Day: January 13, 2018

Brigitte Biography Says Young Macron Wrote Steamy Book About Their Romance

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

A new biography of French first lady Brigitte Macron says her husband penned a racy novel inspired by their early romance, when he was still a teenager and she his married drama teacher.

President Emmanuel Macron, who turned 40 last month, fell for Brigitte during rehearsals for a school play at the Providence high school in Amiens, and defied his parents’ disapproval to pursue the relationship with a woman 24 years his

senior.

The book, “Brigitte Macron, The Liberated Woman”, to be published next week, quotes a family neighbor from Macron’s home town who says she typed up the 300-page manuscript.

“It was a daring novel, a little bit smutty. Of course, the names were not the same but I think he needed to express what he was feeling at the time,” the unnamed neighbor is quoted as saying in excerpts published by Closer magazine.

A spokeswoman for Macron’s office declined to comment.

In the excerpts, the typist said she had not kept a copy of the novel – perhaps sparing the blushes of a leader who has promised to clean up French politics and says he wants to restore the dignity of the presidency.

But Macron would not be the only current French politician to try his hand at adult literature.

In 2011, the prime minister, Edouard Philippe, co-authored ‘Dans l’ombre’ (In the Shadows), a political thriller laced with steamy encounters. The finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, has written a novel entitled ‘Le Ministre’ (The Minister), which includes a steamy scene between the minister and his wife in Venice.

Macron’s literary ambitions as a young man are well known and he wrote at least two unpublished works before authoring a book entitled “Revolution” during his election campaign.

He told the weekly magazine Le Point last year that he had not sought a publisher for the earlier works “as I was not happy with them”.

In a separate article for the same magazine, asked by French author Philippe Besson if he regretted not becoming a writer himself, Macron replied: “My life isn’t finished yet.”

 
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Report: Traffic Fatalities Hold Back Developing Economies

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Deadly traffic accidents are more than just individual tragedies. They’re a drag on economic growth in developing countries, according to a new World Bank report.

The study is among the first to show that investing in road safety in low- and middle-income countries would raise national incomes.

Ninety percent of the world’s annual 1.25 million traffic deaths happen in the developing world. The World Health Organization says traffic accidents are the leading cause of death worldwide for people between 15 to 29 years old. That includes crashes that kill pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists.

But the issue does not get much official attention, according to World Bank transportation expert Dipan Bose.

“There is not a lot of political will in many low and middle income countries to take definitive actions to reduce road deaths and injuries,” he said.

Bose co-authored a study focused on five countries: China, India, Thailand, the Philippines and Tanzania. The authors used economic models to estimate what each country’s overall economy would gain over a 24-year period by cutting traffic deaths in half.

“The results were quite startling,” he said.

Thailand would see a 22 percent boost to national income. The country’s high rates of both economic growth and traffic accidents meant it had the most to gain.  

Tanzania would gain seven percent. The other countries fell in between.

These kinds of economic gains are “something which no national government can ignore,” Bose said. The report “gives the economic story of why it is important to take strong actions on road safety.”

Enforcing speed limits, helmet and seat belt laws and cutting down on drunk driving are “low-hanging fruit” to reduce traffic injuries, the report says.

Not only drivers at fault

But drivers are only partly responsible for traffic deaths, according to a separate report co-authored by the World Bank and the World Resources Institute. City planners and government officials are responsible for building safety into the transportation system.

“If the system’s not safe – if people don’t have the opportunity to cross the road safely, or drive in a safe vehicle – then a small error can result in a fatality,” said report co-author Anna Bray Sharpin at the World Resources Institute. “And that should not be the case.”

For example, she said, “many cities have applied highway design guidelines even to their city streets.” Wide, multi-lane boulevards are designed for “maximum traffic flow and speed,” but not for cyclists or pedestrians.

“People tend to take risks to try and cross the road,” she said. “And that comes back to this issue of whether this is a personal responsibility, or a co-responsibility between governments and planners and people using the road.”

The report offers guidance for incorporating safety into road design. Public transit, walking and biking lower the number of cars on the road and the number of accidents. Installing sidewalks, raised crosswalks and protected cycle lanes helps keep these road users out of harm’s way. On rural roads, median barriers can reduce head-on collisions.

Bray Sharpin notes that many developing countries are currently planning major road infrastructure projects.

