When Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Coast, the Islamic Circle of North America arranged shelter. After it passed, they provided relief. Its volunteers — made up of immigrant and nonimmigrant, Muslim and non-Muslims — has opened minds and hearts wherever they go, to their shared desire to give back to the country.
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Month: September 2017
For Muslim Relief Workers, Faith & Charity Form an Inextricable
When Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Coast, the Islamic Circle of North America arranged shelter. After it passed, they provided relief. Its volunteers — made up of immigrant and nonimmigrant, Muslim and non-Muslims — has opened minds and hearts wherever they go, to their shared desire to give back to the country.
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For Muslim Relief Workers, Faith & Charity Are Inextricable
When Hurricane Irma battered the Florida Coast, volunteers of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) arranged shelter.
After it passed, they provided relief — from flood-damaged homes in Naples to uprooted tree trunk clearings in Cooper City, Florida.
Abdulrauf Khan, a Pakistani immigrant and assistant executive director at ICNA Relief USA — a network of disaster relief and social services — has been through all of it. Anytime a natural calamity strikes, he’s present.
Khan describes his motives as two-fold: a desire to assist his neighbors, while empowering his three children.
“I have a son who is 18 years old,” he begins to recount a vivid memory. “He asked me five years ago, ‘Dad, what have you done for this country?’”
It’s a simple question that would provide clarity to Khan’s mission.
“We have to work and we have to make sure our children feel that ownership of the country,” he said. “We have to give back.”
‘A basic part of the religion’
From Hurricanes Harvey to Irma, there are many Texans who embrace the work of Muslim relief volunteers, and select others who are hesitant to grant their trust, based solely on religion. But regardless of their reception, ICNA answers the call to assist, and changes some minds in the process.
“Charity is a big part of Islam, and giving back to the community is a big part of Islam,” says Aqsa Cheema, administrative coordinator for ICNA Relief South Florida.
Cheema, 22, a generation Pakistani-American who assisted with Irma relief, says she has been in the habit of giving back since she was a kid, attending mosque.
“You go along with it, and you get the chance to distribute food and do things that can benefit the community,” she says. “That’s just a basic part of the religion.”
Open hearts, open arms
Earlier in the week, as Irma’s ruthless winds pounded the state indiscriminately, ICNA facilitated shelter for Floridians — any and all Floridians — in a Boca Raton-based Islamic Center.
Some of their guests said they had never met a Muslim.
“It was their first experience coming to an Islamic Center,” Khan said. “They felt like, ‘this is what we feel like when we go to church, when we go to synagogue’” — welcome, and at home.
Cheema, who is studying to be a social worker, describes her work as enriching, but never complete.
“That lack of true fulfillment is what keeps me going,” she says.
“I accept the fact that I can’t help everyone, but maybe if I help one person, and someone sees me helping that person, they will be like, ‘Hey, you know what? It felt nice to bring a smile on a person’s face. I can help them too.’”
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In Times of Disaster, Why Businesses React the Way They Do
During natural disasters, why do some companies open their doors to the community while other take advantage of its members? Tina Trinh explores the reasons why businesses react the way they do and the cost to their public image.
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Somalia Gets First Forensic Lab Dedicated to Rape Investigation
A new forensic lab launched in central Somalia could transform how the Puntland state government handles cases of rape and gender-based violence, and possibly create a model for the rest of the country to follow.
The Puntland Forensic Center, funded by the Swedish government and supported by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), was opened September 6. It brings advanced DNA testing capabilities to a country still lacking in paved roads and reliable electricity.
The lab opened less than a year after Puntland enacted its Sexual Offenses Act, the first law in Somalia to criminalize sexual offenses and impose harsh penalties, including jail time, fines and public lashing, on the perpetrators.
The lab was designed to provide critical scientific evidence to the police and officials investigating and prosecuting crimes under this new law.
“As we were helping [the Puntland government] develop that piece of legislation, the question came of, ‘How do we enforce that legislation when it is finally approved?'” said Nikolai Botev, UNFPA’s Somalia representative.
“This is when the realization came that there are actually no forensic facilities within Somalia.”
Culture of silence
Rape and sexual assault are pervasive in Somalia, where decades of conflict have created persistent instability and crippled the institutions meant to uphold the law.
Thirty-year-old Fatima was collecting firewood outside her family’s home in a camp for displaced people in Puntland when she was attacked by three strangers. The men gang-raped her so violently that it caused Fatima, who was pregnant, to miscarry.
“After I came home, I started to bleed the next night. After three to four days, I lost my four-month-old baby,” Fatima told VOA in an interview at a women’s health clinic in Garowe.
Like many women in this conservative country, Fatima preferred to stay silent rather than endure the stigma of her community. The blame and shame survivors face deters many women from reporting rapes and assaults, creating a culture of silence.
“I was shy and said to myself, ‘Don’t tell your story to anyone because it is shameful,'” Fatima said. She was dressed in a full black niqab that revealed nothing but her eyes through a small slit.
Although statistics on the numbers of sexual crimes are largely unavailable, Somalia has been ranked as one of the worst countries to be a woman, and stories like Fatima’s are alarmingly common.
UNFPA says reports of rape and sexual assault have increased this year, after a devastating drought pushed women like Fatima into displacement camps where they become even more vulnerable.
“We’re seeing a significant increase of sexual violence, particularly targeting internally displaced people,” Botev said. “The whole idea of the forensic center was born out of a bigger idea of how to address gender-based violence, sexual violence in the context of Somalia.”
