Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe. The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years. Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe. However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180. Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well. U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe. “We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December …
With Boko Haram Threat Receding, Nigeria Allows Fishing to Resume in Lake Chad
Three years ago, at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigerian soldiers stopped all fishing activities in the country’s section of Lake Chad. Militants had infiltrated the ranks of the fishermen, the army said, and were using the guise to fund arms purchases and launch surprise attacks on innocent people. The local fishermen’s union said it understood the army’s actions but pushed for an easing of the ban, because its members had no other way to earn a living in the largely dry and remote area. Relief came to the local fishermen over the weekend, when the Nigerian Army commander in charge of the area, Major General Ibrahimn Attahiru, addressed the fishermen and said they could return to work based on some guidelines the army had reached with their leaders. Fishermen support changes The president of the Lake Chad Fishermen Association, Alhaji Abubakar Gamande, confirmed the development in an interview Monday with VOA’s Hausa Service and pledged that fishermen will follow the new rules. “Based on what happened in the past, we will not continue to operate as we used to, where everyone did as he deemed fit,” he said. “We and the army will watch the activities of the fishermen and anyone whose work requires entering the lake. We will not let him operate as he wishes. We will screen all our members. We have to know where they are coming from and where they are going.” In normal times, the fishermen can still make a decent living …
Family Planning Summit Overshadowed by US Funding Cut
Donor countries at a London summit pledged Tuesday to increase funding for family planning, but proposed cuts to family planning programs by the U.S. government overshadowed the conference. The largest boost in donations announced at the Family Planning Summit came from the U.S.-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sought to improve women’s access to contraceptives. “The $375 million that the foundation announced today, that is absolutely not a reaction to President [Donald] Trump,” Melinda Gates said. “There is not anything anyone can do to fill the bucket of the money that the U.S. has committed to family planning.” The United States is by far the biggest donor to global family planning programs, giving $600 million this year. But Trump announced in April that he planned to withdraw financial support for the U.N. Population Fund, accusing it of using what he called “coercive” family planning practices, including providing abortions. The United Nations strongly rejected the claims. Nigeria’s minister of health, Isaac Adewole, told VOA the cuts would have an impact. “Every country in the developing world will be worried, because it really signifies an increase in the [funding] gap,” he said. “We know family planning is one of the strongest anti-poverty strategies the world has ever known. It is a low-hanging fruit for reducing maternal mortality. It will contribute to shared prosperity.” Call for action By 2050, Nigeria is on course to be the third most populous country, with more than 400 million people. Nigeria’s minister of budget and national …
Twitter Hires ex-Goldman Managing Director as CFO
Twitter on Tuesday hired Ned Segal, senior vice president of finance at Intuit and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs Group, as its chief financial officer beginning in late August. Anthony Noto, who has been serving as Twitter’s CFO and chief operating officer since November, will remain at the company as COO, Twitter said in a statement. The appointment of Segal, 43, comes as investors are demonstrating renewed optimism in Twitter, which still lags rival social network Facebook in terms of size and profitability. Twitter shares rose 3 percent on Tuesday, before the announcement of Segal’s hiring after the market’s close. The stock is up 32 percent since April 17, when it hit the low of the year at $14.12. In April, Twitter reported better-than-expected user growth in the first quarter of the year, partly related to heightened user interest in political news and comment. Before joining Intuit, Segal was the CFO of RPX Corp , which helps companies manage patent risk, and earlier spent some 17 years at Goldman, according to a biography provided by Twitter. From 2009 to 2013, Segal was a Goldman managing director and head of its global software investment banking unit, advising tech companies on mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings, Twitter said. Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Segal was an ideal fit because of the range of his experience. “He brings a principled, engaging and rigorous approach to the CFO role, with a track record of driving profitable growth,” Dorsey said in …
Report: Financial Sector Not Using its Full Power to Fight Human Trafficking
