Environmentalists promote solar energy as an option to reduce pollution, but in places without a central electricity supply solar panels can be a practical solution. They are frequently used by nomads moving through the desert, and people living in remote villages. In recent years solar panels have come to serve as a source of energy in places affected by war and conflict. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports solar panels are now a common sight in villages across Syria.
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Month: July 2017
High Tech Gives Wimbledon a New Look
Not all the action now underway at Wimbledon is on the tennis court. In back rooms on the tournament site, technology is taking the matches to a whole new level. It offers the most immersive view to tennis fans, whether they are in the stands, or following the play on screens around the world. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Takata Announces Another Recall of Air Bags
Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe.
The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years.
Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe.
However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180.
Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well.
U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe.
“We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December 2019 deadline. … If even more are found to be defective, it will take us from being the biggest recall ever to something that could become mind-boggling,” Nelson said.
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With Boko Haram Threat Receding, Nigeria Allows Fishing to Resume in Lake Chad
Three years ago, at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigerian soldiers stopped all fishing activities in the country’s section of Lake Chad. Militants had infiltrated the ranks of the fishermen, the army said, and were using the guise to fund arms purchases and launch surprise attacks on innocent people.
The local fishermen’s union said it understood the army’s actions but pushed for an easing of the ban, because its members had no other way to earn a living in the largely dry and remote area.
Relief came to the local fishermen over the weekend, when the Nigerian Army commander in charge of the area, Major General Ibrahimn Attahiru, addressed the fishermen and said they could return to work based on some guidelines the army had reached with their leaders.
Fishermen support changes
The president of the Lake Chad Fishermen Association, Alhaji Abubakar Gamande, confirmed the development in an interview Monday with VOA’s Hausa Service and pledged that fishermen will follow the new rules.
“Based on what happened in the past, we will not continue to operate as we used to, where everyone did as he deemed fit,” he said. “We and the army will watch the activities of the fishermen and anyone whose work requires entering the lake. We will not let him operate as he wishes. We will screen all our members. We have to know where they are coming from and where they are going.”
In normal times, the fishermen can still make a decent living off Lake Chad despite the lake’s radical shrinkage over the past 50 years, which scientists believe is a result of overuse and shifting rainfall patterns brought on by climate change.
Local authorities back in control
But Boko Haram’s takeover of northeastern Nigeria severely disrupted a fishing industry that draws traders from Nigeria’s Lake Chad neighbors Chad, Cameroon and Niger and enables many locals to support themselves. By early 2015, the well-armed militants had seized effective control of the areas along the lake, and there was little the fishermen could do to stop Boko Haram activity.
Local authorities are now back in control, following a 30-month regional offensive by the army and a multi-national task force that includes soldiers from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin.
Gamande was full of praise for the army, which he said has worked tirelessly to restore peace to the area.
Quiet on new rules
Asked how the new rules will prevent Boko Haram activity, the union leader said he cannot reveal all the details for security reasons.
“On our own part as a union we have laid down guidelines that enable us to know who comes for fishing, those who buy, and those who come to sell,” Gamande said.
“We will do all we can to ensure that what happened in the past will never happen again. Enough is enough.”
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Coal Plan Sparks Ire as Myanmar Struggles to Keep Lights On
Opposition to a planned $3 billion coal-fired power plant in eastern Myanmar is highlighting the challenges facing Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in crafting a coherent energy policy in one of Asia’s poorest and most electricity-starved countries.
With only a third of the country’s 60 million people connected to the grid and major cities experiencing blackouts, finding investors is tough for Myanmar and it is now looking at options, from coal to deep-sea gas, to boost its power supply.
Myanmar has reserves of natural gas, but most existing offshore production is exported under agreements struck during the junta era, while new blocks will not come on stream for some years.
Coal would be one of the quickest ways to ramp up power generation but, as protests against the proposed 1,280 megawatts (MW) project in the eastern Kayin state show, the option is unpopular in Myanmar.
More than 100 activist groups across the country have signed a joint statement calling for the project to be cancelled and urging the government to look at renewable energy instead.
“They are worried about their land and water, which would be affected by the coal-fired plant,” said Kayin-based activist Nan Myint Aung, referring to residents in the area who mostly depend on agriculture.
Attracting investment is crucial for Suu Kyi, who has made job creation one of her top priorities. Foreign direct investment has fallen 30 percent from the previous year to $6.6 billion in 2016/17 due to sluggish progress on retooling the economy after decades of military rule.
Myanmar aims a more than fourfold increase in its electricity generation of over 23,500 MW by 2030 to meet rising demand, a target experts said will be difficult to achieve – particularly, they say, if policy remains confused.
Uncertainty over energy mix
The Kayin state project, which is still awaiting approval from the authorities, is among the 11 planned coal-fired plants in Myanmar and, by itself, would increase the country’s current electricity production by 25 percent, official data shows.
But it is uncertain how many of those projects will go ahead. The former quasi-civilian government led by President Thein Sein had to stall more than 10 coal projects across the country due to opposition on environmental grounds.
Some western experts advising the government also oppose the solution, arguing that importing coal – which is not abundant in Myanmar – would mean an outflow of dollars from a country with tiny reserves of hard currency.
Officials have previously said they were looking to increase the share of hydro power in the country’s energy mix.
Most of its 49 planned hydropower projects have stalled, however, amid a lengthy dispute with China over the building of the Myitsone mega dam.
An electricity master plan has been under review since last year, but the government has yet to reveal details. Several energy officials said the share of coal and gas could be increased at the expense of hydro.
