When you think of wind energy, you tend to think of the massive constructs that dot hilly landscapes or the ocean horizon. But two researchers see a future where it’s as common for wind turbines to show up in backyards and on rooftops and balconies. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Month: October 2018
78th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, has been transformed from an industrial area into an art mecca. Once home to a car manufacturer, its old metal doors and freight elevators serve as a setting for bright paintings and abstract sculptures. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.
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It’s been a mystery in the United States since the Great Depression: Who are the 11 men pictured in a famous photograph called “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper”? In the 1932 photo, the construction workers are enjoying their lunch break on a metal beam, 256 meters up in the air above New York City streets. That skyscraper is now part of the Rockefeller Center complex, and that’s where Boris Koltsov went in search of answers. Anna Rice narrates his report.
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Halloween may still be a few weeks away, but New York City is getting ready to be frightened. The Morgan Library and Museum is celebrating the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s book “Frankenstein,” one of the most famous horror novels of all time. VOA’s Elena Wolf went to the exhibition and got a look at the original Frankenstein manuscript.
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There are more than 650,000 restaurants in the United States, enough to satisfy the pickiest eater. New venues open every day, yet staying in business with such tremendous competition is no easy task. One restaurant has been able to stay open for nearly 200 years. Karina Bafradzhian takes us to an oyster house in Boston, Massachusetts, that stakes its claim as the oldest restaurant in the U.S.
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For the first time, one of the new immunotherapy drugs has shown promise against breast cancer in a large study that combined it with chemotherapy to treat an aggressive form of the disease. But the benefit for most women was small, raising questions about whether the treatment is worth its high cost and side effects.
Results were discussed Saturday at a cancer conference in Munich and published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Drugs called checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment of many types of cancer by removing a chemical brake that keeps the immune system from killing tumor cells. Their discovery recently earned scientists a Nobel Prize. Until now, though, they haven’t proved valuable against breast cancer.
In the study
The new study tested one from Roche called Tecentriq plus chemo versus chemo alone in 902 women with advanced triple-negative breast cancer. About 15 percent of cases are this type, their growth is not fueled by the hormones estrogen or progesterone, or the gene that Herceptin targets, making them hard to treat.
Women in the study who received Tecentriq plus chemo went two months longer on average without their cancer worsening compared with those on chemo alone, a modest benefit. The combo did not significantly improve survival in an early look before long-term follow-up is complete.
Failed protein test
Previous studies found that immunotherapies work best in patients with high levels of a protein that the drugs target, and the plan for the breast cancer study called for analyzing how women fared according to that factor if Tecentriq improved survival overall.
The drug failed that test, but researchers still looked at protein-level results and saw encouraging signs. Women with high levels who received the combo treatment lived roughly 25 months on average versus about 15 months for women given chemo alone.
That’s a big difference, but it will take more time to see if there’s a reliable way to predict benefit, said Dr. Jennifer Litton of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She had no role in running the study but enrolled some patients in it and oversees 14 others testing immunotherapies.
“We’re really hopeful that we can identify a group of women who can get a much bigger and longer response,” she said.
Another breast cancer specialist with no role in the study, Dr. Michael Hassett at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said he felt “cautious excitement” that immunotherapy may prove helpful for certain breast cancer patients.
Side effects and cost
Side effects need a close look, both doctors said. Nearly all study participants had typical chemo side effects such as nausea or low blood cell counts, but serious ones were more common with the combo treatment and twice as many women on it stopped treatment for that reason.
Three of the six deaths from side effects in the combo group were blamed on the treatment itself; only one of three such deaths in the chemo group was.
Cost is another concern. Tecentriq is $12,500 a month. The chemo in this study was Celgene’s Abraxane, which costs about $3,000 per dose plus doctor fees for the IV treatments. Older chemo drugs cost less but require patients to use a steroid to prevent allergic reactions that might interfere with the immunotherapy. Abraxane was chosen because it avoids the need for a steroid, said one study leader, Dr. Sylvia Adams of NYU Langone Health.