A broken system
Somalia’s government, even at the state level, has yet to recover from decades of war. Many Somali women do not bother to report crimes because they lack faith that the system can, or wants to, help them get justice.
Officer Kis Shamis Kabdi Bile stands out in her bright orange sneakers, blue hijab and mirrored sunglasses. As the only woman in Garowe’s Criminal Investigation Division, she handles every case of rape and gender-based violence because, she says, most male officers don’t even consider them to be crimes.
“There are some police officers who say rape is not a big deal and consider it a minor thing,” she told VOA in an interview at the police station. “They say that it is nothing new.”
Bile hasn’t been paid in over a year, and conducts her investigations on foot, as the police department doesn’t have a car. She says the police need resources and specialized training in how to handle sexual crimes.
Many of Bile’s cases are taken over by community elders, who settle disputes through Somalia’s traditional herr system. Often the rapist’s family pays a fine of camels or goats to the survivor’s family, or the survivors are forced to marry their attackers.
It’s frustrating, Bile said. “As you are in the middle of the case, those elders will come and say, ‘We are going to negotiate before you finish the case.'”
During our interview, a young girl, no older than 15, came to plead for Bile’s help. The male police officer assigned to her rape case was insisting she lacked the evidence to go to court, she said, and was encouraging her to resolve her case through the community elders. Bile called the officer in for a strong scolding, and then took over the case.
Changing times
There are promising signs that Puntland’s efforts are already helping more rape survivors to hold their attackers accountable.
Data from Puntland’s attorney general shows that of the 108 rapes reported in Puntland in 2016, only 14, or 12 percent, resulted in convictions. Almost a third were dropped due to lack of evidence.
But since the Sexual Offenses Act was implemented this year, the conviction rate has risen to 27 percent, while the number of cases thrown out for insufficient evidence has dropped to 21 percent.
The trend is encouraging to local politicians, who hope the forensic laboratory will build upon the law’s early success by providing authorities with stronger evidence in a shorter time so they can investigate and prosecute more cases that will stand up in a court of law.
“We used to send DNA from here to Nairobi or from here to South Africa,” said Salah Habib Haaji Hama, Puntland’s Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs. “So those restraints now are easy. We can manage this and get answers within a timely period. Within hours, within minutes, when we used to have days, sometimes months, to receive those.”
An important component to the lab’s success is providing education, both to the survivors and the wider community, about how DNA testing works and why it’s so important.
“There’s a limited time that they have to report or the results of the lab will not be successful. So we will try to educate them,” said Maryan Ahmed Ali, Puntland’s Minister of Women. “What is the time limit? What do they have to do? Do they have to take a shower? Do they have to change or wash their clothes?”
Understanding the implications of DNA testing could deter potential attackers from committing crimes for fear of being caught. It could also be a game changer for women like Fatima, who said she didn’t report the crime because she didn’t know her attackers’ names.
“Who am I going to accuse? I can only accuse a person I know. I can’t catch someone who I only saw in the jungle. I can barely remember the faces,” she said.
A multitude of challenges, including poor infrastructure, potential security threats and lack of qualified technicians, could impede the lab’s success, said UNFPA’s Botev. Somalia lacks advanced universities and hospitals, so the technicians overseeing the facility all studied abroad. They hope to make the lab a training ground for aspiring Somali scientists.
But the greater hope is that more successful convictions will foster increased confidence in Puntland’s new system, and encourage more women to report. Ultimately, Ali said, this will help reduce the social stigma and break the culture of silence surrounding rape and sexual assault.
“There will not be a stigma. There will not be a discussion about who did this, who did the crime, who did the rape. So it’s a big encouragement,” Ali said.
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NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Takes ‘Death Dive’ Into Saturn
After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the Cassini spacecraft made its final “death dive” Friday into the planet Saturn.
Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory received confirmation of the spacecraft’s demise as expected at 7:55 a.m. EDT, when radio signals from Cassini came to an abrupt halt.
“This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft and you’re all an incredible team,” said NASA program manager Earl Maize.
More than 1,500 people, including former project team members, gathered at California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for what NASA called This Grand Finale, described by some as both a vigil and a celebration. Others gathered at the nearby California Institute of Technology, which operates the laboratory for NASA.
NASA said it decided to end the life of the spacecraft with a final plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere because of what was found during the mission: the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.
“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s assistant project science systems engineer.
The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.
“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” said Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer.
Instruments on Cassini had been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.
“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.
Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.
“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.
The discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do as it ran out of fuel. They did not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.
“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus, but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.
Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.
“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” Cable said.
As Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere, it continued to send critical data to Earth until the very end. The data will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.
In Photos: Cassini & Saturn
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Las Vegas Welcomes Mexico’s Independence Day, Crowds it Brings
Las Vegas never needs an excuse to party, and as an entertainment oasis a short trip from Mexico, the city will roll out the red, white and green carpet starting Friday to celebrate Mexican Independence Day.
A premier boxing match, a bell-ringing ceremony and more than a dozen performances by Latin megastars, including Ricky Martin and Alejandro Fernandez, were expected to attract tens of thousands of visitors, making the weekend once again one of Sin City’s busiest.
The holiday, often mistaken in the U.S. for Cinco de Mayo, over time has become a star-studded celebration of Hispanic culture.
