Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer facing women, worldwide. During the last few decades, new treatments and early detection have improved the survival odds. But an 86 year-old Maryland woman credits her recovery to her family and to her love of favorite sport. As Breast Cancer Awareness month in the US draws to a close, VOA’s Natalia Leonova brings us Rita Eisenberg’s story.
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Day: October 31, 2017
The suburbs of Washington are the setting for a pilot project to promote healthier eating habits, a partnership between leaders of the Latino community there and researchers at George Washington University. The “Water up Project” encourages the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages. Faiza Elmasry reports. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Trash and tires floating in a river are easy to see. But there’s a lot of harmful water pollution that isn’t visible to the naked eye. Researchers in Switzerland are testing a robotic version of a sea monster that’s helping them get a better look at what’s floating in the water. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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An organization that has been helping find people missing from the 1990s Balkan conflict has now expanded to tackle the cases of millions of missing people around the world. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), based in the Netherlands, will use the latest DNA technology to identify bodies and provide closure to family members of the missing people. The laboratory findings also will be used to serve justice and support demands for reparations. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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The luncheon special has brought a crowd into El Puente de Oro, a Salvadoran restaurant in Langley Park, Maryland. Owner and chef, Ciro Castro, has put together a meal with a large plate of chicken, beans and rice, salad, and a bottle of water.
“The plate that costs $10, for them costs only $5,” he says.
The meal deal is not only saving his customers money, it’s encouraging them do what they usually don’t – drink water.
“When they are over here eating, they ask for juice or soda, or any other stuff – no water,” Castro says. “I ask the waiters to offer water, even if they have a beer or any other soda or other drink, they can sometimes get a sip of water.”
Castro is pleased to be part of a positive change in his customers’ eating habits.
El Puente de Oro is one of five restaurants in this largely Latino suburb that joined a pilot program called the Water Up Project. Its goal is to get the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages.
Neighbors and Friends
The campaign depends on volunteers, like local leader Brenda Barrios, who’s been explaining the program to neighbors and restaurant owners.
“It’s not like convincing (the business’ owners), it’s more like informing,” she explains. “It’s more like, you know why we need to change these menus. Can you, please help your families because at the end we are a big family, a big Latino family. We want to be healthy.”
Cindy Aguiler is one of her neighbors who have become supporters of the campaign.
“I like the idea and very excited about the Water Up Project because it promotes water. One of the simple, healthy and cheap things is water.”
She’s now drinking more water, and helping her five children develop this healthy habit by not buying soda drinks at home. “I buy juices. It’s maybe on the weekends, but try to make them drink a lot of water.”
Make it Visible, Make it Accessible
Uri Colon-Ramos, assistant professor of global heath at Milken Institute of Public Health in George Washington University, is co-principal investigator of the Water Up Project.
She says the question was how to promote drinking water instead of sugary drinks.
“One of the things we noticed right away that you go to these businesses, to the restaurants and you sit down and they don’t offer you water to drink,” she says. “You go here in DC and elsewhere, you sit down and this is the first thing they bring you, or there is a place where you can just grab water for free. That’s a big barrier because people would come thirsty, they would say, well give me a beer or horchata or tamarind or something really sugary. And they don’t drink water because they don’t have access there, and even if they ask for water, they would bring you a bottle of water that costs more than sugary drinks.”
And, she says, ads target Latinos encouraging them to consume more sugary drinks. “Also in their home countries, they are targeted as well, and the globalization is very real. They’re used to drinking or seeing the promotion of soft drinks as well. They come here to the U.S. and they have more access to these drinks.”
The commercials downplay the serious health risks linked to sugary drinks.
“Sugary drinks are the number one risk factor for diabetes that we don’t need to have in in our diet,” the researcher explains. “There is no reason why we need the calories that are coming from sugary drinks. At least other foods provide other kinds of nutrients. These are nutrient poor type of food that contributes nothing but calories. And those calories come all in the form of sugar.”
The four-month long Water Up project started a few months ago, and researchers are now evaluating the results and feedback, hoping to make it more impactful and expand it to more neighborhoods. They hope this pilot project will inspire other communities around the United States and the world to think about what they drink and choose more water.
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Billionaire Elon Musk has released a photograph of a tunnel he’s building under a Los Angeles suburb to test a novel transportation concept for a system that would move people underground in their personal cars rather than by subway trains.
The founder of SpaceX and Tesla tweeted during the weekend that the tunnel was 500 feet so far and should be 2 miles long in three or four months.
In August, the Hawthorne City Council granted a permit allowing an underground extension of approximately 2 miles from SpaceX property, crossing under a corner of the municipal airport and beneath city streets to a point about a mile east of Los Angeles International Airport.
