For every person who just loves James Bond, it’s the perfect gift. A very nice, stylish pair of shoes, that just happen to be full of high-tech hidden compartments. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Month: December 2017
Fans Say Farewell to S. Korean Singer Who Died in Suspected Suicide
Grief-stricken fans braved Seoul’s winter cold on Thursday to bid farewell to Kim Jong-hyun, the lead singer of top South Korean boy band SHINee, who died in hospital in a suspected suicide.
Weeping, wailing and embracing one another, young men and women dressed in grey and black lined the road as the hearse carrying Kim’s coffin left the hospital.
“I am so sad that I cannot even cry. My heart aches so much”, 18-year-old Chinese fan Chen Jialin said.
Fellow singers, including SHINee’s Minho and members of bands Super Junior and Girls’ Generation, joined the funeral procession.
Kim, 27, was found unconscious next to burning briquettes on a frying pan inside a serviced residence in Seoul on Monday, police told Reuters.
Yonhap news agency had reported that the singer sent a final message to his sister asking her to “let me go.”
Kim spent nearly a decade as one of five members of SHINee, one of the most popular bands in the country, as well as a solo artist. His death was a massive blow to the worldwide fan base that Korea’s K-pop music has attracted in recent years.
K-pop is the rage in Asia and other continents, with a song by the group BTS maintaining a spot on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks as of the end of November.
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New York Gets Ready for Christmas
Cities around the United States are getting ready for Christmas. And when it comes to the season’s decorations, New York City stands out for turning Manhattan’s streets into a big, dazzling holiday display. Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Thailand Battles Drug-Resistant Malaria Strains
While progress has been made against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease kills more than 420,000 people each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, drug-resistant malaria strains in Southeast Asia could threaten the global fight against the disease. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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Clifford Irving, Author of Howard Hughes Literary Hoax, Dies at 87
Clifford Irving, whose scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the 1970s and stands as one of the all-time literary hoaxes, died after being admitted to hospice care. He was 87.
Irving’s wife, Julie Irving, confirmed that he died Tuesday at a hospice near his Sarasota home, The New York Times reported. She said he had been admitted there after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week earlier.
A novelist of little note in 1971, Irving conned McGraw-Hill publishers into paying him a $765,000 advance for a book about the reclusive Hughes. His elaborate ruse became the subject of the 2006 movie “The Hoax,” starring Richard Gere.
Irving served 17 months in federal prison for fraud after Hughes emerged to condemn the work as a fabrication. The bogus autobiography wasn’t published until 1999, when it was printed as a private edition.
‘It became an adventure’
The scam “was exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure,” Irving told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.
The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography “the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century.” Time magazine dubbed Irving “Con Man of the Year” in a 1972 cover story.
Irving said the idea of fabricating an autobiography of Hughes came to him after reading a magazine article about the billionaire’s eccentric lifestyle. Hughes’ hermit-like obsession with his privacy all but guaranteed that the “gorgeous literary caper” would succeed, Irving wrote in “The Hoax,” his 2006 account of the scheme.
“Hughes would never be able to surface to deny it, or else he wouldn’t bother,” he wrote.
Rising skepticism
At the time of the hoax, Hughes had long withdrawn from his life as a powerful industrialist, aviator and filmmaker. He reportedly lived the final 10 years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, in near-total seclusion, even neglecting personal hygiene to avoid contact with the outside world.
Hughes’ intense aversion to publicity gave rise to skepticism about Irving’s claims to have interviewed the billionaire.
Irving insisted that he had several clandestine meetings with Hughes. He submitted to a lie-detector test and produced documents purportedly from the billionaire, including a handwritten letter written to McGraw-Hill.
The letter, forged by Irving, was deemed authentic by handwriting analysts hired by McGraw-Hill. At that point, the publisher decided to move forward with the book.
Irving put the cash advance into a Swiss bank account, opened in the name Helga R. Hughes.
The unraveling
The deception unraveled when investigative reporter James Phelan, writing a book about Hughes, recognized passages of his work in an excerpt from Irving’s manuscript of the autobiography.
Hughes himself then surfaced to conduct a telephone conference with reporters during which he repudiated Irving’s story and said that he never met him. His lawyer sued Irving and his publisher.
At the urging of McGraw-Hill, Swiss authorities investigated the Helga R. Hughes bank account and learned that the deposits had been made by Irving’s wife, Edith.
Irving and his collaborator, Richard Suskind, were indicted on fraud charges and were found guilty in June 1972. In addition to his prison term, Irving returned the $765,000 advance to McGraw-Hill. Suskind was sentenced to six months and served five.
Edith Irving served a total of 16 months in U.S. and Swiss jails for fraud. She left jail announcing her intent to file for divorce.
Irving was unhappy with the movie version of his escapades and asked to have his name removed from the credits as a technical adviser.
“Movie Clifford has the energy of a not-too-bright psychopath. If I were that man, I’d shoot myself,” he wrote on his website. “The movie is best thought of as a hoax.”
Background, books
Born in 1930, Irving grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He attended public schools and his boyhood friends included William Safire, the late columnist and speechwriter for President Richard Nixon.
He attended Cornell University and stayed on for a year after graduation in 1951 on a creative writing fellowship. He worked odd jobs after leaving academia and traveled to Europe, where he finished his first novel, “On a Darkling Plain.”
