Day: February 27, 2019

Walmart Is Eliminating Greeters, Worrying Disabled Workers

As Walmart moves to phase out its familiar blue-vested “greeters” at 1,000 stores nationwide, disabled workers who fill many of those jobs say they’re being ill-treated by a chain that styles itself as community-minded and inclusive. 

 

Walmart told greeters around the country last week that their positions would be eliminated on April 26 in favor of an expanded, more physically demanding “customer host” role. To qualify, they will need to be able to lift 25-pound (11-kilogram) packages, climb ladders and stand for long periods. 

 

That came as a heavy blow to greeters with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and other physical disabilities. For them, a job at Walmart has provided needed income, served as a source of pride and offered a connection to the community.  

Customer backlash

 

Now Walmart, America’s largest private employer, is facing a backlash as customers rally around some of the chain’s most highly visible employees. 

 

Walmart says it is striving to place greeters in other jobs at the company, but workers with disabilities are worried.  

 

Donny Fagnano, 56, who has worked at Walmart for more than 21 years, said he cried when a manager at the store in Lewisburg, Pa., called him into the office last week and told him his job was going away.  

 

“I like working,” he said. “It’s better than sitting at home.” 

 

Fagnano, who has spina bifida, said he was offered a severance package. He hopes to stay on at Walmart and clean bathrooms instead. 

 

Walmart greeters have been around for decades, allowing the retail giant to put a friendly face at the front of its stores. Then, in 2016, Walmart began replacing greeters with hosts, adding responsibilities that include helping with returns, checking receipts to deter shoplifters and keeping the front of the store clean. Walmart and other chains have been redefining roles at stores as they compete with Amazon.  

The effect of the greeter phase-out on disabled and elderly employees — who have traditionally gravitated toward the role as one they were well-suited to doing — largely escaped public notice until last week, when Walmart launched a second round of cuts. 

 

As word spread, first on social media and then in local and national news outlets, outraged customers began calling Walmart to complain. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions. Facebook groups sprang up with names like “Team Adam” and “Save Lesley.” A second-grade class in California wrote letters to Walmart’s CEO on behalf of Adam Catlin, a disabled greeter in Pennsylvania whose mother had written an impassioned Facebook post about his plight. Walmart said it has offered another job to Catlin. 

 

In Galena, Ill., hundreds of customers plan to attend an “appreciation parade” for Ashley Powell on her last day of work as a greeter. 

 

“I love it, and I think I’ve touched a lot of people,” said Powell, 34, who has an intellectual disability. 

‘What am I going to do?’

 

In Vancouver, Wash., John Combs, 42, who has cerebral palsy, was devastated and then angered by his impending job loss. It had taken his family five years to find him a job he could do, and he loved the work, coming up with nicknames for all his co-workers. 

“What am I going to do — just sit here on my butt all day in this house? That’s all I’m going to do?” Combs asked his sister and guardian, Rachel Wasser. “I do my job. I didn’t do anything wrong.” 

 

Wasser urged the retailer to “give these people a fair shake. … If you want to make your actions match your words, do it. Don’t be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” 

 

With the U.S. unemployment rate for disabled people more than twice that for workers without disabilities, Walmart has long been seen as a destination for people like Combs. Advocacy groups worry the company is backsliding.  

“It’s the messaging that concerns me,” said Gabrielle Sedor, chief operations officer at ANCOR, a trade group representing service providers. “Given that Walmart is such an international leader in the retail space, I’m concerned this decision might suggest to some people that the bottom line of the company is more important to the company than inclusive communities. We don’t think those two are mutually exclusive.” 

 

The greeter issue has already prompted at least three complaints to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as a federal lawsuit in Utah alleging discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the federal law, employers must provide “reasonable” accommodations to workers with disabilities. 

 

Walmart did not disclose how many disabled greeters could lose their jobs. The company said that after it made the change at more than 1,000 stores in 2016, 80 percent to 85 percent of all affected greeters found other roles at Walmart. It did not reveal how many of them were disabled. 

 

This time, Walmart initially told greeters they would have 60 days to land other jobs at the company. Amid the uproar, the company has extended the deadline indefinitely for greeters with disabilities. 

 

“We recognize that our associates with physical disabilities face a unique situation,” Walmart spokesman Justin Rushing said in a statement. The extra time, he said, will give Walmart a chance to explore how to accommodate such employees. 

Offers made

 

Walmart said it has already made offers to some greeters, including those with physical disabilities, and expects to continue doing so in the coming weeks.  

 

But some workers say they have been tacitly discouraged from applying for other jobs. 

 

Mitchell Hartzell, 31, a full-time Walmart greeter in Hazel Green, Ala., said his manager told him “they pretty much didn’t have anything in that store for me to do” after his job winds down in April. He said he persisted, approaching several assistant managers to ask about openings, and found out about a vacant position at self-checkout. But it had already been promised to a greeter who doesn’t use a wheelchair, he said. 

 

“It seems like they don’t want us anymore,” said Hartzell, who has cerebral palsy. 