“International investors would like to see more clarity on energy policy. It is presently very difficult to say exactly what Myanmar’s energy plans are,” said Jeremy Mullins, researcher at Yangon-based consulting firm Frontier Myanmar.
‘Dilemma of coal’
Kayin’s energy minister, Soe Hlaing, told Reuters that the government would go ahead with the project if there was “enough public support.” He did not elaborate.
Residents and environmentalists say the risks the plant in Kayin could pose to the environment and the livelihoods of local people are not being properly investigated.
A feasibility study on the environmental and social impact will be ready later this year before the final decision from the energy ministry, local authorities said.
Thailand-based TTCL Public Company Ltd., developer of the project, said it would build a high-efficiency low-emissions station with advanced “clean coal” technology to mitigate environmental impact.
Coal currently generates just 1 percent of Myanmar’s electricity.
Win Htein, one of the top leaders from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, said alternatives such as hydropower would take time and coal was ideal for the country’s urgent energy demand.
“If we have to choose between the dilemma of coal and the development of the country, we prioritize the development,” he said.
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Intel Introduces New Chips in Bid for Data Center Business
Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced a new line of microprocessors for data centers, setting up a battle with Advanced Micro Devices and others for the lucrative business of supplying the chips that power cloud computing.
The new Xeon Scalable Processor chips provide far greater support for next-generation computing applications such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars, said Naveen Rao, vice president of Intel’s artificial intelligence products group, in an interview with Reuters.
The chips are aimed at companies including Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com and others that operate data centers with thousands of computers, both to power their own services and to provide computing horsepower for customers who don’t want to own and maintain their own computer systems.
Google Cloud Platform was the first data center to adopt the new Intel processors. Paul Nash, project manager for Google Compute Engine, called the deal an “expansion and deepening of our partnership” with Intel.
But Intel will face stiff competition from historic rival AMD, which recently launched its own next-generation data center processor.
The big Internet companies are also doing more of their own hardware design and experimenting with chips based on technology from ARM Holdings and others, partly as a way of pushing Intel to keep prices in line.
Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner, said the new Intel processor is a step up from its previous generation with better power efficiency, improvement on artificial intelligence workload and more advanced storage.
Reynolds noted that the biggest risk for Intel may be its dependence on a relatively small number of big data center operators.
“The challenge now is so much of our their work is going to these big internet guys,” he said, and thus demand for chips is subject to how successful the companies are in the fierce battle for customers who are moving their computing to the cloud.
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Family Planning Summit Overshadowed by US Funding Cut
Donor countries at a London summit pledged Tuesday to increase funding for family planning, but proposed cuts to family planning programs by the U.S. government overshadowed the conference.
The largest boost in donations announced at the Family Planning Summit came from the U.S.-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sought to improve women’s access to contraceptives.
“The $375 million that the foundation announced today, that is absolutely not a reaction to President [Donald] Trump,” Melinda Gates said. “There is not anything anyone can do to fill the bucket of the money that the U.S. has committed to family planning.”
The United States is by far the biggest donor to global family planning programs, giving $600 million this year. But Trump announced in April that he planned to withdraw financial support for the U.N. Population Fund, accusing it of using what he called “coercive” family planning practices, including providing abortions. The United Nations strongly rejected the claims.
Nigeria’s minister of health, Isaac Adewole, told VOA the cuts would have an impact.
“Every country in the developing world will be worried, because it really signifies an increase in the [funding] gap,” he said. “We know family planning is one of the strongest anti-poverty strategies the world has ever known. It is a low-hanging fruit for reducing maternal mortality. It will contribute to shared prosperity.”
Call for action
By 2050, Nigeria is on course to be the third most populous country, with more than 400 million people. Nigeria’s minister of budget and national planning, Zainab S. Ahmed, said action was needed fast.
“Our economy cannot grow fast enough to be able to sustain that size of population,” Ahmed said, “so it is a very significant challenge and we need to address it now.”
Nigeria is budgeting $3 million for family planning programs in 2017 and says more is needed. Ministers say reaching young people is key.
The African MTV drama “Shuga” weaves messages around sexual health, contraception and HIV, and it reaches an estimated 720 million people. It’s currently partly funded by the U.S. government.
Georgia Arnold, executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, said, “It is much harder for governments and organizations to be able to speak openly about sex. That is where we come in. We can use our brand. We can use our access to young people and all of the media platforms that they use.”
Delegates expressed hope that partnering between the private sector and governments can provide improved access to contraceptives and family planning advice.
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Folk Art Market Endures Amid Shifting US Immigration Policy
Organizers of the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe say shifting U.S. policies on security and immigration have not hampered participation by artists from 53 countries, from Cuba to Jordan.
In its 14th year, the annual bazaar is expanding its mission to highlight innovation and high-fashion within folk art traditions, from flower-petal dyed scarves from India to Amazonian basketry with mesmerizing patterns and symmetry.
A crowd of 20,000 is expected at the three-day sale that starts Friday. They will shop among wares from nearly 200 artists and artisans, many from remote areas in developing countries.
Here is a look at this year’s event:
Trading Places
Market organizers say that more than nine out of 10 invited artists have been able to secure temporary business visas and attend.
That access is on a par with previous years, despite a partial reinstatement of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens of six mainly Muslim countries and refugees from coming into the U.S.
Work from one of those six banned countries will be on display: blown glass in a century-old style created by Syrian artists who decided last fall to sell goods at the market without attending because of their country’s civil war.
