An estimated 5 million people around the world are bitten by venomous snakes each year, and more than 100,000 victims die. In many cases the key to survival is anti-venom, but getting the right treatment can depend on knowing what kind of snake did the biting. Some new medical tech developed in Denmark is taking the guesswork out of the snake bite business. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Month: January 2018
Scientists and NASA officials who spearheaded development of a space-based missile defense system in the 1980s are urging its revival to counter emerging nuclear threats from North Korea and other rogue states.
False alarms over a North Korean missile attack on Hawaii this month indicate how Pyongyang’s nuclear capability has taken center stage as America’s main security concern since the North Korean government’s recent testing of ICBMs capable of reaching the United States.
The controversial U.S. Space Defense Initiative (SDI), started under President Ronald Reagan, was often ridiculed as “Star Wars” by critics in the U.S. Congress and media who balked at its high cost.
Many also questioned its effectiveness against the Soviet Union’s massive and sophisticated nuclear arsenal.
Back on the drawing board?
The program never got past the drawing board and was largely abandoned at the end of the Cold War.
“Everybody lost interest in SDI when the Soviet Union collapsed, but vast technological advances over the past 30 years and the emerging nuclear threat from North Korea revive its need and feasibility,” says Robert Scheder, a systems analyst with the RAND Corp. who designed the original model for space-based defense.
He conducted early simulations with a weapon system consisting of orbiting rockets equipped with sensor technology designed to intercept attacking missiles at the “boost phase,” or immediately after launch, before they can release decoys and countermeasures.
But there were significant technological shortcomings.
The fleet of satellite interceptor systems, also known as Brilliant Pebbles or Smart Rocks, could not entirely neutralize a Russian first strike involving thousands of nuclear warheads, according to Scheder.
They could, however, provide fail-safe protection against the threat now posed by North Korea, which can only launch a maximum of three or four missiles at a time, he told VOA in an interview from his home in Spain.
Critics: It’s still lacking
Thomas Roberts, a critic of space-based defense at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says that even a small salvo of missiles could penetrate the space shield.
“The enemy can first launch a decoy to make a gap through the interceptor shield and then launch a salvo through that gap, which the Pentagon cannot close fast enough,” Roberts said.
At least 1,600 killer satellites would be needed to fully cover the Earth, costing defense dollars that could be just as effectively spent in deploying more conventional interceptor missiles and launching more satellites to track, surveil and identify incoming enemy missiles.
The calculated $100 billion cost for placing thousands of Brilliant Pebbles in orbit would have absorbed the entire U.S. defense budget in the 1980s.
“But the much smaller size of satellites and advances in miniaturization technology would limit the cost substantially in today’s terms,” Scheder said.
Commercially available space technology currently produced by Tesla and other contractors would also lower development costs and shorten deployment time, according to NASA experts.
The former SDI director, retired U.S. Air Force General James Abrahamson, has placed the current cost of Brilliant Pebbles at $20 billion.
Roberts said it would be at least $70 billion.
Congressional interest
SDI was shelved by President Bill Clinton and plans to revive it under successor George W. Bush were sidelined as counterterrorism and land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq took priority following the 9/11 terror attacks.
Growing concern with North Korea has moved the U.S. Congress to request new funding for space weapons research, according to a recent letter from the House Armed Services Committee to the White House.
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump last month mandates the Missile Defense Agency to “begin research on space-based interceptors and re-establish the space test bed for demonstrating the relevant technologies.”
Abrahamson has said that the land-based anti-ballistic missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, that currently employs Patriot surface-to-air batteries, cannot provide guaranteed protection against a rogue attack.
Simulations have shown that THAAD and the Navy’s AEGIS system have a 50 percent probability of intercepting ICBMs at terminal phases when they re-enter the atmosphere.
“They are tactical weapons designed to protect points in a set piece battle scenario,” Scheder said. But effective protection for entire countries or regions under threat by unstable regimes like Kim Jung Un’s can only be provided by satellite-operated area defense.
Questions remain
Critics of space-based weapons point to the possibility of satellite error in detecting a hostile launch.