The study was sponsored by Roche and many study leaders consult or work for the company or own stock in it.
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Melissa Madara was not surprised to receive death threats Friday as her Brooklyn witchcraft store prepared to host a public hexing of newly confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh this weekend.
The planned casting of an anti-Kavanaugh spell, one of the more striking instances of politically disgruntled Americans turning to the supernatural when frustrated by democracy, has drawn backlash from some Christian groups but support from like-minded witch covens.
“It gives the people who are seeking agency a little bit of chance to have that back,” Madara said. The ritual was to be livestreamed on Facebook and Instagram at 8 p.m. EDT Saturday (1200 GMT Sunday).
Seated at a desk phone among bird skulls and crystal balls at Catland Books, the occult shop she co-owns, Madara said the Kavanaugh hex is expected to be the most popular event the store has hosted since its 2013 opening, including spells aimed at President Donald Trump. Madara declined to provide details of what the latest ritual will entail.
More than 15,000 people who have seen Catland Books promotions on Facebook have expressed interest in attending the event, vastly exceeding the shop’s 60-person capacity.
Irate, threatening calls
Not everyone is a witchcraft fan. Madara said she had fielded numerous irate calls from critics, with at least one threatening violence.
“Every time we host something like this there’s always people who like to call in with death threats or read us scripture,” she said.
As far as supporters go, some are sexual assault survivors still angry that the U.S. Senate confirmed Kavanaugh’s lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court despite accusations that he had sexually assaulted multiple women.
Kavanaugh has denied the allegations, and an FBI investigation failed to corroborate his accusers’ accounts.
Democrats hope lingering outrage over Kavanaugh, particularly among women, will translate into election gains for them Nov. 6. Republicans are likewise trying to seize on anger among conservatives at how they perceive Kavanaugh was mistreated.
Counter hexes and prayers
Believers in mysticism on both sides of the political divide are taking matters into their own hands.
Plans for the Catland Books event have sparked “counter hexes” around the country by those seeking to undo the spell that the Brooklyn witches cast against Kavanaugh, Madara said.
Even mainstream clergy was joining the fray. Rev. Gary Thomas of the Diocese of San Jose in California said Friday that he would include Kavanaugh in his prayers at Saturday mass.
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In Tanzania, protecting endangered animals has become easier thanks to Earth Ranger. Earth Ranger is not a superhero, it’s a technology platform, developed by Vulcan Inc., a company co-founded by U.S. philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The system helps rangers remotely monitor elephants and other animals to stay ahead of poachers. Faiza Elmasry has the story. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Majority-Hindu Bali has long been considered more tolerant of different sexual identities compared with other parts of Indonesia, especially amid recent anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) crackdowns in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
But a beauty pageant promoting HIV education and equality was this month shutdown by Islamic hardliners, sparking concern among some in the LGBT community that Bali is no longer a safe place.
Organized by the Bali-based Gaya Dewata Foundation, which provides testing, counseling and support on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, the pageant has been held annually for the past three years. But this year, anti-LGBT Muslim groups reportedly harassed the owners of the Bhumiku Convention Hall in Denpasar, Bali’s capital.
“We had to call off our event, due to the owners of the venue canceling it,” Christian Supriyadinata, the director of Gaya Dewata, told VOA.
“I thought Bali will have that space for us to be ourselves,” said Agung a Balinese native who recently moved back to the island from Muslim-majority Java. He chose to be identified by one name to protect his identity. Agung told VOA it, “actually turns out to be Bali doesn’t have that immunity anymore, doesn’t have that bubble anymore to protect ourselves.”
LGBT events canceled
Lini Zurlia, an Indonesian queer activist who works for the regional LGBT organization ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, said this was not first LGBT event to be canceled in Bali. Many public events for the Straits Games, a sports event for the gay community from across Asia, were canceled last year after pressure from certain quarters, she said.
“It was not only from hard-line groups but also from the police,” she said. “Since then, we think Bali isn’t all that friendly [to LGBT people] after all. Maybe it’s just friendly because it’s a center for tourism in Indonesia.”