He moved in 1962 to an artists’ colony on the island of Ibiza off the east coast of Spain. It was there that he wrote “Fake!” the story of art forger Elmyr de Hory. The reviews of the book were favorable, but it sold fewer than 30,000 copies.
In all, Irving wrote more than a dozen books. In recent years, he and fifth wife Julie lived in Mexico, Colorado and Florida.
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Overdose Deaths Soar, Cut Life Expectancy for 2nd Year
U.S. deaths from drug overdoses skyrocketed 21 percent last year, and for the second straight year dragged down how long Americans are expected to live.
The government figures released Thursday put drug deaths at 63,600, up from about 52,000 in 2015. For the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.
“This is urgent and deadly,” said Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The opioid epidemic “clearly has a huge impact on our entire society.”
Opioids behind two-thirds of deaths
Two-thirds of last year’s drug deaths, about 42,000, involved opioids, a category that includes heroin, methadone, prescription pain pills like OxyContin, and fentanyl. Fatal overdoses that involved fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs doubled in one year, to more than 19,000, mostly from illegally made pills or powder, which is often mixed with heroin or other drugs.
Heroin was tied to 15,500 deaths and prescription painkillers to 14,500 deaths. The balance of the overdose deaths involved sedatives, cocaine and methamphetamines. More than one drug is often involved in an overdose death.
The highest drug death rates were in ages 25 to 54.
Preliminary 2017 figures show the rise in overdose deaths continuing.
Life expectancy 78 years, 7 months
The drug deaths weigh into CDC’s annual calculation of the average time a person is expected to live. The life expectancy figure is based on the year of their birth, current death trends and other factors. For decades, it was on the upswing, rising a few months nearly every year. But last year marked the first time in more than a half century that U.S. life expectancy fell two consecutive years.
A baby born last year in the U.S. is expected to live about 78 years and 7 months, on average, the CDC said. An American born in 2015 was expected to live about a month longer and one born in 2014 about two months longer than that.
The dip in 2015 was blamed on drug deaths and an unusual upturn in the death rate for the nation’s leading killer, heart disease. Typically, life expectancy goes back up after a one-year decline, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the CDC’s death statistics. The last time there was a two-year drop was 1962-1963. It also happened twice in the 1920s.
“If we don’t get a handle on this,” he said, “we could very well see a third year in a row. With no end in sight.”
Flu pandemic
A three-year decline happened in 1916, 1917 and 1918, which included the worst flu pandemic in modern history.
Overall, there were more than 2.7 million U.S. deaths in 2016, or about 32,000 more than the previous year. It was the most deaths in a single year since the government has been counting. That partly reflects the nation’s growing and aging population. But death rates last year continued to go down for people who are 65 and older while going up for all younger adults, those most affected by the opioid epidemic.
The CDC also reported:
• West Virginia continued to be the state with highest drug overdose death rate, with a rate of 52 deaths per 100,000 state residents in 2016. Ohio and New Hampshire were next, both at about 39 per 100,000.
• Life expectancy for men decreased, but it held steady for women. That increased the gender gap to five years; about 76 for men and 81 for women.
• U.S. death rates decreased for seven of the 10 leading causes of death, but rose for suicide, Alzheimer’s disease and for a category called unintentional injuries, which includes drug overdoses.
• Accidental injuries displaced chronic lower respiratory diseases to become the nation’s third leading cause of death. Contributing were increases in deaths from car crashes and falls.
• Gun deaths rose for a second year, to nearly 39,000. They had been hovering around 33,500 deaths a few years ago.
The United States ranks below dozens of other high-income countries in life expectancy, according to the World Bank. Highest is Japan, at nearly 84 years.
“The fact that U.S. has basically stagnated over the past seven years, and now we’re seeing small declines, is a real sign that the U.S. is doing badly,” said Jessica Ho, a University of Southern California researcher who studies death trends.
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Iron-Fortified Beans Winning Customers in Rwanda, Uganda
A recent study by the Global Nutrition Report 2017 shows that eating beans bred to contain more iron boosts memory and attention in college-going women in Rwanda. The specially biofortified beans could prove significant in a continent where iron deficiency (ID) affects both adults and children, with dire consequences. Lenny Ruvaga reports for VOA from Kigali, Rwanda.
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Chilled Music: Performer Makes Instruments Out of Ice
While most musicians seek to avoid a frosty reception at concerts, for Norwegian composer and performer Terje Isungset a chilly feeling is nothing to fear: he performs with instruments he makes himself out of ice.
A recent performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall featured a set including ice horns, ice drums and an “iceofone” — an ice xylophone — accompanied by the vocal stylings of singer Maria Skranes.
He sees his work as being about more than making music, since he also aims to display the beauty and fragility of ice.
“I see it as a part of something bigger. It’s not me and my project and my ego — it’s the elements,” he told Reuters.
The Norwegian, equipped with a background in traditional Scandinavian music and jazz, makes his instruments using chainsaws and pick axes.
Founder of an ice music festival in Norway, Isungset plays at about 50 festivals and concerts a year, many in the cold conditions of Norway, Canada or Russia.
At concerts in warmer climes, however, hotter temperatures can pose difficulties, as spending any more than 50 minutes at room temperature could damage the instruments.
All of the instruments for the London show were made in Norway and shipped over in special containers, highlighting the fact that, when it comes to making ice instruments, not any old water will do.
“If ice is from polluted water it doesn’t sound that good. If it’s from tap water it doesn’t work because there’s some chemicals in it,” he said. The best ice, he said, was from 2003 in the north of Sweden, adding “I’m very interested in that ice.”
