Tropical Storm Beryl is strengthening over the tropical Atlantic and could become a hurricane by Friday or Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Thursday.
Beryl is about 1,295 miles (2,080 km) east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea and contains maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (85 km/h), the NHC said in its latest advisory.
“The center of Beryl will remain east of the Lesser Antilles through Sunday,” the Miami-based weather forecaster added.
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A woman traveling from Iraq to a Detroit-area airport was found to be carrying seeds infested with an invasive beetle.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says in a release Thursday that agriculture specialists discovered the Khapra beetles November 23 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus. They were in a bag of seeds the woman planned to sow in her garden.
The Khapra beetle is considered one of the world’s most destructive pests for stored grains, cereals and seeds.
The Associated Press sent an email Thursday to border officials asking if the woman was fined or charged.
Khapra beetles were found in January at Washington Dulles International Airport in rice brought from Saudi Arabia and in February at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in cow peas brought from Nigeria.
Drivers of Kenya’s digital taxis shut down operations Monday in protest of what they term as exploitative corporate practices. They say the firms are charging low rates to their clients, yet imposing high commissions on the drivers, leading them to work longer hours with little pay.
The Digital Taxi Association of Kenya, representing more than 2,000 digital taxi drivers, is in the fourth day of a protest that has seen drivers switch off their services, stalling transportation in the country.
The drivers say client charges have reduced over time as more digital taxi apps enter the market, but their commissions to the taxi firms have remained the same.
The drivers are demanding a review of their rates and working conditions. Through their association, they want the digital taxi services to double their client rates and reduce driver commissions to the companies so they can earn decent wages.
“The fare itself, it has been very low from the word go,” said Anthony Maina, an Uber driver in Kenya. “The percentage after they get their commission, we get very little returns.”
The main digital taxi services in Kenya are the American brand Uber and Estonian Taxify, as well as at least three others.
Uber charges a 25 percent commission on each ride, while apps like Taxify charge 15 percent. The drivers want rates at least doubled per kilometer, and commissions slashed to 10 percent.
Kenya Digital Taxi Services Director David Muteru is calling on Kenya’s Ministry of Transport to resolve the issue.
“All these things are happening where we have government agencies who can [take care of all these things] without having pressure from us,” Muteru said. “It is not our wish to come here and start demonstrating. Our demand is that we must have regulations. [The pricing] is very skewed in favor of the app companies to the detriment of drivers.”
Maina says Uber reduced the maximum working hours from 18 to 12 in an effort to better the working conditions, but drivers overwork to earn more to meet expenses.
“We cannot afford daily maintenance, he said. “An example, each and every day you have to fuel the vehicle, you have to wash the car, and if you happen to be in the city center, you have to pay the city council. All those expenses, when you put them together and maybe you do not own the vehicle yourself, you have to pay the partner and you know fuel has been going up every day and they are not adjusting their commission or fare. So that has been a big problem for us.”
Earlier in the week, Uber drivers in South Africa also went on strike to protest the 25 percent fee charged by Uber.
Digital Taxi Association representatives in Kenya are in negotiations with the taxi firms and Kenya’s Ministry of Transport as their strike continues.
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Republican Senator John McCain is perhaps the best known person who has brain cancer. His is a glioblastoma, the most deadly type. Since McCain announced the news last year, he has had surgery and chemotherapy. There’s no cure for this type of cancer, and even with treatment, most people don’t live longer than three years after being diagnosed.
Surgeons often can’t remove the entire tumor because it might affect brain functions, or it might be attached to the spinal column. These tumors often grow tentacles that make them impossible to cut out completely.
Untreated, people have just months to live. But even with treatment, the two-year survival rate is just 30 percent, according to the American Brain Tumor Association.
What’s hopeful is that some new treatments are showing promise.
A case in point is Lori Mines. This 40-year-old wife and mother was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer two years ago. She had a severe headache followed by a stroke. When doctors ordered a brain scan, they found two large brain tumors, one on either side of her brain. One of the tumors was attached to the spinal column so it couldn’t be completely removed. After surgery, Mines had radiation.