The local chapter of the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI) was among the groups that opposed the event and reported it to the police.
“This is clearly very alarming, because the [pageant] is clearly contrary to moral and religious values in Indonesia,” the Bali MUI chairman, Muhammad Taufik Asadi, told the conservative-leaning newspaper Republika.
Sexuality and health
Many local cultures in Indonesia have traditionally had fluid understandings of sexuality beyond a binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality. This has, however, eroded in recent years with the rise of more conservative strains of Islam. Intensified anti-LGBT sentiment has also been accompanied by rising infection rates of HIV/AIDS.
According to UNAIDS, Indonesia had 48,000 new HIV infections and 38,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2016, an increase in AIDS-related deaths of 68 percent from 2010.
“We want the community in Bali, especially our friends in the LGBT community, to understand the problem of HIV/AIDS and help with HIV/AIDS prevention,” Supriyadinata said.
Members of the LGBT community are disproportionately affected, with HIV prevalence rates of 25.8 percent for men who have sex with men and 24.8 percent of transgender people.
“Cases of HIV/AIDS across the whole community [in Indonesia] have indeed increased, so information about HIV/AIDS is much needed,” Supriyadinata said.
Moral panic
The Gaya Dewata pageant’s cancellation is just the latest in a string of anti-LGBT actions by the police and civil society groups across Indonesia. While gay sex is not a crime, the LGBT community is often targeted under the country’s strict anti-pornography laws.
Earlier this month, Jakarta police raided a so-called “gay party” and arrested four men on drug charges. Law enforcement publicly paraded the suspects and their faces were televised. Several social media accounts later further spread the men’s images to shame them.
Social media again exploded with the hashtag #UninstallGojek, with many netizens calling for a boycott of the local ride-sharing application Gojek after one of the company’s executives expressed support for diversity and tolerance of LGBT people on Facebook.
Indonesia’s minister for religion, Lukman Saifuddin, subsequently released a video on social media declaring that “all religions reject LGBT, that’s why I reject LGBT actions and behavior.”
“Although LGBT behavior is wrong, they should be treated with empathy so that they change their deviant ways,” he added. Survey results released by Saiful Mujani Research & Consulting in January showed that 81.5 percent of Indonesians believe gay and lesbian “behavior” is prohibited by religion, and a majority said they would object to having LGBT neighbors or in government. But only 58.3 percent of the respondents reported to know what LGBT meant.
Election season
Some worry that anti-LGBT activity will further ramp up ahead of the country’s presidential elections in April 2019. The incumbent Joko Widodo’s running mate, the influential conservative cleric Ma’ruf Amin, has helped issue fatwas against LGBT people as a member of Indonesia’s Ulama Council.
“We want a stern prohibition of LGBT activities and other deviant sexual activities and legislation that categorizes them as crime[s],” he was quoted as saying by the national news agency Antara in 2016.
Anti-LGBT themes also feature heavily in the rhetoric of supporters of opposition candidate Prabowo Subianto. According to Zurlia of ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, many of the Islamic groups who support Prabowo and opposition figure Fadli Zon claim that the LGBT movement is the product of Western influence and an import from countries like the United States.
“They’re good friends with the American president and praise Donald Trump and yet say that the LGBT movement comes from America,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
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The International Monetary Fund announced Friday it had reached an agreement with Ukraine on economic policies that would unlock a new loan deal that will provide nearly $4 billion.
The new 14-month standby loan deal replaces an existing four-year financial aid package agreed in March 2015 and due to expire in five months, the IMF said in a statement.
The agreement must be approved by the IMF board, which will come later in the year after authorities in Kyiv approve a 2019 budget “consistent with IMF staff recommendations and an increase in household gas and heating tariffs,” a step the government had agreed on but never implemented.
But the deal also stresses the need for “continuing to protect low-income households.”
Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman had been seeking the additional financing from the Washington-based lender to help his crisis-hit nation.
