A special airlift for thousands of baby flamingos is under way in South Africa, as drought puts their breeding ground in peril. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports. A warning, some of the images in her report may be disturbing.
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Month: February 2019
The spread of state welfare for children around Africa has the potential to make a major dent in global poverty, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Children account for the majority of those around the world in extreme poverty, living on less than $1.90 per day, with half of them in Africa, where social security systems are weak.
Globally, about a third of children are covered by social protection programs, but it ranges from 88 percent in Europe and Central Asia to 16 percent in Africa, said a new study by two U.N. bodies.
The evidence shows clearly that social protection benefits, and cash transfers in particular, have a positive impact on poverty, food security, health and access to education — thus helping to ensure that children can realize their full potential, breaking the vicious cycle of poverty,” it said.
Cash on its own was not a magic bullet and needed to be part of broader policies, supported by other benefits such as school meals, said the study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and children’s agency UNICEF.
In sub-Saharan Africa, expected to have 90 percent of children in extreme poverty by 2030, 40 out of 48 countries have some form of cash transfer program, but most pay too little and overall only 13.1 percent of children receive them.
“They aren’t all huge programs but it’s been a real growth in the region and it’s moving very, very quickly,” David Stewart, UNICEF’s head of child poverty, told reporters.
Children up to the age of 14 make up 42.9 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, where public spending on child welfare amounts to only 0.7 percent of GDP, compared to 2.5 percent in Europe, which has far fewer children.
Several African countries were to discuss expanding their coverage at a conference in Geneva this week, Stewart said.
Isabel Ortiz, head of social protection at the ILO, said South Africa was making massive progress but still did not offer universal coverage, while Ghana was reallocating fuel subsidies towards child benefits and Zambia was increasing tax on mining, showing some of the options if governments were willing.
“Just saying we don’t have the budget is not good enough,” she said.
The ILO-UNICEF study also warned about the re-emergence of poverty in Europe, where some governments are cutting back child benefits due to austerity.
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Rich and zesty or low fat and vegan? Clever marketing with mouth-watering words can boost sales of plant-based dishes by more than 70 percent, experts said Tuesday, amid a drive to cut meat intake to improve human and planetary health.
Describing sausages as “Cumberland-spiced” rather than “meat-free” and promoting a soup as “Cuban” instead of “low fat vegetarian” increased sales in British and U.S. cafes, found research by the World Resources Institute (WRI) think tank.
“Right now, the predominant language is ‘meat-free’, ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ and that doesn’t have associations with deliciousness,” said Daniel Vennard, head of WRI’s Better Buying Lab, which aims to get people to eat more sustainable foods.
“Language isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s going to have a key role in reframing the food and luring in a whole new set of the population,” he told Reuters.
Many people in the United States and Europe eat more than double the recommended levels of meat for their health and experts say reducing consumption of animal products would be a relatively easy way to tackle climate change.
Scientists unveiled in January what they said was an ideal diet — doubling consumption of nuts, fruits, vegetables and legumes, and halving meat and sugar intake — which could prevent 11 million premature deaths and cut planet-heating emissions.
But vegans are often seen as weak hippies and consumers dismiss vegetarian meals as bland, the WRI’s two-year study found, urging restaurants and retailers to emphasize instead the provenance, flavor, look and feel of food.
Language such as “low fat,” “reduced-sodium” or “lighter choice” also tends to lessen enjoyment of food in the United States and Britain because people believe healthy food is not tasty, the researchers said.
“The findings can help the world move toward a more sustainable diet by making plant-based foods to be more normal and more appetizing,” Vennard said. “Our challenge on moving the world to a sustainable diet is about getting the masses … the omnivores out there … engaged in this.”
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Radiologists, who typically interact little with patients, can play a key role in identifying victims of abuse by spotting patterns of injuries that point to domestic violence, researchers said Tuesday.
Abuse victims, most often women, have more face, skull and arm fractures than other patients, combined with high rates of asthma, chronic pain and suicide attempts, a team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reported.
The signs of abuse can be detected by radiologists, who specialize in interpreting images such as X-rays, given that such victims undergo four times more emergency-related imaging exams than other patients, the researchers said.
The abuse can be physical, sexual and psychological, they said.
“There’s a wealth of information that’s available to us as radiologists,” said Dr. Elizabeth George, chief resident in the department of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a lead researcher of the report.
“There might be indications on the prior imaging, and if you see a pattern, that could alert you to something else going on in this case, such as violence.”
The World Health Organization reports that one in three women experiences physical or sexual violence in her lifetime.
The Violence Policy Center, a research and advocacy group focused on gun violence, reported that more than half the women murdered in the United States last year were killed by current or former romantic partners.
Signs of abuse can be easily missed in a busy hospital emergency department, George said.
The researchers also said hospital records may not identify or report certain injuries as abuse.
“Survivors need someone there who knows what’s happening,” said Ruth Glenn, head of the Colorado-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
“That alone can plant the seed to find safety. The medical field is perfectly set up to do this.”
