Starting this month, Chinese fishing vessels are allowed to exploit the open waters off the Somali coast, following the granting of licenses by Somalia’s government last month. Somali authorities say the permits will reduce illegal foreign fishing and help boost the economy. But Somali fishermen worry the Chinese vessels now have the license to dominate the trade. Mohamed Sheikh Nor reports from Mogadishu.
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Month: January 2019
A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. Those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.
Fewer than three in 10 young Zimbabweans have steady jobs. Many are idle and see no economic opportunity. For some, that leads to problems with alcohol and drugs.
Church leaders, community leaders, and government officials have started warning youths of the impact of drug and alcohol abuse in Zimbabwe and its effect on their physical wellbeing and mental health.
With drug use growing in Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has called for an all-stakeholders meeting on February 1 to come up with possible solutions.
Zimbabwe’s deputy director of Mental Health Services, Dr. Chido Rwafa, says the government cannot deal with the problem of substance abuse alone.
“Alcohol and substance use is a rising problem in all of Africa, and also in Zimbabwe, and it has become one of our top three diagnoses that we are seeing in our mental health unit, so it is becoming a problem. We need a coordinated approach to this problem. It is a multi-sectorial problem. We need a combined effort between government, between non-governmental organizations, with the community itself,” Rwafa said.
Youths are susceptible to peer pressure and can easily gain access to drugs, says Dr. Rwafa. Once hooked on drugs, they also become more likely to engage in criminal activities.
This 20-year-old asked us not to film him when he was smoking cannabis. He says drug use would fall if more people could find employment.
“The best way is just to improve our country economically such that all those people loitering in the streets will find jobs and will be focused. We are going nowhere. Even if you are to look (in the streets), there are some other people damaged (by drugs). Fifty percent of youths in the streets, they can not even work. Their life has been destructed by drugs etc. It is not that they want drug abuse,” Mandizha said.
Roman Catholic Priest Cloudy Maganga is trying to reduce substance abuse by youths by keeping them busy and offering counseling.
“Within our hall, upstairs we are creating what we call a study center for the young people. We will have computers… We have also started what we call the sports for the young people. We have created a volleyball pitch, we have created also a netball pitch for the young people so that when they are free, during their free time, they can be engaged in sports, everyone here. So at least with that we are removing them from being just idle,” Maganga said.
While that may help, when young people have finished playing, they still find themselves unemployed and in the same conditions youths like Takudzwa Mandizha say make them turn to drugs.
A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. As Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.
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The CES 2019 gadget show opened its doors Tuesday, with tech companies from giants to tiny startups showing off their latest products and services.
In recent years, CES’s influence has declined as Apple, Google and other major companies throw their own events to launch new wares. Still, more than 180,000 people from about 150 countries are expected to attend. The sprawling event spans 11 official venues, plus scores of unofficial ones throughout Las Vegas. The four-day show in Las Vegas opened after two days of media previews.
Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground.
Cutting through the babel
Google has transformed CES into a Disney-like theme park – complete with singing animatronic macarons – to showcase new features of its voice-enabled digital assistant.
This includes an “interpreter mode” that enables some of Google’s smart home devices to work as a translator. It’s being piloted at a hotel concierge desk near the Las Vegas tech conference and rolls out to consumer devices in several weeks.
Voice assistants are getting pretty good at translating speech into text, but it’s a thornier challenge in artificial intelligence to enable real-time translation across different languages. Google’s new feature expands upon real-time translation services it’s rolled out to Android phones and headphones over the past year.
This is the second year that Google Assistant had made a huge splash at CES in an effort to outbid Amazon’s Alexa as the voice assistant of choice.
Google this year has an amusement park ride that resembles Disney’s “It’s a Small World,” though on a roller-coaster-like train at slow speeds. Talking and singing characters showcase Google’s various voice-assistant features as visitors ride along.
Google isn’t the only CES exhibitor promising the next generation of instant translation. Chinese AI firm iFlytek has been showing of its translation apps and devices that are already popular among Chinese travelers. And at least two startups, New York-based Waverly Labs and China-based TimeKettle, are promoting their earbuds that work as in-ear translation devices.