Musk also tweeted that hopefully in a year or so the tunnel would stretch along the Interstate 405 corridor from LAX to U.S. Highway 101 in the San Fernando Valley, which would require approval from other governments. That span is about 17 miles.
Musk has complained about what he called “soul-destroying” Los Angeles traffic. He added The Boring Company to his ventures, acquired a tunnel-boring machine that had been used in a San Francisco Bay Area project and put it down a shaft in a SpaceX parking lot this year.
Hawthorne council document say the “Test Tunnel for Zero Emission Subterranean Transportation” has an exterior diameter of 13.5 feet (4.1 meters) and an interior diameter of approximately 12 feet (3.6 meters) and will run as deep as 44 feet (13.4 meters) beneath the surface.
“When the project is completed, the Test Tunnel would house a ‘skate’ system that would be tested to prove the viability for transporting pedestrians or personal vehicles. The concept is that a vehicle would be drive on to the skate, the engine would be turned off and the vehicle and its passenger would be transported from one end of the Test Tunnel to the other,” the August resolution said.
“The Test Tunnel project would involve SpaceX engineers repeatedly testing and experimenting with personal vehicle types suitable for placement on the skates; refinement of the design and technology; and general data collection on performance, durability, and application. No public use of the Test Tunnel would occur, and no people would be occupying vehicles located on the skates as the skates are tested within the tunnel,” it added.
Construction was expected to take about five months to complete, the resolution said. Musk has maintained that tunneling can be accomplished much more rapidly than occurs with current methods.
The plan allows the city to request that the tunnel be filled in when testing is complete.
Musk has also advocated another transportation concept called the “hyperloop,” a network of nearly airless tubes that would speed special capsules over long distances at up to 750 mph (1,207 kph), using a thin cushion of air, magnetism and solar power. SpaceX has recently hosted competitions by development teams on a test track built at its headquarters.
On Monday, SpaceX conducted its 16th Falcon 9 rocket launch of the year, carrying a South Korean satellite into space from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The rocket’s first-stage booster scored another successful landing aboard a floating platform in the Atlantic.
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Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri vowed to press ahead with reforms to the country’s tax, labor and retirement systems in a speech on Monday, a week after his “Let’s Change” coalition swept to victory at the polls in midterm elections.
The government will present a tax reform proposal this Tuesday or Wednesday, and an amnesty plan for companies that hired workers informally in the coming days, Macri said. He added that the government would convene a commission to propose changes to the retirement system in coming weeks.
The speech marked a roadmap for the second half of Macri’s four-year term, as he seeks to implement business-friendly reforms to attract investors who avoided the country during more than a decade of populist rule.
“We need lower taxes, more public works, and all this we need to achieve with fiscal balance,” Macri told a gathering of lawmakers, governors, union leaders, judges and others.
Investors have been encouraged by the reforms Macri has implemented since taking office in December 2015, including lifting foreign exchange controls, settling with holdout creditors, and lowering export taxes.
But significant investment has not arrived. Companies have demanded lower costs, while credit agencies are concerned about a deep fiscal deficit.
Macri’s coalition swept the five most populous areas in midterm elections, giving him a broader mandate to pass reforms, though it still lacks majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Macri said his government had reduced the country’s tax burden, and wanted to make the system “simpler, clearer, and fairer.”
He reiterated the government’s aim of slashing Argentina’s fiscal deficit by one percentage point of gross domestic product per year.
And he also vowed to reform the country’s retirement system, a large driver of government spending.
“We need to start a mature and honest conversation about our retirement and pension system,” Macri said. “Our retirement system hides serious inequities, and it is not sustainable.”
While Macri has said he does not plan major changes to the country’s labor code, he has said the government plans to provide incentives to companies to formalize undeclared workers and work with unions in specific sectors to lower costs.
Macri also pledged reforms to the country’s justice system to combat corruption. Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena told journalists that the resignation on Monday of chief prosecutor Alejandra Gils Carbo, appointed during the former administration of President Cristina Fernandez, was a step towards making the judiciary more independent.
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Chile’s frontrunning center-right presidential candidate, Sebastian Pinera, on Monday unveiled a $14 billion, four-year spending plan focused on proposed reforms to the country’s tax and pension systems and new investments in infrastructure and hospitals.
The former president, who governed from 2010 to 2014, said he would pay for his proposals by cutting “unnecessary” government spending and simplifying the tax code to encourage investment and boost growth and the country’s coffers.
Recent opinion polls show Pinera, 67, with a wide lead over his seven rivals in the Nov. 19 first-round election. Pinera would also beat his two closest contenders, leftists Alejandro Guillier and Beatriz Sanchez, in a runoff if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote, according to pollster CEP last week.
