Scientists have used multibeam sonar and a remotely operated craft to locate the remains of the USS Abner Read, which was sunk nearly 75 years ago after hitting a Japanese mine off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The ship had been sent to look for Japanese submarines following the only World War II battle to be fought on North American soil. VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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Month: August 2018
A school in Massachusetts is using artificial intelligence tools to help teachers keep students engaged. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk says investors have convinced him that he shouldn’t take the company private, so the firm will remain on the public stock markets.
The eccentric and sometimes erratic CEO said in a statement late Friday that he made the decision based on feedback from shareholders, including institutional investors, who said they have internal rules limiting how much they can sink into a private company.
Musk met with the electric car and solar panel company’s board on Thursday to tell them he wanted to stay public and the board agreed, according to the statement.
In an Aug. 7 post on Twitter, Musk wrote that he was considering taking the company private. He said it would avoid the short-term pressures of reporting quarterly results.
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Brazil’s health officials say more than 4 million children still need to be vaccinated against measles.
More than 1,380 people have been infected in an outbreak linked to cases imported from Venezuela.
To stop the disease’s spread, Brazil’s Health Ministry launched a campaign this month to vaccinate all children between 1 and 5 — regardless of their vaccination history. It said Friday that 4.1 million children still had not been vaccinated as the campaign enters its final week.
Among the places with the lowest vaccination rates is Roraima, one of two border states with Venezuela where cases are concentrated.
Health services in the neighboring country have collapsed amid economic and political turmoil, which has caused more than 1 million people to flee.
Tens of thousands have migrated to Brazil.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has appointed a former federal prosecutor to monitor China’s ZTE Corp — after people familiar with the matter said he rescinded an offer to a former U.S. official for signing a “Never Trump” letter before the 2016 presidential election.
A new monitor for ZTE is required as part of a June settlement that ended a ban on U.S. companies selling components to China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker. The ban threatened ZTE’s survival and became a source of friction in trade talks between Washington and Beijing.
Roscoe Howard, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, will lead a compliance team designed to help ensure that ZTE does not illegally sell products with American parts to Iran and other sanctioned countries.
Howard, who got his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1977, is a partner in Barnes & Thornburg’s litigation department in Washington, and served as associate independent counsel during the Clinton and George H. W. Bush administrations.
Howard was not the first choice of Commerce Department officials.
Peter Lichtenbaum, a former assistant secretary for export administration at the Commerce Department, received a letter on Aug. 15 offering him the post, sources said.
Ross then learned that Lichtenbaum was among the dozens of former national security officials who signed a letter in August 2016 saying Trump was not qualified to be president and they would never vote for him, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
Last Friday, two days after making the offer, the department withdrew it, the sources said.
“This is the final decision. Period,” a Commerce Department spokesman said about Ross’ decision to rescind the offer to Lichtenbaum and choose Howard.
Trump, a former real estate magnate and reality television star, drew opposition from establishment Republicans who opposed his candidacy during the 2016 presidential campaign. His administration has been known to reject people who opposed him.
Violations by ZTE
ZTE, which relies on American-origin components for its smartphones and computer networking gear, pleaded guilty last year to violating U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping U.S. goods and technology to Iran.
The ban on ZTE was imposed in April after officials said the company made false statements about disciplining 35 employees tied to the wrongdoing.
As part of the 2017 guilty plea, ZTE paid nearly $900 million. To lift this year’s ban, it paid an additional $1 billion penalty, placed $400 million in escrow in case of future violations, and installed a new board and senior management.
Two monitors
Under the latest agreement, the Commerce Department is selecting a monitor to oversee compliance for ZTE and its worldwide affiliates for 10 years. Howard will have a staff of at least six people funded by ZTE, including at least one expert in export controls, the Commerce spokesman said.
The government monitor has been designated as a “special compliance coordinator” to distinguish from another monitor for ZTE appointed by a U.S. judge in Texas when the company pleaded guilty last year.
That monitor, James Stanton, a lawyer who has handled personal injury cases among others, was picked by U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade, sources told Reuters last year. Kinkeade has control over that monitor.
