Before it became one of the venues for the World Cup, the city of Volgograd in southwest Russia was famous for an overabundance of small, annoying flies called midges. While the small two-winged flies don’t bite, soccer fans are finding that they don’t leave you alone either. VOA’s Mariama Diallo takes a look at what Russian officials are doing to make the sporting life more comfortable for World Cup fans and players.
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Month: June 2018
Jehovah’s Witnesses: Christians Without the Cross
Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of being persecuted around the world. Their activities are banned or restricted in several countries. They are considered an extremist organization in Russia, while their members are imprisoned in South Korea and Eritrea. Even near their main headquarters and publishing house in New York state, Jehovah’s Witnesses lead a somewhat secluded life. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan has the story.
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New Smithsonian Exhibit Examines Past and Present Pandemics
Globalization in the 20th century facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas and technology. But it also helped spread deadly germs and viruses around the world. A new exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History illustrates the impact of these sometimes lethal biological linkages and looks back at the deadliest and scariest epidemics throughout history. Maxim Moskalkov has more.
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Separation Stress May Permanently Damage Migrant Children
President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to keep migrant children with their parents at the southwestern U.S. border, but more than 2,000 children are living in shelters without their families. Doctors and mental health workers are concerned that some of these children will suffer permanent damage. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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US, Russia Energy Officials to Meet, Discuss Natural Gas
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will meet Russia’s energy minister next week in Washington, a person familiar with the situation said Friday, as the two countries compete to supply global markets with natural gas and crude.
Perry will meet Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak on Tuesday, in the context of the World Gas Conference in Washington, the source said.
Meetings between top energy officials from Russia and the United States, two of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, have been rare in recent years.
Relations between Moscow and Washington have cooled over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and as the Trump administration blames the Russian government for cyber attacks that targeted the U.S. power grid over the last two years.
The two countries are competing to sell natural gas to Europe. Russia’s Gazprom, the European Union’s biggest gas supplier, and several Western energy companies hope to open Nord Stream 2, a pipeline to bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
The United States, meanwhile, has begun some sales of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to Poland and Lithuania, though LNG shipments can be more expensive than gas sent via pipeline.
The United States says the advantage of its LNG is dependability and stable pricing.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as did the administration of former President Barack Obama. Washington believes that the pipeline would give Russia, which has at times frozen deliveries to parts of Europe over pricing disputes, more power over the region.
The meeting comes as U.S. national security adviser John Bolton plans to visit Moscow next week to prepare for a possible meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Perry and Novak will also likely talk about oil markets. On Friday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed in Vienna to raise oil output by a modest amount after consumers had called for producers to curb rising fuel prices.
Russia, which is not an OPEC member, began cooperating last year with the group for the first time, holding back production to support global oil prices. Before the Vienna OPEC meeting, Novak said Moscow would propose a gradual increase in output from oil-producing countries, starting in July.
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Algorithms Aid Tracking of Migrating Songbirds in Arctic
Tracking wildlife migration has been historically difficult in the rugged terrain of Alaska. Researchers primarily rely on either surveys or GPS tracking to understand bird migration patterns. Both methods are expensive, either in terms of time or money. And the trackers are often too large or heavy.
One way to sidestep these common issues is to record audio from frequently used nesting grounds. Using birdsong allows researchers to unobtrusively study the animals, although there’s a downside. Each day produces a flood of audio recordings from multiple microphones placed around nesting grounds. It takes trained listeners endless hours to search the noisy soundscape for birdsong.
In a recently published paper in the journal Science Advances, U.S. researchers explain how they got around these tracking troubles. Columbia University ecologist Ruth Oliver and her fellow collaborators replaced the human ears with machine learning algorithms to listen to birdsong.
Costly proposition
Oliver told VOA News, “Arrival times of migratory song birds is really important for their reproductive success. And obviously sending people to the Arctic to do field work is very expensive and takes a lot of time” — hence, the scientists’ interest in creating an automated method for tracking bird species.
Oliver and her colleagues focused on migratory songbirds who fly to northern Alaska during their mating season. These birds tend to chirp more frequently as soon as they reach the breeding grounds to attract a mate. Spring is short in Alaska and the birds must breed and hatch their clutch before winter.
The team of researchers recorded the springtime soundscape of northern Alaska for five sequential years. They placed microphones at four sites in the foothills of the Brooks Range, which recorded 1,200 audio hours.
However, Oliver admitted the recordings weren’t always perfect. “There’s a lot of other noise in these recordings” Oliver said. “Even in May in northern Alaska there’s lots of wind, lots of rain, and all of that is confounding when you’re listening to birds.”
The scientists fed hours of audio into two types of machine learning algorithms — one that used human expertise to help train it and one that relied solely on the collected audio. Both algorithms were based on the same model that’s used by applications like Siri and Alexa.
Oliver told VOA that in creating the human-supervised algorithm, she “wrote a little program to randomly sample about 1 percent of the data set” and then listened to 4-second clips. She scored these clips as either containing or not containing songbird vocalizations and then fed this information into the program.
Both algorithms were fairly accurate at estimating when the avian commuters arrived in the foothills. The models showed the importance of snowmelt for the arrival of the traveling birds. The human-trained model was slightly better at recognizing the relationship between weather conditions and bird calls, although neither model specifically tracked individual species.