Brilliant Pebbles impactors might also disintegrate upon re-entering the atmosphere in pursuit of an attacking missile before hitting it.
SDI proponents say that triangulations among Earth-based systems, mother satellites at upper orbits, and smart rocks at low orbit need to be tightened.
Scheder also says that the Smart Rock is a solid impactor designed to destroy a rocket with no explosive charge, so its collateral damage would be limited.
“An ICBM has about a 20-minute trajectory through space in which it’s vulnerable to a Smart Rock,” Scheder said. “Once it’s re-entered the atmosphere, land-based missiles have only seconds in which to hit it.”
Some weapon systems conceived for SDI, like laser or electromagnetic guns, could not provide adequate protection, according to the RAND expert.
Missiles can be painted to deflect laser rays and the heavy lift required for electromagnetic guns would complicate their placement in space.
There is a theoretical danger that a rogue nation or group with highly developed cyber war capacity could hack into a Brilliant Pebbles network and direct it against the U.S. or its allies.
But difficulties in countering a U.S. space shield could convince rogue powers of the futility of costly nuclear programs, according to Scheder.
He credits “Star Wars” with the Soviet Union’s decision to fold its arms race.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the U.S is “not concerned” about the value of the dollar in the short-term.
At a press briefing at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Mnuchin said the short-term value of the dollar is dependent on many factors in what is a very liquid market.
In the longer-term, he said, the U.S. currency’s value will be determined by the underlying strength of the U.S. economy.
On Wednesday, Mnuchin sparked a big dollar sell-off when he said the recent fall in the value of the dollar was “good” for trade. The euro, for example, spiked to a three-year high.
Mnuchin insisted Thursday that his comment on the dollar was “balanced and consistent.”
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A federal jury in Wisconsin on Wednesday convicted a Chinese wind turbine company of stealing trade secrets, which nearly destroyed a U.S. manufacturer.
China’s Sinovel Wind Group does business in the United States.
“The theft of ideas and ingenuity is not a business dispute. It’s a crime and will be prosecuted as such,” U.S. Attorney Scott Blader said.
According to the government’s case against Sinovel, the company had an $800 million contract for products and services from Wisconsin-based American Superconductor (AMSC).
It said Sinovel conspired in 2011 with two company managers and a former AMSC employee to use computers in Austria to steal wind turbine technology and trade secrets from AMSC and install them on Sinovel turbines.
Sinovel never paid AMSC the $800 million.
Federal prosecutors said Sinovel’s crime cost AMSC dearly; investors dumped more than $1 billion in AMSC stock and about 700 workers lost their jobs, more than half of the company’s global workforce.
Sinovel will be sentenced in June.
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The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation in an accident involving a Tesla car that may have been operating under its semi-autonomous Autopilot system.
The board sent two investigators to Culver City, California, to learn whether the Autopilot was on and if so, how the car’s sensors failed to detect a firetruck stopped on a highway near Los Angeles on Monday.
This is the second time the safety agency will look in to a crash involving Tesla’s Autopilot feature.
In September, the NTSB determined that while the technology played a major role in the May 2016 fatal crash in Florida, the blame fell on driver errors, including overreliance on technology by an inattentive Tesla driver.
The California driver said the Autopilot mode was engaged when the car struck the firetruck while traveling 104 kilometers per hour (65 mph). “Amazingly there were no injuries! Please stay alert while driving!,” the Culver City firefighters union said in a tweet.
Tesla wouldn’t say if Autopilot was working at the time of the Culver City crash, but said in a statement Monday that drivers must stay attentive when it’s in use. The company would not comment on the investigation.
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Gulf Arab officials used the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday to slam Iran for what they said was its destabilizing behavior in the region,
taking advantage of Tehran’s conspicuous absence at the annual event.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had been a regular presence at the annual forum that brings together top politicians, CEOs and bankers, and he often clashed with his Gulf Arab counterparts at competing sessions. But this year, he did not show.
As a result, the platform was wide open for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to criticize Iran.
