Researchers have found genetic mutations that affect whether a woman is likely to have her baby early or carry it to full term. Even late preterm babies, those born between 34 and 36 weeks of gestation, are more likely to die or experience problems, even if they are the size and weight of some full-term infants born after 37 to 41 weeks in the womb. Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among children younger than 5 worldwide. These babies have higher death rates even into adolescence and beyond. Several studies show health problems related to preterm birth persist through adult life, problems such as chronic lung disease, developmental handicaps, vision and hearing losses. The World Health Organization reports that every year, an estimated 15 million babies are born early, and this number is rising. Until now, little was known about the causes, but these findings could help solve the mystery. Beginning of a journey Dr. Louis Muglia coordinated the study of the DNA of more than 50,000 pregnant women. The study identified six gene regions, which influence the length of pregnancy and the timing of birth. While the study doesn’t provide information about how to prevent prematurity, Muglia says it could eventually do that. “It’s just the beginning of the journey, but at least we know now, what the foundation is,” he says. Muglia is co-director of the Perinatal Institute, which focuses on preterm babies, at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He’s also the principal investigator of one …
New Genetic Discovery May Someday End Premature Birth
An international team of researchers has identified — for the first time — six genes that determine the length of pregnancy and whether a baby is born preterm. Preterm birth is a major cause of infant death and disability. Now, as VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists may have clues about preventing prematurity. …
DC’s Bats Good for Environment but Threatened by Disease
Washington, D.C., is home to nine species of bats. They play a vital role in the ecosystem, but biologists are worried that some may have contracted a deadly disease called white-nose syndrome. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias went on a so-called bat walk with the researchers on an island in the middle of Washington’s Anacostia River. …
UN Environment Head: Asia Must Lead Charge for Pollution-free Planet
Asia-Pacific — home to more than half the world’s population and some of its fastest-growing economies — is a key battleground in the fight against pollution, one of the biggest threats to the planet and its people, the U.N. environment chief said. An estimated 12 million people die prematurely each year because of unhealthy environments, 7 million of them due to air pollution alone, making pollution “the biggest killer of humanity,” Erik Solheim told the first Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment in Bangkok this week. Humans have caused pollution and humans can fix it, said Solheim, executive director of UN Environment, in an interview with Reuters at the four-day summit. “The struggle for a pollution-free planet will be won or lost in Asia — nowhere else,” said the former Norwegian minister for environment and international development. The sheer size of Asia-Pacific, as well as its continued economic growth, put it at the heart of the challenge, he added. The region’s development has been accompanied by worsening pollution of its air, water and soil. Its emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide doubled between 1990 and 2012, and the use of resources such as minerals, metals and biomass has tripled, according to the United Nations. World Health Organization figures also show Asia has 25 of the world’s 30 most-polluted cities in terms of fine particles in the air that pose the greatest risks to human health. The pollution comes largely from the combustion of fossil fuels, mostly for transport and electricity generation. …
Ryan Aiming for Low- to Mid-20 Percent US Corporate Tax Rate
With Republicans in Congress under pressure to deliver on taxes, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday the GOP plan will aim to reduce the corporate tax rate to low- to mid-20 percent — a smaller cut than what President Donald Trump wants. Ryan provided some specifics as the Republicans start to write legislation overhauling the tax system, with help for the middle class a main goal. He spoke as Congress was consumed with providing billions of dollars in relief for hurricane-ravaged Texas, and prospectively for Florida, and with addressing the plight of immigrants facing possible deportation as a result of Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program for young immigrants. Trump, who made overhauling taxes a pillar of his push for economic growth, has called for a 15 percent tax rate for corporations. The rate now ranges from 15 percent to 35 percent. The average tax rate paid by corporations is around 19 percent to 25 percent, according to the Treasury Department and congressional analysts. Some experts say a 15 percent rate isn’t possible without blowing a hole in the deficit. Ryan recognized that as he discussed a higher range during an appearance at a New York Times forum. “Numbers are hard to make that work,” he said. A popular idea among lawmakers is to reduce tax rates for both individuals and corporations, and make up the lost revenue by eliminating special-interest loopholes. But even if Congress eliminated nearly every tax break enjoyed by corporations, …
Equifax: Cyberattack Could Affect 143M Americans
