Iraq and General Electric have signed a deal to develop Iraq’s power infrastructure, which would help bring much-needed electricity to areas facing significant shortages across the country. GE says in a statement released Wednesday that the more than $400 million contract will help building 14 electric substations and supply critical equipment such as transformers, circuit breakers and other outdoor equipment to revamp existing substations. GE says the substations will hook up power plants in the provinces of Ninevah, Salahuddin, Anbar, Baghdad, Karbala, Qadissiyah and Basra to the national grid. It says GE will also help Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity secure funding through various financial institutions. Despite billions of dollars spent since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, many Iraqi cities and towns are still experiencing severe power cuts and rolling blackouts. …
Delhi’s Homeless Most Affected by City’s Severe Air Pollution
In the Indian capital, New Delhi, winter was once a season of cool, crisp winds, bracing walks and picnics under a blue sky. But as the city remained enveloped in gray smog this month, authorities rolled out a series of emergency measures to combat deadly levels of air pollution. As Anjana Pasricha reports, the toxic air has improved slightly, but it is still hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. …
‘Souper-Hero’ Serves Seasonal Soup with Help from Family Farm
Each year in America, when summer ends and fall begins, it’s a safe bet you’ll find pumpkins and sweet potatoes flavoring everything from coffee to pie. It’s seasonal food that makes its way from farms to tables around the country from Thanksgiving to Christmas time. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from a farm feeding local produce to area businesses stewing seasonal sensations. …
Local "Souper-Hero" Serves Seasonal Soup with Help from Local Family Farm
Each year in America, when summer ends and fall begins, it’s a safe bet you’ll find pumpkins and sweet potatoes flavoring everything from coffee to pie. It’s seasonal food that makes its way from farms to tables around the country from Thanksgiving to Christmas time. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from a local farm feeding local produce to a local business stewing seasonal sensations. …
Miami Faces Future of Rising Seas
Sue Brogan’s street is barely above sea level on a good day. During autumn’s “king tides,” when the sun and moon align to create the highest tides of the year, Biscayne Bay backs up through storm drains and flows into Brogan’s street, in Miami’s low-lying Shorecrest neighborhood. Roads flood. The salt water rusts cars and kills greenery. For now, it’s mostly a nuisance several days a year. But Brogan knows it’s only going to get worse. “It’s more of a warning situation. Where is it going to go from this?” she asks. Climate change is expected to raise sea levels a minimum of three-quarters of a meter by the end of the century, according to the estimates that regional planners use. That puts most of Shorecrest underwater year-round, along with other low-lying waterfront neighborhoods. And higher seas mean increased risk of tidal flooding and storm surges across this hurricane-prone city. The planners’ high-end estimate is two meters of sea level rise. That would submerge most of the glitzy city of Miami Beach, across the bay. And scientists say three to three-and-a-half meters is extreme but plausible. In that scenario, Miami Beach is gone and Miami is an archipelago. Planning for this future is difficult, expensive and often controversial. But the Miami region has little choice. “Sea level rise is an existential threat,” said City of Miami Chief Resilience Officer Jane Gilbert. “But it is not an imminent existential threat … We have time to plan.” Miami Beach leads way As …
Venezuela Arrests Top Citgo Executives
Venezuelan authorities arrested the acting president of Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), along with five other senior executives Tuesday for alleged corruption. Attorney General Tarek William Saab told a press conference that interim president Jose Pereira and other managers allegedly arranged contracts that put Citgo at a disadvantage. The company operates refineries in Illinois, Texas and Louisiana with a capacity of 749,000 barrels per day. “They did it with total discretion, without even coordinating with the competent authorities,” Saab said. “This is corruption, corruption of the most rotten kind.” The six were accused of misappropriation of public funds, association to commit crimes and legitimation of capital, among other crimes. The other five detainees were identified as Tomeu Vadell, vice president of Refining Operations; Alirio Zambrano, vice president and general manager of the Corpus Christi Refinery; Jorge Toledo, Vice President of Supply and Marketing; Gustavo Cardenas, Vice President of Strategic Relations with Shareholders and Government, and Jose Luis Zambrano; Vice President of Shared Services. Last month, a senior executive of PDVSA and a dozen officials were arrested for alleged embezzlement. But members of the Venezuelan opposition argue that recent investigations do not demonstrate a genuine intention of the government to eradicate corruption, but only reflect internal struggles of PDVSA. VOA Latin America contributed to this report. …
Cambodia’s Major Food Source is Slowly Dying
Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake, which lies in the center of the country, is home to hundreds of species of fish that provide the Southeast Asian nation with up to 60 percent of its protein. But the lake’s rich fishery is at risk because of overfishing, pollution and hydroelectric dams. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …
