Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Even more so, when the invention is something a loved one needs. That was the case for a young Syrian woman who invented a GPS-equipped life vest. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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Month: March 2018
What Do Palm Trees and Wind Turbines Have in Common?
Increasingly popular wind turbines are getting bigger and making more power, but there is a limit to their size. At some point they become too big, too difficult to transport and install, and strong winds can bend them out of shape. But researchers led by scientists from the University of Virginia say there’s a way around it. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Blacks in Silicon Valley Share Lessons on Pursuing Unicorns or Gazelles
What does it take to build a thriving technology company – and an environment in which black techies, their financial backers and their markets can flourish?
That question underpins the new VOA documentary “Beyond the Unicorn.” Subtitled “Africans Making IT in Silicon Valley,” it explores how some Africans and African-Americans are finding their way in the tech sector’s global capital in California.
The 26-minute documentary profiles several entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and how they overcome hurdles. Its screening Wednesday evening, at a VOA event at the San Francisco campus of the French university INSEEC U., served as a springboard for a panel discussion spanning market potential, funding gaps and hiring disparities.
First, a definition for the uninitiated. A unicorn is a private startup technology firm valued at $1 billion or more. Once rare, such companies have proliferated in the last few years, with almost 200 globally as of last May, according to Forbes.
Silicon Valley has spawned herds of unicorns, such as Uber and Airbnb.
Africa hasn’t. With less readily available investment funding, “a unicorn might be quite unrealistic for an entrepreneur in Africa to build very quickly,” said venture capitalist Mbwana Alliy, who appears in the documentary. He suggested its counterpart might be a “zebracorn.”
“Does that mean it’s a $100 million startup? Maybe that’s more achievable for an entrepreneur,” said Alliy, founder of the Africa-focused Savannah Fund. “And it’s still a major outcome.”
Panelist Stephen Ozoigbo proposed another term: gazelle, “something real and indigenous.”
“If it’s a gazelle, then you’re sure it would outrun, it would outhustle” the competition, said Ozoigbo, CEO of the African Technology Foundation.
Market potential
The continent has some fast-growing economies – think Ethiopia and Nigeria – and the world’s fastest-growing population. More than half of its countries are expected to double their head counts by 2050, the United Nations reports.
No wonder investment in African tech ventures is surging.
Figures vary: The Disrupt Africa news portal says African tech startups raised more than $195 million last year, up from almost $130 million in 2016.
Partech Ventures reports even stronger growth. The global venture capital firm, which has offices in San Francisco and Dakar, Senegal, reports that 124 tech startups drew $560 million in equity in 2017, up from almost $367 million for 74 startups the previous year.
Still, Africa gets only a very tiny share of global private equity capital, said Andile Ngcaba, a panelist and founder of the African tech investment management fund Convergence Partners.
That’s just one of the challenges for Africans and African-Americans in tech.
Lack of diversity
Blacks account for just 3 percent of the workforce among Silicon Valley’s top 75 tech companies, an underrepresentation so striking that it has drawn public condemnation and scrutiny by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a 2016 report.
The male-dominated tech sector can be even less welcoming to black females.
“Being an African woman in Silicon Valley … has been very difficult. I actually had an easier time in Nigeria,” said Bukola Akinfaderin, a senior developer – and the only black female mobile engineer – for the genealogy website Ancestry.com. She said her homeland’s tech sector has less of a gender imbalance.
Akinfaderin, featured in the documentary, finds support in groups such as dev/color, a nonprofit for black software engineers.
She gets encouragement to revive Jandus Radio, her app enabling the African diaspora to hear live radio from the continent. It had as many as 500,000 users by 2016, when the hosting company’s server malfunctioned and deleted the app’s database. She plans to reboot the app as KinFolk.
Akinfaderin touts the value of being an African woman engineer working in Silicon Valley. “When you’re building a product – especially if it’s a consumer-facing product, one that’s international – you are going to need perspective from everyone.”
Need for helping hands
Mentoring and networking can make all the difference in finding opportunities, said Nate Yohannes, a Microsoft business development director for artificial intelligence – and the evening’s keynote speaker.
“Coming to the United States as a child of [Eritrean] refugees,” he said, he couldn’t always rely on his parents’ guidance because of their unfamiliarity with the new setting. So, he sought out mentors, who helped shape his trajectory from law school to a Wall Street job to the U.S. Small Business Association to Microsoft.
“It’s on us” to help each other and connect the continents, Yohannes told the scores of people, including other Africans, in the screening room.
Other concerns
Africa’s rapid population growth heightens the need to educate African youths so they can compete for work globally, said Convergence Partners’ Ngcaba. He added that those aspiring to the tech sector will need training in, say, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“That’s the only way we can position ourselves in the global landscape,” Ngcaba said.
Skills, opportunity and capital are vital for entrepreneurs, agreed Yonas Beshawred, founder and CEO of StackShare, an online marketplace for comparing engineering tools and software.
But, he added, “I think the most important thing is that you have something that you’re passionate about and you start working on it … instead of just talking.”
A VOA showcase
The “Unicorn” screening event also served as a showcase for VOA’s commitment to “telling America’s story” along with providing accurate news and information to countries without independent media, VOA director Amanda Bennett said.
“And what is more American than the American diaspora, the people who come here from places around the world looking for something and looking to give something, looking to be someone? And what is more American than technology?” she asked rhetorically in her introductory remarks, pointing out that VOA opened a Silicon Valley office last spring.
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Some Fear Steel Tariff Could Hurt Auto Industry in the South
German business leaders are expressing concerns that President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel could affect the auto industry in the South.