About 143 million Americans could be affected by a cyberattack on the credit monitoring company Equifax. The Atlanta-based company said Thursday the hackers obtained names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses of more than 40 percent of the U.S. population. “Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017,” the company said in a statement. The company said credit card numbers were also compromised for some 209,000 U.S. consumers, as were credit dispute accounts for 182,000 people. Additionally, limited personal information was also compromised for some in Britain and Canada. Equifax said it doesn’t believe that any consumers from other countries were affected. The company has established a website to enable consumers to determine if they are affected and will be offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to customers. Equifax is one the largest credit-reporting companies in the U.S. …
Equifax Breach Exposes 143M People to Identity Theft
Credit monitoring company Equifax has been hit by a high-tech heist that exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information about 143 million Americans. Now the unwitting victims have to worry about the threat of having their identities stolen. The Atlanta-based company, one of three major U.S. credit bureaus, said Thursday that “criminals” exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year. The theft obtained consumers’ names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers. The purloined data can be enough for crooks to hijack the identities of people whose credentials were stolen through no fault of their own, potentially wreaking havoc on their lives. Equifax said its core credit-reporting databases don’t appear to have been breached. “On a scale of one to 10, this is a 10 in terms of potential identity theft,” said Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan. “Credit bureaus keep so much data about us that affects almost everything we do.” Lenders rely on the information collected by the credit bureaus to help them decide whether to approve financing for homes, cars and credit cards. Credit checks are even sometimes done by employers when deciding whom to hire for a job. Equifax discovered the hack July 29, but waited until Thursday to warn consumers. The Atlanta-based company declined to comment on that delay or anything else beyond its published statement. It’s not unusual for U.S. authorities to ask a company …
Alcohol Industry Accused of Misleading Public Over Cancer Risk
Scientists have accused the alcohol industry of misleading the public over the link between alcohol and cancer. Researchers looked at the websites of 28 global organizations representing the alcohol industry, and concluded that the vast majority distort or misrepresent the evidence of an alcohol-related cancer risk. “What you might see is that certain health problems related to alcohol consumption are mentioned on the website, but cancer is missing, or specific types of cancer are missing, particularly breast cancer or colorectal cancer,” said Mark Petticrew, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the research. The Washington-based International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, or IARD, is accused of misleading the public over the risk of contracting specific types of cancers, and trying to confuse the issue by highlighting a range of other risk factors. In a statement provided to VOA, the IARD disputed the conclusions, saying: “We believe in sharing the current state of the scientific evidence and stand by the information that we publish on drinking and health.” Petticrew compares the industry’s actions with those of the tobacco giants, which for a long time disputed the link between cancer and smoking. “In the U.K., around 4 percent of cancers are attributable to alcohol consumption,” Petticrew said. “I think what’s important to remember is that the risk itself is quite low for people who consume at low levels. But the fact is that the information about the risk that is disseminated by these organizations is distorted and misrepresented.” …
Cholera Outbreak Threatens More Than 1M People in Nigeria Refugee Camps
At least 1.4 million people uprooted by Boko Haram’s insurgency in northeast Nigeria are living in ‘cholera hotspots,’ prey to an outbreak of the deadly disease which is sweeping through camps for the displaced, the United Nations said on Thursday. An estimated 28 people have died from cholera in the conflict-hit region, while about 837 are suspected to have been infected with the disease, including at least 145 children under the age of five, said the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF). The outbreak was first identified last week in the Muna Garage camp in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, which is the heart of jihadist group Boko Haram’s brutal eight-year campaign to carve out an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. About 1.8 million people have abandoned their homes because of violence or food shortages, U.N. agencies say, and many live in camps for the displaced throughout northeast Nigeria. Several aid agencies last month told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Nigeria’s rainy season could spread disease in already unsanitary displacement camps, and 350,000 uprooted children aged under five are at risk of cholera, UNICEF said. “Cholera is difficult for young children to withstand at any time, but becomes a crisis for survival when their resilience is already weakened by malnutrition, malaria and other waterborne diseases,” UNICEF’s Pernille Ironside said in a statement. “Cholera is one more threat amongst many that children in northeast Nigeria are battling today in order to survive,” added Ironside, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Nigeria. UNICEF said aid …