The global financial sector is not fully using tools it has at hand to help fight human trafficking, from reporting suspicious credit card activity to seizing assets, said a report released Tuesday by a United Nations think tank. The United Nations University (UNU) said financial tools were a powerful means to disrupt the flow of money generated from human trafficking with the illegal industry estimated to be worth about $150 billion a year. As many as 45.8 million people, most of them women and girls, are estimated to be enslaved globally, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index by rights group Walk Free Foundation. They are typically forced to work in factories, mines and farms, sold for sex, trapped in debt bondage or born into servitude. Money generated by human trafficking comes from crime and handling those funds can be considered money laundering or, in some cases, financing terrorism, the UNU report said. “Human trafficking is both big business and a serious crime,” said James Cockayne, head of the UNU Office at the United Nations and author of the report, in an accompanying statement. “Disrupting the associated financial flows associated with these crimes will make a powerful contribution to improving these lives and preventing future crimes.” Financial institutions could help identify money couriers as well as so-called “straw men” used to conceal identities and cash-intensive businesses that typically play roles in human trafficking networks, the report said. Risk assessment maps, due diligence procedures, information sharing and protecting whistleblowers are among …
Report: Small Satellites Driving Space Industry Growth
Small satellites used for observing conditions on the earth are the fastest growing segment of the $260.5 billion global satellite industry, the Satellite Industries Association said in an annual report released on Tuesday. Small satellites, some no bigger than a shoe box, generated an 11 percent jump in annual revenue for Earth imagery in 2016 and a growing share of the 1,459 operating spacecraft that circled the planet at the end of the year, the report said. The orbital fleet includes 499 satellites that weigh up to 1,323 pounds (600 kg), many of them used for Earth observation and remote sensing, said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of Bryce Technology and Space, which wrote the report for the trade association. Small satellite launchers Satellite services, including home television, broadband and Earth observation services, collectively generated $127.7 billion of revenue in 2016, the biggest single piece of the industry, according to the report. Satellites used for earth imagery accounted for just $2 billion of the total industry but accounted for 11 percent of the sector’s growth, according to the report. “That’s expected to continue to grow, given the new companies coming into the industry,” association President Tom Stroup said in an interview. The report found at least 33 dedicated small satellite launchers in development worldwide, including privately owned Rocket Lab, which debuted its Electron booster in May, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, which is expected to fly its LauncherOne rocket this year. Revenue from Earth observation services would have been higher, but …
Brazilian Senators Stage Sit-in to Block Labor Reform Vote
Brazilian opposition senators staged a sit-in Tuesday preventing a decisive vote on labor law changes that are a crucial part of President Michel Temer’s economic agenda. The senators commandeered the leaders’ table on the rostrum and prevented Senate President Eunicio Oliveira and some of his allies from taking their seats. Oliveira responded by ordering the power and microphones cut off and he adjourned the session, leading to hours of negotiations behind the scenes while the insurgents remained in the chamber in a standoff that continued into the night. After six hours, Oliveira restarted the session, but the opposition senators did not leave his seat. Sitting on a smaller chair, he could not use his microphone and was forced to shout to his peers to get the discussions under way. Before the live video feed of the Senate session was cut, senators could be seen tapping on their phones and chatting with one another in a darkened room. The spectacle underscored how acrimonious Brazilian politics have become in recent months as Temer’s popularity has plummeted and a corruption charge against him has emboldened members of the opposition who believe he never should have become president. Temer took power last year after his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and removed as president. Given that Temer was only voted in as vice president in the last election, many Brazilians have bristled at his push to pass a series of unpopular economic measures, including a cap on government spending, …
US Agency Gets 2 Million-plus Comments on Monument Reviews
The issue of whether to preserve, shrink or revoke the protected status of two dozen U.S. national monuments drew more than 2 million public comments ahead of a report to be issued by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to President Donald Trump next month. In April, Trump ordered the Interior Department to review 27 national monuments created since 1996, with an eye to rescinding or shrinking the size of some of them to increase development opportunities. Zinke said Tuesday that more than 1.2 million comments were received on the Regulations.gov website and thousands more were received via traditional mail. Environmental groups have said more than 2.5 million comments were submitted in total by Monday’s deadline. Over the last few weeks, Zinke visited national monuments under review in Utah, Maine and other places to meet with different stakeholders. “After hearing some feedback, I’d like to remind and reassure folks that even if a monument is modified, the land will remain under federal ownership,” Zinke said in a statement, adding that he remained opposed to the sale or transfer of public lands. “Nothing in this review changes that policy,” he said. Last month, Zinke made a preliminary recommendation to Trump to reduce the size of the 1.35 million-acre (5,463-square kilometer) Bears Ears monument in Utah, the country’s newest monument, over the objections of a coalition of Native American tribes who say the area is sacred tribal land. His report said that the Antiquities Act, used by past presidents to declare monuments, should cover …
