Sometimes, it just doesn’t pay to manufacture in the United States. Labor and land are expensive. It is why most consumer products sold here come from overseas. But a multinational electric guitar manufacturer still produces one-third of its instruments near where it started decades ago. Arash Arabasadi names that tune from Maryland. …
Back to Bomb Shelters? North Korea Threats Revive Nuke Fears
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the era of nuclear nightmares — of the atomic arms race, of backyard bomb shelters, of schoolchildren diving under desks to practice their survival skills in the event of an attack — seemed to finally, thankfully, fade into history. Until now. For some baby boomers, North Korea’s nuclear advances and President Donald Trump’s bellicose response have prompted flashbacks to a time when they were young, and when they prayed each night that they might awaken the next morning. For their children, the North Korean crisis was a taste of what the Cold War was like. “I’m not concerned to where I can’t sleep at night. But it certainly raises alarms for Guam or even Hawaii, where it might be a real threat,” said 24-year-old banker Christian Zwicky of San Bernardino, California. People of his parents’ generation were taught to duck and cover when the bombs came. “Maybe those types of drills should come back,” Zwicky said. He isn’t old enough to remember the popular 1950s public service announcement in which a cartoon character named Bert the Turtle teaches kids how to dive under their desks for safety. But Zwicky did see it often enough in high school history classes that he can hum the catchy tune that plays at the beginning. That’s when Bert avoids disaster by ducking into his shell, then goes on to explain to schoolchildren what they should do. “I do remember that,” says 65-year-old retiree Scott Paul of Los …
Women Leaders Wangle Water Taps, Security in India’s Slums
Hansaben Rasid knows what it is like to live without a water tap or a toilet of her own, constantly fearful of being evicted by city officials keen on tearing down illegal settlements like hers in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The fear and lack of amenities are but a memory today, after she became a community leader in the Jadibanagar slum and pushed residents to apply for a program that gave them facilities and a guarantee of no evictions for 10 years. “We didn’t even have a water tap here — we had to fetch water from the colony near by, and so much time went in just doing that. People kept falling sick because there was just one toilet,” she said. “Now that we have individual water taps and toilets, we can focus on work and the children’s education. Everyone’s health has improved, and we don’t need to be afraid of getting evicted any day,” she said, seated outside her home. Jadibanagar, with 108 homes, is one of more than 50 slums in Ahmedabad that have been upgraded by Parivartan — meaning “change” — a program that involves city officials, slum dwellers, a developer and a nonprofit organization. Every household pays 2,000 rupees ($31) and in return, each home gets a water tap, a toilet, a sewage line and a stormwater drain. The slum gets street lights, paved lanes and regular garbage collection. Each home also pays 80 rupees as an annual maintenance fee, and the city …
NASA, PBS Marking 40 Years Since Voyager Spacecraft Launches
Forty years after blasting off, Earth’s most distant ambassadors — the twin Voyager spacecraft — are carrying sounds and music of our planet ever deeper into the cosmos. Think of them as messages in bottles meant for anyone — or anything — out there. Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of NASA’s launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant. It departed from Cape Canaveral on August 20, 1977, to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 1 followed a few weeks later and is ahead of Voyager 2. It’s humanity’s farthest spacecraft at 13 billion miles away and is the world’s only craft to reach interstellar space, the vast, mostly empty space between star systems. Voyager 2 is expected to cross that boundary during the next few years. Each carries a 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record (there were no CDs or MP3s in 1977) containing messages from Earth: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, chirping crickets, a baby’s cry, a kiss, wind and rain, a thunderous moon rocket launch, African pygmy songs, Solomon Island panpipes, a Peruvian wedding song and greetings in dozens of languages. There are also more than 100 electronic images on each record showing 20th-century life, traffic jams and all. Tweets, photos NASA is marking the anniversary of its back-to-back Voyager launches with tweets, reminiscences and still-captivating photos of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune taken by the Voyagers from 1979 through the 1980s. Public television is also paying tribute with a documentary, The Farthest — Voyager in Space, airing Wednesday …
Solar Eclipse Fuels Demand, Anxiety, for Viewing Lenses
