment.

“It’s like living a dream,” said Vega. “It’s like a film in a film.”
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Commerce’s Ross: US Wants NAFTA 5-year Sunset Provision

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Thursday that the United States was seeking to add a five-year sunset provision to the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide a regular, “systematic re-examination” of the trade pact.

Ross told a forum hosted by Politico that both he and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had agreed on the need for such a sunset provision for quite a while and would “put it forward” in the NAFTA modernization talks, but it was unclear whether Canada and Mexico would back it.

U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are set to reconvene for a third round of talks in Ottawa on Sept. 23-27.

Ross said that a sunset provision was needed because forecasts for U.S. export and job growth when NAFTA took effect in 1994 were “wildly optimistic” and failed to live up to expectations.

He said the termination clause currently in NAFTA that allows a country to exit after a six-month notice period has never been triggered, and “it’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t be.”

But Ross and U.S. President Donald Trump have both talked about quitting NAFTA if it can’t be renegotiated to reduce U.S. trade deficits with Mexico and Canada.

“The five-year thing is a real thing, would force a systematic re-examination,” Ross said. “If there were a systematic re-examination after a little experience period, you’d have a forum for trying to fix things that didn’t work out the way you thought they would.”

Politico first reported that USTR had circulated the sunset proposal with other federal agencies.
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Brazilians Toil for Gold in Illegal Amazon Mines

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Informal mining in Brazil is seen by many as a scourge polluting the Amazon rainforest, poisoning indigenous tribes and robbing the nation of its wealth.

For others it is a way of life.

Brazilian garimpos, or wildcat mines, are operated by small crews of men, often caked in red-brown mud and working with rudimentary pans, shovels and sluice boxes that have been used for centuries.

More sophisticated operations use water cannons and boats sucking mud from the bottoms of rivers. Regardless of the method, searching for gold and other minerals like cassiterite and niobium is dirty, dangerous and often illegal.

“Looking for gold is like playing in a casino,” said a 48-year-old miner.

Miners asked not to be named, saying they feared the police as much of their work is illegal.

Started as a teen

He started in the wildcat mines as a teenager in the area around Crepurizao,  a ramshackle frontier town of 5,000 with a dirt landing strip that is a gateway for informal mining in the region.

Garimpos are in the spotlight as Brazil debates opening an area known as Renca in the northern Amazon forest to mining, which has met with stiff resistance from environmentalists.

Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho argues that licensed mining will be an improvement over the estimated 1,000 people currently mining in the reserve illegally.

Crepurizao lies hundreds of miles south of Renca, but gives a window into life in the garimpos caught up in the debate.

On brink of poverty

Living in makeshift homes of wood and plastic, miners in the area ship some 60 kilograms (132 lbs) of gold per month, according to traders.

That much pure gold is worth millions of dollars on the global market, but high costs and layers of traders in the local market leave most miners living on the brink of poverty.

Basic staples can cost four or five times the price in the nearest city, an eight-hour bus ride away.

Fuel stations, a general store, a bar, an evangelical church and prostitutes vie for the income and attention of the miners, known as garimpeiros, when they aren’t working or lazing in hammocks.

Most unlicensed

There are 2,113 licensed garimpo sites in Brazil, according to ministry data, but environmental experts and two government officials, who asked not to be named, said far more small-scale mines skip the licensing and ignore regulations altogether.

In Crepurizao, where mines often cluster close together, it was unclear which operations were licensed.

The total area worked by garimpeiros in Brazil is thought to be small. But chemicals like mercury, which miners in Crepurizao dump to separate gold from grit, can leave a large footprint of contamination.

In March last year, a government-backed study of indigenous villages in the northern state of Roraima revealed alarming levels of mercury.

One group of villagers had more than double the level of mercury considered to be a serious health risk — such as damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, heart and reproductive process — detected in their hair.