Virtual Reality As a Mental Health Tool
It is a simple, but startling, statistic: one in four people around the world will have a mental or neurological disorder at some point in their lives. But dealing with mental health issues is so much easier if they are caught early. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports that is the thinking behind a new method using virtual reality to gauge mental health. …
EU’s Top Court Orders Poland to Stop Logging in Ancient Forest
The European Union’s top court Monday ordered Poland to stop logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest, or pay an $118,000 daily fine. “Poland must immediately cease its active forest management operations in the Bialowieza Forest, except in exceptional cases where they are strictly necessary to ensure public safety,” the European Court of Justice wrote. The forest is home to rare plants, birds and mammals and is one of Europe’s last remaining primeval habitats. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The court first warned Poland against logging in July. Poland says the trees are weak and damaged by a beetle outbreak. It says cutting them down is necessary to prevent people foraging for mushrooms from getting hurt if the trees fall. The logging argument is another in a series of a war of words between the European Union and the right-wing Polish government, which accuses the EU of infringing on its sovereignty. The EU has said it is worried about the decline of democratic values in Poland. …
US Sues to Stop AT&T’s Takeover of Time Warner
The U.S. Justice Department is suing to stop AT&T’s multi-billion dollar bid to take over another communications giant, Time Warner, calling it illegal and likening it to extortion. “The $108 billion acquisition would substantially lessen competition, resulting in higher prices and less innovation for millions of Americans,” a Justice Department statement said Monday. “The combined company would use its control over Time Warner’s valuable and highly popular networks to hinder its rivals by forcing them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for the right to distribute those networks.” CNN, HBO top Time Warner products Time Warner’s products include CNN, HBO, TNT, The Cartoon Network, and Cinemax — these networks broadcast highly popular newscasts, movies, comedy and drama series, and sports. AT&T and its subsidiary DirectTV distribute these programs, as well as others, thorough cable and satellite. The Justice Department decries the possibility of AT&T not just controlling television productions, but also the means of bringing them into people’s homes. In its lawsuit, it threw AT&T’s words right back at the communications giant, noting that AT&T recognizes that distributors with control over the shows “have the incentive and ability to use … that control as a weapon to hinder competition.” It also cited a DirectTV statement saying distributors can withhold programs from their rivals and “use such threats to demand higher prices and more favorable terms.” Assured transaction would be approved AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson told reporters the Justice Department’s lawsuit “stretches the reach of anti-trust law …
Scientists Solve the Mystery of America’s Scuba-diving Fly
A small fly that thrives at an inhospitable California lake east of Yosemite National Park long has perplexed observers who watch as it crawls into the severely salty and alkaline water, snacks on some algae or lays some eggs, then emerges dry as a desert. Research published on Monday finally explains the secrets of this scuba-diving insect. These quarter-inch-long (6-mm) alkali flies possess specialized traits that let them conquer Mono Lake, scientists found. They are covered in a large quantity of fine hairs coated with special waxes that let them encapsulate themselves in a body-hugging bubble that protects them from water that would doom an ordinary insect. “The flies have found a great gig — all the food they want with few predators. They just had to solve this one tricky problem,” said California Institute of Technology biologist Michael Dickinson, co-author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. All insects are hairy and water repellant to some degree. These alkali flies, whose scientific name is Ephydra hians, have magnified both traits to overcome the extreme conditions of Mono Lake, considered among the “wettest” water on Earth with a slippery, nearly oily feel. The water tends to attach to any surface due to exorbitant amounts of sodium carbonate, a chemical used in laundry detergent. “The study provides a clear example of evolution in action,” added co-author Floris van Breugel, a former Caltech postdoctoral scholar now at the University of Washington. “The flies have evolved to …
Opioids Haunt Users’ Recovery: ‘It Never Really Leaves You’
