Physicist Stephen Hawking died March 14, 2018, at his home in Cambridge, England. He was one of the most respected and best-known scientists in modern history. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Day: March 14, 2018
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Wednesday that the United States would challenge Indian government export subsidies because they hurt American workers and manufacturers.
Lighthizer said he had requested “dispute settlement consultations” with the Indian government at the World Trade Organization because the subsidies allow India to sell goods at lower prices.
He said his office “will continue to hold our trading partners accountable by vigorously enforcing U.S. rights under our trade agreements and by promoting fair and reciprocal trade through all available tools, including the WTO.”
The announcement is the latest step in President Donald Trump’s trade offensive.The White House has announced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum as well as on imports of solar panels and washing machines.
Lighthizer’s office said India offers benefits valued at $7 billion annually to domestic exporters, such as duty, tax and fee exemptions. Producers of steel, information technology and textiles are among the recipients.
Consultations are the first step in WTO’s dispute settlement process, but Trump has said he does not favor resorting to dispute resolutions at the WTO, where he contends the United States is at a disadvantage.
The administration has instead concentrated efforts on tariffs and remedies as allowed under domestic U.S. law.
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General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Volkswagen and Mercedes all knew of problems with dangerous exploding Takata air bag inflators years before issuing recalls, according to three class actions filed Wednesday with the federal court in Miami.
The lawsuits cite company documents obtained through previous legal actions against other automakers over faulty Takata inflators. The plaintiffs allege that automakers were informed of inflator defects during tests but delayed taking action. Allegations against GM are among the most serious. Takata documents showed that GM employees expressed concerns about inflators rupturing as early as 2003.
Messages were left Wednesday seeking comment from GM, VW and Mercedes. Fiat Chrysler declined comment, saying it had not been served with the lawsuit.
Takata uses the chemical ammonium nitrate to create small explosions to inflate air bags. But the chemical can deteriorate when exposed to high temperatures and airborne moisture. That causes it to explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and hurling shrapnel. At least 22 people have died worldwide and more than 180 have been hurt.
The problem touched off the largest series of automotive recalls in U.S. history, with 19 automakers having to recall up to 69 million inflators in 42 million vehicles. The problem brought a criminal conviction and fine against Takata and forced the Japanese company into bankruptcy protection.
The lawsuits, which consolidate individual claims that were filed previously, allege that owners paid higher prices for their vehicles than they would have if the defect had been disclosed.
They allege that manufacturers picked Takata to supply inflators because the cost was less than other air bag makers who used different, less volatile chemicals as propellants. According to the lawsuits, manufacturers had employees who questioned the quality and performance of Takata’s inflators well before any vehicles were recalled.
“These auto manufacturers were well aware of the public safety risks posed by Takata’s airbags long ago, and still waited years to disclose them to the public and take action,” Peter Prieto, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. The lawsuits “are an important step forward in holding them accountable.”
Early concerns
In an April 2003 communication with Takata, GM was concerned about “ballistic variability,” which is a tendency for the air bags to either underinflate or explode when deployed, the lawsuit against GM said. A GM engineer raised concerns about inadequate testing, moisture control and the inability of Takata to meet GM specifications after a 2003 visit to Takata’s factory in Moses Lake, Washington, according to the lawsuit.
In 2004, Takata employees met with GM officials about a tendency for the inflators to shoot flames when they ruptured, and in March of 2006, Takata reported that inflators tested for GM vehicles continued to show “aggressive behavior,” including the escape of “molten propellant” when they ruptured. A Takata employee admitted “we cannot get good results” with the inflator design, the lawsuit stated.
Yet GM didn’t issue any recalls until June of 2014 when it recalled 29,000 Chevrolet Cruze compact cars from the 2013 and 2014 model years, according to the lawsuit. That recall came after Takata reported three exploding inflators in 2010. “Defendants did nothing to meaningfully investigate the problem, notify the appropriate regulators or notify the class [car owners],” the lawsuit stated.
GM also received reports of real-world problems in 2011 and 2014, including one case in which a Cruze driver was blinded in one eye by an exploding inflator, according to the lawsuit. GM and Takata blamed the trouble on a manufacturing problem instead of the deteriorating ammonium nitrate. “Rather than publicize the truth, both Takata and New GM blamed the ruptures on a manufacturing problem,” the lawsuit alleged.
Old GM, the company that existed before seeking bankruptcy protection in 2009, knew of the problems, and New GM, the company that emerged from bankruptcy, kept employees who knew and had the same knowledge, according to the lawsuit.
