Day: October 7, 2017

Holy Spirits? Closed Churches Find Second Life as Breweries

Ira Gerhart finally found a place last year to fulfill his yearslong dream of opening a brewery: a 1923 Presbyterian church. It was cheap, charming and just blocks from downtown Youngstown.

But soon after Gerhart announced his plans, residents and a minister at a Baptist church just a block away complained about alcohol being served in the former house of worship.

“I get it, you know, just the idea of putting a bar in God’s house,” Gerhart said. “If we didn’t choose to do this, most likely, it’d fall down or get torn down. I told them we’re not going to be a rowdy college bar.”

With stained glass, brick walls and large sanctuaries ideal for holding vats and lots of drinkers, churches renovated into breweries attract beer lovers but can grate on the spiritual sensibilities of clergy and worshippers.

At least 10 new breweries have opened in old churches across the country since 2011, and at least four more are slated to open in the next year. The trend started after the 2007 recession as churches merged or closed because of dwindling membership. Sex abuse settlements by the Roman Catholic Church starting in the mid-2000s were not a factor because those payments were largely covered by insurers, according to Terrence Donilon, spokesman for the archdiocese of Boston.

Gerhart’s is scheduled to open this month after winning over skeptics like the Baptist minister and obtaining a liquor license.

“We don’t want (churches) to become a liquor store,” said Michael Schafer, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which has imposed restrictions on turning closed churches into beer halls. “We don’t think that’s appropriate for a house of worship.”

At the Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh, an early church-turned-brewery that opened in 1996, patrons slide into booths crafted from pews. Towering steel and copper vats sit on the church’s former altar. Yellow flags line the sanctuary emblazoned with the brewery’s motto: “ON THE EIGHTH DAY. MAN CREATED BEER.”

Owner Sean Casey bought the former church because it was cheap and reminded him of beer halls he used to frequent in Munich. Aficionados cite its rustic decor as a major draw.

“It’s got that `wow’ factor,” said Jesse Anderson-Lehnan, 27. “But it still feels like a normal place, it doesn’t feel weird to come and sit at the bar and talk for a few hours.”

When St. John the Baptist Church was desanctified and sold to Casey, Roman Catholics in the diocese voiced their opposition, leading to the deed restrictions to stop other closed churches from becoming bars and clubs.

While the Diocese of Cincinnati also has imposed such restrictions, it’s unclear how much company it and Youngstown have. Limits also exist in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania, while the Boston archdiocese says it solicits proposals from potential buyers and screens them to make sure they’re in line with Catholic values.

Churches are uniquely difficult to renovate, preservationists say. Large stained windows and cavernous sanctuaries are tough to partition into condominiums. Historic landmark protections can bar new owners from knocking down some churches, leading them to sit empty and decay.

But the same vaulted ceilings that keep housing developers away from churches also lend them an old-world air hard to replicate elsewhere, making former houses of worship particularly suitable as dignified beer halls.

There, even clergy members sometimes aren’t so opposed to quaffing a pint. Some are regulars at the Church Brew Works, Casey said, where they can order Pipe Organ pale ale or Pious Monk dark lager.

Cincinnati’s Taft’s Ale House kicked off its grand opening in the 167-year-old St. Paul’s Evangelical Protestant Church with a “blessing of the beers.” A television report at the time shows the Rev. John Kroeger, a Catholic priest, giving the blessing.

“God of all creation, you gift us with friends, and food and drink,” he said, eyes cast upward. “Bless these kegs, and every keg that will be brewed here. Bless all those freshened here, and all those gathered in the days, and months, and years to come!”

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Big Tech Has Big Plans to Help Reconnect Puerto Rico

Facebook and Google once aimed to connect the world. Now they would be happy just to reconnect part of it.

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to send a “connectivity team” to help restore communications in ravaged Puerto Rico. Google parent company Alphabet offered to send its Wi-Fi balloons. They were among several tech companies proposing disaster response ideas, most aimed at getting phone and internet service up and running.

Some of these plans, of course, are more aspirational than others.

Battery Power

Tesla CEO Elon Musk often takes to Twitter to mull over ideas, but on Friday his musings about sending his company’s solar-powered batteries to help restore Puerto Rico’s power attracted the attention of the island’s governor.

“Let’s talk,” said Gov. Ricardo Rossello in a Friday tweet.

Musk agreed. Hours later, he announced he was delaying the unveiling of Tesla’s new semi-truck and diverting resources, in part to “increase battery production for Puerto Rico and other affected areas.”

