Two years after a state of emergency was declared in Flint, Michigan because of lead-poisoned water, residents have been assured their water is now safe. But residents are wary even though these assurances come from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan visited Flint and spoke to residents who face a battle for clean water every day. …
Disasters Pounded North America in 2017 but Were Down Globally
North America couldn’t catch a break in 2017. Parts of the United States were on fire, underwater or lashed by hurricane winds. Mexico shook with back-to-back earthquakes. The Caribbean got hit with a string of hurricanes. The rest of the world, however, fared better. Preliminary research shows there were fewer disasters and deaths this year than on average, but economic damages were much higher. While overall disasters were down, they smacked big cities, which were more vulnerable because of increased development, said economist and geophysicist Chuck Watson of the consulting firm Enki Research. In a year where U.S. and Caribbean hurricanes caused a record $215 billion worth of damage, according to insurance giant Munich Re, no one in the continental U.S. died from storm surge, which traditionally is the No. 1 killer during hurricanes. Forecasters gave residents plenty of advance warning during a season where storms set records for strength and duration. “It’s certainly one of the worst hurricane seasons we’ve had,” National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini said. The globe typically averages about 325 disasters a year, but this year’s total through November was fewer than 250, according to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain in Belgium. They included flooding and monsoons in South Asia, landslides in Africa, a hurricane in Ireland, and cyclones in Australia and Central America. Colombia experienced two different bouts of floods and mudslides. Lower tolls Disasters kill about 30,000 people and affect about 215 million people …
Assisted Breeding Program Helps Australia’s Ailing Great Barrier Reef
There’s new hope for ailing parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – assisted reproductive technology. Researchers have been capturing coral spawn and rearing millions of larvae in large tanks. The reef is arguably Australia’s greatest natural treasure. It stretches more than 2,300 kilometers down north-eastern Australia, and faces many threats, including climate change and pollution. Professor Peter Harrison from Southern Cross University has been collecting the coral spawn off Heron Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. It is then placed into tanks, where it matures. Millions of coral larvae are then placed back onto damaged areas of the reef that may not otherwise regenerate naturally. The larvae are put into large enclosures where their growth can be monitored. Early results are encouraging. It is estimated that 100 juvenile coral have survived, and are settling into their new home. The mesh enclosures cover a hundred square meters of damaged coral, and the next challenge will be covering several kilometers of reef. It is the first time the assisted breeding method has been used in Australia, and it follows a successful trial in the Philippines that rejuvenated reefs damaged by fishing. Harrison says the trial on the Great Barrier Reef is going well. “What we are doing is capturing some of that coral spawn, growing millions of larvae, and then putting those larvae back into areas of the reef that do not have many living corals on them at the moment to rapidly increase the rate at which coral recovery can occur. …
Trump Dismisses Last of His HIV/AIDS Advisory Council
The Trump administration has fired the remaining members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, also known as PACHA. Council members received a letter this week saying that their appointments to the panel were terminated, “effective immediately,” according to a report in The Washington Post. PACHA was established in 1995, during the Clinton administration, to advise the White House on HIV strategies and policies. Six of the members of the council, upset by White House actions on health policy, resigned in June. Scott Schoettes, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, a LGBT rights organization, was one of them. He wrote in Newsweek at the time that U.S. President Donald Trump “simply does not care” about people living with HIV. Schoettes said the Trump administration “pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.” He told The Washington Post Friday, “The tipping point for me was the president’s approach to the Affordable Care Act,” which he said “is of great importance for people living with HIV like myself.” Schoettes said in Newsweek that much of the public is unaware that “only about 40 percent of people living with HIV in the United States are able to access the life-saving medications that have been available for more than 20 years. It is not acceptable for the U.S. president to be unaware of these realities, to setup a government that deprioritizes fighting the epidemic and its causes or to implement policies …
Wall Street Ends Strong Year on Quiet Note