“There’s a window of opportunity now to integrate safety into their planning,” she said. It’s much cheaper than trying to retrofit it later. Plus, once these roads are built, they’ll be around for decades.

If they don’t build in safety now, she added, they will be “locked into their dangerous infrastructure for the very long term.”
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Climate Change Affecting Gender of Endangered Green Sea Turtles

By Uponsci | | No Comments | Science

Researchers say climate change is responsible for the vast majority of green sea turtles in the northern Great Barrier Reef off Australia being female.  

Scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the temperature at which turtle eggs incubate determines the sex of hatchlings, and warn that warmer conditions are creating a dangerous gender imbalance.  

Almost the entire green turtle population in parts of the northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia is now female.  A study of about 200,000 animals in the reef’s northern waters found them to be overwhelmingly female.  The research was published in the journal Current Biology.  There are concerns that the future of the endangered reptile is increasingly precarious.  

In the southern Barrier Reef, where conditions are cooler, about two-thirds are female. Researchers say that while they hope for some milder years to produce more males, they expect temperatures to continue to rise.

One possible solution to the gender imbalance is to put up tents over beaches where turtles nest to give them shade.

Colin Limpus, Queensland chief scientist, says that cloud seeding is another option.

“There is consideration being given to having artificial rain.  It is being considered primarily for how we can get the turtles nesting successfully; at the same time it is going to cool the sand and should shift the sex ratio towards an increase in males,” Limpus said.

The green turtle is one of the largest sea turtles and the only herbivore among the different species.  They are named for the greenish color of their cartilage and fat, not their shells.

They are classified as endangered, and are threatened by habitat loss, over-harvesting of their eggs, and the hunting of adults.

The Great Barrier Reef stretches for 2,300 kilometers down Australia’s northeast coast.  It is home to a spectacular range of wildlife, including more than 130 species of sharks, 500 types of worms and 1,600 varieties of fish.

 

The reef faces a range of threats from the run-off of pesticides and soil from farms, and warmer ocean temperatures that have caused the mass bleaching of the coral in the past two years.
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Awash in Corn, Soybeans, US Farmers Focus on Trade Deals

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

For Illinois farmer Garry Niemeyer, it’s a slow time of year, spent indoors fixing equipment, not outdoors tending his fields, which now lie empty.

All of his corn and soybeans were harvested in what has turned out to be a good year.

“This is the largest amount of corn we’ve had ever,” he said.

And this bounty is not limited to Niemeyer’s farm. It can be seen throughout the United States.

“We’re talking 14½ billion bushels of corn,” Niemeyer told VOA. “That’s a lot of production.”

WATCH: Awash in Corn, Soybeans, US Farmers Focus on Trade Deals

Piles of corn, soybeans

That production is easy to see at nearby elevators, where large piles of corn under white plastic wrap extend into the sky. There is more corn and soybeans than existing storage facilities can hold.

“You can drive by just about any elevator out here in the country and see some pretty large piles of corn that are covered outside of the bins,” said Mark Gebhards, executive director of Governmental Affairs and Commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau. “That is a direct result of a lot of carry-over from last year; i.e., we need to move this and create market demand to get the product moving.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports record harvests of corn and soybeans in the United States in 2017, with stocks overflowing at elevators and storage bins across the country.

In Illinois, Gebhards notes that up to half of the state’s corn supply, and even more soybeans, will eventually reach foreign shores.

“Usually we say every other row of beans is going into the export market,” Gebhards said.

But Niemeyer wants even more of his crop to find a market overseas.

“We have overproduced for our domestic market,” he told VOA. “Our profits will lie in the amount of exports we are able to secure in the future.”

​The NAFTA question

Which is why the Illinois farmer is looking for some indication from U.S. President Donald Trump on the current efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

“NAFTA is huge,” Niemeyer said. “NAFTA consumes $43 billion worth of our crops and livestock and other things we exported out of this country in 2016.”

Niemeyer is pleased with Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations and institute tax reform. But there was little hint of NAFTA’s fate during Trump’s Jan. 8 speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

“If anything was maybe left as an area of concern, it’s still what’s going to happen to that trade agreement,” said Gebhards, who warns the U.S. withdrawing from NAFTA could impact prices.

“On the livestock side, it’s estimated you would see $18 per hog or $71 per cow if we were to withdraw. It’s estimated that we would see potentially a $0.30 per bushel decrease in the corn price and $0.15 on the soybean side.”

