Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Two teenagers have come up with a way to try and reduce the suicide rate with a smartphone app. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo sat down with the inventors, who recently received an award in Washington from the community based non-profit Mental Health America.
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Month: June 2018
The American fashion industry has something for nearly everyone: from high-fashion mavens, sports enthusiasts, to the most discriminating pet owners. Among the pet boutiques that aim to please the fussiest of pets and their owners, a popular designer stands out. Her name is Yana Syrkin, a Ukrainian immigrant who has been designing apparel for Hollywood pets for two decades. Iurii Mamon has more on Syrkin’s luxury pet store called Fifi & Romeo.
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Historic levels of violent crime in Mexico have sparked a record increase in the country’s car-armoring business, with an industry group predicting a double-digit jump in the number of vehicles bulletproofed this year.
There were more than 25,000 murders across Mexico last year, the highest annual tally since modern records began, government data shows, with 2018 on track to be even worse.
That insecurity will help drive a 10 percent rise in car-armoring services this year to 3,284 cars, above the previous all-time high in 2012, according to the Mexican Automotive Armor Association (AMBA).
That figure is small relative to the 15,145 cars armored in 2017 in Brazil, which expects to see a 25 percent jump this year.
Demand in Mexico has grown so strong that more global automakers have started bulletproofing cars on their own Mexican production lines as opposed to the usual practice of after-market armoring.
Audi began making an armored version of its Q5 light sport utility vehicle exclusively in the central state of Puebla in mid-2017 for local sale and export to Brazil and Argentina. The company declined to give recent sales figures.
Audi’s Mexico arm said its factory-made armored Q5, which cost $87,000 locally, was cheaper for consumers than using an after-market firm, which one industry expert estimated would boost the car’s cost to more than $95,000 and void the factory guarantee.
BMW, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz have made armored cars in Mexico for several years.
After being assaulted and robbed multiple times in recent years, Arturo Avila, who owns a security company, now only travels in armored cars to traverse the streets of Mexico City.
“One of the crimes that hurts us most is kidnapping, that’s what we’re afraid of,” he said, adding he changed his car every two years.
About 1.5 million cars were sold in Mexico in 2017, but just a tiny portion were armored, since the cars remain a luxury for the affluent and for companies that require executives to travel in bulletproof vehicles with bodyguards, said Avila.
Those companies include Mexico’s largest banks and multinationals like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Both companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mexican security companies have also expanded rental and leasing offerings, services that are increasingly popular.
About 80 percent of armored car providers’ business is in the private sector, which seeks to protect executives and their families, with the rest from government.
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To treat snake bites, bathe in a tea brewed from yellow button-shaped flowers, advises Melissa Espinoza Paez as she describes the medicinal properties of Costa Rica’s jungle plants, pointing out towering vines used to combat kidney problems.
In the lush mountains close to the Panama border that make up the Bribri indigenous territory, Espinoza hopes the country’s first certified indigenous tour agency can deliver a bigger slice of income from ecotourism directly to local women.
“When other agencies brought tourists to our territory, sometimes they’d give a small amount to the people here, but it wasn’t really the value of their work,” said Espinoza, 38, indicating a green dart frog trying to hide in the undergrowth.
“We’re giving a tourism experience that is truly cultural… We are trying to live a more dignified life,” she said at the Siwakabata farm near Bribri town, some 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital San Jose.
Based in Talamanca canton, one of the poorest in Costa Rica, the recently licensed Talamanca Indigenous Bribri Tour Guides Association (AGITUBRIT) wants to ensure the financial benefits start to trickle down to local families, said Espinoza.
Alongside medicinal plant and gastronomy tours, hiking, jungle and river trips are run through a network of indigenous guides who stamp their cultural identity on the expeditions.
Costa Rican tourists, who often have little knowledge of indigenous culture, as well as Europeans, have so far made up the visitors who come to find out more about the relatively isolated Bribri people.
Tourists often stay with local families in thatched wooden houses to absorb Bribri traditions and learn the language, while some make appointments with traditional doctors who prescribe plant-based medicines.
Home to dense jungles and cloud forests teeming with wildlife, Costa Rica has become one of the world’s best-known ecotourism destinations. A quarter of its territory is now national parks or protected reserves.
But while ecotourism offers an incentive to protect the biodiversity that pulls in visitors, there has been less success in channeling benefits to those who provide services and protect the local environment, say some in the industry.
“The tourism sector in general is still learning how to deal with the social factors,” said Saul Blanco Sosa, a sustainable tourism specialist with the Rainforest Alliance conservation group. “Dealing with people is more complicated than dealing with natural reserves.”
Tour companies need to think about ways to become more socially responsible and inclusive, and avoid disrupting communities with their activities, he added.
Culture Crash Course
Ecotourism ranks as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global travel market, and is worth around $100 billion a year, according to a 2017 report by the U.N. World Tourism Organization and United Nations Development Program.
The World Travel & Tourism Council says about 13 percent of Costa Rica’s gross domestic product comes from tourism, which is expected to employ 265,000 people directly and indirectly in 2018 to deal with its 3 million annual visitors.