This technique has great potential according to Emily Jo Williams, vice president of migratory birds and habitat at the American Bird Conservancy, “This kind of technique that allows you to survey populations in those remote areas is really exciting and could allow us to even discover new places where protection and conservation efforts are needed,” she said.
This study looked at nesting grounds near the Alaskan Arctic Refuge, which is a summer home for birds from nearly every continent. For example, the Northern Wheatear travels approximately 21,000 kilometers (13,000 miles) from Africa to summer in the refuge.
Climate change
Williams told VOA, “We know from some research that some birds’ ranges have actually changed, and they’ve moved in response to what we think is a warming climate.” She went on to explain that “the timing of that migration has evolved over eons, and in large part it’s relative to what food sources are available over a particular time, what weather patterns are or aren’t favorable. So you could end up with bird migration out of sync with insect hatches or the phenology of plants that birds have a relationship to.”
Tools like the algorithm created in this study could be used to track how migratory patterns of many species may shift in response to climate change. Using machine learning is a new way to follow these shifting patterns in birds, insects and other animals.
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French Divided Over Bataclan Performances by Rapper Medine
“All I want to do is the Bataclan, the Bataclan.” Those are lyrics to a song released earlier in the year by rapper Medine. Two of his concerts are scheduled for the Bataclan theater in October. But not everyone wants to see the shows go on.
At issue, in part, are the words to another song by the artist, whose real name is Medine Zaouiche. In the song, “Don’t Laik,” one line goes, “I put fatwas on the heads of idiots.” The song was released in 2015 — the same year that France was hit by several terrorist attacks, including one targeting the Bataclan.
This is not the first time Medina has generated controversy. A decade earlier, he released an album titled Jihad — and he has been photographed in a T-shirt bearing the term, and a massive sword.
Now, thousands of people have signed a petition launched by the far right and demanding Medine’s concerts be canceled. Critics are tweeting their opposition via the hashtag #pasdemedineaubataclan, or “no Medine at the Bataclan.”
On French radio, far-right National Rally party head Marine Le Pen described Medine as an Islamic fundamentalist. His performance at the Bataclan, she said, is a threat to public order.
Victims’ associations are divided. Philippe Duperron, who heads one of them, is against the concerts taking place, out of respect for the victims and the memory of them.
Medine and his lawyers are fighting back. The rapper has criticized Islamic fundamentalism a number of times and says he is against violence. He says “Don’t Laik” is more of a slap at France’s tough secular creed, and that the jihad he refers to is an internal spiritual struggle, rather than violence.
“It’s been 15 years since I’ve criticized all forms of radicalism in my albums,” he posted recently on social media. Banning his concerts, he argues, amounts to caving in to the far right.
Medine’s arguments are drawing support, partly in the name of free expression. That appears to be the argument of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
Still, others argue the divisions over the rapper’s concerts are the worst outcome, at a time when the French should be united against terrorism.
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Police: Backup Driver in Fatal Uber Crash Was Distracted
The human backup driver in an autonomous Uber SUV was streaming the television show “The Voice” on her phone and looking downward just before fatally striking a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix, according to a police report.
The 300-page report released Thursday night by police in Tempe revealed that driver Rafaela Vasquez had been streaming the musical talent show via Hulu in the 43 minutes before the March 18 crash that killed Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a darkened road outside the lines of a crosswalk. The report said the crash, which marks the first fatality involving a self-driving vehicle, wouldn’t have happened had the driver not been distracted.
Dash camera video shows Vasquez was looking down near her right knee for four or five seconds before the crash. She looked up a half second before striking Herzberg as the Volvo was traveling about 44 miles per hour.
Vasquez told police Herzberg “came out of nowhere” and that she didn’t see her prior to the collision. But officers calculated that had Vasquez been paying attention, she could have reacted 143 feet before impact and brought the SUV to a stop about 42.6 feet before hitting Herzberg.
“This crash would not have occurred if Vasquez would have been monitoring the vehicle and roadway conditions and was not distracted,” the report stated.
Tempe police are looking at a vehicular manslaughter charge in the crash, according to a March 19 affidavit filed to get a search warrant for audio, video and data stored in the Uber SUV.
The detective seeking the warrant, identified as J. Barutha, wrote that based on information from the vehicular homicide unit, “it is believed that the crime of vehicular manslaughter has occurred and that evidence of this offense is currently located in a 2017 Grey Volvo XC-90.”
A previously released video of the crash showed Vasquez looking down just before the crash. She had a startled look on her face about the time of the impact.
The National Transportation Safety Board, in a preliminary report issued last month, said the autonomous driving system on Uber’s Volvo XC-90 SUV spotted Herzberg about six seconds before hitting her, but did not stop because the system used to automatically apply brakes in potentially dangerous situations had been disabled.
The system is disabled while Uber’s cars are under computer control, “to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior,” the NTSB report said. Instead of the system, Uber relies on the human backup driver to intervene, the report stated. But the system is not designed to alert the driver.