A key reason the Commerce Department sought a second monitor, according to sources, was to have a qualified person police the company and report directly to the department and the company.
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Facial recognition technology was credited with the arrest this week of a man attempting to use a fake passport to enter the United States at Washington’s Dulles airport, officials said.
Officials said that on the third day of deployment of the new technology, border agents were able to determine that the man was using a fake French passport.
US Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said Dulles is one of 14 “early adopter airports” using facial recognition technology for the entry process, and began deploying it Monday.
On Wednesday, a 26-year-old man traveling from Sao Paulo, Brazil sought to enter with a French passport but the facial comparison biometric system determined he was not a match to the passport he presented.
A search revealed the man’s authentic Republic of Congo identification card concealed in his shoe. His name was not released.
The use of facial recognition has been growing for law enforcement, border control and other uses, even as concerns have risen on privacy.
Privacy activists say there are few safeguards on the databases used and that the technology evokes fears of a “Big Brother” surveillance state.
Heightening those concerns are studies showing facial recognition may not always be accurate, especially for people of color.
The technology is being adopted around the world, with China a heavy user of facial recognition for law enforcement.
The airport border agents use the biometric system to determine if the person is using a real passport, claiming it speeds the entry and exit process.
The agency is also assessing the use of biometric technology as part of a process from check-in to departure in which travelers use biometrics instead of their boarding pass.
The agency said in a release it is “committed to its privacy obligations” and has published several privacy impact assessments.
Facial recognition came into play earlier this year when a suspect arrested for a shooting at a newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland, refused to cooperate with police and could not immediately be identified using fingerprint
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A doctor has become the first probable Ebola case in one of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s “high insecurity zones” which are dogged by militia violence and hard to access, a scenario “we have all been dreading,” the WHO said on Friday.
Since the outbreak erupted on August 1, 103 confirmed and probable cases of Ebola have been identified in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, including 63 deaths, the health ministry said in an overnight update.
The doctor living in Oicha town in North Kivu has been re-hospitalised with Ebola symptoms after his wife was confirmed as having the disease when she traveled to the nearby city of Beni, said Dr. Peter Salama, the World Health Organization’s head of emergency operations.
Oicha is almost entirely surrounded by ADF Ugandan Islamist militia, there are “extremely serious security concerns,” he said. Aid workers, priests and government officials are held hostage in the area, he said.
The doctor’s initial test for Ebola — which causes vomiting, fever and diarrhea — had been negative, but fresh results are awaited, Salama told Reuters.
So far 97 of the doctor’s contacts who may have been exposed to the virus have been identified, and vaccination has begun in the town, he added.
“So for the first time really we have a confirmed case and contacts in an area of very high insecurity. It really was the problem we were anticipating and the problem at same time that we were dreading,” Salama told a news briefing.
WHO and health experts reached Oicha with armed escort by MONUSCO troops this week, he said, adding: “We know from that incident now in Oicha we are going to have to operate in some very complex environments due to security and access concerns.”
In a further worrying development, angry youth burned down a health center in another village, where vaccinations were under way, after learning of a death from Ebola, Salama said.
More than 2,900 people have been vaccinated against Ebola since the outbreak began, he said.
“We are at quite a pivotal moment in this outbreak in terms of the evolution of the outbreak epidemiologically and in terms of the response,” he said.
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Thirty-six million people currently live with AIDS, a disease that claimed the lives of nearly 1 million people last year. Experts predict that by 2030, 100 million people will have been infected with the HIV virus.
Despite the alarming numbers, there have been great strides in treatment. HIV is no longer a death sentence, and researchers say people receiving treatment for HIV are able to live normal lives and do not pose a risk to others when they are being treated proactively.
But success carries a price: complacency. Funding for AIDS research and treatment has declined, and in some places, so has government interest.