Michigan Imposes Prison Term for Female Genital Mutilation
Doctors and parents involved in female genital mutilation will face up to 15 years in prison under new Michigan laws. Female circumcision or cutting is already a federal crime punishable by five years in prison. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation on Tuesday that creates a state crime with harsher penalties. The legislation was proposed after six people from an India-based Muslim sect called Dawoodi Bohra were charged in a genital mutilation case involving six girls at a suburban Detroit clinic. Two of the girls are from Minnesota, and four are from Michigan. Michigan is the 26th state to officially ban the practice, which is common in some parts of the world. The new laws also require increased public education and lengthen the statutes of limitations to file charges and lawsuits. The laws take effect in October. …
Researchers Design Intervention to Stop Abuse of Mothers During Childbirth
Reports over the past decade have drawn global attention to shocking abuses some women have been subjected to during childbirth in developed and developing countries. The maltreatment has ranged from lack of privacy and neglect to forced sterilization, sexual and physical assault, and refusal to release a mother or child from a birth facility without payment. The problems are especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 66 percent of all maternal deaths per year worldwide, according to a February report from UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund. A four-year study by researchers in the United States and Tanzania looked at ways to reduce abuse of mothers-to-be. Keys included gathering community stakeholders and health care workers to define standards of care and identifying barriers to change. Previous efforts to reduce mortality of women giving birth focused on getting them into health care facilities to deliver their children. Despite dramatic increases in facility-based childbirth, however, decreases in mortality remained modest. Even when facilities are equipped to save a mother’s life, reports of abuse can keep women from seeking medical treatment during birth. Site is no guarantee “It doesn’t matter where you give birth — just because it’s a building doesn’t mean you survive,” Lynn Freedman of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health told VOA. With colleagues from Columbia, the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania and Harvard University, Freedman designed one of the first attempts to show how abuse could be reduced. The researchers followed facilities in the Tanga Region of Tanzania …
Tech Companies Wage War on Disease-carrying Mosquitoes
American technology companies are bringing automation and robotics to the age-old task of battling mosquitoes in a bid to halt the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne maladies worldwide. Firms including Microsoft and California life sciences company Verily are forming partnerships with public health officials in several U.S. states to test new high-tech tools. In Texas, Microsoft is testing a smart trap to isolate and capture Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known Zika carriers, for study by entomologists to give them a jump on predicting outbreaks. Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division based in Mountain View, California, is speeding the process for creating sterile male mosquitoes to mate with females in the wild, offering a form of birth control for the species. While it may take years for these advances to become widely available, public health experts say new players bring fresh thinking to vector control, which still relies heavily on traditional defenses such as larvicides and insecticides. “It’s exciting when technology companies come on board,” said Anandasankar Ray, an associate professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. “Their approach to a biological challenge is to engineer a solution.” Smart traps The Zika epidemic that emerged in Brazil in 2015 and left thousands of babies suffering from birth defects has added urgency to the effort. While cases there have slowed markedly, mosquitoes capable of carrying the virus — Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus — are spreading in the Americas, including large swaths of the southern United States. The vast majority of …
Banks Worth $7 Trillion Pledge to Calculate Costs of Climate Risks
Eleven of the world’s biggest banks pledged on Tuesday to find out how much exposure they have to risks related to climate-change, a move backed by environmentalists who say better information on the costs of global warming will push lenders to transition towards green investments. With more than $7 trillion under management, some of the biggest names in global finance have signed onto the United Nations-backed disclosure effort for information on new risks presented by climate change. Information on banks’ climate risks could eventually be reviewed by regulators as part of their financial disclosures, said Simone Dettling, a researcher with the U.N. Environment Program working on the transparency plan. “The goal is to shift lending away from carbon intensive sectors that are becoming risky towards green technologies that are becoming more attractive,” Dettling told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. Before banks can change their lending patterns they need to understand how their portfolios will be impacted by climate change. Most currently do not have this information, Dettling said. “They have committed to finding these numbers,” she said of the voluntary plan. Once banks have information on their exposure to climate risks they can begin disclosing how these risks will impact investors while looking for new sustainable alternatives, she said. That disclosure could happen within the next year, she said, although banks and U.N. officials are still hammering out the details. Information on investments in fossil fuel firms, renewable energy businesses and transportation companies is likely to be …
