Trump Administration Permits ENI to Drill for Oil Off Alaska

Eni US could begin work on oil exploration in federal waters off Alaska as soon as next month after the Trump administration on Tuesday approved permits for leases the company has held for a decade, the Interior Department said.

The department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, issued Eni US, a unit of Italy’s Eni, a permit to explore for oil from an artificial island in the Beaufort Sea. Eni is the first company allowed to explore for oil in federal waters off Alaska since 2015.

The approval is part of the Trump administration’s policy to maximize output of fossil fuels for domestic use and for exporting.

Scott Angelle, the BSEE director, said developing Arctic resources responsibly is a “critical component to achieving American energy dominance.”

Environmentalists say exploring for oil in the Arctic is dangerous.

“The Trump administration is risking a major oil spill by letting this foreign corporation drill in the unforgiving waters off Alaska,” said Kristen Monsell, the legal director for oceans at the Center for Biological Diversity nonprofit group.

Eni wants to drill into the Beaufort from the island using extended wells more than 6 miles (10 km) long. Eni US did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when it would start drilling.

In April President Donald Trump signed a so-called America-First Offshore Energy Strategy executive order to extend offshore drilling to areas in the Arctic and other places that have been off limits.

Eni’s leases, which were set to expire by the end of the year, were outside of an area protected by former President Barack Obama weeks before he left office. The company’s plan to move ahead with risky and expensive drilling in the Arctic comes despite years of low oil prices and plentiful sources of crude in the continental United States.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc quit its exploration quest offshore of Alaska in 2015 after a ship it had leased suffered a gash in mostly uncharted waters and environmentalists discovered an existing law that limited the company’s ability to drill.

Republicans are eager to drill elsewhere in Alaska. A tax bill passed by the Senate budget committee Tuesday contained a provision to open drilling in a portion of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Conservationists say the refuge is one of the planet’s last paradises.

The bill, which Republicans hope to pass in the full Senate this week, faces an uncertain future.

Venezuela’s Maduro Swears In Military ‘Man of the People’ to Lead PDVSA

Venezuelan leftist President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday evening held a ceremony to swear in a military officer as the new head of state oil company PDVSA in the presence of the military’s top brass and cheering red-shirted oil workers.

In a surprise move, the unpopular Maduro on Sunday tapped Major General Manuel Quevedo to lead both PDVSA and the Oil Ministry, giving the already powerful military control of the OPEC nation’s dominant industry.

“He’s a man of the people … and, most importantly, he’s honest!” said Maduro, as workers cheered and chanted that they wanted a “clean up in PDVSA!” after a series of corruption scandals.

Maduro also announced he was naming Ysmel Serrano, the head of the trade and supply division, as vice president of PDVSA, which oversees the world’s largest crude reserves. Maduro said he would seek to name the country’s former energy minister, Ali Rodriguez, as “honorary president” of PDVSA.

More military officers are set to be named to senior management posts as part of a shakeup the government says is aimed at fighting corruption, two company sources told Reuters on Monday.

Sources in the sector also said Quevedo’s appointment could quicken a white-collar exodus from PDVSA and worsen operational problems at a time when production has already tumbled to near 30-year lows of under 2 million barrels per day.

 

Abominable News: Purported Yeti Evidence Came from Bears, Dog

For fans of the yeti, newly published genetic research on purported specimens of the legendary apelike beast said to dwell in the Himalayan region may be too much to bear — literally.

Scientists said on Tuesday that genetic analysis of nine bone, tooth, skin, hair and fecal samples from museum and private collections attributed to the yeti, also called the Abominable Snowman, found that eight came from Asian black bears, Himalayan brown bears or Tibetan brown bears and one came from a dog.

“This strongly suggests that the yeti legend has a root in biological facts and that it has to do with bears that are living in the region today,” said biologist Charlotte Lindqvist of the University at Buffalo in New York and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, who led the study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Lindqvist called the study the most rigorous analysis to date of purported yeti specimens. The researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA — genetic material in structures within cells that was passed down from mothers — of purported yeti samples from Tibet, India and Nepal as well as from black, brown and polar bear populations.

The yeti is a creature of folklore in the Himalayan region that has become a part of Western popular culture. It is separate from North America’s Sasquatch and Big Foot folklore.

“I initially became involved in this study when I was contacted about a previous study that found two purported yeti samples to match genetically with an ancient, 120,000-year-old polar bear that I was doing research on,” Lindqvist said.

“But the data was very limited, and it made me suspicious about the speculation that the yeti legend represented some strange, hybrid bear roaming the Himalaya mountains. So, I agreed to follow up on this study with a more rigorous approach based on more genetic data from more purported yeti samples,” Lindqvist added.

Lindqvist said purported yeti samples came from places including the Messner Mountain Museum in Italy and were gathered by British independent television production company Icon Films.

While no actual yeti was identified, the DNA research shed light on bear populations in the region.

The brown bears roaming the high altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau and those in the western Himalayan mountains appear to belong to two separate bear populations separated from each other for thousands of years, despite their relative geographic proximity, Lindqvist said.

Facebook Reports Progress in Removing Extremist Content

Facebook said on Wednesday that it was removing 99 percent of content related to militant groups Islamic State and al-Qaida before being told of it, as it prepared for a meeting with European authorities on tackling extremist content online.

Eighty-three percent of “terror content” is removed within one hour of being uploaded, Monika Bickert, head of global policy management, and Brian Fishman, head of counterterrorism policy at Facebook, wrote in a blog post.

The world’s largest social media network, with 2.1 billion users, has faced pressure both in the United States and Europe to tackle extremist content on its platform more effectively.

In June, Facebook said it had ramped up use of artificial intelligence, such as image matching and language understanding, to identify and remove content quickly.