“When we talk to ministers of finance, they always say to me, ‘I thought HIV was over because I don’t see anybody dying,’” said Dr. Deborah Birx, a U.S. Global AIDS coordinator who oversees the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
J. Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “We’re not reaching goals.” He added, “There’s going to be a struggle to hold ground. … There’s a widening deficit of political will and financial capacity that we face some really daunting challenges in prevention.”
Dr. Chris Beyrer, with Johns Hopkins Medicine, predicted that things will get worse if governments and civilians continue their complacency.
“We are not done with AIDS,” he said. “It is much too early to declare victory, and the risks of a resurgent epidemic are real.”
Birx, Morrison and Beyrer discussed the challenges in ending AIDS at a program in Washington to evaluate the messages from this year’s International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.
New infections are down from 3.4 million a year, but they’re stuck at 1.8 million per year. And there are 17 million people living with HIV who cannot be reached. They are in high risk groups: young women, particularly young African women; men who have sex with men; IV drug users; those in prisons and other closed settings; sex workers and their clients; and transgender people.
“Those key populations and young women account for over 50 percent of new infections, and they are really hard to reach,” Morrison said.
Though it’s relatively easy to prevent HIV transmission during childbirth, Beyrer said about 30 percent of all infants born with HIV worldwide are born in Nigeria.
In the U.S., HIV is increasingly an infection in communities with high rates of poverty and in black and Hispanic populations.
The National Institutes of Health announced Aug. 20 that getting these groups into care is critical to ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S. NIH also announced an international program to reduce the stigma around the virus so more people with the disease can seek treatment.
Experts agree it is possible to end the HIV pandemic, even without a vaccine. But to do this, governments and communities need to be involved, funding needs to be continued, and everyone with HIV needs to be treated.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled Friday that he expects the Fed to continue gradually raising interest rates if the U.S. economic expansion remains strong.
Powell added that while annual inflation has risen to near the Fed’s 2 percent target rate, it doesn’t seem likely to accelerate above that point. That suggests that he doesn’t foresee a need for the Fed to step up its rate hikes. Late next month, the Fed is widely expected to resume raising rates.
Speaking to an annual conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell said the Fed recognizes that it needs to strike a careful balance between its mandates of maximizing employment and keeping price increases stable. He said a gradual approach is the best way for the Fed to navigate between the risks of raising rates too fast and “needlessly shortening the expansion” and moving too slowly and risking an overheated economy.
“My colleagues and I,” the Fed chairman said in his speech, “are carefully monitoring incoming data, and we are setting policy to do what monetary policy can do to support continued growth, a strong labor market, and inflation near 2 percent.”
Powell made no mention of the recent public criticism from President Donald Trump, who has said he’s unhappy with the Fed’s rate hikes. The president has complained that the Fed’s tightening of credit could threaten the continued strong growth he aims to achieve through the tax cuts enacted late last year, a pullback of regulations and a rewriting of trade deals to better serve the United States.
Many have seen Trump’s complaints about the Fed’s rate hikes as an intrusion on the central bank’s longstanding independence from political influence. On Thursday, two top Fed officials made clear Thursday that Trump’s criticism won’t affect their decisions on whether to continue raising rates.
Powell also made no mention in his speech of what many economists see as the most serious threat to the economy: The trade war that Trump has launched with America’s main trading partners — a conflict that risks depressing U.S. and global economic growth the longer it goes on.
The Fed chairman focused his remarks in part on the difficulty the Fed faces in setting interest-rate policies at a time when the economy seems to be undergoing changes that challenge long-standing beliefs of how low unemployment can fall before it ignites inflation pressures. He said there is also much uncertainty over the “neutral” rate of inflation — the point at which the Fed’s policy rate is neither stimulating economic growth or holding it back.
The Fed’s economic projections, compiled from estimates of all Fed officials, estimates the current neutral rate at 2.9 percent. But Powell noted that there’s a wide difference of opinion about it.
After having kept its key policy rate near zero for seven years to help lift the economy out of the Great Recession, the Fed has raised rates seven times, most recently in March and June this year. Most Fed watchers foresee two more hikes this year — next month and then in December.
Powell said the Fed’s incremental approach to raising rates has so far succeeded.