“It has developed over two decades or more to become a staple. Las Vegas has the ‘ambiente’ — the fun, the excitement — all year long, and then you bring in Alejandro Fernandez, Pepe Aguilar and the ones who have the residencies like Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez,” said Rafael Villanueva, senior director of international business sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Celebration goes beyond Mexico
The celebration is so much wider it includes those superstars who aren’t Mexican, including Martin and Lopez, who both have Puerto Rican roots.
“If you talk to many people in Mexico, they’ll say if we are not going to the Ciudad de Mexico, we are coming to Las Vegas because of all the fun and all the entertainment,” he said.
The Sept. 16 holiday marks Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla’s call to arms that sparked the Mexican uprising against Spanish rulers in 1810. The rebel priest was killed the next year, but his words, known as the “Cry of Dolores” or “Grito de Dolores,” eventually led to independence from Spain in 1821.
What started as private entertainment shows for high rollers from Latin America has evolved into one of the city’s busiest weekends, with companies booking performers a year in advance and airlines adding direct flights from Mexico.
Concerts, boxing match
The concert lineup aims to appeal to a range of musical tastes and generations and includes Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Emmanuel, Enrique Iglesias, Carlos Santana, Mana, Marco Antonio Solis, Jesse and Joy, Gloria Trevi and Alejandra Guzman.
“Probably over the past 15-20 years, we have really embraced the holiday, bringing top-level, A-level acts and fights,” said Sid Greenfeig, vice president of entertainment and booking for MGM Resorts International, which is hosting seven shows and a megaboxing match across its properties. “We look definitely at diversity within the artists, and having arenas and large venues, we also look at acts that can fill these rooms.”
The city’s signature offering is a boxing match. So much so, Floyd Mayweather Jr., before he retired, made Mexican Independence Day his own holiday, fighting multiple times over the years. Promoters have traditionally offered fights featuring Mexican boxers on the El Grito and Cinco de Mayo weekends.
Mexico’s popular Saul “Canelo” Alvarez squares off Saturday against Gennady Golovkin in a long-anticipated middleweight bout at the sold-out T-Mobile Arena.
For the past three years, the tourist bureau’s occupancy rate records show hotels reached above 96 percent capacity during the three-day period associated with the holiday. In 2016, 98.4 percent of the city’s 149,000 hotel and motel rooms were booked, making it the year’s fourth busiest weekend.
On Friday, San Diego resident Esthela Pedrin will see Fernandez’ yearly Mexican Independence Day concert in Las Vegas for the tenth time. With so many options to choose from, she said she’s having a difficult time picking a Saturday concert to attend.
“I love celebrating it in Las Vegas, especially because so many people from all over our country of Mexico gather there,” Pedrin, a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S., said. “(Fernandez) brings out the flag. We all sing.”
The festivities begin Friday night with a celebratory ringing of a bell by Mexican Consul Alejandro Madrigal Becerra at The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. Hidalgo, the rebel priest, rang a bell when he gave his famous speech, and Mexico’s president does it in Mexico City every year.
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Mental Disorders, Poor Diets, Tobacco Make World Ill, Study Says
Heart disease and tobacco ranked with conflict and violence among the world’s biggest killers in 2016, while poor diets and mental disorders caused people the greatest ill health, a large international study has found.
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, published in The Lancet medical journal, found that while life expectancy is increasing, so too are the years people live in poor health. The proportion of life spent being ill is higher in poor countries than in wealthy ones.
“Death is a powerful motivator, both for individuals and for countries, to address diseases that have been killing us at high rates. But we’ve been much less motivated to address issues leading to illnesses,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, which led the study.
He said a “triad of troubles” — obesity, conflict and mental illness — is emerging as a “stubborn and persistent barrier to active and vigorous lifestyles.”
Diet critical
The IHME-led study, involving more than 2,500 researchers in about 130 countries, found that in 2016, poor diet was associated with nearly one in five deaths worldwide. Tobacco smoking killed 7.1 million people.
Diets low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds, fish oils and high in salt were the most common risk factors, contributing to cases of obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and high cholesterol.
The study found that deaths from firearms, conflict and terrorism have increased globally, and that noncommunicable, or chronic, diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes caused 72 percent of all deaths worldwide.
Heart disease was the leading cause of premature death in most regions and killed 9.48 million people globally in 2016.
Mental illness was found to take a heavy toll on individuals and societies, with 1.1 billion people living with psychological or psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems in 2016.
Major depressive disorders ranked in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries worldwide.
The GBD is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global health charity and gives data estimates on 330 diseases, causes of death and injuries in 195 countries and territories.
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Director Channels Fury at State of the World into ‘mother!’
Darren Aronofsky does not just want audiences to watch his new film mother! He wants to shake them up and leave them thinking about his genre-defying, surreal apocalyptic thriller.
“It’s very much a scary film. It’s very much a film that we want to shake audiences,” Aronofsky told Reuters.
“This is definitely a film that we want people to be talking about and giggling about and analyzing and thinking about for times to come,” he added.
An allegorical tale
Aronofsky, 48, mined the depths and descent of the human psyche in films such as Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
With mother!, released in U.S. theaters Friday, Aronofsky channels his fury with the state of the world into an allegorical story that reflects mankind’s selfish relationship with nature, gender, politics and religion.
The film centers on Jennifer Lawrence, a beautiful, naive young woman newly married to an older writer (Javier Bardem) suffering from writer’s block, and the two settle down into the writer’s secluded home.
As Lawrence’s character, an embodiment of Mother Nature, slowly renovates the property, two strangers, played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris, turn up at their doorstep and kick off a series of events that blur the lines of reality and escalate into chaos.