 

Jay Melton, 40, who has worked as a greeter in Marion, N.C., for nearly 17 years, loves church, Tar Heels basketball and Walmart. His sister-in-law, Jamie Melton, said the job is what gets him out of bed. 

 

“He doesn’t have a lot of things he does himself that bring him joy,” she said. Addressing Walmart, Melton added: “When you cut a huge population of people out, and you have written a policy that declares they are no longer capable of doing what they have been doing, that is discrimination.”  

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World Bank: Women Have Just 75 Percent of Men’s Legal Rights

Women around the world are granted only three-quarters of the legal rights enjoyed by men, often preventing them from getting jobs or opening businesses, the World Bank said in study published Wednesday. 

 

“If women have equal opportunities to reach their full potential, the world would not only be fairer, it would be more prosperous as well,” Kristalina Georgieva, the bank’s interim president, said in a statement. 

 

While reforms in many countries are a step in the right direction, “2.7 billion women are still legally barred from having the same choice of jobs as men,” the statement said. 

 

The study included an index measuring gender disparities that was derived from data collected over a decade from 187 countries and using eight indicators to evaluate the balance of rights afforded to men and women. 

 

The report showed progress over the past 10 years, with the index rising to 75 from 70, out of a possible 100, as 131 countries have agreed to enact 274 reforms, adopting laws or regulations allowing greater inclusion of women. 

 

Among the improvements, 35 countries have proposed laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, granting protections to an additional 2 billion women, while 22 nations have abolished restrictions that kept women out of certain industrial sectors. 

 

Six perfect scores

Six nations — Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden — scored a 100, “meaning they give women and men equal legal rights in the measured areas,” the World Bank said. 

 

A decade ago, no economy had achieved a perfect score. 

 

On the other hand, too many women still face discriminatory laws or regulations at every stage of their professional lives: 56 nations made no improvement over the last decade. 

 

South Asia saw the greatest progress, although it still achieved a relatively low score of 58.36. It was followed by Southeast Asia and the Pacific, at 70.73 and 64.80, respectively.  

 

Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the second-highest scores among emerging and developing economies at 79.09. 

 

Conversely, the Middle East and North Africa posted the lowest score for gender equality at 47.37. The World Bank nevertheless pointed to encouraging changes, such as the introduction of laws against domestic violence, in particular in Algeria and Lebanon.

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On World Polar Bear Day Climatologists Sound the Alarm

Wednesday marked World Polar Bear Day – an annual opportunity for conservationists to shed light on the status of the largest and most carnivorous member of the bear family. As VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports, climate change is threatening polar bear habitat and the very future of the species in the wild.

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TikTok Fined in US for Illegally Gathering Children’s Data 

The fast-growing, Chinese-owned video sharing network TikTok agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine to U.S. authorities to settle charges that it illegally collected personal information from children, officials said Wednesday. 

 

The Federal Trade Commission said the penalty for the social network, which had been known as Musical.ly, was the largest ever in a children’s privacy investigation. 

 

The social network, which has been surging in popularity with young smartphone users and taking over from rivals like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, failed to obtain parental consent from its underage users as required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, FTC officials said. 

 

The operators of TikTok “knew many children were using the app, but they still failed to seek parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons.  

No tolerance for lawbreakers

 

“This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law.” 

 

TikTok claimed 500 million users worldwide last year, making it one of the most popular worldwide apps. 

 

Owned by China’s ByteDance, it expanded its reach in the U.S. with the merger with Musical.ly. 

 

Teens have been flocking to the service, which allows them to create and share videos of 15 seconds.  

According to the FTC, the company required users to provide an email address, phone number, username, first and last name, a short biography, and a profile picture. 

 

The consumer protection regulator said 65 million accounts have been registered in the United States. 

 

Officials said the company knew that many of its users were under 13 and should have taken greater precautions. 

 

“In our view, these practices reflected the company’s willingness to pursue growth even at the expense of endangering children,” said a statement from FTC Commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. 

 

“The agency secured a record-setting civil penalty and deletion of ill-gotten data, as well as other remedies to stop this egregious conduct.” 

Suggestive content

 

TikTok has faced criticism around the world for featuring sexually suggestive content inappropriate for children. 

 

TikTok said in a statement it would create a “separate app experience” for younger users with additional privacy protections as part of its agreement with regulators. 

 

“It’s our priority to create a safe and welcoming experience for all of our users, and as we developed the global TikTok platform, we’ve been committed to creating measures to further protect our user community — including tools for parents to protect their teens and for users to enable additional privacy settings,” the statement said.

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Fed to Stop Shrinking Portfolio This Year, Powell Says 

The Federal Reserve will stop shrinking its $4 trillion balance sheet later this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday, ending a process that investors say works at cross-purposes with the Fed’s current pause on interest rate hikes. 

“We’ve worked out, I think, the framework of a plan that we hope to be able to announce soon that will light the way all the way to the end of balance sheet normalization,” Powell told members of the House Financial Services Committee in what were his most detailed remarks to date on the subject. 

