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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Month: October 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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Michael Jackson died eight years ago, but he’s still generating millions of dollars.
Jackson is atop the Forbes list of top-earning dead celebrities for the fifth straight year, with $75 million. Forbes says Jackson’s earnings are boosted by a new greatest hits album, a Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show and a stake in the EMI music publishing catalog.
Two other singers join Jackson in the top five. Elvis Presley comes in fourth with $35 million and Bob Marley ranks fifth with $23 million.
Golf legend Arnold Palmer is the second-highest earner. He brought in $40 million in part through sales of Arizona lemonade and ice tea beverage made in his name.
Palmer is followed by Charles Schulz. The creator of the “Peanuts” franchise made $38 million.
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Imagine you could swipe your phone over a piece of fish in the supermarket and instantly see secure records of its entire path through the supply chain, from the technique used by the fisherman who caught it in Indonesia to when it was shipped and how it was processed at a factory in your home country — all at the tap of a smartphone.
Trial projects such as that one are testing the potential of Blockchain technology to bring transparency to all sorts of notoriously inefficient or shadowy industries in Southeast Asia.
Blockchain, the technology that powers bitcoin, is an essentially unchangeable form of bookkeeping. It creates cryptographically chained signatures between blocks of information that are authenticated by users over a peer-to-peer distributed ledger — a public record that can be applied to any type of bookkeeping, not just cryptocurrencies.
“It removes the requirement for a centralized authority, and in a lot of the products that it’s being launched in, this centralized authority tends to be the government,” said Alisa DiCaprio, head of research at R3 — an enterprise banking software firm that uses distributed ledger technology.
In a region where the most important records — identity and ownership for instance — are often subjected to little or no external oversight, blockchain offers enormous potential benefits.
Erin Murphy, Founder and Principal of Inle Advisory Group, a Myanmar and emerging business advisory firm, said major Asian business hubs are looking to blockchain to clean up and simplify transactions.
“Ideally, we would want to see adoption of blockchain at an official level all across the region,” she said in an email. “But perhaps not surprisingly, the governments that are leading blockchain adoption are those that are already low-corruption.”
One of those governments, she said, is Singapore, which is working with major banks on a blockchain-based system to streamline and qualitatively improve their customer (KYC) processes.
In other countries, it is being used for completely different purposes. In the Philippines, a remittance market worth billions of dollars per month has been invaded by firms offering cheaper services built on blockchain, which people can access without a bank account..
“Any steps that get taken at first may not be viewed through an anti-corruption lens and may inadvertently tackle that issue; it will likely be viewed through a development lens to kickstart poverty alleviation and bringing sectors up to international standards that attract foreign investment,” Murphy said.
More than money
There are many trials with clear utility in Southeast Asia underway, including systems for land titling under development in Sweden and Japan.
In June, the United Nations unveiled a blockchain-based system built in partnership with Microsoft and Accenture that gives stateless refugees a permanent identity based on biometric data.
It’s also being explored for secure voting systems.
The blockchain-based app developed to track the supply chain of fish from Indonesia — Provenance — is now the basis of many other trials, including a project to create a similar system for the garment industry.
Online you can view the results of a pilot released in May this year that follows a piece of clothing — an Alpaca Mirror Jumper from London-based designer Martine Jarlgaard, from a farm in Dulverton, Britain, through every step of production into London with location, content and timestamps.
It is a long way, though, from realizing that something can be done to actually making it happen, DiCaprio of R3 said.
“The technical capability to do this exists in most developing countries,” she said. “You have engineers who can code on the blockchain. But the understanding of how to actually implement this from a business point of view is very poor.”
DiCaprio estimates it will take about five years before we actually see large-scale functioning applications and believes the most impactful will occur at the macro economic level.
“So for example one area that it’s moving very quickly is trade finance,” she said. “And trade finance, you’re generally talking about fairly large companies, generally in Asia mostly exporting or importing from or to the US or EU,.”
Faster, cheaper and more transparent transactions combined with reductions in the risks of lending and borrowing would flow to down to the village level, she added.
Subversion vs centralization
Blockchain proponents are divided by some sharply divergent values. Some see blockchain — whose slogan is “be your own bank,” as technology that can fundamentally upend a global financial system they believe is intractably corrupt.
“There is a serious opportunity for us here to remove money out of government,” said a Southeast Asia based bitcoin trader who would only give his alias FlippingABitCoin, fearing he could expose himself to physical theft.