There were no fireworks on Wall Street for the last trading day of the year, as U.S. stocks closed out their best year since 2013 on a down note, with losses in technology and financial stocks keeping equities in negative territory for the session. Major indexes hit a series of record highs in 2017, lifted by a combination of strong economic growth, solid corporate earnings, low interest rates and hopes for a tax cut from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. The benchmark S&P 500 surged 19.5 percent this year, the blue-chip Dow 25.2 percent and Nasdaq 28.2 percent, as each of the major Wall Street indexes scored the best yearly performance since 2013. The market has also remained resilient in the face of tensions in North Korea and political turmoil in Washington. The S&P 500 only saw four sessions all year with a decline of more than 1 percent while the CBOE Volatility index topped out at 15.96 on a closing basis, well below its long-term average of 20. What will 2018 bring? “The real question is what happens as we head into 2018,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York. “There is an awful lot of optimism built into share prices right now that could set us up for disappointment.” Among sectors, the technology index has been the best performer, up 37 percent and led by a gain of 87.6 percent in Micron Technology. Telecom services, down 5.7 percent, and energy, down 3.7 percent, …
Russia Reports Virulent H5N2 Bird Flu at 660,000-bird Farm
Russia has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N2 bird flu on a farm in the central region of Kostromskaya Oblast that led to the deaths of more than 660,000 birds, the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Friday. The virus killed more than 44,000 birds in an outbreak first detected on December 17, the OIE said, citing a report from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. The rest of the 663,500 birds on the farm were slaughtered, it said in the report. It did not specify the type of birds that were infected. It is the first outbreak of the H5N2 strain in Russia this year, but the country has been facing regular outbreaks of H5N8 since early December last year, with the last one reported to the OIE detected late November. Bird flu has led to the deaths or culling of more than 2.6 million birds on farms between December last year and November this year, a report posted on the OIE website showed. Neither the H5N2 or H5N8 strains has been found in humans. The virulence of highly pathogenic bird flu viruses has prompted countries to bar poultry imports from infected countries in earlier outbreaks. …
Beijing May Be Starting to Win Its Battle Against Smog
Beijing may have turned a corner in its battle against the city’s notorious smog, according to Reuters calculations, and environmental consultants say the Chinese government deserves much of the credit for introducing tough anti-pollution measures. The Chinese capital is set to record its biggest improvement in air quality in at least nine years, with a nearly 20 percent change for the better this year, based on average concentration levels of hazardous breathable particles known as PM2.5. The dramatic change, which has occurred across North China, is partly because of favorable weather conditions in the past three months but it also shows that the government’s strong-arm tactics have had an impact. The Reuters’ estimates show that average levels of the pollutants in the capital have fallen by about 35 percent from 2012 numbers, with nearly half the improvement this year. “The improvement in air quality is due both to long-term efforts by the government and short-term efforts this winter,” said Anders Hove, a Beijing-based energy consultant. “After 2013, the air in summers got much cleaner, but winter had not shown much improvement. This year is the first winter improvement we’ve seen during this war on pollution.” Government officials this week signaled they were confident they were starting to get on top of the problem. “The autumn and winter period is the most challenging part of the air pollution campaign. However, with the intensive efforts all departments have made, we believe the challenge is being successfully overcome,” Liu Youbin, spokesman for the …
Brands Map ‘Invisible’ Shoemakers in South India
When the 55-year-old woman stood up to speak at a meeting of shoemakers in south India earlier this month, she was seeing her employers for the first time. She told them about the decades she had spent hunched up in her home, repeatedly pulling a needle through tough leather as she sewed shoe uppers, the meager income she earned, her failing eyesight and the wounds on her hands. For manufacturers and brands, her story was a revelation. The meeting brought women workers, manufacturers, charities and brands face-to-face for the first time in a bid to map the role of homeworkers – an “invisible workforce” in a global supply chain making high-end shoes – and improve conditions. “It was a historical meeting in that sense,” said Annie Delaney of the Australian RMIT School of Management, who has documented the condition of homeworkers and attended the meeting a fortnight ago in Vellore in Tamil Nadu. “Homeworkers described their reality. It was a powerful experience for not just the women but also for the manufacturers and brands who were meeting them for the first time.” There are hundreds of thousands of women from poor, marginalized families who work for cash — stitching, embroidering and weaving at home to put the finishing touches to products that are sold globally, campaigners said. Most of them are not recognized as formal workers so have no access to social security or fair wages. Vellore district in Tamil Nadu is the hub of a growing industry in India …
Trump Targets Amazon in Call for Postal Service to Hike Prices