Bring that umbrella
IBM is expanding its side job as the world’s meteorologist.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty used a keynote address Tuesday to unveil a new global forecasting system that promises more accurate local weather reports in places that never had them before.
The computing giant owns The Weather Company, which runs popular weather services including weather.com and the Weather Channel and Weather Underground apps (though not the Weather Channel television network). Those apps provide precise and constantly updating forecasts in places like the U.S. and parts of Europe and Japan, but not in most of the world.
IBM says its new forecasting model relies in part on “crowd-sourced” data – barometric pressure readings from millions of smartphones and sensor readings from passing airplanes.
Weather Company CEO Cameron Clayton says the new system is intended to aid IBM’s business providing critical weather data to airlines, energy firms and other industries. But he says it will also have societal benefits, such as helping small farmers in India or parts of Africa yield better crops.
IBM may have trouble persuading some users to agree to transmit atmospheric data to IBM after the city of Los Angeles sued last week to stop the Weather Channel’s data-collection practices. The lawsuit alleges that the company uses location information not just to personalize weather but also to track users’ every step and profit off that information. The company has denied any impropriety with sharing location data collected from users, saying it does disclose what it does.
Samsung wants to bring robots home
Up next for Samsung: a robot that can keep its eye on grandma and grandpa.
The rolling robot, which talks and has two digital eyes on a black screen, can track medicines they take, measure blood pressure and call 911 if it detects a fall.
The company didn’t not say when Samsung Bot Care would be available, but brought the robot out on stage Monday at a presentation at CES. Samsung also said it is working on a robot for stores and another for testing and purifying the air in homes.
Samsung also unveiled TVs, appliances and other high-tech gizmos – but not a foldable phone it hinted at in November. But a startup called Royole did. The Royole FlexPai smartphone was first shown in November but the California-based company has more details. The phone will have a 7.8-inch display that can be folded like a wallet, priced at more than $1,300.
Star delight
Sony brought some star power to CES with a visit from musician Pharrell Williams, straight from trip to Anguilla.
The star of hit songs such as “Happy” came to talk about a mostly secret project that he and Sony are supposedly undertaking. But in the end, it was clearly an attempt by Sony to sprinkle some stardust on launches for TVs and other products.
“I was a little bit worried that he was still on holiday, but he is here,” Sony Music head Rob Stringer told the crowd.
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Facebook has violated Vietnam’s new cybersecurity law by allowing users to post anti-government comments on the platform, state media said on Wednesday, days after the controversial legislation took effect in the communist-ruled country.
Despite economic reforms and increasing openness to social change, Vietnam’s Communist Party retains tight media censorship and does not tolerate dissent.
“Facebook had reportedly not responded to a request to remove fan pages provoking activities against the state,” the official Vietnam News Agency said, citing the Ministry of Information and Communication.
In a statement, a Facebook spokeswoman said, “We have a clear process for governments to report illegal content to us, and we review all these requests against our terms of service and local law.”
She did not elaborate.
The ministry said Facebook also allowed personal accounts to upload posts containing “slanderous” content, anti-government sentiment and defamation of individuals and organizations, the agency added.
“This content had been found to seriously violate Vietnam’s Law on cybersecurity” and government regulations on the management, provision and use of internet services, it quoted the ministry as saying.
Global technology companies and rights groups have earlier said the cybersecurity law, which took effect on Jan. 1 and includes requirements for technology firms to set up local offices and store data locally, could undermine development and stifle innovation in Vietnam.
Company officials have privately expressed concerns that the new law could make it easier for the authorities to seize customer data and expose local employees to arrest.
Facebook had refused to provide information on “fraudulent accounts” to Vietnamese security agencies, the agency said in Wednesday’s report.
The information ministry is also considering taxing Facebook for advertising revenue from the platform.
The report cited a market research company as saying $235 million was spent on advertising on Facebook in Vietnam in 2018, but that Facebook was ignoring its tax obligations there.
In November, Vietnam said it wanted half of social media users on domestic social networks by 2020 and plans to prevent “toxic information” on Facebook and Google.