Iran, the leading Shiite Muslim power, and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, are rivals for influence in the Middle East, where they support opposing sides in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
“In the Middle East, we have two competing visions … and the vision of darkness is sectarianism. It’s trying to restore an empire that was destroyed thousands of years ago. It’s using sectarianism and terrorism in order to interfere in the affairs of other countries,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a panel at the forum. “History has shown that light always prevails over darkness.”
Iran denies interference in Arab countries’ affairs. Last year at Davos, Zarif said Iran and Saudi Arabia should be able to work together to help end conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
Yemeni conflict
Saudi-led forces, which back the Yemeni government, have fought the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen’s civil war. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has described Iran’s supply of rockets to the Houthis as “direct military aggression” that could be an act of war.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri gave a more measured critique. With his coalition government, which includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, he has had to tread carefully. His Saudi allies accuse Hezbollah of waging war
across the Middle East as agents of Iran.
“Iran is a country that we need to deal with. … As prime minister, I would like to have the best relationship with Iran, but I would like it state to state,” Hariri said at a separate panel.
“Iran represents a challenge in the region, maybe, but dialogue also is a part of resolving these issues,” Hariri said.
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, while acknowledging that Berlin had issues with Iran, used the moment to defend the 2015 Iran nuclear deal sealed with world powers, which U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon.
“We have many worries about Iran, without any question, and we see a lot of problems with Iran, without any question. But we think that the Iran [nuclear] deal encapsulates the core problem, and therefore we think we should stick to the deal as long as Iran sticks to the deal, too,” she said.
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The Senate has confirmed a former pharmaceutical industry executive as head of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
Alex Azar, former president of the U.S. division of Eli Lilly & Co., was confirmed by a 55-43 vote on Wednesday.
Azar, 50, will replace Tom Price, who resigned in September amid questions over his use of private jets for official travel.
Azar says he has four main priorities for the Health and Human Services Department: help curb the cost of prescription drugs; make health insurance more affordable and available; continue bipartisan efforts to focus Medicare payments on quality; and confront the opioid addiction epidemic.
Azar had served in senior health jobs under President George W. Bush and had the support of much of the health care industry.
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Elton John is retiring from the road after his upcoming three-year global tour, capping nearly 50 years on stages around the world. He calls it a “way to go out with a bang.”
“I’ve had a good run, I think you’d admit that,” John said Wednesday, adding that he wanted to “leave people thinking, `I saw the last tour and it was fantastic.”‘
The 70-year-old singer, pianist and composer said he wanted to spend time with his family. His children will be 10 and 8 when he stops in 2021, and John said he hoped he might be able to take them to soccer practice. “My priorities now are my children and my husband and my family,” he said. “This is the end.”
John made the announcement at an event in New York in which he sat at a piano and performed “Tiny Dancer” and “I’m Still Standing.” He wore his signature glasses and a colorful suit jacket that read “Gucci Loves Elton.”
His final tour — dubbed “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” — starts in September. It will consist of 300 shows in North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Asia. Tickets go on sale beginning Febraury 2.
John said he decided on his retirement plans in 2015 in France. “I can’t physically do the traveling and I don’t want to,” he said. He also ruled out a residency but vowed: “I will be creative up until the day I die.”
At the Grammy Awards, to be presented in New York on Sunday, John is to perform alongside Miley Cyrus and will collect the President’s Merit Award. His Vegas residency ends in May after six years.
His hits include “Your Song” and “Candle in the Wind.” He has won five Grammys, an Oscar, a Golden Globe for “The Lion King” and a Tony Award for “Aida” He is the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor.
John, who has sold 300 million records, launched his first tour in 1970 and boasts having performed over 4,000 times in more than 80 countries. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
He has suffered several medical setbacks of late, including a bacterial infection last year that he contracted during a South American tour and an E. coli bacterial infection in 2009. He’s also suffered an appendicitis and has been fitted with a pacemaker.
From 1970-76, John released 10 original studio albums and seven consecutive chart toppers. He remained a hit maker over the following four decades, from “The Lion King” soundtrack song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to a revision of his Marilyn Monroe ode “Candle in the Wind,” released in 1997 after the death of John’s friend Princess Diana and one of the best-selling singles of all time.