President Donald Trump returned to a favorite target Friday, saying that the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon.com more money to ship the millions of packages it sends around the world each year. Amazon has been a consistent recipient of Trump’s ire. He has accused the company of failing to pay “internet taxes,” though it’s never been made clear by the White House what the president means by that. In a tweet Friday, Trump said Amazon should be charged “MUCH MORE” by the post office because it’s “losing many billions of dollars a year” while it makes “Amazon richer.” Amazon lives and dies by shipping, and increasing rates that it negotiated with the post office, as well as shippers like UPS and FedEx, could certainly do some damage. In the seconds after the tweet, shares of Amazon, which had been trading higher before the opening bell, began to fade and went into negative territory. The stock remained down almost 1 percent in midday trading Friday. Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. The Post, as well as other major media, has been labeled as “fake news” by Trump after reporting unfavorable developments during his campaign and presidency. He has labeled Bezos’ Post the, “AmazonWashingtonPost.” The Seattle company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. A spokeswoman for the Postal Service said, “We’re looking into it.” Between July and September, Amazon paid $5.4 billion in worldwide shipping costs, …
New Robot Teaches Autistic Adults to Navigate Office Politics
Autism is on the rise in many developed countries, and the reasons why are still unclear. But more autistic children mean that, one day, more autistic adults will be entering the workforce. A new robot is trying to help these workers navigate the emotional elements on the job. VOA’s Bronwyn Benito narrates this report by Kevin Enochs. …
Radiologist Have a New Tool to Detect Breast Cancer
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, and early detection saves lives. Scientists are working on finding new ways to detect breast cancer while at the same time they are studying existing screening methods to find out what is best. Take, for example, mammograms. During a mammogram, a technician takes an X-ray of a woman’s breast as it’s compressed between two glass plates. A radiologist then examines the image for tumors. They are the best screening tools available: The number of deaths from breast cancer has fallen by 30 percent in the U.S. since mammography was introduced in the 1970s. That’s because when cancer is found early, the chances of beating it are greater. But mammograms aren’t 100 percent accurate. A mammogram can look normal even when cancer is present, and it can look abnormal even though there’s no cancer in the breast at all. WATCH: Are 3-D Mammograms Better? 3-D mammography Standard mammograms are two dimensional, but for the 40 to 50 percent of women with dense breasts, both tumors and breast tissue can show up as white masses on 2-D images. Three-dimensional mammograms show a more detailed view of the breast, so women with fibrous or dense breasts may benefit from a 3-D screening, said Dr. Otis Brawley at the American Cancer Society. “It might find disease that we need to find that two-dimensional does not,” he said. “There are potential cons in that it has a higher cost, higher amount of radiation, given …
Conditions are Severe for Rohingya Women in Refugee Camps in Bangladesh
Rohingya women fleeing the military attacks in Myanmar have told countless tales of horror at the hands of soldiers. Now, living in massive refugee camps, they must deal with the past traumas as well as face new risks. Steve Sandford speaks with experts in the camps on what’s being done to aid those most at risk. …
Radiologists Have a New Tool to Detect Breast Cancer
Early detection of breast cancer saves lives. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. As VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists are working on finding new ways to detect breast cancer while they are studying existing screening methods to find out what is best. …
Low Blood Sugar Level Key to Losing Weight
For years, nutritionists have tried to come up with a diet that will guarantee weight loss without fail. Mass production of low-fat or no-fat food varieties has not helped reduce the obesity problem in the United States, and various diets have worked for some people and not for others. Now some scientists say there is no one-size-fits-all solution for weight loss and that only personalized diets work. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more. …
Philippines Preps Economy for Bumper Year in 2018
Officials in the Philippines, one of Asia’s fastest growing economies, are planning a series of economic stimulus measures in 2018 to ease poverty and compensate for a lag in foreign investment. Manila is building $169 billion in infrastructure, such as railways and an airport terminal, while toying with legal changes that would let foreigners own larger shares of localized businesses. Tax reform In another major step, President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law this month the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion act. Tax revenue would pay for infrastructure and social services. The idea is to create jobs and bring in foreign investment. Those outcomes would help sustain economic growth while giving the government funds to ease poverty that afflicts about a quarter of the population of 102 million. “As the country builds for the future, there is the developing (of) social capital,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila. “Developing social capital eventually means these are your health, technical skills and education that are needed by individuals,” he said. “That’s part and parcel of the package.” Infrastructure and taxes The World Bank forecasts 6.7 percent growth in the Philippine economy this year followed by 6.8 percent in 2018 and 2019. Much of the growth comes from overseas remittances, a boom in call-center jobs and consumption. A cornerstone of Duterte’s economic policies is the “Build, Build, Build” program to replace decayed infrastructure through 2022 by adding the likes of railways and expressways. By 2019, …