More recalls
Volkswagen, the lawsuit alleged, had repeated quality issues with Takata dating to 2003, even rejecting products after an audit. Yet no recalls were issued until 2016, the plaintiffs claimed. Daimler AG, maker of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, had concerns about the integrity of Takata inflators in 2003, according to company emails. In 2004, Mercedes engineers agreed to “forego key performance variables” and allow use of Takata inflators, the lawsuit stated. The company didn’t do any recalls until 2016.
Fiat Chrysler didn’t issue its first recall until 2014, even though its engineers expressed concerns about Takata inflators during the early 2000s, the lawsuit stated.
Last year Toyota, BMW, Mazda, Subaru, Nissan and Honda settled similar economic loss class actions for millions of dollars.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is naming Larry Kudlow, a longtime conservative economic analyst and television business show commentator, as his new top White House economic adviser.
The 70-year-old Kudlow told news media he accepted Trump’s offer Wednesday to become director of the White House’s National Economic Council. Reports say a formal announcement could come Thursday.
He will replace former Wall Street financier Gary Cohn, who resigned last week after breaking with President Trump on trade policy. Cohn had lost an internal debate, among Trump advisers, aimed at convincing the president not to impose steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
Kudlow, who was an informal economic adviser to Trump during the first year of his presidency, also opposed Trump’s imposition of the 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent tax on aluminum. Kudlow, however, was also an adviser to Trump during his successful 2016 White House run and worked with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in designing the tax cut plan Trump pushed through Congress in December.
Kudlow worked decades ago in the White House of President Ronald Reagan, but has spent much of the time since then as a television show host, much like Trump, who served as executive producer of The Apprentice reality television show before turning to politics.
One of Kudlow’s first White House efforts is likely to involve the ongoing renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. pact with Canada and Mexico.
Kudlow has said that it would be a “calamitously bad decision” to end the accord, but Trump has said NAFTA has left the United States at a disadvantage in trade deals with the two countries. The president has said he wants better terms for American farmers in their exports to Canada and wants Mexico to step up its border security at the U.S. line to keep undocumented immigrants from crossing into the United States.
France added more kindling to a growing commercial dispute between Europe and the United States, announcing Wednesday it would sue American tech giants Google and Apple over allegedly abusive business practices.
After peanut butter, cranberries and bourbon, Google and Apple are the latest American icons in Europe’s crosshairs. Speaking to French radio Wednesday, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire accused the two U.S. companies of unilaterally imposing prices and other terms on French startups.
Google and Apple may be powerful, Le Maire said, but they should not be able to treat French startups and developers the way they currently do.
France has taken legal action against the companies before. But this latest dispute comes amid a potential trade war, as Washington prepares to slap tariffs against steel and aluminum imports.
The European Union has vowed countermeasures on products such as peanut butter if the bloc is not exempted from the U.S. measures, which may take effect next week. But European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told the EU Parliament Wednesday she hopes that will not happen.
“As long as the measures have not entered into force, we hope to avoid a significant trade dispute,” she said. “The root problem, as many of you have said, is overcapacity in steel and aluminum sectors.”
Malmstrom said the European Union and the United States should instead work together to end unfair subsidies by some countries and level the trading field.
France has a mixed relationship with U.S. internet companies — both encouraging them to invest here, but also to pay more EU taxes — as it tries to build its home-grown industry.
Last year, it also threatened fines against Amazon for allegedly abusing its dominant position with suppliers. French justice has yet to rule on the case.
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Only one of 118 gender discrimination complaints made by women at Microsoft was found to have merit, according to unsealed court documents.
The Seattle Times reports the records made public Monday illustrate the scope of complaints from female employees in technical jobs in the U.S. between 2010 and 2016.
And according to the court documents, Microsoft’s internal investigations determined only one of those complaints was “founded.”
The documents were released as part of an ongoing lawsuit by three current or former Microsoft employees alleging gender discrimination.
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status for the case, claiming more than 8,600 women collectively lost out on $238 million in pay and 500 promotions because of discrimination in the company’s performance review process.
Microsoft’s case is one of several against giant companies in the technology industry, which has been criticized in recent years for its lack of female and minority employees and for a workplace culture that some say is hostile toward those groups.
The plaintiffs argue that men in similar roles with similar job performance were promoted faster and given more raises than their female colleagues.
Microsoft has said a class action isn’t warranted because there is no common cause for the employees’ complaints and plaintiffs have not identified systemic gender discrimination. The company has denied that systemic bias is taking place through its employee-review process.