WABE Radio reports Mercedes-Benz USA this month opened its new North American headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, for 1,000 employees.
The luxury car manufacturer is owned by Germany-based Daimler, but Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Dietmar Exler used the grand opening to remind the crowd of the brand’s U.S. presence.
German automakers in US
That includes operations in South Carolina and in Alabama.
“We are now in the midst of construction of our own factory here, which will open doors in the fall in Charleston, South Carolina, and we’ll make all of the Sprinter vans for North America right here,” Exler said at the grand opening of its headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta.
“Right next to me you have a member of the most successful SUV family, a GLE Coupe,” Exler said. “As you know, the GLE and the GLS are produced in Alabama. Last year, 280,000 cars were produced here not just for the U.S. market, but for markets all over the world.”
German car factories in the U.S. made more than 800,000 vehicles last year, and about half were sold overseas, according to the German Association of the Automotive Industry.
This month, Volkswagen of America Inc. announced plans to build a new five-passenger SUV at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where it manufactures other vehicles. Volkswagen AG is based in Wolfsburg, Germany.
“During my time as governor, I’ve watched Volkswagen Chattanooga flourish from a single vehicle producer, starting with the Passat, into what it is today — a thriving U.S. manufacturing operation that can produce three models, and counting,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said in a statement Monday, when plans were announced.
“We value Volkswagen as a committed partner, whose investments in the state have not only created new jobs, but have helped us build a skilled Tennessee workforce,” Haslam said.
Volkswagen Chattanooga also manufactures the Passat and the Atlas.
Trump proclamation, industry concern
Trump signed a proclamation last week to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel from every country except Canada and Mexico. The hope is to boost steel manufacturing in the U.S.
The concern among some industry experts is that tariffs on steel could hurt companies like Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Porsche, all of which have significant operations in the South, said Stefan Mair of the Federation of German Industries in Berlin.
“Do you see the cars outside? There’s a lot of steel in there,” Mair said at the grand opening of the Georgia headquarters complex. “We think there will be some additional percentage points on the prices of cars.”
That price increase could be enough to stop people from buying new cars, said Lisa Cook, who teaches economics and international relations at Michigan State University.
“If consumers are price sensitive, and they are for many types of cars, this could cause people to postpone their decision to purchase a car,” Cook said.
US steel in cars
A little more than a quarter of all U.S. steel is used to make cars in this country, according to the German American Chamber of Commerce for the southern U.S.
“Approximately 25 percent of all steel is used in automotive manufacturing and 10 percent in machinery and equipment; both industries that German companies have heavily invested in the U.S. over the years,” said Stefanie Ziska, president of GACC South.
Making cars more expensive to build and export could hurt U.S. jobs, said Jeffrey Rosensweig, who teaches international business at Georgia’s Emory University.
“That would not only cost us jobs, it would hurt the U.S. and could potentially harm the U.S. trade balance,” Rosensweig said. “Just the opposite of what President Trump thinks he’s trying to achieve.”
He said the steel tariffs could trigger a trade war that would go beyond the auto industry.
“These foreign nations that we’re going to put these import taxes on, these tariffs, are not stupid,” Rosensweig said. “They’re going to retaliate against our exports, and they’re going to hit us where it hurts, which is often our farm exports.”
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China Warns US It Will Defend Own Trade Interests
The United States has flouted trade rules with an inquiry into intellectual property and China will defend its interests, Vice Premier Liu He told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a telephone call on Saturday, Chinese state media reported.
The call between Mnuchin and Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday.
The deepening rift has sent a chill through financial markets and the corporate world as investors predicted dire consequences for the global economy should trade barriers start going up.
Several U.S. chief executives attending a high-profile forum in Beijing on Saturday, including BlackRock Inc’s Larry Fink and Apple Inc’s Tim Cook, urged restraint.
In his call with Mnuchin, Liu, a Harvard-trained economist, said China still hoped both sides would remain “rational” and work together to keep trade relations stable, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
U.S. officials say an eight-month probe under the 1974 U.S. Trade Act has found that China engages in unfair trade practices by forcing American investors to turn over key technologies to Chinese firms.
However, Liu said the investigation report “violates international trade rules and is beneficial to neither Chinese interests, U.S. interests nor global interests”, Xinhua cited him as saying.
In a statement on its website, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said it had filed a request – at the direction of Trump – for consultations with China at the World Trade Organization to address “discriminatory technology licensing agreements.”
China’s commerce ministry expressed regret at the filing on Saturday, and said China had taken strong measures to protect the legal rights and interests of both domestic and foreign owners of intellectual property.
Counter moves
During a visit to Washington in early March, Liu had requested Washington set up a new economic dialogue mechanism, identify a point person on China issues, and deliver a list of demands.
The Trump administration responded by telling China to immediately shave $100 billion off its record $375 billion trade surplus with the United States. Beijing told Washington that U.S. export restrictions on some high-tech products are to blame.
“China has already prepared, and has the strength, to defend its national interests,” Liu said on Saturday.
According to an editorial by China’s state-run Global Times, it was Mnuchin who called Liu.
Firing off a warning shot, China on Friday declared plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium, imposed after a separate U.S. probe.
Zhang Zhaoxiang, senior vice president of China Minmetals Corp, said that while the state-owned mining group’s steel exports to the U.S. are tiny, the impact could come indirectly.
“China’s direct exports to the U.S. are not big. But there will be some impact due to our exports via the United States or indirect exports,” Zhang told reporters on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing on Saturday.
Global Times said Beijing was only just beginning to look at means to retaliate.