Groysman on Friday announced a gas price increase of 23.5 percent to take effect November 1.
He said the “incredible efforts” of Ukrainian negotiators managed to reach a compromise with the IMF and reduce the initial demand to raise prices by 60 percent.
“If we are not able to continue cooperation with our international partners … this could lead to the country being put into default,” he said.
Ukraine has not received any money from the IMF since April 2017, when the fund released $1 billion for the cash-strapped country to repay loans. It had received less than $9 billion of the original $17.5 billion package.
Talks on economic reform measures that would satisfy IMF requirements and allow the release of further aid had been hung up for months, as the fund awaited the government’s approval of a budget, pension reform and an anti-corruption court.
A gas price hike is a sensitive issue for the cash-strapped country as its pro-Western leadership faces presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019.
The IMF said the new loan “will provide an anchor for the authorities’ economic policies during 2019.”
Building on progress under the previous financing package, the loan will “focus in particular on continuing with fiscal consolidation and reducing inflation, as well as reforms to strengthen tax administration, the financial sector and the energy sector,” the IMF said.
An IMF lifeline helped the country to recover from crises sparked by a Russian-backed war in the separatist industrial east that began in April 2014 and has claimed more than 10,000 lives.
The loss of industries in the war zone and flight of foreign investors saw the former Soviet republic’s economy shrink by 17 percent in 2014-2015.
The IMF now forecasts the economy will grow by 3.5 percent this year and 2.7 percent in 2019.
Following the announcement, debt rating agency Standard and Poor’s affirmed the country’s credit score at “B-” with a stable outlook.
“We expect the new arrangement will aid Ukraine’s efforts to cover sizable external debt obligations maturing next year, and also help to anchor macroeconomic policies through the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections,” S&P said in a statement.
The IMF loan is also likely to unlock credit from other international donors, the ratings agency said.
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Hundreds of people have lined up in New York City as rapper Cardi B handed out free winter coats.
The Bronx-born rapper met with residents and fans on Thursday evening at the Marlboro Houses in Brooklyn during brisk fall weather.
The 26-year-old also was given balloons and a cake to celebrate her recent birthday.
Cardi B says she cares a lot about kids and the community and feels it’s important to set a good example.
On Oct. 1, she got a summons in connection with a melee at a New York strip club. Her lawyer says the star didn’t cause any harm.
About three weeks earlier, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj were involved in an altercation at a New York Fashion Week party.
Supermodel Karlie Kloss has married businessman Joshua Kushner.
Kloss posted a photo of her in a wedding dress and Kushner in a tuxedo – both of them beaming – on Instagram and Twitter Thursday night. People magazine reports the couple married at a small ceremony in upstate New York and will have a larger ceremony in the spring.
Kloss’ publicists did not return an email seeking details about the wedding Thursday.
Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and one of his senior advisers.
Kloss has modeled for Victoria’s Secret and numerous luxury brands, and will be the new host of “Project Runway.”
A global financial body says governments worldwide must establish rules for virtual currencies like bitcoin to stop criminals from using them to launder money or finance terrorism.
The Financial Action Task Force said Friday that from next year it will start assessing whether countries are doing enough to fight criminal use of virtual currencies.
Countries that don’t could risk being effectively put on a “gray list” by the FATF, which can scare away investors.
Marshall Billingslea, an assistant U.S. Treasury secretary who holds the FATF’s rotating leadership, said, “We’ve made clear today that every jurisdiction must establish” virtual currency rules. “It’s no longer optional.”
The FATF described how the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have used virtual currencies.
Financial regulators worldwide have struggled to deal with the rise of electronic alternatives to traditional money.
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Facebook has hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to head its global policy and communications teams, enlisting a veteran of European Union politics to help it with increased regulatory scrutiny in the region.
Clegg, 51, will become a vice president of the social media giant, and report to Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Clegg will be called upon to help Facebook and other Silicon Valley stalwarts grapple with a changing regulatory landscape globally. European Union regulators are interested in reining in mostly American tech giants who they blame for avoiding tax, stifling competition and encroaching on privacy rights.