In court documents, Microsoft also has stood behind its internal investigative process, which involves a four-person team that looks into each complaint filed with the company. In a statement Tuesday, a Microsoft said all employee concerns are taken seriously and that the company has a “fair and robust system in place” to investigate them.
U.S. District Judge James Robart is hearing the case in U.S. District Court in Seattle and is expected to decide on the class-action request in the next several months.
Information from: The Seattle Times.
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European Union leader Donald Tusk has called on U.S. President Donald Trump to maintain longstanding trans-Atlantic relations that have been increasingly strained since Trump announced stiff trade tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
“Instead of risking a trade war, which he seems eager to wage, we should be aiming for greater cooperation,” Tusk said at a news conference Wednesday in Helsinki, Finland.
Trump, however, has continued to defy protests both from abroad and within his own Republican Party, tweeting Wednesday, “We cannot keep a blind eye to the rampant unfair trade practices against our Country!”
Trump has maintained the tariffs are necessary to protect U.S. security, but E.U. Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said Trump’s assertion is simply a ploy.
“We suspect that the U.S. move is effectively not based on security considerations but an economic safeguard measure in disguise,” said Malmstrom.
Malmstrom told the EU parliament the 28-nation bloc would develop countermeasures targeting U.S. goods, while continuing to pursue an exemption from Trump’s tariffs that could take effect next week.
Mistrust between the U.S. and its long-time European allies has escalated since Trump was elected president in 2016, with the tariff announcement being the latest point of friction.
Tusk said there was still time to improve relations and urged Trump to deliver on his promise to exempt “real friends” from the tariffs.
Instead of threatening a trade war, Tusk called on Trump to resume U.S.-EU talks which began under former President Barack Obama but were never finished.
“Make trade, not war, Mr President,” Tusk said in comments posted on Twitter.
The EU says in place of tariffs, the U.S. should try to reduce a surplus of steel and aluminum on global markets, which experts says is primarily due to China’s overproduction in recent years.
In a VOA interview broadcast Wednesday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said a major reason for Europe’s opposition is that “… they too are being dumped on by China and other places. And they’re afraid if we build an effective wall against China, they’ll be subjected to more dumping.”
Dumping refers to the practice of exporting products to other countries at very low or below market prices.
Insider trading charges were announced Wednesday against a former Equifax executive who sold his shares for nearly $1 million before the company’s massive data breach was revealed to the public and the stock price plunged.
A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted Jun Ying, 42, the former chief information officer of Equifax’s U.S. Information Solutions, part of the Atlanta-based credit reporting company. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday also charged Ying with insider trading.
It was not immediately clear whether Ying had an attorney who could comment on the charges.
The SEC and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta said federal investigations are ongoing. Ying is the only former Equifax executive named in Tuesday’s indictment.
Equifax Chief Financial Officer John Gamble and three other executives sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million days after Equifax discovered suspicious activity on its network – and nearly a month before Ying sold his shares – but Equifax said an independent committee determined that these other executives did not know of the breach when their trades were made.
A total of about 147.9 million Americans have been impacted by Equifax’s data breach, which remains the largest exposure of personal information in history. It was disclosed to the public on Sept. 7.
The SEC noted that at the time of the breach, Ying was often entrusted with nonpublic company information and was a leading candidate to become the global CIO of Equifax, a job he was in fact offered on Sept. 15, the same day the company announced CIO Dave Webb would retire.
Federal authorities say Equifax discovered the suspicious activity on its network on July 29. In mid-August, the company changed administrative credentials for many of its internal databases. Ying was aware of these changes, and employees who reported to him were responsible for some of them. On Aug. 25, Ying along with several employees who reported to him were asked to help respond, although he was told then that the work involved a potential Equifax customer, not Equifax itself, the indictment says.
Ying sent text messages to a co-worker saying, “Sounds bad. We may be the one breached,” and “I’m starting to put 2 and 2 together,” the indictment says.
Three days later, Ying used his Equifax computer to do internet searches on the effect on the Experian stock price of a 2015 breach at that credit reporting company. Later that morning, on Aug. 28, he exercised all his available stock options and received 6,815 shares of Equifax stock, which he sold for more than $950,000. That represented a gain of more than $480,000, prosecutors said.
The SEC complaint says Ying worked at Equifax until October.
“Upon learning about Mr. Ying’s August sale of Equifax shares, we launched a review of his trading activity, concluded he violated our company’s trading policies, separated him from the company and reported our findings to government authorities,” Equifax said in an emailed statement. “We are fully cooperating with the DOJ and the SEC, and will continue to do so.”