“We believe it is only part of China’s countermeasures, and soybeans and other U.S. farm products will be targeted,” the widely-read tabloid said in a Saturday editorial.
Wei Jianguo, vice chairman of Beijing-based think tank China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, told China Daily that Beijing could impose tariffs on more U.S. products, and is considering a second and even third list of targets.
Possible items include aircraft and chips, Wei, a former vice commerce minister, told the newspaper, adding that tourism could be a possible target.
Soybeans, autos, planes
The commerce ministry’s response had so far been “relatively weak,” respected former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei said at the forum.
“If I were in the government, I would probably hit soybeans first, then hit autos and airplanes,” said Lou, currently chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund.
U.S. farm groups have long feared that China, which imports more than third of all U.S. soybeans, could slow purchases of agricultural products, heaping more pain on the struggling U.S. farm sector.
U.S. agricultural exports to China stood at $19.6 billion last year, with soybean shipments accounting for $12.4 billion.
Chinese penalties on U.S. soybeans will especially hurt Iowa, a state that backed Trump in the 2016 presidential elections.
Boeing jets have also been often cited as a potential target by China.
China and the U.S. had benefitted by globalization, Blackrock’s Larry Fink said at the forum.
“I believe that a dialogue and maybe some adjustments in trade and trade policy can be in order. It does not need to be done publicly; it can be done privately,” he said.
Apple’s Tim Cook called for “calm heads” amid the dispute.
The sparring has cast a spotlight on hardware makers such as Apple, which assemble the majority of their products in China for export to other countries.
Electrical goods and tech are the largest U.S. import item from China.
Some economists say higher U.S. tariffs will lead to higher costs and ultimately hurt U.S. consumers, while restrictions on Chinese investments could take away jobs in America.
“I don’t think local governments in the United States and President Trump hope to see U.S. workers losing their jobs,” Sun Yongcai, general manager at Chinese railway firm CRRS Corp, which has two U.S. production plants, said at the forum.
Cate Blanchett Slams Aung San Suu Kyi Over Rohingya Crisis
Australian actress Cate Blanchett says she is bewildered by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence over the atrocities being committed against Rohingya Muslims.
More than 670,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have sought safety across the border in Bangladesh since August 2017, after a military campaign against the minority group that a U.N. official has previously called genocide.
Oscar-winning actress Blanchett visited some of the displaced Muslims from Myanmar last week in her capacity as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. The Australian star warns that thousands of refugees are at risk of disease and starvation as the monsoon season approaches. The Rohingya are not recognized as citizens by Myanmar and have lived under a segregated ethnic system in the country’s western Rakhine state for decades.
Blanchett, who is also goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is criticizing Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, for not speaking out over the crisis.
“It is bewildering, is it not, that someone who has been such a fighter for even a fragile democracy, someone who upholds human rights, does not seem to be speaking out more clearly about the atrocities that are so very clearly happening under her watch. The most pressing thing for me is the need to support the refugees in the very immediate present as the monsoon comes. Obviously, political solutions are absolutely vital,” Blanchett said.
Aung San Suu Kyi was in Australia earlier this month for the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, where she was also criticized by the Malaysian Prime Minister. In unusually stern language, Najib Razak said Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims put them at risk of radicalization by extremists because they have no hope for the future.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Aung San Suu Kyi had addressed the controversy during private talks with other South-East Asian leaders in Sydney.
Aung San Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for many years by Myanmar’s military dictators before the country embraced democracy. The author and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize was widely thought to be the champion of human rights and tolerance in Myanmar, although her reputation has clearly been dented by the Rohingya crisis.
Australia Developing Lasers to Track, Destroy Space Junk
Australian scientists say a powerful ground-based laser targeting space junk will be ready for use next year. They say there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris circling the Earth that have the potential to damage or destroy satellites.
Reducing the amount of space junk in orbit has been the focus of a meeting of scientists this week in Canberra organized by Australia’s Space Environment Research Center.
The meeting has heard that a laser using energy from light radiation to move discarded objects in space could be ready for use within a year. Researchers in Australia believe the technology would be able to change the path of orbital junk to prevent collisions with satellites. The aim is to eventually build more powerful laser beams that could push debris into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it would burn up.
Professor Craig Smith, head of EOS Space Systems, the Australian company that is developing the junk-busting devices, explained how it would work.
“We track objects and predict collisions to high accuracy and if we think a space debris object is going to have a collision with another space debris object then we can use our laser to change its orbits rather than crashing into a satellite or another space debris object causing more space debris. Again as we ramp up the power to bigger and bigger lasers then, yes, you can actually start moving it enough to what we call de-orbit the satellite by reducing its velocity enough that it starts to change orbit height and eventually hits the atmosphere and the atmosphere takes over and drags it,” Smith said.
The system, which would operate through a telescope near the Australian capital, Canberra, is expected to be finished early next year. It is estimated there are 7,500 tons of trash in space. This includes an estimated half-a-million marble-sized pieces of junk, while other items, such as discarded rockets and disused parts of space crafts, are much larger.
In 2012, the eight-ton Envisat Earth Observation satellite unexpectedly shut-down in orbit, where it remains. The size of a school bus, the satellite is one of the largest pieces of ‘junk’ in orbit and could become a catastrophic hazard if struck by other space debris and broken into fragments.
But space debris does not have to be big to cause damage. A floating fleck of paint is thought to have cracked a window on the International Space Station.
In Europe, large nets and harpoons are being developed to catch debris encircling our planet.