Turning the findings into action to help victims will require a coordinated effort among radiologists, social workers, emergency room doctors and others, George told Reuters.
More than 96 percent of U.S. victims of violence at the hands of an intimate partner are women, and the highest rates occur among black and Hispanic women, according to the report, published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America.
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Brayan Jimenez, a former head of Guatemalan soccer’s governing body, was sentenced Tuesday to time served and fined $350,000 after pleading guilty for his role in the FIFA corruption scandal uncovered by U.S. prosecutors.
Judge Pamela K. Chen issued the sentence during a 70-minute hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Jimenez faced up to 40 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy, and while Chen explained that federal guidelines called for a sentence of 41 to 51 months, she concluded Jimenez’s cooperation and remorse mitigated the situation.
Chen noted Jimenez had been held in custody for 50 days and spent four to five months under home detention and about three years in Miami living under a court-ordered curfew.
Jimenez is now subject to two years of supervised release. The sentence included a lifetime ban from holding any position in professional soccer — he previously was banned by FIFA.
His lawyer, Justine A. Harris, said Jimenez intends to leave the United States and return to Guatemala within 30 days. He already has paid $100,000 of the fine and will pay 10 percent of his monthly income after resuming his dental practice to cover the remainder. The $350,000 matches about what Jimenez received in bribes, assistant U.S. attorney M. Kristin Mace said.
Jimenez was president of the National Football Federation of Guatemala from December 2009 until May 2015.
‘Tormented’ by mistake
“There are no excuse and no justification for my actions,” he told the court, his words translated from Spanish. “My actions have brought shame to the world of football.”
Jimenez said that at the time of the crime, he had been a longtime alcoholic. He said he had been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, undergoing counseling and had been sober for 1,118 days.
“Every day I’ve had to fight in order to not fall off a cliff,” he said.
His wife and three children watched from the front row, and a woman in his family delegation broke into tears and made the sign of a cross when Chen read the sentence.
Jimenez dabbed his eyes with a tissue and blew his nose while reading his statement.
“In accepting these payments, I violated my moral principles, my honesty and my honor,” he said. “I’ve been tormented by this great mistake I made.”
He was charged in November 2015 as part of the second wave of indictments in the Justice Department’s investigation into soccer corruption. He pleaded guilty in July 2016 to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of wire fraud conspiracy. Each count carried a possible sentence of 20 years to be served either concurrently or consecutively. The other seven counts against him were dismissed Wednesday.
Jimenez’s sentence showed the benefit of cooperation with prosecutors.
‘Rampant’ corruption
Juan Angel Napout, a former president of Paraguay’s federation and the South American governing body CONMEBOL, was sentenced to nine years in prison last summer after being found guilty at trial. Jose Maria Marin, a former president of Brazil’s soccer federation, also was found guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison, ordered to forfeit $3.3 million and pay a $1.2 million fine.
Hector Trujillo, the former secretary of Guatemala’s federation, pleaded guilty and received an eight-month prison term in 2017 in the first sentence in the case.
Chen said there was a “rampant nature of bribery and corruption in FIFA” and its constituents.
Jimenez said he arranged to obtain bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for himself and another federation official during negotiations with the Miami-based company Media World, later known as Imagina US. He said the money was wired from Media World in the U.S. to other people’s accounts in Guatemala, and his share was then distributed to him. Jimenez said the payments were in exchange for media rights for Guatemala’s home World Cup qualifiers in 2018 and ’22, and for giving two individuals the right to organize exhibition games involving Guatemala’s national team.
“This is a very serious crime or crimes,” Chen said, noting Jimenez had taken an extra $200,000 bribe that he kept secret from his co-conspirators.
Jimenez, a member of the FIFA committee for fair play and social responsibility, was banned from soccer for life in April 2017 after the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee said he violated the FIFA code of ethics’ articles on general rules of conduct; loyalty; duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting; conflicts of interest; and bribery and corruption.
Imagina US, majority owned by the Spanish company Imagina Media Audiovisual, pleaded guilty on July 18 to two counts of wire fraud conspiracy in connection with the participation by two of its executives in more than $6.5 million in bribes to officials of the Caribbean Football Union and four Central American national federations. Imagina US agreed to forfeit $5,279,000 in proceeds, of which $790,000 was restitution to Guatemala’s federation. In addition, Imagina Media agreed to pay a fine of $12,883,320 on behalf of Imagina US as part of a non-prosecution agreement.
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This year’s Oscar ceremony will go ahead without an official host for only the second time in its history, an ABC television executive said Tuesday.
Speaking just three weeks before the highest honors in the movie industry are handed out, ABC entertainment president Karey Burke said the Feb. 24 event would forgo a host and “just have presenters host the Oscars.”
ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co, televises the Oscars ceremony annually and is closely involved in planning the telecast.
Comedian Kevin Hart in December stepped down from hosting the Oscars after past homophobic tweets resurfaced. No replacement was announced but there had been no official statements on how the ceremony would proceed.