BMW Gears Up to Mass Produce Electric Cars by 2020
Germany’s BMW is gearing up to mass produce electric cars by 2020 and will to have 12 different models by 2025, it said on Thursday, as traditional manufacturers race to catch up with U.S. electric car pioneer Tesla. Car buyers shunned electric vehicles because of their high cost and limited operating range until Tesla unveiled the Model S in 2012, a car that cracked the 200 mile (322 km) range barrier on a single charge. Since then, big advances in battery technology and a global crackdown on pollution in the wake of Volkswagen’s diesel scandal have raised pressure on carmakers to speed up development of zero-emission alternatives. BMW, which launched the i3 electric car in 2013, said it was now readying its factories to mass produce electric cars by 2020 if demand for battery driven vehicles takes off. “By 2025, we will offer 25 electrified vehicles — 12 will be fully-electric,” Chief Executive Harald Krueger told journalists in Munich, adding the electric cars would have a range of up to 700 km (435 miles). It marks a significant foray by a major manufacturer into electrification. BMW, which includes the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands and sold 2.34 million cars last year, announced the move on the day smaller rival Jaguar said it would offer electric or hybrid variants of all its models by 2020. On Wednesday, Nissan unveiled a new version of its Leaf electric vehicle in its latest move to take on Tesla, the U.S. firm co-founded by Elon Musk …
Chile Expects to Soon Clinch Argentina Energy Swap Deal
Chile expects to close an energy swap deal with Argentina in the days ahead, Chilean Energy Minister Andres Rebolledo said in an interview Thursday. The neighboring South American nations are also negotiating the locations for five additional transmission line interconnection points, with an agreement expected as early as January, the minister told Reuters. “We made a proposal to Argentina and we are very close to reaching an agreement,” Rebolledo said, referring to the energy swap. “I think we can have an agreement in the next couple of days or if not, over the next few weeks,” he added. Chile and Argentina share a 3,300-mile (5,300-kilometer) border running north to south along the rugged terrain of the Andes mountains. The deal would allow both countries to send natural gas or electricity at one point of the frontier and obtain needed supplies at another border point. Rebolledo, who spoke with Reuters on the sidelines of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) meeting in the coastal city of Vina del Mar, said Chile and Argentina are planning to add five new points of electricity interconnection in the coming years. For this, he said the countries commissioned studies with financial support from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) to define the geographic points that would make the project most efficient. “In January, we will probably have the result [of the study], with the map of the five main points where there is supply and demand on the other side, and …
Venezuela’s Monthly Inflation Rate Hits 33.8 Percent, Assembly Says
Venezuela’s monthly inflation rate jumped to 33.8 percent in August, with food price rises reaching hyperinflationary levels above 50 percent, the opposition-controlled National Assembly said Thursday. The government stopped releasing the data more than a year ago amid a deep economic crisis, but the National Assembly has published its own figures since January. They are generally in line with private economists’ estimates. The latest month-on-month inflation figure was a jump from the 26 percent rise in prices reported in July. In the first eight months of 2017, prices rose a cumulative 366.4 percent, according to the legislative body. “Food is now in hyperinflation,” said opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado, adding that the food sector had seen price rises of 51 percent in August. Economists usually define hyperinflation as occurring when monthly rates exceed 50 percent. Millions of Venezuelans are suffering from food and medicine shortages as the oil producer struggles with an economic crisis that spurred months of nationwide unrest earlier this year. However, the protests have died down in recent weeks, with many in the opposition viewing them as fruitless after socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s government sidelined the National Assembly and created its own legislative superbody. Weak currency The country’s bolivar currency also weakened past 20,000 per dollar on the widely used black market on Thursday for the first time. It has lost 95 percent of its value against the U.S. currency in the past year. The value of $1,000 in local currency purchased when Maduro came to power in …
French President Tells IMF: Europe Doesn’t Need You
French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that the International Monetary Fund should step back from its role in European bailouts – breaking with a widely accepted policy adopted when Greece sought international help seven years ago. On a two-day visit to Athens, Macron said the eurozone rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, should play the lead role in financial rescue within the currency zone. France, Europe’s No. 2 economy, had previously backed Germany’s insistence in involving the IMF to enforce austerity measures that came with bailout programs in Greece and other rescued economies including Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus. But on Thursday, Macron told reporters: “I don’t think it was the right method for the IMF to supervise European programs and intervene in the way it did … Let’s work within Europe and not turn to outside agencies.” Macron made the remarks after meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and before delivering a speech on Europe’s future on a hill facing the ancient Acropolis in Athens. “The presence of the IMF was a symptom of a lack of confidence between European countries and sometimes even between the European countries and the European institutions,” Macron said after the meeting. Greece considers France a vital ally and counterweight to fiscally hawkish Germany in its efforts to ease the stringent terms of its international bailouts. The country has relied on international rescue loans since 2010, and in return has seen its economy put under strict supervision by its …