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The Australian owners of a restaurant in East Timor are hoping to use their passion for the local cuisine to combat malnutrition in the tiny Southeast Asian nation.
East Timor has Asia’s worst rates of child malnutrition, with more than 50 percent of children suffering from stunting – a condition that permanently affects their mental and physical development – according to the United Nations.
But this is not primarily due to a shortage of food – instead, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF blames a lack of education and knowledge about local foods.
Development worker turned restaurateur Mark Notaras said traditional dishes like batar da’an – a kind of corn stew served at his Agora Food Studio restaurant in the capital Dili – were looked down on as “poor people’s food.”
“If you came to visit Timor, you could eat at 150 restaurants and never find it on a menu,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Notaras and his wife, Alva Lim, launched the non-profit Timor-Leste Food Innovators Exchange (TLFIX) last year to educate people across the country about cooking with healthy and local ingredients.
They hope to persuade them to supplement diets of white rice and instant noodles – which provide cheap calories but little nutrition – with the indigenous plants that grow there.
“We encourage people to eat a wider array of foods they already have around them in order to improve their nutrition,” said Notaras.
UNICEF already trains mothers in East Timor to provide more nutritious meals, showing them how to incorporate locally grown carrots and leafy greens into the rice that children are traditionally fed.
Lim and Notaras take a more innovative approach.
“We use food storytelling and food innovation to promote better livelihoods, including through nutrition,” said Notaras.
In doing so, they are joining a worldwide movement to return to local produce as populations have shifted away from traditional diets to increasingly consume imported foods that tend to be cheaper but less nutritious.
Organizations like the Rome-based non-profit Bioversity International are trying to reverse that trend by promoting indigenous crops, such as “Mayan spinach” in Central America.
That requires governments to introduce policies that encourage local crops rather than imports, and individual behaviors may need to change too, said Ronnie Vernooy of Bioversity International.
“People may need to invest more time in going to the local market rather than just the supermarket,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by Skype from the Netherlands.
But it may not be that simple.
Rice grown in East Timor can cost three times as much as the low-quality varieties imported from Vietnam, said Notaras, and changing attitudes and market dynamics could take decades.
Lim said she hoped the people of East Timor could push back against the processed food that has flooded the Philippines, where her family originates, and where “the same few bottled and packet sauces” have become ubiquitous.
“There is a lot of diversity in this region and I will be incredibly sad if it disappears,” she said.
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As marine farming grows worldwide, there is an urgent need to study the effects—both positive and negative—on the local ecosystems. Deana Mitchell visits Tomales Bay in Northern California where researchers are using the latest drone technology to investigate.
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Saxophonist Tia Fuller was crying in bed. And praising God.
She’d just received the news that she was nominated for her first-ever Grammy Award — but it’s not just any nomination: Her inclusion in the best jazz instrumental album category is a historic moment for women because they have rarely been nominated for the coveted award throughout the Grammys’ 61-year history.
And if Fuller wins, she becomes just the second women to take home the prize.
“I feel really blessed. Anytime I think extensively about being in the category and (anything) Grammy-wise, I start tearing up,” said Fuller, this time smiling ear-to-ear with light tears of joy in her eyes. “It’s really a dream come true. I’m realizing that dreams can become reality and everything is tangible.”
Her nominated album, “Diamond Cut,” is a smooth and striking collection that has brought the skilled performer, who once played with Ray Charles during her college years and toured with Beyonce, to the next level. The album, her fifth, was produced by another woman making critical waves in jazz, Terri Lyne Carrington. The drummer, who came to national prominence decades ago in “The Arsenio Hall Show” band, became the first female to win best jazz instrumental album at the 2014 Grammys.
Carrington describes the win as bittersweet because of the “many great female instrumentalists that weren’t nominated ever, so that was really disheartening.”
“It just shows that there’s a lot of work to do when it comes to gender equity in jazz and the music industry in general,” she added.
It’s one of the reasons Carrington, a three-time Grammy winner, is excited for Fuller’s success and has been a mentor to the artist.
“I feel like this record is showing her growth and her evolution,” Carrington said. “If nothing else, I believe that she’s really motivated to keep pushing herself and keep evolving into all that she can be.”