“We’re going to be in a position … to stop runoff later this year,” he said, adding that doing so would leave the balance sheet at about 16 percent or 17 percent of GDP, up from about 6 percent before the financial crisis about a decade ago. 

The U.S. gross domestic product is currently about $20 trillion, suggesting the Fed’s balance sheet would be between $3.2 trillion and $3.4 trillion. 

The Fed has been trimming its balance sheet — bulked up by trillions of dollars of bond-buying during the post-crisis years to help keep interest rates low and bolster the economy — by as much as $50 billion a month since October 2017. As recently as a few months ago it had expected to keep shrinking its portfolio for another couple of years. 

New tack

But in a series of meetings that began in November, the Fed has been devising a new approach. With rising demand for currency around the world, and from U.S. banks for reserves held at the central bank, Fed policymakers now believe a big balance sheet is necessary just to ensure it has proper control over the short-term interest rates it sets to manage the economy. 

In addition, Fed policymakers now say balance sheet policy should take financial and economic conditions into account. 

Questions about the plan remain, including whether the Fed will adjust the maturities of its Treasury portfolio, and how it will go about shedding the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) it accumulated during its asset-buying days. 

Powell said the Fed still has a bunch of decisions ahead of it. 

“The one on MBS sales is really closer to the back of the line — really, we have to decide about the maturity composition, things like that, and we’ll be working through that in a very careful way,” Powell said.  “Markets are sensitive to this.” 

Powell’s remarks on the balance sheet came toward the end of more than two hours of testimony before the Democrat-led House panel that includes several new members, including New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

But the Green New Deal advocate and Bronx populist asked no questions during the debate, and much of what Powell said on Wednesday repeated comments made Tuesday to the Republican-controlled Senate Banking Committee, including that the economy is on solid ground and the Fed would be patient on raising rates. 

Inflation goal unchanged

Powell was asked, as he was in the Senate, about the Fed’s plan to rethink its policy framework this year. He assured lawmakers that the Fed is merely trying to refine its approach so it can meet its current 2 percent inflation goal. 

“We are not looking at a higher inflation target, full stop,” he said. 

Powell also repeated his warnings against a failure by Congress to raise the debt ceiling, saying there would be “bad consequences” should the United States default on its debt payments. 

Powell by law appears two times a year before Congress to brief members of the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee on monetary policy and the state of the economy. 

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US Trade Official: Deal with China Not Near Agreement

The top U.S. trade official said Wednesday that a new trade deal with China is not close to being completed.

“Much still needs to be done before an agreement can be reached,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told a congressional panel in Washington. “If we can complete this effort, and again I say if, and if we can reach a resolution on the issue of enforceability, we might have an agreement that enables us to turn the corner in our relationship with China.”

The U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, have been negotiating for months on a new agreement, even as they have imposed hefty new tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s exports.

 

WATCH: US-China Trade Talks ‘Not Close’

Lighthizer said the countries’ negotiators, who have been meeting in Washington and Beijing, “are making real progress.”

President Donald Trump cited that progress Sunday in postponing what would have been a sharp increase in U.S. duties on $200 billion in Chinese imports that would have taken effect Friday.

The most recent U.S. statistics show China last year had a $382 billion trade surplus in deals with the United States through November. Trump is trying to alter trade terms between the two countries to end what the U.S., Japan and European countries contend are China’s unfair trade practices, including state intervention in markets, subsidies of some industries and theft of foreign technology.

China has offered to increase its purchase of American farm products and energy as part of a new trade pact.

Members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, urged Lighthizer to reach a wide-ranging trade agreement.

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Meet Elon Tusk: Tesla Chief Changes Twitter Display Name

Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk changed his Twitter display name to “Elon Tusk” in another late-night flurry of tweets on Wednesday, which also promised news from his electric carmaker Tesla Inc later this week.

In a series of tweets to his 25 million followers following charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week, Musk accused the regulator of failing to read Tesla’s annual reports and said its oversight was “broken”.

On Wednesday, he changed his display name and added an elephant tag.

Social media platforms have featured a number of memes involving wordplay around Musk’s name this week.

He also promised Tesla would have “news” at 2 p.m. California time on Thursday. The company, deep in debt as it ramps up production of its popular Model 3 sedan, is due to repay a $920 million convertible bond a day later.

Musk had promised last year to have his public statements vetted by the company’s board, as part of a settlement with the SEC that headed off demands for him to resign as Tesla CEO.

Tesla did not immediately respond to request for comment.

 

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Malawi Vaccinates Young Girls Against Cervical Cancer

Malawi officials say the country has the world’s highest rate of cervical cancer, but only two oncologists serving the nation of 17 million people. In an effort to reduce cervical cancer deaths, the government has rolled out a massive vaccine campaign against the human papilloma virus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer.

The immunization project follows a pilot effort in two districts between 2013 and 2015.

The campaign is run with funding from the Global Alliance on Vaccines and is expected to reach 1.5 million girls between the ages of 9 and 14 across the country.