Tourists have long come inland from Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast to explore the mountains, swim in waterfalls or float in long wooden canoes along the rivers lacing the Bribri territory.
But by the time middlemen have taken a hefty slice of their money, little is left for local people offering trips or cultural demonstrations, said Espinoza, who is learning English to help bring in more international tourists.
Guides from outside the area explaining the Bribri’s spirituality and strong connection with nature usually just learn their spiel from a book or the internet, she added.
“We live it, we feel it – but for the others, it’s just about money,” said Nora Paez Mayorga, who helps runs the 15-hectare (37-acre) Siwakabata agro-ecology project with her daughter Melissa.
No Jobs
For many women living in Costa Rica’s remote southeast corner with few formal qualifications, jobs other than raising chickens or growing crops such as plantain are hard to come by.
Younger people often have little choice but to head to San Jose to find work, said Paez, as she served up fried pastries and mugs of bitter chocolate drink.
Alongside its eight guides, the tour organization works with about 40 women from local indigenous communities. Some are employed at Siwakabata to cook for visitors, while others come to sell handicrafts, clothes, fruit and chocolate.
Demonstrating how to remove cacao seeds from their padded pods, dry and toast them on an open stove before grinding them to a paste, Basilia Jackson Jackson said she was looking to attract tourists to her home village of Coruma two hours away.
Growing bananas and cacao, her family’s fortunes depend on the prices set by buyers, she explained, turning the wheel of a metal grinder.
“We’ve never dealt with tourists, we’re just getting involved with it… we could have a little bit more income – it wouldn’t be much, but it would help the family,” said Jackson, who traveled to Siwakabata with her daughter Flor. “In this area, we don’t have much work. Between women, we’ve got to get organized to see how we can help each other.”
Espinoza, who left to work in a factory in San Jose before returning to study and finally helping set up AGITUBRIT, is optimistic the agency will prove invaluable in strengthening the position of local women while protecting their culture.
“As indigenous women from here, we know what we need. We can help each other to develop this project – valuing, maintaining and respecting our world view and our culture,” said Espinoza.
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Born in Massachusetts, raised outside Washington D.C. and a resident of New York, director Debra Granik has lived a filmmaking life more intrepid than her own. Her films, fictional and documentary, have taken place in upstate New York, rural Missouri and, now, the Oregon woods.
“I come from what they call the land of nowhere. I’m from the suburbs,” said Granik in recent interview. “It’s extremely atomizing. So your search is: I’m born on this very narrow path. You have to knock on the door like a nerdy documentary filmmaker. What’s it like to be on your path? Can I be there for a minute?”
There are paths figurative and literal in Granik’s latest, “Leave No Trace.” It’s about a survivalist father (Ben Foster), an Army veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and his teenage daughter (the New Zealand-born newcomer Thomasin McKenzie). They live off the grid in a nature preserve outside Portland, foraging off the land in an isolated idyll. But their shelter is discovered by authorities, and they’re forced reluctantly into a more conventional life.
“Leave No Trace,” which opens Friday, was a hit at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals, where Granik last month joined a reporter in a beachside tent alongside Forster and McKenzie. The film has been met with similar raves as Granik’s previous fiction film, the Oscar-nominated Ozarks drama “Winter’s Bone,” which was the world’s introduction to Jennifer Lawrence.
“Winter’s Bone” was also a breakthrough for Granik, but one she didn’t seek to capitalize on the way some filmmakers might. In the eight years since, Granik has made only one other feature: the outstanding, stereotype-busting 2015 documentary “Stray Dog,” about a burly, Harley-riding Vietnam vet she met, and cast, while making “Winter’s Bone” in Missouri.
Granik has instead carved her own unique path in an industry that has come under criticism for consistently overlooking female directors for the biggest productions. But blockbusters aren’t what the resolutely indie 55-year-old filmmaker wants.
“It’s not the sexual time’s-up. It’s the financial time’s-up, and not even ‘pay me,'” said Granik.”`It’s: The movies don’t have to be so big and bloated. Bring down the bloat, the behemoth. It can be lighter.”
So amid the cacophony of summer movies, in between dinosaurs and superheroes, is the tender and earthy “Leave No Trace,” a movie about eking out a humble, quiet life on the edges of crowded, commercial society — right where Granik thrives.
“People that need a high kill ratio don’t have to come. It’s OK because we didn’t borrow so much money to make this,” Granik said. “If they want to see an American who’s working hard to keep his nobility intact and his daughter who’s really trying to understand him and figure out her life trajectory, then they can come and rap with us. Some people have to remain at the margin so that some of the offerings are about the margin.”
“Leave No Trace,” adapted from Peter Rock’s 2009 novel “My Abandonment,” was shot in and around Portland. Foster and McKenzie participated in pre-production wilderness survival training, which doubled as their rehearsal. Instead of work-shopping their dialogue, they learned about making fires, building shelters, eating mushrooms and working with knives.
“With most collaborators, you talk at them and they talk at you, and you go your separate ways,” said Foster. “This particular environment lent itself to being quiet together, doing shared tasks. In that way, it wove us. There was a physical, energetic shorthand that was developed.”
