Most kids love digging in the sand … and many never outgrow that. A new and unusual attraction nicknamed “sand box for grown-ups” is a big hit among teenagers and adults in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s a heavy equipment playground that gives customers a change to operate gigantic, earth-moving bulldozers and hydraulic excavators, get tested on their skills and just have fun. Roman Mamonov tried his hand at operating some of the biggest construction vehicles there. Anna Rice narrates his story.
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Month: May 2019
The world’s coral reefs host an astounding amount of the ocean’s biodiversity, but warming waters are putting them at risk around the world. Now a group of Australian scientists is searching for corals that can thrive in warm, acidic waters. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s social satire Parasite, about a poor family of hustlers who find jobs with a wealthy family, won the Cannes Film Festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or, on Saturday.
Parasite was the first Korean film to win the Palme. In the festival’s closing ceremony, jury president Alejandro Inarritu said the choice was “unanimous” for the nine-person jury.
The genre-mixing film had arguably been celebrated more than others at Cannes this year, hailed by critics as the best yet from the 49-year-old director of Snowpiercer and Okja.
It was the second straight Palme victory for an Asian director. Last year, the award went to Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, a film also about an impoverished family.
“We shared the mystery of the unexpected way this film took us through different genres, speaking in a funny, humorous and tender way of no judgment of something so relevant and urgent and so global,” Inarritu told reporters after the ceremony.
Many of the awards at Cannes on Saturday were given to social and political tales that depicted geopolitical dramas in localized stories, from African shores to Paris suburbs.
The festival’s second-place award, the Grand Prix, went to French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s feature-film debut, Atlantics. The film by Diop, the first black female director ever in competition in Cannes, views the migrant crisis from the perspective of Senegalese women left behind after many young men flee by sea to Spain.
Sciamma’s period romance
Although few quibbled with the choice of Bong, some had expected Cannes to make history by giving the Palme to a female filmmaker for just the second time. Celine Sciamma’s period romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire was the Palme pick for many critics this year. Instead, Sciamma ended up with best screenplay.
In the festival’s 72-year history, only Jane Champion has won the prize. In 1993, her The Piano tied with Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine.
Best actor went to Antonio Banderas for Pedro Almodovar’s reflective drama Pain and Glory. In the film, one of the most broadly acclaimed of the festival, Banderas plays a fictionalized version of Almodovar looking back on his life and career.
“The best is still to come,” said Banderas, accepting the award.
The Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have already twice won the Palme d’Or, took the best director prize for Young Ahmed, their portrait of a Muslim teenager who becomes radicalized by a fundamentalist imam.
The jury prize, or third place, was split between two socially conscious thrillers: French director Ladj Ly’s feature-film debut Les Miserables and Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Bacurau.
Ly called his film an alarm bell about youths living in the housing projects of Paris’ suburbs. Filho viewed his feverish, violent Western about a rural Brazilian community defending itself from a hard-to-comprehend invasion as a reflection of President Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
British actress Emily Beecham won best actress for her performance in Jessica Hausner’s science-fiction drama Little Joe. The jury also gave a special mention to Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven.
The Camera d’Or, an award given for best first feature from across all of Cannes’ sections, went to Cesar Diaz’s Our Mothers, a drama about the Guatemalan civil war in the 1980s.
The ceremony Saturday brought to a close a Cannes Film Festival that was riven with concerns for its own relevancy. It had to contend, most formidably, with the cultural television force of Game of Thrones. The continuing rise of streaming was also a constant subject around the festival.
Netflix controversy
Two years ago, Bong was in Cannes’ competition with Okja, a movie distributed in North America by Netflix. After it and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories — another Netflix release — premiered at Cannes, the festival ruled that all future films in competition needed French theatrical distribution. Netflix has since withdrawn from the festival on the French Riviera.
This year, bowing to pressure from 5050×2020, the French version of Time’s Up, the festival released gender breakdowns of its submissions and selections. Cannes said about 27% of its official selections were directed by women. The 21-film main slate included four films directed by women, which tied the festival’s previous high.