“I was interested in the home invasion genre — the kind of feeling of people coming into your home that won’t leave,” the director said.
“Turning that into a nightmare was the journey we wanted to take audiences on, and then we had this other big idea of like trying to capture what it feels like to be in 21st century America, which is a crazy time right now,” he added.
Reviews mixed
The film sharply split critics as it made the rounds at festivals in Venice and Toronto earlier this month, receiving both boos and cheers at screenings.
Aronofsky said he welcomed the mixed reaction because it meant the film had caught people’s attention.
“We wanted to make something big and loud and also something that’s immediate,” he said.
“I want everyone to know, ‘hey man, you only come if you want to go on the roller coaster and hold your arms up and scream into the abyss.’ That’s why it’s (the film title) got an exclamation point,” he added.
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Research Points to Ecological Costs of ‘Unethical’ Chocolate
Your afternoon chocolate bar may be fueling climate change, destroying protected forests and threatening elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in West Africa, research suggests.
Well-known brands, such as Mars and Nestle, are buying through global traders cocoa that is grown illegally in dwindling national parks and reserves in Ivory Coast and Ghana, environmental group Mighty Earth said.
“Every consumer of chocolate is a part of either the problem or the solution,” Etelle Higonnet, campaign director at Mighty Earth, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“You can choose to buy ethical chocolate. Or you’re voting with your dollar for deforestation.”
Mars and Nestle told the Thomson Reuters Foundation they are working to tackle deforestation.
“We take a responsible approach to sourcing cocoa and have committed to source 100 percent certified sustainable cocoa by 2020,” Mars said in an email.
Both companies have committed to join the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, a major effort to end deforestation in the global cocoa supply chain, launched in March.
“We will be working to ensure human rights are given a high priority alongside the environmental aims of this initiative,” Nestle said in emailed comments.
Conversion to plantations
Almost one-third of 23 protected natural areas in Ivory Coast that researchers visited in 2015 had been almost entirely converted to illegal cocoa plantations, the report said.
Researchers said the practice is so widespread that villages of tens of thousands of people, along with churches and schools, have sprung up in national parks to support the cocoa economy.
Ivory Coast, Francophone West Africa’s biggest economy, is the world’s top cocoa grower.
While the bulk of its 1 million cocoa farmers ply their trade legally, Washington-based Mighty Earth estimates about a third of cocoa is grown illegally in protected areas.
Deforestation for cocoa happens in sight of authorities and chocolate traders are aware of it, they said.
Loss of natural forests is problematic because they act as a home for the region’s wildlife and a key weapon against climate change, absorbing carbon dioxide — a major driver of climate change — as they grow.
Available land for new cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast ran out long ago, so farmers have moved into parks and reserves, taking advantage of a decade of political crisis that ended in 2011.
Ivory Coast’s now has about 2.5 million hectares (6 million acres) of natural forest, a fifth of what it had at independence in 1960, according to European Union figures. Most of the losses have been caused by expanding agriculture.
The government has struggled to evict farmers from forest reserves amid accusations in 2013 of human rights abuses by security forces.
Details of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, which is initially focusing on Ivory Coast and Ghana, will be announced by November’s global climate talks in Bonn.
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‘A Fantastic Woman’ Could Lead to Trans History at Oscars
A transgender Chilean actress has turned in one of the most buzzed-about performances of the year and some are hoping she could be the first trans actor to land an Oscar nomination.
Daniela Vega, 28, stars in Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman. She plays Marina, a transgender woman whose partner (Francisco Reyes) dies, after which Marina is subjected to harsh treatment by the family of her deceased lover and by police investing the death.
Chile has selected the film as its Academy Awards submission this year. But the bigger spotlight may be on whether Vega’s breakout performance — one of stirring strength and compassion — could make Oscar history. Reviewing the movie at its Berlin Film Festival premiere, Variety called her performance “a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting,” that deserves “so much more than political praise.”
While several transgender musicians have been Oscar-nominated, no trans performer has ever earned an acting nod.
“It’s too early to talk about that, to think about it. I have lots of festivals to attend, lots of dresses to wear,” Vega said with a grin in an interview. “The Oscars are a little bit beyond the timeline I’m thinking about right now. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Vega and A Fantastic Woman will not have an easy road to the Oscars. Performances in foreign-language films rarely break into the acting categories, and this year, like most, the field of potential contenders boasts plenty of heavyweight, bigger-name performers like Meryl Streep (The Post) and Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game).
But Vega has two things going for her: the depth of her performance and the possibility of a long-awaited Oscar landmark. Such a result could have great meaning for a trans community that President Donald Trump recently banned from entering the military.
“If we broaden our gaze, it will be more interesting, more beautiful. If we can make more diverse colors, people, stories, it will be interesting,” Vega said. “Uniforms are for the military and the police, not for our thinking.”
Hollywood has far from shied away from telling transgender stories, but the industry has come under increasing criticism for not casting them in high-profile parts. Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) have taken home awards, and movies like 2015’s The Danish Girl, with Eddie Redmayne, and 2005’s Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman, have garnered nominations.
While those films and the Amazon series Transparent have been widely applauded, pressure has mounted urging producers to cast trans actors for trans parts. Progress has instead come in smaller, offbeat productions like Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the much-lauded 2015 film Baker shot with iPhones. It starred a pair of transgender performers, Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez. Taylor last year won an Independent Spirit Award for her performance.
