There is a new word in the English language that all internet users should learn, because it may define the next stage in global financial transactions. It may not be translatable to many other languages so it may become an international term, much like “computer” or “internet,” used and understood around the world. The word is “blockchain,” and VOA’s George Putic explains its meaning.
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Month: December 2017
Study: Drought Caused California Mountains to Rise
A study of California’s Sierra Nevada during the state’s extreme drought has led NASA scientists to new conclusions about how our planet stores water.
The study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, found that the mountain range rose nearly 2.5 centimeters in height from October 2011 to October 2015, when the state experienced its most extended drought.
In the following two years, with abundant snow and rain, the range lost about half, or 1.3 centimeters, of its new height.
“This suggests that the solid Earth has a greater capacity to store water than previously thought,” study leader Donald Argus said in a statement released Wednesday.
“One of the major unknowns in mountain hydrology is what happens below the soil. How much snowmelt percolates through fractured rock straight downward into the core of the mountain?” said Jay Famiglietti, a Jet Propulsion Lab scientist who participated in the research. “This is one of the key topics that we addressed in our study.”
The scientists reasoned that the Earth’s surface sinks when it is weighed down with water and rebounds when the water evaporates or is otherwise lost.
The study used data from 1,300 Global Positioning System stations in the mountains of California, Oregon and Washington that were placed for measurement of subtle tectonic motion in active faults and volcanoes and can detect elevation changes of less than 0.3 centimeter.
The scientists determined that the water lost in the four-year drought was about 45 times the amount that Los Angeles uses in a year.
The study also took into account other reasons for the change in height of the mountain range that runs 644 kilometers along California’s border with Nevada, including tectonic uplift or the extensive pumping of groundwater during the drought.
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British Baby With Heart Outside Body Survives 3 Surgeries
English hospital officials said Wednesday that a baby born with her heart outside her body had survived three surgeries to mend her condition.
Glenfield Hospital in Leicester said Vanellope Hope Wilkins was born in late November with her heart growing on the outside of her body. The unusual condition is called ectopia cordis.
She underwent the first surgery to put her heart back inside her body within in an hour of her birth.
Dr. Nick Moore said the baby was in the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit.
Only eight babies in 1 million are born with ectopia cordis. The vast majority are stillborn or die within three days.
Cardiologists said they didn’t know of another case in Britain in which a baby had survived this condition. Several babies have survived the surgery in the United States, including Audrina Cardenas, who was born in Texas in 2012.
The English baby’s parents, Naomi Findlay and Dean Wilkins, told BBC news that they named their daughter after a character in the Disney movie Wreck-It Ralph.
“Vanellope in the film is a real fighter and at the end turns into a princess, so we thought it was fitting,” Findlay said.
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Microsoft Updates Bing Search to Highlight Reputable Results
Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out new features on its Bing search engine powered by artificial intelligence, including one that summarizes the two opposing sides of contentious questions, and another that measures how many reputable sources are behind a given answer.
Tired of delivering misleading information when their algorithms are gamed by trolls and purveyors of fake news, Microsoft and its tech-company rivals have been going out of their way to show they can be purveyors of good information — either by using better algorithms or hiring more human moderators.
Second-place search engine
Microsoft is also trying to distinguish its 2nd-place search engine from long-dominant Google and position itself as an innovator in finding real-world applications for the latest advances in artificial intelligence.
“As a search engine we have a responsibility to provide answers that are comprehensive and objective,” said Jordi Ribas, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for AI products.
Bing’s new capabilities are designed to give users more confidence that an answer is correct and save them time so they don’t have to click through multiple links to validate it themselves.
“You could be asking, ‘Is coffee good for you?’ We know that there are no good answers for that,” Ribas said. But the new search features side-by-side opposing perspectives. One source emphasizes coffee’s ability to increase metabolism and another shows it can raise blood pressure. Similar questions can also be asked on more sensitive topics, such as whether the death penalty is a good idea.
Digestible doses
On more complicated questions — is there a god? — Bing doesn’t have enough confidence to provide a pro-con perspective. But on questions that involve numbers, it boils information down into digestible doses. Iraq, for instance, is described as “about equal to the size of California.”
Search engines have evolved since Google took the lead at the turn of the 21st century, when rankings were based on “link analysis” that assigned credibility to sites based on how many other sites linked to them. As machines get better at reading and summarizing paragraphs, users expect not just a list of links but a quick and authoritative answer, said Harry Shum, who leads Microsoft’s 8,000-person research and AI division. To test its technology, the company has compared its machine-reading skills to the verbal score on the SAT.
“We are not at 800 yet, but we bypassed President Bush a long time ago,” Shum jokes.
Sophisticated searches
The demand for more sophisticated searches has also grown as people have moved from typing questions to voicing them on the road or in their kitchen.