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Wayne Huizenga, Who Built Fortune in Trash, Dies at 80
H. Wayne Huizenga, a college dropout who built a business empire that included Blockbuster Entertainment, AutoNation and three professional sports franchises, has died. He was 80.
Huizenga died Thursday night at his home, said Valerie Hinkell, a longtime assistant. The cause was cancer, said Bob Henninger, executive vice president of Huizenga Holdings.
Starting with a single garbage truck in 1968, Huizenga built Waste Management Inc. into a Fortune 500 company. He purchased independent sanitation engineering companies, and by the time he took the company public in 1972, he had completed the acquisition of 133 small-time haulers. By 1983, Waste Management was the largest waste disposal company in the United States.
The business model worked again with Blockbuster Video, which he started in 1985 and built into the leading movie rental chain nine years later. In 1996, he formed AutoNation and built it into a Fortune 500 company.
Sports team owner
Huizenga was founding owner of baseball’s Florida Marlins and the NHL’s Florida Panthers — expansion teams that played their first games in 1993. He bought the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and their stadium for $168 million in 1994 from the children of founder Joe Robbie but had sold all three teams by 2009.
“Wayne Huizenga was a seminal figure in the cultural history of South Florida,” current Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said in a statement. “He completely changed the landscape of the region’s sports scene. … Sports fans throughout the region owe him a debt of thanks.”
The Marlins won the 1997 World Series, and the Panthers reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1996, but Huizenga’s beloved Dolphins never reached a Super Bowl while he owned the team.
“If I have one disappointment, the disappointment would be that we did not bring a championship home,” Huizenga said shortly after he sold the Dolphins to Ross. “It’s something we failed to do.”
Fan favorite — for a time
Huizenga earned an almost cultlike following among business investors who watched him build Blockbuster Entertainment into the leading video rental chain by snapping up competitors. He cracked Forbes’ list of the 100 richest Americans, becoming chairman of Republic Services, one of the nation’s top waste management companies, and AutoNation, the nation’s largest automotive retailer. In 2013, Forbes estimated his wealth at $2.5 billion.
For a time, Huizenga was also a favorite with South Florida sports fans, drawing cheers and autograph seekers in public. The crowd roared when he danced the hokey pokey on the field during an early Marlins game. He went on a spending spree to build a veteran team that won the World Series in the franchise’s fifth year.
But his popularity plummeted when he ordered the roster dismantled after that season. He was frustrated by poor attendance and his failure to swing a deal for a new ballpark built with taxpayer money.
Many South Florida fans never forgave him for breaking up the championship team. Huizenga drew boos when introduced at Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino’s retirement celebration in 2000 and kept a lower public profile after that.
In 2009, Huizenga said he regretted ordering the Marlins’ payroll purge.
“We lost $34 million the year we won the World Series, and I just said, ‘You know what, I’m not going to do that,’” Huizenga said. “If I had it to do over again, I’d say, ‘OK, we’ll go one more year.’”
He sold the Marlins in 1999 to John Henry, and sold the Panthers in 2001, unhappy with rising NHL player salaries and the stock price for the team’s public company.
Dolphins man
Huizenga’s first sports love was the Dolphins; he had been a season-ticket holder since their first season in 1966. But he fared better in the NFL as a businessman than as a sports fan.
He turned a nifty profit by selling the Dolphins and their stadium for $1.1 billion, nearly seven times what he paid to become sole owner. But he knew the bottom line in the NFL is championships, and his Dolphins perennially came up short.
Huizenga earned a reputation as a hands-off owner and won raves from many loyal employees, even though he made six coaching changes. He eased Pro Football Hall of Famer Don Shula into retirement in early 1996, and Jimmy Johnson, Dave Wannstedt, interim coach Jim Bates, Nick Saban, Cam Cameron and Tony Sparano followed as coach.
Johnson tweeted: “A great man, one of the nicest individuals I have ever known, Wayne Huizenga passed away. RIP.”
Garbage business
Harry Wayne Huizenga was born in the Chicago suburbs on Dec. 29, 1937, to a family of garbage haulers. He began his business career in Pompano Beach in 1962, driving a garbage truck from 2 a.m. to noon each day for $500 a month.
Huizenga was a five-time recipient of Financial World magazine’s “CEO of the Year” award, and was the Ernst & Young “2005 World Entrepreneur of the Year.”
Regarding his business acumen, Huizenga said: “You just have to be in the right place at the right time. It can only happen in America.”
In 1960, he married Joyce VanderWagon. Together they had two children, Wayne Jr. and Scott. They divorced in 1966. Wayne married his second wife, Marti Goldsby, in 1972. She died in 2017.
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Why is Austin an Attractive Hub for Many Tech Companies?
Austin, Texas, is not California’s Silicon Valley technology corridor. But companies from Silicon Valley and other major U.S. hubs are taking notice of Austin’s growing tech scene. Austin’s lower cost of living and doing business, combined with its smaller size, are just a few reasons that people are attracted to the area. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains other reasons that tech companies are opening up shop there.
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Chinese of the Mississippi Delta – An Audiovisual Journey
Two Asian-American photographers from New York traveled to the deep south — The Mississippi Delta — to explore the roots of a seldom-mentioned, but long-established Chinese community. Their images explore the diverse contributions and experiences of both native-born and immigrant residents. But the young photographers’ journey is also a story of self-identity in an environment far from home.
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Colon Cancer Can Be Prevented and Treated
Although cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, colorectal cancer is one of the cancers that we can actually prevent, the World Health Organization says.