Billions of people currently excluded from the formal banking system will be able to access global cryptocurrencies with no middle man using nothing more than a phone, he said.
“It will level out the playing field of power,” he said.
Another group of enthusiasts are encouraging the absorption of this technology by states, as demonstrated by Canada, Singapore, China and Germany, all of which are either exploring or conducting trials of their own central bank digital currencies using blockchain.
“In the long run, we believe if there is any threat at all to governments, it is that other governments will lead the way in adopting blockchain technologies in producing low-corruption, high-transparency, highly-secure digitized economic infrastructures that will attract business, investment and stakeholder confidence,” wrote Michael Hsieh, a non-resident affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, in an email.
“The societies who lead in the great fintech [financial technology] innovation race of the 21st century will siphon all the capital and productivity from those that lag,” he wrote.
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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports greenhouse gas emissions in Earth’s atmosphere have reached the highest level ever in 800,000 years. The figure was made public at the launch in Geneva of the WMO’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
The report was released in advance of next week’s U.N. climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany. It is meant as a wake-up call to nations that time is running out to take the necessary actions to curb global warning.
The WMO reports CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere surged at record-breaking speed last year to historic highs. The WMO says CO2 levels are now 145 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. It warns this has the potential to change the climate systems in unprecedented and disastrous ways.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas says this is already occurring. He told VOA scientists have been able to track the variability of carbon dioxide concentrations thousands of years back.
“We have far exceeded this natural variability that took place in the past and we are giving extra energy for our planet. We have already started seeing a growing amount of natural disasters related to weather. And, for example, the economic losses related to these disasters, they have tripled since the 80s. So, that is a consequence of climate change,” Taalas said.
The report finds CO2 contributes more than 60 percent to the heating of the planet and that human activity and natural climate variability are behind the substantial increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Taalas warned temperature increases will reach dangerous levels by the end of the century without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. He said measures to mitigate climate change must be urgently taken.
Taalas said work on developing renewable energy systems and transportation systems, including electric and hybrid cars, must be accelerated. He added these low carbon technologies can play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lowering the Earth’s heat for future generations.
It’s been one epic year for women, a notion definitely not lost on Glamour magazine as it named U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, 27 key facilitators of the Women’s March on Washington and astronaut Peggy Whitson among its women of the year from the worlds of politics, entertainment, fashion, business and more.
The other winners announced Monday, ahead of a Nov. 13 gala in Brooklyn, New York, are actor Nicole Kidman, singer Solange Knowles, Syrian refugee Muzoon Almellehan, late-night TV host Samantha Bee, supermodel Gigi Hadid, Dior’s first female creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, and “Wonder Woman” helmswoman Patty Jenkins.
Cindi Leive, Glamour’s editor-in-chief, called them “wildly diverse changemakers” who reflect this “tumultuous and electric year for women.” All will be on hand for the magazine’s annual awards night, with a summit featuring Chelsea Clinton, Laverne Cox, Cecile Richards and other past winners planned for earlier the same day.
This year’s honorees will be featured on multiple Glamour covers and in a spread for December.
A look at some in the Class of 2017:
THE REVOLUTIONARIES
Listening especially to the strong voices of young women after Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win but Electoral College loss to Donald Trump, Glamour called the impact of the Women’s March massive, along with an outpouring around the globe.
“Vastly more women turned out for the march, not just in Washington but the marches around the world, than anyone expected,” Leive told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “There were so many hundreds of women who were involved in the organization and planning of these marches, but 27 key leaders and organizers really devoted the lion’s share of their time between Election Day and Inauguration Day.”
In all, an estimated half a million made their way to Washington, where maybe 200,000 had been expected, and 5 million more gathered everywhere from Australia to Antarctica.
The honorees are:
Bob Bland, Tamika D. Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Paola Mendoza, Carmen Perez, Sarah Sophie Flicker, Janaye Ingram, Ginny Suss, Emma Collum, Cassady Fendlay, Lisa Harps, Mia Ives-Rublee, Rabbi Barat Ellman, Toshi Reagon, Sophie Ellman-Golan, ShiShi Rose, Caitlin Ryan, Jenna Arnold, Nantasha Williams, Alyssa Klein, Mariam Ehrari, Meredith Shepherd, Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, Breanne Butler, Mrinalini Chakraborty, Brea Baker and De’Ara Balenger.