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When It Comes to Holiday Cards, Which Celebs Do It Right?
The Associated Press recently caught up with a few celebrities and asked them about their favorite holiday cards from fellow notables.
Hugh Jackman of The Greatest Showman wouldn’t name any names, but he said some cards are remarkable. He even rates them. Liam Neeson, who stars in The Commuter, really appreciates a certain sender every Christmas season: Steven Spielberg. Neeson said Spielberg has never forgotten his birthday or Christmas since the two did Schindler’s List together.
Rebecca Ferguson wasn’t shy about a little name dropping: Tom Cruise. Of her Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation co-star, she says he has a signature cake he sends for birthdays that he claims is healthy but really isn’t.
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Michael Jackson Sex Abuse Lawsuit Dismissed
A judge on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit brought by a choreographer who alleged Michael Jackson molested him as a child, resolving one of the last major claims against the late singer’s holdings.
Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff’s summary judgment ruling against the now-35-year-old Wade Robson found that the two Jackson-owned corporations, which were the remaining defendants in the case, were not liable for Robson’s exposure to Jackson. He did not rule on the credibility of Robson’s allegations themselves.
Robson’s attorney, Vince Finaldi, said he strongly disagrees and plans to appeal.
Robson, a native of Australia who has worked with Britney Spears and NSYNC, met Jackson when he was 5 years old.
He testified in Jackson’s defense at the singer’s 2005 criminal trial, saying he had spent the night at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch more than 20 times and usually slept in Jackson’s room, but Jackson never molested him. Jackson was acquitted in that trial.
Then in 2013 about four years after the singer’s death, Robson sued the Jackson estate for what his attorneys described as molestation that spanned a seven-year period.
A court ruled in 2015 that Robson had filed his lawsuit too late to get any of Jackson’s estate. That left two remaining defendants, both corporate entities owned by Jackson in his lifetime: MJJ Productions, Inc., and MJJ Ventures, Inc.
The judge ruled Tuesday that those two corporate defendants could not be held responsible for Robson’s exposure to Jackson, the way a school or the Boy Scouts can be found liable for bringing together an abusive adult and a child victim.
Finaldi said the reasoning sets a dangerous precedent.
“What the judge is saying is that you if own a corporation or a company, you can hire people, use these people to facilitate your sexual abuse, use them to facilitate victims,” Finaldi told The Associated Press by phone. “So long as you’re the sole owner of that corporation, the corporation can’t be held liable.”
Jackson estate attorney Howard Weitzman said in a statement that he “believes the court made the correct decision in dismissing Wade Robson’s claim against it. “In my opinion Mr. Robson’s allegations, made 20 plus years after they supposedly occurred and years after Mr. Robson testified twice under oath — including in front of a jury — that Michael Jackson had never done anything wrong to him was always about the money rather than a search for the truth.”
Finaldi replied that the Jackson camp’s interest in the truth was “hollow.”
“If someone’s trying to search for the truth, why not let the lawsuit proceed?” Finaldi said. “Why not exonerate him and let a jury decide.”
During the criminal trial, Robson bristled at testimony by other witnesses that they had seen Jackson molest him.
“I’m telling you nothing happened,” Robson testified at the time when a prosecutor challenged him.
Another Robson attorney said when his lawsuit was filed that stress and sexual trauma led Robson to finally accept that he had been molested by Jackson.
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Survey: Rohingya Refugees Fear for Health, Safety
A survey by the U.N. refugee agency reveals heightened worries by the Rohingya refugee population in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh over their health and safety.
It has been nearly four months since the mass exodus of Rohingya refugees began from Myanmar into Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. More than 645,000 Rohingya who escaped violence and persecution in Myanmar are living in squalid, overcrowded settlements.
A survey by the U.N. refugee agency and 13 other organizations finds the refugees have developed strong support networks to help them cope with their difficulties.
UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic says the refugees have many worries. They express concern about their safety, considering their weak shelter accommodations and poor lighting at night.
“Access to sanitation is still insufficient, leading sometimes to long queues for latrines,” said Mahecic. “Women and girls are anxious about the shortage of private bathing spaces, forcing some to wash outside their shelters in early morning hours.”
The survey finds some children have to walk long distances to fetch water and firewood, a situation that can put them at risk. Mahecic says both parents and children want access to education and more safe places for children to play. He says health services also are a major concern.
“Increased mental health support for those who have witnessed the killings or suffered torture or rape remains crucially needed,” said Mahecic. “Refugees cite continued feelings of depression and rejection, especially among the elderly and disabled. Many young people are worried about their uncertain future.”
Mahecic says the UNHCR will use the survey findings to improve its protection and assistance programs for the Rohingya in the coming year. He says the agency already has begun providing alternatives to firewood to address child labor and environmental concerns.
He says efforts also are under way to improve the hygiene and sanitary conditions for women and girls and to provide more child-friendly spaces where boys and girls can play in safety. Children account for more than half of the refugee population.
Health officials say the refugees are extremely vulnerable to diseases as they have low vaccination coverage and are living in congested, unsanitary settlements that are breeding grounds for infectious diseases.
EU Court Rules Uber Should be Regulated Like Taxi Service
The European Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that ride-hailing company Uber should be regulated like a taxi service instead of a technology firm, a decision that limits its business operations in Europe.