Female artists from a cooperative in South Sudan known for its beaded jewelry and clothing also chose to stay home amid unrest and famine there. The Roots Project, founded by South Sudanese human rights activist Anyieth D’Awol, is sending artwork with an outside representative to Santa Fe.
Four other countries are making their market debut with an Argentine leatherworker, a Bedouin-style rug weaver from Jordan, a jeweler from Tajikistan and beadwork by women from northern Tanzania.
Organizers of the market say it has evolved into a tool for visiting artists to better their lives and their communities, and for Americans to learn more about diverse artistic traditions.
Cuba Connections
The Trump administration’s partial reversal of the Obama-era detente with Havana has had little bearing on the market’s strong ties to Cuba.
Among five visiting Cuba artists is Leandro Gomez Quintero — who creates out of painted cardboard startlingly realistic miniatures of vintage American-made Jeeps and safari-style vehicles that roam the eastern end of the island nation. The 40-year-old history teacher hopes to earn enough on his first trip abroad to repair his hurricane-ravaged home and studio in the town of Baracoa.
The house band from the famed Havana restaurant La Bodeguita del Medio will play in an artist procession through downtown Santa Fe on Wednesday evening.
Peggy Gaustad, a board member of International Folk Art Alliance that produces the market, says the Cuban exchanges during the market began in 2010 under exceptions to the U.S. trade embargo and have endured partly because every visiting Cuban artist has returned home afterward.
She notes the U.S. Embassy in Havana is publicizing the visits by Cuban artists on its Facebook page.
Innovation and Tradition
A new exhibit area at the market this year is devoted to innovation, with a juried selection of 30 contemporary artists whose work brings a fresh perspective to time-honored folk art traditions.
Those booths will be selling high-end fashion accessories dyed with flower offerings recycled from Hindu temples in Mumbai, India; hand-beaded jewelry from a women’s cooperative in Tanzania; rugs in Guatemala made out of cast off T-shirts from the United States; and indigo- and mud-dyed textiles from Mali in Africa.
Returning artist Manisha Mishra of India says the new category freed her to transfer ornate paintings of mythological scenes to much larger canvases and three-dimensional busts of humans and animals.
Keith Recker led a selection committee for the “Innovation Inspiration” exhibit area and says it combines cultural preservation “with an expanded conversation about personal expression, about art that acknowledges 21st century life.”
Jeff Snell, CEO of the International Folk Art Alliance, became an advocate for the new approach after noticing artists in Uzbekistan were hiding their more adventuresome work from view for fear it would disqualify them from the International Folk Art Market.
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Michigan Imposes Prison Term for Female Genital Mutilation
Doctors and parents involved in female genital mutilation will face up to 15 years in prison under new Michigan laws.
Female circumcision or cutting is already a federal crime punishable by five years in prison. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation on Tuesday that creates a state crime with harsher penalties.
The legislation was proposed after six people from an India-based Muslim sect called Dawoodi Bohra were charged in a genital mutilation case involving six girls at a suburban Detroit clinic. Two of the girls are from Minnesota, and four are from Michigan.
Michigan is the 26th state to officially ban the practice, which is common in some parts of the world.
The new laws also require increased public education and lengthen the statutes of limitations to file charges and lawsuits.
The laws take effect in October.
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Researchers Design Intervention to Stop Abuse of Mothers During Childbirth
Reports over the past decade have drawn global attention to shocking abuses some women have been subjected to during childbirth in developed and developing countries.
The maltreatment has ranged from lack of privacy and neglect to forced sterilization, sexual and physical assault, and refusal to release a mother or child from a birth facility without payment. The problems are especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 66 percent of all maternal deaths per year worldwide, according to a February report from UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund.
A four-year study by researchers in the United States and Tanzania looked at ways to reduce abuse of mothers-to-be. Keys included gathering community stakeholders and health care workers to define standards of care and identifying barriers to change.
Previous efforts to reduce mortality of women giving birth focused on getting them into health care facilities to deliver their children. Despite dramatic increases in facility-based childbirth, however, decreases in mortality remained modest. Even when facilities are equipped to save a mother’s life, reports of abuse can keep women from seeking medical treatment during birth.
Site is no guarantee
“It doesn’t matter where you give birth — just because it’s a building doesn’t mean you survive,” Lynn Freedman of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health told VOA.
With colleagues from Columbia, the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania and Harvard University, Freedman designed one of the first attempts to show how abuse could be reduced. The researchers followed facilities in the Tanga Region of Tanzania for their study and randomly selected one to receive the intervention. They called their project Staha, which means “respect” in Swahili.
They first gathered stakeholders in the community and asked them to develop a set of standards for what appropriate care during childbirth should be. The residents were able to provide a unique local perspective. In this case, stakeholders felt it was important to foster a mutual respect between patients and health providers.
Freedman agreed, saying, “Patients can blame the health workers, who are more an expression of systemic problems and not the sole cause of them.”
Quality improvement
Researchers then distributed the standards in the facility and convened a quality-improvement team made up of its employees. The team determined drivers of abuse and implemented changes to correct them. Changes included continuous patient surveys, increased oversight by management and educators, and tea for the staff to show appreciation on difficult days.
A year after they finished working with the facility, the researchers went back to see whether there had been changes in reported abuse and if progress had been sustained. They found that there was a 66 percent decrease in levels of reported abuse. The sharpest decreases were seen in reports of neglect and physical assault.
But Freedman warned against immediately recommending that others implement these changes. Getting the community involved is most important, she said.