The 72nd Cannes had its share of red-carpet dazzle, too. Elton John brought his biopic Rocketman to the festival, joining star Taron Egerton for a beachside duet after the premiere. And Quentin Tarantino unveiled his 1960s Los Angeles tale Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, 25 years after the director’s Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or.
Tarantino, who attended the closing ceremony, didn’t go home empty-handed. On Friday, a prominent pooch in his film won the annual Palme Dog, an award given by critics to Cannes’ best canine.
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In the United States, the last Monday in May is Memorial Day, a holiday that honors people who died in military service during wartime.
The end of May also marks the beginning of a less serious kind of war. It is one many living Americans fight each summer. It is a battle for – and about – the perfect lawn. That’s right, the lawn: the grass around most American houses.
Virginia Scott Jenkins is an expert on Americans’ extreme interest in lawns. In fact, in her book on the issue, she calls it an “obsession.”
She says that, in the minds of many Americans, the perfect lawn looks like a soft, green carpet. “One height, one color, one type of grass, one consistency.”
Many Americans believe such a lawn does more than make a house or neighborhood look good.
“An orderly front lawn is supposed to be representative of an orderly household,” Jenkins says. “Good neighbors have good front lawns, good citizens have good front lawn(s).”
Lawns are so linked to American identity that they are part of some U.S. government buildings overseas. Architectural historian Jane Loeffler notes that the design for the American embassy in Berlin, Germany, for example, includes an outdoor area made to look like “the beloved American lawn.”
Man against nature
Lawns are not only a big deal for Americans – they are also big business.
The Bloomberg news service found that Americans spend about $40 billion every year on lawn care. They pay for lawn mowers to cut the grass and chemical fertilizers to make it grow. Many also pay other people to help keep their lawns thick and green.
These things are all weapons in a war against natural forces that, in time, may make lawns look wild or brown. So why do so many Americans fight such a war each summer?
“People have grown up believing that that ’s what [a lawn] is supposed to look like,” Jenkins says. “Because of tremendous advertising campaigns and pressure from the lawn care industry, which is a multi-million dollar business.”
Jenkins says that lawns also show a person’s social position. “Do you know how much money it takes, and time and effort, to grow a perfect front lawn?”
A major reason why lawns are so much work is because they are completely man-made, she adds. “There is not anything natural about them.”
Even the grass seed historically comes from Europe and Africa.
Man against neighbor
Of course, not everyone accepts traditional American lawn culture.
In recent years, another front on the lawn war has formed. It is between people who want to control their lawns, and those who want to let native plants grow naturally.
In 2014, in an area of Virginia about 80 kilometers outside Washington, D.C, a couple entered into a legal fight with their neighborhood about their lawn. The couple’s house is on about 2.2 hectares of land. They cut and care for the grass on part of that land, but they permit the rest to grow naturally into a meadow, with tall grass and wildflowers.
The couple, Michael and Sian Pugh, told the Washington Post newspaper that they enjoy watching the butterflies, birds and deer that visit the meadow.
But the Pughs are part of a homeowners association – a group that cares for and governs a neighborhood. The homeowners association, or HOA, makes and enforces rules about that area. One rule that is common among HOAs across the country is that members must keep their grass short and green. The Pugh’s HOA says their meadow violates this rule and is not fair to their neighbors.
One concern is that the meadow might reduce the value of other people’s homes in the area. People who sell property say a well-kept lawn is an important part of making a house attractive to buyers.
Another concern is that the neighborhood will no longer feel pleasant – or even safe – to the people who already live there.
But the Pughs and their supporters say meadows such as theirs add value because they are better for the environment. The native grasses have deep roots and can protect against flooding. And the wildflowers invite bees and butterflies, which help crops and other plants grow.
Alternatives to the traditional American lawn
Activists in other places have made similar environmental arguments.
They say the chemicals that “feed and weed” traditional lawns can hurt people and animals. They criticize the water waste involved in keeping lawns green, especially in places that face drought.