The decision was handed down in response to a complaint from a Barcelona taxi drivers association, which tried to prevent Uber from expanding into the Spanish city. The drivers maintained that Uber drivers should be subject to authorizations and license requirements and accused the company of engaging in unfair competition.
The San Francisco-based Uber contends it should be regulated as an information services provider because it is based on a mobile application that links passengers to drivers.
The European Union’s highest court said services provided by Uber and similar companies are “inherently linked to a transport service” and therefore must be classified as “a service in the field of transport” under EU law.
The decision will impact ride-hailing companies in the 28-nation EU, where national governments can now regulate them as transportation services.
Uber attempted to downplay the decision, saying it only affects its operations in four countries and that it will move forward with plans to expand in Europe. But the company was previously forced to abandon its peer-to-peer service in several EU countries that connect freelance drivers with riders.
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World Meteorological Org.: Arctic Warming Appears Irreversible
The World Meteorological Organization reports 2017 is on track to be among the three hottest years on record, just behind the two preceding years.
While 2017 may only emerge as the third warmest year on record, scientists predict it will beat out the competition for warmest year without a warming El Nino. These record setting years concern those who see this as a sure sign that climate change is happening at a quickened pace.
The WMO says the overall long-term warming trend since the late 1970s is worrying and cannot be ignored. The United Nations agency says rising temperatures are ushering in more extreme weather with huge socioeconomic impact.
WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis says the warming conditions prevailing over both the Arctic and the Antarctic are very alarming. She says the Arctic is warming at about twice the rate of the global temperature increase.
“We are very, very concerned about the rate of warming in the Arctic,” she said. “There was an Arctic Report Card released last week. It said while 2017 saw fewer records shattered than in 2016, the Arctic shows no sign of returning to the reliably frozen region it was decades ago.”
The Arctic Report Card is a peer-reviewed report that brings together the work of 85 scientists from 12 nations.
WMO notes warmer than average temperatures dominated across much of the world’s land and ocean surfaces during November. It says the most notable temperature rises were across the Northern Hemisphere.
For example, it reports temperatures in northern Canada and northwestern Alaska were two degrees centigrade above the average, indicating a very pronounced warming at the Arctic.
EPA Says Superfund Task Force Left Behind Little Paper Trail
The Environmental Protection Agency says an internal task force appointed to revamp how the nation’s most polluted sites are cleaned up generated no record of its deliberations.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in May announced the creation of a Superfund Task Force that he said would reprioritize and streamline procedures for remediating more than 1,300 sites. Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, appointed a political supporter from his home state with no experience in pollution cleanups to lead the group.
The task force in June issued a nearly three-dozen page report containing 42 detailed recommendations, all of which Pruitt immediately adopted. The advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER, quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking a long list of documents related to the development of Pruitt’s plan.
After EPA didn’t immediately release any records, PEER sued.
Now, nearly six months after the task force released its report, a lawyer for EPA has written PEER to say that the task force had no agenda for its meetings, kept no minutes and used no reference materials.
Further, there was no written criteria for selecting the 107 EPA employees the agency says served on the task force or background materials distributed to them during the deliberative process for creating the recommendations.
According to EPA, the task force also created no work product other than its final report.
“Pruitt’s plan for cleaning up toxic sites was apparently immaculately conceived, without the usual trappings of human parentage,” said Jeff Ruch, the executive direction of PEER. “It stretches credulity that 107 EPA staff members with no agenda or reference materials somehow wrote an intricate plan in 30 days.”
The task force was led by Albert “Kell” Kelly, whom Pruitt hired at EPA as a senior adviser. Kelly was previously the chairman of Tulsa-based SpiritBank, where he worked as an executive for 34 years.
The Associated Press reported in August that Kelly was barred by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from working for any U.S. financial institution after officials determined he violated laws or regulations, leading to a financial loss for his bank. The FDIC’s order didn’t detail what Kelly is alleged to have done. Without admitting wrongdoing, he agreed to pay a $125,000 penalty.
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Displaced by Mining, Peru Villagers Spurn Shiny New Town
This remote town in Peru’s southern Andes was supposed to serve as a model for how companies can help communities uprooted by mining.
Named Nueva Fuerabamba, it was built to house around 1,600 people who gave up their village and farmland to make room for a massive, open-pit copper mine.
The new hamlet boasts paved streets and tidy houses with electricity and indoor plumbing, once luxuries to the indigenous Quechua-speaking people who now call this place home.
The mine’s operator, MMG Ltd, the Melbourne-based unit of state-owned China Minmetals Corp, threw in jobs and enough cash so that some villagers no longer work.
But the high-profile deal has not brought the harmony sought by villagers or MMG, a testament to the difficulty in averting mining disputes in this mineral-rich nation.
Resource battles are common in Latin America, but tensions are particularly high in Peru, the world’s No. 2 producer of copper, zinc and silver. Peasant farmers have revolted against an industry that many see as damaging their land and livelihoods while denying them a fair share of the wealth.
Peru is home to 167 social conflicts, most related to mining, according to the national ombudsman’s office, whose mission includes defusing hostilities.
Nueva Fuerabamba was the centerpiece of one of the most generous mining settlements ever negotiated in Peru. But three years after moving in, many transplants are struggling amid their suburban-style conveniences, Reuters interviews with two dozen residents showed.
Many miss their old lives growing potatoes and raising livestock. Some have squandered their cash settlements. Idleness and isolation have dulled the spirits of a people whose ancestors were feared cattle rustlers.