SpaceX Launches Air Force’s Super-secret Minishuttle
SpaceX launched the Air Force’s super-secret space shuttle on Thursday, a technology tester capable of spending years in orbit. The unmanned Falcon rocket blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, as schools and businesses boarded up for Hurricane Irma. It’s the fifth flight for one of these crewless minishuttles, known as the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. The two Air Force space planes have already logged a combined 5 ½ years in orbit. But officials won’t say what the spacecraft are doing up there. The last mission lasted almost two years and ended with a May touchdown at the runway formerly used by NASA’s space shuttles. The first one launched in 2010. As has become customary, SpaceX landed its leftover booster back at Cape Canaveral for eventual reuse. This was the first time SpaceX has provided a lift for the experimental minishuttle. The previous missions relied on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rockets. Air Force officials said they want to use a variety of rockets for the X-37B program, to launch quickly if warranted. The Boeing-built minishuttle is 29 feet long, with a 14-foot wingspan. By comparison, NASA’s retired space shuttles were 122 feet long, with a 78-foot wingspan. SpaceX stopped providing details about the X-37B’s climb to orbit, a few minutes after liftoff at the Air Force’s request. The booster’s return to SpaceX’s landing zone at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, however, was broadcast live. “The Falcon has safely landed,” a SpaceX launch controller announced. Cheers erupted at SpaceX headquarters …
Researchers: For City Economies to Prosper, Poor Need Clean Power
Giving the poorest people in the world’s fast-growing cities access to affordable, clean energy supplies, while wiping out the use of hazardous solid fuels is essential for urban economies to grow on a warming planet, researchers said. Some half a billion people in urban areas still cook with traditional fuels like wood, said a report from the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI). It urged cities to boost access to solar power and other clean energy sources, and make buildings and domestic appliances more efficient. “You cannot be a modern, prosperous city in the 21st century unless the energy access challenge is addressed,” Michael Westphal from the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Providing energy services for the under-served really will enhance the environment and the economy for the whole city. It’s only when everyone in the city has dependable energy that the city will thrive,” said the report co-author. Rising migration to already polluted cities means they cannot afford to rely on fossil fuel-based systems developed in rich countries, and should concentrate on clean, cheap energy sources that produce less greenhouse gases, said the report. Up to 97 percent of people in cities in Latin America and East and South Asia had access to electricity in 2012. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the rate was less than 60 percent, with services often inefficient and unreliable, said the WRI report. Around 95 million of the 131 million people in urban areas who do not have electricity are …
Waste Not: Belgian Startup to Print 3-D Recycled Sunglasses
A Belgium-based start-up is on its way to making the world a bit sunnier, by printing the first 3-D sunglasses out of recycled plastic. The Antwerp-based company w.r.yuma – pronounced “We are Yuma” and named after one of the sunniest places on earth – began a month-long online crowd-sourcing campaign on Kickstarter on Wednesday. After two years of prototyping and testing different materials, it promises to transform old car dashboards, soda bottles, fridges and other plastic waste into different colored shades. “It’s the icon of cool, really, and when you wear, literally you are looking to the world through a different set of lenses, and that’s exactly the message that I want to bring,” Founder Sebastiaan de Neubourg said of the company, named after Yuma, Arizona. “I want to inspire people to have, quite literally, another look at waste.” The plastic waste is sourced from the Netherlands and Belgium’s Flemish region. The waste is fed into the 3-D printer, melted to form thin strands of plastic wire and layered together to construct the frames. These are then assembled by hand and fitted with Italian made Mazzuchelli lenses. Marketing schemes include setting up stands at music festivals to transform plastic drinking cups into sunglasses on the spot. The company is also making a limited number of soda white sunglasses made from 90 percent recycled PET plastic from soda bottles. It is also inviting would-be clients to return the glasses once they are done with them to be turned into a new …
Analysts: China Reluctant to Support US-backed Oil Blockade to North Korea