“The economy is strong,” he said. “Inflation is near our 2 percent objective and most people who want a job are finding one. We are setting policy to do what monetary policy can do to support continued growth, a strong labor market and inflation near 2 percent.”
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John Lennon’s killer has been denied parole for a 10th time and will remain behind bars for at least two more years.
Mark David Chapman appeared before New York’s parole board on Wednesday. In a denial decision obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, the board said it had determined Chapman’s release “would be incompatible with the welfare and safety of society and would so deprecate the serious nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.”
Chapman, 63, shot and killed the former Beatle outside Lennon’s Manhattan apartment on Dec. 8, 1980. He is serving 20-years-to-life in the Wende Correctional Facility in western New York.
“You admittedly carefully planned and executed the murder of a world-famous person for no reason other than to gain notoriety,” the parole panel wrote in its denial decision. “While no one person’s life is any more valuable than another’s life, the fact that you chose someone who was not only a world renown person and beloved by millions, regardless of the pain and suffering you would cause to his family, friends and so many others, you demonstrated a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life and the pain and suffering of others.”
It said releasing Chapman would not only “tend to mitigate the seriousness of your crime,” but also would endanger public safety because someone might try to harm him out of anger or revenge or to gain similar notoriety.
As Chapman faced the parole panel Wednesday, politicians and fans called for his release to be denied during a rally at Strawberry Fields, Lennon’s memorial in Central Park across from his former home.
Jonas Herbsman, the attorney for Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.
A transcript of the parole hearing wasn’t immediately released. At previous hearings, Chapman has said he still gets letters about the pain he caused and was sorry for choosing the wrong path to fame.
Chapman will be up for parole again in August 2020.
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Since the 1990s, annual numbers of U.S. coal miners with new, confirmed cases of an advanced form of so-called black lung disease known as progressive massive fibrosis have been steadily rising, according to a new study.
The resurgence is particularly strong among central Appalachian miners in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, the study authors note.
“It’s an entirely preventable disease, and every case is an important representation of a failure to prevent this disease,” said lead study author Kirsten Almberg of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Progressive massive fibrosis is the most severe form of pneumoconiosis, which is also known as black lung disease and is caused by overexposure to coal mine dust. The symptoms are debilitating and can lead to respiratory distress.
“Many people think black lung is a relic of the past,” she told Reuters Health in a phone interview. “But it shouldn’t fade from our attention.”
Almberg and colleagues looked at the number of progressive massive fibrosis cases among former U.S. coal miners applying for Federal Black Lung Program benefits between 1970 and 2016.Miners can apply for financial help and medical coverage if facing disabling lung impairment, and claims are accepted when medical tests and imaging verify the presence of disabling pulmonary impairment.
Progressive massive fibrosis is “by definition” considered totally disabling, the authors note in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
Among 314,000 miners who applied for benefits during the 46-year period, the research team found 4,679 cases of confirmed progressive massive fibrosis, with 2,474 of these representing claims filed since 1996.
The yearly number of cases fell from 404 in 1978 to 18 in 1988 but then began increasing each year, with 383 confirmed cases in 2014, the study found. At the same time, employment has declined from 250,000 miners in 1979 to 81,000 in 2016, the authors note.
“It’s pretty staggering that more than half of the cases were in the more recent period since 1996,” Almberg said. “These are our first snapshots of how big this problem really is.”
The increase has most dramatically impacted the Appalachian region. About 84 percent of miners with confirmed cases of progressive massive fibrosis last mined in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, although only 62 percent of claims originated in these states.
“Put simply, we still do not know exactly why severe disease has increased so much among miners in central Appalachia or when this trend may reverse,” said Emily Sarver, a mining and minerals engineer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Future research should look at the different factors that may affect this ongoing increase in diagnoses, such as changes in the types of dust in mining environments, said Sarver, who works with mine partners to sample dust in active operations and characterize what’s in it and the size of particles.