It’s not, ” ‘Here’s the best practice. Do this,’ ” she said. It’s vital “that people themselves analyze the situation and develop the intervention.”
While attention has been growing, Freedman hopes for more. This is an issue that “everyone who actually lives with and works in the system knows is there, but has been so not the priority of policymakers and donors — almost like a silent emergency.”
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Wounded Afghan Soldiers Set for Invictus Games Debut
In a sprawling military base on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul, Mohammad Esa, who lost both legs to a roadside bomb, is getting ready to compete in the Invictus Games in Canada later this year.
Seven Afghan soldiers have been selected to compete against peers from 17 different countries in the Games, an international paralympic-style event for military personnel wounded in action.
Thirteen nations taking part were in the NATO-led coalition that has supported the Kabul government since the U.S.-led campaign to oust the Taliban in 2001.
Locked in an intractable battle with Taliban and Islamic State insurgents, Afghan security forces have struggled to handle high casualties, including at least 13,000 soldiers and police wounded last year.
Esa, 24, said that despite his disability, he had never lost hope and was very excited to represent his country on the world stage.
“I was so shattered when I lost my legs but now I am happy that I am back to life and want to achieve something through sport,” Esa said from an army gym in Kabul where he was going through exercises for wheelchair volleyball and powerlifting, the two events he will be competing in.
“I am training for Canada and want to make my country proud and come back with an achievement,” said Esa.
The Invictus Games were created three years ago by Britain’s Prince Harry, who served two deployments in Afghanistan as an officer in the British army.
The name — “Invictus” means unconquered in Latin — symbolizes the way that sport can help wounded soldiers overcome trauma suffered in combat.
Esa lost his legs to a roadside bomb during a security patrol in northern Baghlan province two years ago, one of tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and police to have been wounded since the U.S.-led campaign to oust the Taliban in 2001. Many thousands of others have been killed.
The Games have been held twice before, in London in 2014 and in Orlando, Florida, in 2016. More than 550 competitors will take part in the competition in Toronto, from Sept 23-30.
Sports, with specially adapted rules, include archery, athletics, indoor rowing, wheelchair basketball, tennis and rugby, and powerlifting.
The seven-member team is the largest Afghanistan has sent to the Invictus Games.
All of Esa’s teammates have suffered severe injuries that have changed their lives, but they say the focus needed to compete in the Games has provided a goal to channel their energies.
“I haven’t lost hope, despite losing a leg and this sport gives me a lot of motivation,” said Salahuddin Zahiri, another Afghan army soldier who will be competing in Canada.
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Rocks Are Common Theme at Idaho’s National Park Sites
Idaho is known for potatoes, but at City of Rocks and Craters of the Moon national park sites, it’s rocks that take center stage – for rock climbers, astronauts and lovers of the rugged outdoors. Julie Taboh reports.
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Despite Winning Freedom, Many Former Fishing Slaves Struggle
On the day they were freed from slavery, the fishermen hugged, high-fived and sprinted through a stinging rain to line up so they wouldn’t be left behind. But even as they learned they were going home, some wept at the thought of returning empty-handed and becoming one more mouth to feed.
Two years have passed since an Associated Press investigation spurred that dramatic rescue, leading to the release of more than 2,000 men trapped on remote Indonesian islands. The euphoria they first felt during reunions with relatives has long faded. Occasional stories of happiness and opportunity have surfaced, but the men’s fight to start over has largely been narrated by shame and struggle.
Some of them are lucky to find odd jobs paying pennies an hour in cramped slums and rural villages in Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. Others must travel far from home for back-breaking labor.
Some suffer night terrors and trauma from the years or even decades of physical and mental abuse they endured on boats run by Thai captains. Others have fought their demons with drugs and alcohol.
At least one Cambodian tried to hang himself. Another Thai fisherman went back to work on a different boat at home, only to have his arm ripped off by a net. He says he was offered about $3 and a few packets of instant noodles as compensation.
The men left their impoverished homes years ago full of hope and headed to neighboring Thailand, promising to send money back from good-paying jobs. Instead, they were tricked, sold or even kidnapped and put onto boats that became floating prisons.
They then were trafficked thousands of miles away to the isolated Indonesian island village of Benjina, where the AP first found hundreds of captive fishermen, including some locked in a cage simply because they asked to go home. They were beaten and routinely forced to work up to 22 hours a day. The unluckiest ones ended up in the sea or buried in a company graveyard under fake names – their bodies will likely never be recovered.
The AP story prompted the Indonesian government to initiate a rescue. It also traced fish tainted by forced labor back to the supply chains of many major U.S. companies and pet food brands, including Wal-Mart, Sysco, Kroger, Fancy Feast and Iams.
“What happened in Benjina has opened everybody’s eyes,” says Indonesian fishing minister Susi Pudjiastuti, who oversaw the rescue and is pushing for improved human rights at sea globally.
Despite all the suffering following their homecomings, there are stories of inspiration.
Some of the men borrowed money, enrolled in trade school or found decent work, saving what little they could. Others are opening small businesses, or have married and started families.
A few have gone to court to challenge their former captains, receiving a small portion of the pay they were owed. In rare instances, some even helped send their traffickers to jail.
Many say time has helped soften the pain, but most remain angry about the money and years lost to Benjina. Still, they are thankful to be home, living as free men.
They are slaves no more.
Sick and unemployed
MON STATE, Myanmar – Myint Naing sits outside the flimsy thatch shack he shares with five other family members. He stares silently at a computer alongside his mother and sister, watching flickering images of their extraordinary reunion two years ago.