“If you use Bing or Google nowadays you recognize that more and more often you’ll see direct answers on the top of search result pages,” Shum said. “We’re getting to the point that for probably about 10 percent of those queries we’ll see answers.”
Shum is hesitant to over-promise Bing’s new features as an antidote to the misinformation flooding the internet.
“At the end of the day, people have their own judgments,” he said.
The search engine features were announced along with updates to Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana and a new search partnership with the popular online forum Reddit.
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Ultra-rare Prince Vinyl ‘Black Album’ Resurfaces
One of the world’s rarest records has resurfaced — several vinyl copies of Prince’s “Black Album,” which the eccentric pop legend had demanded destroyed 30 years ago.
Recordmecca, a collector’s site owned by a former executive on Prince’s Warner Brothers label, on Wednesday was selling a coveted sealed vinyl copy of the album for $15,000.
The Purple Rain star, then at the height of his fame, in December 1987 sought to release music like no one had attempted before — sending it to stores completely secretly, without his name or any art on it.
Warner, with which he had legendary feuds, discouraged Prince but eventually relented and ordered the pressing of the vinyl — which has no actual title but was informally called the “Black Album” for its blank, dark cover.
But Prince soon afterward declared that he had a spiritual revelation that the album was “evil” and demanded the destruction of all copies.
Warner largely succeeded in seizing and destroying the more than 500,000 copies at their factories. But Recordmecca owner Jeff Gold, who worked with Prince at Warner, said he was recently contacted by a fellow former executive who came upon five copies.
Gold said that the executive, who requested anonymity, had been sending records to his own daughter, who had bought a first turntable amid vinyl’s rebirth.
Sifting through his collection, the executive discovered two envelopes distributed within Warner. Inside were five copies of the “Black Album.”
“For 30 years, the two mailers had sat unopened among their other boxed-up vinyl,” Gold wrote.
The former executive decided to sell three copies. Gold was offering one copy online, saying he already sold another one directly and would list the third one later.
Gold said he would attach certificates of authenticity.
Prince in late 1994 finally released the “Black Album” on limited-edition CDs and cassettes but not vinyl, making the record a holy grail for record collectors.
Prince resented Warner’s constraints and in the 1990s changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in hopes of getting out of contractual conditions.
He finally made peace with Warner in 2014 in a deal that gave him control over his classic albums. He died two years later at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota from an accidental overdose of painkillers.
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Glacier National Park Offers More Than Glaciers
There was a time — in this northwest corner of Montana — when glaciers ruled the land.
Crown of the Continent
The abundance of the massive rivers of ice — and their runoff — created “a land of striking scenery.” That’s how American anthropologist, historian, naturalist and writer George Bird Grinnell described Glacier National Park, nine years before the land was set aside as a national park on May 11, 1910.
Today, there are far fewer icy behemoths. And they’re all shrinking.
“There are currently 26 glaciers in Glacier National Park,” says national parks traveler Mikah Meyer. “I can’t remember the exact number that there were when it was founded but it was vastly higher,” he added. “The glaciers are melting and the snowfall is not restoring their size in the way that they have in past years.”
Melting glaciers
But the glaciers – both those long gone and those that still remain — have left their mark. As they started melting 10,000 years ago, they carved out majestic mountains, lush valleys, and pristine lakes.
Glacial waters are the headwaters for streams that flow west to the Pacific Ocean, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east across the continent to Hudson’s Bay, according to the National Park Service. It emphasizes that that runoff “affects waters in a huge section of North America.”
With more than 760 lakes and nearly half a million hectares of parkland, it’s easy to see why Mikah has returned.
“Five years ago I stood on this exact same spot; at the end of the dock on Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park,” he said as he stood in front of a landscape so serene, it could have passed as a painting.
“It was one of my first experiences with the National Park Service site and I was hooked,” he admitted.
Waters from those melting glaciers also feed Iceberg Lake — another popular attraction in the park. “It is very cold and very windy and lots of little icebergs floating back there by the snow,” Mikah said as he braved the winds to capture the scene with his camera.
But despite the cold, nearby wildflowers were in full bloom, creating a pastoral setting. As Mikah walked through a field of bear grass, he said he felt like he was “in some fairytale land.”
The elegant white blossoms are a common wildflower in Glacier National Park, which this year grew in prolific numbers. They provided a perfect environment to view the local wildlife, including deer, moose, marmots and mountain goats.
Generous tour companies
Mikah got lucky when several tour companies offered him a chance to explore the park from a variety of perspectives. With Red Bus Tours, Mikah got a nice overview of the park from their vintage 1930s buses.
“It’s a massive park — it takes an hour and a half just to cross it,” he noted. “So it’s a guided tour that allows you to focus on looking at the beauty of the park instead of having to stay on these tiny mountain roads.”