Uber pulled its self-driving cars out of Arizona the day before the NTSB report was released, eliminating the jobs of about 300 people who served as backup drivers and performed other jobs connected to the vehicles. The company had suspended testing of its self-driving vehicles in Arizona, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto while regulators investigated the cause of the crash. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey prohibited Uber from continuing its tests of self-driving cars after Herzberg was run over.
Police initially determined that Vasquez was not impaired after giving her a field test.
Analysis of video taken from the vehicle shows Vasquez looked downward 204 times in the 11.8 miles traveled before the crash. While the SUV was in motion, Vasquez averted her eyes away from the roadway nearly a third of the time, according to the report.
“Sometimes, her face appears to react and show a smirk or laugh at various points during the times that she is looking down,” the report said. “Her hands are not visible in the frame of the video during these times.”
The office of Cristina Perez Hesano, an attorney for Herzberg’s daughter and husband, declined to comment on the police report. Attorney Pat McGroder, who represents Herzberg’s mother, father and son, didn’t immediately respond to a call late Friday morning seeking comment.
An Uber spokeswoman said in a prepared statement Friday morning that the company is cooperating with investigations while it does an internal safety review. “We have a strict policy prohibiting mobile device usage for anyone operating our self-driving vehicles. We plan to share more on the changes we’ll make to our program soon,” the statement said.
Use of a mobile device while an autonomous vehicle is moving is a fireable offense, and “this is emphasized on an ongoing basis,” the statement said.
After the crash, the ride-hailing company said it did a top-to-bottom safety evaluation, reviewing internal processes and safety culture. Uber also said it brought in former transportation safety board chairman Christopher Hart to advise the company on safety.
Both Vasquez and Uber could still face civil liability in the case, Uber for potentially negligent hiring, training and supervision, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who closely follows autonomous vehicles.
Vasquez could be charged criminally, and if there’s evidence that Uber or its employees acted recklessly, then charges against them are possible, Smith said. But charges against the company are not likely, he added.
“This should not have happened in so many ways and on so many levels,” Smith said. “This report, if true, makes things worse. And obviously it would not look good to a jury.”
Uber settled quickly with some of Herzberg’s family members but others have retained legal counsel.
The Yavapai County Attorney’s Office hasn’t set a deadline for deciding whether to bring charges, said Penny Cramer, assistant to County Attorney Sheila Polk. The prosecutorial agency declined to comment on the police report.
The case was handed to Polk’s office after the prosecutor’s office in metro Phoenix passed on the case, citing a potential conflict of interest. The agency in Phoenix had previously participated in a public-safety campaign with Uber.
On a body camera video the night of the crash, police gathered at the scene quickly realized that they were dealing with a big story because an autonomous vehicle was involved.
An officer who identifies himself as supervisor of the unit that investigates fatal crashes is seen asking a man who appears to be an Uber supervisor about getting video from the SUV and whether Uber’s lawyers have been contacted.
“You guys know as well as I know that this is going to be an international story,” the police supervisor says. “We want to make sure that we’re doing not only what we normally do and not doing anything different, but also making sure that everything’s above board and everything’s out in the open.”
The supervisor goes on to say that he’s going to communicate as honestly as he can. “I hope that you guys do the same because we’re going to be working together throughout this whole process from now, probably for months from now.”
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No Drugs, No Alcohol in US Celebrity Chef Bourdain’s Body When He Died: Prosecutor
U.S. celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who killed himself in a French hotel room earlier this month, had no narcotics or alcohol in his body when he died, a local prosecutor said on Friday.
Bourdain, host of CNN’s food-and-travel-focused “Parts Unknown” television series, was 61. Brash and opinionated, he had spoken openly about his use of drugs and addiction to heroin earlier in his life.
“No trace of narcotics, no trace of any toxic products, no trace of medicines, no trace of alcohol,” prosecutor Christian de Rocquigny told Reuters.
Bourdain, whose career catapulted him from washing dishes at New York restaurants to dining in Vietnam with President Barack Obama, hanged himself in a hotel room near Strasbourg, France, where he had been working on an upcoming episode of his TV series, according to CNN.
Images from Michael Benanav’s journey with the Van Gujjars of Northern India.
Michael Benanav has traveled around much of the world, chronicling in words and pictures nomadic communities from Mali, to Jordan to Mongolia. But when the photographer heard about the Van Gujjar tribe of Northern India, he knew he wanted to do more than just document their existence. He wanted to join them on a migration to better understand their nomadic way of life and culture.
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Trump Threatens 20 Percent Tariff on EU Cars
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose a 20 percent tariff on vehicles assembled in the European Union and shipped to the United States, in retaliation for European tariffs on American imports.
On Friday, the day new EU tariffs went into effect, Trump tweeted, “…if these Tariffs and Barriers are not soon broken down and removed, we will be placing a 20% Tariff on all of their cars coming into the U.S. Build them here!”
Auto industry experts say such tariffs could negatively impact the U.S. economy, as well as Europe’s.
“It’s really a tangle; it’s not a simple question” of cars being made in one place and sold in another, Kasper Peters, communications manager of ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, said Friday in an interview with VOA.