New oversight

The Mining and Energy Ministry said a new oversight agency created in a decree by President Michel Temer, now pending congressional approval, would allow more effective government coordination and inspections to restrict illegal mining.

Congressman Leonardo Quintao, who sits on the committee considering the new agency, said it will be able to raise more funding for oversight. He said the regulations target licensed miners, while illegal mining remains a matter for the police.

Still, one enforcement officer, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said the government had left miners like those in Crepurizao in a precarious limbo.

“You can’t just pull them out of the garimpos and the cities that are living off gold. And the government does not offer them structure and decent conditions,” said the officer. “So they’re stranded there without the minimum conditions for survival.”

 
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Hong Kong Singer, Actress Josie Ho Making New Music

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

To say that Josie Ho has been busy is an understatement.

The Hong Kong singer and actress is putting out new music, touring Asia and has shot a new travel show on TLC.

Together with her indie rock band, Josie and the Uni Boys, Ho is releasing seven new singles on vinyl records, one song at a time. She said her new music is inspired by the psycho thriller film Split starring James McAvoy, about three young girls kidnapped by a man who suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Fittingly, the first single is named Skitzo.

“I believe everyone has at least five personalities, like when you go home and face your parents, your lover, your friends, your colleagues, your boss and like, some PR friends,” Ho explained. “Some people have guilt trips about having different faces, like they feel like they’re two-faced, which I don’t think so. That’s why we need to put this concept out there, so when people really understand our lyrics and our music, I hope everyone feels that ‘We’re OK. We’re all OK. We’re fine.'”

Split might just be the way Ho, 42, feels about her life. The daughter of Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho, Ho defied her parents and refused to join the family business. Instead, she wanted to become an actress and singer.

In 1996, she released her first solo albums and also began acting in films. However, it wasn’t until she played a prostitute in the 2003 movie Naked Ambition that critics began to take her seriously as an actress. For that performance, Ho won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. She also attempted to break into Hollywood, gaining a small part in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion about the SARS epidemic. 

This year, Ho is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her band. They will kick off a tour in Tokyo in October, and Ho could hardly contain her excitement.

“I’m going to be able to perform like a Japanese band at their live houses. Those are not just any live houses, those are scared rock ‘n’ roll, hall of fame places. So, I’m really honored to play there,” Ho said.   

After Japan, Josie and the Uni Boys head to China, the Philippines and Taiwan before returning home to Hong Kong next spring.

Until then, fans can catch Ho on TLC, A Taste of Hong Kong with Josie Ho, where she hosts other Asian celebrities in Hong Kong and shows them around town. Her favorite spot in Hong Kong? Surprisingly, the outdoors.

“A lot of countries have outdoor sports as well, but our outdoor sports are only 20 minutes away from the city. So I think we have the upper hand, compared to other cities in Asia. So you can go wakeboarding, take 45 minutes to shower and change, and go to work in central. I think that’s a really important point to tell people,” she said.
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Text Message Network Connects Offline Farmers in Kenya

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

When she woke up one morning in February, Catherine Kagendo realized that one of her cows could not stand.

“It was lying on its side, had lost its appetite and was breathing heavily,” she told Reuters from her farm in Meru, in eastern Kenya.

With her husband, she decided to turn to WeFarm, a text-based network of small-scale farmers, for help.

Within an hour, their text — “one of my lactating cows cannot stand” — generated a flurry of suggestions, from “feed your cow with minerals rich in calcium” to “make sure the cow shed is clean and well-drained so the animals don’t slip.”

“I realized our cow had milk fever, so gave it calcium-rich feed and it was standing again within hours,” Kagendo explained.

She is one of many Kenyan small-scale farmers who lack good information — mostly due to a lack of internet access — on how to manage problems from dry spells to diseases, local farm experts say.

As a result, such farmers often lose their harvest or animals, they said.

But WeFarm, a farmers’ network launched in Kenya in 2014 and more recently expanded to Uganda and Peru, allows people to ask a question by text message and receive advice from their peers.