“It is still early, but the results are promising, and we are hopeful that AI (artificial intelligence) will become a more important tool in the arsenal of protection and safety on the internet and on Facebook,” Bickert and Fishman wrote.

“Today, 99 percent of the ISIS and al Qaeda-related terror content we remove from Facebook is content we detect before anyone in our community has flagged it to us, and in some cases, before it goes live on the site.”

ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

The blog post comes a week before Facebook and other social media companies such as Alphabet’s Google and Twitter meet with European Union governments and the EU executive to discuss how to remove extremist content and hate speech online.

“Deploying AI for counterterrorism is not as simple as flipping a switch. … A system designed to find content from one terrorist group may not work for another because of language and stylistic differences in their propaganda,” Facebook said.

The European Commission in September told social media firms to find ways to remove the content faster, including through automatic detection technologies, or face possible legislation forcing them to do so.

FCC’s Pai, Addressing Net Neutrality Rules, Calls Twitter Biased

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, accused social media company Twitter of being politically biased  Tuesday as he defended his plan to roll back rules intended to ensure a free and open internet.

Pai, a Republican named by President Donald Trump to head up the FCC, unveiled plans last week to scrap the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access.

“When it comes to an open internet, Twitter is part of the problem,” Pai said. “The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”

He pointed to Twitter’s refusal to let Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, advertise a campaign video with an anti-abortion message.

“To say the least, the company appears to have a double standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users,” Pai said.

A spokesperson for Twitter said that at no time was Blackburn’s video censored and that her followers would have been able to still see it.

“Because advertisements are served to users who do not necessarily follow an account, we therefore have higher standards for their content,” the Twitter spokesperson said.

Twitter in October declined a campaign video advertisement by Blackburn, who announced she was running for the U.S. Senate, saying that a remark by Blackburn about opposing abortion was inflammatory. Twitter later reversed its decision.

Internet-based firms’ letter

Pai’s criticism came a day after Twitter and a number of other internet-based companies — including AirBnb, Reddit, Shutterstock, Tumblr and Etsy — sent a letter urging the FCC to maintain the net neutrality rules.

Trump is a prolific user of Twitter, often posting his thoughts on the news of the day. He used Twitter throughout his presidential campaign to circumvent traditional media and talk directly to voters.

Pai has also been a frequent user of the website — acknowledging during the speech, “I love Twitter” — to push his case in favor of the rule changes. On Tuesday afternoon, he even posted a link to his remarks critical of Twitter on his own Twitter account.

Following Pai’s remarks on Tuesday, at an event organized by the libertarian-leaning R Street Institute, two other FCC commissioners said they would support his proposal when they vote on December 14.

Big internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon Communications have favored a repeal of net neutrality. On the other side, websites such as Facebook and Alphabet’s Google have favored the rules.

The rules prohibit broadband providers from giving or selling access to speedy internet, essentially a “fast lane,” to certain internet services over others.

“So when you get past the wild accusations, fearmongering and hysteria, here’s the boring bottom line,” Pai said. “The plan to restore internet freedom would return us to the light touch, market-based approach under which the internet thrived.”

Remains of Ancient Sea Cow Unearthed on California Island

Scientists say they’ve unearthed fossil remains of a sea cow that lived in the shallow waters off Southern California’s Channel Islands some 25 million years ago.

 

The fossil skull and rib cage were discovered this summer on Santa Rosa Island, in the Pacific Ocean about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles, the National Park Service announced Tuesday.

 

Scientists say the remains may be from a previously unknown sea cow species but they won’t know for sure until the skull is analyzed by an expert.

 

Some fossilized remnants of at least from four other sea cows also were found nearby.

 

Sea cows are torpedo-shaped plant-eaters that graze in shallow waters and can grow up to 13 feet long. The only living species are the dugong and three types of manatee.

 

Two researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey found the skull and rib cage in a steep ravine while mapping earthquake faults, said Yvonne Menard of the park service. Erosion may have only recently revealed them.

 

“This sea cow may have only been exposed the past few years after being buried for millions of years,” said Jonathan Hoffman with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which is protecting the fossils.

 

“They’re embedded in rock and the top surface has been exposed,” Menard said.

 

That surface has been covered with plaster-impregnated bandages and burlap to protect the fossils until work to excavate them can resume in late spring, Menard said.

 

The work is slow because researchers need to obtain permits to excavate.

 

Researchers hope to uncover the teeth of the sea cow, which could help determine the animal’s diet and its age when it died.

Researchers Use Advanced Technology to Study Child Mummy

Researchers from Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago are using advanced technology to unwrap the mysteries of an 1,800-year-old mummy.

 

They say the high-energy X-ray beams from a synchrotron will provide molecular information about what is inside the mummy of the little girl. Argonne says it’s the first time the beams have been used in this way.

 

Researchers say the technology allows them to study what’s inside the mummy while leaving the 5-year-old girl’s remains and wrappings intact.

 

Scientists examined the rare find on Monday in the hopes of learning more about how the girl died. And they say studying the wrapping materials may shed new light on ancient Egyptian culture.

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Springsteen, Top Ticket on Broadway, Extends Run

Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday announced four more months of intimate concerts on Broadway after his initial run triggered massive interest — and wide disappointment among fans who couldn’t get tickets.

The rock legend, who for decades has sold out arenas with his adrenaline-fueled marathon performances, said he would extend his residency at the 960-seat Walter Kerr Theatre from February 28 to June 30.

Springsteen opened the shows on October 3 and already extended once, until February 3, with tickets selling out nearly instantly.

The 68-year-old balladeer of working-class America set prices at $75 to $800 — but tickets immediately reappeared on resale sites at much higher prices.