In March, ACEA Secretary General Erik Jonnaert noted the impact European carmakers with plants in the United States have on local economies. “EU manufacturers do not only import vehicles into the U.S. They also have a major manufacturing footprint there, providing significant local employment and generating tax revenue,” Jonnaert said in a statement.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said earlier this week that his department plans to wrap up by July or August an investigation into whether imported cars and car parts are a threat to national security. But Daniel Price, a former senior economic adviser to President George W. Bush, told The Washington Post that Trump’s threat of new tariffs “short-circuited the … process and conclusively undercut the stated national security rationale of that investigation.”
The new EU tariffs enacted Friday apply to billions of dollars’ worth of American goods — including jeans, bourbon and motorcycles.
The action is the latest response to Trump’s decision to tax imported steel and aluminum.
The U.S. is scheduled to start taxing more than $30 billion in Chinese imports in two weeks.
Like the EU, China has promised to retaliate immediately, putting the world’s two largest economies at odds.
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president, John Murphy, was cited by the Associated Press as saying he estimates that $75 billion in U.S. products could be subjected to new foreign tariffs by the end of the first week of July.
Separately, a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry said, “The U.S. is abusing the tariff methods and starting trade wars all around the world.”
“Clarity [is] still lacking about how far things will ultimately go between [the] U.S. and China and the potential ripple effect for world trade,” said financial analyst Mike van Dulken.
During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to apply tariffs, saying countries around the world had been exploiting the U.S.
A former White House trade adviser says Trump “has been so belligerent that it becomes almost impossible for democratically elected leaders — or even a non-democratic leader like [Chinese President] Xi Jinping — to appear to kowtow and give in.”
Phillip Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said, “The president has made it very hard for other countries to give him what he wants.”
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Paul McCartney Drives Down Memory Lane for ‘Carpool Karaoke’
It had been a magical mystery tour as Paul McCartney led James Corden through his hometown of Liverpool during a “Carpool Karaoke” segment on CBS’ “The Late Late Show.”
Thursday’s program wraps up a weeklong stay in London and the 76-year-old Beatles legend joined Corden for a drive.
In between songs, McCartney autographs the Penny Lane wall and visits his childhood home.
Corden chokes up as McCartney explains how a dream about his late mother led to the lyrics for “Let It Be.”
The pair ends up at a pub, where Corden serves as bartender and encourages patrons to use the jukebox. When one does, a curtain dropped and revealed McCartney on stage with a band. He sings some of his old hits before inviting Corden onstage for “Hey Jude.”
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India Joins Countries Announcing Retaliatory Tariffs on US Products
Retaliating against the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, India has raised duties on 29 U.S. goods worth about $240 million.
New Delhi made the announcement Thursday after Washington ignored its request to be exempted from the tariffs because its exports were tiny compared to others, such as China and the European Union. India accounts for about 2 percent of American imports of steel and aluminum, or $1.5 billion in sales.
India is the latest country to hit back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff increases on steel and aluminum imports.
Among the items on which India will impose higher tariffs are agricultural products such as almonds, apples, walnuts, chickpeas and lentils, as well as some stainless steel products. India is the world’s biggest buyer of U.S. almonds and among the biggest importers of apples. The new tariffs will go into effect August 4.
New Delhi imposed the retaliatory tariffs amid worries that the U.S. might target India’s more significant exports, such as pharmaceuticals.
“It is an appropriate signal,” said Rajiv Kumar of the government’s policy research organization, NITI Aayog. “I am hopeful that all this will die down.”
Although the Indian levies on American products are small compared with those involved in the U.S.-China spat, the trade friction between the two democracies signals discord and uncertainty at a time when they are developing a closer strategic partnership.
India is among the countries named by Trump as following trade practices unfair to the U.S.
Speaking at the Group of Seven summit in Canada earlier this month, he said, “This isn’t just G-7. I mean, we have India, where some of the tariffs are 100 percent. A hundred percent. And we charge nothing. We can’t do that.”
Trump has repeatedly said India imposes a punitive import duty on Harley-Davidson motorcycles whereas the U.S. has much lower duties on motorcycles imported from India. His complaint prompted New Delhi to cut the import duty from 75 percent to 50 percent on high-end bikes earlier this year.
For the time being, India has kept high-end motorcycles off the list of items selected for higher tariffs.
The U.S. tariffs and counter-tariffs are “opening a Pandora’s box whereby countries will impose, retaliate, somebody will act, somebody will react. This is going to be a process that will pull everybody down,” said economist Ram Upendra Das, who heads the Center for Regional Trade in New Delhi, a research organization of India’s Commerce Ministry. He calls it “a race to the bottom.”
A trade deficit in New Delhi’s favor of about $30 billion in their annual bilateral trade of approximately $125 billion has long been an irritant for Washington. India is on the Trump administration list of countries with which it had a large deficit.
Officials from New Delhi and Washington are expected to hold trade talks next week to try to bridge their differences.
But amid growing fears that the rising wave of protectionism signaled by the U.S. tariffs threatens emerging economies like India, economists are confident that the trade disputes will be short-lived. “It has to get corrected. We will have to see how long it takes,” said economist Das.