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, is among organizations implementing the project.

“The disease starts when you engage in sexual behavior and contract a virus we call human papilloma virus that causes cancer slowly, over time,” said Steve Macheso, an immunization specialist for UNICEF in Malawi. “So we are trying to catch the girls early before their sexual debut so that when even they contract human papilloma virus, the virus does not cause cancer when they grow up.”

Other organizations supporting the effort are the World Health Organization and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Health experts say cervical cancer causes the largest number of cancer deaths among women in Malawi.

“For the whole Malawi, we are talking about close to 3,600 new cases every year. And over 2,000 of these women die from this kind of cancer every year. This is the highest number of cervical cancer cases in the world,” said Dr. Leo Masamba, one of only two oncologists in Malawi.

Masamba says results of the HPV vaccination effort will not be felt for decades.

“In between, whilst we are waiting for those 10 to 30 years, there will still be quite a lot of cervical cancer cases coming from people that have already been infected with HPV now. We need to make sure that treatments are still available, and other interventions like palliative care is still available,” Masamba said.  

Loveness Kalanda is happy that her 9-year-old daughter will be vaccinated.

“I wish if it was possible, government should have considered vaccination for us older women because this disease is not selective,” she said, adding that she wished there were another way to protect older women from the disease.

Jonathan Chiwanda, the national cancer coordinator in the Ministry of Health, told reporters in the capital, Lilongwe, that measures are in place to tackle the disease.

“All along we have been doing surgeries, we have been offering chemotherapy. We have also been giving antiretroviral drugs with help from remission for the Kaposi sarcoma (type of cancer),” he said.

In addition, he said, the government will soon open its first-ever cancer center in Lilongwe, which will be offering radiotherapy and other treatment to patients.

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Michael Jackson Brothers Say Accusers’ Film Neglects Facts

The family of Michael Jackson had a feeling the years-old child molestation allegations against the pop superstar would resurface at some point. So they say they weren’t entirely surprised to learn that a forthcoming HBO documentary would feature two of his accusers.

“I thought, ‘Oh here we go again,’” Jackson’s oldest brother Jackie Jackson said Tuesday of the moment he learned of “Leaving Neverland” while on tour in Australia. “That’s the first thing we said,” Jackie Jackson said during an interview with The Associated Press seated next to his brothers Tito, Marlon and his nephew, Taj.

The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to a standing ovation , will starting Sunday air the abuse allegations of two men , Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who had previously denied Jackson molested them and supported him to authorities and in Robson’s case, very publicly.

“It was going to be the 10-year anniversary,” Taj Jackson said, referring to his uncle’s June 2009 death. “I remember a year ago I was like, ’This is too appetizing for the media. They’re going to do something. This is the time when everyone comes out of the woodwork, the same cast, the same characters that have been discredited throughout the years. They have a platform now to talk about Michael Jackson.”

It was the latest and most public pushback from the family and Jackson estate, which have repeatedly denounced the documentary in recent weeks through written statements, a lawsuit , and letters to HBO and Britain’s Channel 4, which plan to air the film. HBO announced Wednesday that it will air a special on Monday night in which Oprah Winfrey also interviews Robson and Safechuck.

Their central criticism has been the film’s failure to talk to family members or other defenders of Jackson, whom they insist never molested a child.

The brothers said they would have answered the allegations had the filmmakers asked them.

“Oh, we definitely would have come and talked to them about the situation … to protect our brother,” Tito Jackson said. “He’s not here no more. He’s passed, and, we’re his brothers, we’re supposed to do this.”

Marlon Jackson added, “I look at it as yes, you’re protecting your brother, but you’re telling the truth, and we want people to understand the truth. And I do not understand how a filmmaker can make a documentary and not want to speak to myself or some of the other families that were at Neverland.”

The documentary’s director Dan Reed has repeatedly defended his film, which uses only the voices of Robson, Safechuck and their families.

“It’s the story of these two families and not of all the other people who were or weren’t abused by Michael Jackson,” Reed told the AP the day after the film’s premiere. “People who spent time with him can go, ‘he couldn’t possibly be a pedophile.’ How do they know? It’s absurd.”

Robson, 36, and Safechuck, 40, both came forward as adults, first via 2013 lawsuits and later in the documentary, to talk about the alleged abuse, which Robson says started when he was 7, Safechuck when he was 10.

Both had previously told authorities there had been no abuse, with Robson testifying in Jackson’s defense at the 2005 molestation trial that ended with the superstar’s acquittal.

Jackson family members say they were especially stunned to first hear such allegations coming from Robson, a noted choreographer who has worked with Britney Spears and ’N Sync. Many Jacksons, including Taj, had known Robson and his family since he was a child. Robson had dated Jackie Jackson’s daughter for over seven years.

“I was like ’No that can’t be Wade Robson not the same guy that I knew, They must have got the names wrong,” Taj Jackson said. “Wade was the most adamant person when it came to 2005 and the trial. He was their first defense witness. He was the star witness. He was adamant that nothing ever happened.”