With a new sanctions package under international consideration following North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test last week, analysts say China still appears reluctant to support an oil cutoff, a measure that could trigger destabilization of the Kim Jong Un regime. Speaking at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called after Pyongyang on Sunday tested what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb that can fit onto an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Monday that the U.S. is running out of patience with Kim, who is “begging for war.” She said only the strongest sanctions would allow a resolution of the growing nuclear threat through diplomacy. Haley said the 15 Security Council members would negotiate a new draft resolution of tougher sanctions this week and push for a vote next Monday. It has been just more than a month since the Security Council adopted a sanctions resolution in the wake of the regime’s two long-range ICBM tests, conducted in July, aiming to slash a third of Pyongyang’s $3 billion annual export revenue by banning coal, iron, lead and seafood. What remains untapped that has the potential to stifle Pyongyang’s nuclear pursuits is cutting off its supplies of oil and other fuels. Draft resolution The U.S. draft resolution of new U.N. sanctions, obtained by VOA Wednesday, calls for a ban on the sale of oil, as well as refined petroleum products and natural gas liquids, to North Korea. Support from China …
UN Seeks to Protect Children from Work in Lebanon
With child labor soaring in Lebanon following the outbreak of war in Syria, the United Nations published Wednesday the first guide in Arabic to help farmers and officials seeking to protect them from risks like sexual abuse and injury. Children as young as 5, largely Syrian refugees and poor Lebanese, are missing out on school and harming their health by working on farms, especially in remote, rural regions like the Beqaa, it said. “Abuse and exploitation is widespread,” Frank Hagemann, the International Labor Organization’s deputy director for Arab states told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. More than 9 million, or almost one in 10 children in the Middle East and North Africa, are child laborers, mostly working in agriculture, ILO data show. “It has been fueled by the refugee influx, by the need of refugee families to earn a livelihood, by their economic misery,” Hagemann said. Lebanon has more than 1 million Syrian refugees, including nearly 500,000 children, after a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2011 led to civil war, and Islamic State militants used the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq. The guide, co-written with the Food and Agriculture Organization, includes information on the risks child laborers face — for example, sexual abuse, contamination from pesticides and missing out on their right to education. …
Study: Treating Insomnia Eases Anxiety, Depression
Treating young people who suffer from insomnia by using online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) could reduce debilitating mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, scientists said Wednesday. In a large trial published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, researchers at Oxford University’s Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute also found that successfully treating sleep disruption eased psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and paranoia. “Sleep problems are very common in people with mental health disorders, but for too long insomnia has been trivialized as merely a symptom, rather than a cause, of psychological difficulties,” said Daniel Freeman, a professor of clinical psychology who led the work. “This study turns that old idea on its head, showing that insomnia may actually be a contributory cause of mental health problems.” The research involved 3,755 university students from across Britain who were randomized into two groups. One group had six sessions of online CBT, each lasting about 20 minutes, and delivered via a digital program called Sleepio. The others had access to standard treatments but no CBT. Freeman’s team monitored participants’ mental health with a series of online questionnaires at zero, three, 10 and 22 weeks from the start of treatment. The researchers found that those who had the CBT sleep treatment reduced their insomnia significantly as well as showing small but sustained reductions in paranoia and hallucinatory experiences. The CBT also led to improvements in depression, anxiety, nightmares, psychological well-being, and daytime work and home functioning. Andrew Welchman, head of neuroscience and mental health …
Plastic Found in Drinking Water on Five Continents
Tiny pieces of plastic have been found in drinking water on five continents – from Trump Tower in New York to a public tap on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda – posing a potential risk to people’s health, researchers said on Wednesday. Plastic degrades over time into tiny particles known as microplastics, which were found in 83 percent of samples from Germany to Cuba to Lebanon analyzed by U.S.-based digital news organization Orb Media. “If you ask people whether they want to be eating or drinking plastic, they just say, ‘No, that’s a dumb question,’ ” said Sherri Mason, one of study’s authors and a chemistry professor at the State University of New York. “It’s probably not something that we want to be ingesting, but we are, whether through our drinking water, through beer, juice. It’s in our food, sea salt, mussels. Nobody is safe,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Microplastics of up to 5 millimeters are also in bottled water, she said. The health impact of ingesting plastics are unclear, but studies on fish have shown they inhibit hatching of fertilized eggs, stunt growth and make them more susceptible to predators, increasing mortality rates. Microplastics absorb toxic chemicals from the marine environment, which are released into the bodies of fish and mammals who consume them, Orb Media’s chief executive, Molly Bingham, said in a statement. While many studies have shown the prevalence of microplastics in the world’s oceans, where more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic …