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Kentucky Governor Downplays Effect of EU Tariffs on Bourbon
In comments at odds with his home state’s whiskey distillers, Kentucky’s Republican governor is downplaying fears that the European Union’s retaliatory tariffs could disrupt the booming market for the Bluegrass state’s iconic bourbon industry.
“There’s always the potential for some type of impact, but I don’t think it will be a tremendous impact,” Governor Matt Bevin said when asked about tariffs during a TV interview this week with Bloomberg.
Bevin, a regular at bourbon industry events celebrating new or expanded facilities, called the tariffs that took effect Friday a “money grab” by the EU, but sounded confident that Kentucky bourbon will expand its share of the vast European whiskey market.
“Europeans are still going to drink more bourbon this year than they did last year; they’re just going to pay more for it because their government is going to take some of it,” he said this week during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Bevin referred to Europe as a “small portion” of the bourbon market, but the Kentucky Distillers’ Association said EU countries accounted for nearly $200 million of the more than $450 million in total exports of Kentucky bourbon and other distilled spirits in 2017.
Kentucky whiskey exports to EU countries have grown more than 10 percent annually in the past five years, said the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, which represents dozens of distillers, large and small. Kentucky whiskey exports overall rose by a whopping 23 percent last year, it said.
The governor’s comments downplaying the effect of tariffs stood in stark contrast to the distillers’ group, which warned that duties on American whiskey would have a “significant impact” on investment and employment in the state’s $8.5 billion bourbon sector.
“As we have said for the past few months, there are no winners in a trade war, only casualties and consequences,” the Kentucky Distillers’ Association said in its statement, which was released shortly after Bevin’s comments but did not directly refer to the governor.
Tariffs will drive up the price of Kentucky whiskey in EU markets where customers have plenty of spirits to choose from.
If a trade war breaks out, bourbon wouldn’t be the state’s biggest casualty, said University of Kentucky economics professor Ken Troske.
Kentucky’s auto parts sector could be hit hard, since many of its products are shipped to auto assembly plants in Canada and Mexico, he said Friday. Many of those vehicles are sent to the U.S. for sale. “Kentucky is a big, big player in that,” Troske said.
As for the bourbon sector, he said: “I don’t think tariffs are going to slow the growth down that much.”
The EU’s tariff action comes in response to Republican President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European steel and aluminum. Its retaliatory move targets other American goods including Harley Davidson bikes, cranberries, peanut butter and playing cards.
Kentucky produces about 95 percent of the world’s bourbon, with such brands as Jim Beam, Evan Williams, Wild Turkey, Maker’s Mark, Woodford Reserve and Four Roses. The industry supplies about 17,500 Kentucky jobs, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.
The industry is in the midst of a building boom, with more than $1.1 billion in projects planned, under way or completed in the past five years, it said. The construction includes expanded production facilities and new tourism centers.
Bevin, who routinely lavishes praise on Trump, said this week that the back-and-forth trade actions reflect “a certain amount of posturing that’s going on. It’s part of the negotiation process.” The governor said the EU has more to lose in a trade dispute.
“If they want to play this game with the United States, ultimately they’re going to lose,” he said during the Bloomberg interview. “So I don’t see that this will have long-term implications on trade between the EU and the U.S. I really don’t, but especially as it relates to bourbon. People in Europe still love bourbon, they’re still going to buy it and the European Union will just make money off it.”
Other trade disputes
Bevin’s downplaying of tariffs ran counter to comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who said during a recent speech in Louisville that tariffs “will not be good for the economy” and expressed hope that “we pull back from the brink.”
American spirits makers are being targeted for duties in other trade disputes. Mexico imposed tariffs on U.S. whiskey in response to Trump administration duties on Mexican steel and aluminum, while other countries including China and Canada are taking aim at American spirits.
Wall Street has been closely monitoring threats of a trade war. Vivien Azer, an analyst at Cowen & Co., said in a recent note that tariffs could affect a “notable piece” of international sales for Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corp. The producer of such brands as Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and Woodford Reserve tried to hedge against tariff-related price increases by stockpiling inventories overseas.
Small and mid-sized distilleries often don’t have the financial wherewithal to stockpile supplies. But even for the biggest distillers, stockpiling offers “only a short-term fix, as there’s only so much excess inventory” they could ship, Azer said.
But if the trade dispute drags on, “we would generally expect the tariff impact to subside over time as pricing and consumer purchase behavior adjusts,” Azer wrote.
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Top 5 Songs for Week Ending June 23
We’re shaking hands with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending June 23, 2018.
Two new entries and a new champion: if you’re looking for action this week, you came to the right place.
No. 5: Drake “God’s Plan”
Drake backs off two slots to No. 5 with his former champ “God’s Plan.” Sunday, June 17 was Father’s Day, and Drake celebrated by buying his Dad a Bentley. TMZ reports that Drake gifted his father, Dennis Graham, with the luxury car, worth an estimated $150,000. Drake will give the rest of us a gift June 29, when he drops his fifth album “Scorpion.”
No. 4: Maroon 5 & Cardi B “Girls Like You”
The biggest jump on our chart happens in fourth place, where Maroon 5 and Cardi B rise 90 slots with “Girls Like You.”