Taj Jackson said he remembers thanking Robson the day he testified, and Robson responding that it was the least he could do for Michael.

“To see that 180, it feels like the biggest backstab that you could possibly feel,” he said.

The film acknowledges and discusses the men’s initial denials of abuse. Both say they experienced trauma that emerged as adults when they started to accept what happened to them.

No one in the Jackson family has any memory of meeting Safechuck. They have focused their criticism on Robson, whose allegations, they say, have coincided with financial problems. They say in particular that being denied a job with a Jackson-themed Cirque du Soleil show prompted him to change his story.

Robson has said it had no bearing on the allegations, and that he actually removed himself from the Cirque du Soleil show because he was having nervous breakdowns. Those prompted him to talk to his therapist for the first time about the abuse.

The men’s lawsuits have been thrown out on technical grounds, but are on appeal.

The Jackson estate’s lawsuit , filed last week, alleges “Leaving Neverland” violates a 1992 contract agreeing the channel would not disparage Jackson in the future. HBO called the lawsuit a desperate attempt to undermine the film.

Jackson’s family urged those inclined to watch “Leaving Neverland” to look deeper into the situation.

“That’s all we’re worried about is just facts,” Marlon Jackson said. “The facts, which are public record, tell a totally different story than what this documentary talks about.”

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Boeing Unveils Unmanned Combat Jet Developed in Australia

Boeing on Wednesday unveiled an unmanned, fighter-like jet developed in Australia and designed to fly alongside crewed aircraft in combat for a fraction of the cost.

The U.S. manufacturer hopes to sell the multi-role aircraft, which is 38 feet long (11.6 meters) and has a 2,000 nautical mile (3,704-kilometer) range, to customers around the world, modifying it as requested.

It is Australia’s first domestically developed combat aircraft in decades and Boeing’s biggest investment in unmanned systems outside the United States, although the company declined to specify the dollar amount.

Defense contractors are investing increasingly in autonomous technology as militaries around the world look for a cheaper and safer way to maximize their resources.

Boeing rivals like Lockheed Martin and Kratos Defense and Security Solutions are also investing in such aircraft.

Four to six of the new aircraft, called the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, can fly alongside a F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, said Shane Arnott, director of Boeing research and prototype arm Phantom Works International.

“To bring that extra component and the advantage of unmanned capability, you can accept a higher level of risk,” he said.

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in the United States said last year that the U.S. Air Force should explore pairing crewed and uncrewed aircraft to expand its fleet and complement a limited number of “exquisite, expensive, but highly potent fifth-generation aircraft” like the F-35.

“Human performance factors are a major driver behind current aerial combat practices,” the policy paper said. “Humans can only pull a certain number of Gs, fly for a certain number of hours, or process a certain amount of information at a given time.”

In addition to performing like a fighter jet, other roles for the Boeing system early warning, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance alongside aircraft like the P-8 Poseidon and E-7 Wedgetail, said Kristin Robertson, vice president and general manager of Boeing Autonomous Systems.

​”It is operationally very flexible, modular, multi-mission,” she said. “It is a very disruptive price point. Fighter-like capability at a fraction of the cost.”

Robertson declined to comment on the cost, saying that it would depend on the configuration chosen by individual customers.

The jet is powered by a derivative of a commercially available engine, uses standard runways for take-off and landing, and can be modified for carrier operations at sea, Robertson said. She declined to specify whether it could reach supersonic speeds, common for modern fighter aircraft.

Its first flight is expected in 2020, with Boeing and the Australian government producing a concept demonstrator to pave the way for full production.

Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, is home to Boeing’s largest footprint outside the United States and has vast airspace with relatively low traffic for flight testing. 

The Boeing Airpower Teaming System will be manufactured in

Australia, but production lines could be set up in other countries depending on sales, Arnott said.

The United States, which has the world’s biggest military budget, would be among the natural customers for the product.

The U.S. Air Force 2030 project foresees the Lockheed Martin F-35A Joint Strike Fighter working together with stealthy combat drones, called the “Loyal Wingman” concept, said Derrick Maple, principal analyst for unmanned systems at IHS Markit.

“The U.S. has more specific plans for the wingman concept, but Western Europe will likely develop their requirements in parallel, to abate the capabilities of China and the Russian Federation and other potential threats,” he said.

Robertson declined to name potential customers and would not comment on potential stealth properties, but said the aircraft had the potential to sell globally.

“We didn’t design this as a point solution but a very flexible solution that we could outfit with payloads, sensors, different mission sets to complement whatever their fleet is,” she said. “Don’t think of it as a specific product that is tailored to do only one mission.”

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Brazil’s Senate Confirms Campos Neto as Central Bank Chief

Brazil’s Senate confirmed Roberto Campos Neto as central bank governor on Tuesday, after he stressed that controlling inflation and reining in public spending were critical to supporting economic growth.

Much work must still be done to secure Brazil’s economic recovery, Campos Neto told the Senate’s economic committee at his confirmation hearing.