Swan Mountain Outfitters donated a horseback tour for an eight-hour trek to Cracker Lake, an eye-popping turquoise body of water which is also fed by melting glacial waters.
Mikah described the scene: “You crest over this hill on the horses and you’re in the middle, surrounded by bear grass and trees and flowers and these large gray mountains in the background, and it just pops like nothing else.”
And thanks to Montana Whitewater Rafting, Mikah got to experience those glacial waters up close during a rafting tour on the Middle Fork River — a 150-kilometer river in western Montana that forms the southwestern boundary of the park.
“It was a very clear river,” Mikah said, since the water was a combination of glacier melt and snow runoff. “So you could see down through the water to the bottom, see the rocks, and the fish, so very pure, very clear water.”
Mikah was pleased to have experienced the park from the depths of the water as well as from the top of a ski lift where he could see “where it all started.”
Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all 417 national parks in the U.S., says he hopes to come back again one day, even if the glaciers are gone.
“Even if the physical glaciers don’t still exist because they melted away, it can still be Glacier National Park because that’s what created this amazing landscape.”
Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website MikahMeyer.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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A Landscape Carved in the Last Ice Age
How many places are there in the U.S. where visitors get to see nature in all its abundance within a single setting? National parks traveler Mikah Meyer thinks Glacier National Park, in northern Montana on the border with Canada, comes pretty darn close. He shared highlights of his experiences with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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US Central Bank Raises Interest Rate Slightly
The U.S. central bank raised its key interest rate slightly Wednesday, but left the level low enough to continue stimulating economic growth.
The Federal Reserve pushed up rates a quarter of a percent to a range between 1.25 and 1.5 percent. The increase leaves the benchmark rate below historic averages.
The Fed slashed rates nearly to zero during the recession in a bid to boost the economy and fight unemployment by making it cheaper to borrow the money needed to build factories, buy equipment and hire people.
Janet Yellen, at her last press conference as chair of the Federal Reserve, said economic growth is “solid” as business investment and overseas demand grow. She said the impact of tax changes working their way through Congress is “uncertain” but would probably give a “modest lift” to the economy over the next few years. Fed officials are expected to continue raising interest rates gradually.
The recession ended and expansion resumed in 2009. Unemployment was cut from 10 percent to the current 4.1 percent and the Fed eventually decided the recovering economy needed less assistance and started raising rates. Leaving interest rates too low for too long could overstimulate the economy and spark a sharp increase in prices.
The newest U.S. inflation data came out Wednesday, showing that prices rose 2.2 percent during the past 12 months. Outside the volatile areas of food and energy, the overall economy expanded at a 1.7 percent annual rate. That so-called “core” rate remains below the 2 percent rate that Fed experts think is best for economic growth.
Some analysts predict the Fed will raise rates a couple more times next year as experts balance the need to boost growth against worries that inflation could jump out of control.
Trump Administration Calls for Government IT to Adopt Cloud Services
The White House said Wednesday the U.S. government needs a major overhaul of information technology systems and should take steps to better protect data and accelerate efforts to use cloud-based technology.
“Difficulties in agency prioritization of resources in support of IT modernization, ability to procure services quickly, and technical issues have resulted in an unwieldy and out-of-date federal IT infrastructure,” the White House said in a report.
The report outlined a timeline over the next year for IT reforms and a detailed implementation plan. The report said one unnamed cloud-based email provider has agreed to assist in keeping track of government spending on cloud-based email migration.
President Donald Trump in April signed an executive order creating a new technology council to overhaul the U.S. government’s information technology systems.
The report said the federal government must eliminate barriers to using commercial cloud-based technology. “Federal agencies must consolidate their IT investments and place more trust in services and infrastructure operated by others,” the report found. Government agencies often pay dramatically different prices for the same IT item, the report said, sometimes three or four times as much.
Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Corp’s Google and Intel Corp are making big investments in the fast-growing cloud computing business.
A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report estimated the U.S. government spends more than $80 billion on IT annually but said spending has fallen by $7.3 billion since 2010.
In 2015, there were at least 7,000 separate IT investments by the U.S. government. The $80 billion figure does not include Defense Department classified IT systems and 58 independent executive branch agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency.
The GAO report said U.S. government IT investments “are becoming increasingly obsolete: many use outdated software languages and hardware parts that are unsupported.”
The GAO report found some agencies are using systems that have components that are at least 50 years old.
Agencies typically buy their own IT systems independently, the White House said Wednesday. A “lack of common standards and lack of coordination drives costly redundancies and inefficiencies.”
The White House said in June that most of the government’s 6,100 data centers can be consolidated and moved to a cloud-based storage system.