The colon is a long, muscular tube that’s also known as the large intestine. It is part of the digestive system. Colon cancer is linked to diet, genetic predisposition and age. In the U.S., 1 in 23 people will be told they have colon cancer.
WATCH: Colon Cancer Can be Prevented and Treated
Michele Alexander got her diagnosis at age 53.
“How much longer do I have? My daughter’s 24. You know, she’s still got a lot of life left. How much longer will I be with her? Those kind of thoughts go through your head,” Alexander said.
Largely preventable
Dr. Zihao Wu at the University of Missouri Health Care says this type of cancer is largely preventable.
“The majority of colon cancer develops from a benign polyp, and that takes about 10 to 15 years,” he said. “And if you find a polyp and remove it, you won’t have colon cancer, so it’s very important to have a screening to prevent cancer.”
As scary as her diagnosis was, Alexander’s passion for auto racing helped her get through her ordeal. Her favorite driver is Carl Edwards, and she had tickets to a race in which he was competing. When someone shared her story with him, he called her.
“I said, ‘I know there’s an auction where I can bid to ride in the truck with you for driver intros, and it is my goal to win that auction,’” she said. … He said, ‘Don’t bid. You get here, you’re riding with me.’”
Six weeks after surgery to remove the cancer in her colon, Alexander got her ride.
“Oh, it was just joy. In a race for my life, and I crossed the finish line a winner,” she said.
Healthy lifestyle helps
Wu said Alexander’s attitude helped.
“She wanted to get better. She had a strong will to get better, and I think that’s very important,” he said.
Doctors say you can help prevent colon cancer if you eat plenty of greens, whole grains and vegetables and legumes, which are high in fiber. Regular exercise also helps, and if you smoke, stop.
Most importantly, get a regular screening starting at age 50 or sooner if you have a family history.
If colon cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, the World Health Organization says 90 percent of patients survive at least five years, compared with no more than percent of those diagnosed at an advanced stage.
Two years after her surgery, Alexander is still cancer free and still a racecar enthusiast.
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Top 5 Songs for Week Ending March 24
We’re on the move with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending March 24, 2018.
It’s always a good week when we welcome a new song, and this one is already setting records.
Number 5: Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line “Meant To Be”
Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line are your Top Five newcomers this week, as “Meant To Be” rises two slots to fifth place.
This song comes with a pedigree: It’s now in its 16th week atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. That’s the longest reign in that chart’s history for a song with a lead female vocal. Ironically, it was originally released on the contemporary hit radio format … not country.
Number 4: Post Malone Featuring Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”
Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign back off two slots to fourth place with “Psycho.”
Post’s next album “Beerbongs & Bentleys” has been a long time coming …and we still don’t have a release date. However, he’s now offering two different beer bongs on his merchandise page for $20 apiece … so that new album can’t be too far off, can it?
Number 3: Bruno Mars & Cardi B “Finesse”
Bruno Mars and Cardi B take over third place with “Finesse,” and Cardi just gave us her unfiltered opinion of the #MeToo movement.
Speaking with Cosmopolitan magazine, Cardi said she doesn’t feel the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements will have much effect on the hip hop scene. She says sexual favors were expected back when she was trying to break into videos, and if women spoke up they were belittled. Cardi also doesn’t feel that male producers and directors have learned much from anti-harassment initiatives … they’re just scared.
Number 2: Ed Sheeran “Perfect”
Ed Sheeran recovers a slot to second place with “Perfect.” Ed’s plans to build a chapel on his English estate may be foiled by newts. Ed submitted an application to the Suffolk Coastal District Council, but neighbors worry about the planned structure’s impact on the crested newt population. The little amphibians are a protected species.
Number 1: Drake “God’s Plan”
Drake heads the hit list for a seventh week with “God’s Plan.” Last year, author Margaret Atwood suggested that Drake should appear in the TV adaptation of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. On March 18, cast members made their own appeals for Drake to take a cameo role in the dystopian show. Season 2 releases on April 25 on Hulu … without Drake, as far as we know.
We’ll be back next week with a new lineup!
UN Reports See a Lonelier Planet With Fewer Plants, Animals
Earth is losing plants, animals and clean water at a dramatic rate, according to four new U.N. scientific reports that provide the most comprehensive and localized look at the state of biodiversity.
Scientists meeting in Colombia issued four regional reports Friday on how well animals and plants are doing in the Americas; Europe and Central Asia; Africa; and the Asia-Pacific area.
Their conclusion after three years of study : Nowhere is doing well.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem was about more than just critters, said study team chairman Robert Watson. It is about keeping Earth livable for humans, because we rely on biodiversity for food, clean water and public health, the prominent British and U.S. scientist said.
“This is undermining well-being across the planet, threatening us long term on food and water,” Watson said in an interview.
Scientists pointed to this week’s death of the last male northern white rhino in Africa and severe declines in the numbers of elephants, tigers and pangolins, but said those are only the most visible and charismatic of species that are in trouble.
What’s happening is a side effect of the world getting wealthier and more crowded with people, Watson said. Humans need more food, more clean water, more energy and more land. And the way society has tried to achieve that has cut down on biodiversity, he said.
Crucial habitat has been cut apart; alien species have invaded places; chemicals have hurt plants and animals; wetlands and mangroves that clean up pollution are disappearing; and the world’s waters are overfished, he said.
Man-made climate change is getting worse, and global warming will soon hurt biodiversity as much as all the other problems combined, Watson said.
“We keep making choices to borrow from the future to live well today,” said Jake Rice, Canada’s chief government scientist for fisheries and oceans, who co-chaired the Americas report.