Trump Administration Rescinds Rules for Drilling on Public Land
President Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing and other oil- and gas-drilling practices on government lands, government officials announced Thursday. The rules developed under President Barack Obama would have applied mainly in the West, where most federal lands are located. Companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in fracking, which pumps pressurized water underground to break open hydrocarbon deposits. The rules to be rescinded Friday were supposed to take effect in 2015, but a federal judge in Wyoming blocked them at the last minute. In September, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver declined to rule in that case because the Trump administration intended to rescind the rules. Industry praise The long-awaited change drew praise from industry groups including the Washington, D.C.-based Independent Petroleum Association of America and Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, which sued to block the rules. They claimed the federal rules would have duplicated state rules, putting unnecessary and expensive burdens on petroleum developers. “States have an exemplary safety record regulating fracking, and that environmental protection will continue as before,” Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma said in a release. Fracking and water Fracking has been so successful in boosting production over the past decade it has become almost synonymous with oil and gas drilling. In many areas, it would be rare nowadays for a gas or oil well to not be fracked. The process requires several million gallons of water each time. Environmentalists say the potential risks to groundwater …
WHO to Recognize Gaming Disorder as Health Issue
The World Health Organization is set to recognize gaming disorder as a serious mental health issue. In its 11th International Classification of Disease, a diagnostic manual to be published next year, the U.N. health agency defines gaming disorder as a “persistent or recurrent” disorder that can cause “significant impairment” to the gamer’s life, including to family, education, work and friends. The agency says the disorder is characterized by giving increasing priority to gaming, on and offline, over other aspects of everyday life. Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, told CNN that the entry on the disorder “includes only a clinical description and not prevention and treatment options.” According to a report released in 2016 by the gaming industry, 63 percent of U.S. households include a gamer who, on average, has been playing video games for 13 years. The increasing popularity of video gaming became evident in the past three years when 50 U.S. colleges established varsity gaming teams, with scholarships, coaches and game analysts. However, some countries, such as China and South Korea already consider the internet and gaming to be addictions and have created boot-camplike treatment facilities. …
In a Milestone Year, Gene Therapy Finds a Place in Medicine
After decades of hope and high promise, this was the year scientists really showed they could doctor DNA to successfully treat diseases. Gene therapies to treat cancer and even pull off the biblical-sounding feat of helping the blind to see were approved by U.S. regulators, establishing gene manipulation as a new mode of medicine. Almost 20 years ago, a teen’s death in a gene experiment put a chill on what had been a field full of outsized expectations. Now, a series of jaw-dropping successes have renewed hopes that some one-time fixes of DNA, the chemical code that governs life, might turn out to be cures. “I am totally willing to use the ‘C’ word,” said the National Institutes of Health’s director, Dr. Francis Collins. Gene therapy aims to treat the root cause of a problem by deleting, adding or altering DNA, rather than just treating symptoms that result from the genetic flaw. The advent of gene editing — a more precise and long-lasting way to do gene therapy — may expand the number and types of diseases that can be treated. In November, California scientists tried editing a gene inside someone’s body for the first time, using a tool called zinc finger nucleases for a man with a metabolic disease. It’s like a cut-and-paste operation to place a new gene in a specific spot. Tests of another editing tool called CRISPR, to genetically alter human cells in the lab, may start next year. “There are a few times in our …
With Lineup Widening, Apple Depends Less on iPhone X