“It is like we are trapped in a jail, in a cage where little animals are kept,” said Cipriano Lima, 43, a former farmer.
Meanwhile, the mine, known as Las Bambas, has remained a magnet for discontent. Clashes between demonstrators and authorities in 2015 and 2016 left four area men dead.
Nueva Fuerabamba residents have blocked copper transport roads to press for more financial help from MMG.
The company acknowledged the transition has been difficult for some villagers, but said most have benefited from improved housing, healthcare and education.
“Nueva Fuerabamba has experienced significant positive change,” Troy Hey, MMG’s executive general manager of stakeholder relations, said in an email to Reuters. MMG said it spent “hundreds of millions” on the relocation effort.
Mining is the driver of Peru’s economy, which has averaged 5.5 percent annual growth over the past decade. Still, pitched conflicts have derailed billions of dollars worth of investment in recent years, including projects by Newmont Mining and Southern Copper.
To defuse opposition, President Pablo Kuczynski has vowed to boost social services in rural highland areas, where nearly half of residents live in poverty.
But moving from conflict to cooperation is not easy after centuries of mistrust. Relocations are particularly fraught, according to Camilo Leon, a mining resettlement specialist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
Subsistence farmers have struggled to adapt to the loss of their traditions and the “very urban, very organized” layout of planned towns, Leon said.
“It is generally a shock for rural communities,” Leon said.
At least six proposed mines have required relocations in Peru in the past decade, Leon said. Later this month, Peru will tender a $2-billion copper project, Michiquillay, which would require moving yet another village.
‘Everything is Money’
MMG inherited the Nueva Fuerabamba project when it bought Las Bambas from Switzerland’s Glencore Plc in 2014 for $7 billion.
Under terms of a deal struck in 2009 and reviewed by Reuters, villagers voted to trade their existing homes and farmland for houses in a new community. Heads of each household, about 500 in all, were promised mining jobs. University scholarships would be given to their children. Residents were to receive new land for farming and grazing, albeit in a parcel four hours away by car.
Cash was an added sweetener. Villagers say each household got 400,000 soles ($120,000), which amounts to a lifetime’s earnings for a minimum-wage worker in Peru.
MMG declined to confirm the payments, saying its agreements are confidential.
Built into a hillside 15 miles from the Las Bambas mine, Nueva Fuerabamba was the product of extensive community input, MMG said. Amenities include a hospital, soccer fields and a cement bull ring for festivals.
But some residents say the deal has not been the windfall they hoped. Their new two-and-three story houses, made of drywall, are drafty and appear flimsy compared to their old thatched-roof adobe cottages heated by wood-fired stoves, some said.
Many no longer plant crops or tend livestock because their replacement plots are too far away. Jobs provided by MMG mostly involve maintaining the town because most residents lack the skills to work in a modern mine.
Many villagers spent their settlements unwisely, said community president Alfonso Vargas. “Some invested in businesses but others did not. They went drinking,” he said.
Now basics like water, food and fuel – once wrested from the land – must be paid for.
“Everything is money,” Margot Portilla, 20, said as she cooked rice on a gas stove in her sister-in-law’s bright-yellow home. “Before we could make a fire for cooking with cow dung. Now we have to buy gas.”
Ghost Town
Some residents said they have benefited from the move.
The new town is cleaner than the old village, said Betsabe Mendoza, 25. She invested her settlement in a metalworking business in a bigger town.
Portilla, the young mom, says her younger sisters are getting a better education than she did.
Still, the streets of Nueva Fuerabamba were virtually deserted on a recent weekday. Vargas, the community leader, said many residents have returned to the countryside or sought work elsewhere.
Alcoholism, fueled by idle time and settlement money, is on the rise, he said.
Some villagers have committed suicide. Over the 12 months through July, four residents killed themselves by taking farming chemicals, according to the provincial district attorney’s office. It could not provide data on suicides in the old village of Fuerabamba.
MMG, citing an “independent” study done prior to the relocation, said the community previously suffered from high rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, illiteracy and poverty.
While the company considers the new town a success, it acknowledged the transition has not been easy for all.
“Connection to land, livelihood restoration and simple adaptation to new living conditions remain a challenge,” MMG said.
Nueva Fuerabamba residents continue pressuring the company for additional assistance. Demands include more jobs and deeds to their houses, which have yet to be delivered because of bureaucratic delays, said Godofredo Huamani, the community’s lawyer.
MMG said it stays apace of community needs through town hall meetings and has representatives on hand to field complaints.
While villagers fret about the future, many cling to the past. Flora Huamani, 39, a mother of four girls, recalled how women used to get together to weave wool from their own sheep into the embroidered black dresses they wear.
“Those were our traditions,” said Huamani from a bench in her walled front yard. “Now our tradition is meeting after meeting after meeting” to discuss the community’s problems.
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US Sees Foreign Reliance on ‘Critical’ Minerals as Security Concern
The United States needs to encourage domestic production of a handful of minerals critical for the technology and defense industries, and stem reliance on China, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Tuesday.
Zinke made the remarks at the Interior Department as he unveiled a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which detailed the extent to which the United States is dependent upon foreign competitors for its supply of certain minerals.
The report identified 23 out of 88 minerals that are priorities for U.S. national defense and the economy because they are components in products ranging from batteries to military equipment.