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Toys R Us, a nostalgic favorite even as many shoppers moved to Amazon and huge chains like Walmart, plans to close up to 182 stores, or about 20 percent of its U.S. locations.
The company that once dominated toy sales in the U.S. has been operating under bankruptcy protection since last fall, when it filed for Chapter 11 under the weight of $5 billion in debt. Toys R Us operates about 900 stores in the U.S., including Babies R Us stores.
Loyal fans lamented the closing of their hometown stores. Many said they liked to shop at Toys R Us because of the atmosphere and the variety of toys they found.
“It’s an experience,” said Bryan Likins of Indianapolis, who takes his 4-year-old daughter to Toys R Us. “She likes to walk through the store and point to different toys she liked.”
Likins said he remembered playing with the video games and trying out bikes with his brothers at Toys R Us, and he liked continuing that with his child. He said he shopped on Amazon only for specific items that he wasn’t sure other toy sellers carried.
The store closings will begin in February and the majority of locations identified for closure, which include Babies R Us stores, will go dark by mid-April. At some other locations, Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores will be combined. The bankruptcy court still must sign off on the closings.
Toys R Us wouldn’t say how many jobs were to be cut. It said some employees would be moved to other stores and those who could not be moved would severance pay.
Ease of shopping
Chairman and CEO Dave Brandon said Wednesday that tough decisions were required to save Toys R Us. He acknowledged “operational missteps” during the critical holiday shopping season, when shopping at its stores and online wasn’t as easy as it should have been.
“The actions we are taking are necessary to give us the best chance to emerge from our bankruptcy proceedings as a more viable and competitive company that will provide the level of service and experience you should expect,” he said in a letter to customers.
Gerrick Johnson, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, had estimated that holiday sales at the company’s North America stores were down more than 10 percent. He attributed much of the decline to people’s confusion around the bankruptcy filing and a fear of buying gifts at Toys R Us because they thought they wouldn’t be able to return them if necessary. Johnson also blamed a weak marketing campaign and email promotions that didn’t create a sense of urgency.
Toys R Us, based in Wayne, New Jersey, has struggled with debt since private-equity firms Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust took it private in a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout in 2005. The plan had been to take the company public again, but weak sales have prevented that from happening. With such debt levels, Toys R Us has not had the financial flexibility to invest in its business.
Meanwhile, other stores like Target have been increasing their assortment of toys.
Toys R Us closed its flagship store in Manhattan’s Times Square, a huge tourist destination, about two years ago.
While its sales numbers have been shrinking, Toys R Us still sells about 20 percent of the toys bought in the U.S., according to Stephanie Wissink, an analyst at Jefferies LLC.
Competitive pressures will force the company to examine all its stores, and more will likely be shuttered over the next year or two, Wissink said. Moody’s lead retail analyst Charlie O’Shea said the closings would let Toys R Us “focus all of its operating efforts on only its best locations.”
Ryan McLaine, mother of a 4-year-old boy, is disappointed that her favorite Toys R Us store in Exton, Pennsylvania, was on the list of closures.
“We would always like to reward him. It was always fun to take him to the big store to see what he would like,” she said. “Now, we have to figure out what to do next.”
She said the next closest Toys R Us location is in King of Prussia, and it’s not well-maintained. And she doesn’t like to shop for toys on Amazon.com because she likes to get a reaction from her son before she buys.
A ‘category killer’
Toys R Us reigned supreme in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was one of the first of the “category killers” — a store totally devoted to one thing: toys. Its scale gave it leverage with toy sellers and it disrupted general merchandise stores and mom-and-pop shops. Children sang along with commercials featuring the mascot, Geoffrey the giraffe.
Now Toys R Us and other category killers like the now-defunct Sports Authority, Borders and Circuit City are being upended by Amazon and online shopping. More than three dozen retailers sought bankruptcy protection last year, due in large part to radical shifts in where people shop, and what they buy.
GlobalData Retail estimates that nearly 14 percent of toy sales were made online in 2016, more than double the level five years ago.