On Monday, Aug. 21, for the first time in 99 years, a solar eclipse will march across the United States from west coast to east coast, and excitement is building across the nation. Experts advise that people wear specific, protective eyewear to view the eclipse, but as VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, finding the special lenses is becoming a difficult task. …
For Moms Heading Back to Work, ‘Returnships’ Offer a Path Forward
How does a former stay-at-home mom become an employee of a tech company that could be worth more than $1 billion? For Ellein Cheng, mom to a 5½- and a 2½-year-old, the answer involved a “returnship.” So-called returnships are internships that target men and women who have been out of the workforce, either for childrearing or other caregiving. It gives them a chance to retrain in a new field. In Cheng’s case, the former math teacher and tutor took a returnship at AppNexus, an online advertising company. For companies, returnships are an opportunity to tap into more mature and professionally diverse talent pools. For participants who may be out of the workforce, it’s a chance to refresh their networks, learn new skills and try on new roles. Beneficial arrangement For both parties, it’s a low-risk, low-commitment arrangement. Companies can achieve their goals to make the employee ranks more diverse. Job seekers can potentially find full-time work. Cheng’s returnship was set up by Path Forward [[www.pathforward.org/]], a New York-based nonprofit that works with tech companies to coordinate 16-week, paid assignments for those who have been away from the labor market for two or more years because of caregiving. The organization partners with tech companies that range in size from 30-person startups to behemoths such as PayPal, which has more than 10,000 employees. “What these companies of every size in the tech sector have in common is rapid growth, and also not enough talent to fulfill their needs,” said Tami Forman, executive …
Proposed US Budget Cuts Could Have Severe Impact on Health Security
President Trump proposes to make big cuts in spending on global health research that could affect work to end malaria, AIDS and protect against other infectious diseases. Although the president’s proposal is essentially a wish list and Congress doesn’t have to go along with it, some see it as part of a disturbing trend. Carol Pearson reports. …
Greenland Ice Sheet Yielding Clues of Climate Change
Scientists are drilling down through kilometers of Arctic ice to read the world’s climate history as a way to predict the planet’s future. VOA’s Steve Baragona visited Greenland to see what you can learn from a hole in the ice. …
Researchers Attempt to Develop Smarter Prosthetic Hand
An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.S do not have a limb, according to Rice University in Houston. While existing prosthetics allow amputees to regain some of their abilities, there are very few devices that provide sensory feedback for the users. Researchers from Rice University, the University of Pisa and the Italian Institute of Technology are working to allow amputees to better perceive what their prosthesis is doing. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Houston. …
Fitch Upgrades Greece’s Credit Rating
Fitch Ratings has upgraded Greece’s credit rating from CCC to B-, a one-notch improvement that still leaves the bonds issued by the crisis-battered country well below investment grade. The ratings agency said Friday that the outlook of the Greek economy was positive and that it expected talks with the country’s international creditors to be concluded “without creating instability.” A Fitch statement added that other European countries using the euro currency were expected to grant Greece substantial debt relief next year. It said that would boost market confidence and help Greece finance itself directly by issuing bonds after its current bailout program ends in a year. Fitch said Greece’s political situation had become more stable and that there was “limited” risk of a future government reversing bailout-linked austerity and reforms. …
Entrepreneurs Hope Pence’s Latin America Trip Sparks Ideas
More public backing for innovation, more idea exchanges to nurture global trade and more stability. That’s what two transnational entrepreneurs hope will result from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s travels this week to Latin America, where he has promoted prosperity, security and democracy for the Americas. Liliana “Lili” Gil Valletta, a Colombia native and naturalized U.S. citizen, described Pence’s trip to her homeland, Argentina, Chile and Panama as “a good thing” that highlights bilateral trade. Valletta co-founded and runs CIEN+, a marketing and analytics firm based in New York and Medellin, Colombia. “We’re doing our mini-version of trade, giving jobs on both sides,” she joked. Nathan Lustig, an American entrepreneur, said he hopes Pence’s visit reinforces the benefits of trade and competition — for the entire hemisphere. “Many Latin Americans limit themselves” because they lack confidence that they can compete in global markets, says the 31-year-old managing partner of Magma Partners, a wide-ranging seed-stage investment fund with offices in Los Angeles, California and Santiago, Chile. “What we see on the ground is that they actually can.” Pence, speaking at a business dinner in Santiago on Wednesday, said that U.S.-Latin America trade “totaled a stunning $1.6 trillion” last year and that the United States wants to see it increase: “We want to bring even more of our business culture of entrepreneurship and innovation across Latin America.” Trading ideas Lustig and Valletta suggested Latin America also can export some valuable approaches to entrepreneurship. Lustig is a beneficiary of Start-Up Chile, an international …