“I didn’t even want to know anything about it. I just basically wanted to focus on trying to get better,” she said.
Even noncancerous brain tumors can be deadly if they interfere with portions of the brain responsible for vital bodily functions. Treatment often includes surgery, chemotherapy or radiation or a combination of these treatments.
Glioblastomas are the most common type of cancerous brain tumors, and the five-year relative survival rate is less than 6 percent.
Mines says she’s realistic, although she hopes she can live longer. She says she will just keep fighting for herself, for her husband, and for her young daughter.
“I have persisted because there’s no other option,” she said.
Scientists at Duke Health found they can increase the survival rate for some patients by injecting a modified polio virus directly into the tumor. Other researchers are trying to get the body’s immune system to attack the tumors.
Dr. Arnab Chakravarti heads the Department of Radiation Oncology at The Ohio State University where he specializes in brain cancers. Chakravarti says medical researchers are examining novel clinical trials, targeted therapies and immunotherapies.
“There’s a lot of hope for this patient population,” he said.
Chakravarti led a study on the genetic makeup of gliomas, brain tumors that can be cancerous or benign. The researchers found they could more than double the life expectancy among patients who had a distinctive biomarker, a cell or a molecule that is present with a particular type of tumor. It helps doctors decide what treatment can work best to shrink the tumor.
“It’s very important to personalize care for the individual patient and that’s why biomarkers, prognostic and predictive biomarkers are so important,” Chakravarti said. The study was published in JAMA Oncology.
Experts say testing genetic markers will become the standard for patients with malignant brain tumors. They are also looking at targeted drug therapies as part of individualized treatment. The hope is that getting a diagnosis of brain cancer will no longer be an imminent death sentence.
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South Africa has become one of the biggest markets for illegal cigarette sales and is losing out on 7 billion rand ($514 million) a year in potential tax revenue, a report funded by a tobacco industry group said on Thursday.
The study carried out by Ipsos found illegal cigarette trade spiked between 2014 and 2017 after a probe into the underground industry was dropped by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) under suspended commissioner Tom Moyane.
Moyane, an ally of former President Jacob Zuma, is the main focus of an ongoing SARS commission of inquiry over allegations of widespread corruption at the tax agency under his watch. He denies any wrongdoing.
Former head of enforcement at SARS, Gene Ravele, told the inquiry last week the decision to drop the investigation into illegal tobacco trade was intended to let it continue.
“After I left [in 2015], there was no inspections at cigarette factories. It was planned,” said Ravele.
A packet of cigarettes should incur a minimum tax of 17.85 rand ($1.31), yet packs are sold on the black market for as little as 5 rand as manufacturers dodge official sales channels to avoid paying tax, the Ipsos study found.
Three-quarters of all South Africa’s informal vendors — totaling 100,000 — sell illegal cigarettes in an industry that was worth 15 billion rand ($1.10 billion) over the last three years, the report said.
“Independent superettes, corner cafes and general dealers are the key channels for ultra-cheap brands, with hawkers providing a key entry point, mainly through the loose cigarette sales,” Ipsos head of measurement Zibusiso Ngulube said. “These manufacturers are perfectly primed to continue to grow at a fast rate.”
The study was funded by The Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa, which includes arms of global manufacturers like Philip Morris International, Alliance One and British American Tobacco.
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The Russian Internet company Yandex said Thursday that its public search engine has been turning up dozens of Google documents that appear meant for private use, suggesting there may have been a data breach.
Yandex spokesman Ilya Grabovsky said that some Internet users contacted the company Wednesday to say that its public search engine was yielding what looked like personal Google files.
Russian social media users started posting scores of such documents, including an internal memo from a Russian bank, press summaries and company business plans.
Grabovsky said Yandex has alerted Google to the concerns.
It was unclear whether the files were meant to be publicly viewable by their authors and how many there were. Google did not comment.
Grabovsky said that a Yandex search only yields files that don’t require logins or passwords. He added that the files were also turning up in other search engines.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she would back lowering European Union tariffs on U.S. car imports, responding to an offer from Washington to abandon threatened levies on European cars in return for concessions.