The report found that the United States was 100 percent net import reliant on 20 mineral commodities in 2016, including manganese, niobium, tantalum and others. In 1954, the U.S. was 100 percent import reliant for the supply of just eight nonfuel mineral commodities.
“We have the minerals here and likely we have enough to provide our needs and be a world trader in them, but we have to go forward and identify where they are at,” Zinke told reporters at an Interior Department briefing.
He also blamed previous administrations for allowing foreign competitors like China to dominate mineral production for minerals, such as rare earth elements, used in smartphones, computers and military equipment.
Zinke said the report is likely to shape Interior Department policy-making in 2018, as the agency looks to carry out its “Energy Dominance” strategy, expanding mining and resource extraction on federal lands.
The survey is the first update of a 1973 USGS report that catalogued the production of minerals worldwide. The update was started under the Obama administration in 2013.
Many of the commodities that are covered in the new volume were of minor importance when the original survey was done, since it pre-dated the global electronics boom.
The USGS and Interior Department said the report is meant to be used by national security experts, economists, private companies, the World Bank and resource managers.
It does not offer policy recommendations, but Zinke will rely on the findings as he prioritizes research into certain mineral deposit areas on federal land and plans policies to promote mining.
“We do expect that to lead to policy changes. The USGS is not involved in policy, but I suspect you will see some policy changes,” said Larry Meinert, lead author of the report.
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Striking a Chord, Researchers Tap Brain to Find Out How Music Heals
Like a friendly Pied Piper, the violinist keeps up a toe-tapping beat as dancers weave through busy hospital hallways and into the chemotherapy unit, patients looking up in surprised delight. Upstairs, a cellist plays an Irish folk tune for a patient in intensive care.
Music increasingly is becoming a part of patient care, although it’s still pretty unusual to see roving performers captivating entire wards, as they did at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital one recent fall morning.
“It takes them away for just a few minutes to some other place where they don’t have to think about what’s going on,” said cellist Martha Vance after playing for a patient isolated to avoid spreading infection.
The challenge: harnessing music to do more than comfort the sick. Now, moving beyond programs like Georgetown’s, the National Institutes of Health is bringing together musicians, music therapists and neuroscientists to tap into the brain’s circuitry and figure out how.
“The brain is able to compensate for other deficits sometimes by using music to communicate,” said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, a geneticist who also plays a mean guitar.
To turn that ability into a successful therapy, “it would be a really good thing to know which parts of the brain are still intact to be called into action — to know the circuits well enough to know the backup plan,” Collins added.
Scientists aren’t starting from scratch. Learning to play an instrument, for example, sharpens how the brain processes sound and can improve children’s reading and other school skills. Stroke survivors who can’t speak sometimes can sing, and music therapy can help them retrain brain pathways to communicate. Similarly, Parkinson’s patients sometimes walk better to the right beat.
Scientific explanation
But what’s missing is rigorous science to better understand how either listening to or creating music might improve health in a range of other ways — research into how the brain processes music that NIH is beginning to fund.
“The water is wide, I cannot cross over,” well-known soprano Renee Fleming belted out, not from a concert stage but from inside an MRI machine at the NIH campus.
The opera star, who partnered with Collins to start the Sound Health initiative, spent two hours in the scanner to help researchers tease out what brain activity is key for singing. How? First, Fleming spoke the lyrics. Then she sang them. Finally, she imagined singing them.
“We’re trying to understand the brain not just so we can address mental disorders or diseases or injuries, but also so we can understand what happens when a brain’s working right and what happens when it’s performing at a really high level,” said NIH researcher David Jangraw, who shared the MRI data with The Associated Press.
To Jangraw’s surprise, several brain regions were more active when Fleming imagined singing than when she actually sang, including the brain’s emotion center and areas involved with motion and vision. One theory: It took more mental effort to keep track of where she was in the song, and to maintain its emotion, without auditory feedback.
Fleming put it more simply: “I’m skilled at singing so I didn’t have to think about it quite so much,” she told a spring workshop at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where she is an artistic adviser.
Indeed, Jangraw notes a saying in neuroscience: Neurons that fire together, wire together. Brain cells communicate by firing messages to each other through junctions called synapses. Cells that regularly connect — for example, when a musician practices — strengthen bonds into circuitry that forms an efficient network for, in Fleming’s case, singing.
But that’s a healthy brain. In North Carolina, a neuroscientist and a dance professor are starting an improvisational dance class for Alzheimer’s to tell whether music and movement enhance a diseased brain’s neural networks.
Well before memory loss becomes severe, Alzheimer’s patients can experience apathy, depression, and gait and balance problems as the brain’s synaptic connections begin to falter. The NIH-funded study at Wake Forest University will randomly assign such patients to the improvisation class — to dance playfully without having to remember choreography — or to other interventions.
What will scans show?
The test: If quality-of-life symptoms improve, will MRI scans show correlating strengthening of neural networks that govern gait or social engagement?
With senior centers increasingly touting arts programs, “having a deeper understanding of how these things are affecting our biology can help us understand how to leverage resources already in our community,” noted Wake Forest lead researcher Christina Hugenschmidt.
Proof may be tough. An international music therapy study failed to significantly help children with autism, the Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported, contradicting earlier promising findings. But experts cited challenges with the study and called for additional research.
Unlike music therapy, which works one on one toward individual outcomes, the arts and humanities program at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center lets musicians-in-residence play throughout the hospital. Palliative care nurses often seek Vance, the cellist, for patients anxious or in pain. She may watch monitors, matching a tune’s tempo to heart rate and then gradually slowing. Sometimes she plays for the dying, choosing a gently arrhythmic background and never a song that might be familiar.