The memories are still raw of Myint collapsing into his wailing mother’s arms on the same dusty road just feet away from where they sit now in southern Myanmar. That day was tinged with both joy and sorrow for all the time lost – ending 22 years of separation after Myint was taken to Indonesia and nearly beaten to death by a captain who refused to let him go home.
His mother blots her eyes and briefly looks away from the screen. Myint’s younger sister sees herself embracing her brother and screaming, “We don’t need money! We just need family!”
She never realized just how much those words would be tested every day in the harsh reality of poverty.
Myint, now 42, desperately wants to work, but he’s simply not able. He tried doing construction and other manual labor, but the muscles on the right side of his body were weakened by a stroke-like attack in Indonesia. He can’t even steady a smartphone with one hand long enough to take a selfie.
He dreams of opening a little snack shop to contribute to the family’s income, but there is no money to start it.
“Half of my body is suffering, and it’s very challenging for me to get a job anywhere,” he says, as his nieces dance around him on a rickety porch. “I don’t really know how to keep going like this.”
He’s also stressed. He and his sister moved out of their mother’s house soon after he returned, partially because Myint didn’t get along with his new stepfather, who is about his age.
His sister, Mawli Than, and her husband together earn less than $5.50 a day to feed three children and three adults. But she has kept her promise to love and care for him no matter what.
She wishes she could afford to get Myint the long-term medical care he needs. Her voice cracks when she talks about not being able to give him a proper ceremony before he left to study as a Buddhist novice, a custom that every devout Burmese male tries to fulfill.
“I feel really sad and guilty that I wasn’t able to do that,” she says, sobbing, as he listens quietly in the doorway. “My brother is like a father to me.”
Myint’s freshly shaved head reveals two large scars he received during his years in Indonesia. One is from a motorbike helmet, the other from an iron rod – both blows from angry fishing captains.
He eventually escaped his captors and lived in the jungle for years, farming vegetables with help from sympathetic local families.
He insists life is better now that he is home. But his mind often drifts to the past. If his former Thai captains would just pay him what he’s owed for all the time he worked on the boats, he could buy his own house and help his sister instead of making her life harder.
“I’m very angry at them. I can’t even find words,” he says. “If I ever saw them again, I might kill them.”
Happy on land
PREK TATIENG, Cambodia – A gas-powered pump growls on Sriev Kry’s back as he walks barefoot, spraying a stream of pesticide on pink lotus blossoms that will soon be ready for harvest.
The work is hard and unforgiving. He doesn’t wear a mask or other protective gear, and there aren’t any trees in the surrounding rice paddy to shield him from the blistering sun. But this is Cambodian soil, and it belongs to him. It’s a freedom he says he never really understood until being trafficked and enslaved in Benjina.
The wiry rice farmer never wanted to be a fisherman because the ocean’s roiling waves had always sent him running to the side of the boat to vomit. So when a cousin asked if he was interested in leaving his rural Cambodian village to find higher-paying work in Thailand, he refused until he was promised a factory job or something else on land.
Unlike most migrant workers who cross the border illegally, Sriev Kry and two of his cousins waited to receive passports before leaving in 2014.
They were immediately taken to a boat and ordered to get on board after receiving $880 advances. They were told they wouldn’t be at sea long. But it was all a lie.
Just as their trawler reached the Malaysian border, Sriev Kry says he woke up to learn a Burmese fisherman was missing. They didn’t stop to search for him, and no calls were made for help. Instead, Sriev Kry says the Thai owner told the workers that “life on the boat doesn’t matter. No one cares about missing people.”
He says the men then watched as the crew member’s passport was tossed into the sea, destroying the only record of his existence.
“The other workers just saw that life is very cheap,” Sriev Kry recalls. “It is cheaper than the bodies of dogs.”
He tried not to cause problems and worked nonstop on the boat, sorting mountains of fish. He saw other crew beaten or scalded by water tossed on them when they were too sick to work.
“It’s like a slave’s life. It’s even worse than a slave. Slaves can sometimes complain or challenge the owner,” he says. “If we refused, if we complained, the Thai owner always asked: ‘You want to live? You want to have a life? Or do you want to die?'”
Sriev Kry was only able to contact his wife a few times from Benjina. He told her he wasn’t sure he’d ever make it back home to the emerald green rice paddies and lotus fields they tended together.
Two of their four children were studying in the capital, Phnom Penh, with one already in university. The baby was just a year old, and the family was struggling to survive because Sriev Kry never sent the money he was promised. But his wife, Khan Srin, encouraged him to hold on. To focus on staying alive.
When he was finally rescued, Sriev Kry was done being silent: He volunteered to testify against his captain. He saw it as his duty to speak out to prevent others from facing the same fate. He is still waiting for his day in court.
Today, at 44, he earns about $10 a day farming the field that rings a one-room shack perched on stilts overlooking the few acres of land he owns. He sleeps here sometimes, away from his nearby village, to stand watch over his crops. He also sells mangoes from his beat-up motorbike just across the border in Vietnam and harvests catfish from a lake – the only fishing he says he will ever do again.
It’s not much, but it’s enough to pay his debts and feed his family. His captain in Benjina swore more earnings would be sent, but Sriev Kry says nothing ever came.
He remains angry and is still haunted by the image of the dead crewman’s passport being thrown into the sea. But he’s happy to be home and vows he’ll never leave his family again.
“I was just rescued from hell,” he says, shaking his head. “Why would I go back to hell again?”