Various U.S. government systems have been the target of hacking and data breaches in recent years. In September, the Securities and Exchange Commission, America’s chief stock market regulator, said cybercriminals may have used data stolen last year.
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Half of World’s People Can’t get Basic Health Services: WHO
At least half the world’s population is unable to access essential health services and many others are forced into extreme poverty by having to pay for healthcare they cannot afford, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.
Some 800 million people worldwide spend at least 10 percent of their household income on healthcare for themselves or a sick child, and as many as 100 million of those are left with less than $1.90 a day to live on as a result, the WHO said.
In a joint report with the World Bank, the United Nations health agency said it was unacceptable that more than half the world’s people still don’t get the most basic healthcare.
“If we are serious – not just about better health outcomes but also about ending poverty – we must urgently scale up our efforts on universal health coverage,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement with the report.
Anna Marriott, health policy advisor for the international aid agency Oxfam, said the report was a “damning indictment” of governments’ efforts on health.
“Healthcare, a basic human right, has become a luxury only the wealthy can afford,” she said in a statement.
“Behind each of these appalling statistics are people facing unimaginable suffering – parents reduced to watching their children die; children pulled out of school so they can help pay off their families’ health care debts; and women working themselves into the ground caring for sick family members.”
The WHO and World Bank report did have some positive news: This century has seen a rise in the number of people getting services such as vaccinations, HIV/AIDS drugs, and mosquito-repelling bednets and contraception, it said.
But there are wide gaps in the availability of services in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, the report found. In other regions, basic services such as family planning and child immunization are more available, but families are suffering financially to pay for them.
Yong Kim said this was a sign that “the system is broken”.
“We need a fundamental shift in the way we mobilize resources for health and human capital, especially at the country level,” he said.
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Sweet Victory: French Candymakers Win China Legal War
Revenge is sweet for the makers of France’s traditional “calisson” candies, who have won a months-long legal battle with a businessman who trademarked the product’s name in China.
The lozenge-shaped sweets, made of a mixture of candied fruit and ground almonds topped with icing, are widely enjoyed in France’s southern Aix-en-Provence region.
Their makers were none too pleased when Chinese entrepreneur Ye Chunlin spotted a sweet opportunity in 2015 to register the “Calisson d’Aix” name for use at home, as well as its Mandarin equivalent, “kalisong”.
The trademark was set to be valid until 2026, sparking angst among Provence’s sweetmakers who worried Ye’s move could have barred them from entering the huge Chinese market.
But China’s copyright office rejected Ye’s claim to the brand name in a decision seen by AFP on Wednesday, which said his request to use the label “could confuse consumers on the origin of the products”.
Laure Pierrisnard, head of the union of calisson makers in Aix, hailed the news as “a real victory”.
The union has fought the case for months in the name of 12 sweetmakers, accusing Ye of “opportunism.”
It is not uncommon for Western brands to try to crack the Chinese market only to find that their name or trademark has been registered by a local company.
An enterprising Chinese businessman in 2007 registered the brand name “IPHONE” for use in leather products, to the great displeasure of Apple, which lost a court case against him.
The courts similarly backed a Chinese company that wanted to use the name of sneaker brand New Balance.
Ye, who is from the eastern province of Zhejiang, did not respond to the French sweetmakers’ objections to Chinese authorities.
But he insisted in late 2016 that he acted in good faith, telling AFP he was “a salesman who does business within the rules.”
As far as French producers are aware, calissons have never rolled off a factory line in China.
Some makers, dreaming of the international success enjoyed by their rival the macaron, are seeking to expand abroad, including to the enticing Chinese market.
The Roy Rene chain – owned by Olivier Baussan, the entrepreneur behind Province’s best known brand internationally, L’Occitane cosmetics — has stores in Miami and Canada, and is eyeing Dubai.
The company says it has been contacted by several investors over the course of the Chinese court case seeking to bring the sweets to China.
The affair has also re-energized makers of the dainty candies in their bid for special European status as a product that comes specifically from Provence.
Beijing has already recognized the status of 10 such European foods, including France’s Comte and Roquefort cheeses and Italy’s Parma ham, as well as 45 different wines from Bordeaux.
Aix-en-Provence produces about 800 tons of calissons every year.
Tanzania Orders Tighter Controls on Currency, Bank Crackdown as Growth Slows
Tanzanian president John Magufuli ordered the central bank on Wednesday to tighten controls on the movement of hard currency and take swift action against failing banks in a bid to tackle financial crimes and protect the local shilling currency.
The move comes as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called on Tanzania to speed up reforms and spend more to prevent a slowdown in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Magufuli pledged to reform an economy hobbled by red tape and corruption and begin a program to develop public infrastructure after he was elected in 2015.
