The life history of Holocaust survivors is being kept alive in a very real and personal way with the help of technology. Imagine speaking to a video image of a genocide survivor and getting answers back as if you’re having a conversation with the real person. That is now possible with a project called Dimensions in Testimony developed by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details on how it works.
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Day: February 20, 2019
At home in the United States, Kerrie Springer takes pride in being environmentally conscious. So when she booked a week’s getaway at the Bucuti and Tara Beach Resort in Aruba, she choose the “green stay” option, agreeing to reuse her sheets and towels rather than have them changed each day.
“You don’t do that at home, so why do it at a resort?” asked Springer, who visited the resort with her husband. “Water in the Caribbean is precious, so why use it if you do not have to?”
Environmentally friendly tourism options — available at a growing string of hotels across the Caribbean — are proving popular with tourists, helping curb climate change and waste, industry groups say.
The Bucuti and Tara resort last August was certified as 100 percent carbon neutral by Natural Capital Partners, an international organization that works to promote low-carbon sustainable development.
The resort, established by Austrian Ewald Biemans in 1987, after he moved to Aruba in the 1960s, is known for its use of renewable energy, smaller portions at meal time to reduce food waste, and reuseable containers for everything from ketchup to shampoo.
Those kinds of changes are catching on around the Caribbean, with a range of hotels and resorts eliminating single-use plastics such as straws, water bottles and shampoo containers.
Others are switching to more efficient air conditioners and refrigerators and installing LED lights, officials say.
The push is part of an ongoing effort to make tourism in the region greener, said Amanda Charles, a sustainable tourism development specialist at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO).
Less Energy, Lower Bills
Loreto Duffy-Mayers, who works with Charles on hotel energy audits, said efforts to improve energy efficiency, for instance, have helped many hotels cut their energy bills 30 to 50 percent.
The Paradise Island Beach Club in the Bahamas was able to slash its energy costs, saving about a quarter million dollars a year, through measures such as installing air conditioners that turn off when a room is cool enough and unplugging unused refrigerators, she said.
The CTO’s members are 24 countries throughout the English, French and Dutch Caribbean whose economies are heavily dependent on tourism.
Charles said the group encourages members to focus on providing three kinds of benefits in their countries: environmental, social and economic.
In Aruba, for instance, tourism provides over 90 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product – and, by extension, most of its employment and tax revenue, said Frank Comito, director general of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA).
That revenue in turn funds schools, healthcare and other public services, he said.
Because the country’s sea, sun and natural beauty is the primary driver for tourism, places like Aruba also have enacted policies to conserve water and electricity and protect the environment, he said.
Comito said the hotel and tourism association offers regular webinars on sustainability issues, including waste management, sustainable design, and climate change, and guides members through environmental certification programs.
It also holds disaster risk preparedness workshops for its members – from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Jamaica – to help them prepare for worsening climate-related risks.
Charles acknowledges, however, that raising environmental awareness in the tourism sector remains a work in progress.
“Most of the CTO’s member countries have a higher budget for marketing than one for sustainable tourism initiatives,” she admitted.
High turnover among hotel staff – particularly housekeepers – can also make it difficult to ensure that green changes brought in continue to be fully implemented, she said.
But changes slowly are taking root. Biemans, of the Bucuti and Tara, said water at his resort is recycled and solar panels provide 20 percent of the facility’s electricity needs.
The resort also buys another 22 percent of its energy from a wind farm operated by the Aruban government, he said.
“We reuse every drop of water. Our meal portions are about 30 percent less and people are actually pleased with it. We do not have a single complaint. And our food waste is reused by pig farms on the island,” Biemans said. “It is good for business, the staff and customers. It saves the environment as much as it saves money. The customer has to pay less for the room, we have to pay less for energy — and in the end everybody benefits.”
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Ford Motor Co. said on Tuesday it will close its oldest factory in Brazil and exit its heavy commercial truck business in South America, a move that could cost more than 2,700 jobs as part of a restructuring meant to end losses around the world.
Ford previously said the global reorganization, to impact thousands of jobs and possible plant closures in Europe, would result in $11 billion in charges.
Following that announcement, analysts and investors had expected a similar restructuring in South America. Ford Chief Executive Jim Hackett said last month that investors would not have to wait long for the South American reorganization plan.
The factory slated for closure is in Sao Bernardo do Campo, an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo that has operated since 1967.
It first produced a number of auto models before being switched predominantly to trucks in 2001. It makes the F-4000 and F-350 trucks, as well as the Fiesta small car, a sales laggard.
The factory closure may mean Ford is refocusing on the core of its car business in Latin America’s largest economy, based in a much newer factory in the northeastern state of Bahia. But the job cuts in Brazil’s industrial heartland represent a psychological blow for the new administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, which is battling an unemployment rate above 11 percent.
Ford’s latest cuts come as investors watch for signs of progress on the company’s alliance with Volkswagen AG, which already encompasses commercial vans and pickup trucks but may soon expand into electric and self-driving cars. The two automakers have also pledged to work together on other projects, which could include combining capacity in regions like South America.
Ford shares closed up 3.4 percent at $8.83 in New York.
“You can’t cost cut your way to prosperity in the long term,” said David Kudla, who heads Michigan-based Mainstay Capital Management, a firm that previously owned Ford stock. “We want to hear about the future, what you’re doing for mobility services and autonomous vehicles.”
The closure is also a blow to the industrial outskirts of Sao Paulo, where Brazil’s automotive industry was born and which long drove its industrial growth. It is also where imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva came to fame as a union leader who organized massive strikes that helped harken the end of the military dictatorship.
The union in Sao Bernardo did not have an immediate comment.
But Sao Bernardo Mayor Orlando Morando complained angrily that Ford gave no warning and failed to discuss the closure with the workers.
“The 2,800 families directly affected and another 2,000 indirectly affected deserved a chance to react. This is an act of cowardice,” Morando’s office said in a statement.
A Ford spokesman declined to provide a precise figure for job cuts but acknowledged there would be “a significant impact” and said the automaker would work with unions and other affected parties on “next steps.”
Ford South America President Lyle Watters said on Tuesday the automaker remains “committed” to South America, a region where it is not currently profitable.
Slow Growth
Sales of Ford cars and light trucks grew by 10 percent between 2017 and 2018 in Brazil, lagging a 15 percent post-recession increase for the industry as a whole.
In the trucks business, it ranked fourth, with sales less than half those of Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen.
Ford said in October it would stop building its Focus compact cars in Argentina in May 2019 as part of efforts to end its losses in the region.
Kleiton Da Silva, an employee and union representative in Ford’s surviving Bahia plant, said the carmaker was in talks to cut 650 of its workforce there, which the automaker has said totals 4,604.
The No. 2 U.S. automaker expects to record pre-tax special charges of about $460 million, with most of that recorded this year, it said in the statement.
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