“Diamond Cut” is Fuller’s first album in six years. She’s been busy as a professor at the prestigious Berklee College of Music since 2013, and that decision to move to Boston to fulfill a lifetime dream came at a crossroads: In the same 24-hour period that Fuller was offered the teaching position, Beyonce asked Fuller to perform again with the band.
“That was the year I think they were doing the Super Bowl and she was going back out on tour,” recalled Fuller, who performed with Beyonce from 2006 to 2010.
“While I was on tour with her something came over me and spoke, ‘You have to move in faith and not fear. Don’t be afraid of what may not happen, or get attached to the artificial result of, ‘I’m playing with Beyonce,'” she said. “So the reason why that I ended up not going back is because I realized that it was time for me to move on.”
Fuller’s decision was very Beyonce-like: “She’s always pressing forward. Always growing. Always evolving. …I sat back and I just watched how she would never take ‘no’ for an answer. She would always find a ‘yes.’ And that’s something that now, I’ve incorporated into me being a leader, a band leader, a businesswoman, a professor at Berklee, all of that.”
The 42-year-old, who was born and raised in Aurora, Colorado, has followed in the footsteps of her parents, who are also musicians and educators. Fuller first started playing the piano at three, then moved on to the flute. But once her grandfather handed her a saxophone, she was hooked.
“I was in the upper level of my parent’s house, like the loft. I just remember how it reverberated throughout the house. I was like, ‘Oh this is way better than flute, I can be loud.'”
Fuller has making noise ever since, and doesn’t plan on slowing down. She wants to be a voice for women in jazz, especially instrumentalists, who don’t get as much as credit as the men.
“I’m representative of all of these women out here that are grinding. Terri (Lyne Carrington) served as that for me prior to me even knowing who she was. Seeing her on Arsenio Hall’s show, and then of course hearing her name on the scene, watching her on different TV shows. That was an unspoken, internal narrative that spoke to me, ‘She’s doing it, you can do it,'” she said. “For me, I don’t think it’s necessarily a historical thing, but hopefully I’m a beacon of light for not only other women, but men, too. And also changing this inadvertent narrative, the male, patriarchal perspective in the jazz world, actually in the musical world. (Women) have always had just as much influence over the music.”
Her career — and success — has not come without challenges: “I’ve dealt with sexism, inadvertent sexism, sometimes racism — sometimes a combination of both.”
She recalls coming to New York in the early 2000s to build buzz as a performer, going from jazz club to jazz club to share her music and sound with listeners. “There was a long line of people, of course I’m the only woman up there, so I go onstage and I’m about to play and somebody just cuts me off and starts playing. That was like my first year. That was the first and last time that happened.”
She’s also faced people assuming she’s dating a successful musician to justify her seat at the table, or “even club owners trying to hit on you, not taking you as serious.”
But Fuller has preserved, and she’s using her role as a teacher to help change the narrative in jazz, and in music.
“I was directing a band full of young men. I’m like, ‘What is your job and what is your role in this whole thing?’ You can’t just sit back passively,” she said. “Accountability to me is key for not only women to hold men accountable, but for men to hold their brothers accountable.”
In 2017, along with Carrington and 12 other female artists, Fuller developed We Have Voice, a collective that has created a code of conduct that performing arts venues, jazz festivals, schools and others have adopted. The goal, she said, is “to bring the level of consciousness up.”
“I think slowly but surely we’re doing the work and there is some shift happening,” she said. “I especially see it with my students and the younger generation. That’s something that’s near and dear to my heart. I’m seeing the pain, psychological, physical, emotional pain that it’s caused with women and sometimes men, too.”
And in between the teaching and playing — she’s also busy dress shopping for her big day at the Grammys, taking place Feb. 10 in Los Angeles.
“I actually reached out to one of Beyonce’s stylists and he responded, so he’s going to help and connect me with some of his designers,” she said. “I’m trying to find a healthy mix between making a statement and me being me.”
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An asteroid-circling spacecraft has captured a cool snapshot of home.
NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft took the picture days before going into orbit around asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve.