He indicated there would be little change, if any, to monetary policy, echoing the central bank’s current stance that decisions are based on “caution, serenity and perseverance.”

The Senate approved Campos Neto by a vote of 55 in favor to six opposed, following unanimous confirmation by the economic committee.

He will officially assume the role with the signature of President Jair Bolsonaro, likely later this week.

Campos Neto is a former senior executive at Banco Santander Brasil SA. A University of California-trained economist, he has spent his career in banking and market trading and is acutely aware of the impact central bank policy decisions and communications have on markets, analysts say.

In his testimony Tuesday, Campos Neto said the country must keep opening up capital markets to foreign and domestic investors, while avoiding inflationary stimulus or state intervention.

His rhetoric largely mirrored that of several advisers to President Jair Bolsonaro, most of whom are pushing for an overhaul of the nation’s costly public pension system and a broad series of privatizations.

Campos Neto predicted Brazil’s economy would perform better this year than last, thanks in part to reforms the government is promoting.

Brazilian interest rates have been held at a record low 6.50 percent but economic growth has slowed in recent months, weakening what was already a sluggish recovery from the 2015-16 recession.

“While his market knowledge could make him adopt a more forceful stance at some point, the need to build credibility, particularly at the beginning of his tenure, would favor prudence,” said a U.S.-based source with first-hand experience of Brazilian markets.

Campos Neto refused to discuss whether Brazil should sell any of its $375 billion reserves, saying it was something that would require more analysis.

International FX reserves serve as an insurance policy in times of crisis, he said.

“The price of that insurance is much lower now,” he said, noting the narrowing of the spread between U.S. and Brazilian interest rates to less than 400 basis points from over 1,200 bps a couple of years ago.

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Parkinson’s Drug Trial Offers Glimmer of Hope for Brain Cells

An experimental drug could offer hope for restoring damaged brain cells in Parkinson’s patients, scientists said on Wednesday, although they cautioned that a clinical trial was not able to prove the treatment slowed or halted the neurodegenerative disease.

The trial involved delivery of a protein therapy directly into the brains of Parkinson’s patients. Scientists said some brain scans revealed “extremely promising” effects on damaged neurons of those who received the treatment.

“The spatial and relative magnitude of the improvement in the brain scans is beyond anything seen previously in trials,” said Alan Whone, a Parkinson’s specialist at Britain’s Bristol University who co-led the trial.

Researchers said the therapy warranted further investigation even though it failed to demonstrate improvement of symptoms in patients who received it when compared to others given a placebo.

“The primary outcome was disappointing,” Whone told reporters at a briefing in London.

Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease that affects around one percent to two percent of people over age 65. It causes tremors, muscle stiffness and movement and balance problems. Although some medicines can improve symptoms, there is no cure or treatment that can slow progression of the disease.

This trial involved 41 patients who all underwent robot-assisted surgery to have tubes placed into their brains.

That allowed doctors to infuse either the experimental treatment – called Glial Cell Line Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) – or a placebo directly to the affected brain areas. GDNF is made by privately-held Canadian biotech firm MedGenesis Therapeutix.

Half of the patients were given monthly GDNF infusions and half received monthly placebo infusions. After nine months, all participants were offered the GDNF infusions for a further nine months.

Results showed some signs of improvements, Whone said, but there was no significant difference between the treatment and placebo groups. He said this was in part due to the sizeable placebo effect in this trial.

The placebo effect has been known to confound clinical trials of treatments for conditions involving the brain, boosted by patients’ expectations that a potential treatment will work.

But the brain scan results suggested the drug might be starting to reawaken damaged brain cells. After nine months, there was no change in the scans of patients who received a placebo, but those who got GDNF showed major changes in a key area of the brain affected by the disease.

Whone said this suggested GDNF could be “a means to possibly reawaken and restore” brain cells that are gradually destroyed in Parkinson’s.

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Dining Out? This App Will Help You Find a Quiet Restaurant

When it comes to dining out, the noisiness of a restaurant can ruin an otherwise good meal. But a crowdsourcing app is helping diners choose where to eat based on noise levels. Tina Trinh reports.

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Scientists Study Tiny Creatures With Big Impact on the Ocean

It’s not just human workers who commute each day. Millions of tiny creatures that form the base of the ocean food chain migrate in giant swarms each night. They go up and down – from deep waters to the surface to feed, then back to the depths as dawn breaks. Scientists are looking at how this vertical commute affects the ocean, which is a key regulator of climate by storing and transporting heat, carbon, nutrients and freshwater around the world.

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First Iranian-American Woman to Win Oscar Turns to Iran-Themed Films

The first Iranian-American woman to win an Oscar, Rayka Zehtabchi, says she wants to build on Sunday’s triumph of her documentary about menstruation by producing several films with Iran-related themes.

“I’m very interested in telling Iranian stories as well as women’s stories,” the 25-year-old Los Angeles-based filmmaker told VOA Persian in a Skype interview on Monday. “I was raised in Southern California pretty much my whole life, but the older I get, the more I feel like I connect with and learn about my Iranian culture.”