“This is a real and very complex problem. Unlike safety issues, which are oftentimes apparent or can be identified and mitigated quickly, the exposure-response time with many health issues is quite long,” she said. “If I am exposed to hazardous dust today, for example, it may not impact my lungs for a decade or more, and I may experience a different outcome than another person exposed to the same dust.”
Similarly, Almberg and study co-author Robert Cohen of NIOSH and National Jewish Health and University of Colorado in Denver are working with mining engineers and pathologists to study coal mine dust in lung tissue samples to understand what causes progressive massive fibrosis to develop.
They’re comparing lung tissue samples from current cases to samples collected from autopsies of former miners, and want to understand whether new mining techniques may create smaller dust particles that drive the disease deeper into the lungs or whether more toxic carbon or coal dust is being expelled from mines.
“Like any person, you should expect to be able to work for a full career and leave the workforce and still have your health and life ahead of you,” Almberg said. “Coal miners aren’t the only ones exposed to hazardous materials on the job, and we should be able to catch this early and prevent it from progressing to the severe stages of the disease.”
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Vice President Mike Pence is in Houston, Texas, to reaffirm the Trump administration’s plans to establish an American Space Force by 2020, return Americans to the moon, and set its sight on Mars and beyond.
During a speech Thursday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Pence said that recent Pentagon reports have shown that China is “aggressively weaponizing space” and that Russia is developing weapons to “counter America’s space capabilities.”
Pence said the Department of Defense is moving forward to “strengthen American security in space” and that the administration will work with Congress to secure funding and authorization to establish Space Force as a new and separate branch of the armed forces.
Pence also highlighted efforts to move the Lunar Orbital Platform, formerly known as the Deep Space Gateway, from proposal phase to production. NASA, the main U.S. agency for space exploration, and several of its partners, have been developing plans for this lunar-orbit space station that would be used as a staging point for lunar exploration and would have several gateway-to-space features, including a propulsion system, a habitat for the crew, and docking capability.
In its 2019 budget, NASA has requested $504 million in funding for this project, which has yet to be approved by Congress.
There was little new detail in Pence’s speech other than reiterating the administration’s vision for “American dominance in space.” Space Force has been mentioned by Pence on several occasions, and a theme that President Donald Trump often returns to, including during his rally in Charleston, West Virginia, on Tuesday.
Trump first announced the creation of Space Force at the White House in June. He pledged to reclaim U.S. leadership in space, framing it as a national security issue, and saying he does not want “China and Russia and other countries leading us.”
Trump’s Space Force has triggered debate in military space exploration, as well as legal circles, including whether it may violate international law. The U.S. is a signatory and ratifier of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
The treaty prevents any nation from declaring sovereignty over space or heavenly bodies, and prohibits space-faring countries from blocking other nations from exploring space. There are further restrictions over military presence on heavenly bodies such as the moon, which according to the treaty “shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
Last December, Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, a national space policy directing a government-private partnership with the goal of returning Americans to the moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond.
The policy calls for the NASA administrator to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities.”
Pence has been the leading spokesperson for the U.S. space program, delivering remarks about the country’s space ambitions on behalf of the president.
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Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson and country singer Faith Hill will sing at the funeral of Aretha Franklin in Detroit next week, her publicist said Thursday.
They will be joined by R&B singers Chaka Khan, Ron Isley, Fantasia and Yolanda Adams at the funeral for the late Queen of Soul, publicist Gwendolyn Quinn said in a statement.
Franklin, 76, died last week of pancreatic cancer in her Detroit home. Her Aug. 31 funeral will be held at Detroit’s 4,000-seat Greater Grace Temple, which was the venue for the 2005 funeral of civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
The funeral will be limited to family, friends, dignitaries and special guests.
Thousands of members of the public are expected to pay their respects to Franklin during three days of viewing of her casket at Detroit’s Museum of African-American History, and at the New Bethel Baptist Church where a teenaged Franklin sang in the gospel choir.
The 18-time Grammy-winning singer of hits like “Chain of Fools” and “Respect” was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but grew up in Detroit and retained strong links to the city.
Her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, was a minister at the New Bethel Baptist Church for more than 30 years and Franklin honed her singing skills in the church choir.