Trial Begins in Japan for CEO of Failed Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox
The former chief executive officer of the failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox pleaded not guilty to charges that he stole hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the virtual currency. French-born Mark Karpeles appeared Tuesday in Tokyo District Court at the start of his trial on embezzlement and data manipulation charges. Prosecutors have accused the 32-year-old of manipulating Mt. Gox’s data and moving millions of Bitcoins into his personal account before the exchange shut down in February 2014. Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy after losing about 850,000 bitcoins, then worth close to half a billion U.S. dollars. The exchange blamed the loss on hackers who exploited a security flaw. The company later claimed it found about 200,000 of the missing bitcoins in another location. The collapse of Mt. Gox, which handled much of the world’s Bitcoin trading activity, angered investors and damaged the reputation of the alternative currency. The scandal prompted Japanese lawmakers to enact laws regulating the use of bitcoins and other digital-based currencies. …
Swedish Project Seeks to Recycle Resources Contained in Waste Water
Average households use a lot of water that cannot be re-used and it goes to waste. A new project in Sweden is testing a water treatment system that would put to use the nutrients and other useful elements from used water while eliminating the toxic parts. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more. …
Report: Cutting Food Source Leads to Dramatic Drop in Number of Mosquitoes
Insecticides, mosquito nets, and disrupting breeding grounds all reduce mosquito populations and slow the spread of malaria. Now, researchers want to take away the insect’s food to fight the disease that kills a child every two minutes. Mosquitoes mostly feed on plant sugars that can be hard to find during the dry season in Africa, where 90 percent of malaria cases develop. Researchers thought one potential source of food might be from the flowers on a small type of mesquite tree. The tree, imported from Mexico 40 years ago to provide firewood and shore up irrigation dykes, quickly became invasive and grew out of control. To test their idea, researchers monitored mosquito populations in six villages in the Bandiagra District of Mali. After a week, they removed the flowers from the mesquite trees in half of the villages. The report, published in Malaria Journal, found that with less food around, the mosquitoes didn’t live as long and populations dropped 69 percent. This didn’t just mean fewer mosquitoes, it meant fewer old mosquitoes. That’s important because it takes 12 days for the malaria virus to get to the salivary glands of a mosquito where it could infect a human. So if mosquitoes die even a couple of days earlier, that could greatly reduce the number of mosquitoes that pose a threat. “This suggests that removal of the flowers could be a new way to shift inherently high malaria transmission areas to low transmission areas,” said Gunter Muller, lead author of the study from …
Trump to Nominate Quarles to Be Fed’s Top Banking Regulator
U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate former Treasury official Randal Quarles to be the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, the White House said on Monday. If confirmed by the Senate, Quarles would be the first vice chair of supervision at the Fed, a role created after the 2008 financial crisis but never filled during the Obama administration. Quarles is viewed as an industry-friendly figure who will likely listen to banks that have complained about the impact of regulations implemented since the financial meltdown. His nomination has been widely expected since April. Former Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo effectively ran banking supervision until he stepped down in February, overseeing a strict implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and administering rigorous “stress tests” annually to banks on how prepared they are to withstand unexpected shocks. Quarles currently runs a private investment firm that he founded, the Cynosure Group, from Salt Lake City, Utah. He was previously a partner at private equity firm the Carlyle Group. He was also under secretary for domestic finance at the Treasury under President George W. Bush and was the U.S. executive director of the International Monetary Fund. In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in March 2016, Quarles and Lawrence Goodman, another former U.S. Treasury official, argued against breaking up big banks because it would risk damaging the wider economy. He has also talked about refining Obama-era financial rules, introduced after the financial crisis. Quarles will be a central figure in pushing …
US Expected to Scrap Visa Program for Entrepreneurs