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A producer of hit royal drama The Crown says Claire Foy, who played the central role of Queen Elizabeth II, was paid less than her on-screen husband.
The Netflix series traces Elizabeth’s journey from princess to queen, beginning in the 1950s.
Trade publication Variety quoted producer Suzanne Mackie as confirming Foy was paid less than Matt Smith, who played Prince Philip in two seasons of the series. She made the reported comment at an industry event in Jerusalem.
She said this was because Smith was better-known after starring in the sci-fi series Doctor Who. Mackie said the gap would be closed with the forthcoming third series, saying “going forward, no one gets paid more than the queen.”
Foy’s agent did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Neither Foy nor Smith will appear in the third series, which will star Olivia Colman as the middle-aged monarch.
The gender pay gap has become a big issue in Hollywood after revelations that many female stars were paid less than their male counterparts.
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Chinese telecoms giant Huawei says it will continue to invest in the United States despite recent setbacks in its efforts to boost sales there.
Xu Qingsong, also known as Jim Xu, Huawei’s head of sales and marketing, told reporters in Shenzhen he was “confident” Huawei smartphone sales would triple this year in the U.S. from last year.
News reports in January said Huawei appeared to be on the verge of cracking the lucrative American market when it signed a deal with AT&T, but the agreement fell through under U.S. government pressure.
In the past, Huawei officials have rejected U.S. security complaints as politically motivated or possibly an attempt by competitors to keep it out of the market.
“I don’t know why they’re so nervous,” Xu said Tuesday, referring to the U.S. “They’re too nervous.”
Huawei sells some models in U.S. electronics stores and online but has a minimal share of an American market in which most sales are through carriers. Globally, the company trails Samsung and Apple in handset shipments but leads in China, the biggest market, and says it expects to ship a total of 150 million this year.
Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of network gear used by phone companies, suffered earlier setbacks in the American market when a congressional report in October 2013 said it was a security risk and warned telecom carriers not to use its equipment.
More recently, a new global struggle for influence over next-generation “5G” communications technology has brought Huawei under increasing scrutiny by the U.S. government. Many American officials are concerned Chinese companies such as Huawei could take a larger, or even a dominant, role in setting 5G technology and standards and practices.
Kevin Ho, president of Huawei’s handset product line, said they’ll instead focus on Europe and developing markets in Asia, especially India, where Huawei sees opportunities to expand the Shenzhen-based company’s market share.
“There are still some big countries where our market share is very, very low,” Ho said. “This is a hint of where we can raise our market share globally.”
On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump blocked Singapore chipmaker Broadcom from pursuing a hostile takeover of prominent U.S. rival Qualcomm, a deal which officials believed could have hobbled the U.S.’s ability to make a quick transition to 5G.
When asked about the blocked deal, Xu declined to comment.
Separately, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill on January 9 that would prohibit government purchases of telecoms equipment from Huawei Technologies and smaller rival ZTE, citing their ties to the Chinese military and backing from the ruling Communist Party.
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Well-traveled and much experienced as a soccer coach, Hector Cuper is facing a new obstacle when it comes to preparing Egypt for this year’s World Cup.
The tournament in Russia starts on the final day of Ramadan, the holy month that requires Muslims to fast from dawn to sunset. Egypt is scheduled to play its opening match a day later, on June 15, against Uruguay.
That means much of Egypt’s preparations for the World Cup – the country’s first in 28 years – will be done while the all-Muslim team is supposed to be fasting during daylight hours.
“If I deal with that pragmatically, I should turn the day upside down. Maybe Egyptian players are accustomed to doing this, but I as a Western person am not,” Cuper said late Tuesday on a TV talk show. “How can I train them at night around 11 or 12 after iftar (the meal Muslims eat at sunset to break their fast)? And how can I train them during the day without water and when they had nothing to eat?
“We are working on this and seeking to find the best way to overcome fasting fatigue and prevent it from hurting the players.”
Egypt, a record seven-time African champion, will also face host Russia and Saudi Arabia in Group A at the World Cup. Cuper, an Argentine who has coached extensively around his native country and in Europe, took over as national team coach in 2015.
There has been widespread speculation on whether soccer authorities in Egypt will request a fatwa, or a religious edict, from the country’s top theologian exempting the squad from fasting during the crucial month of preparation before the tournament begins.
In comments published Wednesday, Cuper said it would be up to the individual players to decide.