The Oscars ceremony has gone without a host only once before in its 91-year history, in 1989.
Burke said the decision was taken after what she called “the messiness” over the Hart withdrawal and an attempt to revive his chances.
“After that, it was pretty clear that we were going to stay the course and just have presenters host the Oscars. We all got on board with that idea pretty quickly,” Burke told reporters at the Television Critics Association meeting in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena.
She said the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Oscars, had promised ABC last year to keep the telecast to three hours — about 30 minutes shorter than in recent years.
“So the producers, I think, decided wisely to not have a host and to go back to having the presenters and the movies being the stars,” Burke said.
The Oscars host traditionally opens the ceremony with a comedic monologue focusing on celebrities, the state of the movie industry, and cultural and political issues.
Burke said she would hear details from the show producers later this week but said there were plans for “a pretty exciting opening” to the telecast.
She added that speculation over the shape of the ceremony was an encouraging sign that the Oscars were still relevant.
Audiences have dropped in recent years with the 2018 show attracting just 26.5 million viewers, the smallest number ever.
“I have found that the lack of clarity around the Oscars has kept the Oscars in the conversation and that the mystery has been really compelling. People really care,” she said.
Mexican drama Roma and British historical comedy The Favourite lead the Oscars nominations with 10 nods apiece.
Burke noted that three of the other best picture nominees — Disney’s Black Panther, Warner Bros A Star is Born and 21st Century Fox musical Bohemian Rhapsody — had each taken in more than $200 million at the North American box office alone.
“I think we are going to see a big turnout for this because these are big popular movies that have been nominated,” she said.
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Thais of Chinese descent largely ignored Bangkok’s call for restraint in burning of incense and “spirit money” to mark the Lunar New Year as the city fights choking pollution.
Most people celebrating the Year of the Pig, which began Tuesday, shrugged off health concerns as they burnt offerings to ancestors at shrines, many wearing anti-pollution masks.
“It’s impossible to completely stop burning incense,” said Romnalin Wangteeranon, 61, from behind a mask. “It’s a festival that we descendants cannot do without.”
Air quality in Bangkok has been hovering at unhealthy levels as the amount of hazardous dust particles known as PM 2.5 exceeded the safe level in several districts where face masks have sold out at most drug stores.
PM 2.5 is a mixture of liquid droplets and solid particles that can include dust, soot and smoke, one of the main measures of the Air Quality Index (AQI).
Tuesday’s AQI was 110 in the afternoon, according to airvisual.com, which measures levels in cities worldwide, placing Bangkok among the world’s most polluted cities.
Bangkok’s index has improved from last week due to a change in wind direction. But measures taken by the government, including seeding rain clouds, regulating truck traffic and hosing down streets, have helped little.
There was only slightly less incense burning this year compared to 2018, which was not enough to make a difference, said an official at the Poh Teck Tung Foundation, which runs the Tai Hong Kong Shrine in Bangkok’s Chinatown.
“Since we could only ask for cooperation, not impose a ban, most people are still doing it,” the official said.
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As Asian-Americans across the U.S. mark the Lunar New Year on Tuesday, they can celebrate by eating Mickey Mouse-shaped tofu, sporting a pair of Year of the Pig-inspired Nike shoes and by snacking on pricey cupcakes.
The delicacies and traditions that once made a generation of Asian-Americans feel foreign are now fodder for merchandizing. Between now and Feb. 17, Disney California Adventure Park is offering “Asian eats” that include the Mickey-shaped tofu and purple yam macarons. Nike is issuing a limited-edition Chinese New Year colle ction of shoes with traditional Chinese patchwork. And housewares giant Williams Sonoma has a slew of Lunar New Year dishware and its website offers a set of nine “Year of the Pig” cupcakes for $80.
Robert Passikoff, a marketing consultant and founder of Brand Keys Inc., said there’s been a “reawakening” in the last few years of the United States’ world view of China. But it’s also about differentiating your business and growing revenue, not necessarily inclusion.
“They’re not there as social workers to create harmony among the disenfranchised people,” Passikoff said. “The other side is brands are all looking for for a niche, they’re all looking for some way to engage customers. And if the Lunar New Year will do it, why not?”
Chinese fast-food chain Panda Express funded a New Year’s-themed interactive exhibit inside a Los Angeles mall. “The House of Good Fortune: A Lunar New Year,” includes different rooms showcasing customs, like a room of “flying” red envelopes and a “hall of long noodles,” a customary dish that symbolizes long life.
“Crazy Rich Asians” cast member Harry Shum Jr. promoted the exhibit and brushed off those who may scoff at the company’s efforts.
“I think it’s good to be reminded of these traditions. It’s been so important for many generations before us to try and pass that on and also experience it in a new way,” Shum said.
Andrea Cherng, the Panda Restaurant Group’s chief marketing officer and the daughter of Chinese-American founders Andrew and Peggy Cherng, said she knows some Asian-Americans will roll their eyes.