Cast over Skype, it was the first time McKenzie, 17, was in the United States since she was 6 years old. The acclaim for her performance in “Leave No Trace,” along with a few high-profile upcoming projects (Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit,” “The King” opposite Timothee Chalamet) has led to JLaw-like breakthrough chatter for the young actress.
McKenzie brought her own ways of preparing for a scene.
“We did a traditional Maori greeting touching noses and foreheads, being comfortable and intimate and not embarrassed about it,” said McKenzie. “My mum’s an acting coach and she’s got a technique called ‘hug to connect.’ So we would just hug each other for a minute or two to get into the rhythm of each other’s breath and heartbeat.”
Foster, the intense 37-year-old actor of “Hell or High Water” and “The Messenger,” is also a city dweller in New York. But he vividly described how trees have always been “medicinal to me” by recalling a spiritual experience he once had lying beneath a fallen Redwood. While making “Leave No Trace,” Foster found he increasingly identified with his character.
“It was such an intense shooting process and such an intense time at home. When I read the script, me and my fiancee found out she was pregnant,” said Foster, who recently wed the actress Laura Prepon. “Then we found out it was going to be a girl. So readying this script was so deeply moving and frightening. Frightening because this film is in many ways saying goodbye to many things, sometimes the person closest to us.”
That “Leave No Trace” was such a personal experience for both actors is a testament to Granik as a filmmaker. And the film — character-based, off-the-beaten-path — reflects Granik, herself. She even considered flying Ron Hall, the “Stray Dog” star, for a pivotal scene at an RV park. But that might have been leaving too much of a trail for a filmmaker of masterly sleight-of-hand.
“The ferns we trod on and trampled, we were happy to know — the ranger assured us — that in two weeks they would be robust again,” said Granik before adding, a little regretfully: “We did have to maul ferns.”
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The group that hands out the Oscars said on Monday that it had invited 928 new members from 59 countries, in its biggest diversity drive after years of criticism of its mostly white and male membership.
Those invited include “Girls Trip” star Tiffany Haddish; “The Big Sick” co-writers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon; and comedian and actor Dave Chappelle, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said in a statement.
If all those invited accept, female membership would rise to 31 percent from the current 28 percent, the group said. People of color will increase to 16 percent from 13 percent.
Total membership would stand at more than 7,000 actors, writers, directors, executives and others.
A lack of diversity within the academy has long been cited as a barrier to racial inclusion in Hollywood’s highest honors.
In 2016, the Academy responded by pledging to double female and minority membership by 2020.
Malnutrition is the “challenge of our time,” with diet-related disease afflicting almost every country in the world, the winners of a $250,000 prize dubbed the Nobel for agriculture said Monday.
David Nabarro and Lawrence Haddad, who were jointly awarded this year’s World Food Prize, are credited with cutting the number of stunted children in the world by 10 million by lobbying governments and donors to improve nutrition.
Stunting is caused by malnutrition in infancy and hinders cognitive as well as physical growth. Experts say the effects are largely irreversible and stunted children generally complete fewer years of schooling and earn less money as adults.
Malnourished children also tended to become malnourished mothers, perpetuating the cycle, said Haddad, who heads the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition.
Levels of obesity, diabetes and hypertension were “skyrocketing in pretty much every country … and the center of all these things is diets,” he said.
“People can’t get enough nutritious food because it’s too expensive or unavailable and the stuff that they shouldn’t be eating a lot of, stuff that’s high in sugar, salt and fat, is really cheap and available,” he told Reuters by phone. “This is the big challenge of our time. It’s not about how to feed our world. It’s about how to nourish our world.”
Haddad was joint winner of the award with Nabarro, a British doctor and former U.N. Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition.
Between them they have persuaded governments, donors and others to set up policies and programs that decreased the number of stunted children globally to 155 million in 2017 from 165 million in 2012, the World Food Prize organizers said.
Nabarro said good nutrition in the first 1,000 days from conception to a child’s second birthday was “absolutely key.”
“There is work still to be done to get a widespread understanding of the importance of the right kind of diet,” he said.
About 815 million of the world’s 7.6 billion people go hungry daily while 2 billion are overweight or obese, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
The winners were honored in a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Past recipients of the annual prize, founded in 1986 by Nobel laureate Norman Bourlag, include John Kufuour, a former president of Ghana, and Grameen Bank founder and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh.
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U.S. health regulators on Monday approved the first prescription drug made from marijuana, a milestone that could spur more research into a drug that remains illegal under federal law, despite growing legalization for recreational and medical use.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the medication, called Epidiolex, to treat two rare forms of epilepsy that begin in childhood. But it’s not quite medical marijuana.
The strawberry-flavored syrup is a purified form of a chemical ingredient found in the cannabis plant — but not the one that gets users high. It’s not yet clear why the ingredient, called cannabidiol, or CBD, reduces seizures in some people with epilepsy.
British drugmaker GW Pharmaceuticals studied the drug in more than 500 children and adults with hard-to-treat seizures, overcoming numerous legal hurdles that have long stymied research into cannabis.
FDA officials said the drug reduced seizures when combined with older epilepsy drugs.
The FDA has previously approved synthetic versions of another cannabis ingredient for medical use, including severe weight loss in patients with HIV.