Businessman Kyle Graves shot himself in the ankle so emergency room doctors would feed his opioid habit. Ex-trucker Jeff McCoy threatened to blow his brains out if his mother didn’t hand over his fentanyl patches. Bianca Knight resorted to street pills when her opioids ran out, envisioning her law career dreams crumble. These are three Americans who started using powerful painkillers legitimately but, like millions of others, got caught in the country’s worst drug epidemic. Now they’re fighting the same recovery battle, on anti-addiction medicine similar to pills that nearly did them in. Their doctor, Dan Lonergan, a Vanderbilt University pain and addiction physician, sometimes recommends the same drugs to pain patients that brought his addiction patients to the brink. He’s heard criticism about doctors “who get ’em hooked on drugs and then turn around and treat ’em for addiction.” And he’s seen the finger-pointing from those who think faith and willpower are the only answer. “Doctors have contributed to this problem. In the past three decades we have gotten a lot of patients on medications that can be very dangerous,” he said. “The pharmaceutical industry has contributed significantly to this problem. This is a problem that we all need to own.” This is a snapshot from Nashville of America’s addiction crisis. More than 2 million people are hooked on opioids. Overdoses kill, on average, 120 Americans every day. Even for survivors, success can be precarious. An unsure future At 53 and on disability, Kyle Graves …
Technology Companies, Retailers Send US Stock Indexes Higher
U.S. stocks are higher Monday as technology and industrial companies, banks and retailers all make modest gains. Drugmakers and other health care companies are trading lower. Companies that make opioid pain medications are down sharply after the government released a much higher estimate of the costs of the ongoing addiction crisis. Keeping score The Standard & Poor’s 500 index picked up 5 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,584 as of 2:15 p.m. Eastern time. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 94 points, or 0.4 percent, to 23,452. The Nasdaq composite advanced 7 points, or 0.1 percent, to 6,789. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks edged up 6 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,499. Tech tie-up Chipmaker Marvell Technology Group said it will buy competitor Cavium for $6 billion in the latest deal in the semiconductor industry. Cavium climbed $7.48, or 9.9 percent, to $83.31 and it is up 22 percent over the last two weeks on reports Marvell would make a bid. Marvell rose $1.02, or 5 percent, to $21.31. Other technology companies climbed as well. IBM added $2.01, or 1.3 percent, to $150.98 and Applied Materials picked up $1.12, or 2 percent, to $57.61. Cisco Systems gained 55 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $36.45. Retail rising again Retailers continued to move higher. They climbed last week following solid quarterly reports from Wal-Mart, Gap and Ross Stores. That’s given investors hope that shoppers are ready to spend more money. Home improvement retailer Home Depot rose $2.68, or 1.6 percent, …
Yellen to Leave Fed Board When New Leader Sworn In
Fed Chair Janet Yellen says she will leave the U.S. central bank’s board when her successor is sworn in early next year. Jerome Powell was chosen by President Donald Trump to head the Federal Reserve when Yellen’s term expires. Powell must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before he can take office, but analysts say his approach to managing interest rates is similar to Yellen’s. She is credited with managing the economy in ways that boosted recovery from the 2007 recession and cut unemployment in half. In her resignation letter to Trump, Yellen said she is “gratified that the financial system is much stronger than a decade ago.” She also noted “substantial improvement in the economy since the crisis.” Yellen is the first woman to lead the Fed, and was a member of its board of governors before taking the leadership role. Her term on the board does not officially expire until 2024, and she could have stayed on if she wished to do so. Candidate Trump criticized Yellen during his campaign, but praised her work after he became president. Yellen has served as vice chair of the Fed, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and head of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. She has researched and taught economics at the University of California at Berkeley. …
Amsterdam, Paris Picked to Host EU Agencies After Brexit
The European Union went back to its roots Monday by picking cities from two of its founding nations — France and the Netherlands — to host key agencies that will have move once Britain leaves the bloc in 2019. During voting so tight they were both decided by a lucky draw, EU members except Britain chose Amsterdam over Italy’s Milan as the new home of the European Medicines Agency and Paris over Dublin to host the European Banking Authority. Both currently are located in London. “We needed to draw lots in both cases,” Estonian EU Affairs Minister Matti Maasikas, who chaired the meeting and in both cases made the decisive selection from a big transparent bowl. Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank, surprisingly failed to become one of the two finalists competing for the banking agency. The relocations made necessary by the referendum to take Britain out of the EU are expected to cost the country over 1,000 jobs directly and more in secondary employment. The outcomes of the votes also left newer EU member states in eastern and southern Europe with some bitterness. Several had hoped to be tapped for a lucrative prize that would be a sign the bloc was truly committed to outreach. Some 890 top jobs will leave Britain for Amsterdam with the European Medicines Agency, giving the Dutch a welcome economic boost and more prestige. The EMA is responsible for the evaluation, supervision and monitoring of medicines. The Paris-bound European Banking Authority, which has …
US State of Nebraska OKs Keystone Oil Pipeline Route