WATCH: Rayka Zehtabchi discusses being connected to her culture

Zehtabchi won the award for best documentary short at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood for “Period. End of Sentence.” The Netflix-produced film is about women in rural India fighting the stigma surrounding menstruation by manufacturing sanitary pads to enable adolescent girls to stay in school while managing their periods.

Los Angeles high school students inspired the film by raising money to buy pad-making machines for the villagers of Hapur district, 90 kilometers east of the Indian capital, New Delhi. “Just seeing that there are these young people who care so deeply about this cause that is affecting women all over the world, and being a young woman myself, I felt compelled to jump on board,” Zehtabchi said.

Zehtabchi directed the film and shared the Oscar with American producer Melissa Berton.

Iranian-born British-American actress Nazanin Boniadi congratulated Zehtabchi on Twitter for being the first Iranian-American woman to achieve such a feat.

Watch: Rayka Zehtabchi, on being first Iranian-American Oscar winner

“It didn’t even cross my mind that I’d be the first Iranian-American woman to win an Oscar, but I feel absolutely incredible,” said Zehtabchi, the daughter of Iranian immigrants to the United States. “My dad passed away three years ago from lung cancer, and I wish he could have been there to see it, because he would have been very proud,” she added as her voice filled with emotion.

Watch: Rayka Zehtabchi, on her family’s journey to U.S.

The filmmaker said one of her next productions will be a narrative feature about her family’s journey to the United States in the early 1990s. “I’m very interested in exploring the immigrant experience and how it could be devastating but also hilarious at times, being a foreigner in a new country and having to learn how to assimilate.”

Zehtabchi said she also is working on feature version of a 2016 short film that marked her directorial debut, “Madaran.” Based on a true story about an Iranian mother who must decide whether to end or spare the life of her only son’s killer at his execution, the original film qualified for Oscar contention in the Live Action Short category that year.

Watch: Rayka Zehtabchi’s message to other young Iranian women

Asked for her message to other young women of Iranian origin who have cheered her success, she said: “You are strong and you are beautiful and you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.

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Fed’s Powell: ‘No Rush’ to Hike Rates in ‘Solid’ But Slowing Economy

The Federal Reserve is in “no rush to make a judgment” about further changes to interest rates, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday as he spelled out the central bank’s approach to an economy that is likely slowing.

In two hours of testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Powell elaborated on the “conflicting signals” the Fed has tried to decipher in recent weeks, including disappointing data on retail sales and other aspects of the economy that contrast with steady hiring, wage growth, and ongoing low unemployment.

“The baseline outlook is a good one,” Powell said, but slower growth overseas is a drag on the U.S. economy that “we may feel more of” in the coming months.

“We have the makings of a good outlook and our (rate-setting) committee is really monitoring the crosscurrents, the risks, and for now we are going to be patient with our policy and allow things to take time to clarify.”

If anything, Powell’s comments solidified a Fed policy shift last month in which it indicated it would pause a three-year cycle of rate hikes, which had been projected to run well into 2020, until the inflation or growth dynamics change.

The flow of new workers into the labor force, for example, has surprised the central bank and means “there is more room to grow,” Powell said.

Powell, who has led the Fed for just over a year, faced virtually no pushback from Republicans on the Senate panel, as former Fed chief Janet Yellen had in the past, that the central bank was courting inflation or financial risks by leaving rates too low.

After raising rates four times in 2018, and anticipating further hikes in 2019, the Fed in January switched to a “patient” stance as concerns about the global economy took root, and markets voiced doubts about the U.S. economic recovery.

The Fed’s benchmark overnight lending rate currently is within a range of 2.25 percent to 2.50 percent.

There was also little said by lawmakers about the Fed’s evolving plan to maintain a balance sheet of perhaps $3.5 trillion, which would be lower than the current $4 trillion but still massive by historical standards. Republican lawmakers generally have pushed the central bank to reduce a financial footprint inflated by crisis-era programs many in the party considered risky.

Financial markets were largely unmoved by Powell’s testimony, which was the first of his two hearings this week in Congress. He is due to appear before the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

U.S. Treasury yields were lower in afternoon trading while major U.S. stock indexes were slightly higher. The dollar was weaker against a basket of currencies.

Political Shift

Powell told lawmakers that the Fed expected the U.S. economy to grow solidly but at a slower pace this year than the estimated 3 percent growth for 2018, an outlook that was built into the central bank’s policy statement in January.

The “patient” approach to rate hikes has been a staple of Fed commentary since early last month.

“As long as we have steady growth with no inflation, that should keep the Fed at bay,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Wealth Advisors in Chicago.

But Tuesday’s hearing did offer a preview of issues the central bank may confront as the 2020 presidential campaign takes shape, and Democrats use their recently-won control of the House to press new economic and political ideas.

Amid a growing debate over whether the U.S. government may have far more room to expand its debt than conventional economics might recommend, or whether the Fed’s own balance sheet might help finance a “Green New Deal” of economic and environmental programs, Powell made clear he was among the traditionalists.