“Now the reality about Panda is that we were many people’s first Chinese experience in the U.S.,” Cherng said. “But then what a fantastic opportunity for us to be able to bridge cultures and bring to them our interpretation of what’s so special about this holiday.”
Christopher Tai, 37, of San Francisco, recently bought a Golden State Warriors jersey specially made for the Lunar New Year as a gift for his girlfriend’s father. The design includes the Chinese character for “warrior.” He said the jersey shows an effort at inclusion.
“They’re recognizing an underrepresented part of their fan base,” Tai said.
But he wonders if shoppers who snap up Williams Sonoma dishware will come away learning anything.
“I feel like a lot of people are attracted to these aesthetic elements like say red, dragons, dogs or shiny gold, without really knowing the significance of the colors and symbols and what the animals mean,” Tai said.
“There’s a part of me that’s still that kid who felt my culture was very ‘other.’ From that standpoint, I’m happy to see it more mainstream,” said Lisa Hsia, 37, of Oakland, California. “But at the same time when I see Chinese New Year shoes or whatever, I have to ask, who’s putting this together and who’s it for?”
Most Chinese traditionally ring in the Lunar New Year, which is assigned one of 12 animals each year off the Chinese zodiac, with a family dinner the evening before. The meals typically include a whole chicken, a whole fish, pork, noodles, spring rolls and dumplings, whose shape resembles ancient Chinese gold ingot currency.
Other customs include giving money-filled red envelopes to children or single young adults and sharing mandarin oranges, which represent good fortune. The celebrations, which are also commemorated in Vietnam and other countries with ethnic Chinese communities, can last up to two weeks.
As Asian populations in the U.S. and social media use grow, it’s easier for people to be aware of the holiday and its customs.
Xi Chen, who is from China but teaches Mandarin to middle-schoolers in Hamilton, Massachusetts, incorporated dumpling-making as part of her Lunar New Year lesson.
“We don’t have many Asian restaurants in town. Some students told me it was the first time in their life they’ve tried dumplings,” Chen said.
Stella Loh, 39, of Los Altos, California, said as a kid, she often got questions like, “Didn’t we already celebrate the new year?”
But now, even non-Asian co-workers have been wishing her a happy new year.
“I’d never really brought it up before,” Loh said. “It’s always nice to know people who aren’t Chinese recognize a piece of your own culture.”
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President Donald Trump plans to nominate David Malpass, a Trump administration critic of the World Bank, to lead the institution.
That’s according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions.
Trump is expected to make an announcement later this week.
Malpass, the undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, has been a sharp critic of the World Bank, especially over its lending to China.
Malpass would succeed Jim Yong Kim, who announced in January that he is stepping down three years before his term was set to expire.
The final decision on a successor to Kim will be up to the bank’s board.
Politico was first to report on the nomination.
Failure to meet global climate goals could lead to warming of five degrees celsius in the Himalayan mountains and a loss of two-thirds of the region’s glaciers by the year 2100, with disastrous consequences for water supplies and food production for about two billion people in eight Asian countries, warns a new study.
Meeting the Paris agreement goals of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius will slow down the process, but one third of the region’s glaciers are still set to disappear according to the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, which conducted the five-year study. The problem is being exacerbated by severe air pollution in parts of the region.
“Big hit on agriculture, changing rainfall patterns, so what this translates into is sometimes too much water, sometimes too little water, and so we see the hazard of floods increasing or landslides, ” according to David Molden, Director General of ICIMOD. Pointing out that there has been far too little attention on this mountain hotspot, he says “It’s basically a highly vulnerable region to disasters because of these changes.”
The Hindu Kush Himalayan region covered by the study spans 3,500 kilometers across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
According to the report, the ice masses on the Himalayas have been thinning and retreating since global warming set in and the present pace of warming will spike temperatures in mountain areas by 5 degrees celsius, whereas limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century would lead to a 2.1 degree spike in temperatures as mountains heat up faster.
“This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,” said Philippus Wester of the ICIMOD, who led the report, the “Hindu Kush Assessment.” Saying that global warming is on track to transform mountain peaks to bare rocks in a little less than a century, he says “projected reductions in pre-monsoon river flows and changes in the monsoon that will hit hardest, throwing urban water systems and food and energy production off kilt.”
The people affected would include some of the world’s most vulnerable communities in mountains and those living in the plains who rely on river systems that originate in the mountains — known as the water towers of Asia, the Himalayas feed 10 major rivers such as the Yangtze, the Ganges and the Indus.
“If glaciers are melting then first people get a little bit more water, but then there comes a time when actually there will be a reduction in contribution of glacier melt into our river systems,” according to Molden. “Some of the poorest people and most vulnerable people are living there, who do not really add to greenhouse gases but who are impacted by this kind of change.”
The study says that one-third of the 250 million people living in the mountains live on less that $2 a day.
Besides global warming, air pollution from the Indo-Gangetic Plains—one of the world’s most polluted regions is also impacting the mountains as these pollutants deposit black carbon and dust on the glaciers, hastening their melting according to the study.