Still a fisherman
YANGON, Myanmar – Phyo Kyaw’s father wept when he heard his son was returning to Thailand to board another fishing boat. But there was nothing he could do.
After the 31-year-old was rescued from Benjina, he worked a few months on the gritty outskirts of Yangon driving a bus and a motorbike taxi, but the money wasn’t good and his bike soon was stolen.
Several of Phyo’s friends from Benjina already had gone back to Thailand to find better-paying work, and they encouraged him to get a passport and join them on another fishing boat. They had heard good stories about the company, and they all had legal working documents this time. They were convinced their papers would protect them from exploitation.
Phyo left Myanmar without telling his father. He went to the same port town where he was initially trafficked and got on a trawler with 13 other Burmese men.
After being beaten and spending more than two years on Benjina with no pay, he was scared of being trafficked again but decided to take a chance. As he prepared to leave, he met other fishermen who had just docked – they had been at sea for three years without touching land.
“I don’t think it’s fair, but it’s my choice to go,” Phyo says. “My father is the only financial provider here for the moment so at least if I go to Thailand, I can bring some money back.”
Phyo didn’t know where his boat was going or how long he would be gone. He also had no idea if he was fishing legally or poaching, a common but dangerous practice that can land an entire crew in a foreign jail.
The days were still long but, this time, he got a few more hours of sleep – four or five a night – and he wasn’t beaten.
After six months at sea, the trawler returned to Thailand. Phyo should have made nearly $1,600 for the trip, but was left with just $350 after deductions for fees, food and supplies.
He could have earned nearly double that amount driving the motorbike taxi back home. Still, he’s thinking about going out to sea again with another group of Benjina guys.
His father, an electrical engineer, can only shake his head with disappointment.
“As parents, you are always worried about your children,” Aye Kyaw, 67, says inside the family’s small, sweltering apartment.
But Phyo just shrugs. Fishing is what he knows.
“If I can get a better job here, I won’t go,” he says. “But if I don’t have anything, I will go on a fishing boat.”
Forgiveness as a monk
SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand – Wrapped in flowing saffron robes with a shaved head, Prasert Jakkawaro speaks calmly and softly as he looks back on his lost life.
He spent eight years fishing the Arafura Sea’s rich waters off Benjina. If he was lucky, his boat docked twice a year. He worked around the clock, but says he was never paid what was promised.
The memories still cut like razor blades, but he does not show it. His voice remains steady, his fingers laced loosely across his lap. The rage that once sent him searching for solace at the bottom of a bottle has died. He now finds comfort praying in a monastery as a Buddhist monk and helping others who have lost their way.
“I feel that I have to give forgiveness and kindness back,” he says, his robe concealing tattoos from his former life. “I have another chance. There’s no point in dwelling on the past. The anger will only follow me in this life and into the next.”
Finding peace wasn’t easy: He was first forced to confront all of the evil he saw.
Even though the captains were Thai like him, he says he was treated just as badly as his fellow fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia. They rarely had vegetables or meat to eat – just fish and rice for every meal, and even that wasn’t guaranteed. Those who got sick were forced to work anyway, and he saw one crew member die due to a lack of medical attention. Sleep was a luxury.
“If you don’t get up, the metal rod will be used to bang on your door and beat on your legs,” says Prasert, 53. “The rule is that if you can eat, then you have to work.”
When he asked to go home after just one year on his trawler, he was told he first had to find a replacement, an impossible request on a remote island with hundreds of other enslaved men just as desperate to leave.
Once, after coming ashore, Prasert asked his captain for more money. As punishment, he says he was tossed into a tiny, muggy cell with about 20 other men.
The security guards then used the imprisoned fishermen for a twisted form of entertainment – forcing them to beat each other up.
“You would get hit so hard that you could see the handprints on your face,” Prasert says.
Over the years, he lost hope and rage festered inside him. He talked about attacking the captain, but the other fishermen always managed to calm him down.
After he was finally rescued and returned home to Thailand, he received a settlement of about $2,250 from the boat owner. It was far short of the nearly $9,000 he says he was owed, but he knows most of the other men received nothing.
The anger continued to swell, and he wallowed in alcohol and slept anywhere he could find, including on a bathroom floor. Staff at the local nonprofit Labor Rights Protection Network, which has long assisted trafficked fishermen, pushed him to seek help.
With encouragement from his sister, Prasert spent three months studying at a Buddhist temple.
Slowly, the hatred began to melt.
“When I attend ceremonies, people really look at me as if I can shine a light on their life, and it makes me feel that I am useful again,” he says. “I feel like I can have real happiness at last.”
- Information for this story came from interviews with nearly 15 former fishermen in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand along with nonprofits in Cambodia and Thailand.
Congress May Bar States From Setting Self-driving Car Rules
U.S. House Republicans expect to introduce bills later this week that would bar states from setting their own rules for self-driving cars and take other steps to remove obstacles to putting such vehicles on the road, a spokeswoman said.
The legislative action comes as major automakers are joining forces with auto suppliers and other groups to prod Congress into action.
Last month, a U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing on a Republican draft package of 14 bills that would allow U.S. regulators to exempt up to 100,000 vehicles a year per manufacturer from federal motor vehicle safety rules that prevent the sale of self-driving vehicles without human controls.
Blair Ellis, a spokeswoman for the committee, said on Monday it was likely that legislation would be introduced this week and a formal hearing on the bills would occur next week.
Republican U.S. Representative Robert Latta said last month he hoped to win committee approval of a bipartisan legislative package by the end of July.