The need for help in restoring power and communication after Hurricane Maria is great: The Puerto Rican energy authority reported Saturday that about 88 percent of the island is still without power. The Federal Communications Commission said Saturday that 82 percent of cell sites remain out in Puerto Rico; 58 percent are out of service in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The FCC’s daily status report also shows significant wireline, TV and radio outages remain in both U.S. territories. The agency formed a task force this week and approved an advance of $77 million to support carriers working to restore telecommunications services.

Vague Promises

But many offers of help from big companies remain somewhat vague. Google parent company Alphabet has proposed launching balloons over the island to bring Wi-Fi service to hard-to-reach places, as it has in other parts of the world.

The FCC announced Saturday that it’s approved an experimental license for Project Loon to operate in Puerto Rico. But that doesn’t mean it will able to get them in the air anytime soon.

“We’re grateful for the support of the FCC and the Puerto Rican authorities as we work hard to see if it’s possible to use Loon balloons to bring emergency connectivity to the island during this time of need,” said Libby Leahy, a spokesman for Alphabet’s X division.

But there are limitations, she said Saturday.

“To deliver signal to people’s devices, Loon needs be integrated with a telco partner’s network — the balloons can’t do it alone,” she said, adding that the company is “making solid progress on this next step.”

Collaborative efforts

Cisco Systems has sent a tactical team and says it is working with local government, emergency responders and service providers to facilitate restoration and recovery efforts. The company, along with Microsoft and others, backs the NetHope consortium, which specializes in setting up post-disaster communication networks and has field teams now operating in Puerto Rico and several other Caribbean islands.

“Communication is critical during a disaster,” Zuckerberg said after the hurricane hit, announcing that employees from his company’s connectivity team — the same group working to build high-altitude drones that can beam internet service down to Earth — were heading to Puerto Rico. But with its aircraft still in the testing phase, the company said Friday that the engineers it’s sent to Puerto Rico are focused on providing support to NetHope’s teams.

Smaller organizations

Much of the ground work is being spearheaded by nonprofit organizations and small firms with expertise in rural or emergency communications.

Lexington, Massachusetts-based Vanu Inc., which sets up wireless communications networks in rural parts of the United States, Africa and India, is sending dozens of its small, solar-powered cellular base stations to volunteer crews on the ground in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Aid workers are pairing Vanu’s devices with other technology, such as inflatable satellite antennas.

After setting up a network on the island of Vieques, off the main island of Puerto Rico, one team watched from a roof as local residents started getting text alerts from family members who had been trying to get in touch.

“They noticed everyone in the plaza pulling their phones out,” said CEO Vanu Bose. “You don’t have to announce you’ve lit up coverage. People know right away.”

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Uganda Lures World Investors to Boost Conservation Tourism

Home to half the world’s Mountain gorilla and 50 percent of world bird species, conservation tourism marketing remains a challenge for Uganda.  In a first ever conservation Finance Giants Forum, Uganda also known as the Pearl of Africa, Friday, got an opportunity to market its beauty in a bid to lure more investors and tourists into the country.

Uganda held the first ever Conservation and Tourism Investment Forum Friday, gathering senior business figures from around the world.  

Emphasis was put on new marketing strategies, particularly the need for private sector investment to compliment traditional sources of conservation capital.

The government’s intention was to show investors that Uganda is open for responsible investment in the conservation sector and for conservation organizations to take note of the opportunity to co-manage protected areas with the government.  

Stephen Asiimwe is the Chief Executive Director Uganda Tourism Board.

“Because we’ve got forests, we’ve got Rift Valley, we’ve got the Mountains, we’ve got the national parks, we’ve got places near falls, we’ve got places near rivers, lakes,” said Asiimwe. “So basically, we are selling locations, which offer the customer at the end of the day a fantastic experience that gives them a sense of saying, I want to stay here.”

The investors made it clear what they needed from the government. Max Graham, founder of the elephant conservation group Space for Giants, one of the organizers of the conference, says Uganda has great conservation and tourism potential – but needs investment.

“It’s the opportunity for the first time really to have a very willing partner in government to create the right environment,” said Graham. “Political security, you know, security generally, great apes, and the opportunity to create a unique circuit and then finally a willing partner in government to help make the transaction simple. So, currently across most of Uganda’s protected areas, they are under-resourced. They don’t have the investment to maintain the roads. They don’t have the investment, and this is critical, to protect their wild life populations.”

Reassurance is what they got from President Yoweri Museveni.

“We have been able to establish a strong security system, a strong army which has been able to defeat terrorism,” he said. Then we had some strong anti-poaching measures, that’s how the elephant population came up. Then we have been able to work on some roads, like for instance Murchison Falls and now we have done one for Kibaale Forest Reserve. We are working on the roads to Karamoja, eventually to Kidepo, even towards Bwindi.”