NASA Launches Last of its Longtime Tracking Satellites
NASA launched the last of its longtime tracking and communication satellites Friday, a vital link to astronauts in orbit as well as the Hubble Space Telescope. The end of the era came with a morning liftoff of TDRS-M, the 13th satellite in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network. It rode to orbit aboard an unmanned Atlas V rocket. There were handshakes all around two hours later, when the satellite successfully separated from the rocket’s upper stage. “We’re going to really celebrate this one,” said launch director Tim Dunn. NASA has been launching TDRS satellites since 1983. The 22,300-mile-high constellation links ground controllers with the International Space Station and other low-orbiting craft including Hubble. “It’s like our baby,” said NASA’s Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation. “People have invested their soul and their sweat into making it happen” over the decades, Younes said on the eve of launch. “This spacecraft has served us so well.” This latest flight from Cape Canaveral was delayed two weeks after a crane hit one of the satellite’s antennas last month. Satellite maker Boeing replaced the damaged antenna and took corrective action to prevent future accidents. Worker error was blamed. The rocket and satellite cost $540 million. Space shuttles hoisted the first-generation TDRS satellites. The second in the series was aboard Challenger’s doomed flight in 1986. It was the only loss in the entire TDRS series. TDRS-M is third generation. NASA’s next-generation tracking network will rely on lasers. This more advanced …
Vietnam Dengue Cases Soar 42 Percent
Vietnam has been battling raging dengue fever outbreaks, with more than 10,000 new infections reported in the past week stretching its medical system. The number of admitted patients represents a 42 percent increase over the same period last year along with seven more deaths, the Ministry of Health said Friday. A total of 90,626 people have been infected, of whom 76,848 are hospitalized and 24 have died. The ministry attributed the rise of dengue outbreaks to higher temperatures, more rains and rapid urbanization that promote the breeding of virus-carrying mosquitoes. Hospitals strained Dr. Vu Minh Dien of the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, where the most severe cases were being treated, said that 800-1,000 people have been checking in daily complaining of fever. That compares to only several cases that reported to the hospital in June and July last year, he said. Dien said about 300 dengue patients were being treated, stretching the hospital’s resources, including longer working hours without weekend leaves. Tran Thi Xuyen, a fruit and vegetable seller in a small market in Son La province, said she did not know how she contracted dengue fever, which also infected her fellow saleswoman. “I took antibiotics prescribed by the local district hospital for four days, but the fever did not go away and I admitted myself to this hospital where doctors said I had dengue fever,” she said from her hospital bed. Mosquito-killing campaign There is no cure for any of the four strains of the mosquito-borne …
In North Korea, Rise of Consumer Culture is the Real Revolution
Like all North Korean adults, Song Un Pyol wears the faces of leader Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather pinned neatly to her left lapel, above her heart. But on her right glitters a diamond-and-gold brooch. Song is what a success story in Kim Jong Un’s North Korea is supposed to look like. Just after Kim assumed power in late 2011, she started managing the supermarket floor at a state-run department store, which has freezers stocked full of pork and beef and rows of dairy, bakery and canned goods. She watches as customers fill their shopping carts, take their groceries directly to be scanned at the checkout counter and pay with cash or bank debit cards. Song is part of a paradigm shift within North Korea: Three generations into the Kim family’s ruling dynasty, markets have blossomed and a consumer culture is taking root. From 120 varieties of “May Day Stadium’’ brand ice cream to the widespread use of plastic to pay the bills, it’s a change visibly and irreversibly transforming her nation. Market forces will out While Kim has in recent weeks gained attention for his threat to fire missiles near Guam, his trademark two-track policy focuses on the development of both nuclear weapons and the economy. His acceptance of a more consumer-friendly economy is meant to foster economic growth and bring profits into the regime’s coffers. But like his pursuit of nuclear weapons, it’s a risky business. Facing even more international sanctions and a flood …