Epidiolex is essentially a pharmaceutical-grade version CBD oil, which some parents already use to treat children with epilepsy. CBD is one of more than 100 chemicals found in marijuana. But it doesn’t contain THC, the ingredient that gives marijuana its mind-altering effect.
Physicians say it’s important to have a consistent, government-regulated version.
“I’m really happy we have a product that will be much cleaner and one that I know what it is,” said Ellaine Wirrell, director of the Mayo Clinic’s program for childhood epilepsy. “In the artisanal products, there’s often a huge variation in doses from bottle to bottle depending on where you get it.”
Side effects with the drug include diarrhea, vomiting, fatigue and sleep problems.
Several years ago, Allison Hendershot considered relocating her family to Colorado, one of the first states to legalize marijuana and home to a large network of CBD producers and providers. Her 13-year-old daughter, Molly, has suffered from severe seizures since she was 4 months old. But then Hendershot learned about a trial of Epidiolex at New York University.
“I preferred this to some of those other options because it’s is a commercial product that has gone through rigorous testing,” said Hendershot, who lives in Rochester, New York.
Since receiving Epidiolex, Hendershot says her daughter has been able to concentrate more and has had fewer “drop” seizures — in which her entire body goes limp and collapses.
FDA warnings
CBD oil is currently sold online and in specialty shops across the U.S., though its legal status remains murky. Most producers say their oil is made from hemp, a plant in the cannabis family that contains little THC and can be legally farmed in a number of states for clothing, food and other uses.
The impact of Monday’s approval on these products is unclear.
The FDA has issued warnings to CBD producers that claimed their products could treat specific diseases, such as cancer or Alzheimer’s. Only products that have received formal FDA approval can make such claims, typically requiring clinical trials costing millions.
Most CBD producers sidestep the issue by making only broad claims about general health and well-being.
Industry supporters downplayed the impact of the FDA approval.
“I don’t know a mom or dad in their right mind who is going to change what’s already working,” said Heather Jackson, CEO of Realm of Caring, a charitable group affiliated with Colorado-based CW Hemp, one of nation’s largest CBD companies. “I really don’t think it’s going to affect us much.”
Cost
Jackson’s group estimates the typical family using CBD to treat childhood epilepsy spends about $1,800 per year on the substance.
A GW Pharmaceuticals spokeswoman said the company would not immediately announce a price for the drug, which it expects to launch in the fall. Wall Street analysts have previously predicted it could cost $25,000 per year, with annual sales eventually reaching $1 billion.
For their part, GW Pharmaceuticals executives say they are not trying to disrupt products already on the market. The company has pushed legislation in several states to make sure its drug can be legally sold and prescribed.
The FDA approval for Epidiolex is technically limited to patients with Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes, two rare forms of epilepsy for which there are few treatments. But doctors will have the option to prescribe it for other uses.
The new medication enters an increasingly complicated legal environment for marijuana.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use. Another 20 states allow medical marijuana, but the U.S. government continues to classify it as a controlled substance with no medical use, in the same category as heroin and LSD.
Despite increasing acceptance, there is little rigorous research on the benefits and harms of marijuana. Last year a government-commissioned group concluded that the lack of scientific information about marijuana and CBD poses a risk to public health.
Before sales of Epidiolex can begin, the Drug Enforcement Administration must formally reclassify CBD into a different category of drugs that have federal medical approval.
GW Pharmaceuticals makes the drug in the U.K. from cannabis plants that are specially bred to contain high levels of CBD. And the company plans to continue importing the medicine, bypassing onerous U.S. regulations on manufacturing restricted substances.
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The 2018 BET Awards barely handed out any trophies with big stars like Cardi B, Drake and Kendrick Lamar absent, but the show included superior performances by rising singer H.E.R., rapper Meek Mill and gospel artist Yolanda Adams, who paid tribute to Anita Baker and nearly brought her to tears.
Baker, an eight-time Grammy winner who dominated the R&B charts from the early ’80s to mid-90s, earned the Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
The 60-year-old used her speech to encourage the artists in the room to keep music alive.
“I would ask that the music be allowed to play, that singers are allowed to sing, and rappers are allowed to rap, and poets are allowed to rhyme,” said Baker, who also was honored by host Jamie Foxx, Ledisi and Marsha Ambrosius.
H.E.R., whose real name is Gabi Wilson, was impressive as she sang the R&B hit “Focus,” played the electric guitar like a rock star and sang softly during the sweet love song “Best Part,” where she was joined by Daniel Caesar.
Meek Mill, who was released from prison in April, rapped the song “Stay Woke” on a stage transformed into a street corner, featuring hustlers, children and police officers. A mother screams as her child is shot during the powerful performance, and an officer lays an American flag over the body.
Meek Mill also made a statement by wearing a hoodie featuring the face of XXXTentacion, the 20-year-old rapper-singer who died after being shot last week.
“We can’t get used to these types of things. We’re too used to young people getting killed,” Foxx said when speaking about XXXTentacion later in the show.
The Oscar winner told the audience to “try to sneak a message in” their music.
“We got to figure something out,” he said.