The steps needed to prepare for the changes are altering existing agriculture systems, preparing for droughts, putting up early flood warning systems and protecting high mountain eco systems.
It also calls for greater attention to mountain areas in efforts to tackle global climate change and urges governments in the eight Asian countries to work together to turn the tide against melting glaciers.
“Its an urgent action needed at the global scale,” said Molden. “Mountains are these faraway places, great for holidays, beautiful locations, but I think we have not seen the level of science on mountains as say in the plains, or say in the Arctics.”
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Negotiating new World Trade Organization rules to try to rein in China’s “mercantilist” trade practices would be largely a futile exercise, the Trump administration’s trade office said on Monday, vowing to pursue its unilateral approach to protect U.S. workers, farmers and businesses.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office used its annual report to Congress on China’s WTO compliance in part to justify its actions in a six-month trade war with Beijing aimed at forcing changes in China’s economic model.
The report also reflects the United States’ continued frustration with the WTO’s inability to curb what it sees as China’s trade-distorting non-market economic policies, and offered little hope that situation could change soon.
“It is unrealistic to expect success in any negotiation of new WTO rules that would restrict China’s current approach to the economy and trade in a meaningful way,” the USTR said in the report.
Some U.S. allies, including Canada, the European Union and Japan, which are also frustrated with pressures created by China’s economic policies, have begun talks on the first potential changes and modernization of WTO rules since it was founded in 1995.
But any WTO rule changes must be agreed by all 164 member nations, and past efforts have stalled. It was “highly unlikely” China would agree to new disciplines targeting changes to its trade practices and economic system, the USTR said.
Tariff deadline
The report shed little light on progress in talks between the United States and China to ease a bruising tariff fight, despite a swiftly approaching March 2 deadline to hike U.S. tariffs to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods imports.
The WTO report follows two days of intense talks between high-level U.S. and Chinese officials last week centered on U.S. demands for structural policy changes. These include enforcing intellectual property protections, ending cyber theft of trade secrets, halting the forced transfers of American technology to Chinese firms and reining in industrial subsidies.
While U.S. President Donald Trump said he would like to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to hammer out a trade deal, the USTR report makes clear a massive amount of work will be needed to bridge the gulf between the two countries.
It cited the key structural issues in the talks, which also include China’s new cybersecurity law and discriminatory regulatory practices, as examples of how China aids domestic firms at the expense of foreign competitors in ways that escape WTO rules, adding that China has become “a unique and pressing problem for the WTO and the multilateral trading system.”
The criticism also comes as the United States weakens the WTO’s role as global commerce watchdog by blocking the appointments of judges to its appellate body, which may no longer be able to function by December, when two judges step down.
‘Holding China accountable’
USTR said the United States intends to “hold China accountable” for adhering to existing WTO rules and “any unfair and market-distorting trade practices that hurt U.S. workers, businesses, farmers or ranchers.”
“Until China transforms its approach to the economy and trade, the United States will take all appropriate actions to ensure that the costs of China’s non-market economic system are borne by China, not by the United States,” USTR said.
The agency reiterated a broad array of concerns over China’s key structural issues, such as its 2025 plan for investment in particular sectors and its failure to follow market-oriented principles expected of WTO members, the report said.
“China retains its non-market economic structure and its state-led, mercantilist approach to trade, to the detriment of its trading partners,” it said.
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Music is helping to heal students displaced by the fires that raged through Northern California in November. More than 100 students from five schools in the fire-ravaged region are sharing their message of hope through song and dance.
Called Voices Strong United, the choir of more than 100 students has performed in affected communities since December. Half of the performers lost their homes, and all have been affected by the massive dislocation.
“On Nov. 8,” recalled retired music teacher Seth Gronseth, “the fire burned our hometown of Paradise and scattered 50,000 people from that ridge all over California and Oregon and Washington.”
Several other local communities were also devastated. Gronseth lost his home, as did thousands of his neighbors. He traveled with the choir to Southern California to perform for the National Association of Music Merchants in Anaheim, or NAMM. With more than 100,000 attendees, it’s one of the largest music trade shows in the world.
The so-called Camp Fire was one of a several destructive blazes that raged throughout California late last year and was the deadliest in state’s history. The fire killed more than 80 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, leaving much of the town of Paradise in ashes.
At the suggestion of a school administrator, Gronseth, who had retired from teaching at Paradise High School, helped create the choir to lift the community’s spirits. Their repertoire includes the Broadway show tune You Will Be Found and the inspirational anthem Rise Up, popularized by singer Andra Day.
Choir member Aaron Cagle also lost her home and is thrilled to be involved in the musical project.
It is “awesome,” she said, “that I get to be part of this thing that everybody is contributing to,” adding that “everyone is pulling together after the fire and helping each other out.”
Among the displaced teens was a Brazilian exchange student who was evacuated from Paradise, along with her host family, as the flames approached.
The choir “is a way of reconstructing not only the community, but ourselves, after what happened,” said Thais Santana. “It’s very, very healing,” she added.