Regulators in the U.S. state of Nebraska have voted to approve a route for TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL pipeline – the last major obstacle to complete the oil pipeline that President Donald Trump has supported. The regulatory body, which by state law could not consider the risk of leaks or potential environmental impacts, voted to approve the project just days after a leak in a separate pipeline – also named “Keystone” – spilled 5,000 barrels of oil in the nearby state of South Dakota. The 3-2 decision by the Nebraska Public Service Commission is likely to be challenged in court by environmental activists in the nearly decade-long debate surrounding TransCanada’s project linking Canada’s Alberta oil sands to refineries in the United States. The commission’s vote does not approve TransCanada’s proposed route, but a modified one which could prove more costly and difficult to build. It was not immediately clear whether the corporation would go through with the project as it considers its commercial viability. In 2015, the Obama administration rejected construction of the pipeline, saying it would detract from America’s global leadership on issues related to climate change. But the Trump administration overturned the decision in March, saying that the pipeline is safer than other methods used to transport oil, and calling its completion “long overdue.” The 1,900-kilometer-long pipeline is designed to transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of tar sand oil from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska, where it would then enter existing pipelines to the Gulf Coast refineries. …
Bitcoin Hits Record High After Smashing Through $8,000 for First Time
Bitcoin hit a new record high on Monday after smashing through the $8,000 level for the first time over the weekend, marking an almost 50 percent climb in just eight days. The new high came after leading U.S. payments company Square Inc. said late last week that it had started allowing select customers to buy and sell bitcoins on its Cash app. Bitcoin traded as high as $8,197.81 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, up over 2 percent on the day and around 48 percent up since dipping to $5,555 on Nov. 12. An eye-watering eightfold increase in the value of the volatile cryptocurrency since the start of the year has led to multiple warnings that the market is in a bubble, and institutional investors are broadly staying away. Retail investors, however, as well as some hedge funds and family offices, are piling into the market. The “market cap” of all cryptocurrencies hit an all-time high of over $242 billion on Monday, according to trade website Coinmarketcap. …
Roche Win Boosts Case for Adding Chemo to Cancer Immunotherapy
Cancer doctors struggling to work out the best way to use modern immunotherapy drugs now have further evidence of the benefits of adding them to chemotherapy, despite earlier skepticism. News that Roche’s immune system-boosting drug Tecentriq delayed lung cancer progression when given alongside chemo and its older drug Avastin validates the approach for the first time in a large Phase III clinical trial. It is a significant milestone for physicians, patients and investors, who are trying to assess the competitive landscape as drugmakers race to develop better ways to fight tumors in previously untreated lung cancer. Lung cancer is by far the biggest oncology market and first-line treatment provides access to the most patients, opening up potential annual sales forecast by some analysts at $20 billion. Roche and Merck & Co have led the way in pioneering so-called “chemo-combo” treatment, while AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers are betting primarily on mixing two immunotherapies. AstraZeneca notably failed to show a similar benefit in a high-profile clinical trial in July. Stefan Zimmermann, an oncologist at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland, said the Roche data would help scotch concerns that chemo might hamper the new class of immuno-oncology medicines. “Many experts in the field will be relieved because there has been uncertainty … I think this will really encourage many of us to use this combination upfront,” he told Reuters. “For now, the only positive data that we have is for chemo combination.” Merck, in fact, already has U.S. approval to add chemo to its …
МВФ планує продовжити обговорення з Україною проекту держбюджету-2018
Міжнародний валютний фонд у найближчі тижні планує продовжити переговори з українською владою стосовно проекту державного бюджету України на 2018 рік, повідомили в МВФ. «Обговорення триватиме протягом наступних тижнів, щоб забезпечити відповідність в ухваленому бюджеті показника дефіциту в 2,5% ВВП, узгодженого в рамках підтримуваної фондом програми економічних реформ України», – зазначили в МВФ за підсумками візиту до Києва місії фонду, який відбувався з 9 до 17 листопада. 14 листопада Верховна Рада схвалила в першому читанні проект державного бюджету на 2018 рік. Показник дефіциту закладений у межах 77,9 мільярда гривень, що становить 2,4% ВВП. Прем’єр-міністр України Володимир Гройсман очікує ухвалення державного бюджету до 10 грудня. У березні 2015 року між МВФ і Україною була затверджена чотирирічна програма розширеного фінансування на суму близько 17,5 мільярдів доларів США. Наразі МВФ надав Україні за цією програмою близько 8 мільярдів 380 мільйонів доларів. У Міністерстві фінансів України раніше заявляли, що очікують надходження нового траншу кредиту МВФ на початку 2018 року. …
Miami Responds to Threat of Rising Seas
Preparing for a century of steadily higher tides is a central challenge for city officials from Boston to Bangkok. The U.S. city of Miami, Florida, and its neighbors are home to nearly 3 million people and billions of dollars of real estate development. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look at what rising seas mean for one of the most vulnerable cities in the United States. …