As of Tuesday, the cheapest ticket on resale site StubHub was $1,449, significantly higher than Broadway’s other coveted theater seats, including those for Hamilton and Bette Midler’s revival of Hello, Dolly!

Springsteen has tried to reduce scalping through a new verification system by Ticketmaster, which asks fans to sign up and uses algorithms to determine the likelihood that they will attend before providing a code to allow purchases.

In light of the number of fans who were unable to buy tickets initially, the ticketing company said it would not start a new verification round, instead sending codes to fans who already signed up.

Springsteen has said he was inspired to create a more intimate concert experience after he played a somber private show at the White House as a gift from departing President Barack Obama to staff.

Instead of Springsteen’s high-octane arena shows with his E Street Band — whose surprise song choices once marveled fans — the Broadway concerts feature the rocker alone on piano and guitar and a standard set list.

The shows, which follow the release of Springsteen’s autobiography, start with his early song Growin’ Up, about his teenage years, and culminate in Born to Run, his classic hit of escape and ambition.

Spielberg’s ‘The Post’ Aimed at People ‘Starving for the Truth’

Steven Spielberg’s new movie The Post may be set in 1971, but its theme about press freedom is all about today.

Spielberg rushed to get the movie filmed and released within a year. It is about the battle by newspapers to publish the leaked Pentagon Papers detailing the U.S. government’s misleading portrayal of the Vietnam War.

“I just felt that there was an urgency to reflect 1971 and 2017 because they were very terrifyingly similar,” the Oscar-winning director told a Hollywood audience after a screening of the film on Monday.

“Our intended audience are the people who have spent the last 13, 14 months thirsting and starving for the truth,” Spielberg said. “They are out there, and they need some good news.”

Spielberg, a prominent Hollywood Democrat, did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump. But The Post arrives in movie theaters in December at a time when media outlets have been under repeated attacks by Trump since his election in November 2016.

Trump has called journalists “the enemy of the American people.” He uses the term “fake news” to cast doubt on news reports critical of his administration, often without providing evidence to support his case.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in August the Trump administration was considering requiring journalists to reveal their sources amid Trump’s push to stop leaks to the press.

Streep, Hanks

Starring Meryl Streep as the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as late editor Ben Bradlee, The Post is seen by awards watchers as a front-runner for next year’s Oscars.

The film dramatizes the decisions by The New York Times and The Washington Post to publish the top-secret Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War in the face of injunctions by the Nixon administration in a battle that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Spielberg said that before making the film he was “really depressed about what was happening in the world and the country.”

After getting the script in February, “suddenly my entire outlook on the future brightened overnight,” he said.

The Post was shot in June and opens in U.S. movie theaters on December 22.

Meghan Markle Has Advocated for Women Since the Age of 11

Meghan Markle became an advocate for women when she was an 11-year-old elementary school student, and achieving gender equality remains a driving force for the fiancée of Britain’s Prince Harry and self-described “feminist.”

Since 2014, the American actress has helped put a global spotlight on the need for equality between women and men as an “Advocate for Political Participation and Leadership” for the women’s agency of the United Nations.

In her role for UN Women, Markle spent time at the World Bank and with the team of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learning more about the issue. She also visited Rwanda, which has the highest percentage of women in parliament and where she also met with female refugees.

UN Women said in a statement after Monday’s announcement of Markle’s engagement to Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson that it “trusts and hopes that in her new and important public role she will continue to use her visibility and voice to support the advancement of gender equality.”

Markle spoke about her accidental road to becoming an advocate at a star-studded celebration in March 2015 for the 20th anniversary of the Beijing women’s conference that adopted a roadmap to achieve equality for women, which is the framework for UN Women’s activities.

Her opening words drew loud applause and cheers: “I am proud to be a woman and a feminist.”

Markle recalled that around the time of the 1995 Beijing conference she was in school in Los Angeles watching television and saw a commercial for a dishwashing liquid with the tagline: “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”

“Two boys from my class said, ‘Yeah. That’s where women belong – in the kitchen,'” she said.

“I remember feeling shocked and angry and also just feeling so hurt. It just wasn’t right, and something needed to be done,” Markle said.

When she went home, she told her dad, who encouraged her to write letters.

“My 11-year-old self worked out that if I really wanted someone to hear, well then I should write a letter to the first lady. So off I went scribbling away to our first lady at the time, Hillary Clinton,” Markle said.

She also wrote to her main news source, Linda Ellerbee, who hosted a kids news program, as well as to “powerhouse attorney” Gloria Allred and to the manufacturer of the dishwashing soap.

To her surprise, she said, after a few weeks she received letters of encouragement from Clinton, Allred and Ellerbee, who even sent a camera crew to her house to cover the story.

“It was roughly a month later when the soap manufacturer, Proctor and Gamble, changed the commercial for their Ivory Clear Dishwashing Liquid … from ‘Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans’ to “People all over America …’,” Markle said.

“It was at that moment that I realized the magnitude of my actions,” she said. “At the age of 11, I had created my small level of impact by standing up for equality.”

Markle said that for her, equality means that Rwandan President Paul Kagame is equal to the little girl in the refugee camp who dreams of being president and the U.N. secretary-general is equal to the U.N. intern who dreams of shaking his hand.

And “it means that a wife is equal to her husband, a sister to her brother – not better, not worse. They are equal,” she said.

UN Women has set 2030 “as the expiration date for gender inequality,” Markle said, but even though women comprise more than half the world’s population, their voices still go unheard “at the highest levels of decision-making.”

Markle called for programs to mobilize girls and women “to see their value as leaders” and for support to ensure they have seats at the top table. And when those seats aren’t available, “then they need to create their own table,” she said to loud applause.

Markle also said Rwanda’s Kagame, who has championed women in parliament, should be a role model, “just as we need more men like my father, who championed my 11-year-old self to stand up for what is right.”