Study Highlights Rise in Opioid Drug Cases
In what is being called the first study of its kind, medical researchers have attempted to quantify the rise in opioid-related admissions and deaths at U.S. hospitals. The team studied hospital records over a seven-year period, between 2009 and 2015. The results put numbers to a drug epidemic that is growing rapidly. Kevin Enochs reports. …
At NAFTA Talks, Businesses Eager to Say: Do No Harm
Steps away from this week’s NAFTA trade negotiations, business unified in hopes of sending a singular message: do no harm. Representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico convened behind closed doors at a Washington hotel in an effort to strike a new North American Free Trade Agreement. And not far away, industry representatives from all three nations sat waiting and hoping to influence the talks. After two days of meetings, lobbyists admitted privately that they remained mostly in the dark, swapping rumors about dates and times of future meetings but unsure what progress was being made in the first round of discussions. The meetings were largely expected to be procedural, with little discussion on substance in the early days. The decision to renegotiate NAFTA has largely been driven by politics, chiefly U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier this year threatened to withdraw entirely. Business, on the other hand, has largely praised the agreement and hopes to persuade all three governments to make minimal changes to the pact. More than $1 trillion in trade U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade has quadrupled since NAFTA took effect in 1994, surpassing $1 trillion in 2015. “We’re all in the same boat,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association. “In the end we all serve primarily the U.S. consumer. So if you’re going to raise the cost structure, or if you’re going to change the dynamic flow of goods or people in those three countries, you’re really hurting the cost to market for …
Auto Groups Side with Canada, Mexico on NAFTA Origin Rules
Auto industry groups from Canada, Mexico and the United States are pushing back against the Trump administration’s demand for higher U.S. automotive content in a modernized North American Free Trade Agreement. At talks underway this week in Washington, automaker and parts groups from all three countries were urging negotiators against tighter rules of origin, said Eduardo Solis, president of the Mexican Automotive Industry Association. But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer confirmed the industry’s fears that the administration of President Donald Trump was seeking major changes to these rules to try to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico. “Rules of origin, particularly on autos and auto parts, must require higher NAFTA content and substantial U.S. content. Country of origin should be verified, not ‘deemed,’” Lighthizer said on Wednesday in opening remarks. Fiat Chrysler, Ford, GM represented Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland both said they were not in favor of specific national rules of origin within NAFTA — a position that the industry agrees with. “We certainly think a U.S.-specific requirement would greatly complicate the ability of companies, particularly small- and medium-size enterprises, to take advantage of the benefits of NAFTA,” said Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council. The trade group represents Detroit automakers General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler. His comments were echoed by Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association. “Anytime you say this list or a part of this list has to come from one specific country …
Name, Shame Countries That Don’t Protect Doctors in War, Expert Tells UN
The United Nations should name and shame countries that fail to protect health workers in war zones and audit what steps they take to keep medics safe, an aid expert said on Thursday. International law bounds all warring parties to respect and protect medical personnel, but the provision is largely disregarded, with hospital and medics often deliberately targeted in conflict areas, aid agencies say. Last year, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for an end to impunity for perpetrators, but little has been done to implement it, said Leonard Rubenstein, head of Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a network of aid groups. “Since 2016, we have had complete international paralysis,” he told an event in London, blaming the stalemate on divisions between Russia and other members of the Security Council. At least 80 people were killed in attacks on health facilities in 14 countries in the first three months of 2017, according to the World Health Organization. More than half the attacks were in Syria. Rubenstein said impartial investigations and reforming both military training and practice could improve safety for health workers — but nations had to be pushed into adopting them. “The only way to get them to do it is to shame them,” he told a panel at the Overseas Development Institute via video link, ahead of World Humanitarian Day on Aug 19. In order to do so, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights should issue annual reports highlighting what steps countries have taken …