In years past, demand for Apple Inc.’s latest flagship phone was critical to the company’s results over the holiday shopping quarter. That dynamic might be changing, however, as Apple’s widening lineup of devices and services more than makes up for any tepidness in demand this quarter for its lead product, the $999 iPhone X. On Tuesday, Apple’s stock fell 2.5 percent to $170.57 after Taiwan’s Economic Daily and several analysts suggested iPhone X sales in the fiscal first quarter would be 30 million units, 20 million fewer than initially planned by the company. The cut in the forecast was not confirmed, and the stock regained ground Thursday, hitting $171.82 by midday. The mean revenue estimate for the holiday quarter among 30 analysts remains at $86.2 billion, near the high end of Apple’s forecast of $84 billion to $87 billion. Apple declined to comment. Part of the support for Apple may reflect a change in its business strategy. Releasing two new models and keeping older ones have made Apple less dependent on its flagship product. Apple shareholder Ross Gerber, chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management in Santa Monica, California, said the higher price and better margins on the iPhone X would reduce fears of a sales decline. Eye on combined sales “We know that Apple’s strategy was different this quarter by releasing two phones, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, and I think combined sales will be in line with what people expect,” Gerber said. Apple also has fattened its portfolio of accessories and other devices, from its AirPods wireless headphones to a new Apple Watch with cellular data features. While none …
China Gets Its Wine On
By 2020, China could become the world’s second-largest wine consumer, behind the United States, according to a report by Vinexpo, a leading wine exhibition. “Nowadays, many people in China have given up Baijiu, no more Baijiu,” says Jiawei Wang, a Napa Valley visitor from China, referring to his native country’s traditional grain-based spirits. “Because wine has enough alcohol, but it’s also good for health. It can soften humans’ blood vessels. People are changing.” Wang is not alone. Chinese are visiting Northern California’s Napa Valley wine region in numbers never seen before. “It’s interesting because the Chinese market in Napa is the fastest growing international market that we have, according to the statistics from Visit Napa Valley, our visitor bureau here in Napa Valley,” says John Taylor of Yao Family Wines. “China was the number one international market in the Napa Valley last year, composing, I think, about 5.5 percent of total visitation to the valley.” A must-see stop for Chinese tourists is the Yao Family Wines vineyard, which is owned by retired basketball star Yao Ming. Yao’s celebrity aside, his wines have won praise from wine critics. “The Cabernet Sauvignon is very nice,” says Wang. “It tastes great.” About an hour’s drive to the east, the University of California-Davis has one of the country’s top programs for the science of growing grapes and wine making. “From what I can see, there were not many Chinese students previously,” says Shizhang Han, a Chinese student in the UC-Davis program, “but now in …
US Economic Momentum Expected to Continue in 2018
Despite initial concerns about an untested new leader, the world’s largest economy will end the year on a high note. The US economy is expanding at the fastest pace in more than two years, buoyed in part by low unemployment, soaring stock prices and a broad economic recovery around the globe. The momentum is expected to carry into 2018, but, as Mil Arcega reports, economists say the new year is likely to bring new challenges. …
As Online Shopping Grows, UPS Sees Record Holiday Package Returns
United Parcel Service Inc is on track to return a record number of packages this holiday shipping season, a sign that e-commerce purchases surged to new heights over the past month. The world’s largest package delivery company and rival FedEx Corp get paid by retailers like Amazon.com Inc and Wal-Mart Stores Inc for handling e-commerce deliveries. Both have benefited from booming delivery volumes over the past few years, but also have had to invest billions of dollars to upgrade and expand their networks to cope. An 8 percent increase in returns UPS said on Wednesday it handled more than 1 million returns to retailers daily in December, a pace expected to last into early January. It said returns would likely peak at 1.4 million on Jan. 3, which would be a fifth consecutive annual record, up 8 percent from this year. The returns follow what could be the strongest holiday shopping season on record for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers, once stores publish sales data. Mastercard Inc said on Tuesday U.S. shoppers spent over $800 billion during the season, more than ever before. FedEx said on Wednesday it experienced another record-breaking peak shipping season, but declined to provide specifics. The company’s Chief Marketing Officer Rajesh Subramaniam told analysts last week about 15 percent of all goods purchased online are returned, with apparel running at about 30 percent. UPS said record-breaking e-commerce sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November jolted the returns season, with a larger flood of packages …
Rehab Center Provides Second Chance to Critically Wounded Soldiers
Rehabilitation centers give critically wounded soldiers a second chance at life. Paraplegics and quadriplegics spend their days together in an environment built to aid them in self-reliance. Arash Arabasadi reports on one such facility. …
Chinese Embrace Western Wine Culture
When you think about fine wine, what countries come to mind? France? Italy? What about China? Well, by 2020, China could become the world’s second-largest wine consumer, behind the United States. That’s according to a report by Vinexpo, a leading wine exhibition. VOA’s Chu Wu visited California’s wine country to hear what winemakers—and drinkers—had to say. …