“The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency I think is just wrong. I think that U.S. debt is fairly high as a level of (gross domestic product) and, much more importantly than that, it’s growing faster than GDP,” Powell said. “To the extent that people are talking about the Fed – our role is not to provide support for particular policies” on environmental, social or other related issues.

Indeed, asked about the upcoming need to boost the U.S. debt ceiling, he said he considered the prospect of a U.S. government default on its obligations “a bright line, and I hope we never do pass it.”

Powell’s appearances on Capitol Hill this week, part of his semi-annual testimony to Congress, are his first since Democrats won control of the House in the November elections. They also follow the kickoff of a number of 2020 presidential campaigns.

Along with questions that ranged from the sources of rural poverty to the impact of climate change on banks, Senate committee members pressed points likely to figure into the Democratic primary battle.

“The Fed works for big rich banks that want to get bigger and richer,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat running for president. She questioned whether Powell would be adequately aggressive in reviewing a proposed megamerger between U.S. regional lender BB&T and rival SunTrust Banks.

Powell pledged an “open and transparent” review of the deal.

When asked whether there had been any “direct or indirect” communication from the White House about interest rates, Powell deferred, saying he would not comment on private conversations with other officials.

President Donald Trump has castigated the Fed for raising rates, arguing that the monetary tightening was undercutting his administration’s efforts to boost economic growth.

On Tuesday, Powell repeated his oft-heard pledge that the Fed will make policy decisions “in a way that is not political.”

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Underprivileged Children Find a Spot in Prestigious Literary Magazine

A library run by a volunteer group in New Delhi’s largest slum resettlement colony is helping underprivileged teenagers become writers. Some have had their stories published in India’s best-known Hindi language literary magazine as well as in other publications. For VOA, Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi.

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Noise-weary New York Ponders a Gentler, European-style Siren

If two New York City lawmakers get their way, the long, droning siren from police cars, fire trucks and ambulances that has been part of the city’s soundtrack for generations — WAAAAAhhhhhhh — would be replaced by a high-low wail similar to what’s heard on the streets of London and Paris — WEE-oww-WEE-oww-WEE-oww.

Their reasons for the switch: The European-style siren is less shrill and annoying and contributes less to noise pollution.

“I’ve been hearing from constituents complaining that the current sirens in New York are a high-pitched, continuous noise — a nuisance,” says Helen Rosenthal, an Upper West Side Democrat and one of the sponsors of the proposal.

Noise is consistently among the most frequent complaints to the city’s hotline, with many calls about the loud sirens that blare 24/7, wake people from their slumber and cause dogs to howl in unison. 

“Europeanizing” New York sirens would not change the decibel level — still topping out at roughly 118 — but would lower the frequency and thus make the sirens less shrill but still ear-catching enough to grab attention. 

“The alternating high-low siren required by this legislation is not as piercing,” adds co-sponsor Carlina Rivera, a Manhattan Democrat.

If approved in a council vote — which has yet to be scheduled — the legislation would require sirens on all emergency vehicles to transition within a two-year period.

Buzz about the bill even made it to last week’s NBC “Saturday Night Live,” where a “Weekend Update” anchor joked that with the European-style siren, “You can spend your ride in the ambulance pretending you have universal health care.”

City council members are looking closely at the experience of the city’s Mount Sinai Health System, which already uses the two-tone siren in its 25 ambulances that make about 100,000 trips a year. The switch was made last year after decades of complaints from residents of the Upper East Side home of the hospital complex. 

At community board meetings, Mount Sinai’s Emergency Medical Services Director Joseph Davis played various siren options to find out which one locals preferred.

 “People hated them all,” Davis said, “but the `high-low’ was least intrusive. It didn’t have that piercing sound.”

Davis, a 40-year EMS veteran who suffers from hearing damage that he blames on repeated exposure to sirens, said the change was simple and cost effective: All it took was reprogramming the electronic box in each vehicle, which comes preloaded with seven different sounds with names such as “Wail,” “Yelp” and “Piercer.” 

In fact, many ambulances, fire trucks and police cars are equipped with alternate sirens and horns that they can employ in certain situations, such as in traffic when cars and pedestrians just won’t get out of the way. They include short blips and the “Rumbler” low-frequency, vibrating siren aimed at motorists who may otherwise be unable to hear higher frequencies.

For some Manhattanites, any change in the city’s daily siren song would be welcomed.

“I always have to cover my ears with my hands when a siren-blaring ambulance passes,” says Louise Belulovich, a Manhattan attorney. “If I’m carrying packages and unable to, then what is an annoying experience becomes a painful one.”

But Linda Sachs, a longtime resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side who lives near one of the Mount Sinai hospitals that uses the new European siren, doesn’t think the change is for the good. She prefers the old New York standard.

“The old sirens never woke me up, but these make me shudder,” Sachs says, adding that she understands city lawmakers are attempting to do something about noise pollution. “But the old sound wasn’t as obnoxious.”

 

 

 

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