They also note that some kinds of lawn mowers use gas and pollute the air. And they say that, in general, keeping lawns under control takes too much time, and is a job that few homeowners really want to do.
In answer to these arguments, some people have found other ways to use the area around their houses. They use plants that grow easily. Or they put in vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Or, like the Pughs, they permit nature to take over and hope their neighbors w ill come to accept a new definition of “lawn.”
By the way, the Pugh’s case was never fully resolved. The HOA decided not to go to court. But HOA officials are also re-writing the rules so that no one else tries to grow a tall, wild meadow in a place where neighbors prefer a short, orderly lawn.
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The United Nations has drawn up new measures to strengthen its response to the Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and put an end to the spread of this deadly virus, which already has claimed more than 1200 lives.
The plan is top-heavy with senior officials who will oversee and coordinate U.N. and international efforts to come to grips with this virulent disease. The Ebola epidemic was declared 10 months ago in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces in eastern DRC.
Since then, growing insecurity and community mistrust have hampered efforts to contain the virus, heightening the risk of the disease spreading to neighboring countries.
To deal with this increasingly complex situation, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says the U.N., in close cooperation with the DRC government and partners, is strengthening its political engagement, bolstering preparedness plans and increasing support for humanitarian coordination.
“WHO is adapting public health response strategies to identify and treat people as quickly as possible, expanding vaccination to reach and protect more people; and redoubling work to end transmission in health facilities,” said Jasarevic. “The United Nations Secretary-General has established a strengthened coordination and support mechanism in the epicenter of the outbreak, Butembo.”
To head this effort, the U.N. chief has appointed two high-ranking experienced officials. David Gressly, newly appointed as U.N. Emergency Ebola Response Coordinator will oversee the coordination of international support for the Ebola response.
He will work closely with WHO on health operations and with Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response, Ibrahima Soce Fall. He has been leading WHO’s Ebola response in DRC from Butembo since mid-March.
Fall, whose responsibilities will be expanded, praises the new approach to the Ebola crisis. He says it will provide better security for patients and health workers and wider access to an effective Ebola vaccine. He says the plan also will present a more humane face to the response, which should help allay community suspicion.
A water-proof drone is being used by Australian scientists to collect the highly-treasured nasal mucus of migrating whales. The snot is rich with fresh DNA, viruses and bacteria, and is collected by a drone that hovers over the blowholes of humpback whales as they embark on their epic annual journey along Australia’s east coast.
Whales, like all mammals need air, and come to the surface to breathe through a blowhole.
Vanessa Pirotta, a marine biologist at Macquarie University, says that nasal mucus indicates the health of the whale.
“It is the juicy biological mixture that you see as a whale takes a breath as they surface from the water,” she said. “You often see that plume and it sounds like this like [sounds of sharp breaths] as a whale breathes because, after all, they are mammals like you and I and they have two nostrils, and it is the humpback whale that I am talking about. So as they take a breath it is a lot of lung bacteria coming out from their lungs, which we can collect to provide a snapshot of whale health.”
Australian researchers have attached a petri dish that is used in scientific tests to a drone which flies through the whale’s nasal mist.
“As a whale comes to take a breath — you can actually see it coming to the surface on really good weather days that is — the drone then lowers, the petri dish is then opened and the drone is flown through the densest part of the whale snot, collecting the sample in the petri dish. Now once this happens the lid is shut and the drone is flown back to the research vessel and we collect the sample to later process it in the laboratory,” said Pirotta.
The research could help to solve one of the mysteries of another magnificent creature of the deep — the Southern right whale. Its numbers have recovered on Australia’s west coast since hunting was outlawed but its population on the eastern seaboard remains stubbornly low.
In the past studies into whale health had to rely on examining whales that were either killed or those whales that had been stranded on a beach.
Drones allow scientists to collect samples from free-swimming whales to gather information in a safe and non-invasive way.