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THE CONGRESSWOMAN WHO COULD
At 79, Maxine Waters describes herself in Glamour as a mix of “intellect and alley cat.” She has been on the front line of progressive politics for years, but that moment over the summer when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared to be trying to run out her allotted five minutes rather than answer her questions about Trump’s financial ties to Russia, the congresswoman shut him down when she declared repeatedly that she was “reclaiming my time.” Her words became a hashtag and a call to action for women.
Waters earned Glamour’s lifetime achievement award.
“Most young people really became aware of her over the course of this year because she’s been very vocal, very outspoken, standing up to members of the administration, but she’s actually had an incredibly inspiring lifetime of achievement,” Leive said. “This is a woman who grew up without all that much and decided that she would go back to college in her 20s, after having worked at the phone company, and then worked as a community coordinator for Head Start. She wasn’t born into politics or anything like that. She really made her own career.”
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GIGI THE SUPERNOVA
The first time Gigi Hadid bubbled to the surface was on the reality show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” Modeling since she was around 3, she went from a Guess campaign at 17 to supermodel five years later, racking up numerous magazine covers, editorial gigs and runway shows, along with a fashion collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger and an upcoming cosmetics collection with Maybelline.
As Glamour writes, Hadid didn’t just take off, “she took over.”
At 22, Hadid has a 36-million strong following on Instagram and a megaplatform that could easily have been wasted. Instead, she has spoken out about gun control and marched with sister Bella to protest Trump’s signing of an executive order that suspended immigration to the U.S. from seven Muslim countries.
Their father, real estate developer Mohamed Hadid, was born in Palestine and their mother, Yolanda Hadid, emigrated from Holland in her teens.
“When I started working in fashion, it was like, Gigi, the all-American. I was very much that ‘girl next door,'” she told Glamour, “but if you read my interviews, I always talk about my parents’ cultural backgrounds.”
Leive called her “incredibly wise beyond her years.”
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SOLANGE BREAKS IT OPEN
With a Grammy win and a groundbreaking album, “A Seat at the Table,” Knowles is living her truth in abundance. The record, released late last year, takes on some key issues: racism, cultural appropriation, activism and empowerment among them.
“She’s such a fantastic and inspiring example of somebody who has always chosen not to do things the easy way,” Leive said. “Her sister is Beyonce. She could have become a pop star in any number of ways but she decided to really focus on her own personal vision of art.”
Knowles told the magazine that she worked on “A Seat at the Table” on and off for three years, at one point spending three months writing songs in tiny Patoutville, Louisiana, soaking up the pride, resilience and traditions of the regional culture. She worked in a house on a sugar plantation, feeling a closeness to her ancestors and feeling a “constant state of reflection.”
Part of her goal was to reclaim and change her own narrative, she said, “whether it was people challenging who wrote what on my album, whether it was about some editor commenting on my hair in a story or someone feeling like they were entitled to space in my life. I needed to unfold, reveal and discover my truth.”
Once they find them, wild animals tend to stick around human neighborhoods. That’s because of the free food buffet we tend to leave lying around, in our trash and gardens. Then, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of the unwanted guests, short of killing them. That was the problem with Baboons in one South African neighborhood, until recently. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Opening a new trade route to Afghanistan that bypasses Pakistan, India has dispatched its first consignment of wheat to the war torn country via the Iranian port of Chabahar.
The strategic sea route is a significant step in bolstering trade with Kabul that has been hampered because rival Pakistan does not allow India to transport goods to Afghanistan through its territory.
After the shipment was seen off by Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Afghan counterpart Salahuddin Rabbani via a joint video conference Sunday, the Indian government called it a “landmark moment.”
In the coming months, six more consignments of wheat totaling 1.1. million tons will be sent from India’s western port of Kandla to Chabahar. From the Iranian port it will be taken by road to Kabul.
The shipment comes days after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a visit to New Delhi, allayed concerns that the Trump administration’s tough stand on Iran could pose a fresh stumbling block to India’s plans to develop the strategic Iranian port as a regional transit hub.
Easier connectivity to Afghanistan is key for India to step up its economic engagement with Kabul, which Washington has called for as part of its new policy to stabilize the war torn country.
And Chabahar port, in which India is investing $500 million to build new terminals, cargo berths and connecting road and rail lines, is the centerpiece of the strategy to improve linkages not just with Afghanistan, but also to resource-rich Central Asian republics.
“This is the first time that we are getting into Afghanistan through a route different than what traditional routes have been,” said South Asia expert Sukh Deo Muni at New Delhi’s Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses.