“Players of the national squad are absolutely free to fast and we cannot interfere in this because of my full respect for all faiths,” Cuper said, adding nutrition experts have been retained to advise the players on how to cope with fasting and sleeping during Ramadan.
In Russia, the Egyptian team will be based in Chechnya. Team officials have said they are happy to be in Grozny because it is a Muslim city where the players would be comfortable.
Devout Muslims refrain from food, water and sex while the sun is out during Ramadan. The lunar month is in May and June this year, with the long days making the fast a grueling 15- or 16-hour test of stamina. During Ramadan, Muslims break their fast at iftar, the traditionally large meal after sunset. Just before dawn, they eat another meal, sohour.
“I endure a great deal of hardship when I am fasting, but I prefer to honor my religious duty as long as I am able to cope,’ said Egypt defender Saad Sameer, who plays for Cairo club Al-Ahly. “I will fast the month of Ramadan, regardless of what the team decides.”
Another Egypt player, Zamalek midfielder Tareq Hamed, said he would abide by any decision reached by the team’s management on whether to fast.
“I hope we do well in the World Cup and not be distracted by issues like fasting,” said Hamed, adding he and many other players have in the past played matches while fasting.
Edicts exempting soccer players from fasting are not without precedence.
A 2008 edict by Egypt’s mufti, the country’s top theologian, exempted players from fasting during match days, arguing that if playing is what they do for a living then they should break their fast, provided that they compensate for those days after the end of Ramadan. Training, he said, did not provide grounds for breaking the fast.
The issue of Ramadan has showcased the religious dimension of sports, especially soccer, in Egypt, a majority Muslim country of about 100 million people, of whom about 10 million are Christians.
Egyptian match commentators routinely pray to God to come to the aid of the national team and they offer a prayer of thanks when they score. Beside the “Pharaohs,” the Egyptian national team has another nickname: “The Squad of al-Sajedeen,” or the team that kneels down and offers prayers, which they do after scoring.
It is also traditional for the team to collectively read the opening verse of the Quran before kickoff.
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Tuaregs in northern Niger are hoping to draw tourists back to the region by putting their traditional dances, music poetry and camel races on display.
Despite concerns about Islamic extremism throughout the Sahel region in West Africa, organizers recently hosted more than 1,000 visitors to a cultural festival in Iferouane, a village in Niger’s far north.
“Without tourism, our youth risks falling into idleness and misery, and will join the wave of migration to Europe,” said Mohamed Houma, the mayor of the town located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the central city of Agadez.
The Air festival, considered one of the most important gatherings to celebrate the culture of the Tuareg people, has been held since 2001.
It was marked last month by the sound of tende, the Tuareg style of music and drumming, as the women and men, on foot and on their camels, participated in song and dance competitions.
Since 2001, the gatherings have been held to celebrate the culture of the semi-nomadic Tuareg people. More than 2 million Tuaregs live in the Sahara Desert area, stretching across Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Tunisia.
Niger’s Air region, with oases, mountains and sand dunes, has been a destination for adventurous Western tourists since the 1980s and the visitors have been a financial boon for the region. But the tourism has dwindled since the Tuareg rebellion, which lasted from 2007 to 2009, and from the proliferation of armed and extremist groups in the Sahel region.
Security guards watched over the dozen French and Belgian tourists who participated this year’s in Air Festival.
“We are very happy because this festival shows the rest of the world that despite the international geopolitical and security context, we live here in peace, sheltered from the upheavals of some of our neighboring countries,” Houma said.
French tourists to the festival this year included Jacques Maire, a French legislator who heads a France-Niger Friendship group in the French National Assembly.
While the situation in Niger is tense, he said it is not the worst in the region.
“There has always been a strong French appetite for the Sahara,” said Maire. “We must seize every opportunity to recreate tourist flows.”‘
South by Southwest (SXSW) is not just an annual music festival and tech conference in Austin, Texas, it also includes venues where people from specific countries or regions of the world can gather to share ideas. This is the inaugural year for Africa House at South by Southwest, and it’s providing valuable networking opportunities for Africans who come to experience and benefit from this eclectic festival. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Austin.
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Brenda Katwesigye traveled thousands of kilometers from Uganda in eastern Africa to Austin, Texas with a vision. She wants to find help for Wazi Vision, the startup that she founded in 2016 to make eyeglasses more affordable. Katwesigye’s company, named for the Swahili word that means “clear,” says Wazi Vision makes the frames from recycled plastic and that they cost 80 percent less than what is currently on the market.