Franklin’s second son, Edward Franklin, will also sing at the funeral, along with the Aretha Franklin Orchestra and the Aretha Franklin Choir, Quinn said.
Detroit news media on Thursday reported plans by Greater Grace Temple church leaders to bring in dozens of pink Cadillacs to line the streets for next Friday’s service. Franklin sang about cruising joyously in a pink Cadillac in her 1985 hit “Freeway of Love.”
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Russian scientists have found the carcass of an ancient foal perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost.
The fossil discovered in the region of Yakutia has its skin, hair, hooves and tail preserved. Yakutia is also famous having wooly mammoth fossils found in the permafrost.
Scientists from Russia’s Northeast Federal University who presented the discovery Thursday said the foal is estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old. They believe it was about two months old when it died.
Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in the regional capital of Yakutsk, was surprised to see the perfect state of the find. He noted it’s the best-preserved ancient foal found to date.
The foal was discovered in the Batagaika crater, a huge 100-meter (328-foot) deep depression in the East Siberian taiga.
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George Clooney can raise a glass, even if he’s not starring in any hit movies.
The 57-year-old tops the 2018 Forbes’ list of highest-paid actors with $239 million in pretax earnings. Forbes credits up to $1 billion that a British conglomerate said it would pay for Casamigos Tequila, which Clooney co-founded in 2013 with two entrepreneurs. The actor’s wealth also includes additional earnings from endorsements and older movies.
The rankings include on-screen and outside earnings.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson ranked second with $124 million pretax. Forbes says a huge social media following helped Johnson nearly double his 2017 earnings because he’s able to negotiate an extra seven figures over his standard contract for promotion.
Robert Downey Jr. was third with $81 million, followed by Chris Hemsworth with $64.5 million and Jackie Chan’s $45.5 million.
A best-selling author and Newsweek correspondent has a book coming out on President Donald Trump and the women in his life.
Gallery Books announced Thursday that Nina Burleigh’s “Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women” will be published October 16. Burleigh, Newsweek’s national political correspondent, will draw on investigative journalism and feminist analysis, according to Gallery Books. She will write about Trump’s mother, his three wives, his sisters, daughters and female employees. She will also write about the more than a dozen women who have alleged harassment or other sexual misconduct – allegations he has denied.
Burleigh’s previous books include “The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox” and “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.”
Facebook banned a quiz app from its platform for refusing an inspection and concerns that data on as many as 4 million users was misused.
The social media company said Wednesday that it took action against the myPersonality app after it found user information was shared with researchers and companies “with only limited protections in place.”
Facebook said it would notify the app’s users that their data was misused. It’s only the second time Facebook has banned an app, after it blocked one linked to political data mining firm Cambridge Analytica that sparked a privacy scandal.
The company said myPersonality was “mainly active” prior to 2012, and it wasn’t clear why Facebook was taking action now.
The app was created in 2007 by researcher David Stillwell and allowed users to take a personality questionnaire and get feedback on the results.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal sparked a wider investigation in March by Facebook, which said it had investigated thousands of apps and suspended more than 400 apps over data sharing concerns.
Cambridge Analytica obtained data on up to 87 million users. It was collected by an app, “This Is Your Digital Life,” created by researcher Aleksandr Kogan, which Facebook banned after it found out.
Shaki was 18 when she died, too young given the life expectancy of a giraffe. Ruth the rhinoceros was recovering from an infection until she fell, was stuck for hours in thick mud and then died.
The recent deaths have fueled charges by conservationists that an attempt by the Buenos Aires’ government to turn a 140-year-old zoo into a less intensive “eco-park” and relocate most of its 1,500 animals to sanctuaries has been a poorly planned disaster.
A coalition of more than a dozen environmental and veterinary groups has issued a letter denouncing a “state of abandonment” at the site, where about 200 animals have died since 2016. And more recently, a former zoo director filed a complaint demanding an investigation into the deaths of Shaki and Ruth, arguing that a lack of resources and the stress from nearby construction work contributed to their demise.