“There is very beautiful transgender talent,” Taylor said, accepting the supporting actress award. “You better get out there and put it in your movie.”
Transgender people have been nominated in other Oscar categories. The composer Angela Morley received two nods, for 1974’s The Little Prince and 1976’s The Slipper and the Rose.
Most recently, singer Anohni, formerly known as Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, became the first transgendered performer ever nominated. She collaborated with J. Ralph on the nominated song Manta Ray for the documentary Racing Extinction. But when the category’s other nominees — Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, the Weeknd — were given performing slots during the 2016 broadcast, Anohni was not, and she opted to boycott the ceremony.
In a fiery essay announcing her refusal to attend, Anohni declared: “They are going to try to convince us that they have our best interests at heart by waving flags for identity politics and fake moral issues.”
Whether Vega — and Oscar voters — can change history won’t be decided for months. Sony Picture Classics, which has guided performers to dozens of Academy Award nominations, will release the film on Nov. 17. For now, Vega is soaking up her moment.
“It’s like living a dream,” said Vega. “It’s like a film in a film.”
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Commerce’s Ross: US Wants NAFTA 5-year Sunset Provision
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Thursday that the United States was seeking to add a five-year sunset provision to the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide a regular, “systematic re-examination” of the trade pact.
Ross told a forum hosted by Politico that both he and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had agreed on the need for such a sunset provision for quite a while and would “put it forward” in the NAFTA modernization talks, but it was unclear whether Canada and Mexico would back it.
U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are set to reconvene for a third round of talks in Ottawa on Sept. 23-27.
Ross said that a sunset provision was needed because forecasts for U.S. export and job growth when NAFTA took effect in 1994 were “wildly optimistic” and failed to live up to expectations.
He said the termination clause currently in NAFTA that allows a country to exit after a six-month notice period has never been triggered, and “it’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t be.”
But Ross and U.S. President Donald Trump have both talked about quitting NAFTA if it can’t be renegotiated to reduce U.S. trade deficits with Mexico and Canada.
“The five-year thing is a real thing, would force a systematic re-examination,” Ross said. “If there were a systematic re-examination after a little experience period, you’d have a forum for trying to fix things that didn’t work out the way you thought they would.”
Politico first reported that USTR had circulated the sunset proposal with other federal agencies.
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Brazilians Toil for Gold in Illegal Amazon Mines
Informal mining in Brazil is seen by many as a scourge polluting the Amazon rainforest, poisoning indigenous tribes and robbing the nation of its wealth.
For others it is a way of life.
Brazilian garimpos, or wildcat mines, are operated by small crews of men, often caked in red-brown mud and working with rudimentary pans, shovels and sluice boxes that have been used for centuries.
More sophisticated operations use water cannons and boats sucking mud from the bottoms of rivers. Regardless of the method, searching for gold and other minerals like cassiterite and niobium is dirty, dangerous and often illegal.
“Looking for gold is like playing in a casino,” said a 48-year-old miner.
Miners asked not to be named, saying they feared the police as much of their work is illegal.
Started as a teen
He started in the wildcat mines as a teenager in the area around Crepurizao, a ramshackle frontier town of 5,000 with a dirt landing strip that is a gateway for informal mining in the region.
Garimpos are in the spotlight as Brazil debates opening an area known as Renca in the northern Amazon forest to mining, which has met with stiff resistance from environmentalists.
Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho argues that licensed mining will be an improvement over the estimated 1,000 people currently mining in the reserve illegally.
Crepurizao lies hundreds of miles south of Renca, but gives a window into life in the garimpos caught up in the debate.
On brink of poverty
Living in makeshift homes of wood and plastic, miners in the area ship some 60 kilograms (132 lbs) of gold per month, according to traders.
That much pure gold is worth millions of dollars on the global market, but high costs and layers of traders in the local market leave most miners living on the brink of poverty.
Basic staples can cost four or five times the price in the nearest city, an eight-hour bus ride away.
Fuel stations, a general store, a bar, an evangelical church and prostitutes vie for the income and attention of the miners, known as garimpeiros, when they aren’t working or lazing in hammocks.
Most unlicensed
There are 2,113 licensed garimpo sites in Brazil, according to ministry data, but environmental experts and two government officials, who asked not to be named, said far more small-scale mines skip the licensing and ignore regulations altogether.
In Crepurizao, where mines often cluster close together, it was unclear which operations were licensed.
The total area worked by garimpeiros in Brazil is thought to be small. But chemicals like mercury, which miners in Crepurizao dump to separate gold from grit, can leave a large footprint of contamination.
In March last year, a government-backed study of indigenous villages in the northern state of Roraima revealed alarming levels of mercury.
One group of villagers had more than double the level of mercury considered to be a serious health risk — such as damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, heart and reproductive process — detected in their hair.
New oversight
The Mining and Energy Ministry said a new oversight agency created in a decree by President Michel Temer, now pending congressional approval, would allow more effective government coordination and inspections to restrict illegal mining.
Congressman Leonardo Quintao, who sits on the committee considering the new agency, said it will be able to raise more funding for oversight. He said the regulations target licensed miners, while illegal mining remains a matter for the police.
Still, one enforcement officer, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said the government had left miners like those in Crepurizao in a precarious limbo.
“You can’t just pull them out of the garimpos and the cities that are living off gold. And the government does not offer them structure and decent conditions,” said the officer. “So they’re stranded there without the minimum conditions for survival.”
Hong Kong Singer, Actress Josie Ho Making New Music
To say that Josie Ho has been busy is an understatement.