“When we want to negotiate tariffs, on cars for example, we need a common European position and we are still working on it,” Merkel said.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened last month to impose a 20-percent import tariff on all EU-assembled vehicles, which could upend the industry’s current business model for selling cars in the United States.
According to an industry source, the U.S. ambassador to Germany told German car bosses from BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen at a meeting on Wednesday that Trump could abandon such threats if the EU scrapped duties on U.S. cars imported into the bloc.
Merkel said any move to cut tariffs on U.S. vehicles would require reductions on those imported from other countries to conform with World Trade Organization rules.
“I would be ready to support negotiations on reducing tariffs, but we would not be able to do this only with the U.S.,” she said.
German automotive trade body VDA said any suggestions about mutually removing tariffs and other trade barriers were positive signals.
“But it is clear that the negotiations are exclusively being held at a political level,” it said in a statement.
Current U.S. import tariff rates on cars are 2.5 percent and on trucks 25 percent. The EU has a 10 percent levy on car imports from the United States.
Trump hit the EU, Canada and Mexico with tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum at the start of June, ending exemptions that had been in place since March.
The EU executive responded by imposing its own import duties of 25 percent on a range of U.S. goods, including steel and aluminum products, farm produce such as sweetcorn and peanuts, bourbon, jeans and motor-bikes.
Trump’s protectionist trade policies, which also target Chinese imports, have raised fears of a full-blown and protracted trade war that threatens to damage the world economy.
Unemployment among Saudi citizens edged up to a record 12.9 percent in the first quarter of this year as private employers struggled under the weight of a new tax and a domestic fuel price hike, official data showed on Thursday.
The figures underlined the difficulties which the government faces as it pushes through reforms to reduce the economy’s reliance on oil exports.
The reforms aim to develop non-oil industries and create jobs, but they also involve austerity steps to close a big state budget deficit; a 5 percent value-added tax was imposed at the start of 2018. The austerity is hurting many private companies.
The first-quarter unemployment rate was the highest recorded by the official statistics agency in data going back to 1999. It exceeded the 12.8 percent level which had prevailed for the previous three quarters.
Authorities are keen to lure more Saudis, especially Saudi women, into the labor force to make the economy more efficient and reduce the government’s financial burden.
The latest data showed little progress in that area, however, with the number of Saudi job seekers falling to 1.07 million in the first quarter from 1.09 million in the previous quarter, even as the number of employed Saudis also declined.
The figures revealed a continued exodus of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from Saudi Arabia because of the weak economy and hikes in fees which companies must pay the government to hire expatriates.
The number of foreigners employed in the kingdom shrank to 10.18 million from 10.42 million in the previous quarter and 10.85 million in the first quarter of 2017 – a drop which is slowing the economy by hurting consumer demand.
Saudi gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew 1.2 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2018, beginning to recover after shrinking in 2017, figures released earlier this week showed.
But the rebound was largely due to stabilizing oil output, and economists expect the oil sector to lead growth later this year with non-oil businesses expanding only modestly – a trend that may keep unemployment high.
Unemployment among Saudi citizens edged up to a record 12.9 percent in the first quarter of this year as private employers struggled under the weight of a new tax and a domestic fuel price hike, official data showed on Thursday.
The figures underlined the difficulties which the government faces as it pushes through reforms to reduce the economy’s reliance on oil exports.
The reforms aim to develop non-oil industries and create jobs, but they also involve austerity steps to close a big state budget deficit; a 5 percent value-added tax was imposed at the start of 2018. The austerity is hurting many private companies.
The first-quarter unemployment rate was the highest recorded by the official statistics agency in data going back to 1999. It exceeded the 12.8 percent level which had prevailed for the previous three quarters.
Authorities are keen to lure more Saudis, especially Saudi women, into the labor force to make the economy more efficient and reduce the government’s financial burden.
The latest data showed little progress in that area, however, with the number of Saudi job seekers falling to 1.07 million in the first quarter from 1.09 million in the previous quarter, even as the number of employed Saudis also declined.
The figures revealed a continued exodus of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from Saudi Arabia because of the weak economy and hikes in fees which companies must pay the government to hire expatriates.