Billboard says it’s the fourth-largest one-week leap in Hot 100 history. Kelly Clarkson holds the record: Back in 2009, “My Life Would Suck Without You” shot from 97th to first place. Maroon 5 holds the record for the biggest one-week jump by a group.
No. 3: Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin “I Like It”
Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin pump it up four slots to third place with “I Like It.”
Cardi is likely weeks away from giving birth, and both she and her baby bump adorn the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Also in the photo is the father, Offset of Migos. The issue will hit newsstands July 2. Cardi has canceled her summer touring dates, but is still scheduled to join Bruno Mars on tour in September.
No. 2: Drake “Nice For What”
Drake loses his Hot 100 crown in second place with “Nice For What.” While he drops his “Scorpion” album June 29, details are still sparse. We don’t have a guest list or a track list — although DJ Khaled was photographed holding a jacket bearing the “Scorpion” name.
Drake also reportedly plans to address his recent high-profile beef with Pusha-T on the album … and next month, he’ll hit the road with Migos in North America.
No. 1: Post Malone Featuring Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho”
Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign jump that all-important final slot, as “Psycho” takes the Hot 100 crown. It is Post’s second career countdown win, after “Rockstar.” This week, Kacey Musgraves went on Twitter to request a collaboration with Post … they both grew up in Texas.
That’s it for this week … join us for a new lineup in seven days.
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Q&A: Sam Smith on Touring, Therapy, Smoking and Lip Syncing
Sam Smith knows his music is melancholy and emotional, but he’s hoping his live shows will be uplifting and feel “like a fistful of love,” as he put it.
The singer, known for down-tempo hits like “Stay With Me” and “Too Good at Goodbyes,” is launching “The Thrill of It All Tour” in the United States on Friday in Detroit.
Smith will perform at some of the arenas he played three years ago when his 2014 debut album, “In the Lonely Hour,” dominated the charts. But he said now he’s able to do more when it comes to the show — from the lighting to the set list.
“We didn’t really know what to do actually because everything became very big before we actually had the money to actually afford to put on anything that was a spectacle,” he said of his 2015 tour.
“With this tour, I got to choose songs. I got to really decide what type of show and tour this is,” said Smith, who released this sophomore album, “The Thrill of It All,” last November. “I really think you can see, within the show, (the) growth of me as an artist, I hope.”
Smith talked to The Associated Press about the tour, cutting out alcohol and smoking, and going to therapy for the first time.
AP: How have you been prepping to get ready for this tour?
Smith: It’s very, very tough. I’m trying to really discover other joys in life instead of going out drinking and going clubbing. I’ve completely stopped drinking. I’m working out. I have my trainer on the road with me, which is amazing. I work out every day. I’ve just had four weeks off so I’ve been eating a lot of really bad food, so I’m trying to work that off before I get to New York. I’m just being super, super, super healthy. Making sure I go to bed after the shows and rest my voice. It’s really looking after myself as much as I can. The time that I’m onstage is my time to have fun and that’s my time to express and let go.
AP: Have you cut out smoking?
Smith: Yes. The last year or so, I’m embarrassed to say that I did — I fell into the pit of smoking cigarettes. I’m battling it. I’m not smoking at all at the moment. When I have my time off in between shows I find it really difficult. But I’m pretty certain and sure that I’ve kicked it now. I have to. It’s so bad for you. It’s just affecting my voice. It affects my mood as well, smoking. I feel like I’m hurting myself in a way when I do it. So, I’ve stopped that.
AP: You sing live every night. How does it feel when you see others lip sync?
Smith: In general, I find it sad. It’s different with the different artists, I feel. …I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure some people sing a bit here and there and mime a bit during the show because they’re dancing so hard. Then I understand that because I’m not a dancer and I don’t know how it feels. If you’re singing for a bit of it live, then I get it. I’ve got to admit, it’s something that I find annoying, especially within pop music, because I’m someone who has never mimed. I’ve never ever mimed my entire life.
Whenever people around you are miming, you’re kind of expected to do the same amount of work and promo and stuff as all the other artists. But, it’s hard. I can’t do as much promo. I can’t sing flat out every day, all day because my songs are very, very high and demanding for me as a male singer. I sing in a place in my voice, even when I’m singing high, I’m belting. It’s quite exhausting for my vocal chords. It’s just a strain because sometimes I feel like I can’t work as hard as everyone else because I’m not miming. Other than that, what other people do isn’t my business. If they can sleep at night and they mime, then that’s fine. It works for them, it doesn’t work for me.
AP: Do you get to go to concerts? If so, who have you seen recently?
Smith: Yeah, I go to shows quite a lot. I try to see all the big pop shows. I saw Beyonce’s “Lemonade” stadium tour. I’m watching all of her “On the (Run Tour)” stuff online. I’m just obsessed. It’s just incredible to watch. My dream person to see that I haven’t seen is Robyn. I just really want to see her live. I think I’d just cry the whole time.
AP: How’s it been performing songs from your latest album now that it’s been out several months?
Smith: I look back at this album and sometimes, when I’m singing these songs, I worry because I know they are very dark. If you listen to the album it’s got quite a dark tone to it.