Duke University conservationist Stuart Pimm, who wasn’t part of the study team, said the reports make sense and are based on well-established scientific data: “Are things pretty dire? Yes.”
Among the regional findings:
The Americas
If current trends continue, by the year 2050 the Americas will have 15 percent fewer plants and animals than now. That means there will be 40 percent fewer plants and animals in the Americas than in the early 1700s.
Nearly a quarter of the species that were fully measured are now threatened, Rice said.
And when all of “nature’s contributions” are taken into account, nearly two-thirds are declining and more than one-fifth are “decreasing strongly,” Rice said.
Asia-Pacific
If trends continue, there will be no “exploitable fish stocks” for commercial fishing by 2048. Around that same, the region will lose 45 percent of its biodiversity and about 90 percent of its crucial corals, if nothing changes, said Asia co-chair Sonali Seneratna Sellamuttu, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute.
“All major ecosystems are threatened in the region,” she said.
Europe and Central Asia
Even though it is the region that Watson said may be doing the best, 28 percent of the species that live only in Europe are now threatened. In the last decade, 42 percent of the land plant and animal species have declined, said Europe co-chair Mark Rounsevell of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Wetlands have been cut in half since 1970.
Africa
Africa could lose half of some bird and mammal species by 2100. And more than 60 percent of the continent’s people depend on natural resources for their livelihoods, said report co-chair Luthando Dziba of South African National Parks.
Already more than 20 percent of Africa’s species are threatened, endangered or extinct.
While scientists said government and society needs to change its ways, individuals can use less energy, less water and eat less red meat, Watson said.
“A balanced diet can really help,” he said. There are “lots of individual things you can do.”
The outlook is bleak if society doesn’t change, but it still can, Watson said.
“Some species are threatened with extinctions. Others, just pure numbers will go down,” Watson said. “It will be a lonelier place relative to our natural world. It’s a moral issue. Do we humans have right to make them go extinct?”
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Film Details ‘Hidden Figures’ in Black Female Pro Wrestling
Ramona Isbell is worried. What will people say when they find out? After all, she mostly kept her secret for more than 50 years.
The practices. The out-of-town — and out-of-country — travel. Her role as a hidden figure in a lesser-known aspect of integration brought on by the civil rights movement.
Her life as one of the country’s first black female professional wrestlers.
“I liked the freedom, I liked the money, I liked the travel, and I had fun,” Isbell said.
A new documentary explores the role of black women recruited as professional wrestlers in the 1950s and 1960s. Columbus was an epicenter for the female wrestlers thanks to promoter Billy Wolfe.
Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring debuts Thursday at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts.
Filmmaker Chris Bournea said people like Isbell wrestled not only before women were deemed capable of athletic accomplishments, but before blacks had civil rights in many places.
They also didn’t talk a lot about what they did, perhaps concerned about others’ reactions. And when they were finished, they wanted to move on with their lives.
Bournea, who is black, grew up in Columbus without ever hearing the stories. After he learned of them as a journalist about a decade ago, he knew he had to do something.
“Awareness needed to be brought to these women’s accomplishments,” Bournea said.
The driving force behind their recruitment was Wolfe, a former wrestler and trainer, who was white. A gambler, cigar smoker and womanizer, he was a classic American hustler, said Jeff Leen, a Washington Post reporter whose 2009 book on Wolfe’s wife, wrestler Mildred Burke, The Queen of the Ring offers a comprehensive history of the early years of women’s professional wrestling.
Whatever else he was, though, Wolfe wasn’t prejudiced.
Wolfe didn’t care if his wrestlers “were straight or gay, black or white,” Leen said. “He cared if they were a great dynamic performer who was going to put butts in the seat and make him money.”
He also wanted real athletes, despite the staged matches, and required women to work out diligently.
The matches promoted by Wolfe preceded the Glorious Women of Wrestling, or GLOW, syndicated TV promotion of the 1980s, now the subject of a Netflix comedy series.
Bournea said he has planned screenings in other cities with large professional wrestling fan bases and will then release the film on Amazon.
Life in the ring
Isbell signed with Wolfe in Columbus in 1961 in her early 20s, one of a few dozen black women that wrestled for Wolfe, in addition to many white women.
Isbell practiced three times a week, and wrestled in modified one-piece swimsuits. She appeared throughout the U.S., wrestling white women in northern cities like Detroit, and black women only in the Jim Crow South. She made anywhere from $100 to $400 a match.
Isbell also saw the world, wrestling in matches in Australia, Japan and Nigeria. Along the way she raised four children, who were vaguely aware of what their mom was up to. She wrestled into the 1970s, with a final appearance in a promotion in California in the 1980s. By then she was working for the state, retiring as a purchasing agent with the Ohio Industrial Commission.
Now 78, she keeps fit through yard work, walks in the park, and exercising on a treadmill in her east-side Columbus home.
Next month, she plans to attend an annual professional wrestling reunion in Las Vegas held by the Cauliflower Alley Club, a pro-wrestling preservation society.
News of her exploits is leaking out as word of the documentary grows in Columbus. But that doesn’t stop Isbell from considering people’s reaction.
“That’s why I’m worried now,” Isbell said with a laugh. “What are they going to say at church?”
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Iowa Inmates to Perform at New York City Opera
Inmates from an eastern Iowa prison have spent weeks learning German and perfecting inflections to make their New York City opera debut in a broadcast performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
Heartbeat Opera invited the Oakdale Community Choir to perform the Prisoner’s Chorus for its New York City live production in May.