Genetic Profiling May Make Children’s Treatment of Cancer Less Painful

Children diagnosed with cancer can suffer as much from the treatment’s side-effects as from the disease itself. But a new study gives hope for improving the treatment. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, it’s using a genetic test to determine the exact amount of chemotherapy the child needs. Faith Lapidus narrates.

Climate Change Changing Winter Plans For Thousands of Birds

Thousands of birds that usually migrate to Africa during the colder months are now making Israel their final winter destination. Avian experts say climate change is to blame, and human interaction with the various species is more critical than ever. VOA’s Robert Raffaele explains.

Artificial Muscles Give ‘Superpower’ to Robots

Inspired by the folding technique of origami, U.S. researchers said Monday they have crafted cheap, artificial muscles for robots that give them the power to lift up to 1,000 times their own weight.

The advance offers a leap forward in the field of soft robotics, which is fast replacing an older generation of robots that were jerky and rigid in their movements, researchers say.

“It’s like giving these robots superpowers,” said senior author Daniela Rus, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The muscles, known as actuators, are built on a framework of metal coils or plastic sheets, and each muscle costs around $1 to make, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed U.S. journal.

Their origami inspiration derives from a zig-zag structure that some of the muscles employ, allowing them to contract and expand as commanded, using vacuum-powered air or water pressure.

“The skeleton can be a spring, an origami-like folded structure, or any solid structure with hinged or elastic voids,” said the report.

Possible uses include expandable space habitats on Mars, miniature surgical devices, wearable robotic exoskeletons, deep-sea exploration devices or even transformable architecture.

“Artificial muscle-like actuators are one of the most important grand challenges in all of engineering,” said co-author Rob Wood, professor of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard University.

“Now that we have created actuators with properties similar to natural muscle, we can imagine building almost any robot for almost any task.”

Researchers built dozens of muscles, using metal springs, packing foam or plastic in a range of shapes and sizes.

They created “muscles that can contract down to 10 percent of their original size, lift a delicate flower off the ground, and twist into a coil, all simply by sucking the air out of them,” said the report.

The artificial muscles “can generate about six times more force per unit area than mammalian skeletal muscle can, and are also incredibly lightweight,” it added.

A .09-ounce (2.6-gram) muscle can lift an object weighing 6.6 pounds (three kilograms) “which is the equivalent of a mallard duck lifting a car.”

According to co-author Daniel Vogt, research engineer at the Wyss Institute, the vacuum-based muscles “have a lower risk of rupture, failure, and damage, and they don’t expand when they’re operating, so you can integrate them into closer-fitting robots on the human body.”

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

Give Women Greater Role in Industry to Cut Poverty, Urges UN Executive

Women need to be given a greater role in industries in poorer nations to meet the global goal of cutting poverty by 2030, the head of the United Nations industrial development agency said on Monday after being voted in for a second term.

Li Yong said empowering women will be a priority in his second four-year stint as director general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), which oversees about 860 projects to boost economic growth and tackle poverty.

Data shows about half of the world’s women are in the labor force compared with about 75 percent of men, hold less senior roles and earn on average 60 to 75 percent of what men make.

But studies repeatedly show that more women working accelerates economic growth, while women also invest more of their income into families to educate children and end poverty.

“We need to look at how our projects help women’s empowerment and job creation,” Li, formerly of China’s Ministry of Finance, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview at UNIDO’s 17th General Conference in Vienna.

“Lots of projects like agro-industry are related to women’s empowerment … and one part of our evaluation is to look at women’s empowerment, at training, at jobs, all those things that are very concrete measures.”

Li was widely praised in his first term in office for re-establishing UNIDO as a key development organization in the U.N. system with a mission to promote industry as a driver to create jobs, boost prosperity, and reduce poverty.

Some countries had questioned the purpose and effectiveness of UNIDO, one of 15 specialized U.N. agencies, and some nations withdrew funding in the past decade including Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and France.

Climate Change

Representatives of UNIDO’s 168 member states, however, said Li had changed the focus to support developing countries and find ways to build sustainable, environmentally friendly businesses using fewer resources, less energy and generating less waste.

He had also encouraged public and private, local and international partnerships such as setting up agro-industrial parks and introducing clean tanning technology to India’s leather industry.

One of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, an agenda to be reached by 2030, acknowledges industrialization as a key driver of sustained economic sustainability and prosperity.

Li said UNIDO’s core mission had never been more relevant.

He said poverty, employment and hunger remain major challenges, exacerbated by climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation and the potential impact of new technology which will cut jobs, with women to be worst hit.

Africa remained a priority, but climate change meant thinking differently about manufacturing, particularly in low-lying small island nations with limited resources, he said.

Such nations import expensive crude oil to generate power, he said.

“I said to them ‘Open your eyes. Expand your vision.'” said Li. “If they could use renewable power, like solar or maybe tidal … they can manage their fishing industry, or tourism, and expand job creation.”

He said the Pacific island nations of Kiribati and the Marshall Islands had joined UNIDO in the past two years and others were keen to follow suit.

“Our work is very relevant to their economic development,” he said.

Migrating Birds Winter in Israel as Climate Change Makes Desert Too Dangerous

Climate change is turning Israel into a permanent wintering ground for some of the 500 million migrating birds that used to stop over briefly before flying on to the warm plains of Africa, Israeli experts say.

The birds now prefer to stay longer in cooler areas rather than cross into Africa, where encroaching deserts and frequent droughts have made food more scarce.

“In the last few decades Israel has become more than just a short stopover because many more birds and a greater number of species can no longer cross the desert,” said ornithologist Shay Agmon, avian coordinator for the wetlands park of Agamon Hula in northern Israel.