This musical performance is important “because it’s a way to unite people,” said student and choir member Kya Beltran. She didn’t lose her home, but many of her neighbors and family members did. The choir allows students to “connect” with each other and their community after “something that’s traumatic, something that has destroyed everything,” she said.
Student and choir member Sofia DiBenedetto said it is difficult to talk about the future,”but I think people are starting to, not get over it, but the pain is going away a little bit.”
The community response to the fire has also been “uplifting,” said student Andy Thompson, because people have welcomed displaced neighbors into their homes.
“A lot of companies donated money, giving people gift cards and discounts at their stores, and it’s really awesome to see everyone come together,” she added.
Public performances like these give the students an opportunity to share their healing music with others, she said.
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Brazil’s government has opened discussions with congressional leaders, state governors and mayors on a pension reform bill that would set the minimum retirement age for men and women at 65, a government official said on Monday.
The proposal is one of several under consideration, as President Jair Bolsonaro looks to get the legislative ball rolling on his ambitious plans to overhaul Brazil’s creaking social security system.
Currently, if workers have contributed into the system for at least 15 years, the earliest men can retire is 65 and for women it is 60. But men can retire at any age if they have paid into the system for at least 35 years, and women if they have contributed for 30 years.
Speaking to reporters outside the Economy Ministry in Brasilia, Rogerio Marinho, secretary of social security and labor at the ministry, confirmed talks were underway on the proposal to change that.
Part of the proposal, which was originally reported by O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, stipulates that workers must pay into the system for a minimum of 20 years.
“Until a draft has been finalized, Bolsonaro cannot confirm anything on social security,” Bolsonaro’s spokesman Otavio Rego Barros said on Monday.
Bolsonaro has put overhauling social security at the top of his agenda. Depending on the final proposals, it could save up to 1.3 trillion reais ($354 billion) over the next decade, economy ministry sources reckon.
Investors have pinned much of their optimistic outlook for Brazil this year on Bolsonaro delivering on pension reform. The elections of Bolsonaro allies as house and senate presidents last week were seen as a step in that direction.
The Bovespa stock market hit a record high on Monday above 98,500 points, and the real has risen around 7 percent against the dollar in the last six weeks.
($1 = 3.6707 reais)
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When the Grammys added more nominees to its top four categories, the Recording Academy said the expansion from five to eight nominees would add more “flexibility” for voters. But for those artists competing for the night’s biggest awards, the change made it a little harder for any one nominee to win, statistically speaking.
For the first time in the history of the awards, eight nominees will compete in album of the year, record of the year, song of the year and best new artist. The change came after the Grammys were criticized for the lack of female winners on last year’s awards show and often rap and R&B artists don’t end up winning in the all-genre categories even when they are considered favorites.
Here’s a look at how expanding the number of nominees will affect the 2019 Grammys, airing live Sunday from Los Angeles.
Adding Diversity
When the nominations came out in December, the immediate effect was that women were a majority of the nominees in two of the top categories. In record of the year, five nominees are rap songs.
Neil Portnow, the academy’s president and CEO, said they wanted to expand the all-genre categories because those were the categories that got the most entries and had the largest number of voting members. Academy voters are performers, songwriters, producers, engineers, musicians and others currently working in the music industry. Last year, the academy also invited hundreds of new people to become voting members, which can also affect voting this year.
Portnow said adding three more slots for voters to choose from would “broaden the ability of entries to be more diverse,” not only in terms of gender and ethnicity but also the genres of music.
“I do think it’s had the positive change and impact we’re looking for,” he said.
Adding Competition
But just increasing the nominees doesn’t necessarily mean women and rap artists have a greater chance of winning. In fact, adding competition has made it harder for any single nominee to win, explains Ben Zauzmer, an awards analyst. Zauzmer is a freelance journalist who works for The Hollywood Reporter and has been using data to predict, often correctly, the winners of the Academy Awards.
Zauzmer says that these award shows are often hard to predict because they don’t release their vote totals, so he can’t predict winners with certainty, but uses logic and voting patterns to make speculations.
By increasing the number of nominees, the minimum percentage of the total votes an artist or song or album needs in order to win falls from a little over 20 percent to a little over 12.5 percent. But Zauzmer explains those numbers are misleading because that only happens when there is a near perfect tie among all the nominees, which is very unlikely, Zauzmer said.
“Even though you probably need fewer votes to win, there’s now a lot more competition in order to get those votes,” he said. “My best guess is this will reward songs or artists that have a truly devoted following.”
Unequal Odds
In the best new artist category, six female acts (H.E.R., Margo Price, Dua Lipa, Bebe Rexha, Chloe x Halle and Jorja Smith) are up against a male singer and male rock group (Luke Combs and Greta Van Fleet), which looks like good odds for a woman to win.
“If we assume that every artist has an equal chance of winning that category, it would be a 75 percent chance that a female artist wins new artist,” Zauzmer said. “That said, starting from the assumption that every artist has an equal probability is likely incorrect.”