Guillier, the frontrunner on the left, has yet to put a price tag on his proposals, which track the policies of outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet. Sanchez has proposed a $13.4 billion plan of deeper social and economic reforms, paid for in part by a tax on the “super-rich.”
The 67-year-old Pinera, a billionaire who has campaigned on a program of fiscal austerity, is benefiting from disenchantment with Bachelet, whose program of progressive reforms coincided with a downturn in the price of copper, which can account for as much as 15 percent of gross domestic product in Chile, the world’s top producer.
“Half of the financing for my program will come from reallocations drawn from ineffective government programs … and a reduction of unnecessary spending in the public sector,” Pinera said in a 124-page paper detailing his proposals.
Pinera’s plan to reform the pension system would cost about $3 billion and include new subsidies to raise pensions for women and the middle class, as well as incentives to encourage workers to retire later, Pinera said in the document.
The current retirement system, introduced in the 1980s during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, was historically seen as a model by many economists, but it has been criticized in recent years on a number of fronts, including what many see as insufficient payouts.
Pinera, a businessman-turned-politician, has also called for a $2.7 billion overhaul of Bachelet’s tax reform, to provide “more certainty and incentives for saving and investment,” as well as $3 billion of investment in hospitals and infrastructure.
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The leaders of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia launched an 826-km (500-mile) rail link connecting the three countries on Monday, establishing a freight and passenger link between Europe and China that bypasses Russia.
The line, which includes 105 km of new track, will have the capacity to transport one million passengers and 5 million tons of freight.
The three countries are linked by the BP-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas line, but trade links between Turkey and the Caucasus region are limited. The new Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway (BTK) promises to provide an economic boost to the region.
“Baku-Tbilisi-Kars is part of a big Silk Road and it’s important that we have implemented this project using our own funds,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said at the railway’s inauguration ceremony attended by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili.
Starting in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, trains will stop in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, pass through gauge-changing facilities in the Georgian town of Akhalkalaki and end their journey in the Turkish town of Kars.
The project’s total cost rose to more than $1 billion from an initial estimate of about $400 million. The bulk of that financing came from Azerbaijan’s state oil fund.
The rail link between Azerbaijan and Georgia was modernized under the project, which was launched in 2007. Its completion had been postponed several times since 2011.
“Several European countries have expressed an interest in this project and Azerbaijan is in talks with them,” Aliyev said, adding Kazakhstan and other countries in Central Asia were interested in transporting their goods via the BTK.
The new link will reduce journey times between China and Europe to around 15 days, which is more than twice as fast as the sea route at less than half the price of flying.
Trains can depart from cities in China, cross into Kazakhstan at the Khorgos Gateway, be transported across the Caspian Sea by ferry to the New Port of Baku and then be loaded directly onto the BTK and head to Europe.
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A rare bird has landed at the University of Michigan: a two-legged robot named “Cassie” that researchers hope could be the forerunner of a machine that one day will aid search-and-rescue efforts.
Cassie — whose name is derived from the cassowary, a flightless bird similar to an ostrich — stands upright on legs with backward-facing knees. The biped that weighs about 66 pounds (29.94 kilograms) may not have feathers or a head, but she is attached to a short torso that holds motors, computers and batteries and is able to walk unassisted on rough and uneven terrain.
Cassie, which stands a bit over 3.25 feet (1 meter) at full leg extension, was built by Albany, Oregon-based Agility Robotics and purchased by Michigan researchers using grant money from the National Science Foundation and Toyota Research Institute. Although other institutions have acquired similar models, Michigan’s team is excited to use its version to put Michigan Robotics’ cutting-edge programming to the test, said Jessy Grizzle, director of Michigan Robotics.
“This stuff makes our old math look like child’s play,” Grizzle said.
Although there is considerable excitement about Cassie and the potential she represents, certain real-world applications are still a bit out of reach.
Search-and-rescue “is a hard problem and serves as a template for ‘unsolved problems in robotics,’ which is one of the reasons you see it pop up so much when robotics companies talk about applications,” said Agility Robotics CEO Damion Shelton, who added that it is “difficult to even speculate” when a robot could be used for such a purpose.
Other applications will be launched sooner, according to Shelton, who said a robot capable of walking around the perimeter of an industrial site taking 3-D scans is no more than two years away from becoming reality.
For now, Grizzle and some of his students are putting Cassie through her paces on and around Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus. During a recent a stroll on a pedestrian walkway, Cassie ambled on a grassy, sloped surface, then took a serious tumble and did a face-plant on the concrete.
“Well, I think that’s the end” of the test, Grizzle said, as Cassie lay in a heap on the ground, slightly nicked and scratched but no worse for wear.
The programs Grizzle and his students tested “are version 1.0,” he said.
“They are simple algorithms to make sure that we understand the robot. We will now focus on implementing our super-cool latest stuff,” Grizzle said.
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