“They will stay here for longer and eventually the whole pattern of migration will change,” he said.

Cranes are one of the most abundant species to visit the Hula wetlands and Agmon said that the number that prefer to stay in Israel until the end of March has risen from less than 1,000 in the 1950s to some 45,000 currently.

Although migrating birds are a welcome attraction for ornithologists and tourists, their hunger for food from crop fields makes them a menace to farmers.

Workers at the lush Hula reserve, which lies in the Syrian-African Rift Valley, have lured the birds from surrounding fields by feeding them at the wetlands site and offering them a far more comfortable existence.

“It’s harder for the birds to cross a much larger desert and they just cannot do it. There is not enough fuel, there are not enough ‘gas stations’ on the way, so Israel has became their biggest ‘gas station,’ their biggest restaurant,” Agmon said.

Yossi Leshem, a zoology professor at Tel Aviv University and bird expert, cautioned that changes in migration patterns were also affecting the global food cycle because birds eat insects and also protect crops.

“If birds are not present, farmers will have to use more pesticides, which costs more money, kills birds, damages soil and contaminates the water. If one part of the environment is affected, the others collapse in a domino effect,” Leshem said.

Agmon said that because fewer species will be able to survive in traditional wintering grounds and more will spend winter further north, permanent human intervention will become ever more important in assisting nature.

“We will have to deal with it all the time. We will be in charge of the health and wellness of every species around us,” he said.

Diplomats Search for Way to Save Trade System After US Vetoes Judges

Diplomats are searching for ways to prevent the global trade dispute resolution system from freezing up, after the Trump administration blocked appointments to the body that acts as the supreme court for global trade.

U.S. President Donald Trump has vetoed the appointment of judges to fill vacancies on the seven-member Apellate Body of the World Trade Organization, which provides final decisions in arguments between countries over trade.

“Members are already having a conversation about what to do with this situation,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo told reporters. “They are floating ideas, they are discussing. We have to see how that evolves.”

The WTO normally has seven judges and needs three to sign off on every appeal ruling. But two have left and another goes in December, leaving only four — just one above the minimum — to deal with a growing backlog of trade disputes.

Azevedo said he did not think the situation was a threat to the WTO’s survival but it was already having an impact, and the longer it went on the more acutely it would be felt.

In a confidential note sent to all WTO members on Monday, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the Appellate Body said departing judges would continue working after they left on appeals filed before their terms ended. The United States has objected to that practice in the past.

Appointments to the Appellate Body are meant to be unanimously agreed by all 164 members, like all decisions at the WTO. The fine print says the WTO can switch to majority voting if necessary, but diplomats are reluctant to do that for fear of unravelling a system that relies on consensus as a bulwark to protectionism.

Azevedo said the Trump administration had made clear it had misgivings about the way the world trade system has functioned, although it had not linked any specific demands for reform with the decision to halt appointments to the appeals panel.

The Trump administration has not publicly explained why it is blocking the appointment of judges to the trade panel. The U.S. mission to the WTO in Geneva declined to comment.

‘True emergency’

Several trade experts said the move seemed to fit Trump’s ideology of favoring bilateral trade deals over the multi-lateral system embodied by the WTO.

Pieter Jan Kuijper, professor of law at the University of Amsterdam, said Trump’s trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, preferred the pre-WTO practice of negotiating the outcome of trade disputes rather than being bound by WTO rulings.

Although Trump regularly says Washington has been hurt by trade disputes, WTO experts mainly say the United States has actually been a big winner at the WTO. But negotiating the outcome of trade disputes rather than leaving them to judges might tip the balance further in Washington’s favor.

Kuijper compared Trump’s stance to that of Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe killing off the court of the Southern African Development Community by blocking new judges when the court became too troublesome.

“That example doesn’t make one optimistic,” he said. “We are in a true emergency where we should take into account that the end of the Appellate Body may come, either by design or by accident.”

Possible solutions

At a panel discussion Monday for trade officials and diplomats, Kuijper and other trade experts discussed possible ways to avert a crisis if more vacancies come open.

One solution would be to switch to majority voting for appointing judges. Another would be for the judges to change their own working procedures, refusing to take any more appeals until there are more judges.

Nicolas Lockhart, a trade lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP, suggested the WTO could use its arbitration process more to resolve disputes and rely less on appeals.

All three approaches have drawbacks, including the risk of further alienating the United States.

“A process that could lead to a situation where the United States leaves the WTO in a huff is actually a situation where everyone loses, and the last thing we should be aiming for,” said Alice Tipping, a former New Zealand trade diplomat now at the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development.

Bruno Mars Readies First TV Special

When Bruno Mars hit the stage for his first TV special, he could feel the music — in his bones and his veins — and it shows.

 

Mars’ energetic and slick dance moves and smooth vocals are at the forefront of “Bruno Mars: 24K Magic Live at the Apollo,” which debuts Wednesday on CBS at 10 p.m. Eastern. He recorded the special at the Apollo Theater in New York’s Harlem, performing the majority of his third album, “24K Magic.”

 

“You got to perform it a few times to get it in your bones, to get it right, to work out all the kinks … it’s never going to be right the first time to do it,” Mars said in a phone interview from South America, where he is on tour. “By the time we got to film at the Apollo, we were already a well-oiled machine.”

 

“People are going to get the best that I got,” he added.

 

Mars said he chose to film the one-hour special at the Apollo — which he calls “a magical place” — because of the venue’s rich history in music and pop culture.

 

“I remember growing up watching ‘Showtime at the Apollo’ before ‘X Factor’ and ‘American Idol’ — that was the singing competition show. It was pretty cut-throat. Either you got it and they would cheer you on, or you don’t and they’ll boo you off the stage,” he said. “And that’s just Entertainment 101, and you feel that when you get into that theater. This is where it all begins it feels like.”