The number of foreigners employed in the kingdom shrank to 10.18 million from 10.42 million in the previous quarter and 10.85 million in the first quarter of 2017 – a drop which is slowing the economy by hurting consumer demand.
Saudi gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew 1.2 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2018, beginning to recover after shrinking in 2017, figures released earlier this week showed.
But the rebound was largely due to stabilizing oil output, and economists expect the oil sector to lead growth later this year with non-oil businesses expanding only modestly – a trend that may keep unemployment high.
The year 1968 was a time of great social and political upheaval in America. Coincidentally, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington also opened to the public that year. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the museum is presenting a time capsule of that important period and the cultural icons who shaped it. The exhibit is especially timely as the nation once again grapples with political and social turmoil. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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U.S. car maker Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it has no plans currently to hike retail prices of its imported Ford and Lincoln models in China, despite steep additional tariffs on imported U.S. vehicles set to come into play on Friday.
The firm, which has been facing sluggish sales in the world’s largest auto market, said in a statement “it has no current plans to increase the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) on its import line-up in China.”
Ford is the first foreign automaker to address pricing issues ahead of the new tariffs that will affect around $34 billion of U.S. imports from soybeans and cars to lobsters.
China, which just days ago cut tariffs on all imported automobiles, has said that it will slap an additional 25 percent levy on 545 American products, including U.S.-made cars, should the Trump administration go ahead with plans to implement tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports from July 6.
Ford added it encouraged Washington and Beijing to resolve their issues over trade and that it would “continue to monitor the situation as it evolves.”
Moscow’s most famous landmarks — Red Square, the Kremlin, and the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral — are swarmed with World Cup fans doing a bit of sightseeing in between matches. Just upriver, more adventurous tourists will find an anonymous-looking apartment block whose history sheds light on the Soviet Union’s darkest days.
The House on the Embankment embodies the history of revolution and dictatorship in miniature. It lies just upstream from the Kremlin and was completed in 1931 to house the Soviet Union’s governing elite.
“These people living here were the so-called ‘old Bolsheviks’ [revolutionaries]. And they were people close to each other — in their spirit and ideology — as well as their fate,” said Olga Trifonova, who runs the House on the Embankment museum, inside one of the block’s roughly 500 apartments.
The museum displays some of the luxurious fittings and furniture the first residents enjoyed. The block offered in-house theaters and cafeterias, libraries and sports halls.
Soon, however, the ostentatious lifestyles of the residents began to look at odds with the ideals of the revolution.
In the mid-1930s, Soviet leader Josef Stalin began the “Great Purge” to rid the country of those deemed enemies of the working class. A million people were imprisoned and 700,000 executed. The residents of the House on the Embankment — once the elite of the revolution — were among the first in line. Arrests and disappearances created a crushing paranoia.
WATCH: Moscow’s ‘House of Fear’ Embodies Soviet History
“The residents of the house stopped paying visits to each other. One stopped having confidence in other people,” Trifonova said.
During the 1930s, 800 of the residents were arrested. Close to half of them were executed.
Olga Trifonova’s late husband, Yuri, grew up in the House on the Embankment. His father was arrested during the purges in June 1937 and never seen again. His mother was sent to a Gulag prison in Kazakhstan. In 1976, Yuri Trifonov wrote a best-selling book about his memories, which gave the apartment block its name. He died in 1981.
“This is a story about the nature of fear. How fear mutilates a human for his entire life,” Trifonova said.
Memories of that fear appear to be fading. An opinion poll last year crowned Stalin as Russia’s most outstanding historical figure.
But the grim history of the House on the Embankment is not forgotten, according to Dmitry Taganov of real estate firm INCOM, which is selling some of the apartments on the block.
“Many buyers are scared off by the gloomy background of this House. Many people undoubtedly know about that, even the ones belonging to the younger generation.”
A younger generation that is forming its own historical image of Stalin and the legacy of Communism.