Prices are a factor growers like Niemeyer maintain a close watch on.

“(The) price of corn is about $3.30 a bushel, so $3 corn, it’s hard to make anything work, even with a large yield,” which, Niemeyer said, is why many farmers are holding on to what they have.

“Everybody’s sitting still, that’s the reason you aren’t seeing much corn move right today because the price has done absolutely nothing,” he said.

Niemeyer wants a final NAFTA agreement soon, so negotiators can focus on new trade agreements that could help create more demand, improve prices and ultimately move the supply that has piled up in the U.S.

Gebhards said the world is watching the negotiations for clues on how reliable the U.S. is as a trading partner under Trump.

“It’s a short term issue for us not to lose ground as we try to renegotiate NAFTA,” Gebhards said. “But I think the long term is what kind of a signal do you send as a reliable trading partner to the rest of the world that if you enter into this agreement with the United States you know that you will be able to get that product that you’ve agreed to buy.”

Trump has recently suggested a deadline extension for modernizing NAFTA, which means the uncertainty for farmers like Niemeyer could extend into March or April, when he is preparing to put a new crop in the ground.
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Awash in Corn, Soybeans, U.S. Farmers Focus on Trade Deals

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

The United States Department of Agriculture reports record harvests of corn and soybeans in the United States in 2017, with stocks overflowing at elevators and storage bins across the country. But as VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, record yields don’t necessarily translate into stronger bottom lines for farmers, who increasingly depend on international trade to move their product and improve their prices.
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New ‘Smart Home’ Tech Lets You Talk to Your Smoke Detector

By Uponsil | | No Comments | Silicon Valley

Gadgets that can make homes smarter are becoming more affordable for consumers. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, even simple devices were getting sophisticated new brains. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Protests Erupt Again in Tunisia, Cradle of 2011 Arab Spring

By Uponbiz | | No Comments | Business

Protesters took to the streets in towns and cities across Tunisia for a fourth day Friday, as anger grows over price hikes introduced by the government. Demonstrations in 2011 in Tunisia grew into the revolution that overthrew the government and triggered a wave of uprisings across the Arab world. Seven years on, the dictatorship may have gone but, as Henry Ridgwell reports, lingering social and economic problems are driving the anger, raising the prospect that the unrest could spread.
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First Saudi Stadium Opens to Women to Watch Soccer

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Saudi women were allowed into a sports stadium for the first time Friday to watch a soccer match between two local teams, though they were segregated in the stands from the male-only crowd with designated seating in the so-called “family section.”

The move was the first of Saudi Arabia’s social reforms planned for this year to ease restrictions on women, spearheaded by the kingdom’s 32-year-old crown prince. The kingdom has also announced that starting in June, women will be allowed to drive, lifting the world’s only ban on female drivers.

Integrate women into society

More than just an incremental step toward greater rights, the presence of women in the sports stadium underscored a wider effort to integrate women into society and grant them more public visibility in a country where gender segregation is widely enforced and where most women cover their faces and hair with black veils and don loose-flowing black robes, known as abayas.

The first stadium to open its doors to women was in the Red Sea city of Jiddah. The stadium in the capital, Riyadh, will open to women on Saturday, followed by the western city of Dammam on Thursday.

At the Jiddah stadium Friday, young Saudi women wearing bright orange vests over their abayas were deployed to help with the female crowds. “Welcome to Saudi families,” read a sign in Arabic erected across the section of the stadium reserved for women.

“It’s very festive and very well organized. A lot of people are just really happy to be here. I think there’s a lot of excitement when you walked in, especially among the children,” said Sarah Swick of the match between Saudi soccer teams Al-Ahli and Al-Batin.

​Family sections

To prepare for the change, the kingdom designated so-called “family sections” in the stands for women, separated by barriers from the male-only crowds. The stadiums were also fitted with female prayer areas and restrooms, as well as separate entrances and parking lots for female spectators. Local media said women would also have their own designated smoking areas.

“Family sections” are ubiquitous across the kingdom, allowing married couples, direct relatives and sometimes groups of friends to sit together, isolated from male-only tables at restaurants and in waiting areas at banks and hospitals. The sections also include women out on their own or in groups with other women.

Although only 20 riyals ($5.33) a ticket, the family section for Friday’s match was still less than half full.