Snoop Dogg celebrated 25 years in music, performing the classic songs “What’s My Name” and “Next Episode.” The rapper also performed songs from his recently released gospel album, wearing a choir robe on a stage that looked like a church.
Childish Gambino, whose song and music video “This Is America” tackles racism and gun violence and became a viral hit last month, gave a short, impromptu performance of the song when Foxx brought him onstage.
“Everybody begged me to do a joke about that song. I said that song should not be joked about,” Foxx said.
Foxx kicked off the show rejoicing in the uber success of “Black Panther,” namedropping the records the film has broken and even pulled Michael B. Jordan onstage to recite a line from the film.
“We don’t need a president right now because we got our king,” Foxx said of T’Challa. “(Director) Ryan Coogler gave us our king.”
Foxx entered the arena with a stuffed black panther toy – with a gold chain around its neck – which he handed to Jordan. The film won best movie.
“The film is about our experiences being African-Americans and also captures the experiences of being African,” Coogler said. “It was about tapping into the voice that tells us to be proud of who we are.”
At the end of his speech he told the audience to travel to Africa and learn more about the continent’s history.
SZA, who was the most nominated woman at this year’s Grammys, won best new artist and said she’s “never won anything in front of other people.”
She dedicated the award to those “lost in the world,” saying: “Follow your passion … believe in yourself.”
After the show, BET announced that Kendrick Lamar had won best album for “DAMN.” and best male hip-hop artist. Beyonce won best female pop/R&B artist, while Bruno Mars was named the best male pop/R&B artist.
“Girls Trip” star and comedian Tiffany Haddish, who won best actress and gave her speech in a taped video, also said encouraging words.
“You can achieve anything you want in life,” she said.
DJ Khaled was the leading nominee with six and picked up the first award of the night – best collaboration – for “Wild Thoughts” with Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. He was holding his son on his hip onstage and also used his speech to highlight young people.
“All of y’all are leaders and all of y’all are kings and queens – the future,” he said.
Migos won best group and gave a fun performance that even had Adams reciting the lyrics. J. Cole, Nicki Minaj, Janelle Monae, Miguel, YG, 2 Chainz and Big Sean also performed.
The BET Awards normally hands its Humanitarian Award to one person, but six individuals received the honor Sunday. Dubbed “Humanitarian Heroes,” the network gave awards to James Shaw Jr., who wrestled an assault-style rifle away from a gunman in a Tennessee Waffle House in April; Anthony Borges, the 15-year-old student who was shot five times and is credited with saving the lives of at least 20 other students during February massacre in Florida; Mamoudou Gassama, who scaled an apartment building to save a child dangling from a balcony last month in Paris; Naomi Wadler, an 11-year-old who gave a memorable and influential speech at March for Our Lives; Justin Blackman, the only student to walk out of his high school in North Carolina during the nationwide student walkout to protest gun violence in March; and journalist and activist Shaun King.
Debra Lee, who stepped down as chairman and CEO of BET last month after 32 years at the network, earned the Ultimate Icon Award.
“The power of black culture is unmatched. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing. It’s everything. It’s us,” she said.
She ended her speech quoting former U.S. President Barack Obama, calling him “our commander in chief,” which drew loud applause.
“And, it’s Debra Lee, out,” she said as she dropped her imaginary microphone.
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Uber argued Monday that is should be allowed to keep driving on the streets of London, telling a court that the ride-hailing app has made significant changes since a regulator refused to renew the company’s operating license last year.
Lawyers for the company opened their case in an effort to overturn Transport for London’s ruling in September that Uber was not a “fit and proper” company after repeated lapses in corporate responsibility. Uber attorney Tom de la Mare said the ruling led to “wholesale change” at the company.
“It’s profound and very much for the better,” he said at the Westminster Magistrates Court.
The regulator had raised a number of concerns about Uber, including driver vetting, the way it reports serious criminal offences and the use of technology that allegedly helps the company evade law enforcement officials.
Since then, De la Mare argued, three Transport for London inspections have shown a “perfect record of compliance.” Uber has said it has also made significant changes to its leadership and has been proactively reporting serious incidents to the Metropolitan Police.
De la Mare argues the measures show a “change of a business that grew very fast to one that has grown up.”
Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot will rule whether Uber is “fit and proper” to hold a license in the capital now, as opposed to whether transport authorities made the right decision September.
Harley-Davidson, facing rising costs from new tariffs, will begin shifting the production of motorcycles heading for Europe from the U.S. to factories overseas.
The famed motorcycle maker said in a regulatory filing Monday that European Union tariffs on its motorcycles exported from the U.S. jumped from 6 percent to 31 percent.
Harley-Davidson Inc. said that it will not raise its prices due to “an immediate and lasting detrimental impact to its business in the region.”
Latin American countries have sprung a World Cup surprise by filling Russia’s 11 host cities with tens of thousands of fans from Mexico and Colombia to Peru and Argentina.
And some of the Europeans who did show up said their friends back home told them they were crazy to go.
The contrasting cast of supporters at the biggest event in sport reflects Russia’s progressive creep away from Europe in the 18 years of President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
Moscow is now embracing new allies that happen to worship football and where damning — and often exaggerated — media stories about Russian hooligans and poisoning cases are rare.