In 2016 Uganda received one million three hundred tourists accounting for 1.3 billion dollars with hope of growing tourism figures to four million by 2020.

 

 

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Chinese Basketball Gets a Boost from Playing NBA Teams

The Chinese Basketball Association is on tour in the US, with teams playing against US professional squads. Calla Yu from VOA’s Mandarin Service was at a recent game in the Washington area.

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US Economy Loses 33,000 Jobs in September, but Rebound Expected

Two back-to-back hurricanes in the continental U.S. displaced more workers than first thought resulting in a net loss of 33 thousand jobs in September. But the job losses seem to have had little effect on the national unemployment rate, which fell to 4.2 percent the lowest since 2001. Mil Arcega has more.

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Our Planet Seen From High Above

Astronauts say seeing the Earth from a distance, where the whole planet comes into perspective, is a life-changing experience that makes you realize how beautiful and fragile it is. A group of enthusiasts in California set up a nonprofit organization that uses satellite imagery to spread this feeling to as many people as possible and raise awareness about the dangers of detrimental human activities. VOA’s George Putic has more.

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In Uganda, Changing Lives One Prosthetic at a Time

In the United States, the number of amputees is expected to double by 2050. There are similar statistics for the developing world, but many of those places do not have the infrastructure to support those trying to function with a lost limb. One doctor in Uganda is trying to provide for amputees in his town, person by person. VOA’s Kevin Enochs.

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Ham for a Watch: Venezuelans Struggle With Cash Shortages

Venezuelans already struggling to find food, medicine and other basic necessities have a new shortage to worry about: cash.

 

Troubling shortfalls of Venezuelan bolivars are forcing many in this distressed South American nation to form long lines outside banks several times a week to withdraw what little cash is available. Others are resorting to bartering goods and services to skirt cash transactions.

 

“As if we didn’t have enough problems already,” said Roberto Granadillo, 37, a watchmaker. “Now we can’t even find bills.”

 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blames the cash crunch on mafias moving bills overseas in an attempt to derail the nation’s economy, though he’s presented only scant evidence to back the claim.

What is certain is that the country’s triple-digit inflation continues to skyrocket, meaning Venezuelans must find larger quantities of the scarce bills to purchase even relatively inexpensive items like bread or a cup of coffee — or turn to electronic transfers from their bank accounts.

 

The Venezuelan government released new, higher denomination bills in values of 500, 5,000 and 20,000 bolivars earlier this year after the currency meltdown left the country’s then-largest note worth around 2 U.S. cents on the black market.

 

But now even the freshly minted bills, printed in rainbow hues and imported in part from the United States, are quickly dwindling in value. In January, one U.S. dollar was worth 4,578 bolivars on Venezuela’s pervasive black market; by October a U.S. dollar got you 29,170 bolivars, according to DolarToday, a website critical of the government that tracks the black market rate.

 

Analysts project Venezuela’s inflation could surpass 1,000 percent this year and many Venezuelans worry recently announced sanctions by the Trump administration prohibiting U.S. banks from issuing new credit to the Venezuelan government or its state oil company will deepen the economic crisis. In September, Venezuelan authorities enacted stricter banking and business regulations in an attempt to stem the tide of bolivar bills. Officials are also considering printing bills in even higher values.

 

The cash shortage is already being felt in the daily lives of Venezuelans like Granadillo, who said his weekly income has slipped more than 50 percent as customers use the bills they are able to obtain to purchase food instead of comparative luxuries like a watch repair.

 

Instead of cash, he has recently begun accepting a new form a payment: A kilo (2.2 pounds) of ham, chicken or beef in exchange for a newly ticking watch.

 

“You have to find a way to eat,” Granadillo said.

At the start of 2017, a 20,000 bolivar bill — the equivalent of about $6 and the largest denomination of Venezuelan currency — could easily purchase five basic food products: rice, coffee, corn flour, sugar and pasta. Now Jose Guerra, president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly’s Finance Commission, estimates that a 20,000-bolivar note only has the purchasing power to obtain just one of those and half a standard-sized portion of another. He said the bolivar’s value has crashed 75 percent between January and August, and that banks are limiting the amount of cash they let customers withdraw because the Central Bank is not providing enough bills.

 

“You need a lot more bills,” Guerra said. “And they aren’t there.”