“In the Lonely Hour” — I felt that it was melancholy but there was hopefulness to the songs, because I was hoping the man I loved loved me back. And I think during the period of “The Thrill of It All,” I really was a bit stuck and I was in a place where I just felt very confused about fame and felt that love was nowhere to be seen. I look back on that time and sometimes I’m almost upset with how dark it was and wish I could have written a happier record. But it was honest and it was me.
I’ve already started writing quite a lot for my third record. Just wrote something today, actually, in the dressing room. It’s just feeling a little more up. Never too happy. But I’m feeling a lot more confident as a songwriter, which is really, really nice.
AP: Is what you’re writing now a reflection of how you feel now? Because it seems like you’re happier.
Smith: Oh, yeah, completely. I’m a lot happier now then I was. I still have my down days. After releasing the record, I got into a really happy place and it was great, and then had a massive low a few months afterward. I started therapy recently and I’m starting to truly understand that you can’t be happy all the time. And life is like a sea, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s calm and then sometimes it’s crazy and stormy. And you’ve just got to ride it, I guess. I still find parts of my life really, really challenging and difficult and I get very, very sad sometimes, but I have the tools now. And I’m trying to work out the tools, how to stay happy, which is good. The not drinking thing is a big thing for me. Not smoking. Yeah, just seeking help around me. And remembering that I’m good by myself as well. I think alone time is really important.
AP: Was this the first time you tried therapy?
Smith: Yeah, yeah, first time ever in my life recently. It’s only been recently, but it’s been great.
1 More American Confirmed Hurt by Mystery ‘Attack’ in Cuba
One more U.S. Embassy employee in Havana, Cuba, has been affected by mysterious health incidents, the State Department said.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said one of two Americans recently evacuated from Cuba was “medically confirmed” to have been affected, while the other was “still being evaluated” by doctors.
25 Americans affected
In all, 25 Americans have been affected by the mystery ailment in Cuba.
“We still don’t know, to this day, what is causing it and who is responsible,” Nauert said, noting that investigations were underway in Havana as well as Guangzhou, China, where one employee experienced similar symptoms recently.
The United States has said that the Cuba incidents started in late 2016. The State Department calls them “specific attacks” but has not said what caused them or who was behind them. Cuba has adamantly denied involvement or knowledge.
Initial speculation centered on some type of sonic attack owing to strange sounds heard by those affected, but an interim FBI report in January found no evidence that sound waves could have caused the damage, The Associated Press has reported.
Warning issued in China
The State Department issued a health warning after the employee in China reported experiencing “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure” and was diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described it as a “serious medical incident.”
The new confirmation came less than a week after the U.S. renewed demands on Cuba to determine the source of the “attacks” on U.S. diplomats. Cuba responded by again denying any involvement in or knowledge of any such attacks.
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Overweight? Depressed? It May Be Your Microbes
Microbes may be helping stir up anxiety and depression in obese people, if results from a new mouse study hold true in humans.
The authors link the effects to how the brain responds to insulin, the hormone that regulates sugar levels in the blood.
The research raises questions about whether changing gut microbes, or changing diet, could help treat these conditions.
Mood, microbes and metabolism
Obesity triggers changes in metabolism — for example, making liver, muscle, fat and other tissues less responsive to insulin. Left untreated, these changes can lead to diabetes.
Obese people also have higher rates of anxiety and depression.
“One could say, ‘Maybe that’s just because they’re obese,’ ” said Harvard Medical School diabetes researcher Ronald Kahn, “but others could say, ‘Maybe there’s a metabolic link.’ ”
“And we asked the question, ‘Maybe the metabolic link is at least partly fueled by the microbiome,’ ” the community of microbes living in a person’s gut, he added.
Those microbes change with diet, and Kahn said different microbes might respond differently to the foods we eat.
To test the theory, Kahn and colleagues fed mice a high-fat diet and studied their behavior as the animals became obese.
They used common tests to gauge anxious and depressed behavior in rodents — for example, how much time the animals spent hiding in a dark box versus exploring a brightly lit area. The more anxious the mouse, the less time it will spend in the light.
Obese mice spent about 25 percent less time in the light than animals on a normal diet, and they scored higher on the other anxiety and depression tests, too.
Return to normal
But those differences disappeared when obese mice were given antibiotics, even though their weight didn’t change much.
“That really says there’s probably something about the microbiome,” Kahn said.
The researchers then tested how the animals’ microbiomes affected mice raised in a sterile environment with no microbes of their own.
Bacteria from obese rodents made these germ-free mice more anxious than microbes from normal mice.
But when germ-free mice got microbes from obese animals that had been given antibiotics, they behaved like normal mice.
To see what parts of the brain might be responsible for the effects, the researchers focused on two regions involved in metabolism and responses to rewards. They found these regions were less responsive to insulin in the obese mice compared with normal-weight animals.
Again, antibiotics returned those responses to normal.
The research appears in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
“It was actually quite a surprise,” Kahn said. “Even though we had seen some effects on metabolism in the rest of the body, I was very surprised how dramatic and how clear the effects were also on the brain and on behavior.”
Into the unknown
That doesn’t mean antibiotics are the cure for obesity, Kahn warned. The drugs kill good and bad microbes indiscriminately, and taking the medication unnecessarily can contribute to the rising threat of antibiotic resistance.