“We now have some 58 banks in Tanzania, the [central] Bank of Tanzania should closely monitor these banks and take swift action against failing institutions. It’s better to have a few viable banks than many failing banks,” he said in a statement issued by his office.
“I also want restrictions on the use of U.S. dollars. As I speak, $1 million cash was confiscated at the … [main] airport in Dar es Salaam and there is no explanation on the movement of this money into the country. We have to be careful.”
Magufuli said his government was taking several monetary policy measures to improve lending to the private sector, and this had already started to ease pressure on shilling liquidity.
The IMF said late on Tuesday that Tanzania’s banking sector remained well-capitalized, but some small and mid-sized banks face a sizable reduction in capitalization ratios.
It said that progress has been slow, while a lack of public spending — coupled with private sector concerns over policy uncertainty — was curtailing growth in East Africa’s third-biggest economy.
“Improvements in the business environment — policy predictability based on a strong dialog with the private sector, regulatory reforms, timely payment of value-added tax [VAT] and other tax refunds, and eliminating domestic arrears — must be pursued with urgency,” the IMF said late on Tuesday.
Tanzania’s economy grew at an annual rate of 6.8 percent in the first half of this year from 7.7 percent in the same period in 2016.
The economy has been growing at around 7 percent annually for the past decade, but the World Bank said in November growth will likely slow to 6.6 percent in 2017.
The IMF said a sharp fall in lending to the private sector, prompted by high non-performing loans, pointed to a continued slowdown in growth.
In June, the IMF said Tanzania may have to delay implementing some of its infrastructure projects because its revenue expectations for 2017-2018 may not be achieved.
In a bid to profit from its long coastline, Tanzania wants to spend $14.2 billion over the next five years to build a 2,560 km (1,590 mile) railway network, part of plans that also include upgrading ports and roads to serve growing economies in the region.
The IMF said subdued government revenue collection and delays in securing financing for projects have held back development spending and hurt economic growth.
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Growing Levels of E-Waste Bad for Environment, Health and Economy
A new report finds growing levels of E-waste pose significant risks to the environment and human health and result in huge economic losses for countries around the world. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from the launch of the International Telecommunication Union report in Geneva.
The global information society is racing ahead at top speed. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reports nearly half of the world uses the internet and most people have access to mobile phones, laptops, televisions, refrigerators and other electronic devices.
But ITU E-waste Technical Expert, Vanessa Gray, said the ever-increasing expansion of technology is creating staggering amounts of electronic waste.
“In 2016, the world generated a total of 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste—that is, electronic and electrical equipment that is discarded,” Gray said. “So, that basically everything that runs on a plug or on a battery. This is equivalent to about 4,500 Eiffel Towers for the year.”
The report found Asia generates the greatest amounts of E-waste, followed by Europe and the Americas. Africa and Oceania produce the least.
Gray warned improper and unsafe treatment and disposal of e-waste pose significant risks to the environment and human health. She noted that low recycling rates also result in important economic losses, because high value materials – including gold, silver, copper – are not recovered.
“We estimate that the value of recoverable material contained in the 2016 e-waste is no less than $55 billion US, which is actually more than the Gross Domestic Product in many of the world’s countries,” Gray said.
The report calls for the development of proper legislation to manage e-waste. It says a growing number of countries are moving in that direction. Currently, it says 66 percent of the world population, living in 67 countries, is covered by national e-waste management laws.
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Waddling into History: Huge Ancient Penguin Inhabited New Zealand
Scientists have unearthed in New Zealand fossil bones of what might be the heavyweight champion of the penguin world, a bird nearly 6 feet tall (1.77 meters) that thrived 55 to 60 million years ago, relatively soon after the demise of the dinosaurs.
Researchers said on Tuesday the ancient penguin, called Kumimanu biceae, weighed nearly 225 pounds (101 kg), and was much bigger than the largest of these flightless seabirds alive today, the emperor penguin, which grows to about 4-1/4 feet (1.2 meters) and about 90 pounds (40 kg).
The only ancient penguin yet discovered that might have been larger than Kumimanu is known only from a leg bone, said ornithologist Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt.
“Gigantism in penguins evolved more than once,” Mayr said.
Kumimanu, named after a creature from Maori folklore and the Maori word for bird, is the second-oldest known penguin. The older one, also from New Zealand, was 61 million years old.
Kumimanu’s partial skeleton lacks the skull. Mayr said other fossils indicate that the earliest penguins possessed much longer beaks than their modern relatives, useful for spearing fish.
“It would have been very impressive: as tall as many people, and a very solid, muscly animal built to withstand frequent deep dives to catch its prey,” said Alan Tennyson, vertebrate curator at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, another of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
“It would not have been the kind of bird that someone could catch alive. It would have been considerably more powerful than a person.”