 

Mars performed the song “24K Magic” on top of the Apollo marquee in the special. He also filmed various scenes throughout New York City, from eating at hot spots to meeting his fans: “The coolest part about that was the locals in Harlem, holding their arms out for you, (saying), ‘Yo Bruno, welcome to Harlem.”’

The last year for the 32-year-old has continued to push him to superstardom: “24K Magic” reached double platinum status, while the song “That’s What I Like” hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It’s the year’s top R&B song.

 

This month he won five Soul Train Awards and seven American Music Awards, including artist of the year. Mars picked up video of the year at the BET Awards, shared with Beyonce, and won his fifth Grammy Award earlier this year.

 

“Awards show — I don’t know where it’s going to swing,” he said. “It’s awesome … I feel like people understand what I’m doing and what I’m trying to do and what I stand for when it comes to everything — the music, the videos, I work hard for this (expletive).”

 

Mars said as he reflects a year after releasing the album that he feels good about the work he put in to create the ’90s R&B-inspired album.

 

“You can go crazy in the studio (and) start second- guessing,” he said. “‘That’s What I Like’ — I’m listening to it for over a year to make sure it’s all right and then we put it out and luckily it did what it did. It just confirms that I’m not crazy, maybe. It’s just nice that the work I put in the studio, it translated and I just got to remember that going into the next project.”

New Venezuela Oil Boss to Give Military More PDVSA Posts

A general appointed at the weekend to run Venezuela’s energy sector will name more military officers to senior management posts at state oil company PDVSA as part of a shakeup the government says is aimed at fighting corruption, two company sources told Reuters on Monday.

In a surprise move, unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday tapped Major General Manuel Quevedo to lead PDVSA and the Oil Ministry, giving the already powerful military control of the OPEC nation’s dominant industry.

Besides the corruption scandals, Quevedo will have to tackle an attempted debt restructuring, within the context of a deep recession and debilitating U.S. sanctions.

Sources in the sector said Quevedo’s appointment could quicken a white-collar exodus from PDVSA and worsen operational problems at a time when production has already tumbled to near 30-year lows of under 2 million barrels per day.

About 50 officials at state oil company PDVSA have been arrested since August in what the state prosecutor says is a “crusade” against corruption.

Sources within PDVSA and the oil industry said Maduro’s administration was using corruption allegations to sideline rivals and deepen its control of the industry, which accounts for over 90 percent of export revenue.

“The order given is to militarize PDVSA in key areas,” said a PDVSA employee, asking to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A second source said he was told military officials would take over key production divisions in Venezuela’s east and west.

Venezuela’s president, a former bus driver and union leader whose popularity has plummeted during the economic crisis, has gradually handed the military more power in his cabinet and in key sectors such as mining.

Unlike his popular predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro does not hail from the military. The opposition says he has been forced to buy the loyalty of the army, historically a power broker in Venezuela, giving them top posts and juicy business contracts while turning a blind eye to corruption.

PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an internal company message seen by Reuters called on workers to come to Caracas on Tuesday for Quevedo’s swearing in.

“Let’s all go to Caracas to consolidate the deepening of socialism and the total, absolute transformation of PDVSA,” the message read.

Increasing Military Sway

Quevedo, a former housing minister with no known energy experience, is not a heavyweight in Venezuela’s political scene, although two sources close to the military told Reuters he was a Maduro ally.

Opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado predicted the appointment would worsen PDVSA’s operations.

“They’re getting rid of the old executives, who although socialist and working under catastrophic management, at least knew about oil,” he said. “Now we’re going to have totally inexperienced hands.”

Although military appointees had been on the rise within the oil industry too, Quevedo’s appointment is the first time in a decade and a half that a military official has taken the helm of the oil industry.

PDVSA so far had been led by chemist Nelson Martinez and the Oil Ministry by engineer Eulogio Del Pino, both of whom rose in the ranks under previous PDVSA president and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez.

Later demoted to become Venezuela’s representative at the United Nations in New York, Ramirez recently criticized Maduro for not reforming Venezuela’s flailing economy, in what insiders say is a power struggle between the two rivals.

Oil Companies Worry

The opposition has also accused Quevedo of violating human rights during the National Guard’s handling of anti-Maduro protests, in which stone-throwing hooded youths regularly clashed with tear gas-firing soldiers.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio included Quevedo on a 2014 list of Venezuelan officials whom he said should be named in U.S. sanctions, although Quevedo does not appear in the list released by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Venezuela’s government denies abuses, saying protesters were in fact part of a U.S.-promoted “armed insurrection” designed to sabotage socialism in Latin America.

Quevedo’s appointment has worried foreign oil companies in Venezuela, including U.S. major Chevron and Russian state oil giant Rosneft, according to industry sources.

Venezuela is also trying to pull off a complex restructuring of foreign debt, including $60 billion in bonds, about half of which have been issued by PDVSA. Bondholders were invited to Caracas for a meeting with the government two weeks ago, but market sources say there has been no concrete progress or proposals since.

PDVSA said on Friday it was making last-minute payments on two bonds close to default, including one backed by shares in U.S.-based Citgo, a Venezuelan-owned refiner and marketer of oil and petrochemical products, due on Monday, and called for “trust” as it seeks to maintain debt service amid the crisis.

Quevedo’s position on the debt issue is not publicly known.

Houston Arts Groups Working to Recover From Hurricane Harvey

Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch looked flushed as he stood at the edge of the Hobby Center’s Sarofim Hall stage during a break in the company’s annual Jubilee of Dance performance.