Citizen Scientists Gear Up for Eclipse
The August 21 solar eclipse, the first to travel coast to coast in the United States in nearly a century, has inspired dozens of citizen science projects involving solar physics, atmosphere and biology. “Millions of people … can walk out on their porch in their slippers and collect world-class data,” said Matthew Penn, an astronomer with the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Penn is coordinating a citizen science effort to photograph the sun’s volatile outer atmosphere, known as the corona. The corona’s pearly light is typically obscured by the bright glare of the sun, but during a total eclipse, scientists can get a clear view of the outer crown, a mysterious region that triggers solar flares and other storms that can disrupt satellites, power grids and other systems on Earth. The view does not last long. Because the moon is moving at more than 2,000 mph (3,200 kph), it blocks the sun for only a couple of minutes, not long enough to detect key changes in the corona. 93-minute show The eclipse will cast the moon’s 70-mile-wide shadow, called the “path of totality,” across the United States over 93 minutes, temporarily bringing darkness to daytime skies. Penn’s project, called The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse Experiment, or Citizen CATE, involves a network of volunteers who will be stationed along the path of the eclipse with identical telescopes to take digital photos of the corona. The pictures will later be spliced together into a 93-minute movie. Citizen CATE participants require special …
US VP Pence: US Wants Increased Trade with Latin America
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Thursday that Washington wants more trade and investment with Latin America, pushing back against perceptions in the region that the Trump administration has an isolationist agenda. Speaking during a visit to the Panama Canal at the end of a Latin American tour, Pence said the United States was seeking to keep the spirit of the original North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the pact now being renegotiated in Washington. Pence said he wanted a NAFTA deal that was a “win, win, win” for the United States, Mexico and Canada, taking a more conciliatory tone than U.S. negotiators who have warned the deal needed a major overhaul to favor U.S. workers. Pence later reiterated the United States’ concerns about the tense political situation in Venezuela, but took a more measured approach than U.S. President Donald Trump. Last week, Trump said the United States had “many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary.” Pence said on Thursday that Venezuela was becoming a dictatorship and that the United States would not stand by while it was destroyed. He said he was sure the United States, with its allies in Latin America, would find a peaceful solution to the situation in Venezuela. Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela voiced concern over Venezuela and said that Panama would in the coming days announce measures against it, including immigration actions, to pressure Caracas into restoring democratic order. …
Cosmonauts Release 3-D-printed Satellite
Spacewalking cosmonauts on Thursday set free the world’s first satellite made almost entirely with a 3-D printer. In all, Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy ended up releasing five nanosatellites by hand. One by one, the tiny craft — no more than 1 to 2 feet in size — tumbled safely away from the International Space Station. The exterior casing of the first one tossed overboard was made with a 3-D printer. So were the battery packs inside. Researchers want to see how 3-D-made parts weather the space environment. The 3-D satellite contains regular electronics. It also holds greetings to planet Earth in a variety of languages, courtesy of students at Siberia’s Tomsk Polytechnic University, where the satellite was made. The other satellites deployed Thursday have traditional spacecraft parts. Each weighs just 10 to 24 pounds. They’re expected to orbit for five to six months. One commemorates the 60th anniversary of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, launched October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union. Another pays tribute to Russia’s father of rocketry, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He was born 160 years ago next month. The remaining two small satellites involve navigation and other experiments. Yurchikhin and Ryazanskiy completed the satellite releases within an hour of venturing outside. Barely a minute passed between a few of the launches. The rest of their work took longer than expected, however, and Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow sent the planned six-hour spacewalk into overtime. It ended up lasting 7½ hours, and the cosmonauts said their …