For instance, one new artist nominee, the R&B singer H.E.R., is also nominated for album of the year, which would indicate a higher probability of being a Grammy voter favorite, Zauzmer noted.
Vote Splitting
The Grammys’ top categories are different than an awards show like the Oscars, in which voters rank their best picture nominees. Zauzmer said that a ranked choice voting system often results in rewarding movies that have a lot of consensus among the voters.
“A voting system that allows each person to vote for one favorite tends to reward songs that have a truly passionate following,” he said.
By expanding the nominees, vote splitting along genre lines or between two artists or songs that are similar becomes a real risk, Zauzmer said. Record of the year nominees include five rappers — Drake, Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone and Childish Gambino — competing against Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow,” Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke,” and the Zedd-Maren Morris-Grey collaboration “The Middle.” That’s a scenario where a split vote could hurt a rap song’s chances of winning.
Portnow noted that vote splitting happens whether there are five or eight nominees and is always a dynamic of the voting process.
Upsetting Results
But one long-term effect of the expansion of the nominees in these categories is a greater chance for upsets, Zauzmer said, although he doesn’t expect that to happen right away.
“I think a lot of people expect ‘Shallow’ to win at least one in the song or record categories,” he said. “But let’s give it time. If you watch the Grammys for the next decade, two decades, three decades, I do believe in the long run more nominees should lead to more surprises. The fact that you probably don’t need as many votes to win, the fact that some nominees might be splitting votes with each other who might otherwise be favorites, that can definitely lead to more so-called upsets.”
Portnow said until the results are announced, there’s no way to know how the additional nominees might affect the voting long-term. But he said they will definitely be looking at the results and evaluating how the process worked.
“Time will tell,” Portnow said.
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Long before she became just one of the financially destitute legions of street sweepers that dot Moscow’s bitterly cold winter landscape, Shaknoza Ishankulova had simply wanted to do the right thing.
It was 2008, and the recent Uzbekistan National University graduate was ecstatic to secure a teaching post at a Tashkent high school, finally making good use of her diploma in secondary education.
Twenty-two years old and eager to guide younger Uzbeks toward a better life, she was shaken when Uzbekistan’s notoriously vast culture of entrenched corruption revealed itself in the form of a personal mentor and supervisor — a deputy principal at the school who notified her that, if she wished to keep her job, a full third of her weekly salary would have to be kicked back to him.
It was his cut, he explained, for having hired her in the first place.
Years passed before Shaknoza gathered the courage to broach the issue with the school’s principal, a suspiciously wealthy public servant who promptly dismissed the complaint as naively frivolous.
Taking her cue from the anti-corruption initiatives she had seen in Uzbekistan, marketed in the form of public service announcements since 2005, Shaknoza escalated her complaint to Russia’s Ministry of Education, and was summarily placed on paid leave pending further investigation.
Two years and a cancer battle later, Shaknoza’s case had wound its way through ministry proceedings, leaving her fate in the hands of her employer, who summarily fired her, demanded reimbursement for the two years of salaried leave, and permanently blacklisted her from any professional employment.
Like many unemployed Uzbek nationals, Shaknoza was lured by Moscow’s abundance of service sector jobs that paid more than similar work in Tashkent. After spending nearly a year as a sweeper, she lucked out by landing a relatively well-paid waitressing job, only to lose the position when a Russian supervisor publicly castigated her for making conversation with foreign diners, an experience she attributed to the ethnic workplace discrimination many Uzbeks face in Russia.
Tall and slender with distinctly Asian facial features and straight shoulder-length hair, Shoksana, appearing older than her 34 years, is now a cashier and produce vendor at one of Moscow’s many 24-hour convenience stores.
Speaking with VOA on a frigid afternoon in Moscow, her bare hands balled in fists as she stood stock still in seemingly arctic gales, the former high school teacher said she has done reasonably well for herself when compared to fellow migrants sleeping 10 to a room on the city’s outskirts.
Making $37 per 24-hour shift, each of which is followed by 24 hours off, she said the salary is enough to share a two-room apartment with three other laborers: two Uzbek men and a woman, with whom she shares the bedroom.
After feeding and clothing herself, she says, she sends a small amount home to her mother.
“But it’s not enough to save anything,” she said, explaining that she lacks the resources to get ahead in Moscow and that, as a blacklisted whistleblower, any path back to Tashkent is surely a dead end.
Millions seek opportunity
By 2017, Russia was home to nearly 12 million migrants — the world’s third largest foreign-born population.
Much like in western European nations and the United States, the large numbers of immigrants have triggered unease, and a majority of Russians have become increasingly intolerant of the newcomers.
A 2018 survey by the Washington-based Pew Charitable Trust showed that nearly 70 percent of Russian nationals felt the country should allow fewer or no migrants in the future.
While many of the migrants from China, eastern Europe and the West possess a broad range of professional skill sets, the vast majority of Russia’s lowest-paid laborers hail from impoverished central Asian countries, of which Uzbeks are the largest group.
This makes them the most visible targets of anti-immigrant vitriol.