“A lot of people wanted to wait and see how it is. Some thought it wouldn’t be very safe or organized,” said Swick, who attended the game with her Saudi husband and son, and her American mother.

Swick, who grew up in Maryland and has been living in Saudi Arabia for the past nine years, has attended football games in the U.S. and soccer matches in France, but said she was impressed with how organized Friday night’s match was.

“I definitely think we will come back,” she said.

​Some opposed

An Arabic hashtag on Twitter about women entering stadiums garnered tens of thousands of tweets on Friday, with some using the hashtag to share photos of female spectators wearing their team’s colors in scarves thrown over their black abayas.

While many welcomed the decision to allow women into stadiums, others spoke out against it.

Some used the hashtag to write that women’s place should be in the home, focusing on their children and preserving their faith, and not at a stadium where male crowds frequently curse and chant raucously.

Change and jobs

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seen as the driving force behind the loosened restrictions on women. Still in place, however, are guardianship laws that prevent women from traveling abroad, obtaining a passport or marrying without a male relative’s consent.

Set to inherit a country where more than half the population is younger than 25 and hungry for change, the young crown prince has looked to boost his popularity by curbing nearly four decades of deeply entrenched ultraconservative influence. His reforms, which include allowing movie theaters to open in March after a more than 35-year ban, are also aimed at creating more jobs and increasing local spending on entertainment as the country faces several more years of budget deficit amid continued lower oil prices.

The country’s large, new stadiums were built with hundreds of millions of dollars when oil prices were nearly double what they are now. The government spent lavishly on them in an effort to appease young Saudis and provide spaces for fans eager to cheer on local clubs, as well as hold national parades and ceremonies.

In a one-off, the stadium in Riyadh allowed families to enter and watch National Day festivities in September, marking the first time women had set foot inside.

Earlier failures, successes

In 2015, a Saudi woman who tried to attend a soccer game in Jiddah was arrested after local media said she was spotted by security officers “deliberately disguised” in pants, a long-sleeve top, a hat and sunglasses to avoid detection.

Over the years, though, there have been some exceptions for foreign women.

In 2015, an Australian female supporter of Western Sydney Wanderers soccer club was permitted to attend a match at Riyadh’s main stadium and a group of American women traveling with a U.S. Congress delegation also watched a local club match there.
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Original Disney Mouseketeer Tracey Dies at 74

By Uponent | | No Comments | Entertainment

Doreen Tracey, a former child star who played one of the original cute-as-a-button Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s, has died, according to Disney publicist Howard Green. She was 74.

Tracey died of pneumonia Wednesday at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, Calif., following a two-year battle with cancer.

Tracey maintained ties to Disney and show business throughout her life, appearing in the film Westward Ho the Wagons! and touring with the Mouseketeers. She later served as a publicist to musician Frank Zappa and worked at Warner Bros.

It was the pig-tailed Tracey and her talented co-stars — including Annette Funicello — who appeared on television in black hats with ears following the anthem “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E …” on ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club.

Millions of kids raced home from school to watch in wonder as the bouncy Mouseketeers announced themselves at the top of the show.

The Mickey Mouse Club was the brainchild of Walt Disney during the flowering of his company’s fortunes in the mid-1950s. To help finance the Disneyland park, he agreed to supply ABC with TV shows. One was designed for children in the pre-dinner hour.

The hourlong show proved a sensation with its Oct. 3, 1955, debut. It flourished for two seasons, then was reduced to a half-hour for two more. Tracey stayed for its four-year run.

The black-and-white series was syndicated in 1962-65. The 1990s version of The Mickey Mouse Club launched the careers of singers Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and actors Keri Russell and Ryan Gosling.

Born in London on April 3, 1943, to parents who worked in vaudeville, Tracey arrived in the United States when she was 4 and learned to sing and dance. She nabbed a spot on The Mickey Mouse Club when she was 12.

Lorraine Santoli, a former executive at Disney who wrote The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book, said Tracey remained close to her Disney roots, maintaining longtime friendships with her fellow Mouseketeers.

Tracey strained her relationship with Disney by posing for a men’s magazine in 1976 with nothing on except her mouse ears and later wearing nothing but an open trench coat in front of Disney Studios. Still, she often appeared at Mickey Mouse Club reunion shows at Disneyland and at Disney conventions, last celebrating the show’s 60th anniversary in 2015.

Tracey is survived by her son, Bradley, and two grandchildren, Gavin, 9, and Autumn, 12.
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