President Donald Trump’s administration is postponing and plans to drop a program to provide visas for foreign entrepreneurs who launch companies in the United States. The visa program, proposed last year by former President Barack Obama, was intended to give entrepreneurs who are not eligible for other types of visas permission to live in the U.S. for 30 months to get their enterprises up and running. Leading figures in the technology industry had lobbied strongly for the visa program as a way for immigrants to come to the U.S. to start companies, contribute to the economy and create more jobs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has estimated that nearly 3,000 entrepreneurs would be eligible for such visas each year. The so-called startup visa program was to have taken effect next week, but DHS will issue a notice Tuesday postponing implementation of the International Entrepreneur Rule until March 14, 2018. A draft of the notice posted online by the Federal Register said DHS plans to rescind the rule, but is requesting public comments before issuing a final decision. The program would permit non-U.S. citizens to stay in the country for renewable 30-month terms if they have $250,000 in capital investments or win $100,000 in government grants to support their proposals. The president of the National Venture Capital Association, Bobby Franklin, said Monday the administration’s decision was “extremely disappointing.” “At a time when countries around the world are doing all they can to attract and retain talented individuals to come to their …
Tanzania’s President Signs New Mining Bills into Law
Tanzanian President John Magufuli said on Monday he has signed into law new mining bills which require the government to own at least a 16 percent stake in mining projects. The laws, which also increase royalties tax on gold and other minerals, were passed by parliament last week despite opposition from the mining industry body. Magufuli reiterated on Monday that no new mining licenses would be issued until Tanzania “puts things in order” and that the government would review all existing mining licenses with foreign investors. “We must benefit from our God-given minerals and that is why we must safeguard our natural resource wealth to ensure we do not end up with empty mining pits,” Magufuli told a rally in his home village in Chato district, northwestern Tanzania. The president has sent shock-waves through the mining community with a series of actions since his election in 2015, which he says are aimed at distributing revenue to the Tanzanian people. The new mining laws, which were fast-tracked through parliament, raise royalties tax for gold, copper, silver and platinum exports to six percent from four percent. They also give the government the right to tear up and renegotiate contracts for natural resources like gas or minerals, and remove the right to international arbitration. “I would like to thank parliament for making the legislative changes. I signed the bills into law the same day Parliament concluded its session on July 5,” Magufuli said. Passage of the new legislation also followed months of wrangling …
Musk Tweets Pictures of First Model 3 to Roll Off the Line
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted pictures of the first Model 3 sedan to roll off the assembly line. Tesla board member Ira Ehrenpreis was the first to put down a $1,000 deposit on the Model 3 and gifted the car to Musk for his 46th birthday, Musk said in a tweet. Musk has high hopes for the $35,000 Model 3, aimed at the mass market, and expects the rollout to help the company deliver five times its current annual sales volume. Tesla’s shares have taken a beating in the last few weeks, as investors have become increasingly concerned that demand for the company’s existing Model S sedan is weakening. Musk said in May that some “confused” Tesla buyers considered the new Model 3 as an upgrade to the Model S, hurting orders for the older car. Registrations for Tesla’s vehicles in California, its largest market, fell 24 percent in April from a year ago, according to data from research firm IHS Markit. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that new registrations of Tesla cars fell to zero in Hong Kong after authorities slashed a tax break for electric vehicles in April. Last week, Musk said production of the Model 3 would increase exponentially — from 100 cars in August, more than 1,500 in September to 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in December. …
Cholera Outbreak Reaches 300,000 People Infected in Yemen
A cholera outbreak in Yemen “continues to spiral out of control,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which says there are now over 300,000 suspected cases of the water-borne disease. The country is also struggling to battle famine in the midst of a two-year war between a Saudi-led coalition and Shiite rebels who control the capital city of Sana’a. The World Food Program has reported that two-thirds of Yemen’s population does not know where their next meal will come from. “Disturbing. We’re at 300k+ suspected cases with ~7k new cases/day,” ICRC Regional Director Robert Mardini said in a tweet. “More than 1,600 have died,” the ICRC tweeted. Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can be spread through contaminated food and water. The disease thrives in impoverished areas like Yemen. Although easily treatable, the disease is spreading in war-torn Yemen as less than half of all medical facilities have become useless. According to the U.N’.s Humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, most of the $1.1 billion in aid promised to Yemen has not been delivered yet, causing food security to become even more of a problem. “Humanitarian Organizations have had to reprogram their resources away from malnutrition and reuse them to control the cholera outbreak,” he said in Sana’a last week. “We’re trying to do our best, but its very much beyond what we can cope with.” …
China’s COSCO to Buy Orient Overseas for $6.3 Billion