Kumimanu and other early penguins had already developed typical penguin features including flipper-like wings and an upright stance. Studies suggest early penguins were brownish, not the trademark black and white of today’s penguins, Mayr said.
Penguins are thought to have evolved from a flying ancestor perhaps resembling a cormorant, Mayr said. The asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago also eliminated the large marine reptiles that dominated the seas, clearing the way for fish-eating divers like penguins.
Kumimanu lived long before Antarctica’s glaciation. At the time, New Zealand and Antarctica were subtropical.
“It’s a common myth that penguins only live in very cold environments such as the Antarctic region,” Tennyson said.
“Today, Galapagos penguins live at the equator, and many fossils show that early forms of penguins lived in warm seas.”
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US, EU, Japan Slam Market Distortion in Swipe at China
The United States, European Union and Japan vowed Tuesday to work together to fight market-distorting trade practices and policies that have fueled excess production capacity, naming several key features of China’s economic system.
In a joint statement that did not single out China or any other country, the three economic powers said they would work within the World Trade Organization and other multilateral groups to eliminate unfair competitive conditions caused by subsidies, state-owned enterprises, “forced” technology transfer and local content requirements.
The move was a rare show of solidarity with the United States at a World Trade Organization meeting dominated by differences over U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade agenda and U.S. efforts to stall the appointment of WTO judges.
It reflected growing frustration among industrial countries over China’s trade practices, along with concerns that other developing countries will follow Beijing’s lead.
The statement said protectionist practices “are serious concerns for the proper functioning of international trade, the creation of innovative technologies and the sustainable growth of the global economy.”
EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said China’s industry subsidies, including for aluminum and steel, were flooding global markets and hurting European workers in a “very, very dramatic” way.
“There’s no secret that we think that China is a big sinner here, but there are other countries that are as well,” Malmstrom told reporters on the sidelines of a business forum.
In the opening session of the WTO ministerial conference in Buenos Aires on Monday, the United States and Japan criticized a lack of transparency in some WTO members’ trade practices, a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing.
China, meanwhile, appealed for members to “join hands” and uphold WTO rules to protect globalization in the face of rising protectionism.
The joint statement came after Japan approached the European Union and the United States about overcapacity, according to an EU source, with both Tokyo and Brussels concerned about the possibility the Trump administration could act unilaterally.
“There is a thought that if we bring them into the fold, and can work jointly with them, then it reduces the risk of them going alone,” the source said.
’Playing by the rules’
Washington, Brussels and Tokyo have previously raised complaints about China’s excess production capacity in a number of industrial sectors that has pushed down world prices and caused layoffs elsewhere.
The United States recently sided with the EU in arguing that such distortions mean the WTO should not grant China market economy status, a move that would severely weaken their trade defenses.
“We have been … reaching out to China to tell them they really must start playing by the rules,” Malmstrom told reporters.
The EU’s and Japan’s willingness to cooperate with the Trump administration comes despite disagreements over the role of the WTO and the future of multilateral trade deals.
Trump has expressed his preference for bilateral negotiations, and his trade rhetoric has cast a cloud over the WTO meeting.
Efforts on Tuesday to make progress on a ministerial statement from all 164 WTO members were unsuccessful, since one country could not agree on the language, WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told reporters, declining to name that country.
U.S. officials last month blocked WTO efforts to draft a statement of unity over the “centrality” of the global trading system and the need to aid development.
A spokeswoman for the office of the U.S. trade representative could not be immediately reached for comment.
The Trump administration is considering several unilateral tariff actions on steel, aluminum and China’s intellectual property practices that are likely to draw disputes from WTO members.
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‘A Fantastic Woman’ Director Celebrates Golden Globe Nod
Director Sebastian Lelio feels that A Fantastic Woman has gone beyond the cinematic experience with its social message, to a great extent thanks to the performance of its star, Daniela Vega.
The film follows Marina, a transgender woman who, after the passing of her older lover, is mistreated by his family and the police officers investigating his death. It is Chile’s selection for the Academy Awards and on Monday was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the best foreign film category.
“I am very proud of Daniela, of how she faced the challenge of a movie that not only meant an absolute leading role … that goes through an emotional spectrum, but that in addition flies, faces windstorms, sings two operatic arias. In short, it’s a polytonal role of great complexity and she … didn’t have much experience, so it was an all-or-nothing betting,” Lelio told The Associated Press in a phone interview shortly after the Globes nominations were announced.
“It was very beautiful to see how she gave herself completely and played this character with such complexity and beauty,” he added about Vega, whose performance has received Oscars buzz. If she is nominated next month, it would be the first Oscar nomination for a transgender actress.