Peru Raises Cost of Post-floods Rebuilding to Nearly $8B
Previously uncalculated damage caused by severe flooding in Peru this year has pushed up the cost of rebuilding infrastructure by 28 percent to 25.65 billion soles ($7.92 billion), a government official said Wednesday. Pablo de la Flor, who was appointed by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to lead the reconstruction effort, said 38 percent of the new total will pay for rebuilding highways, roads and bridges. The rest will be used to help build homes, schools, health clinics, sewage systems and farms affected by the floods. “Without a doubt this is the most important fiscal effort in Peru’s recent history,” de la Flor told a press conference. Finance Minister Fernando Zavala said the cost increase would be included in the budget in 2019 or 2020. The rebuilding plan was approved by Kuczynski’s cabinet on Wednesday and does not need a green light from Congress. Early this year an unusually brutal rainy season due to a sudden warming of Pacific waters killed 162 people, slowed economic growth sharply and caused damage equivalent to 2 percent of Peru’s gross domestic product. De la Flor said the government would likely start awarding contracts at the end of the year. ($1=3.237) …
US Ranks Near Bottom in Helping Poorer Nations
The United States placed near last among the world’s wealthiest nations in an index ranking how their policies help improve the lives of people in poorer nations, a report showed on Wednesday. The superpower ranked 23rd out of 27 countries in the yearly Commitment to Development Index but would have fared worse with data recent enough to capture U.S. President Donald Trump’s policymaking, its authors said. The Center for Global Development (CGD) compiled thousands of data points dating up to 2016, when Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama was still in office. The CGD said it looks at each nation’s performance in areas of aid, trade, finance, migration, environment, technology and security to measure how policies of wealthy countries help or hurt the world’s poorest people. Denmark ranked at the top, in part due to effectiveness of its aid and its significant contribution to international peacekeeping efforts, the CGD said. It was followed by Sweden and Finland. Dropping three places from the last ranking, the United States lags poorer Central European nations Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. It scored poorly on policies impacting aid, finance and the environment, the CGD said. The country has consistently scored low marks over the last five years “despite some promising movements” in the Obama administration on the environment, said Ian Mitchell, a spokesman for the CGD, a Washington think-tank. But a number of new policies under the Trump administration could further erode the country’s ability to bring prosperity and security to poorer countries and …
Biblical Archeologist Searching Ancient Turkish Sites
Like the film character Indiana Jones, Mark Fairchild is a professor at a university in Indiana. He travels to far off places in search of Biblical antiquities and doesn’t like snakes. That’s why his students call him Indiana Mark. It’s also one of the reasons he’s the focus of a new documentary. Erika Celeste reports from Huntington, Indiana. …
За місяць кількість автомобілів, які перебувають в Україні незаконно, зросла майже на 12 тисяч – ДФС
Державна фіскальна служба повідомила 6 вересня, що в Україні незаконно перебуває 63 тисячі 900 автомобілів на іноземних номерах. Порівняно з показниками серпня (52,2 тисячі), кількість таких машин зросла майже на 12 тисяч. «З 2015 року митниками було складено понад 26,1 тисячі протоколів про порушення митних правил за ст. 470 (порушення термінів транзиту) та майже 4,9 тисячі протоколів про порушення митних правил за ст. 481 (порушення термінів тимчасового ввезення) Митного кодексу України», – інформують фіскали. За ці порушення митниці наклали штрафів на суму понад 206 з половиною мільйонів гривень, повідомляє ДФС. Зранку 6 вересня вулиця Грушевського в Києві заблокована власниками автомобілів з іноземною реєстрацією, які проводять акцію протесту під будівлями Кабінету міністрів та Верховної Ради. Вони вимагають змінити законодавство таким чином, щоб уможливити реєстрацію своїх автомобілів в Україні за прийнятною для громадян України ціною. Нині в Україні для її громадян неможлива реєстрація ввезених з-за кордону автомобілів, які не відповідають стандартові «Євро-5». Це означає неможливість реєстрації машин, старших від 2010 року (коли став діяти цей стандарт) – незалежно від їхнього технічного стану. Власники автомобілів на «єврономерах» наводять такий приклад. У Львові активісти придбали старий «Запорожець» за 250 доларів, який у Польщі оцінили у 800 доларів. Така ціна була зумовлена незвичністю автівки для поляків. За переоформлення цієї машини на іноземну реєстрацію сплатили 250 доларів. В Україні ж розмитнити цей «Запорожець», старший від 2010 року, можна лише через суд, сплативши 3000 доларів митних платежів. У травні президент України Петро Порошенко доручив уряду вжити заходів для невідкладного врегулювання ситуації щодо недодержання вимог митного законодавства при …