“We need people that are here that can sell them in their stores. We need people with online e-commerce platforms that can help with logistics and everything,” she said.
Katwesigye hopes to find these partners at South by Southwest (SXSW), the music and film festival and tech conference held in Austin in the spring every year. Her home away from home at the event is Africa House, a venue where Africans can meet members of the diaspora in the United States and other Africans from Africa.
“It’s quite incredible. We’ve traveled all the way from Africa to meet Africa here and to meet people that we otherwise would never have had a chance to meet back home.” Katwesigye added, “I’ve met some really meaningful contacts that I plan on following up on.”
Her trip would not be possible without the help of the United States African Development Foundation (USADF), which funded her travel.
“It’s a global environment. These are people here again, who are artisans and who are tech entrepreneurs and who are people who are really social change makers in the U.S. who want to meet African counterparts,” said C.D. Glin, president of USADF.
U.S.-born Bunmi Akinyemiju grew up in Nigeria, went to college in the U.S. and returned to Nigeria to become managing director and chief executive officer of Lagos-based Venture Garden Group, a payment and data analytics company.
“We look for new technologies. We look for new startups, so while we look for startups, that allows us to actually make investments in those startups that can collaborate with our parent company,” said Akinyemiju.
USADF and two other organizations have joined forces to sponsor the first Africa House at SXSW this year. The other two are U.S. public relations firm Insider, which works with emerging market entrepreneurs, and Temple Management Company, a talent and events management agency based in Lagos, Nigeria.
“Really to be able to showcase Africans and their social enterprises to the community at South by Southwest was something we felt like was a must do this year,” said Glin.
Azariah Mengistu is making a premium handcrafted leather sneaker in Ethiopia, in part to change Africa’s image abroad.
“We want everyone to challenge global perceptions of what people thought when they saw Africa. So we want people to engage with the product, something physical that was made with the best quality at the best standards with the best materials. We wanted it all to be done in Africa.”
For Nigerian musician 9ice, Africa House is a venue “to network. It is to make more fans.”
Glin says that while this is the first Africa House at South by Southwest – it won’t be the last.
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It was an ordinary surgery to remove a tumor – until doctors turned off the lights and the patient’s chest started to glow. A spot over his heart shined purplish pink. Another shimmered in a lung.
They were hidden cancers revealed by fluorescent dye, an advance that soon may transform how hundreds of thousands of operations are done each year.
Surgery has long been the best way to cure cancer. If the disease recurs, it’s usually because stray tumor cells were left behind or others lurked undetected. Yet there’s no good way for surgeons to tell what is cancer and what is not. They look and feel for defects, but good and bad tissue often seem the same.
Now, dyes are being tested to make cancer cells light up so doctors can cut them out and give patients a better shot at survival.
With dyes, “it’s almost like we have bionic vision,” said Dr. Sunil Singhal at the University of Pennsylvania. “We can be sure we’re not taking too much or too little.”
The dyes are experimental but advancing quickly. Two are in late-stage studies aimed at winning Food and Drug Administration approval. Johnson & Johnson just invested $40 million in one, and federal grants support some of the work.
“We think this is so important. Patients’ lives will be improved by this,” said Paula Jacobs, an imaging expert at the National Cancer Institute. In five or so years, “there will be a palette of these,” she predicts.
Making cells glow
Singhal was inspired a decade ago, while pondering a student who died when her lung cancer recurred soon after he thought he had removed it all. He was lying next to his baby, gazing at fluorescent decals.
“I looked up and saw all these stars on the ceiling and I thought, how cool if we could make cells light up” so people wouldn’t die from unseen tumors, he said.
A dye called ICG had long been used for various medical purposes. Singhal found that when big doses were given by IV a day before surgery, it collected in cancer cells and glowed when exposed to near infrared light. He dubbed it TumorGlow and has been testing it for lung, brain and other tumor types.
He used it on Ryan Ciccozzi, a 45-year-old highway worker and father of four from Deptford, New Jersey, and found hidden cancer near Ciccozzi’s heart and in a lung.
“The tumor was kind of growing into everything in there,” Ciccozzi said. “Without the dye, I don’t think they would have seen anything” besides the baseball-sized mass visible on CT scans ahead of time.
Singhal also is testing a dye for On Target Laboratories, based in the Purdue research park in Indiana, that binds to a protein more common in cancer cells. A late-stage study is underway for ovarian cancer and a mid-stage one for lung cancer.
In one study, the dye highlighted 56 of 59 lung cancers seen on scans before surgery, plus nine more that weren’t visible ahead of time.