White House: Opioid Crisis Cost US Economy $504 Billion in 2015
Opioid drug abuse, which has ravaged parts of the United States in recent years, cost the economy as much as $504 billion in 2015, White House economists said in a report made public on Sunday. The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) said the toll from the opioid crisis represented 2.8 percent of gross domestic product that year. President Donald Trump last month declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. While Republican lawmakers said that was an important step in fighting opioid abuse, some critics, including Democrats, said the move was meaningless without additional funding. The report could be used by the Trump White House to urge Republicans in Congress – who historically have opposed increasing government spending – to provide more funding for fighting the opioid crisis by arguing that the economic losses far outweigh the cost of additional government funding. Using a combination of statistical models, the CEA said the lost economic output stemming from 33,000 opioid-related deaths in 2015 could be between $221 billion and $431 billion, depending on the methodology used. In addition, the report looked at the cost of non-fatal opioid usage, estimating a total of $72 billion for 2.4 million people with opioid addictions in 2015. Those costs included medical treatment, criminal justice system expenses and the decreased economic productivity of addicts. The CEA said its estimate was larger than those of some prior studies because it took a broad look at the value of lives lost to overdoses. The CEA also …
With Little Movement, NAFTA Talks Said to Run Risk of Stalemate
Talks to update the North American Free Trade Agreement appeared to be in danger of grinding toward a stalemate amid complaints of U.S. negotiators’ inflexibility, people familiar with the process said on Sunday. The United States, Canada and Mexico are holding the fifth of seven planned rounds of talks to modernize NAFTA, which U.S. President Donald Trump blames for job losses and big trade deficits for his country. Time is running short to reach a deal before the March 2018 start of Mexico’s presidential elections, and lack of progress in the current round could put the schedule at risk. “The talks are really not going anywhere,” Jerry Dias, president of Unifor, the largest Canadian private-sector union, told reporters after meeting with Canada’s chief negotiator on Sunday. “As long as the United States is taking the position they are, this is a colossal waste of time,” said Dias, who is advising the government and regularly meets the Canadian team. Hanging over the negotiations is the very real threat that Trump could make good on a threat to scrap NAFTA. Canada and Mexico object to a number of demands the U.S. side unveiled during the fourth round last month, including for a five-year sunset clause that would force frequent renegotiation of the trade pact, far more stringent automotive content rules and radical changes to dispute settlement mechanisms. Calls for greater US flexibility “Our internal view as of this morning is that if any progress is to be made, the United States needs …
Britain to Submit ‘Brexit Bill’ Proposal Before December EU Meeting
Britain will submit its proposals on how to settle its financial obligations to the European Union before an EU Council meeting next month, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday. British Prime Minister Theresa May was told on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock Brexit talks, as the European Union repeated an early December deadline for her to move on the divorce bill. “We will make our proposals to the European Union in time for the council,” Hammond told the BBC. Last week, May met fellow leaders on the sidelines of an EU summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, to try to break the deadlock over how much Britain will pay on leaving the bloc in 16 months. She signaled again that she would increase an initial offer that is estimated at some 20 billion euros ($24 billion), about a third of what Brussels wants. …
European Cities Battle Fiercely for Top Agencies Leaving UK
Brexit is still well over year away but two European cities on Monday will already be celebrating Britain’s departure from the European Union. Two major EU agencies now in London — the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority — must move to a new EU city because Britain is leaving the bloc. The two prizes are being hotly fought over by most of the EU’s other 27 nations. Despite all the rigid rules and conditions the bloc imposed to try to make it a fair, objective decision, the process has turned into a deeply political beauty contest — part Olympic host city bidding, part Eurovision Song Contest. It will culminate in a secret vote Monday at EU headquarters in Brussels that some say could be tainted by vote trading. The move involves tens of millions in annual funding, about 1,000 top jobs with many more indirectly linked, prestige around the world and plenty of bragging rights for whichever leader can bring home the agencies. “I will throw my full weight behind this,” French President Emmanuel Macron said when he visited Lille, which is seeking to host the EMA once Britain leaves in the EU in March 2019. “Now is the final rush.” At an EU summit Friday in Goteborg, Sweden, leaders were lobbying each other to get support for their bids. The EMA is responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines in the EU. It has around 890 staff and …