The service, whose Scottish co-founder Kenny Ewan describes it as “the internet for people with no internet,” is free to use and only requires a mobile phone.

Farmers text questions to a local number, and WeFarm transmits the message to users with similar interests in the area, tapping into their knowledge.

“We want farmers to get answers to their problems without needing to access the internet, so the information is available to all,” said Mwinyi Bwika, head of marketing at WeFarm.

Although the platform also exists online, over 95 percent of users choose to use it offline, he said.

Information gap

Kagendo said that when her animals were ill or her maize crops too dry, she used to have to hire an extension officer to help solve the problem.

“But we had to pay a fee ranging from 500 to 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($5-$20), and most of the time the officer didn’t even explain their diagnosis,” she said.

That cut into her family’s income and left them no better able to understand the diseases facing their cattle and their crops.

“We cannot even afford a smartphone to go online, so finding credible information was near impossible,” she said.

According to Bwika, small-scale farmers often lack the information they need because of a lack of cash — most live on less than a dollar a day — as well as poor internet connection and low literacy levels.

“Ewan realized that farmers living just a few miles from each other were facing the same challenges, but with no way to communicate about them. So, he created a platform to connect them,” Bwika said.

Joseph Kinyua, another farmer from Meru who grows vegetables, said he spends at least 30 minutes per day using WeFarm.

“It’s taught me anything from using pest control traps to ensuring that my sprinklers don’t put out too much water,” he said. “And I know the methods are proven and tested by other farmers.”

The knowledge has helped improve the quality of the kale he grows, he said, enough that “I can now sell a kilo at the market at 70 shillings [$0.70] compared to 50 [$0.50] previously.”

Preventing problems

While the platform might receive dozens of replies to a question, it only sends out to the user a selection of answers judged correct, Bwika said.

But it uses the questions and advice received to help track disease outbreaks or extreme weather spells, and shares those insights with governments and non-governmental organizations, Bwika said.

“In doing so, we hope to prevent disease outbreaks and track problems before they occur,” he said.

Not everyone shares this optimism, however.

Mary Nkatha, a farmer from Meru, said she found it hard to implement some of the recommendations she received from WeFarm without the practical guidance of an expert.

“If I am told to inject my cow with something, how do I make sure I do it in the right place? And where do I find the equipment?” she asked.

Fredrick Ochido, a Kenya-based consultant on dairy farming, also worries that the platform may be entrenching farmers’ poor use of technology, rather than helping them keep up with new trends.

The WeFarm platform has over 100,000 current users in Kenya, Uganda and Peru, and its operators hopes to reach one million farmers in the next year. They also aim to expand the effort to other countries, including Tanzania.
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Irma Pushes Florida’s Poor Closer to the Edge of Ruin

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Larry and Elida Dimas didn’t have much to begin with, and Hurricane Irma left them with even less.

The storm peeled open the roof of the old mobile home where they live with their 18-year-old twins, and it destroyed another one they rented to migrant workers in Immokalee, one of Florida’s poorest communities. Someone from the government already has promised aid, but Dimas’ chin quivers at the thought of accepting it.

“I don’t want the help,” said Dimas, 55. “But I need it.”

Dimas is one of millions of Floridians who live in poverty, and an untold number of them have seen their lives up-ended by Irma. Their options, already limited, were narrowed even further when the hurricane destroyed possessions, increased expenses and knocked them out of work.

Not far from Dimas in impoverished Immokalee, located on the edge of the Everglades, Haitian immigrant Woodchy Darius, a junior at Immokalee High School, must decide whether to return to class when school reopens or head to the fields to pick berries once the land is dry enough to work again.

“The rent is $375, and if I don’t have the money they’ll kick us out,” said Darius, 17. He lives in a grubby apartment building with bare concrete floors, burglar-proof doors and cinder-block walls that make it resemble a jail more than home.