Each year, about 80,000 Americans have surgery for suspicious lung spots. If a dye can show that cancer is confined to a small node, surgeons can remove a wedge instead of a whole lobe and preserve more breathing capacity, said On Target chief Marty Low. No price has been set, but dyes are cheap to make and the cost should fit within rates hospitals negotiate with insurers for these operations, he said.
Big promise for breast cancer
Dyes may hold the most promise for breast cancer, said the American Cancer Society’s Dr. Len Lichtenfeld. Up to one third of women who have a lump removed need a second operation because margins weren’t clear – an edge of the removed tissue later was found to harbor cancer.
“If we drop that down into single digits, the impact is huge,” said Kelly Londy, who heads Lumicell, a suburban Boston company testing a dye paired with a device to scan the lump cavity for stray cancer cells.
A device called MarginProbe is sold now, but it uses different technology to examine the surface of tissue that’s been taken out, so it can’t pinpoint in the breast where residual disease lurks, said Dr. Barbara Smith, a breast surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.
She leads a late-stage study of Lumicell’s system in 400 breast cancer patients. In an earlier study of 60 women, it revealed all of the cancers, verified by tissue tests later.
But it also gave false alarms in more than a quarter of cases – “there were some areas where normal tissue lit up a little bit,” Smith said.
Still, she said, “you would rather take a little extra tissue with the first surgery rather than missing something and have to go back.”
Other cancers
Blaze Bioscience is testing Tumor Paint, patented by company co-founder Dr. Jim Olson of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital. It’s a combo product – a molecule that binds to cancer and a dye to make it glow.
“You can see it down to a few dozen cells or a few hundred cells,” Olson said. “I’ve seen neurosurgeons come out of the operating room with a big smile on their face because they can see the cancer very clearly.”
Early-stage studies have been done for skin, brain and breast cancers in adults, and brain tumors in children.
Avelas Biosciences of San Diego has a similar approach – a dye attached to a molecule to carry it into tumor cells. The company is finishing early studies in breast cancer and plans more for colon, head and neck, ovarian and other types.
Cancer drugs have had a lot of attention while ways to improve surgery have had far less, said company president Carmine Stengone.
“This was just an overlooked area, despite the high medical need.”
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World-renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, who sought to understand a range of cosmic topics from the beginning of the universe to the intricacies of black holes, died Wednesday at the age of 76.
A family spokesman said he died peacefully at his home in the city of Cambridge where he worked for decades as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement.
He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 21, a disease that eventually confined him to a wheelchair and took away this ability to speak, leaving Hawking to communicate through a voice synthesizer.
Doctors predicted he would only live a few years, but he instead thrived, focusing on his work that included seeking to bridge the gap between Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that describes the motion of large objects and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics dealing with subatomic particles.
“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all,” Hawking said.
His 1988 book “A Brief History of Time” became an international bestseller and brought him widespread fame.
One of his most famous accomplishments came in his research on black holes, showing that small amounts of radiation could escape their gravitational pull. The phenomenon is now commonly known as Hawking radiation.
A sign of his popularity came in October when Cambridge put Hawking’s 1966 thesis online for the first time, and demand for the document was so high the university’s website crashed.
Hawking was also a proponent of human space travel to the Moon and Mars, an endeavor he said would help unite humanity in the shared purpose of spreading beyond Earth.
Hawking said making the first moves into space would “elevate humanity” because it would have to involve many countries.
“We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth,” he said last year. “If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before.”
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In one of the planet’s most northerly settlements, in a tiny Arctic town of about 2,000 people, Benjamin Vidmar’s domed greenhouse stands out like an alien structure in the snow-cloaked landscape.
This is where in summer the American chef grows tomatoes, onions, chilies and other vegetables, taking advantage of the season’s 24 hours of daily sunlight.
During winter’s four months of darkness, when temperatures can reach -30 Celsius (-22°F), Vidmar tends to microgreens – the leaves and shoots of young salad plants – and dozens of quails in two rooms beneath his home.
He is the sole supplier of locally-grown food in the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago. The North Pole is about 1,050 kilometers (650 miles) to the north; mainland Norway is about as far south.
Growing food in such conditions can be “mission impossible” but it is necessary, Vidmar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
He hopes to set an example for other remote towns in the region.
“We are so dependent on imports. Everything is by boat and plane,” said Vidmar, who comes from Cleveland, Ohio, and who has lived here for nearly a decade.