Production Director Ethan Heard traveled to the medium-security prison in Coralville, Iowa, on Wednesday to record the choir, comprised of 40 inmates and 30 community members. It’s among six choirs being recorded singing for a pivotal scene.
Inmate Shane Kendrick says any humanizing depiction of inmates is good for them and the community that they’ll re-enter.
Heard tells the Iowa City Press-Citizen that the idea to reimagine Fidelio came to him when he began exploring injustice in today’s prison system.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Sets Course for Popular Social Media Site
Now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken publicly about the firm’s data controversy, the chief question remains whether the changes he outlined will be enough to restore the public’s trust in the social media giant.
In a series of media interviews this week, Zuckerberg went into full damage control mode about how the company handled user data when it discovered in 2015 that 50 million users’ data had been shared with Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy that advises political campaigns, thus breaking the company’s rules.
He apologized. He called the recent controversy “a major breach of trust.”
What now?
Congressional leaders have already called on Zuckerberg to testify in Congress — something that Zuckerberg appeared willing to do, according to the interviews, if he was “the right person.”
Some Facebook critics argue the firm, which relies on advertising revenue, isn’t able or willing to curtail practices that may improve users’ privacy but potentially hurt its bottom line. The company needs some sort of regulatory oversight, they say, or new laws about users’ personal data.
But for now, Zuckerberg outlined a series of measures that would limit the amount of data collected on users, something that many privacy advocates have argued for. The firm’s revenue model, he said, is here to stay.
“I don’t think the ad model is going to go away because I think fundamentally, it’s important to have a service like this that everyone in the world can use, and the only way to do that is to have it be very cheap or free,” Zuckerberg told the New York Times.
Going back to 2014
Facebook plans to turn the clock back to 2014, before it changed its rules stopping a developers’ ability to tap into users’ friends’ data.
With the help of forensic auditors, the company plans to investigate all “large apps” — “thousands,” by Zuckerberg’s estimate, that scooped up data then.
This includes users whose data was gathered by a researcher and given to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook plans to inform affected users. Cambridge Analytica has denied that it improperly used user data.
If a developer doesn’t want to comply with Facebook’s audit, Facebook will ban it from the social network, Zuckerberg said.
“Even if you solve the problem going forward, there’s still this issue of: Are there other Cambridge Analyticas out there,” Zuckerberg told the Times. “We also need to make sure we get that under control.”
Remove access to data
In addition, the company plans to remove a developer’s access to a person’s data if someone hasn’t used the developer’s app in three months. And the company plans to reduce the amount of information collected when users sign in.
Finally, the company says it plans to make it easier to see who has access to their data and to revoke permissions. The moves are intended to curtail what critics have long complained about Facebook’s role in enabling the ongoing collection of more data on users than is needed.
Feeling ‘uncomfortable’
Zuckerberg told Recode that Facebook, with more than two billion users, has become so big and important in the lives of many around the world that he doesn’t always feel comfortable making blanket decisions.
“I feel fundamentally uncomfortable sitting here in California at an office, making content policy decisions for people around the world,” he said. “Things like where is the line on hate speech?”
He has to make the decisions he said, because he runs Facebook.
“But I’d rather not.”
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Black Identity, Technology in US Celebrated at Afrotectopia Fest
Being black and working in the tech industry can be an isolating experience.
New York nonprofit Ascend Leadership analyzed the hiring data of hundreds of San Francisco Bay-area tech companies from 2007 and 2015 and issued a report last year, detailing the lack of diversity in tech.
Based on data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Ascend found that the black tech professional workforce declined from 2.5 percent in 2007 to 1.9 percent in 2015. The outlook was even bleaker at the top. Despite 43 percent growth in the number of black executives from 2007 to 2015, blacks accounted for 1.1 percent of the total number of tech executives in 2015.
“You’re one in a sea full of people that just don’t look like you,” said Ari Melenciano, a graduate student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Melenciano decided to do something about it and created Afrotectopia.
Recently held at NYU, the inaugural 2-day festival brought together black technologists, designers and artists to discuss their work and the challenges of navigating the mostly white world of technology and new media.
“It’s really important for us to be able to see ourselves and build this community of people that actually look like us and are doing amazing things,” Melenciano said.
Glenn Cantave, founder and CEO of performance art coalition Movers and Shakers NYC, was on hand to demonstrate the group’s use of augmented reality and virtual reality, with apps that address racism and discrimination.
“My parents told me from a very young age that ‘You will not be treated like your white friends. There are certain privileges that you do not have,'” said Cantave. “It’s affected my conduct, it affects how I navigate spaces. I stay hyper-aware of my surroundings at all times, in terms of safety.”
Cantave and his team are working on an augmented reality book for children entitled, White Supremacy 101: Columbus the Hero? The book will contain various images that become animated when viewed with an augmented reality app. Each excerpt is intended to be a counterpoint to traditional history lessons which tell American history from a white perspective.
“If these false narratives are perpetuated for generations in the future, you’re going to have a collective consciousness that doesn’t see black people as human beings,” Cantave said. “You see it with mass incarceration, you see it with police brutality, you see it with unsympathetic immigration policy.”
But technology offers an opportunity to change that, according to Idris Brewster, creator of the app and CTO of Movers and Shakers NYC.
“Augmented reality and virtual reality … really provides us with a unique opportunity to use very immersive technology and tell a story in a very different and engaging way,” Brewster said.
Public response has been positive. “It’s blown the kids’ minds just to see animations. A lot of kids will be like, ‘Wow, this is like Harry Potter,'” he said.
Brewster also works as a computer science instructor at Google, where in 2016, blacks made up 1 percent of the company’s U.S. tech workers. He wants to see more minorities become tech creators, not just end users.