Vinyl records are becoming more popular in the U.S., after almost disappearing from American markets when they were replaced over the years by audio tapes, CDs and digital music downloaded onto phones and other devices. With vinyl records coming back, record-pressing plants are being established, including one just recently opened in Alexandria, Va., a Washington, D.C., suburb. Alina Golinata recently visited the plant and filed this report.
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Leonardo da Vinci is renowned as a “Renaissance man” for his mastery in art, science, architecture, music, mathematics, engineering and cartography, but he was no master at completing his efforts.
Five hundred years after his death, a professor of psychiatry in Britain has suggested that the reason da Vinci left behind so many unfinished works, including the iconic Mona Lisa, is that he may have had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
“I am confident ADHD is the most convincing and scientifically plausible hypothesis to explain Leonardo’s difficulty in finishing his works,” Marco Catani of King’s College in London argues in a paper published Friday in the neurological journal Brain.
Catani said historical records show da Vinci’s struggles with finishing tasks were pervasive from childhood.
On the go
Accounts from biographers and contemporaries show he was constantly on the go, Catani said, often jumping from task to task. And like many people with ADHD, da Vinci got very little sleep and often worked continuously, night and day.
“Historical records show Leonardo spent excessive time planning projects but lacked perseverance. ADHD could explain aspects of Leonardo’s temperament and his strange mercurial genius,” the professor said.
ADHD is a behavioral disorder most commonly identified with inability to complete tasks and mental and physical restlessness. It is most commonly recognized in children but is increasingly being diagnosed among adults, including those with successful careers.
“There is a prevailing misconception that ADHD is typical of misbehaving children with low intelligence, destined for a troubled life,” Catani said. He said he hoped that “that the case of Leonardo shows that ADHD is not linked to low IQ or lack of creativity but rather the difficulty of capitalizing on natural talents. I hope that Leonardo’s legacy can help us to change some of the stigma around ADHD.”
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In a building a few miles from Google and Facebook’s plush campuses is the Pentagon’s sparse outpost in Silicon Valley.
Here, military personnel and civilians look for commercial technology that can help the armed services solve problems they face in the field.
That could be working with a local commercial rocket company to deploy satellites faster. Or finding an up-and-coming firm that has created a novel communication system that works in some of the harshest conditions.
Defense Innovation Unit
Founded four years ago, the Defense Innovation Unit has a sense of urgency now more than ever, says its director, Michael Brown, formerly chief executive of Symantec, the cyber security firm, and of Quantum, a computer storage firm.
Because of the new so-called Tech Cold War, tensions are surging between the U.S. and China over emergent technologies, such as 5G mobile phone networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.
“The Defense Innovation Unit’s mission has never been more critical, given the tech race that we’re in with China, than it is today,” Brown said.
Chinese investors and companies also are here, for many of the same reasons — to find the breakthroughs that will help their nascent and growing tech industry. But they’re presence is under increasing scrutiny, fueled by a concern that Chinese investors and companies are part of a system of transferring technology out of the U.S. and into the hands of an adversary, the Chinese government.
Raising alarms
Brown is the co-author of a report that shed light on the growing presence of Chinese firms and investors in Silicon Valley and raised alarms over whether the U.S. was in danger of losing key technology to the Chinese.
The U.S. government has expanded its restrictions on Chinese companies buying firms deemed to hold key technology. And Chinese investors are finding it harder to be part of funding rounds of U.S. startups.
“Investors have become much more sensitive to the issue,” said Rebecca Fannin, author of “Tech Titans of China.” “They’re more cautious about investing.”
Mixed reception
Some in the tech industry are skeptical of working for either the Pentagon or Chinese companies and the Chinese government. Employees at Google this year pushed back on projects involving both.
Brown’s job is two-fold. With his deep ties in the tech industry, he helps find technology that might help the military. He is also an ambassador of sorts for the Pentagon in Silicon Valley, building a bridge to tech firms large and small.
“For areas like artificial intelligence or cyber, we need those companies more than they need us,” he said. “But when we’re talking about smaller companies that are trying to get off the ground, get to their first $100 million in revenue, they’re interested in large customers. So, we have found no reluctance at all, in fact, enthusiastic response that they participate in our solicitations.”