The draft measures would bar states from setting self-driving rules and prevent the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from pre-approving self-driving car technologies.
Democrats say the NHTSA must play a more aggressive role in mandating self-driving car safety.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a group representing General Motors Co, Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corp and others, and the Association of Global Automakers, representing major foreign automakers including Honda Motor Co and Hyundai Motor Corp, are forming the Coalition for Future Mobility to press Congress to act.
The group, which includes the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National Federation of the Blind and Securing America’s Future Energy, a group of corporate officials and retired military leaders, plans to begin airing radio ads on Tuesday portraying the legislation as “liberating innovation for self-driving vehicles.”
GM, Alphabet Inc., Tesla Inc., and others have been lobbying Congress to pre-empt rules under consideration in California and other states that could limit self-driving vehicle deployment.
The administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama last year unveiled voluntary guidelines on self-driving cars. President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, has said she plans to quickly update those.
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Russia Calls EU-Ukraine Pact "Exemplary" Breach of WTO Rules
Russia has indicated a potential new legal salvo in its trade war with Ukraine and the European Union, telling the World Trade Organization that a trade deal between Kiev and Brussels breaks the rules by penalizing Russia.
Minutes of a June 29 meeting of the WTO’s committee on regional trade agreements, published on Tuesday, record Russia’s representative as saying the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement was “an exemplary case of a situation where a free trade area worsened trade conditions for other trading partners”.
That meant it was a breach of the WTO rules, which say that free trade areas should encourage trade between the signatories without raising new barriers with other countries, the Russian representative said.
Russia has launched six trade disputes within its first five years as a WTO member, all of them against Ukraine or the EU.
Its most recent complaint, in May this year, accused Ukraine of “a universe of restrictions, prohibitions, requirements and procedures” that discriminated against Russia.
Russia’s representative at the WTO committee on regional trade agreements said the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States had harmonized trade legislation with Ukraine since the 1990s, and signed a treaty in 2011 on coordinating the removal of technical barriers to trade.
“To sum up, there were dozens of bilateral and multilateral agreements in the field of trade and investment that linked Ukraine with the CIS countries. Many of Ukraine’s commitments were inconsistent with its obligations under the EU-Ukraine Agreement,” the minutes of the meeting said.
Russia’s representative also said Ukraine’s 2015 law on the natural gas market required the operator of Ukraine’s gas pipelines to be a person with at least five years’ experience from the European Energy Community or the United States.
The Energy Community, which aims to extend the EU’s internal energy market to the Balkans and Black Sea region, excludes Russia.
The Russian representative at the WTO meeting asked how excluding pipeline experts from other countries could be justified and how it could correspond with the WTO rules that say free trade agreements should not diminish other countries’ rights.
She also said that Russia’s share in Ukrainian imports had fallen significantly since Ukraine began implementing its Association Agreement with the EU, while the EU’s share had grown.
The chairman of the WTO committee invited follow-up written questions, which Ukraine and the EU were asked to respond to by July 20.
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Trial Begins in Japan for CEO of Failed Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox
The former chief executive officer of the failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox pleaded not guilty to charges that he stole hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the virtual currency.
French-born Mark Karpeles appeared Tuesday in Tokyo District Court at the start of his trial on embezzlement and data manipulation charges. Prosecutors have accused the 32-year-old of manipulating Mt. Gox’s data and moving millions of Bitcoins into his personal account before the exchange shut down in February 2014.
Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy after losing about 850,000 bitcoins, then worth close to half a billion U.S. dollars. The exchange blamed the loss on hackers who exploited a security flaw. The company later claimed it found about 200,000 of the missing bitcoins in another location.
The collapse of Mt. Gox, which handled much of the world’s Bitcoin trading activity, angered investors and damaged the reputation of the alternative currency. The scandal prompted Japanese lawmakers to enact laws regulating the use of bitcoins and other digital-based currencies.
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Whiskey Byproduct Will Power Cars
Every now and then, it pays to revisit abandoned methods for using a waste product of an industrial process. Researchers in Scotland found a profitable way to use byproducts of whiskey production to power cars, without any modifications to the engines. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Swedish Project Seeks to Recycle Resources Contained in Waste Water
Average households use a lot of water that cannot be re-used and it goes to waste. A new project in Sweden is testing a water treatment system that would put to use the nutrients and other useful elements from used water while eliminating the toxic parts. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Report: Cutting Food Source Leads to Dramatic Drop in Number of Mosquitoes
Insecticides, mosquito nets, and disrupting breeding grounds all reduce mosquito populations and slow the spread of malaria. Now, researchers want to take away the insect’s food to fight the disease that kills a child every two minutes.
Mosquitoes mostly feed on plant sugars that can be hard to find during the dry season in Africa, where 90 percent of malaria cases develop. Researchers thought one potential source of food might be from the flowers on a small type of mesquite tree. The tree, imported from Mexico 40 years ago to provide firewood and shore up irrigation dykes, quickly became invasive and grew out of control.
To test their idea, researchers monitored mosquito populations in six villages in the Bandiagra District of Mali. After a week, they removed the flowers from the mesquite trees in half of the villages.
The report, published in Malaria Journal, found that with less food around, the mosquitoes didn’t live as long and populations dropped 69 percent. This didn’t just mean fewer mosquitoes, it meant fewer old mosquitoes. That’s important because it takes 12 days for the malaria virus to get to the salivary glands of a mosquito where it could infect a human. So if mosquitoes die even a couple of days earlier, that could greatly reduce the number of mosquitoes that pose a threat.