The Hong Kong singer and actress is putting out new music, touring Asia and has shot a new travel show on TLC.
Together with her indie rock band, Josie and the Uni Boys, Ho is releasing seven new singles on vinyl records, one song at a time. She said her new music is inspired by the psycho thriller film Split starring James McAvoy, about three young girls kidnapped by a man who suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Fittingly, the first single is named Skitzo.
“I believe everyone has at least five personalities, like when you go home and face your parents, your lover, your friends, your colleagues, your boss and like, some PR friends,” Ho explained. “Some people have guilt trips about having different faces, like they feel like they’re two-faced, which I don’t think so. That’s why we need to put this concept out there, so when people really understand our lyrics and our music, I hope everyone feels that ‘We’re OK. We’re all OK. We’re fine.'”
Split might just be the way Ho, 42, feels about her life. The daughter of Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho, Ho defied her parents and refused to join the family business. Instead, she wanted to become an actress and singer.
In 1996, she released her first solo albums and also began acting in films. However, it wasn’t until she played a prostitute in the 2003 movie Naked Ambition that critics began to take her seriously as an actress. For that performance, Ho won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. She also attempted to break into Hollywood, gaining a small part in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion about the SARS epidemic.
This year, Ho is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her band. They will kick off a tour in Tokyo in October, and Ho could hardly contain her excitement.
“I’m going to be able to perform like a Japanese band at their live houses. Those are not just any live houses, those are scared rock ‘n’ roll, hall of fame places. So, I’m really honored to play there,” Ho said.
After Japan, Josie and the Uni Boys head to China, the Philippines and Taiwan before returning home to Hong Kong next spring.
Until then, fans can catch Ho on TLC, A Taste of Hong Kong with Josie Ho, where she hosts other Asian celebrities in Hong Kong and shows them around town. Her favorite spot in Hong Kong? Surprisingly, the outdoors.
“A lot of countries have outdoor sports as well, but our outdoor sports are only 20 minutes away from the city. So I think we have the upper hand, compared to other cities in Asia. So you can go wakeboarding, take 45 minutes to shower and change, and go to work in central. I think that’s a really important point to tell people,” she said.
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Text Message Network Connects Offline Farmers in Kenya
When she woke up one morning in February, Catherine Kagendo realized that one of her cows could not stand.
“It was lying on its side, had lost its appetite and was breathing heavily,” she told Reuters from her farm in Meru, in eastern Kenya.
With her husband, she decided to turn to WeFarm, a text-based network of small-scale farmers, for help.
Within an hour, their text — “one of my lactating cows cannot stand” — generated a flurry of suggestions, from “feed your cow with minerals rich in calcium” to “make sure the cow shed is clean and well-drained so the animals don’t slip.”
“I realized our cow had milk fever, so gave it calcium-rich feed and it was standing again within hours,” Kagendo explained.
She is one of many Kenyan small-scale farmers who lack good information — mostly due to a lack of internet access — on how to manage problems from dry spells to diseases, local farm experts say.
As a result, such farmers often lose their harvest or animals, they said.
But WeFarm, a farmers’ network launched in Kenya in 2014 and more recently expanded to Uganda and Peru, allows people to ask a question by text message and receive advice from their peers.
The service, whose Scottish co-founder Kenny Ewan describes it as “the internet for people with no internet,” is free to use and only requires a mobile phone.
Farmers text questions to a local number, and WeFarm transmits the message to users with similar interests in the area, tapping into their knowledge.
“We want farmers to get answers to their problems without needing to access the internet, so the information is available to all,” said Mwinyi Bwika, head of marketing at WeFarm.
Although the platform also exists online, over 95 percent of users choose to use it offline, he said.
Information gap
Kagendo said that when her animals were ill or her maize crops too dry, she used to have to hire an extension officer to help solve the problem.
“But we had to pay a fee ranging from 500 to 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($5-$20), and most of the time the officer didn’t even explain their diagnosis,” she said.
That cut into her family’s income and left them no better able to understand the diseases facing their cattle and their crops.
“We cannot even afford a smartphone to go online, so finding credible information was near impossible,” she said.
According to Bwika, small-scale farmers often lack the information they need because of a lack of cash — most live on less than a dollar a day — as well as poor internet connection and low literacy levels.
“Ewan realized that farmers living just a few miles from each other were facing the same challenges, but with no way to communicate about them. So, he created a platform to connect them,” Bwika said.
Joseph Kinyua, another farmer from Meru who grows vegetables, said he spends at least 30 minutes per day using WeFarm.
“It’s taught me anything from using pest control traps to ensuring that my sprinklers don’t put out too much water,” he said. “And I know the methods are proven and tested by other farmers.”
The knowledge has helped improve the quality of the kale he grows, he said, enough that “I can now sell a kilo at the market at 70 shillings [$0.70] compared to 50 [$0.50] previously.”
Preventing problems
While the platform might receive dozens of replies to a question, it only sends out to the user a selection of answers judged correct, Bwika said.
But it uses the questions and advice received to help track disease outbreaks or extreme weather spells, and shares those insights with governments and non-governmental organizations, Bwika said.
“In doing so, we hope to prevent disease outbreaks and track problems before they occur,” he said.
Not everyone shares this optimism, however.
Mary Nkatha, a farmer from Meru, said she found it hard to implement some of the recommendations she received from WeFarm without the practical guidance of an expert.