China’s biggest shipping company, state-owned COSCO Shipping Holdings Co., is creating the world’s No. 3 container shipping giant by acquiring rival Orient Overseas (International) Ltd. Shares in both companies surged Monday following the announcement of the $6.3 billion deal. A wave of consolidation has created huge competitors in a global shipping industry that is struggling with sluggish trade and depressed prices. On Monday, COSCO’s shares traded in Hong Kong jumped 4.7 percent while Orient Overseas’ shares soared 19.5 percent. On its own, COSCO ranks No. 4 globally with 317 ships and 8.4 percent of container traffic, according to Alphaline, an industry database. Adding Orient Overseas would give it market share of 11.7 percent, moving it ahead of Marseilles, France-based CMA CGM Group. The No. 1 shipper is Denmark’s AP Moeller-Maersk with 643 ships and 16.4 percent of container traffic. Orient Overseas, with 103 ships, is controlled by the family of former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa. The transaction is subject to antitrust review by Chinese, European and U.S. authorities, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The filing said COSCO will pay $10.07 per share (HK$78.67), a premium of 38 percent over Orient’s Friday share price on the Hong Kong Exchange. The total price tag for the deal will be $6.3 billion (HK$49.2 billion). AP Moeller-Maersk acquired Hamburg Sud of Germany in December. CMA CGM bought Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines last year. Orient Overseas reported a loss of $219.2 million last year. It blamed a glut …
Rural Amazon Violence Rises Amid Bureaucracy Over Land Titles
For a farmer in Brazil’s Amazon, Manoel Freire Camurca was doing pretty well for himself until a local power broker burned down his house and took the surrounding fields he had poured his life into. Camurca’s eviction eight months ago happened as officials were finalizing his claim to 500 hectares of land in southwestern Amazonas state where he had spent nearly three decades growing corn, sugar and beans. “I lost everything,” 61-year-old Camurca told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wiping away tears. “I went into town and when I came back everything was burned and destroyed.” Half a dozen other small farmers in his village suffered the same fate after a large rancher said he was the rightful owner of the land. Camurca’s story highlights an increasingly violent environment in parts of rural Brazil which government officials say is fueled by unclear property title deeds, local corruption and a system where competing state agencies work on land regularization. ‘Death in the Countryside’ At least 36 people died in land conflicts in the first five months of this year, according to the Brazil-based Pastoral Land Commission watchdog. One government official said 2017 had so far been the most violent year for land fights this century. “Land conflicts in the Amazon have gotten worse,” said Ronaldo Santos, an official with the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), a government body responsible for managing and demarcating rural land. “Big farm operators have the power to dispense injustice,” Santos told the Thomson Reuters …
At France’s Davos, French Bosses Laud Impact of New President
Top French company bosses who have for years lamented their country’s slow pace of reforms at an annual summer gathering in Provence offered glowing praise this year for the first steps taken by newly elected President Emmanuel Macron. Sixty days after Macron became France’s youngest ever president, the CEOs gathered in the southern town of Aix-en-Provence said they had sensed a radical change in the country’s image abroad. “The whole world admires France today. There is renewed confidence, optimism about the country,” Patrick Pouyanne, the head of oil major Total, France’s largest company, told reporters. “What I expect from this government is that it maintains this confidence, this optimism so the French start spending more and companies start investing.” Although Macron’s government has yet to pass any concrete measures, it outlined its action plan in policy speeches last week, and has begun talks with unions to pass an extensive reform of French labor regulations. “I think this new president and his government are making an extremely positive start,” Isabelle Kocher of gas utility ENGIE told Reuters at the summit often referred to as a “mini-Davos”. “They are changing France’s image abroad, I see it everywhere I go, it’s really striking and has happened very quickly,” she said. “France went from being labeled the sick man of Europe to being seen as the savior of Europe,” a politician who sits on the board of several French companies told Reuters at one of the cafes lining the town’s sunny streets. Tax cut …
China Tests Self-sustaining Space Station in Beijing
Sealed behind the steel doors of two bunkers in a Beijing suburb, university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a space station on another planet, recycling everything from plant cuttings to urine. They are part of a project aimed at creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that provides everything humans need to survive. Four students from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics entered the Lunar Palace-1 on Sunday with the aim of living self-sufficiently for 200 days. They say they are happy to act as human guinea-pigs if it means getting closer to their dream of becoming astronauts. “I’ll get so much out of this,” Liu Guanghui, a PhD student, who entered the bunker on Sunday, said. “It’s truly a different life experience.” President Xi Jinping wants China to become a global power in space exploration, with plans to send the first probe to the dark side of the moon by 2018 and to put astronauts on the moon by 2036. The Lunar Palace 365 experiment may allow them to stay there for extended periods. For Liu Hong, a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the project’s principal architect, said everything needed for human survival had been carefully calculated. “We’ve designed it so the oxygen [produced by plants at the station] is exactly enough to satisfy the humans, the animals, and the organisms that break down the waste materials,” she said. But satisfying physical needs is only one part of the experiment, Liu …