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Scientists have developed a way to harvest water from dry desert air and the only power the device needs is sunlight. It could be useful in an increasingly water-stressed world. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Trade rhetoric is spilling into the real world of jobs and consumer goods. The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6. Beijing is fighting back with its own $34 billion of tariffs on American goods. As VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports, investors are understandably on edge.
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Orthopedic surgery can be tricky. So, researchers at Northwestern University are engineering new materials to make 3D printed bones that are a perfect match, ready for grafts. Faith Lapidus reports.
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A book about an alleged prophecy describing Donald Trump’s win as U.S. president is being produced as a movie by Liberty University, but students at the Christian college are pushing back on the film.
The production, in which Liberty University students are technicians, editors and set decorators for class credit, tells the story of Mark Taylor, a retired firefighter from Orlando, Florida. Taylor said in 2011 God told him Trump would become president of the United States. Trump won the election in 2016.
“This movie could reflect very poorly on all Liberty students and Liberty University as a whole,” states an online petition called “Cancel the Liberty University Film Programs Heretical Film Project,” created by Liberty students.
The author’s “claims to have received prophecies directly from God … do not align with the Bible’s message,” states the petition signed by more than 2,000 respondents.
Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, partnered with Christian filmmaker Rick Eldridge, owner of Reel Works Studio in Charlotte, N.C., to produce the book, which was published in July 2017.
Liberty University staff contends that this has been an excellent learning experience for students in cinematic arts at the university.
“We think this feature-length work experience is unique to our department among film schools,” said Stephan Schultze, Liberty professor of cinematic arts and director of the film. “This distinction gives our students a skill set that makes them ready for the workforce upon graduating.”
Movie production experience
Students agree they have gained hands-on experience working on the movie production. But some said they object to the alleged prophecy and the message.
In their online petition, they cited a later interpretation of the Bible, 1 John 4:1, that suggests believers “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
“We should be very wary of modern-day prophets,” the petition says. “Mark Taylor has claimed God told him that electing Trump will save the world, which is unbiblical at best and heretical at worst.”
“Liberty’s mission statement and purpose is to be a light on a hill and to train champions for Christ,” the petition continues. “Openly supporting both a ‘modern-day prophet’ and Trump as a school does not convey this mission.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. is an outspoken Trump supporter and was appointed to the Trump Task Force for Higher Education in 2017.
Schultze said the Liberty students who worked on the film served in positions that usually go to people with at least five years of experience in the film industry.
The Liberty students pushed back, saying they were “of the distasteful opinion that the producer had only come to Liberty to make his film because he could get free student labor that would significantly lower the cost of making the film,” according to a source who asked to remain anonymous. “Many of us felt used at times, which was another reason why we petitioned against the film in the first place.”
Students were given other options to working on the prophecy film, but those were of lesser experience, the source said. Well into the making of the film, students said, “it became clear … after the initial script reading and the many rewrites … the film did have a political agenda, which we were against.”
Biopic-style film
Schultze said the film is a biopic that “chronicles real-life events, following a fireman [Taylor] suffering from PTSD who believes he has heard a message from God, that Donald Trump will be the next president.” He did not respond directly to whether he thought the film was heretical but said he would “advise people to watch the movie first.”
“I think the film will be well-received, and people will be inspired to know that our students have created a narrative film whose quality is strong enough to warrant a national theatrical release on more than 1,200 screens,” he said.
“This is been a great experience for students, and I believe it will provide them with the edge they need for employment upon graduating,” Schultze added.
He said that Liberty University did not receive or pay any fees in exchange for the movie being produced there. He said there was a “cost benefit to student involvement,” but there was also “a risk to engage newly skilled labor still in a steep learning curve. It all evens out in the end because additional shooting days are required for the teaching process to take place on set. Our students’ education is a huge benefactor in the process.”
Students contested that the experience had enhanced their learning.
“Many do not want this movie on their resume and some are even considering … dropping out,” the student petition said.
Eldridge of Reel Works said he wants the film’s message to resonate with its viewers.
“We hope that they will be inspired by all that is great about our country,” Eldridge said of the audience in an email to VOA. “All the while we hope that they will be entertained by the story and the many voices who will speak during our reflective conversations after the dramatic story.”
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