“There’s algorithms being created in our world right now that are detrimental to people of color because they’re not made for people of color,” Brewster said. “We need to start being able to figure out how we can get our minds and our perspectives in those conversations, creating those algorithms.”
Virtual reality filmmaker Jazzy Harvey attended Afrotectopia to present her virtual-reality film, Built Not Bought, which profiles the custom-car enthusiasts of south central Los Angeles.
Harvey said she felt greater creative freedom working with the new medium. “There’s no rules, and the fact that I have no rules and no restrictions … I get to choose which story is worth telling,” Harvey said.
Afrotectopia panelists and attendees tackled a variety of topics including digital activism, entrepreneurship and education, but ultimately, it was about getting everyone in the same room together.
“To come into a space where you don’t have to assimilate culturally, you can just be yourself and talk the way that you actually talk and really have people that can connect with you culturally is so important,” Melenciano said. “Especially when you’re talking about things that you’re passionate about like tech, it’s a space where we’re so often dismissed from.”
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Black Identity, Technology Celebrated at Afrotectopia Fest
Being black and working in the tech industry can be an isolating experience. But at the Afrotectopia festival in New York, it’s what everyone has in common. Tina Trinh meets with the creative people exploring the intersection of race and technology.
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US Core Capital Goods Orders, Shipments Jump in February
New orders for key U.S.-made capital goods rebounded more than expected in February after two straight monthly declines and shipments surged, which could temper expectations of a sharp slowdown in business spending on equipment in the first quarter.
The Commerce Department’s report on Friday could prompt economists to raise their economic growth estimates for the first three months of the year. They were slashed last week after data showed retail sales fell in February for the third month in a row.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday painted an upbeat picture of the economy when it raised interest rates and forecast at least two more increases for 2018.
Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending plans, jumped 1.8 percent last month. That was the biggest gain in five months and followed a downwardly revised 0.4 percent decrease in January.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast those orders rising only 0.8 percent in February after a previously reported 0.3 percent decline in January. Core capital goods orders increased 7.4 percent on a year-on-year basis.
Shipments of core capital goods increased 1.4 percent last month, the biggest advance since December 2016, after an upwardly revised 0.1 percent gain in January. Core capital goods shipments are used to calculate equipment spending in the government’s gross domestic product measurement.
They were previously reported to have slipped 0.1 percent in January. Business spending on equipment powered ahead in 2017 as companies anticipated a hefty reduction in the corporate income tax rate. The Trump administration slashed that rate to 21 percent from 35 percent effective in January.
U.S. financial markets were little moved by the data as investors worried that President Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday of tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods could start a global trade war.
Prices of U.S. Treasuries were mixed while U.S. stock index futures were largely flat. The dollar fell against a basket of currencies.
Strong business spending
The surge in core capital goods orders in February suggests further gains. There had been concerns spending could slow sharply after double-digit growth in the past quarters.
Investment in equipment is likely to be bolstered by robust business confidence, strengthening global economic growth and a weakening dollar, which is boosting demand for U.S. exports.
That is helping to support manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of U.S. economic activity.
The strength in core capital goods shipments, together with a surge in industrial production in February, could help offset the impact of soft consumer spending on first-quarter growth.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve is forecasting gross domestic product increasing at a 1.8 percent annualized rate in the first three months of the year.
The government reported last month that the economy grew at a 2.5 percent pace in the fourth quarter. However, revisions to December data on construction spending, factory orders and wholesale inventories have suggested the fourth-quarter growth estimate could be raised to a 3.1 percent pace. The government will publish its third GDP estimate on Wednesday.
Last month, orders for machinery soared 1.6 percent. There were also hefty increases in orders of primary metals and electrical equipment, appliances and components.
Orders for computers and electronic products fell 0.2 percent, with bookings for communications equipment recording their biggest drop since December 2015.
Overall orders for durable goods, items ranging from toasters to aircraft that are meant to last three years or more, vaulted 3.1 percent last month as demand for transportation equipment soared 7.1 percent.
That followed a 3.5 percent tumble in January. Orders for motor vehicles and parts increased 1.6 percent last month after edging up 0.1 percent in January.
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Russia Eyes Restrictions on US Imports in Response to Tariffs
Russia will likely prepare a list of restrictions on imported products from the United States in response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, Moscow’s trade ministry said on Friday, according to Interfax news agency.
The announcement came after China threatened to retaliate to U.S. President Donald Trump’s measures, stoking fears of a looming global trade war.
“We will prepare our position, submit it to the Economy Ministry and apply to the WTO [the World Trade Organization],” Russia’s Deputy Trade Minister, Viktor Yevtukhov, said, according to Interfax.
“We will probably prepare proposals on the response measures. Restrictions against the American goods. I think that all countries will follow this path,” Yevtukhov added.
The United States has said the tariffs are needed to protect its national security and therefore do not need to be cleared by the WTO. Many trade experts disagree saying they fall under the jurisdiction of the Geneva-based global trade body.
Russian steel and aluminum producers have been playing down the potential impact of the U.S. tariffs. But Russia’s Trade Ministry said there would be an impact.
Russian steel and aluminum producers may lose $2 billion and $1 billion, respectively, from the U.S. tariffs introduction, Yevtukhov said, citing preliminary estimates for the Trade Ministry. It was not clear whether he was referring to annual losses.
China’s commerce ministry said on Friday that the country was planning measures against up to $3 billion of U.S. imports to balance the steel and aluminum tariffs, with a list of 128 U.S. products that could be targeted.
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