The Houston Chronicle reports his military-style jacket seemed apt for the warrior’s role he has played in recent months, trying to keep his 59 dancers sharp and happy in their glittering costumes as he shuffles their performances in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

The audience had just seen a video describing how the ballet rebounded from damage to its $45 million studio building but lost its stage venue — the Wortham Theater Center — for what will likely be the entire season, forcing a season-long home town tour. And Welch wanted to convey the gargantuan effort it takes to produce world-class dancing, even as some of his weary staff members continue going home every night to flood-gutted messes.

Tears welled in his eyes.

“It’s still a very raw thing for all of us,” Welch said.

Leaders of Houston’s powerhouse performing arts companies have been more emotional than usual this fall. Worn to a nub from the scramble of relocating, rethinking and rescheduling shows because Houston’s Theater District was so severely damaged, they also need to convince Houstonians that their work is more meaningful and necessary than ever.

On the cusp of the all-important holiday entertainment season, a time when audiences typically flock to their productions, they are constantly comparing notes and watching their numbers. Never before have so many of the city’s cultural jewels looked so precarious at once.

The ballet, symphony, opera and Alley Theater each expect setbacks of millions of dollars as a result of the storm. Insurance will offset some of the losses, but ticket sales for the rest of the season remain a huge and critical unknown. Directors worry that people’s priorities have changed.

“The entire momentum of the city has been disrupted,” said Perryn Leech, Houston Grand Opera’s managing director. “Even if 10 percent of people don’t come back to the theater, when they get out of the habit of going out, that’s a challenge.”

Bobby Tudor, chairman of the Houston Symphony’s board of trustees and former chairman of the Board of the Society for the Performing Arts, said the storm’s effects underscore the fragility of the city’s arts organizations.

“The vast majority of them live from hand to mouth,” Tudor said during a panel discussion at a recent luncheon about the importance of Houston’s arts economy.

Arts organizations of all kinds across Houston’s 10-country region amount to a $1.1 billion industry that employs more than 25,000 people, but most of those companies operate dangerously close to the margins.

“At some point, you worry about making payroll — whether you’re a small contemporary dance company, a presenting organization or a big, multimillion dollar organization,” Tudor said. “Too often in the arts, we spend every single penny-plus of what we can raise in contributed income and philanthropy, and we have no cushion when bad things happen. And this was a bad thing.”

The Alley stands to lose an estimated $18 million — about the equivalent of an entire year’s operating budget. Managing director Dean Gladden said he hopes to recoup most of it through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (the Alley owns its building, which was insured) and fundraising.

On the plus side, tickets are selling well for “A Christmas Carol,” which marked the theater company’s return to its home. Its smaller, basement-level Neuhaus stage, which was flooded to the ceiling, is still under reconstruction but slated to reopen in late January.

The Houston Symphony, which closed for seven weeks and canceled 17 events at Jones Hall, could lose an estimated $3 million this season and up to $6 million during the coming three years, although it is back on track now with performances in Jones Hall. The company hopes to recover some lost revenue with a concert added to its season: A score performance and screening of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” a follow-up to last summer’s wildly successful “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” concert.

                   And returning theater and symphony audiences will be able to park nearby. The Theater District Garage, which took on 270 million gallons of floodwater, was expected to be operating again by late November.

 

But the Sugar Plum Fairy won’t be joining the downtown party this year.

Houston Ballet has had to move Welch’s massive new production of “The Nutcracker” to Sugar Land’s Smart Financial Center and downtown’s Hobby Center for 28 performances — 10 less than it usually presents at the Wortham. As a result, executive director Jim Nelson has lowered his team’s “Nutcracker” sales goal by $1.25 million this year, to $4 million.

On top of that hit, relocating the massive production — twice — will cost the company several hundred thousand dollars. The ballet has a deeper cushion than some of the other organizations, with an endowment that’s currently worth more than $76 million — the third largest among American ballet companies — although Nelson doesn’t want to rob it.

Deep-pocketed patrons have helped. Lynn Wyatt, for example, bought a traveling dance floor for Houston Ballet after the storm because the Hobby Center, where the ballet has staged several performances, wasn’t equipped with one.

“It’s tough,” Nelson said. “Costs are higher, and revenues are compromised. We will get through it, but now more than ever, we need community support.”

Leech said the opera has adjusted its ticket sale targets, too — and still not met them.

HGO spent more than $500,000 to create the makeshift Resilience Theater inside an exhibit hall of the George R. Brown Convention Center, where it has performed “La Traviata” and “Julius Caesar” and will premiere “The House Without a Christmas Tree” on Nov. 30. The acoustics aren’t great, and the orchestra has to sit behind the stage, but at least shows are going on, and artists are excelling in spite of the conditions.

Houston First, which operates the city-owned convention center, Wortham and Jones Hall, has shifted 27 clients to other spaces to accommodate the opera, also supplying some of the lighting and stage equipment, which it extracted from the empty Wortham.

Houston First president and CEO Dawn Ullrich expects the ballet will be performing at the convention center next year, too. Nelson said there were still details to iron out before he announces the remainder of his organization’s season, but the schedule will likely offer different ballets than originally planned, and on different dates.

The ballet has loss of revenue insurance, but the opera does not. Leech expects HGO’s setback could be as high as $15 million, well over half of its normal annual budget.

“I consider us to be part of the hurricane relief ask,” Leech said. “This is definitely a conversation with the people who have supported us: Do you want HGO to take a backward step? We as a city need to have the arts as part of the recovery plan. The arts are more important now than ever.”

Everyone expects it will take the companies three years to fully recover.

Amanda Dinitz, the symphony’s interim executive director and CEO, believes all arts organizations need to anticipate a shift in how people are spending discretionary income and prioritizing their donations now. But she remains optimistic about recovery from the storm.

“We’re confident that this community has a strong interest in not maintaining but continuing to build the quality of the arts,” she said.