“If I am told to inject my cow with something, how do I make sure I do it in the right place? And where do I find the equipment?” she asked.
Fredrick Ochido, a Kenya-based consultant on dairy farming, also worries that the platform may be entrenching farmers’ poor use of technology, rather than helping them keep up with new trends.
The WeFarm platform has over 100,000 current users in Kenya, Uganda and Peru, and its operators hopes to reach one million farmers in the next year. They also aim to expand the effort to other countries, including Tanzania.
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Irma Pushes Florida’s Poor Closer to the Edge of Ruin
Larry and Elida Dimas didn’t have much to begin with, and Hurricane Irma left them with even less.
The storm peeled open the roof of the old mobile home where they live with their 18-year-old twins, and it destroyed another one they rented to migrant workers in Immokalee, one of Florida’s poorest communities. Someone from the government already has promised aid, but Dimas’ chin quivers at the thought of accepting it.
“I don’t want the help,” said Dimas, 55. “But I need it.”
Dimas is one of millions of Floridians who live in poverty, and an untold number of them have seen their lives up-ended by Irma. Their options, already limited, were narrowed even further when the hurricane destroyed possessions, increased expenses and knocked them out of work.
Not far from Dimas in impoverished Immokalee, located on the edge of the Everglades, Haitian immigrant Woodchy Darius, a junior at Immokalee High School, must decide whether to return to class when school reopens or head to the fields to pick berries once the land is dry enough to work again.
“The rent is $375, and if I don’t have the money they’ll kick us out,” said Darius, 17. He lives in a grubby apartment building with bare concrete floors, burglar-proof doors and cinder-block walls that make it resemble a jail more than home.
The Census Bureau estimates about 3.3 million people live in poverty in Florida – nearly 16 percent of the state’s 20.6 million population. For them, the amusement parks of Orlando or President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach might as well be on Mars.
Many work by the hour in restaurants, gas stations, hotels, stores and other businesses forced to close for days after Irma, depriving them of paychecks. Others are day laborers or migrants who earn money by the pound picking produce that’s sold in stores nationwide. Still others are retirees on fixed incomes or disability checks whose budgets already were tight before Irma.
Fleeing Irma wasn’t an option for those who lacked transportation to get to a shelter, couldn’t afford gas to drive north and couldn’t rent a hotel room. The likely costs associated with cleaning up or finding a new place to live pushed them closer to the edge than ever.
After Irma, Gwen Bush scrambled to find a place just to sleep after flood waters rose around her home.
A security worker for Amway Center in Orlando, Bush hadn’t worked in the days leading up to Irma because concerts and other events had been canceled as the storm approached. It’s not certain when the arena will be open for business, and she was down to her final $10 before the storm.
“I’ve been through some hurricanes and some storms living here but I can say on my life this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Bush, 50, a lifelong resident of Orlando. “How do you recover from this, losing all of your stuff?”
David and Andrea Jewell survive on disability checks and live on a sailboat they bought for $1,000 on eBay years ago. David Jewell, 51, can’t imagine now living on land; both consider the ocean – like the dolphins they watch – their only real neighbors.
After the storm, the Jewells stayed on cots in the gym at a community center in Jacksonville. They tried to figure out if they could get a new boat if theirs was destroyed. Maybe, they decided, they could just cut back on food and find another cheap one with their next disability checks.
“There aren’t any answers,” he said, “so I guess I’ll have to roll with it.”
But in one bit of good news, they later learned from a friend that their boat is still floating.
For some poor people, there’s at least a little upside to the devastation.
Guatemalan immigrant Aura Gaspar totaled up storm-related expenses of about $600 while using a twig-fired grill to stew chicken on her front stoop in Immokalee; she has three school-age children to feed and a 2-week-old baby.
But Gaspar said husband Juan Francisco got a job cleaning up storm debris in the Fort Myers and Naples area. He needed to get busy, she said through a translator: Their storm preparations cost nearly twice as much as his weekly pay of $320.
“We had to prepare the house so it would protect us,” said Gaspar, 28.
Beside his ruined Immokalee mobile home, Dimas is trying to get back on his feet, but it’s tough.
Dimas earns a meager living cooking hamburgers and chicken in a food truck parked by his home, and some customers already have returned – he said he sold all 40 of the hamburgers that were still safe to cook Tuesday.
Dimas needs to replace the income from his rental trailer, already condemned after being split open by the wind. Dimas had used that money to help feed his two teenagers and pay for the rescue inhalers he needs for his asthma. Losing it will only make it harder for Dimas to do what he says is one of his favorite things – providing free or cut-rate food to those who have even less.
Coping with Irma’s aftermath is only making life tougher for people with little who live in places including unincorporated Immokalee, said Dimas.
“A lot of people work. They work hard here. They don’t ask for nothing. They just go to work, come home and something like this happens, it’s ….,” Dimas said. “I don’t know what to say.”
He stopped talking and turned away to keep from crying.
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SpaceX Bloopers Video: ‘How NOT to Land an Orbital Rocket’
SpaceX has put together a bloopers video showing “How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster.”
Set to John Philip Sousa’s rousing march “The Liberty Bell,” the two-minute video posted Thursday shows rockets exploding at sea and over land. The opening blast, from 2013, is even synchronized to the music.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk can afford to poke fun at his early, pioneering efforts at rocket recycling, now that his private company has pulled off 16 successful booster landings. The most recent occurred last week in Florida.
“We messed up a lot before it finally worked, but there’s some epic explosion footage,” Musk said recently on Twitter.