This mix and the added ingredient of a more evenly spread-out global middle-class with the means to travel the world has the streets of Russia dancing to a decidedly Latin beat.
“We didn’t expect it to be this beautiful and the people are amazing,” Mauricio Miranda said as she waved a Colombian flag on the edge of Red Square in Moscow.
“We will definitely come back,” said the 30-year-old.
Belgian public relations consultant Jo De Munter does not necessarily disagree. It is his friends who do.
“I think Europeans are a bit afraid,” the 46-year-old said while staring in the direction of Lenin’s Mausoleum.
“In Belgium, everybody told me I was crazy to go to the football.”
By the numbers
World Cups come in all shapes and sizes and comparing ticket sales rarely tells the whole tale.
Europeans and Latin Americans are naturally more inclined to attend World Cups held in their regions because of the easier travel arrangements and familiarity.
South Africa in 2010 may provide a better example because it was a frontier football country with specific security and logistical risks.
Yet FIFA figures showed almost 50 percent more Britons bought tickets for the African continent’s first World Cup than this maiden one in eastern Europe.
Australians were in third place then but are just ninth in Russia.
Germany and England bought the fourth- and fifth-most number of tickets. France was ninth.
But France dropped out of the top 10 in Russia while Britain slipped down to last place. Germany remained fourth.
The United States has long led purchases among non-hosting countries because of its massive economy and large communities from football-mad Mexico and other Central American communities.
Taking the US out of the equation leaves Latin Americans accounting for two-thirds of the top 10 countries that have bought tickets for Russia.
Safety net
Fans banging Mexican drums and sporting the red-and-white bodypaint of the Peruvian flag encountered on a Moscow summer’s day were almost all big city office workers.
Colombia’s Miranda is an urban planner with a new job in Canada.
Alexandro Grado is a former financial consultant with Mexico’s Citibanamex who now owns a plastics recycling firm.
“Going to Russia is not expensive if you buy everything ahead of time,” Grado said.
Yet not all fans can afford to go bar hopping near the Kremlin and sociologists who study the sport say this is where Latin American football federations come in.
“There are national teams which have very strong organizational support behind them. Argentina in 2010 was one example,” said Ludovic Lestrelin of France’s Universite de Caen in Normandy.
Lestrelin said less well-off fans in Europe get far less travel and accommodation assistance from state agencies and are increasingly more likely to stay home and watch on TV.
This means Europeans attending World Cups tend to be richer than the average football fan. The traveling Latin Americans are more likely to come from all types of backgrounds.
“Those who travel to Russia and other places do not reflect the social makeup of French stadiums,” said Lestrelin.
“Those (in France) are more diverse, with a central core of lower and middle class workers.”
Zbigniew Iwanowski of the Institute of Latin American Studies in Moscow said Russia is further reaping the rewards of a “pink tide” that brought anti-US leaders power across the continent.
“The pendulum has swung back to the right but they still have (Russian state media) like Sputnik and RT,” Iwanowski said.
“Russia’s image is better in Latin America than it is in Europe and US.”
‘Not properly European’
Few would argue that Russia generates a lot of negative headlines in Europe in general and Britain in particular.
But the media’s role in shaping public opinion — and the reverse — is all but impossible to gauge.
What is clear is that at least some of the Europeans who ventured to Moscow and beyond did so with a degree of trepidation the voyagers from Latin America lacked.
De Munter said he often travels to watch Belgium play abroad. Rarely has he seen the national team’s support so small.
“We are expecting 4,000 Belgian people, which is not that much. Especially now because the Red Devils are doing very well.”
Gherardo Drardanelli flew in from Italy to take part in one of the fan tournaments organised alongside the World Cup.
“I think our concept of Russia — we feel that Russia is far away, that it’s not a properly European country,” the 28-year-old said.
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Donald Hall, a prolific, award-winning poet and man of letters widely admired for his sharp humor and painful candor about nature, mortality, baseball and the distant past, has died at age 89.
Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed Sunday that her father died Saturday at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, after being in hospice care for some time.
“He’s really quite amazingly versatile,” said Hall’s long-time friend Mike Pride, the editor emeritus of the Concord Monitor newspaper and a retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He said Hall would occasionally speak to reporters at the Monitor about the importance of words.
Hall was the nation’s 2006-2007 poet laureate.
Starting in the 1950s, Hall published more than 50 books, from poetry and drama to biography and memoirs, and edited a pair of influential anthologies. He was an avid baseball fan who wrote odes to his beloved Boston Red Sox, completed a book on pitcher Dock Ellis and contributed to Sports Illustrated. He wrote a prize-winning children’s book, “Ox-Cart Man,” and even attempted a biography of Charles Laughton, only to have his actor’s widow, Elsa Lanchester, kill the project.
But the greatest acclaim came for his poetry, for which his honors included a National Book Critics Circle prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a National Medal of Arts. Although his style varied from haikus to blank verse, he returned repeatedly to a handful of themes: his childhood, the death of his parents and grandparents and the loss of his second wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon.
“Much of my poetry has been elegiac, even morbid, beginning with laments over New Hampshire farms and extending to the death of my wife,” he wrote in the memoir “Packing the Boxes,” published in 2008.