American tech companies have long argued for the same access to China’s market that Chinese companies have here, for a “level playing field.” That hasn’t happened yet, but some are skeptical that disengaging from the Chinese economy is the right approach.
Vigilance, engagement
At a recent event by the Asia Society Northern California, investors, former tech executives and intellectual property experts discussed the conflict with China. Engagement with China has worked, argued Andy Rothman, an investment strategist at Matthews Asia, an investment firm, even if there is still a lot China hasn’t done that it said it would do.“The level of personal freedom that the Chinese people have today is dramatically better than it was 30 or 40 years ago and part of that is due to engagement with the rest of the world,” Rothman said.
For Brown, the issue isn’t how far China has come. It’s about the U.S. maintaining its technology edge and getting tech firms to think twice about working with the Chinese, even though the country represents a huge, largely untapped market.
“We do not share the same values as the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “We need to be aware of that as we’re looking to make the next dollar. There’s other things at stake.”
However the trade war is settled, the ongoing tensions over whether there will be one or two tech super powers likely will remain.
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John Pinto, a Navajo Code Talker in World War II who became one of the nation’s longest serving Native American elected officials as a New Mexico state senator, has died. He was 94.
Senate colleague Michael Padilla confirmed Pinto’s death in Gallup on Friday after years of suffering from various illnesses that rarely kept him from his duties.
After serving as a Marine, Pinto was elected to the Senate in 1976 and represented a district that includes the Navajo Nation for more than four decades. The region is one of the poorest in the country.
“Words cannot express the sadness we feel for the loss of a great Dine warrior,” said Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, using the indigenous word for Navajo. “He dedicated his life to helping others.”
Born in Lupton, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation to a family of sheep herders. Pinto didn’t start formal schooling until he was nearly a teenager.
“At the age of 12, I was in kindergarten,” Pinto told the Albuquerque Journal in a 2007 interview. “I guess I did all right.”
Pinto also recalled that his grandparents told of being forced at gunpoint from their land in the 1860s by the U.S. Army in the forced relocation of the Navajo people on foot to southern New Mexico.
After serving as a Code Talker — a group of radio men who translated American coordinates and messages into an indecipherable code based on the Navajo language — Pinto had to take an English test four times before he was finally admitted into the University of New Mexico’s College of Education.
He graduated with a bachelor’s in elementary education at 39, and eventually earned his master’s, becoming a teacher and a truancy officer in Gallup.
Pinto delved into politics to address the needs of impoverished indigenous populations. The Democrat won a seat in state Senate in 1976 as one of the state’s first Native American senators.
An unassuming appearance and manner belied Pinto’s political determination that carried him through 42 years in the Legislature. Laurie Canepa, the senior librarian for the Legislative Council Service, said that made him the longest serving senator in state history.
Manny Aragon, the state’s one-time Senate president, tells the story of driving to the Statehouse in a January 1977 snowstorm and picking up a middle-aged Navajo man who was hitchhiking in Albuquerque. The hitchhiker was newly elected Sen. Pinto.
“I just thought he was a transient,” Aragon said.
In the Legislature, Pinto advocated for education reform and anti-poverty programs. Receiving a lifetime achievement award in 2016, Pinto recalled going hungry at times as a child while his parents juggled odd jobs and said the experience influenced his work on issues of homelessness as a lawmaker.
Every year, Pinto would sing on the Senate floor the “Potato Song” — a Navajo song about a potato, planted in the spring and visited in the summer until it is harvested. Fellow senators, staff and aides clapped along to Pinto’s rendition.
Lenore Naranjo, the Senate’s chief clerk, says Pinto taught her bits of Navajo language over the decades.
“A beautiful man is all I can say,” Naranjo said.
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A SpaceX rocket has launched 60 satellites into orbit, which will be used to provide internet service from space.
The rocket was launched Thursday night from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida.