In one video shot, Musk looks over a rocket’s charred remains with the caption: “It’s just a scratch.” After another huge fiery explosion, this one on the company’s barge, the caption reads: “Well, technically, it did land … just not in one piece.”
Musk tweeted Thursday that when the Falcon rocket’s upper stage and the cargo enclosure can also be retrieved and reused, launch costs will drop by a factor of more than 100.
For now, SpaceX’s first-stage boosters- 15 stories tall – separate shortly after liftoff and fly back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station or an ocean platform for a vertical touchdown. Until the company’s recovery efforts – unique among rocket makers launching spacecraft into orbit – these segments were discarded at sea. A couple of these recycled rockets already have launched a second time.
The video ends with scenes of the first successful booster touchdown at Cape Canaveral in 2015 and the first one on an ocean platform in 2016.
“The Liberty Bell” march was the theme music for the old “Monty Python” comedy TV series.
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Long-endangered Snow Leopard Upgraded to ‘Vulnerable’ Status
The elusive snow leopard – long considered an endangered species – has been upgraded to “vulnerable,” international conservationists said Thursday. But experts warned the new classification does not mean they are safe.
The animals still face serious challenges including poaching and loss of prey in their high Himalayan habitat.
“The species still faces ‘a high risk of extinction in the wild’ and is likely still declining – just not at the rate previously thought,” said Tom McCarthy, head of the snow leopard program at the big cat conservation group Panthera.
Snow leopards had been listed as endangered since 1972.
The reclassification announced Thursday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, followed a three-year assessment during which experts determined the Himalayan cats no longer numbered fewer than 2,500 in the wild, and was not in steep decline – the two criteria for being considered “endangered.”
Using improved methods for counting cat numbers, experts now estimate there are about 4,000 snow leopards in the wild.
But experts stressed that estimate was based on an assessment that included a detailed survey of only 2 percent of the snow leopard’s high-mountain range, across 12 countries in Asia.
Some positive conservation developments included an increase in the number of protected areas within that range, as well as stepped-up efforts by local communities to protect the animals from poachers.
Communities were also working to prevent cases of local herdsmen retaliating for lost livestock by building predator-proof livestock corrals, according to team member Rodney Jackson, who heads the Snow Leopard Conservancy group, according to a statement.
Still, the animals are hunted for their thick fur and bones. They also face declining numbers of wild prey, as domestic livestock have degraded grasslands.
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Study: Future of Oldest Tree Species in Peril
The bristlecone pine tree, famous for its wind-beaten, gnarly limbs and having the longest lifespan on Earth, is losing a race to the top of mountains throughout the Western United States, putting future generations in peril, researchers said Wednesday.
Driven by climate change, a cousin of the tree, the limber pine, is leapfrogging up mountainsides, taking root in warmer, more favorable temperatures and leaving little room for the late-coming bristlecone, a study finds.
Researchers compare the competing tree species to a pair of old men in a slow-motion race up a mountainside taking thousands of years, and climate change is the starting gun.
“Limber pine is taking all the good spots,” said Brian Smithers, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, who led the research. “It’s jarring.”
Lifespan of 5,000 years
The bristlecone pine can live 5,000 years, making it the oldest individually growing organism on the planet, researchers say.
Forests of the diminutive bristlecone pines are found in eastern California, Nevada and Utah. They thrive in desolate limestone soil that is inhospitable to most trees. They grow at high elevation, hammered by wind and extreme temperatures.
The punishing conditions give shape to their twisted limbs. To survive long dry spells, parts of the tree dies and sheds its bark appearing dead, except for small spouts of green pine needles, signaling life, researchers say.
Among the oldest and most famous is Methuselah standing in the White Mountains of eastern California. It remains unmarked among its grove, so vandals cannot find it.
The bristlecone pine’s distant relative, the limber pine is also a hearty survivalist, living 2,000 years. Researchers say they found that the limber pine, which typically grows at lower elevations, has begun to leapfrog past the bristlecone
The three-year study involved counting the trees newly sprouting within the last 50 years above the historical tree line. Most of those growing at the higher elevation are limber pine, researchers said.
“It’s very odd to see it charging upslope and not see bristlecone charging upslope ahead of the limber pine,” Smithers said. “Or at least with it.”
Extinction not a risk yet
Smithers said he could not estimate how many bristlecone pine trees exist throughout the Western U.S. They are not at risk of extinction, but they could be crowded out in some places they’ve grown for thousands of years.
This research on climate change’s impact on these two species of trees can be used to understand more complex forests with several types of trees harvested for timber, Smithers said.
Researchers at U.C. Davis’ Department of Plant Sciences and the U.S. Forest Service published their research Aug. 30 in the scientific journal, Global Change Biology.
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Cassini on Course for Final Death Dive Into Saturn to Preserve the Possibility of Life
After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the spacecraft Cassini is preparing to make a final death dive into the planet Saturn on Friday.
Scientists and Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said their decision to end the life of the spacecraft in this way is because of what they found during the mission, the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.
“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s Assistant Project Science Systems Engineer of the Cassini.
The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.
“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer, said.
Instruments on Cassini have been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.
“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.
Photo Gallery: Cassini’s Amazing Photos of Saturn, Rings and Moons
Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.
“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.
These discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do with it once it runs out of fuel. They do not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.
“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.
Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.
“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” said Cable.
The end of Cassini looks like a death dive into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending critical data to Earth until the very end. It’s information that will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.
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