In person, he at times resembled a 19th century rustic with his untrimmed beard and ragged hair. And his work reached back to timeless images of his beloved, ancestral New Hampshire home, Eagle Pond Farm, built in 1803 and belonging to his family since the 1860s. He kept country hours for much of his working life, rising at 6 and writing for two hours.
For Hall, the industrialized, commercialized world often seemed an intrusion, like a neon sign along a dirt road. In the tradition of T.S. Eliot and other modernists, he juxtaposed classical and historical references with contemporary slang and brand names. In “Building a House,” he begins with the drafters of the U.S. Constitution leaving Philadelphia, then shifts the setting to the 20th century.
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Some delegates hitched rides chatting with teamsters
some flew standby and wandered stoned in O’Hare
or borrowed from King Alexander’s National Bank.
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An opponent of the Vietnam War whose taxes were audited year after year, he was also ruthlessly self-critical. Nakedly, even abjectly, he recorded his failures and shortcomings and disappointments, whether his infidelities or his struggles with alcoholism.
The joy and tragedy of his life were his years with Kenyon, his second wife. They met in 1969, when she was his student at the University of Michigan. By the mid-70s, they were married and living together at Eagle Creek, fellow poets enjoying a fantasy of mind and body – of sex, work and homemaking.
“We sleep, we make love, we plant a tree, we walk up and down/eating lunch,” he wrote.
But Kenyon was diagnosed with leukemia and died 18 months later, in 1995, when she was only 47. Even as he found new lovers – and sought them compulsively – Hall never stopped mourning her and arranged to be buried next to her, beneath a headstone inscribed with lines from one of her poems: “I BELIEVE IN THE MIRACLES OF ART, BUT WHAT PRODIGY WILL KEEP YOU BESIDE ME?”
In the 1998 collection “Without,” and in many poems after, he reflected on her dying days, on the shock of outliving a woman so many years younger, and the lasting bewilderment of their dog Gus, who years later was still looking for her. In “Rain,” he bitterly summarized his efforts to help her.
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I never belittled her sorrows or joshed at her dreads and miseries
How admirable I found myself.
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Hall was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928, but soon favored Eagle Pond to the “blocks of six-room houses” back home. By age 14, he had decided to become a poet, inspired after a conversation with a fellow teen versifier who declared, “It is my profession.”
“I had never heard anyone speak so thrilling a sentence,” Hall remembered.
He published poetry while a struggling student at Phillips Exeter Academy and formed many lasting literary friendships at Harvard University, including with fellow poets Robert Bly and Adrienne Rich and with George Plimpton, for whom he later served as the first poetry editor at The Paris Review. He also met Daniel Ellsberg and would suspect well before others that the anonymous leaker of the Vietnam War documents known as the Pentagon Papers was his old college friend.
After graduating from Harvard, Hall studied at the University of Oxford and became one of the few Americans to win the Newdigate Prize, a poetry honor founded at Oxford and previously given to Oscar Wilde, John Ruskin and other British writers. He returned to the states in the mid-1950s and taught at several schools, including Stanford University at Bennington College. He was married to Kirby Thompson from 1952-69, and they had two children.
Hall’s first literary hero was Edgar Allan Poe and death was an early subject. He completed his debut collection, “Exiles and Marriages,” between visits to his ailing father, who died at the end of 1955. In the poem “Snow,” Hall confesses, “Like an old man/whatever I touch I turn/to the story of death.”
In recent years, as Hall entered the “planet of antiquity,” many of his elegies were for himself. He worried that “anthologies dropped him out/Poetry festivals never invited him.” He pictured himself awaking “mournful,” dressed in black pajamas. He warned that a story with a happy ending had not really ended, but advised that we leave behind a story to tell.
“Work, love, build a house, and die,” he wrote. “But build a house.”
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President Donald Trump has issued a warning to U.S. trading partners that unless they remove restrictions placed on American goods, they will face “more than Reciprocity by the U.S.A.”
“The United States is insisting that all countries that have placed artificial Trade Barriers and Tariffs on goods going into their country, remove those Barriers & Tariffs or be met with more than Reciprocity by the U.S.A. Trade must be fair and no longer a one way street!” Trump tweeted Sunday.
Trump has already annoyed major U.S. trading partners, including China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and India, by imposing tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products from those countries.
On Friday, Trump threatened to impose a 20 percent tariff on vehicles assembled in the European Union and shipped to the United States, in retaliation for European tariffs on American imports.
That threat was in response to EU tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of American goods — including jeans, bourbon and motorcycles, which in turn were in response to trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum.
The U.S. is scheduled to start taxing more than $30 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks.
Like the EU, China has promised to retaliate immediately, putting the world’s two largest economies at odds.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior Vice President John Murphy was cited by the Associated Press as saying he estimates that $75 billion in U.S. products could be subjected to new foreign tariffs by the end of the first week of July.
Separately, a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry said, “The U.S. is abusing the tariff methods and starting trade wars all around the world.”
During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to apply tariffs because he said countries around the world had been exploiting the U.S.