Jonathan Cordell, the father of an 8-month-old boy, said he does a lot of price comparisons online, jumping back and forth between Babies R Us and Amazon. But he likes to buy baby clothes at Babies R Us in Queens’ College Point section, which is on the list of stores to be closed.
“I usually take advantage of the price matching. I could find clothing at 50 percent off. You can’t find that on Amazon,” he said.
Toys R Us has been hurt by the shift to mobile devices taking up more play time. Some toy makers have struggled as well, with talk last year about the possibility of a merger between Mattel and Hasbro, the nation’s largest toy makers.
Wissink estimates that Toys R Us accounts for about 11 percent of Mattel’s annual sales and about 9 percent of Hasbro’s annual volume. Shares of Mattel Inc. fell while Hasbro Inc.’s stock was up in afternoon trading.
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For the first time, researchers have used the cloning method that produced Dolly the sheep to create two healthy monkeys, bringing science an important step closer to being able to do the same with humans.
Since Dolly’s birth in 1996, scientists have cloned nearly two dozen kinds of mammals, including dogs, cats, pigs, cows and polo ponies, and have also created human embryos with this method. But until now, they have been unable to make babies this way in primates, the category that includes monkeys, apes and people.
“The barrier of cloning primate species is now overcome,” declared Muming Poo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.
He and colleagues announced their success with macaques in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Cell. The female baby monkeys, about 7 and 8 weeks old, are named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua.
“It’s been a long road,” said one scientist who tried and failed to make monkeys and was not involved in the new research, Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University. “Finally, they did it.”
In principle, Poo said, the feat means humans can be cloned. But he said his team has no intention of doing that. Mainstream scientists generally oppose making human babies by cloning, and Poo said society would ban it for ethical reasons.
Instead, he said, the goal is to create lots of genetically identical monkeys for use in medical research, where they would be particularly valuable because they are more like humans than other lab animals such as mice or rats.
Inefficient and challenging
The process is still very inefficient — it took 127 eggs to get the two babies — and so far it has succeeded only by starting with a monkey fetus. The scientists failed to produce healthy babies from an adult monkey, though they are still trying. Dolly caused a sensation because she was the first mammal cloned from an adult.
The procedure was technically challenging. Essentially, the Chinese scientists removed the DNA-containing nucleus from monkey eggs and replaced it with DNA from the monkey fetus. These reconstituted eggs grew and divided, finally becoming an early embryo, which was then placed into female monkeys to grow to birth.
The scientists implanted 79 embryos to produce the two babies. Still, the approach succeeded where others had failed. Poo said that was because of improvements in lab techniques and because researchers added two substances that helped reprogram the DNA from the fetus. That let the DNA abandon its job in the fetus, which involves things like helping to make collagen, and take on the new task of creating an entire monkey.
The Chinese researchers said cloning of fetal cells could be combined with gene editing techniques to produce large numbers of monkeys with certain genetic defects that cause disease in people. The animals could then be used to study such diseases and test treatments. The researchers said their initial targets will be Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
‘Big ethical dilemma’
Mitalipov, noting the Chinese failed to produce healthy babies from adult cells, said he suspects attempts to clone babies from a human adult would also fail. “I don’t think it would be advisable to anyone to even think about it,” he said.
Jose Cibelli, a scientist at Michigan State University, said it might be technically possible someday, but “criminal” to try now because of the suffering caused by the many lost pregnancies the process entails.
If the procedure became efficient enough in monkeys, he said, society could face “a big ethical dilemma” over whether to adapt it for humans. The key step of transferring DNA might be combined with gene editing to correct genetic disorders in embryos, allowing healthy babies to be born, he said.
Of course, the familiar image of human cloning involves making a copy of someone already born. That might be possible someday, but “I don’t think it should be pursued,” said researcher Dieter Egli of Columbia University. “I can’t think of a strong benefit.”
Henry Greely, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in the implications of biomedical technologies, said the strongest argument he can think of would be the desire of grieving parents to produce a genetic duplicate of a dead child. But he doubts that’s a compelling enough reason to undertake the extensive and costly effort needed to get such a procedure approved, at least for “decades and decades.”
Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, California, called it unethical to subject that new child to “the psychological and emotional risks of living under the shadow of its genetic predecessor.” Human cloning could also require many women to donate eggs and to serve as surrogates, she said.
At the moment, because of safety concerns, federal regulators in the U.S. would not allow making a human baby by cloning, and international scientific groups also oppose it, said biomedical ethics expert Insoo Hyun of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
‘Misery and death’
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals condemned the monkey-cloning experiments.
“Cloning is a horror show: a waste of lives, time and money — and the suffering that such experiments cause is unimaginable,” PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo said in a statement. “Because cloning has a failure rate of at least 90 percent, these two monkeys represent misery and death on an enormous scale.”
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Apple’s next major update of its mobile software will include an option that will enable owners of older iPhones to turn off a feature that slows the device to prevent aging batteries from shutting down.
The free upgrade announced Wednesday will be released this spring.
The additional controls are meant to appease iPhone owners outraged since Apple acknowledged last month that its recent software updates had been secretly slowing down older iPhones when their batteries weakened.
Many people believed Apple was purposefully undermining the performance of older iPhones to drive sales of its newer and more expensive devices. Apple insisted it was simply trying to extend the lives of older iPhones, but issued an apology last month and promised to replace batteries in affected devices at a discounted price of $50.
Despite Apple’s contrition, the company is still facing an investigation by French authorities, a series of questions from U.S. Senate and a spate of consumer lawsuits alleging misconduct.
Besides giving people more control over the operation of older iPhones, the upcoming update dubbed iOS 11.3 will also show how well the device’s battery is holding up. Apple had promised to add a battery gauge when it apologized to consumers last month.
Other features coming in the next update will include the ability to look at personal medical histories in Apple’s health app, more tricks in its augmented reality toolkit and more animated emojis that work with the facial recognition technology in the iPhone X.
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Protesters have been pouring into the streets in several Swiss cities to express opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attendance at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos.
Trump arrives Thursday in the Swiss ski resort and is slated to present his “America First” message in a speech Friday to global business and political leaders.
On the eve of his arrival, members of Trump’s economic team previewed the strategy for increasing U.S. global competitiveness.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, one of 10 Cabinet secretaries attending the gathering, endorsed a lower dollar, pushing the greenback to its lowest level in three years, according to the Bloomberg Dollar Index.
“Obviously, a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities,” Mnuchin told reporters at Davos.
A day after Trump imposed tariffs on imported solar-energy components and large washing machines, Mnuchin said he was not worried about what many see as a clash between Trump’s protectionist policies and the concept of globalism.
“This is about an ‘America First’ agenda, but ‘America First’ does mean working with the rest of the world” on free trade issues, Mnuchin said.
But many observers and analysts see an irreconcilable conflict of economic philosophies.
Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at Washington’s Peterson Institute for International Economics, expressed amusement at the prospect of the populist Trump speaking at a forum that has become a symbol of the growing consensus around an increasingly globalized world.
“It’s hard to square ‘America First’ with the Davos ethos of globalism, but Trump might put it this way: Every other country pursues its own interests first and foremost, while America makes concession after concession and carries burden after burden,” Hufbauer said in a written answer to a VOA request. “The time has come for America to act just like all the other countries represented in Davos.”
Presidential scholar Joshua Sandman of the University of New Haven likens Trump’s visit to the biblical story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den.
“Even though the Davos people are antithetical to his populist message, he wants to confront them and to establish the legitimacy of the American approach as he articulates it, which is to confront globalism and put American interests first,” Sandman said in a phone interview.
Briefing White House reporters this week, Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn said the president would use his speech at Davos to tell the world America is open for business. “We want the world to invest in America and create jobs for hardworking Americans,” he said.
“He’s going to talk to world leaders about making sure we all respect each other, we all abide by the laws, we all have free, fair, open, and reciprocal trade,” Cohn explained. “And if we live in a world where there are not artificial barriers, we will all grow and we will all help each other grow. And the president truly believes that.”