“A year ago, I said that this institution was not Noah’s Ark, but the Titanic on its course to be shipwrecked,” said Claudio Bertonatti, ex-director of the Buenos Aires zoo and consultant for the Fundacion Azara non-governmental organization. “Today, we’ve crashed into an iceberg.”
Opened in 1875
The zoo was inaugurated in 1875 on what was then a quiet patch on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. It was later a favorite haunt of Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges, who was fascinated by the tigers and wrote about them in his books. But as the megalopolis grew, the zoo became surrounded by an urban sprawl of busy avenues with honking buses and screeching cars near the animal enclosures, where on a recent day a solitary lion spent his time chasing his tail in circles.
The antiquated enclosures were widely considered inhumane by modern standards, as were the noisy environment and pollution, and pressure from animal rights groups grew to close the zoo.
“The situation of captivity is degrading for the animals, and it’s not the way to take care of them,” said Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta when he announced the zoo’s closure in 2016.
But the task remained to find new homes for the animals, hundreds of which still remain behind bars at the site in noisy limbo two years later.
Improvements made
Developers of Eco Park, as the site is now called, say there have been improvements to the enclosures and the 45-acre (18-hectare) site has been closed to the public, reducing the stress on the animals. Some 432 of them have been transferred so far, including two grizzly bears sent to The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado, three alligators to Noah’s Ark Animal Sanctuary in Georgia and a Fiji crested iguana to the San Diego Zoo.
City officials acknowledge that the process of closing the zoo has proved more difficult than they originally thought. Legislation had to be enacted to set standards and authorize the transfers. Experts feared that many animals were so zoo-trained that they would die if moved, even to wild animal preserves. Other animals were not transferred because of difficult logistics — they were too large or too tall to travel.
Shaki and family
That was the case of the giraffes: Shaki, her partner Buddy and their calf, Ciro. Nothing, however, indicated that Shaki was at risk of death. Giraffes in the wild live to about 25 years.
“The truth is that she was an adult female, but she had many years ahead of her,” said Guillermo Wiemayer, a veterinarian who has worked at the former zoo for more than a decade.
Shaki began showing signs of what appeared to be abdominal pain around 9 a.m. on July 24. Six hours later, the giraffe was dead. The necropsy found an ulcer in the wall of the animal’s stomach that ultimately led to peritonitis.
Ruth’s death
It occurred just 10 days after Ruth died following an infection in her vulva that later spread. Wiemayer said the rhinoceros had been breathing heavily and had diarrhea. She also suffered what he said were some “scratches” after she was attacked by a male rhinoceros. But overall, Ruth’s condition had improved.
Then, the enclosure flooded, she slipped and got stuck in the mud. For more than six hours, her keepers made a desperate attempt to rescue her using four-wheel-drive vehicles and other machinery. By the time they got Ruth out, she was too weak.
Wiemayer denied that the deaths of the animals were related to changes in their food or stress from construction near their enclosures, saying that the work had ended months before.
“While they’re under our care, we try to give them the best quality of life possible,” he said near Ciro, while the young orphaned giraffe extended its long dark-grey tongue during feeding time.
“But we know that unfortunately, we live with life and death.”
Complaint filed
The complaint filed by Bertonatti to a special unit of prosecutors that deals with environmental matters includes video showing rats and cockroaches in the enclosures of some of the park’s animals.
The park’s developers acknowledged that the footage was shot inside the park, but said it was years before city officials took it over in 2016. Rodents, they said, are inevitable since food is often out on the open, but they have hired a company and also gotten advice from a university to help them deal with infestations.
“Until the deaths of the giraffe and the rhino, there had never been criticisms in regards to the well-being of our animals,” said Gonzalo Pascual, deputy secretary of the environment and public spaces, who is in charge of the Eco Park project, which will have interactive learning modules, green spaces and the animals that can’t be transferred.
“We have more than 130 people focused on the well-being of the animals,” he said. “Nowhere in the world do you have the amount of professionals per animal that we have here at the Eco Park.”
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