It had been originally scheduled to launch last week, but was postponed because of high winds over the Cape and the need for a software update.
The Starlink internet service will go into service only after hundreds more satellites are launched into orbit and activated.
SpaceX is the private rocket company of Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk said he saw Thursday’s launch as “a key stepping stone on the way towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon.”
Thousands of school students in Australia and New Zealand took to the streets Friday, initiating an international day of protests against the lack of action against climate change.
Organizers expect that more than a million young people in at least 120 counties will participate in protests.
Demonstrators are demanding that politicians and business leaders take swift measures to slow global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, which are damaging planet Earth.
The school protesters in Frankfurt, Germany, marched on the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) to demand it stop financing the fossil fuel industry.
According to environmental scientists, greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels have caused droughts and heatwaves, the melting of glaciers, rising sea levels and devastating floods.
The worldwide protests are inspired by Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish activist who began a single-handed climate protest outside the Swedish parliament in August. Since then, her school strike movement “Fridays for Future” has grown exponentially.
Global carbon emissions reached a record high last year, despite warnings from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October that gas emissions must be curbed over the next 12 years to stabilize the climate.
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Silicon Valley has long been a power center of American innovation. Now that high-tech is also becoming a focus of tensions between the U.S. and China, companies based here are trying to understand how they fit in. VOA’s Michelle Quinn speaks with the head of the U.S. Defense Department’s local outpost who sees the tech industry as key to U.S. national security.
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Anna, a female green anaconda that has lived most of her life in an all-female enclosure at the New England Aquarium, has given birth.
The anaconda produced 18 snakes in early January. A DNA test has confirmed that the births were a result of a nonsexual reproduction process known as parthenogenesis, or “virgin birth,” according to the aquarium.
Parthenogenesis commonly occurs in the plant world and among animals without a backbone, but is rare among vertebrates. The process has been documented only among lizards, birds, sharks and snakes.
The phenomenon involving Anna is the second known confirmed case of parthenogenesis for a green anaconda. The first was at a British zoo in 2014.
Only two of Anna’s 18 offspring have survived.
Aquarium staff said the young snakes are clones of their mother. Limited genetic sequencing shows complete matches on all the sites tested.
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Chile’s 12,000 square kilometer (4,633 square mile) Southern Patagonia Ice Field split in two and is likely to continue to fracture amid climate change, according to a team of Chilean scientists who were in the region in March.
Gino Casassa, chief of the Snow and Glacier Division of Chile’s DGA water authority, told Reuters increasing temperatures along the Andes Mountains in southern Chile and Argentina have meant less snow and ice to replenish the region’s abundant glaciers.
“What occurred is a fracture as the ice has retreated, Casassa said.
The chunk of ice that split off from the main glacier was estimated at 208 square kilometers (80.3 square miles), a relatively small part of the ice field.
But Casassa said it may be a sign of things to come.
The ice field, he said, is now “split in two, and we’ll likely discover further divisions to the south,” he said.
Two icebergs broke off the Grey Glacier in southern Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park earlier this year, adding to fears that such ruptures are becoming more frequent.
President Donald Trump says he is “honored” to give U.S. farmers hurt by the trade war with China another $16 billion in aid.
Flanked by potato growers, ranchers and dairymen in the White House, Trump said Thursday the aid “will help keep our cherished farms thriving and make clear that no country has a veto on America’s economic and national security.”
Trump added that trade has been “very unfair” to the farmers who he says support him politically.
This is the second multibillion-dollar bailout the Trump administration has provided to U.S. farmers who have seen Chinese markets for their products dry up because of tariffs China imposed on U.S. goods to retaliate for U.S. tariffs on Chinese products. The White House gave farmers $12 billion last year.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says farmers should see the first installment of the new $16 billion in aid in July or August. Perdue said he doubts if the United States and China can reach a trade deal by then.
Most of the money will go to farmers who grow and sell such crops as soybeans, corn, peanuts and wheat. Money will also be set aside to buy excess products from the farmers and send them to schools and food banks.