The funding environment is challenging for arts organizations everywhere, even without storm issues.

Randy Cohen, vice president of research and policy at the nonprofit advocacy group Americans for the Arts, which produced the economic research, said he’s confident Houston’s theater community can turn lemons into lemonade. In other cities, forced relocations have helped entrenched groups in the long term.

“The arts are all about hope, aspiration and connectedness,” Cohen said. “Sometimes the urgency to do things differently can engage an audience in a community in a whole different way.”

Arts organizations across the country have stepped up to help, too. The Alley has received monetary donations from other theater companies. Major ballet companies in other cities have opened their costume and set coffers to their Houston colleagues.

The ballet’s annual Margaret Alkek Williams Jubilee of Dance (named for its underwriter) had to be staged earlier than normal. Welch instituted the annual showcase of rigorous dancing and season highlights more than a decade ago to give performers and serious ballet fans a break from the Nutcracker'' marathon that typically begins the day after Thanksgiving. This year,The Nutcracker” opens fairly far into the holiday period, on Dec. 10, in Sugar Land.

Welch lamented, along with the loss of the Wortham, a heartbreaking undoing of ballet history. The 15 feet of floodwater that filled the theater’s basement for several weeks destroyed costumes for 50 one-act ballets. That is a huge chunk of the company’s repertory, including seminal works by George Balanchine, Christopher Bruce, Mark Morris and other leading choreographers.

But Welch is adamant that the ballet will continue to present great art, a sentiment his cohorts at the theater, opera and symphony echo as they plead with Houstonians to buy tickets. Audiences are what they need most right now.

“When this storm hit us, we dusted ourselves off and picked ourselves up and came here to perform beautiful art for you,” Welch said. “We would like to say thank you for being patient with us, and for being here with us tonight. “The curtain behind him parted to reveal a stage full of people in costume and not — dancers, backstage artists, teachers, ticket sellers, accountants. “We are Houston Ballet,” Welch said, “and we are Houston strong.”

The audience stood and cheered.

 

Dictionary.com Chooses ‘Complicit’ as Its Word of the Year

Russian election influence, the ever-widening sexual harassment scandal, mass shootings and the opioid epidemic helped elevate the word “complicit” as Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2017.

 

Look-ups of the word increased nearly 300 percent over last year as “complicit” hit just about every hot button from politics to natural disasters, lexicographer Jane Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s formal announcement of the site’s pick.

 

“This year a conversation that keeps on surfacing is what exactly it means to be complicit,” she said. “Complicit has sprung up in conversations about those who speak out against powerful figures in institutions, and those who stay silent.”

 

The first of three major spikes for the word struck March 12. That was the day after “Saturday Night Live” aired a sketch starring Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump in a glittery gold dress peddling a fragrance called “Complicit” because: “She’s beautiful, she’s powerful, she’s complicit.”

 

The bump was followed by another April 5, also related to Ivanka, Solomon said. It was the day after she appeared on “CBS This Morning” and told Gayle King, among other things: “I don’t know what it means to be complicit.”

 

It was unclear at the time whether Ivanka was deflecting or whether the summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business — with a degree in economics — didn’t really know.

 

Another major spike occurred Oct. 24, the day Arizona Republican Jeff Flake announced from the Senate floor that he would not seek re-election, harshly criticizing President Donald Trump and urging other members of the party not to stand silently with the president.

 

“I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit,” Flake said.

 

Solomon noted that neither she nor Dictionary.com can know what sends people to dictionaries or dictionary sites to look up “complicit” or any other word. She and other lexicographers who study look-up behavior believe it’s likely a combination of people who may not know a definition, are digging deeper or are seeking inspiration or emotional reinforcement of some sort.

 

As for “complicit,” she said several other major events contributed to interest in the word. They include the rise of the opioid epidemic and how it came to pass, along with the spread of sexual harassment and assault allegations against an ever-growing list of powerful men, including film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

 

The scandal that started in Hollywood and quickly spread across industries has led to a mountain of questions over who knew what, who might have contributed and what it means to stay silent.

 

While Solomon shared percentage increases for “complicit,” the company would not disclose the number of look-ups, calling that data proprietary.

 

The site chooses its word of the year by heading straight for data first, scouring look-ups by day, month and year to date and how they correspond to noteworthy events, Solomon said. This year, a lot of high-volume trends unsurprisingly corresponded to politics. But the site also looks at lower-volume trends to see what other words resonated. Among them:

INTERSEX: It trended on Dictionary.com in January thanks to model Hanne Gaby Odiele speaking up about being intersex to break taboos. As a noun it means "an individual having reproductive organs or external sexual characteristics of both male and female.'' Dictionary.com traces its origins back to 1915, as the back formation of "intersexual.''

 
SHRINKAGE: While the word has been around since 1790, a specific definition tied to a famous 1994 episode of "Seinfeld'' led to a word look-up revival in February. That's when a house in The Hamptons where the episode was filmed went on the market. For the record: The Jason Alexander character George Costanza emerges with "shrinkage'' from a pool and said "shrinkage'' is noted by Jerry's girlfriend.

 
TARNATION: It had a good ride on Dictionary.com in the first few months of the year due to a round of social media fun with the "What in tarnation'' meme that had animals and various objects wearing cowboy hats.

 
HOROLOGIST: As in master clockmaker, like the one featured in the podcast "S-Town,'' the highly anticipated "This American Life'' follow-up to the popular "Serial'' podcast. All seven episodes of murder intrigue were released at once in March. Horologist, used in the radio story, trended around that time.

 
TOTALITY: There were look-up spikes in August. Thank you, solar eclipse and your narrow band of totality, meaning the strip of land where the sun was completely obscured by the moon.