“Somehow Daniela’s presence and the power that her body brings are the heart of the movie and it has been very nice and exciting to witness how she has become a voice not only of the movie but a sort of symbol of everything that is fragile, cornered,” said Lelio. “In some ways this is when cinema surpasses cinema and gets in the social fabric, and that is very powerful.”
A winner in Berlin
A Fantastic Woman debuted last February at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for best feature film as well as the Silver Bear for its screenplay, written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza. Among other honors, it has also been nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Lelio is in Los Angeles filming an English version of his acclaimed 2013 film Gloria, starring Oscar-winner Julianne Moore.
“It has been very exciting to be able to revisit what’s universal in the story and see a performer as powerful as Julianne Moore playing this role,” he said.
For now, he is savoring the Globes nomination, where A Fantastic Woman will compete against Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father (Cambodia), In the Fade (Germany/France), Loveless (Russia) and The Square (Sweden/Germany/France).
“It’s a joy for the team, for everyone who made this movie, to be among this select group of such powerful movies that have been selected,” the director said.
As for Vega, he said: “I spoke to her this morning and she was very happy with the news. She is already getting her dress.”
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Afreximbank Pledges Up to $1.5B to Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe
The African Export and Import Bank has pledged up to $1.5 billion in new loans and financial guarantees to Zimbabwe in a major boost for new President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, the bank’s president and chairman said Tuesday.
Mnangagwa, who took over last month after veteran autocrat Robert Mugabe quit following a de facto military coup, has vowed to focus on reviving the struggling economy and provide jobs in a nation with an unemployment rate exceeding 80 percent.
Afreximbank was the only international lender that stood by Zimbabwe throughout Mugabe’s repressive 37-year rule, but its quick announcement of a fresh package of loans and guarantees appeared to be a vote of confidence in the new government.
Cairo-based Afreximbank was a major funder of Zimbabwe while the country was cut off from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for having defaulted on its debt in 1999.
Bank president and chairman Okey Oramah told reporters after a meeting with Mnangagwa and senior government officials that Afreximbank would provide $150 million to local banks to help them pay for outstanding critical imports.
“We also discussed a number of other areas that involve additional investment from us for something that will be in the order of $1 billion to $1.5 billion that will include certain kinds of guarantees to encourage investors to come to Zimbabwe.
“We … want to make sure that we support the stabilization of the economy, that means providing liquidity to make sure that the situation where people are rushing every time to look for cash is dealt with,” Oramah said.
In August, before Mugabe’s ouster, Afreximbank provided $600 million to help Zimbabwe pay for imports and $300 million to allow it to print more “bond notes,” a quasi-currency that officially trades on par with the U.S. dollar.
Zimbabwe has a foreign debt of more than $7 billion and in September said it would not be able to pay $1.8 billion in arrears to the World Bank and African Development Bank until economic fundamentals improved.
The southern African nation, which dumped its hyperinflation-hit currency in 2009, is struggling with a severe dollar crunch that has seen banks fail to avail cash to customers while importers struggle to pay for imports.
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa promised in a budget speech last week to re-engage with international lenders, curb spending and attract investors to revive the economy.
On Tuesday, Chinamasa described Afreximbank as a “pillar of strength” and said the economy was “in for some very good times.”
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Trump’s Climate Politics Propel US Scientist to New Start in France
When U.S.-based scientist Christopher Cantrell heard President Donald Trump pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, he did not imagine that six months later he would be shaking the French leader’s hand and starting anew in France.
Hours after Trump’s announcement in June, President Emmanuel Macron made a dramatic TV announcement in English, responding that he would not give up the fight against climate change and adding in a dig: “Make our planet great again.”
That later became the name of a research grant program sponsored by the French presidency to attract U.S.-based scientists — like Cantrell, 62, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It was all over the news in the United States and on social media,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a summit in Paris marking the Paris accord’s two year anniversary.
“I found out about a week ago that I was successful. This is going to be fun,” he said.
Moving for the funding
For Cantrell, the decision to move to France is not a political one, but a response to a gradual decline in public funds in his field, which he did not expect to get better under Trump.
“I’ve been disappointed with this whole administration, as to how they … view the world of science and policy-making,” Cantrell said.
“I wouldn’t say I’m coming to France to get away from the Trump administration, but it was an opportunity that wasn’t available in the United States,” he added.
Macron, who repeatedly tried to persuade the U.S. leader to reverse his decision, also sees an opportunity to raise the profile of French research institutes and attract top talent.
‘World-class’
Some 1,822 researchers applied for the program, the French presidency said, with almost two thirds of them coming from the United States.
Thirteen of the initial 18 grants awarded on Monday were given to U.S.-based scientists, including some from prominent Ivy League universities such as Princeton, Stanford and Harvard.
A second batch of grants will be awarded early next year.