The Census Bureau estimates about 3.3 million people live in poverty in Florida – nearly 16 percent of the state’s 20.6 million population. For them, the amusement parks of Orlando or President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach might as well be on Mars.

Many work by the hour in restaurants, gas stations, hotels, stores and other businesses forced to close for days after Irma, depriving them of paychecks. Others are day laborers or migrants who earn money by the pound picking produce that’s sold in stores nationwide. Still others are retirees on fixed incomes or disability checks whose budgets already were tight before Irma.

Fleeing Irma wasn’t an option for those who lacked transportation to get to a shelter, couldn’t afford gas to drive north and couldn’t rent a hotel room. The likely costs associated with cleaning up or finding a new place to live pushed them closer to the edge than ever.

After Irma, Gwen Bush scrambled to find a place just to sleep after flood waters rose around her home.

A security worker for Amway Center in Orlando, Bush hadn’t worked in the days leading up to Irma because concerts and other events had been canceled as the storm approached. It’s not certain when the arena will be open for business, and she was down to her final $10 before the storm.

“I’ve been through some hurricanes and some storms living here but I can say on my life this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Bush, 50, a lifelong resident of Orlando. “How do you recover from this, losing all of your stuff?”

David and Andrea Jewell survive on disability checks and live on a sailboat they bought for $1,000 on eBay years ago. David Jewell, 51, can’t imagine now living on land; both consider the ocean – like the dolphins they watch – their only real neighbors.

After the storm, the Jewells stayed on cots in the gym at a community center in Jacksonville. They tried to figure out if they could get a new boat if theirs was destroyed. Maybe, they decided, they could just cut back on food and find another cheap one with their next disability checks.

“There aren’t any answers,” he said, “so I guess I’ll have to roll with it.”

But in one bit of good news, they later learned from a friend that their boat is still floating.

For some poor people, there’s at least a little upside to the devastation.

Guatemalan immigrant Aura Gaspar totaled up storm-related expenses of about $600 while using a twig-fired grill to stew chicken on her front stoop in Immokalee; she has three school-age children to feed and a 2-week-old baby.

But Gaspar said husband Juan Francisco got a job cleaning up storm debris in the Fort Myers and Naples area. He needed to get busy, she said through a translator: Their storm preparations cost nearly twice as much as his weekly pay of $320.

“We had to prepare the house so it would protect us,” said Gaspar, 28.

Beside his ruined Immokalee mobile home, Dimas is trying to get back on his feet, but it’s tough.

Dimas earns a meager living cooking hamburgers and chicken in a food truck parked by his home, and some customers already have returned – he said he sold all 40 of the hamburgers that were still safe to cook Tuesday.

Dimas needs to replace the income from his rental trailer, already condemned after being split open by the wind. Dimas had used that money to help feed his two teenagers and pay for the rescue inhalers he needs for his asthma. Losing it will only make it harder for Dimas to do what he says is one of his favorite things – providing free or cut-rate food to those who have even less.

Coping with Irma’s aftermath is only making life tougher for people with little who live in places including unincorporated Immokalee, said Dimas.

“A lot of people work. They work hard here. They don’t ask for nothing. They just go to work, come home and something like this happens, it’s ….,” Dimas said. “I don’t know what to say.”

He stopped talking and turned away to keep from crying.
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A Dead Dictator, His Rusting Boat and a Fight for History

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

In a Croatian port sits a boat built to carry bananas from Africa to Italy, that laid mines for Nazi Germany and was sunk by Allied planes before it was salvaged as the personal yacht of a globe-trotting communist leader.

Josip Broz Tito and the state he led – Yugoslavia – have long passed into history, and the boat, the Galeb (Seagull), was left to rust in a corner of Rijeka’s once mighty docks.

Now, with Rijeka readying to become European Capital of Culture in 2020, city authorities have secured European Union money to restore the 117-meter (384-feet) boat as a museum, just as debate in Croatia rages over the life and deeds of the man who graced the pink mattress in the front port-side cabin.