Political scientist Thomas Whalen of Boston University says Trump is unlikely to win many converts among the globalist crowd at Davos.
“Trump at Davos would be greeted about the same way an appearance by [disgraced Hollywood producer] Harvey Weinstein would go off at the Oscars,” Whalen said. “His approach to world affairs is anathema to those world leaders. We live in a 21st century interconnected globalized economy, and his idea of erecting trade barriers is going to unspool the entire system if left unchecked.”
Sideline meetings
The president ‘s schedule includes sideline meetings with several other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Theresa May. The president earlier canceled a planned trip to Britain for the opening of the new U.S. embassy in London, where he would be likely to face fierce protests. But National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Trump is prioritizing the meeting with May.
“We do have a special relationship,” McMaster said, adding that the meeting would touch on critical global issues, such as “the conflict in Syria, Iran’s destabilizing behavior, ways to address shortcomings in that Iran nuclear deal, and our shared goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.”
Trump also will meet the incoming African Union chairman, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, to “reaffirm the U.S.-Africa relationship and discuss shared priorities, including trade and security,” McMaster said.
The meeting comes weeks after Trump was reported to have used a vulgar slur to describe African countries during a conversation about immigration.
Trump will be the first U.S. president to attend the Davos forum since Bill Clinton in 2000. Other world leaders in attendance for the first time include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also will be there, but her advisers say she will not meet with Trump.
Economic adviser Cohn has attended several Davos meetings in his previous role as president of the Wall Street banking firm Goldman Sachs. Asked what Trump might find on his first trip to the Swiss resort that he would not expect, Cohn replied, “A lot of snow. Fourteen feet [4.25 meters] of snow.”
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A movie produced by a German film student about the 2015 Mandera bus attack in Kenya has just been nominated for an Oscar. The short film, Watu Wote, or Swahili for “All of Us,” tells the story of how average Kenyans resisted Al Shabab. The film premiered in Nairobi Tuesday night and is based on the real-life events of December 21, 2015.
On that day, Al-Shabab militants attacked a bus headed from Nairobi to Mandera, a town at Kenya’s border with Somalia. The terrorists tried to coerce the Muslim passengers to identify the Christians. The passengers refused.
The film depicts the harrowing encounter.
German film student Katja Benrath directed the short film as her graduation project at the Hamburg Media School.
“We felt very good being nominated because this is a huge achievement being nominated, for us, for Gernany and for Kenya,” said Benrath. “It’s just great.”
Kenya, in particular the country’s border region, has been struck repeatedly by Al Shabab attacks in recent years. Watu Wote explores the tensions that have arisen in Kenya over that violence.
The film’s fictional protagonist is a woman named Jua. She is taking the bus to visit her sick mother. We see Jua get angry at a Muslim boy selling water. A Muslim passenger named Salah Farah later asks her why and Jua says her husband and child had been murdered by terrorists.
Later, during the attack, Salah defends the non-Muslim passengers. He challenges the terrorists on the virtues of what true Islam is all about. Finally they shoot him.
The real-life Salah Farah died from his injuries less than a month after the attack.
In the film, we see Jua sitting in the row behind Salah, her hand placed reassuringly on the injured man’s shoulder as the bus escapes.
Actress Adelyne Wairimu played the role of Jua.
“I started seeing life in a different way because it’s not every day you are attacked by terrorists and people have the courage to stand in and tell them you are not going to do this and that. It’s unbelievable,” said Wairium.
28-year-old Abdulahi Ahmed played the role of the Al-Shabab second in command.
“It was hard acting as a terrorist, but the thing is I really wanted to spread the message that Muslims are not allowed to kill Christians and our religion doesn’t teach us to kill Christians,” said Ahmed. “In our Koran, we are told that our religion does not allow us to kill even an innocent ant without a reason.”
The short film has already swept up awards at film festivals in the United States and is now up for a prestigious Oscar award in the “Live Action Short Film” category.
The director, Katja Benrath hopes the message of the film will spread.