That makes the town vulnerable, he said. In 2010, stores in Longyearbyen stood empty after an Icelandic volcano erupted, bringing air transport to a halt. And the cost of imported food and its quality “is often disappointing.”
His company, Polar Permaculture, aims to produce enough food for the town and process all its organic and biological waste.
It sounds ambitious, but the firm, which received support from a government-funded body that helps startups, broke even last year, just two years in.
It was helped by the fact that he and his teenage son do not draw salaries, and Vidmar still cooks full-time at a school.
‘Crazy’ to Try
Vidmar’s produce now appears on many of Longyearbyen’s menus, including at Huset restaurant where intricate, multi-course Nordic tasting menus are served in stately surroundings.
Alongside reindeer steak and tartare of bearded seal is a delicate dish of quail egg with dill, red onions and anchovies on flatbread.
“We would not use quail eggs unless they were local so we designed a dish as soon as we got the opportunity to try them,” said Filip Gemzell, Huset’s head chef.
Vidmar first stepped foot in Svalbard in 2007 while working as a chef on a cruise ship. One of his first thoughts was, “How can people live here?,” but he was also intrigued.
“The sad part (in America) is you work so hard and you still have to worry about money. Then you come here and you have all this nature. No distraction, no huge shopping centers, no billboards saying, ‘buy, buy, buy.'”
A year later, he moved to the island and started working at restaurants and bars in Longyearbyen, a coal mining town turned tourist-and-research attraction.
He decided to grow his own food after becoming frustrated with the absence of fresh produce and the fact that a lack of treatment sites meant organic waste was dumped into the sea.
People thought he was “crazy” trying to grow food in the Arctic.
Initially he experimented with hydroponics – farming in water instead of soil – but that meant using fertilizer, which comes from the mainland. Eventually the city authorities gave him permission to bring in worms from Florida to do the job.
Now, whenever he or his son deliver a tray of microgreens to restaurants, they collect the previous tray and feed the soil to the worms, which break it down to produce natural fertilizer for bigger plants.
His next aim is to heat the greenhouse during winter using a biodigester – which generates energy from organic material – so he can use it all-year-round.
Sustainability
Vidmar also helps fourth- and ninth-grade students at Longyearbyen school to learn farming and sustainability. That has led older students to query the island’s supply chain, said teacher Lisa Dymbe Djonne.
“They question the transportation of food from the mainland to here and how expensive that is,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
“They’re going to interview some of the leaders … to figure out how much it costs for the island and if it is possible to grow our own food,” she added. “It’s a question a lot of people up here have.”
Eivind Uleberg, a scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Bioeconomy Research in Tromso in northern Norway, said that fitted a pattern of rising interest in locally produced food and sustainability in agriculture.
In a phone interview, Uleberg said that, although he was unaware of Vidmar’s undertaking, efforts to produce food locally in Norway were positive.
A short growing season and low temperatures are the main barriers to producing food in such latitudes, he said, but higher temperatures caused by climate change could help.
“There is definitely the potential to produce more vegetables and berries,” he said.
But there are also challenges, Uleberg added, including more rain in the autumn during harvest, and changing conditions in winter that could kill grasses crucial for animal feed.
For Vidmar, such obstacles and the unique conditions are the reason he is determined to produce “the freshest food possible.”
“We’re on a mission … to make this town very sustainable. Because if we can do it here, then what’s everybody else’s excuse?”
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Bridesmaids director Paul Feig said Tuesday that his production company was adding an inclusion rider for future shows, the latest Hollywood figure to take up the call for more diversity on movie and television sets.
Feig, whose movies also include the all-female 2016 version of Ghostbusters, joined Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Black Panther actor and producer Michael B. Jordan in adopting the initiative that was highlighted at the Oscars ceremony this month.
An inclusion rider is an addition to a Hollywood contract that can stipulate 50 percent diversity of gender, race and sexual orientation in both the casts and crews of movies and television shows. The idea won attention thanks to a rousing Oscar best actress acceptance speech by Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri star Frances McDormand.
“Thrilled to announce that Feigco Entertainment is officially adopting an #inclusionrider for all our film and TV productions moving forward,” Feig said on Twitter. “We challenge other companies and studios to do the same.”
Damon and Affleck’s production company, Pearl Street Films, said Monday that it was adopting the inclusion rider, and Jordan said last week that his company, Outlier Productions, would do the same.
Stacy Smith, the Los Angeles researcher and academic behind the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, on Tuesday thanked Feig and said he had long promoted women in his projects.
“Thank you my friend for putting female leads front and center for years! You are an industry role model,” Smith tweeted.
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