Julia Langley, who directs Georgetown’s program, wants research into the type and dose of music for different health situations: “If we can study the arts in the same way that science studies medication and other therapeutics, I think we will be doing so much good.”
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Greek Lawmakers Approve 2018 Budget Featuring More Austerity
Greece’s parliament on Tuesday approved the 2018 state budget, which includes further austerity measures beyond the official end of the country’s third international bailout next summer.
All 153 lawmakers from the left-led governing coalition backed the budget measures in a late vote, while the 144 opposition lawmakers present rejected them. Three were absent from the vote.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised that the country would smoothly exit the eight-year crisis that has seen its economy shrink by a quarter and unemployment hit highs previously unseen during peacetime.
Tsipras argued that international money markets — on whose credit Greece will have to depend once its rescue loan program ends — are showing strong confidence in the country’s prospects, with the yield on Greek government bonds dropping to a pre-crisis low of less than 4 percent.
“The way to exit [the crisis] is for our borrowing costs to return to acceptable levels so the country can finance itself without the restrictive bailout framework,” Tsipras said.
The budget promises Greece’s international lenders continued belt-tightening measures and high primary budget surpluses — the budget balance before debt and interest payments are taken into account.
It sets the primary surplus at 2.44 percent for 2017 and 3.82 percent for 2018, higher than previously estimated. The economy is forecast to grow by 1.6 percent in 2017 and 2.5 percent next year, helped by a return to growth across Europe.
Debt to hold steady
With the Greek economy worth around 185 billion euros ($271 billion) in 2018, the national debt will remain at just under 180 percent of annual GDP, roughly unchanged from the previous year.
Greeks will see new tax hikes and pension cuts over the next two years. Bailout lenders had demanded additional guarantees the Greek economy will be stabilized before considering measures to improve the country’s debt repayment terms.
Opposition parties have criticized the budget, saying it will prolong the pain for Greeks. The main opposition conservative New Democracy party said the budget was “bleeding dry” the Greek people with 1.9 billion euros’ worth of new austerity measures.
Greece’s latest international bailout officially ends in August, more than eight years after the country began receiving emergency loans from the other European Union countries that use the euro currency, as well as from the International Monetary Fund.
In return for the funds, successive governments have had to impose repeated rounds of tax hikes and spending cuts, as well as structural changes aimed at reforming the country’s moribund economy and making it more competitive.
Tsipras first was elected in 2015 on promises to quickly end the painful austerity. But negotiations with bailout creditors soon went awry and, threatened with a disastrous euro exit, he signed on to more income cuts, increased taxation and further spending cuts.
His governing Syriza party is trailing New Democracy in the polls. But Tsipras insisted Tuesday that the government would see out its mandate, which ends in 2019.
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Ex-Odebrecht CEO, Symbol of Brazil Graft Probe, Leaves Jail
One of the most prominent people convicted in Latin America’s largest corruption scandal left prison Tuesday for house arrest after serving two-and-a-half years behind bars at a time when many Brazilians are becoming disillusioned with the graft investigation once hailed as a political game-changer.
Marcelo Odebrecht’s release came a day after Brazil’s top court halted investigations into several lawmakers, underscoring the limitations of the “Car Wash” investigation that uncovered nearly institutionalized corruption involving senior politicians in several countries and several major Brazilian companies.
Odebrecht, who was CEO of his family’s company of the same name, cooperated with prosecutors and testified that executives routinely paid bribes and made illegal campaign contributions to politicians in exchange for favors. He was originally sentenced to 19 years in prison but, once he began cooperating, that penalty was reduced to 10, with the agreement that the majority of it would be served under house arrest.
Odebrecht’s conviction and jailing were seen as a major victory for Car Wash prosecutors. The testimony of Odebrecht and other executives revealed that, for years, the company had essentially captured the Brazilian state, paying bribes and kickbacks to whoever was in power.
The corruption was so organized — and endemic — that it had its own department at Odebrecht, blandly named the Division of Structured Operations.
On Tuesday, Odebrecht left prison and went to the federal court in the southern state of Parana, where an electronic bracelet was attached, the court said. Neither the court nor his representatives would say where he was headed next, but local media have reported he will serve out his term in his home in an upscale neighborhood of Sao Paulo.
“The main objective of this new phase of his life is, I repeat, to return to the family fold, which is very dear to him, and to be effective in his collaboration” with prosecutors, Nabor Bulhoes, a lawyer for Odebrecht told reporters outside the court. “Right now, he has no other plan and no other goal.”
Lack of ‘real accountability’
While Odebrecht’s release was expected, it underscored the inequalities in Brazil’s criminal justice system, in which corruption and white-collar crimes generally receive little jail time.
“It’s terrible for the image of Brazil,” said Celcino Rodrigues Junior, a 26-year-old law student in Sao Paulo, referring to Odebrecht’s release. “It’s favorable to him because he will be in a mansion, he will be in total comfort.”
Revealing the extent of corruption in Brazil was one of Car Wash’s great achievements. The other was managing to put some of its masterminds, Odebrecht among them, in jail.
But the investigation has slowed in recent months, and there have been accusations that President Michel Temer and other senior politicians are trying to hinder it. Some fear the new chief of the federal police will be less aggressive in investigating corruption, and others bemoaned the closure earlier this year of the task force dedicated to the probe. Temer has always maintained that he supports the investigation.