Cantrell, who works on air quality and what happens to pollution when the atmosphere tries to process it, will be based at the University of Paris-Est in the suburb of Creteil. He will study the Paris plume — the cloud of pollution that regularly shrouds the French capital.
“This laboratory that I’m going to be associated with has world-class expertise, state-of-the-art computer models to simulate the atmosphere, so this place I’m going to is actually perfect for the kind of work I’m interested in,” he said.
Salary covered for five years
The 1.5-million-euro ($1.76-million) French grant means the constant hunt for funds to finance his research that was part of his daily life in the U.S. was now less of a concern.
“It’s been tough. Now I’ll be able to not have to worry about that part of it. My salary is covered for five years, I can focus on science,” he said.
He and his wife are now busy brushing up on their French.
“I came for a week to visit the lab, see the kind of things they did, I got to meet the staff, English works fine for all the people that work there,” he said.
A Breakthrough Year for Brooklynn Prince of ‘The Florida Project’
Seven-year-old Brooklynn Prince is sitting in a darkened TV studio with lights, cameras and control panels all around her. “Mission to Mars, mission to Mars,” she says. “This is Apollo.”
Brooklynn, the cheerful star of “The Florida Project,” has indeed lifted off. Her performance as Moonee, a brash, trouble-making pipsqueak living with her mom (Bria Vinaite) in a low-rent Orlando motel, may be the most spirited thing of 2017. Brooklynn is the exuberant energy at the center of one the year’s most acclaimed films, and some believe she should be the youngest Oscar nominee ever. Brooklynn included.
“I really want to be nominated,” she says. “Even if I get close to nominated, that’s a real honor.”
But she’d also — maybe even more so — really like to meet Emma Watson and Elle Fanning.
“They have been my girls for years,” she says.
None of the year’s breakthrough performers has enjoyed their moment more than Brooklyn. She has shot a selfie with Gary Oldman, shaken hands with Adam Sandler and met Margot Robbie, whom she confirms was “super-duper nice.”
“I never thought I would have this chance,” Brooklynn says. “It’s this crazy little movie that’s everywhere.”
She has Instagramed, Snapchatted and tweeted her adventures, from the Cannes Film Festival to the recent Gotham Awards, by borrowing her parents’ phones. She carries pins for homeless awareness with her to give away as a way to magnify the message of “The Florida Project.”
“I’ve always said: It doesn’t matter how small you are or what age you are to change the world. You can get into the business anytime. I was two when I got into the business,” says Brooklynn, the veteran. “Now I know that this is really what I want. My mom and dad aren’t pushing me for this. It’s what I want. Acting is, like, my life and I want to keep doing it forever.”
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‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Mostly Finds Its Force With Critics
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” won warm reviews from most critics on Tuesday, a day before the latest installment in the sci-fi saga begins hitting movie theaters worldwide in what is projected to be the biggest-grossing movie of 2017.
The Walt Disney Co. movie received four or five stars from most reviewers, along with praise for its energy and emotion. “The Last Jedi” scored a 94 percent “fresh” rating on aggregator site RottenTomatoes.com.
The film, arriving in movie theaters from Dec. 13, picks up from 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which took in more than $2 billion at the global box office to become the third-biggest-grossing movie of all time.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, “The Last Jedi” kicks off with the Resistance fighting Supreme Leader Snoke’s First Order, which is trying to take control of the galaxy.
The movie features the final appearance of Carrie Fisher, who plays the franchise’s Princess Leia. The actress died at age 60 last December, weeks after completing filming.
Numerous critics including The Hollywood Reporter felt that at 2-1/2 hours, the movie’s run time was a little too long. But the Hollywood Reporter added, “there’s a pervasive freshness and enthusiasm to Johnson’s approach that keeps the film, and with it the franchise, alive, and that is no doubt what matters most.”
The London Times newspaper deemed it the best “Star Wars” movie yet, calling it a “film of wit and wonder, of eye-gouging visual spectacle, and one that is buttressed by entirely unexpected, and frequently devastating, emotional power.”
Entertainment Weekly said “The Last Jedi” was a “triumph with flaws,” while USA Today said it was “a stellar entry” in the “Star Wars” franchise.
The Washington Post praised the film’s “irreverent humor and worshipful love for the original text.”
Variety was among a handful of less enthusiastic reviews, calling the film “ultimately a disappointment.” CNN said “Last Jedi” felt “like a significant letdown, one that does far less than its predecessor to stoke enthusiasm for the next leg in the trilogy.”
Before the reviews were out, Boxoffice.com projected that “Last Jedi” would haul in $185 million to $215 million in North America in its first weekend, which would rank as one of the biggest film debuts in history.
Disney said in November that Johnson will oversee a new trilogy of “Star Wars” films that will not follow the Skywalker saga, which George Lucas kicked off in 1977.