The tiny asteroid — barely one-third of a mile (500 meters) across — appears as a big bright blob in the long-exposure photo released last week. Seventy million miles (110 million kilometers) away, Earth appears as a white dot, with the moon an even smaller dot but still clearly visible.
Osiris-Rex is the first spacecraft to orbit such a small celestial body, and from such a close distance — about a mile (1,600 meters) out.
Next year, Osiris-Rex will attempt to gather some samples from the carbon-rich asteroid, for return to Earth in 2023.
Osiris-Rex launched from Florida in 2016.
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One of America’s sweethearts hands the torch to another when Tom Hanks presents Alan Alda with a lifetime achievement award at the upcoming Screen Actors Guild Award ceremony.
The 82-year-old Alda, a Golden Globe- and Emmy-winner, will become the 55th recipient of the annual award given to an actor who fosters the “finest ideals of the acting profession.” Hanks will hand it to him in a Jan. 27 ceremony.
“I’m so thrilled that Tom agreed to that. I had no idea they were even asking him. And it’s so generous of him,” Alda told The Associated Press.
Alda and Hanks worked together on the film Bridge of Spies, and Alda said they “have run into each other casually over the years at awards ceremonies and on airplanes and things like that. So, I remember him when he was just a kid.”
Throughout a career that has spanned seven decades, Alda has appeared in The West Wing, The Aviator and Manhattan Murder Mystery, but is perhaps best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the television series MAS*H. Alda has won six Emmy Awards and was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2004 for his role in The Aviator.
Alda has also been involved in numerous charities and organizations that have supported children’s causes, women’s issues and the sciences. The latter inspired the formation of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York.
That combined with his affable personality has earned Alda his “nice guy” reputation over the years. He jokes that the “niceness” compensates for a profession that is not always viewed kindly.
“It’s a counterbalance, I guess, to the rowdy reputation that a lot of actors have had over the last couple of hundred years, including the guy who shot Lincoln. So it’s good to balance the reputations of the acting profession,” Alda said.
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Jordan Peele’s “Us,” his anticipated follow-up to “Get Out,” will make its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival
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The U.S. cancer death rate has hit a milestone: It’s been falling for at least 25 years, according to a new report.
Lower smoking rates are translating into fewer deaths. Advances in early detection and treatment also are having a positive impact, experts say.
But it’s not all good news. Obesity-related cancer deaths are rising, and prostate cancer deaths are no longer dropping, said Rebecca Siegel, lead author of the American Cancer Society report published Tuesday.
Cancer also remains the nation’s No. 2 killer. The society predicts there will be more than 1.7 million new cancer cases, and more than 600,000 cancer deaths, in the U.S. this year.
A breakdown of what the report says:
Decline
There’s been a lot of bad news recently regarding U.S. death rates. In 2017, increases were seen in fatalities from seven of the 10 leading causes of death, according to recently released government data. But cancer has been something of a bright spot.
The nation’s cancer death rate was increasing until the early 1990s. It has been dropping since, falling 27 percent between 1991 and 2016, the Cancer Society reported.
Lung cancer is the main reason. Among cancers, it has long killed the most people, especially men. But the lung cancer death rate dropped by nearly 50 percent among men since 1991. It was a delayed effect from a decline in smoking that began in the 1960s, Siegel said.
Prostate cancer
The report has some mixed news about prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in men.
The prostate cancer death rate fell by half over two decades, but experts have been wondering whether the trend changed after a 2011 decision by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to stop recommending routine testing of men using the PSA blood test. That decision was prompted by concerns the test was leading to overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
The prostate cancer death rate flattened from 2013 to 2016. So, while the PSA testing may have surfaced cases that didn’t actually need treatment, it may also have prevented some cancer deaths, the report suggests.
Obesity
Of the most common types of cancer in the U.S., all the ones with increasing death rates are linked to obesity, including cancers of the pancreas and uterus.
Another is liver cancer. Liver cancer deaths have been increasing since the 1970s, and initially most of the increase was tied to hepatitis C infections spread among people who abuse drugs. But now obesity accounts for a third of liver cancer deaths, and is more of a factor than hepatitis, Siegel said.