A young, Iraqi man struggled to find work in the oil-rich city of Basra. After extensive online job searches, he had an idea to outfit his small car with a coffee machine and a giant coffee cup on the roof, turning him into a barista with a mobile café. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Hand washing is one of the easiest ways to prevent some diseases. But in refugee camps and temporary shelters, providing access to soap, clean water and sanitation can put increased strain on resources. Officials at the global aid agency Oxfam say they have a solution that may overcome some of those challenges. Faith Lapidus reports.
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A British minister accused Airbus and other major companies of issuing “completely inappropriate” threats and undermining Prime Minister Theresa May in a sign of growing tensions with businesses leaders over Brexit.
Aircraft manufacturer Airbus last week issued its strongest warning over the impact of Britain’s departure from the European Union, saying a withdrawal without a deal would force it to reconsider its long-term position and put thousands of British jobs at risk.
Other European companies with major operations in Britain have also started to speak out two years on from the Brexit vote, voicing concerns over a lack of clarity on the terms of trade when Britain leaves next March.
“It was completely inappropriate for businesses to be making these kinds of threats for one very simple reason — we are in an absolutely critical moment in the Brexit discussions and what that means is that we need to get behind Theresa May,” Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the BBC.
“The more that we undermine Theresa May the more likely we to end up with a fudge which will be absolute disaster for everyone,” he added.
German carmaker BMW has warned the company would have to make contingency plans within months if the government did not soon clarify its post-Brexit position and German
industrial group Siemens said it urgently needs clarity on how its operations would have to be organized.
The leaders of five major business lobby groups also warned the prime minister over the weekend that the ongoing uncertainty about Brexit could cost the economy billions of pounds.
Hunt, a senior figure in the government who is viewed as a potential future prime minister, dismissed “siren voices” who say Brexit negotiations are not going well and said people should ignore them.
With only nine months until Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, little is clear about how trade will flow as May, who is grappling with a divided party, is still trying to strike a deal with the bloc.
Business leaders are increasingly concerned that their concerns are being ignored and are stepping up their contingency plans in case Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal.
The foreign minister Boris Johnson was quoted in the Telegraph newspaper by two sources over the weekend as dismissing business leaders’ concerns about the impact of Brexit, using foul language in a meeting with EU diplomats.
A spokesperson for the foreign office disputed whether Johnson had used bad language and said he had been attacking business lobbyists.
Around 100,000 supporters of the EU marched through central London on Saturday to demand that the government hold a final public vote on the terms of Brexit, organizers said.
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Languishing with fever and frustrated by delays in diagnosing his illness, Brian Gitta came up with a bright idea: a malaria test that would not need blood samples or specialized laboratory technicians.
That inspiration has won the 25-year-old Ugandan computer scientist a prestigious engineering prize for a noninvasive malaria test kit that he hopes will be widely used across Africa.
For developing the reusable test kit known as Matibabu, Gitta this month was awarded the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. The award by the Royal Academy of Engineering in Britain comes with $32,940.
Malaria is the biggest killer in Africa, and the sub-Saharan region accounts for about 80 percent of the world’s malaria cases and deaths. Cases rose to 216 million in 2016, up from 211 million cases in 2015, according to the latest World Malaria Report, released late last year. Malaria deaths fell by 1,000, to 445,000.
The mosquito-borne disease is a challenge to prevent, with increasing resistance reported to both drugs and insecticides.
No needles
The new malaria test kit works by shining a red beam of light onto a finger to detect changes in the shape, color and concentration of red blood cells, all of which are affected by malaria. The results are sent within a minute to a computer or mobile phone linked to the device.
A Portugal-based firm has been contracted to produce the components for Matibabu, the Swahili word for “treatment.”
“It’s a perfect example of how engineering can unlock development, in this case by improving health care,” Rebecca Enonchong, Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation judge, said in a statement. “Matibabu is simply a game changer.”
Gitta and five colleagues, all trained in computer science or engineering, developed an affordable, bloodless test that does not need a specialist to operate. The new test will be suitable for use in Africa’s rural areas, where most cases of malaria occur, because it will not depend on sending blood samples to a distant laboratory.
Others are also working to fill the need for quicker, easier malaria tests. There are more than 200 rapid diagnostic test products for malaria on the market, according to the WHO.
80 percent accurate now
The fifth-generation prototype of Matibabu, with an accuracy rate of 80 percent, is still a work in process. Gitta and his group aim to refine the device until it achieves an accuracy rate exceeding 90 percent.
Matibabu has yet to be formally subjected to all the necessary clinical trials under Ugandan safety and ethics regulations.
“It excites me as a clinician,” said Medard Bitekyerezo, a Ugandan physician who chairs the National Drug Authority. “I think the National Drug Authority will approve it.”
The government should invest in the project so that its developers don’t struggle financially, he added. The unit cost of the latest prototype is about $100.
Despite the optimism, Gitta has found a hurdle he didn’t anticipate: Some patients are skeptical of unfamiliar technology.
“The doctors will tell you that some people will not leave the hospital until their children have been pricked, and until they have been given anti-malaria drugs and painkillers, even if the kid is not sick,” he said.
“We think we are developing for hospitals first, so that people can first get attached to the brand, and gain the trust of patients over time.”
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