Despite its success in sending several businessmen to jail, the Car Wash operation has also struggled to put senior politicians behind bars. That’s at least partially because sitting politicians have the right to be tried in the Supreme Court, where justice is slow and often deferential.
On Monday, a Supreme Court panel voted 2-1 to stop Car Wash investigations against four members of Congress. The decision effectively shields them from investigation while they remain in office.
Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes also ordered house arrest instead of jail for Adriana Anselmo, wife of former Rio de Janeiro Gov. Sergio Cabral. Cabral has been convicted of corruption and is in prison, while his wife has been in jail accused of several crimes.
“Brazilians, as a whole, are exhausted by this marathon of scandal, and it’s only natural that they would be disappointed by and exhausted by the absence of any real accountability,” said Matthew Taylor, an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington.
Even though the operation, known as Lava Jato in Portugese, hasn’t always lived up to Brazil’s highest hopes, Taylor says it has made significant progress.
“The fact that Odebrecht went to jail at all is a paradigm-shifting event in Brazilian history,” he said. “Lava Jato has moved the needle.”
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Gene Therapy for Rare Form of Blindness Wins US Approval
U.S. health officials on Tuesday approved the nation’s first gene therapy for an inherited, rare form of blindness, marking another major advance for the emerging field of genetic medicine.
The approval for pharmaceutical company Spark Therapeutics offers a life-changing intervention for a small group of patients with a vision-destroying genetic mutation and hope for many more people with other inherited diseases.
The drugmaker said it would not disclose the price until next month, delaying debate about the affordability of a treatment that analysts predict will be priced around $1 million.
The injection, called Luxturna, is the first gene therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration in which a corrective gene is given directly to patients. The gene mutation interferes with the production of an enzyme needed for normal vision.
Patients who got the treatment have described seeing snow, stars or the moon for the first time.
“One of the best things I’ve ever seen since surgery are the stars. I never knew that they were little dots that twinkled,” said Mistie Lovelace of Kentucky, one of several patients who urged the FDA to approve the therapy at a public hearing in October.
Patients with the condition generally start losing their sight before 18, almost always progressing to total blindness. The defective gene that causes the disease can be passed down for generations undetected before suddenly appearing when a child inherits a copy from both parents. Only a few thousand people in the U.S. are thought to have the condition.
One injection per eye
Luxturna is delivered via an injection for each eye; they replace the defective gene that prevents the retina — tissue at the back of the eye — from converting light into electronic signals sent to the brain.
The FDA has approved three gene therapies since August, as decades of research into the genetic building blocks of life begin translating into marketable treatments. The previous two were custom-made treatments for forms of blood cancer. Novartis’ Kymriah is priced at $475,000 for a one-time infusion of genetically enhanced cells. Gilead Sciences’ similar treatment, Yescarta, costs $373,000 per treatment.
Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics said it would announce its price in early January, but suggested its own analysis put the value of the therapy at about $1 million. Key to the company’s reasoning is the assumption that Luxturna will be given once, with lasting benefits. To date, the company has tracked patients enrolled in a key study for as long as four years and hasn’t seen their vision deteriorate.
“All the data we have today suggests it’s long-lasting, if not lifelong,” said Spark CEO Jeffrey Marrazzo.
Given Luxturna’s FDA approval and strong study results, many experts expect U.S. insurers, including both the federal government and private plans, to cover the treatment.
The spate of new genetic therapies marks a boom for a field once plagued by safety concerns. Gene therapy research suffered a setback in 1999 with the death of a patient treated for a rare metabolic disorder at the University of Pennsylvania. In another case, patients treated for an immune disorder later developed leukemia.
Dr. David Valle said initial excitement about the wide-ranging possibilities for genetic medicine has given way to a more deliberative approach focused on individual diseases. He applauded researchers at the University of Pennsylvania for decades of work that led to the treatment.
“The hype for gene therapy has been without many successes and actually a few failures, so chalk this one up in the win column,” said Valle, a geneticist and pediatrician at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in Luxturna’s development.
Development took years
University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Jean Bennett said she and her husband, Dr. Albert Maguire, first imagined using genetic medicine to treat retinal blindness in the mid-1980s. But it took decades to develop the science and technology, with the first animal tests in 2000 and the first human trials in 2007.
“We didn’t know what genes caused the disease, we didn’t have animal models with those genes, we didn’t have the ability to clone genes and deliver them to the retina, so it took time to develop all that,” said Bennett, an eye specialist.
Bennett and Maguire tested the treatment by recording patients’ ability to complete an obstacle course at varying levels of light, simulating real-world conditions. A hallmark of the disorder is difficulty seeing at night.
One year after treatment, patients who received the injection showed significant improvements in navigating the obstacle course at low-light levels compared with those who had not received the therapy.
Goldman Sachs analyst Salveen Richter predicted Luxturna would cost $500,000 per injection, or $1 million for both eyes. She pointed out that many current drugs for ultra-rare diseases were priced at $250,000 per year or more, putting their long-term cost over $1 million after several years.
But David Mitchell, a cancer patient and advocate for lower drug prices, worries that the cost of genetic therapies won’t be sustainable.
“We don’t have unlimited dollars in this country,” said Mitchell, founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs. “You get 50 of these drugs in the system and I don’t know how we will handle it as a country.”
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