The escalating cash crunch comes on the heels of four months of political upheaval that left at least 120 people dead in near-daily protests decrying Maduro’s rule. In early August, a new, all-powerful constitutional assembly was installed following a vote boycotted by the opposition. One of the new assembly’s first acts was to declare itself superior to all other branches of government, making the nation’s already weakened legislature an essentially powerless institution.

 

Jose Gil, director of Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis, said the cash shortfall carries a “very high price” for Maduro’s government but the opposition has not been able to capitalize on the discontent.

Venezuela’s Central Bank injected 849 million bills in varying denominations into the nation’s economy up until August, three times the amount released over the same time period in 2016 — yet still not enough to keep up with inflation. It’s not uncommon to see Venezuelans paying for goods with large wads of cash, and authorities have opened investigations into citizens caught hoarding substantial amounts, even if they add up to relatively small dollar values.

 

In one high-profile probe, prosecutors last month seized 200 million bolivars — the equivalent of about $8,000 at the black market rate — from activist Lilian Tintori, the wife of Leopoldo Lopez, the country’s most prominent political prisoner. The cash was found in steel-clad wooden boxes in the back of her car. Tintori claimed the investigation was part of a pattern of persecution against her family and that the cash was needed to pay for emergencies including the hospitalization of her 100-year-old grandmother.

Venezuelan Banking Superintendent Antonio Morales recently told Union Radio that bolivar notes leaving banking institutions are not being returned, as typically happens when cash shifts from customers to commercial businesses and back to banks. He said investigators have uncovered evidence that contraband networks are moving paper cash out of Venezuela and into Colombia. Officials recently detained 121 people allegedly involved in currency crimes, though no details on the charges were released.

 

Morales also blamed some local businesses for hoarding cash.

 

Meanwhile, Venezuelans like Maria Castillo, who works in the kitchen at a public hospital, are struggling to purchase food to sustain their families with the little cash they are able to obtain. The 70-year-old recently waited in an hour-long line at her bank to take out the maximum allowed: 10,000 bolivars — the equivalent of $3.

 

A day later, she was back in line at the bank.

 

“I could only buy a package of rice,” Castillo said. “Now I’m waiting in line again for the same amount.”

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US Chamber: Trump Making ‘Highly Dangerous’ NAFTA Demands 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned on Friday that the Trump administration was making “highly dangerous demands” in the North American Free Trade Agreement modernization talks that could erode U.S. business support and torpedo the negotiations.

John Murphy, the chamber’s senior vice president for international policy, said the largest U.S. business lobby was urging the administration to drop some of its more controversial NAFTA proposals, including raising rules of origin thresholds.

“We’re increasingly concerned about the state of play in negotiations,” Murphy told reporters.

​Fourth round of talks

U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are preparing for a fourth round of talks to update the 23-year-old trade pact next week in a Washington suburb, Oct. 11-15.

U.S. companies large and small were worried about a proposal by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to add a five-year termination clause to NAFTA, Murphy said. 

He said there was also concern about Lighthizer’s proposal to reduce Canadian and Mexican companies’ access to U.S. public procurement contracts, and to include a U.S.-specific content requirement for autos and auto parts.

“We see these proposals as highly dangerous, and even one of them could be significant enough to move the business and agriculture community to oppose an agreement that included them,” Murphy said.

He also voiced similar concerns about U.S. proposals for revamping dispute settlement mechanisms and trade protections for seasonal U.S. produce.

Some U.S. lawmakers and congressional staff are also growing increasingly concerned that the talks can reach a successful conclusion. 

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, a pro-trade Republican, has invited Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to speak to the tax- and trade-focused panel Wednesday as negotiators return to the table, a committee spokeswoman said.

​Auto content

Inside U.S. Trade, a trade publication, stirred concerns among auto industry groups by quoting unnamed sources as saying that the Trump administration was also moving forward with a bid to increase North American content requirements for autos to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent, with a new 50 percent U.S. content requirement.

U.S. Trade Representative spokeswoman Emily Davis declined to comment on the report, but said President Donald Trump had been clear about the need to shake up the agreement governing one of the world’s biggest trade blocs.

“NAFTA has been a disaster for many Americans, and achieving his objectives requires substantial change,” she said. “These changes of course will be opposed by entrenched Washington lobbyists and trade associations.”

Officials from auto industry trade groups said they had not seen a rules of origin proposal with such stringent targets.

“Forcing unrealistic rules of origin on businesses would leave the U.S. unable to compete by increasing the cost of manufacturing and raising prices for consumers,” said Cindy Sebrell, a spokeswoman for the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, which represents auto parts manufacturers.

Karen Antebi, the trade counselor at Mexico’s embassy in Washington, told a forum on Friday that while there were rumors of a 50 U.S. percent content demand for autos, formal texts had not been proposed on rules of origin.