The nation’s growing obesity epidemic was first identified as a problem in the 1990s. It can take decades to see how a risk factor influences cancer rates, “so we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the effect of the obesity epidemic on cancer,” Siegel said.
Disparity
There’s been a decline in the historic racial gap in cancer death rates, but an economic gap is growing — especially when it comes to deaths that could be prevented by early screening and treatment, better eating and less smoking.
In the early 1970s, colon cancer death rates in the poorest counties were 20 percent lower than those in affluent counties; now they’re 30 percent higher. Cervical cancer deaths are twice as high for women in poor counties now, compared with women in affluent counties. And lung and liver cancer death rates are 40 percent higher for men in poor counties.
Dr. Darrell Gray, deputy director of Ohio State University’s Center for Cancer Health Equity, called the findings “important but not surprising.”
“We’ve known for some time that race is a surrogate” for other factors, like poverty and difficulty getting to — or paying for — doctor’s appointments, he said.
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The World Bank is downgrading its outlook for the global economy this year, citing rising trade tension, weakening manufacturing activity and growing financial stress in emerging-market countries.
In a report titled “Darkening Skies,” the anti-poverty agency said Tuesday that it expects the world economy to grow 2.9 percent in 2019, down from the 3 percent it forecast back in June. It would be the second straight year of slowing growth: The global economy expanded 3 percent last year and 3.1 percent in 2017.
‘Risks are rising’
“Global growth is slowing, and the risks are rising,” Ayhan Kose, the World Bank economist who oversees forecasts, said in an interview. “In 2017, the global economy was pretty much firing on all cylinders. In 2018, the engines started sputtering.”
The bank left its forecast for the U.S. economy unchanged at 2.5 percent this year, down from 2.9 percent in 2018. It predicts 1.6 percent growth for the 19 countries that use the euro currency, down from 1.9 percent last year; and 6.2 percent growth for China, the world’s second-biggest economy, versus 6.5 percent in 2018.
The bank upgraded expectations for the Japanese economy, lifting its growth forecast to 0.9 percent, up from 0.8 percent in 2018.
President Donald Trump, declaring that years of U.S. support for free trade had cost America jobs, last year slapped import taxes on foreign dishwashers, solar panels, steel, aluminum and $250 billion in Chinese products. Other countries retaliated with tariffs of their own in disputes that have yet to be resolved.
The exchange of tariffs is taking a toll on world trade. The bank predicts that the growth of world trade will slow to 3.6 percent this year from 3.8 percent in 2018 and 5.4 percent in 2017. Slowing trade is hurting manufacturers around the world.
Rising interest rates
Rising interest rates are also pinching emerging-market governments and companies that borrowed heavily when rates were ultra-low in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 Great Recession. As the debts roll over, those borrowers have to refinance at higher rates. A rising dollar is also making things harder for emerging-market borrowers who took out loans denominated in the U.S. currency.
“Now debt service is eating into government revenues, making it more difficult (for governments) to fund essential social services,” said World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva, who will replace bank president Jim Yong Kim on an interim basis when he leaves at the end of January.
The bank slashed its forecast for 2019 growth for Turkey, Argentina, Iran and Pakistan, among others.
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Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will go on trial in Manhattan on May 6 on charges of sexually assaulting two women, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Weinstein is accused of forcibly performing oral sex on a woman in July 2006 and raping another woman in March 2013. He faces five charges, including rape, and a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
More than 70 women, mostly young actresses and others in the movie business, have accused Weinstein, 66, of sexual assaults dating back decades. The scandal helped launch the #MeToo movement, in which hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in entertainment, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct.
Weinstein, who pleaded not guilty after his arrest last May, has denied all the accusations, saying any sexual encounters were consensual.
The New York prosecution, which was brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, is the only criminal case to emerge from those allegations to date.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, confirmed the trial date in an email on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Weinstein is due back in court for a pretrial conference on March 7.
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In rural Malawi, families send girls as young as 12 years old for “initiation,” a traditional, cultural practice that marks a child’s entry into adulthood. But child rights campaigners say the ritual entices young girls into early sex, marriage, and teenage pregnancy — forcing many to drop out of school. One local organization is seeking to change this by teaching initiation counselors to give girls age-appropriate information.