“This suggests that removal of the flowers could be a new way to shift inherently high malaria transmission areas to low transmission areas,” said Gunter Muller, lead author of the study from Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School.
Devil tree
But getting rid of mesquite is easier said than done. It’s not as if people haven’t tried to control the tree before. It encroaches on crop lands, makes areas inaccessible, and can use up what little water there is. It has been known to grow up though the floors of huts. Even getting to the flowers is a challenge, due to the 10-centimeter-long thorns that grow along the branches.
Many refer to it as the devil tree, but Medusa tree may be just as apt a name, since it can grow back from just its roots after it is cut down.
Biologist Dawn Wesson from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine said this was one of the first attempts she has seen to control mosquito populations by restricting their food source.
Wesson, who was not involved in the research, highlighted that not only were populations depressed, but that the degree of impact varied greatly depending on the species of mosquito. In this case all of the species can carry malaria, but Wesson hopes that in other contexts this could be used to help a benign species of mosquito displace a dangerous species of mosquito. That impact could extend beyond the end of any food control measures.
Approach could backfire
But Wesson also cautioned that removing mesquite might backfire. Without flowers to feed on, these mosquitoes might turn to blood meals. This could lead to more frequent bitings and increased transmission of malaria. “It’s probably unlikely,” she told VOA. “They did show a nice decrease … in the older female mosquitoes. But remember their study only took place over a period of about eight days.”
The next step, she suggests, should be to measure the impact of removing mesquite, not just on mosquito populations, but also on the incidence of malaria.
Spyware in Mexico Targeted International Experts Critical of Government
Investigators said Monday that targets of high-tech spying in Mexico included an international group of experts backed by the Organization of American States who had criticized the government’s probe into the disappearance of 43 students.
Previous investigations by the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab found that the spyware had been directed at journalists, activists and opposition politicians in Mexico. But targeting foreign experts operating under the aegis of an international body marks an escalation of the scandal, which so far involves 19 individuals or groups.
“This must be investigated to find out who sent these messages, because they could put at risk a lot of contacts and sources,” said former Colombian prosecutor Angela Buitrago, a member of the group of experts.
Buitrago said she and another expert, Carlos Beristain, received the messages.
“I didn’t open it because I am used to spying,” Buitrago said. “When you work in a prosecutors’ office, a government office, there are strange messages and you pass them on to the analysts.”
Beristain said the spying attempt “may be a more serious crime given the diplomatic protected status that we had in order to carry out our work.”
A report released by the University of Toronto-based cyber-sleuths found that someone sent emails with links to the spyware to the International Group of Independent Experts, named by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The experts had been critical of the government’s investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state — a politically sensitive incident that deeply embarrassed the government.
Jose Eguiguren Praeli, the president of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, called the revelations “extremely worrying.”
“There should be an investigation that is completely independent and impartial, to find out who carried out the supposed espionage and who ordered it,” he said.
Cellphone becomes eavesdropper
While the Mexican government bought such software, it’s not clear who used it. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last week dismissed allegations that his government was responsible and promised an investigation. Arely Gomez, who was attorney general at the time some of the hacking attempts occurred but now heads the country’s anti-corruption agency, said Thursday that her office had intelligence tools “like any other attorney general’s office in Mexico and anywhere else in the world.”
“During my term, they were always applied in accordance with the legal framework,” Gomez said.
The spyware, known as Pegasus, is made by the Israel-based NSO Group, which says it sells only to government agencies for use against criminals and terrorists. It turns a cellphone into an eavesdropper, giving snoopers the ability to remotely activate its microphone and camera and access its data.
The spyware is uploaded when users click on a link in email messages designed to pique their interest.
Citizen Lab said the spyware attempts against the international experts occurred in March 2016 as the group was preparing its final, critical report on the government investigation into the disappearances.
“In March 2016 a phone belonging to the GIEI group received two messages designed to trick the recipient into clicking. The two messages related to the purported death of a relative,” the group reported.
It was unclear if the link was opened or the phones were compromised.
The 43 students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state were detained by local police in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, and were turned over to a crime gang. After an initial investigation, the government said it had determined the “historical truth:” that all of the students were killed and that their bodies were incinerated at a dump and then tossed into a river.
But only one student’s remains have been identified, with a partial DNA match on another. The experts criticized the government’s conclusions, saying there was no evidence of a fire large enough to incinerate the bodies and that government investigators had not looked into other evidence.
‘Seemingly political ends’
Citizen Lab said it found similarities in the messages on the sender’s phone number with a previous spyware attack. In a June 19 report, the group said at least 76 spyware text messages were sent to 12 prominent journalists and rights activists in Mexico, all of whom were investigating or critical of the government. Some had uncovered corruption.
The conservative National Action Party was also a target.
The investigators said they had no conclusive proof of government involvement in the attacks, but John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab said National Action case “makes it crystal clear that NSO has been used widely and recklessly across a swath of Mexican civil society and politics. Once again we see ‘government-exclusive’ spyware being used for seemingly political ends.”
“As cases continue to emerge, it is clear that this is not an isolated case of misuse, but a sustained operation that lasted for more than a year and a half,” Scott-Railton said.
The Centro Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez, a human rights group that has investigated a number of high-profile human rights cases, has said its staff members were targeted. Other targets included well-known journalists Carmen Aristegui and Carlos Loret de Mola.
In February, Citizen Lab and its Mexican partners published a report detailing how Mexican food scientists and anti-obesity campaigners who backed Mexico’s soda tax were also targeted with Pegasus.
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