Indian leaders expressed optimism about the project, which is still a work in progress. Minister Swaraj called it the starting point of a journey that would spur the unhindered flow of commerce and trade throughout the region. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted the launch of the trade route, “marks a new chapter in regional cooperation & connectivity.”
The sea route via the Iranian port is the second step taken by India to increase connectivity with Kabul. In June it opened an air freight corridor to provide greater access for Afghan goods to the Indian market.
The Chabahar port is seen as India’s answer to the Gwadar port in Pakistan being developed by China.
The project was conceived almost 15 years ago, but the plans were stalled for years due to U.S. led international sanctions on Iran. Their easing prompted India to sign a trilateral pact with Iran and Afghanistan last year to develop the port.
U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson indicated in New Delhi last week that fresh sanctions on Iran by the Trump administration would not pose a stumbling block to those plans.
“It is not our objective to harm the Iranian people, nor is it our objective to interfere with legitimate business activities that are going on with other businesses, whether they be from Europe, India or agreements that are in place that promote economic development and activity to the benefit of our friends and allies as well. We think there is no contradiction within that policy,” he told reporters in India.
Those words have been welcomed in New Delhi said analyst Muni. “I think there is a far more reassuring feeling in India vis-a-vis the Trump administration than what the initial thought was,” he said.
The shortest and most cost effective land routes between India and Afghanistan lie through Pakistan. However, due to longstanding rivalries between the two countries, India is not allowed to send any exports through Pakistani territory and Afghanistan is only allowed to send a limited amount of perishable goods through Pakistani territory to India.
Actor Kevin Spacey said Sunday he is “beyond horrified” by allegations that he made sexual advances on a teen boy decades ago.
The two-time Oscar winner posted on Twitter that he doesn’t remember the encounter.
“But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years,” he said.
In an interview with BuzzFeed, actor Anthony Rapp said Spacey befriended him while they both performed on Broadway shows. Rapp was 14 when he attended a party at Spacey’s apartment in 1986, he said. At the end of the night, an inebriated Spacey picked him up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, Rapp said.
Rapp said the 26-year-old was holding him down tightly, but he was able to get away and left the apartment.
Rapp, who is now 46 and starring in the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery”, said he came forward after allegations against Harvey Weinstein sparked conversations about sexual abuse and harassment in the entertainment industry.
Spacey, who is now 58, spoke publicly about his sexual orientation for the first time Sunday on Twitter.
“As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women,” he said. “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.”
Spacey, who has fiercely protected his private life, had never disclosed his sexuality before but said Rapp’s story encouraged him to speak.
“I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior,” he said.
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On display along the crowded main aisle of the cavernous warehouse are early 20th century kitchen utensils, vintage jewelry, old license plates and a wide variety of assorted unidentifiable objects. Welcome to 112 Antique Mall in White House, Tennessee, one of the tens of thousands of locations around the United States where vendors sell everything from treasures from someone’s attic to memorabilia from long-forgotten celebrations.
Despite a national fascination with everything new and shiny, there is a portion of America that is focused on the old and quirky. Antiquing is, in part, a search for our history, says antiques appraiser Connie Sue Davenport.
“We collect and treasure, try to have, or find the things that remind of us of the sweet, comforting times of our childhood, with our grandparents primarily.”
Rita Read, who has been in the antique business for more than 20 years, agrees. “What people are buying when they’re buying antique, they’re buying a memory. They’re buying something that was at their grandmother’s house or their great-aunt Sally’s house or something they saw and loved in a museum maybe.”
She says most antique buyers today are young. “People over 50 are not buying so much anymore, it seems, because I think they’ve got most everything they want and they’re being more selective. But younger people are furnishing houses and doing things like that so they’re looking for something that you see in the magazines.”
Making something new from something old
Read suggests that do-it-yourself magazines and television programs are fueling a market for items that can be repurposed. “I think people enjoy making something their own and having something different from what everybody else has.”
Just down the interstate highway from the antique mall is Sweet Pickin’s, part of a breed of shop particularly suited to shoppers who are repurposing. Owner Tim La Roche admits that, although it is advertised as an antique store, it’s more like a junk shop. “When I first opened up over here, I was bringing stuff over that I was going to do the project and then sell it. But what I found was that people were buying all my materials I was going to build with and it just took off from there.”
La Roche and other antique dealers have found success by getting yesterday’s treasures, and sometimes yesterday’s junk, into the hands of new owners.
“You can’t underestimate what people may be looking for, for their project. Literally anything is fair game and that’s what we’ve got – literally a little bit of everything.”
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