“Mexico has been firm and consistent that country specific rules of origin within the NAFTA would be unacceptable,” she said.

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Winds, Floods and Fire: US Ties Record for Costly Weather

Howling winds, deadly floods, fire and ice so far this year have pushed the U.S. into a tie for weather disasters that topped $1 billion in damage.

There have been 15 costly disasters through September, tying 2011 for the most billion-dollar weather disasters for the first nine months of a year. The record for a year is 16, and the hurricane season is not over yet.

2017 unprecedented?

The figures released Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration include three hurricanes, three tornado outbreaks, four severe storms, two floods, a drought, a freeze and wildfires.

NOAA climate scientist Adam Smith said 2017 is shaping up to be an unprecedented year. It is likely to tie or break the record for billion-dollar weather disasters that was set in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina and other deadly storms.

NOAA hasn’t calculated the costs from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, but an outside disaster risk company estimates the U.S. damage from the three hurricanes to be around $150 billion. The remaining disasters so far this year have cost more than $21.7 billion and killed 282 people, according to NOAA.

Damage figures are adjusted for inflation; records for billion-dollar disasters go back to 1980.

Climate change

Between 1980 and 2007, the U.S. averaged only four billion-dollar disasters per year. In the decade since, the country has averaged 11 per year.

Experts blame a combination of factors.

“Climate change is impacting extreme weather in ways we hadn’t anticipated,” Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University said in an email.

But an even bigger factor is that more people moving into harm’s way “has created massive amounts of exposure in regions prone to severe weather events,” said Mark Bove, a meteorologist at insurance giant Munich Re.

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US House Committee Calls New Hearing on Kaspersky Software

A U.S. House of Representatives committee said Friday that it had scheduled a new hearing on Kaspersky Lab software as lawmakers review accusations that the Kremlin could use its products to conduct espionage.

Kaspersky Lab has strongly denied those allegations — which last month prompted the Trump administration to order civilian government agencies to purge the software from its networks — and agreed to send Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky to Washington to testify before Congress.

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced the October 25 hearing a day after reports that Russian government-backed hackers stole highly classified U.S. cybersecrets in 2015 from a National Security Agency contractor who had Kaspersky software installed on his laptop.

The House science committee did not say who would be called to testify at the hearing.

Eugene Kaspersky last month told Reuters that the committee had invited him to testify at a September 27 hearing and that he would attend if he could get an expedited visa to enter the United States.

Classified session

That hearing was later canceled, though the committee held a closed-door classified session on Kaspersky software on September 26.

Kaspersky said in a statement on Friday that he hoped to attend the hearing.

“I look forward to participating in the hearing once it’s rescheduled and having the opportunity to address the committee’s concerns directly,” he said.

An appearance before Congress would mark Kaspersky’s most high-profile attempt to dispel long-standing accusations that his firm may be conducting espionage on behalf of the Russian government.

The investigation into the 2015 NSA hack is focused on somebody who worked at the agency’s Tailored Access Operations unit, a unit that uses computer hacking to gather intelligence, according to two people familiar with the classified probe.

Kaspersky anti-virus software was running on the contractor’s laptop at the time of the hack, and investigators are looking into whether hackers used the software to breach the computer and steal the data, said one of those sources.

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US Slaps More Duties on Canada’s Bombardier

The U.S. Commerce Department said Friday that it is imposing more duties on Canada’s Bombardier C series aircraft, charging that the Canadian company is selling the planes in America below cost.

The 80 percent duty comes on top of duties of nearly 220 percent Commerce announced last month. The case is a victory for U.S. rival Boeing Co.

The U.S. says Montreal-based Bombardier used unfair government subsidies to sell jets at artificially low prices in the United States.

“The United States is committed to free, fair and reciprocal trade with Canada, but this is not our idea of a properly functioning trading relationship,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.

Specifically, Boeing charges that Bombardier last year sold Delta Air Lines 75 CS100 aircraft for less than it cost to build them. But Delta has said Boeing did not even make the 100-seat jets it needed.

“These anti-dumping duties on Bombardier’s C Series aircraft unfairly target Canada’s highly innovative aerospace sector and its more than 200,000 workers, and put at risk the almost 23,000 U.S. jobs that depend on Bombardier and its suppliers,” said Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign affairs minister. “Boeing is manipulating the U.S. trade remedy system to prevent Bombardier’s new aircraft, the C Series, from entering the U.S. market.”

Bombardier can appeal any sanctions to a U.S. court or to a dispute-resolution panel created under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Canadian government can also take the case to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

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