“I can’t recall a president more concerned about farmer well-being. We are working hard to assess trade damages and this package ensures farmers will not bear the brunt,” Perdue said.
While Trump said Thursday that many farmers told him he is “doing the right thing,” some trade experts call the bailout a political ploy and say farmers are more concerned about winning back the lost Chinese market.
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East African countries are set to ban skin-lightening products that contain hydroquinone, a medical agent linked to health problems when used in high concentrations. The East African Legislative Assembly last week passed a resolution calling for a region-wide ban on the manufacturing and importation of products containing hydroquinone.
At a beauty parlor in Arusha, 52-year-old Rose Mselle has been using skin-bleaching products since she was a teenager. She says women like her want to be beautiful
“And in the process of looking for beauty, or for our skin color to shine, we use things that we shouldn’t,” she added.
At a nearby market, 32-year-old clothing vendor Janet Jonijosefu used skin-lightening products that contain hydroquinone, a medical agent used to treat dark spots, for years. She stopped after her skin became fragile.
She said the beauty products containing hydroquinone badly affected her skin. She started developing patches on her face. She went to the doctor and was advised to stop using products containing hydroquinone and instead use aloe vera.
Skin-lightening products often use high concentrations of hydroquinone, which can cause skin problems or become toxic when mixed with other bleaching chemicals.
Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa ban or regulate the agent in cosmetics. Tanzania bars imports.
The East African Legislative Assembly last week passed a resolution on a region-wide ban of hydroquinone’s manufacture and importation.
Suzan Nakawuki, a member of the regional assembly from Uganda, noted that hydroquinone is not only used by women but also men.
“We have seen men bleaching seriously even more than women,” she said. “But it’s becoming a problem. If we don’t regulate it, it is going to become very problematic.”
When used medically, hydroquinone can be an effective treatment for skin discoloration. Some East African lawmakers spoke out against a blanket ban.
Aden Abdikadir, a lawmaker from Kenya, said he is concerned a blanket ban will cause “serious trade disruption” for cosmetics.
If signed by heads of state, the ban becomes law in all six East African Community states, which include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Critics point out bans on hydroquinone have failed to stop smuggled products from being sold openly. Cosmetics labeled as having hydroquinone are on display at shops in Arusha.
If bans are not backed by enforcement, they will have little effect on the use of the high demand skin-lightening products, despite the risk to health.
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The World Health Organization has certified Algeria and Argentina as malaria-free, following three consecutive years where no new cases of the deadly disease have been reported.
The malaria parasite, which kills more than 400,000 people each year, was discovered in Algeria in 1880. Most of the victims are children under the age of five in Africa.
The World Health Organization reports Algeria is the second country in Africa to be recognized as malaria-free after Mauritius, which was certified in 1973. Argentina is the second country in South America, after Paraguay, to be declared malaria-free.
A combination of many factors has made the achievements possible, according to WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib.
“It is very good news for Algeria and Argentina, but also for the two continents and globally also,” Chaib told VOA. “It means that malaria can be beaten. But the efforts should continue because we need also to enhance surveillance to be able to detect if any cases of malaria are still present in the country.”
WHO says the two countries eliminated malaria by employing a number of basic, well-proven measures, including insecticide-treated mosquito nets. It says both countries improved surveillance, which enabled them to rapidly identify and treat new cases of malaria. In addition, the two countries provided free diagnosis and treatment within their borders.
In the case of Argentina, WHO says cross-border collaboration with its neighbor Bolivia was critical in combating the disease. It says both countries teamed up to spray more than 22,000 homes in border areas and to conduct widespread malaria testing.
WHO says Algeria’s and Argentina’s unwavering commitment, perseverance and success in combating malaria should serve as a model for other countries.
Both Algeria and Argentina have succeeded in ridding themselves of the deadly malaria parasite without the benefit of a vaccine. Health officials are hopeful this task becomes easier with the recent rollout of the first promising malaria vaccine in Ghana and Malawi.
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