Clegg led the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015, including five years in the coalition government with the Conservatives. He lost his Sheffield Hallam seat at last year’s general election.
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Thousands of Bangladeshi music fans gathered in the capital on Friday to mourn the sudden death of one of the country’s most famous rock stars.
Ayub Bachchu, widely known as AB among his fans, started his music career in 1978 and was one of the pioneers of the celebrated underground rock music scene in Bangladesh.
The 57-year-old was also credited with introducing the blues music genre to Bangladeshi audiences and created several smash-hit rock tracks with his band Love Runs Blind.
He was declared dead at a Dhaka hospital after a cardiac arrest Thursday.
Fans grieved on social media over the passing of Bachchu, one of the major patrons of the rock genre in the conservative South Asian country.
Over 10,000 people took to the streets in the capital’s Shahid Minar neighborhood with flowers to pay homage to the guitar maestro.
“He stood tall and will stand tall with his songs,” said reputed musician Hamin Ahmed.
“He will be missed!”
Bangladesh’s president, prime minister and culture minister also all paid tribute.
Thousands of people attended his funeral prayers for Bachchu in Dhaka before his body was taken to the port city of Chittagong, his hometown, where he will be laid to rest.
“This is an untimely demise of such a legend,” transport minister Obaidul Quader told reporters as he paid homage to the rock star.
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The Syrian government says the ancient city of Palmyra, gravely damaged by IS militants, could reopen to the public next spring. But, while restoration continues on the ground, one French startup is showing people how Palmyra and other cities affected by war once looked, how they look now, and how they might look after restoration. Kevin Enochs explains.
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An observatory in Barrow, Alaska, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has become a key scientific instrument in studying climate change. Established in 1973, the Barrow Observatory is staffed year-round by two researchers who measure and track changes in air quality and weather. Natasha Mozgovaya traveled to Barrow, Alaska, now officially called Utqiagvik, its original Inupiaq name, to see what life is like in one of the coldest and snowiest places in the world.
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A women-to-women investment fund is coming to Britain next month to boost financing for female-owned businesses, its founder said Thursday, as efforts grow to close the gender investing gap.
SheEO has lent more than $2 million to 32 female social entrepreneurs in the United States, Canada and New Zealand to grow their businesses since 2015 in an attempt to address a global gender investment gap.
“Most of the people writing checks and investing are men,” founder Vicki Saunders told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “SheEO wants to fund female innovators with great ideas to create stronger communities and a better world.”
Support for female entrepreneurs
It is the latest venture to support female entrepreneurs around the world, who often face more obstacles than men, including a lack of access to finance, business networks, international markets and role models.
Three out of 10 U.S. businesses are owned by women but they only receive $1 in investment for every $23 that goes to male-led businesses, the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee found in 2014.
A Goldman Sachs-World Bank Group partnership to provide capital to women entrepreneurs in emerging markets reached $1 billion in investments in May.
How it works
SheEO brings together 500 women each year who contribute $1,100 each, which they pool and lend, interest-free, to five women-led businesses of their choice.
The loans are paid back over five years and then loaned out again, creating a perpetual fund that SheEO hopes will grow to $1 billion, with 1 million investors supporting 10,000 women-led ventures.
More than 300 women in Britain wrote to SheEO asking it to launch there, Saunders said ahead of a visit to London where she hopes that 500 female investors will come on board.
Workplace gender equality is in the spotlight in Britain, where just 6 percent of the biggest publicly listed companies are headed by women and pay disparities were revealed at major institutions last year.
Twenty One Toys founder Ilana Ben-Ari, one of the first to get SheEO funding in 2015, said it changed her business, enabling her to push ahead with production and hire staff to help with a stressful workload. Her revenue has now doubled.
“It was easy to get my foot in the door and have a meeting but it was near impossible to have a serious conversation about my business,” she said, describing her efforts to get financing from venture capitalists. “Halfway through that meeting you find out — this isn’t a meeting, this is a date.”
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