Madalitso Makosa was 13 years old when she underwent a traditional, Malawian initiation ritual to become an adult.
She says after the initiation ceremony, the counselors advised her to perform a Kusasa Fumbi or “removing the dust” ritual with a man of my choice. She chose to sleep with her former boyfriend but, unfortunately, became pregnant.
“Removing the dust” refers to a girl losing her virginity, often without protection, to become an adult. Those who become teenage mothers pay the price for this tradition.
Makosa says when she discovered she was pregnant, she was devastated because she had to drop out of school. She is now struggling to get support to take care of her baby. She wished she had continued with her education.”
During the initiation, counselors show how they prepare girls for marriage and for sex.
Agnes Matemba, is an initiation counselor.
She says she gives girls these lessons so that they should keep their man and prevent him from going out to look for another woman. Because, if he goes out and finds excitement in other women, he is likely to dump her.
Child rights campaigners say the initiation ritual fuels Malawi’s high rate of child marriage. Half the girls here marry before age 18.
Malawian group Youthnet and Counselling, YONECO, wants to keep girls in school with a more age-appropriate initiation ritual.
MacBain Mkandawire is YONECO’s executive director.
“This is a traditional cultural thing that people believe in, and it will be very difficult to just say let us end initiation ceremonies,” Mkandawire said. “But what we are saying is that can we package the curriculum in such way the young people are accessing the correct curriculum at the correct time?”
YONECO is working with initiation counselors and traditional leaders to tone down Malawi’s initiations. Already, some areas are banning the practice of encouraging sex after the ceremony.
Aidah Deleza is also known as Senior Chief Chikumbu.
“We say no, no, no,” Chikumbu said. “This is why we have a lot of girls drop out from school, that is why the population has just shot so high just because of that, just because a lot of girls now they have got babies, most of them they are not in marriage.”
To further discourage teenage pregnancy, traditional leaders like Chikumbu are dividing girls’ initiation rituals into two camps.
One is a simple ceremony for teenage girls like Makosa, while the other provides some sex education for older girls who are preparing to marry.
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Peru Attorney General Pedro Chavarry resigned on Tuesday after a public outcry over his handling of the high-profile corruption investigation involving Brazilian builder Odebrecht.
His departure from the public prosecutors office marks a fresh victory for President Martin Vizcarra and supporters of his measures to uproot entrenched corruption in one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies.
Chavarry prompted widespread scorn and days of street protests after he announced on New Year’s Eve that he was removing two lead prosecutors from the Odebrecht inquiry, which has targeted former presidents and presidential candidates.
Vizcarra responded by sending Congress legislation to suspend Chavarry and overhaul the prosecutor’s office.
Resignation protects prosecutor?
Chavarry denied he was trying to meddle in the investigation and said he was stepping down to protect the independence of the prosecutor’s office, which he portrayed in his resignation letter as under attack by Vizcarra’s government.
Vizcarra had repeatedly called for Chavarry to step down since he was appointed by a panel of prosecutors in July despite his ties to an alleged criminal group of judges, lawmakers and businessmen. Chavarry was later named by a prosecutor in his office as a suspect in the probe. He denies wrongdoing.
A former vice president, Vizcarra has made fighting corruption a focus of his government since taking office last year to replace Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who stepped down in one of several graft scandals to grip Peru in recent years.
Vizcarra, however, lacked the authority to dismiss Chavarry. Under Peru’s constitution, only Congress, where Chavarry enjoyed support with the opposition majority, can oust the attorney general.
Avalos is acting attorney general
Supreme Prosecutor Zoraida Avalos, one of several prominent prosecutors to call for Chavarry to resign in the past week, was named as acting attorney general on Tuesday.
The prosecutors whom Chavarry had dismissed last week — Rafael Vela and Jose Domingo Perez — were reinstated amid the outcry.
The two are seen as pivotal figures in the Odebrecht investigation and recently drew up a plea deal that commits the company to providing evidence on about $30 million in bribes it acknowledges it paid to local politicians.