Also, what happens in mice does not necessarily happen in humans, he added, or it may happen for only some people. So far, there is not much evidence that probiotics help anxious people.
“The difficulty is, both of these things — depression and obesity — are complicated things that have multiple, multiple factors influencing them,” said mental health researcher Gregory Simon at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, who was not part of the study.
Microbes are likely just one factor, along with environment, genetics, social influences and more, Simon added.
But Kahn said his group’s research raised interesting questions about how food affects our behavior.
“I think now we can get some idea that there are a lot of things that are being metabolized by gut bacteria that could affect brain function,” he said.
And he said there might be ways to change brain function by changing those bacteria, by eating helpful microbes or by eating foods that sustain them.
He and his colleagues are working to figure out exactly which of the hundreds of species of gut bacteria are responsible. At the moment, it’s a mystery.
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Turkey Joins Nations Placing New Tariffs on US Products
Turkey announced Thursday that it would impose tariffs on $1.8 billion worth of U.S. goods in retaliation for U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
The World Trade Organization said the new Turkish tariffs would amount to $266.5 million on products including cars, coal, paper, rice and tobacco.
Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said in a statement that Turkey would not allow itself “to be wrongly blamed for America’s economic challenges.”
He continued, “We are part of the solution, not the problem.”
On Wednesday, the EU announced that it had compiled a list of U.S. products on which it would begin charging import duties of 25 percent, a move that could escalate into a full-blown trade war, especially if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with his threat to impose tariffs on European cars.
“We did not want to be in this position. However, the unilateral and unjustified decision of the U.S. to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU means that we are left with no other choice,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement.
The commission, which manages the daily business of the EU, adopted a law that places duties on $3.2 billion worth of U.S. goods, including aluminum and steel products, agricultural products, bourbon and motorcycles.
Malmstrom said that the EU response was consistent with World Trade Organization rules and that the tariffs would be lifted if the U.S. rescinded its metal tariffs, which amount to $7.41 billion.
Trump slapped tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum on the EU, Canada and Mexico, which went into effect at the beginning of June.
Canada said it would impose retaliatory tariffs on $12.5 billion worth of U.S. products on July 1.
Mexico imposed tariffs two weeks ago on a range of U.S. products, including steel, pork and bourbon.
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Study: Leptospirosis Spread by Cattle, Not Just Rats
Fever, chills, and muscle pain aren’t the symptoms just of malaria. They could be signs of leptospirosis, which infects millions of people each year — primarily in tropical regions.
The under-reported disease is usually spread though contact with rodents, but a new study finds this trend may not hold in northern Tanzania or beyond.
Research in Asia has tied living in close quarters with rats to outbreaks of leptospirosis. The bacterial infection causes symptoms that are often mistaken for malaria. Severe cases can be life-threatening, says Professor Albert Ko at the Yale School of Public Health.
“Our group has done global burden of disease studies on this and there are over a million a cases a year and roughly 60 thousand deaths,” said Ko.
Common source of fevers
Leptospirosis is becoming recognized as a common source of fevers in Africa. But the source of the disease was unclear. It could be rats, or it could be something else, said Michael Maze, of the University of Otago.
“Well, we know that leptospirosis has many possible animal hosts,” said Maze. “I guess the story starts when we identified how common leptospirosis was the cause of severe fever in people coming to the hospital in northern Tanzania.”
Maze and an international team of researchers asked those patients about their lifestyles: how many rats they saw around their home… whether they owned livestock and if so, what kind?
They also tested blood samples for leptospirosis infections. Of the nearly 900 people tested, almost a third were infected, or had been.
The researchers also trapped almost 400 rats in nearby villages. They tested the rodents to see if they carried the leptospira bacterium like their Asian cousins. They did not.
But cattle did — they found over seven percent of them carried up to four types of leptospira that could potentially infect humans. Goats and sheep did, too, though less often.
Blood samples match
This result matched the findings from the patients’ blood samples. People who owned livestock were most likely to have leptospirosis infections, especially cattle owners.
“Leptospirosis is carried in the renal tract — so the kidney and the bladder — and comes out in the urine of infected animals,” said Maze. “So even simple things like avoiding urine while doing activities such as, for example, milking cattle would be a good first step.”
Maze recommends abattoir workers and dairy farmers wear gloves and other protective clothing.
“A cow is much bigger and it produces a much larger volume of urine and so that creates a greater opportunity for exposure,” said Maze.
But Maze and colleagues found doctors did not diagnose a single one of the patients in the study with leptospirosis. In fact, one in four active cases was misdiagnosed as malaria — even though the patients’ blood tested negative for parasites.
Symptoms similar
Maze says one reason is because symptoms of the two diseases are similar and there is not an accurate, simple test for leptospirosis that can be run in regional hospitals.
“The second reason is that clinician awareness of these diseases is low,” said Maze. “If you don’t recognize them it becomes a cycle where they’re never diagnosed so you never recognize them.”
Yale’s Albert Ko says the work Maze and his colleagues have done provides a better understanding of how leptospirosis spreads.
“This is an important study specifically because it provides key information on risk factors in a high burden setting, said Ko. “In specifically among this at-risk population of vulnerable pastoralist society.”