Rural America Braces for Labor Shortages After Immigration Crackdown
At CareerLink, the state job agency in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, custodial worker and former welder Glenn Hendrickson was looking to change careers. Hendrickson was just beginning his search for a new line of work and he did not yet know what would pique his interest. But he for sure wasn’t interested in farm work, except as a last resort. “I’ve had a lot of friends who have had summer jobs, like when they were in high school, picking fruit but I doubt anyone would make a career out of it,” he said. According to local farm sector employers, most workers are paid well above Pennsylvania’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Crew chiefs and foremen on some orchards earn close to $19 per hour. Yet few native-born Americans are willing to do this work, even if unemployed says Alan Dudley, administrator of the Gettysburg CareerLink office. “The work is difficult, especially in the fields, and it’s not necessarily unskilled work,” he said. “Orchard owners want skilled people to harvest apples so they get the best return on their crop.” Adams County’s farms, orchards, and processing plants are where the jobs are. The so-called “fruit belt” of vast peach and apple orchards extends across the region’s rolling green hills, along with the packing and processing companies and other agricultural-related businesses. Tourism, with the 3 million visitors drawn annually to the historic Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, is the other main economic generator. Adams County’s $580-million fruit industry depends heavily on immigrant labor, …
Turkey Bones May Help Trace Fate of Ancient Cliff Dwellers
Researchers say they have found a new clue into the mysterious exodus of ancient cliff-dwelling people from the Mesa Verde area of Colorado more than 700 years ago: DNA from the bones of domesticated turkeys. The DNA shows the Mesa Verde people raised turkeys that had telltale similarities to turkeys kept by ancient people in the Rio Grande Valley of northern New Mexico — and that those birds became more common in New Mexico about the same time the Mesa Verde people were leaving their cliff dwellings, according to a paper published last month in the journal PLoS One. That supports the hypothesis that when the cliff dwellers left the Mesa Verde region in the late 1200s, many migrated to northern New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) to the southeast, and that the Pueblo Indians who live there today are their descendants, the archaeologists wrote. The cliff dwellers would have taken some turkeys with them, accounting for the increase in numbers in New Mexico, the authors said. The debate continues Researchers have long debated what became of the people sometimes called Ancestral Puebloans, who lived in the elaborate Mesa Verde cliff dwellings and other communities across the Four Corners region, where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. Archaeologists believe the Ancestral Puebloans were a flourishing population of about 30,000 in 1200, but by 1280 they were gone, driven off by a devastating drought, social turbulence and warfare. Because they left no written …
Investors Exhibit ‘More Signs of Fatigue Than Euphoria’
Here’s how much hope and expectation has been built into the stock market: Big companies are healthy and making fatter profits than Wall Street expected, yet it’s barely enough to keep the market from falling. Consider Home Depot, which gave an earnings report on Tuesday that was seemingly fantastic. The retailer made more in profit from May through July than in any other quarter in its history, and its 14 percent rise in earnings per share was stronger than analysts expected. Home Depot at the same time raised its profit forecast for this year and reported higher revenue than Wall Street forecast, all of which should be kibble for investors ravenously looking for growth. Even still, Home Depot’s stock slid 2.7 percent after the report. That reaction hasn’t been too far off the norm recently, as companies have lined up to report how much they earned during the spring. Very solid quarter Companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index are on pace to report one of their strongest quarters in years. Earnings per share were likely up more than 10 percent from a year earlier, better than the 7 percent that analysts had penciled in when the quarter ended, according to FactSet. Despite those gains, S&P 500 index funds are nearly exactly where they were before the heart of earnings reporting season began in mid-July. “Equity markets have greeted positive earnings reports largely with indifference,” strategists at BlackRock wrote in a recent report. “Investor sentiment shows more signs of …