Some high-level Russian officials have relayed largely context-free statistics that they portray as an immigrant-fueled crime wave for which Uzbeks in particular are to blame.
“If you create a ranking of criminality, you will find citizens of Uzbekistan at the top,” Moscow chief prosecutor Sergei Kudeneyev told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper in 2014. “They have committed 2,522 crimes; next is Tajikistan, with 1,745 crimes; and in third place there is Kyrgyzstan, whose citizens committed 1,269 crimes.”
“The unremitting crime rates among foreign citizens are causing serious concern, particularly since crimes of this nature draw a lot of public attention,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told a gathering of top security officials in 2016. During the televised statement, the president demanded a swift crackdown on foreign criminals.
Alexander Verkhovsky of SOVA, the Center for Information and Analysis, a think tank in Moscow, questioned the veracity and transparency of these datasets.
“Any statistics on working migrants are very blurry,” he said. “While there are police crime statistics — or at least crime documentation — that may indicate a given perpetrator’s country of origin, that specific data is never published in full.
“In general, data on crimes is organized by categories of crime, and even whether these crimes may have been committed by or against a foreigner,” he said. But by the time police records are internally digested into statistics and prepared for public presentation via the prosecutor’s office, hard data about specific countries of origin has been scrubbed.
“You never get to see the complete data,” he said.
A 2016 report by Columbia University’s Eurasia.org news site suggests migrants who have committed crimes may have acted in response to a series of new Russian laws that drastically increased living costs.
Migrant work permit requirements unveiled in 2015 required applicants to “undergo a battery of tests for HIV, tuberculosis, drug addiction and skin diseases.” Permit holders, the report says, were also required to purchase health insurance, acquire taxpayer identification numbers, and be tested on Russian language, history and laws.
Failure to satisfy requirements within a month of arriving in Russia subjected migrants to a $152 fine.
“Once migrants have jumped through all the hoops, they must pay 14.5 thousand rubles ($219) for their work permit and another four thousand rubles ($61) every month to renew the document,” the report says. “All told, this costs almost $1,000 per year.”
A December 2018 SOVA report on hate crimes that was compiled from official statistics and field research said although attacks targeting foreigners are decreasing, ethnic migrants are among the most vulnerable to violent attacks on Russian soil.
“People perceived as ethnic outsiders constituted the largest group of victims in 2017,” says the report, which recorded 28 ethnically motivated attacks, down from 44 attacks (7 fatal) in 2016.
“Migrants from Central Asia were the most numerous group in this category of victims … followed by individuals of unidentified non-Slavic appearance,” the report states. “Most likely, the overwhelming majority of these people were also from Central Asia, since their appearance was described as Asian.”
Foreigners targeted
All of the migrants VOA spoke with mentioned that they had been intimidated by racists or nationalists, swindled into weeks of free labor by dishonest employers, or were the victims of robbery.
Oibek Usupov, a construction worker from Tashkent, recounted the time he and his brother accepted jobs at an apartment development, wherein the employer required them to sign contracts to work throughout the winter. They received a small advance up front, followed by a handful of paychecks well below what they were promised.
Once the units began selling, the developer said, they would be reimbursed in full. Then payments stopped and, a week before spring, it was announced the project had been bought out by another developer.
The new boss, Usupov told us, said prior contracts weren’t binding because his company hadn’t authorized them.
“We lost months of back pay,” he said.
Adkham Enamov, an Uzbek artist who lives an hour north of Moscow, says he became stranded in Russia after intermediaries who sold his paintings at a famous Moscow arts bazaar disappeared with the profits.
“At the time, my dream was to see Moscow, to sell my paintings in Russia, but I didn’t know that half of Moscow are artists,” he said. “So my current dream is to see my motherland, to return in good health.”
Emanov, 46, who speaks very little Russian, has a 16-year-old son with cerebral palsy. His purpose in Moscow was to cover the medical expenses stacking up in Tashkent.
And then in early 2018, tragedy struck when his 4-year-old daughter, Nama, died from an undiagnosed illness.
“She was buried without me due to the Muslim tradition,” he said, referring to the Sharia ritual of washing and burying the dead within 24 hours of passing. “Well, I sent some money there. Not much.”
After a long, reflective pause, he added, “I should come back being quite rich, but my dream didn’t come true.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to praise the U.S. economy and insist on the need for a physical barrier on the U.S. border with Mexico in his upcoming state of the union address. Trump’s address was originally scheduled for Jan. 29, but has been postponed for Feb. 5 (Tuesday) due the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown, caused by the rift between the Republican president and the Democratic majority in Congress over the funding for the border wall. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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February 4 is designated as World Cancer Day, and the disease remains one of the world’s leading causes of death. Last year, there were close to two million new cases of cancer worldwide and more than 600-thousand people died of the disease. But progress is being made. Cancer mortality rates have been going down for decades, and new technology is making early detection easier. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The town of Paradise, California was ravaged by a fire in November that killed more than 80 people and drove thousands from their homes. Now music is helping survivors with their recovery, as we hear from Mike O’Sullivan.
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