If the Galeb was a symbol of Tito’s prestige on the world stage – a communist leader welcome in ports West as well as East – its restoration is part of Croatia’s own tortured process of reconciliation with its 20th century history.

Villain to some, hero to others

To conservatives in Croatia, Tito – who was born in what is today Croatia to a Croat father and Slovene mother – was a totalitarian dictator: to look fondly on him means to be nostalgic for a shared federal state that denied Croats their own until they forged one in a 1991-95 war.

Liberals, however, recall his guerrilla fight against the Nazis and the relative freedom and prosperity of Yugoslavs compared to those who lived in the Soviet Union or in its shadow.

They see in the disdain of conservatives a thinly veiled fondness for the World War II Croatian state that collaborated with the Nazis but was snuffed out with Tito’s Partisan victory – sentiment that has gained a foothold in mainstream Croatian

politics in recent years.

It is a tug-of-war over history and identity that was encapsulated this month in the renaming by Zagreb’s city council of the capital’s Marshal Tito Square to Republic of Croatia square.

Days later, the government ordered the removal of a plaque near the site of a World War II concentration camp that bore a notorious slogan associated with the Nazi puppet regime in Croatia.

“We live in a time when history is being reinvented retroactively,” said Ivan Sarar, who as head of culture at Rijeka’s city council is in charge of its 2020 makeover.

“It’s interesting that just by undertaking this [restoration] we have already been declared revisionists,” he told Reuters.

‘Quasi-cultural exhibitionism’

After years of false-starts, work on restoring the Galeb is imminent – “a mammoth, multi-million-euro task to recreate the 1950s chic of Tito’s floating palace, host to over 100 heads of state and some of Hollywood’s finest.

Some of the furniture remains – in Tito’s cabin, his turquoise-tiled bathroom and the adjacent salon with doors that open to the deck. But the ship itself is little more than a rotting hull.

The Galeb was the stage for Tito’s major contribution to history, said Sarar, a showcase for the non-aligned movement he helped found in answer to the East-West polarization of the Cold War.

But Sarar stressed: “We won’t be soft on anyone.”

He noted Tito’s cosy ties with dictators around the world, the exodus of Italian residents of Rijeka when he took the city as part of Yugoslavia, and his denial of democracy during 35 years of one-man rule until his death in 1980. Yugoslavia fell apart in war a decade later and some 135,000 people were killed.

It was Tito’s seizure of Rijeka and the Istrian peninsula that cemented his status in this part of Croatia as a liberator.

Dozens of streets in Istria still bear his name, as do others in the Balkans – most notably in Serbia, once the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.

Conservatives, however, struck a blow with the renaming of Zagreb’s Marshal Tito Square, part of a deal struck by the mayor to secure his majority in the city assembly.

The man behind the initiative, leading right-wing politician Zlatko Hasanbegovic, told Reuters that while Tito was “undeniably a significant historical figure,” so were Napoleon, Stalin and Lenin.

“In all countries, streets and squares bear the names of those who embody the values with which the entire nation identifies itself,” he said, describing the restoration of the Galeb as part of an attempt to revive the cult of Tito.

“Those insisting on it should ask themselves how the tens of thousands of victims of Yugoslav communism look on that kind of quasi-cultural exhibitionism.”

In Rijeka, Sarar denied planning any kind of homage to Tito.

“We want to create a place for dialogue, away from the current situation of extreme black, white and red truths that lead nowhere,” he said. “It’s bound to be difficult.”
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Venezuela’s New Plan to Beat Hunger: Breed Rabbits

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Venezuela’s government this week urged citizens to see rabbits as more than “cute pets” as it defended a plan to breed and eat them even as the opposition says this would do nothing to end chronic food shortages.