“I think prejudices are not the right way to live, so I think maybe this movie could help to start again, to look at the next person as a human being and not as a religion you don’t like or a culture you don’t like,” said Benrath. “I think this movie could really open up minds.”
The 90th Oscar awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on March 4.
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The International Telecommunication Union reports hundreds of millions of people in the world’s poorest countries now have access to the Internet and mobile devices.
It is increasingly difficult to function in this modern digital world without access to the Internet, a smart phone or other digital device. A new report by the International Telecommunication Union finds e-banking, e-commerce and other actions in cyberspace are no longer just the purview of the rich world.
It says all 47 of the world’s Least Developed Countries are making huge strides in increasing their Internet access. The ITU says more than 60 percent of LDC populations are covered by a 3G network, referring to a third generation or advanced wireless mobile telecommunication technology.
It notes by the end of last year, about 700 million people in LDCs had subscriptions to mobile phones, with 80 percent of their populations living within range of a mobile cellular network. Given this progress, the ITU reports LDCs are on track toward achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal on universal and affordable Internet access by 2020.
ITU spokeswoman Jennifer Ferguson-Mitchell tells VOA having access to the Internet and mobile phones has a positive impact on peoples’ lives. She says digital connectivity can provide valuable knowledge and information to populations around the world.
“It gives farmers access to information on crops, when to plant their crops, weather patterns that are happening. It provides access to online education to communities,” she said. “It can make micro and small and medium sized enterprises be able to compete with larger businesses.”
The lTU says universal and affordable Internet access can help LDCs leap-frog in areas such as education, health, government services, trade and can trigger new business opportunities. While this is positive, the report identifies lack of digital skills as a key barrier to Information Communication Technology and Internet use in LDCs.
The report calls on policy makers, industry leaders, and educators to work together to increase digital skills across the Least Developed Countries.
The high cost of living makes finding affordable child care a challenge in Silicon Valley. Three moms have founded the online platform “Roovillage” to help ease the burden. VOA’s Calla Yu reports from San Mateo, California.
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Virtual reality allows the user to enter a different world through sight and sound. Several researchers and companies are adding a third element to the virtual experience: the sense of touch.
Researchers in haptics, meaning the feeling of touch, are incorporating this sense into virtual reality with real-world applications.
French company Go Touch VR created a device called VRtouch that straps onto the fingertips. The device applies varying pressure to the fingertips that correlates to what the user is seeing, touching and lifting in the virtual world.
“That will open enormous possibilities,” said Eric Vezzoli, co-founder of Go Touch VR.
Applications for the touch device include allowing users to undergo training in a safe virtual environment.
Vezzoli said strapping three of the VR touch devices on each hand — the thumb, forefinger and middle finger — are ideal.
“We can use up to six fingers. Why? Because three fingers are enough to manipulate light objects. For example, if you’re writing, you use just three fingers. But (in) VR, there’s no mass, there’s no weight. So, just three fingers is just enough,” Vezzoli said.
Training in virtual reality with the sense of touch may include surgical preparation in a medical procedure or learning in an industrial setting. A different application can be found in the advertising world.
“You can, for example, visit an apartment — virtual apartment. You can open a cabinet. You can touch the bed — feel its softness, and that generates a physical connection with the buyer that can increase the chance of sale,” said Vezzoli.
The company’s clients include the carmaker BMW. Go Touch VR hopes its haptic device will interest content producers, major corporations and the military, as virtual reality is more widely used in the real world.
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South African jazz trumpeter and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Masekela dies at the age of 78. Among his greatest hits were the anthem “Bring Him Back Home,” demanding Nelson Mandela’s freedom from jail. But he recorded countless other solos and worked with other big names, including Senegalese and American superstars Youssou N’Dour and Paul Simon. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on the outpouring of tributes to his long career in music and political activism.
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The United States Food and Drug Administration will be talking about alternatives to cigarette smoking as it deliberates whether to approve a new product offered by tobacco companies that delivers nicotine to the user without burning tobacco. The American Lung Association reports that cigarette smoking rates in the U.S. are at historically low levels. A little over 15 percent of Americans smoke.
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