‘Car Wash’ probe
Odebrecht is at the center of the “Car Wash” investigation in Brazil, which has rippled across Latin America and which U.S. prosecutors have said is the biggest political graft scheme ever uncovered.
In late 2016, Odebrecht acknowledged it had paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in a dozen countries to secure public works contracts dating back over a decade. The company has committed to paying billions of dollars in fines.
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Labor rights campaigners warned against complacency as the European Union on Tuesday withdrew its threat to ban Thai fishing imports into the bloc, saying that the country has made progress in tackling illegal and unregulated fishing.
The EU’s so-called “yellow card” on Thai fishing exports has been in place since April 2015 as a warning that the country was not sufficiently addressing the issues.
“Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing damages global fish stocks, but it also hurts the people living from the sea, especially those already vulnerable to poverty,” Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for environment and fisheries said.
“Today’s decision reverses the first step of a process that could have led to a complete import ban of marine fisheries products into the EU,” he said in a statement.
Thailand has amended its fisheries legal framework in line with international law, and improved its monitoring and surveillance systems, including remote monitoring of fishing activities and more robust inspections at port, the EU said.
The country’s multibillion-dollar seafood industry has also come under scrutiny for slavery, trafficking and violence on fishing boats and at onshore processing facilities.
After the EU threatened to ban fish exports, and the U.S. State Department said it was failing to tackle human trafficking, the Southeast Asian country toughened up its laws and increased fines for violations.
Thailand has introduced modern technologies — from satellites to optical scanning and electronic payment services — to crack down on abuses.
But the International Labor Organization said in March that fishermen remained at risk of forced labor, and the wages of some continued to be withheld.
The EU on Tuesday said it recognized efforts by Thailand to tackle human trafficking and to improve labor conditions in the fishing sector.
Thailand voted in December to ratify ILO convention 188 — which sets standards of decent work in the fishing industry — becoming the first Asian country to do so.
But important gaps remain, said Steve Trent, executive director at advocacy group Environmental Justice Foundation.
“We still have concerns about the workers. We need to see that the reforms are durable,” he said.
Thailand is yet to ratify two other ILO conventions on the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining, both of which are essential to protect workers, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
This is particularly important in the fishing and seafood processing industries, as most of their estimated 600,000 workers are migrant workers.
“There is a risk that with the lifting of the yellow card, complacency will set in. We need to see a culture of compliance, and more being done to protect vulnerable workers in the industry,” Trent said.
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Forest fires caused by climate change are costing insurers more than ever, with the deadly fire that ravaged northern California the single most expensive natural disaster in 2018, Munich Re said in its catastrophe report Tuesday.
The California wildfire that devastated the small town of Paradise in November caused losses of $16.5 billion, of which $12.5 billion were insured.
Worldwide natural disasters caused $160 billion in economic damage in 2018. That was down from $350 billion the previous year, but a number of devastating hurricanes had contributed to the high losses in 2017.
Insurers and reinsurers paid out $80 billion for natural disaster claims last year, down from $140 billion a year earlier but almost double the 30-year average of $41 billion, the reinsurer said.
Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said that 2018 was marked by several severe natural disasters with high insured losses.
“These include the unusual coincidence of severe cyclones in the U.S. and Japan, and devastating forest fires in California,” he said, adding that climate change appears to be making such large fires more common.
Insurers spent $18 billion on two huge fires in the United States in 2018 — equivalent to one in every four dollars they paid out as a result of natural disasters.
Ernst Rauch, the reinsurer’s chief climatologist, told Reuters that forest fires were entering a whole new dimension, costing tens of billions of dollars.
“Higher and higher temperatures are leading to ever greater droughts, and high humidity in the winter means that shrubbery grows quickly, creating an easily flammable material in dry summers,” he said.
Rauch said it was questionable whether areas at high risk could continue to be populated without taking additional measures, such as building houses farther from forests and with better safety standards.
Reinsurers act as a financial backstop to insurance companies, paying a chunk of the big claims for storms or earthquakes in exchange for part of the policy premiums.
The review gave no claims figures for Munich Re itself. The reinsurer is due to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 6.
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