The “Rabbit Plan” is an effort by the government of President Nicolas Maduro to boost food availability. Authorities have also taught citizens to plant food on roofs and balconies of their homes.

Maduro’s adversaries dismiss such ideas as nonsensical, insisting the real problem is a failed model of oil-financed socialism that was unable to survive after crude markets collapsed.

“There is a cultural problem because we have been taught that rabbits are cute pets,” Urban Agriculture Minister Freddy Bernal said during a televised broadcast with Maduro this week.

“A rabbit is not a pet; it’s two-and-a-half kilos (5.5 pounds) of meat that is high in protein, with no cholesterol.”

Maduro’s critics lampooned the idea.

“Are you serious?” asked Henrique Capriles, a state governor and two-time opposition presidential candidate in a video to response to Bernal. ” … You want people to start raising rabbits to solve the problem of hunger in our country?”

Rabbit consumption is common in Europe and to lesser extent in the United States. The animals are more efficient than pigs and cattle in converting protein into edible meat, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

But raising rabbits in significant quantities in contemporary Venezuela would be difficult.

The country’s constant shortages, resulting from stringent price and currency controls, would probably leave the would-be rabbit industry struggling to find materials ranging from feed to metal and wire for breeding cages.

Maduro says the country is a victim of an “economic war” led by adversaries and fueled by recent sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
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SpaceX Bloopers Video: ‘How NOT to Land an Orbital Rocket’

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

SpaceX has put together a bloopers video showing “How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster.”

Set to John Philip Sousa’s rousing march “The Liberty Bell,” the two-minute video posted Thursday shows rockets exploding at sea and over land. The opening blast, from 2013, is even synchronized to the music.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk can afford to poke fun at his early, pioneering efforts at rocket recycling, now that his private company has pulled off 16 successful booster landings. The most recent occurred last week in Florida.

“We messed up a lot before it finally worked, but there’s some epic explosion footage,” Musk said recently on Twitter.

In one video shot, Musk looks over a rocket’s charred remains with the caption: “It’s just a scratch.” After another huge fiery explosion, this one on the company’s barge, the caption reads: “Well, technically, it did land … just not in one piece.”

Musk tweeted Thursday that when the Falcon rocket’s upper stage and the cargo enclosure can also be retrieved and reused, launch costs will drop by a factor of more than 100.

For now, SpaceX’s first-stage boosters- 15 stories tall – separate shortly after liftoff and fly back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station or an ocean platform for a vertical touchdown. Until the company’s recovery efforts – unique among rocket makers launching spacecraft into orbit – these segments were discarded at sea. A couple of these recycled rockets already have launched a second time.

The video ends with scenes of the first successful booster touchdown at Cape Canaveral in 2015 and the first one on an ocean platform in 2016.

“The Liberty Bell” march was the theme music for the old “Monty Python” comedy TV series.
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Harvey Charities Raise More Than $350M in Less Than 3 Weeks

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

More than 50 local and national charities have raised more than $350 million in the nearly three weeks since Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas Gulf Coast, and the disparate groups are trying to decide on priorities while some storm victims still await help.

Distrust of large charities such as the American Red Cross has driven many donors to smaller, local organizations. For instance, Houston Texans football star J.J. Watt has raised more than $30 million for his foundation, an effort he started by posting appeals on social media.

One donor to Watt’s effort, Helen Vasquez, stood outside the Texans’ stadium and said she had seen a Facebook post listing the salaries of executives at top national charities. She gave Watt $20 instead.

“It’s all going to the people itself and not to the corporations, not the higher-ups in the corporations,” Vasquez said.

But most of the money raised for Harvey has gone to the Red Cross, which has raised a least $211 million. The rest went to other organizations, including 40 groups listed by Charity Navigator, as well as dozens of other groups and individual families raising money on do-it-yourself sites such as GoFundMe.

More than $50 million has poured into the local fund set up by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief administrative official.

Turner and Emmett openly urge donors to give to the local fund and not the Red Cross, saying doing so will ensure the best use of the money.

Emmett has blamed the Red Cross for problems that arose with setting up and running the emergency shelters used by tens of thousands of people who were flooded out of their homes.

The Greater Houston Community Foundation, which the men have asked to administer the fund, is creating a 12-member board and a grant committee to set priorities and distribute donations starting in the next several weeks. The foundation is working with the United Way and dozens of other charities, but so far not with the Red Cross or with Watt, who did not respond to questions sent through a spokesman for the Texans.

David Brady, CEO of the Red Cross of the Texas Gulf Coast, said his group would be “happy to be a part of all conversations” and that the Red Cross would review how it could improve its shelter operations in the future.

“We can’t take the criticisms personally,” he said.

The foundation’s CEO, Stephen Maislin, said it will pay the costs of running the Harvey relief fund on its own, including the credit card fees banks charge for donations.

The charities are still weighing the best ways to use the money and setting up systems to monitor where the money goes. Veterans of other major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, say coordination between groups is critical to make the most out of every dollar.

Reese May, national director of recovery for the home rebuilding group SBP, said local leaders need to bridge the gaps between the dozens of groups by setting clear goals.

“When there is aggressive leadership, when there are aggressive goals that are publicly set, it plants the flag,” May said. “It gives neighbors the opportunity to connect with one another, saying, ‘Absolutely, we’re going to make it back from this.'”

Among the most critical needs is figuring out housing for thousands of people who are still living in emergency shelters, many of whom are not eligible for federal assistance. Others lost everything in their homes, and some people are living in gutted homes flooded by sewage because they have nowhere else to go.

The people involved in fundraising say they must move quickly and coordinate with each other.

“I’m praying we can stretch it,” said Anna Babin, head of the United Way of Greater Houston, which is already issuing grants to people needing help with rent and lost vehicles and cleaning out flooded homes. “But this is so significant.”

As the Texans played their first game of the season Sunday, around 1,900 evacuees were inside the NRG Center, the convention center across the street from the stadium. Thousands of NFL fans were tailgating in nearby parking lots, and smoke from sausages and chicken on the grill rose in the air.

Estella Martin and several other people said they wanted answers from the groups raising money on their behalf.

“They got enough to put every one of the people that are still here in a home or an apartment and help them out until they get up on their feet,” Martin said. “Instead, they’ve got us here.”
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Long-endangered Snow Leopard Upgraded to ‘Vulnerable’ Status

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

The elusive snow leopard – long considered an endangered species – has been upgraded to “vulnerable,” international conservationists said Thursday. But experts warned the new classification does not mean they are safe.

The animals still face serious challenges including poaching and loss of prey in their high Himalayan habitat.

“The species still faces ‘a high risk of extinction in the wild’ and is likely still declining – just not at the rate previously thought,” said Tom McCarthy, head of the snow leopard program at the big cat conservation group Panthera.

Snow leopards had been listed as endangered since 1972.

The reclassification announced Thursday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, followed a three-year assessment during which experts determined the Himalayan cats no longer numbered fewer than 2,500 in the wild, and was not in steep decline – the two criteria for being considered “endangered.”

Using improved methods for counting cat numbers, experts now estimate there are about 4,000 snow leopards in the wild.

But experts stressed that estimate was based on an assessment that included a detailed survey of only 2 percent of the snow leopard’s high-mountain range, across 12 countries in Asia.

Some positive conservation developments included an increase in the number of protected areas within that range, as well as stepped-up efforts by local communities to protect the animals from poachers.

Communities were also working to prevent cases of local herdsmen retaliating for lost livestock by building predator-proof livestock corrals, according to team member Rodney Jackson, who heads the Snow Leopard Conservancy group, according to a statement.

Still, the animals are hunted for their thick fur and bones. They also face declining numbers of wild prey, as domestic livestock have degraded grasslands.
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