Remembering to take medications can be challenging for some people. But one day an implant may replace medications that need to be taken orally in certain cases. One lab in Houston is developing refillable implants placed under the skin to potentially deliver life-saving medicine at a low cost for various diseases. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
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Month: August 2018
US Unemployment Drops Slightly; Job Growth Slows
The U.S. unemployment rate dropped slightly in July, while job gains were lower than many analysts predicted.
Friday’s report from the Labor Department shows the jobless rate fell one-tenth of a percent to 3.9 percent, one of the lowest figures in years.
The world’s largest economy also had a net gain of 157,000 jobs, which is less than the monthly average so far this year.
Experts blamed some of the change on closing retail stores, but said the labor market remains tight, with more openings than jobs overall.
A jobless rate of under 4 percent usually prompts employers to raise wages to attract and keep good workers; but, the newest figures show wages grew just 2.7 percent over the past year, which is slightly lower than the inflation rate, meaning that real wages are actually falling slightly.
Peter Cramer, senior portfolio manager of Prime Advisors, says one reason wages are not growing faster is the large but shrinking pool of part-time workers who are getting longer hours or full-time work.
In a VOA interview via Skype, Cramer says so far, there is little evidence that Washington’s many trade disputes have hurt employment, but that could change if the bickering goes on for “six or eight months.”
PNC Bank chief economist Gus Faucher says the U.S. unemployment rate will probably fall to 3.5 percent by the end of the year. Faucher writes that as that happens, job growth will slow down because businesses will find it more difficult to recruit new hires.
‘Strong’ economy
On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, said the economy was “strong,” an upgrade from its June assessment, which dubbed the economy “solid.”
The Fed also made clear it expects to raise interest rates in the coming months, going against President Donald Trump’s demands for the independent body to keep rates steady. “I think the economy’s in a really good place,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell told NPR in July.
Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Trump likely will tout a strong economy as his Republican Party looks to maintain its grasp on the U.S. legislative chambers, the Senate and House of Representatives. Yet analysts warned this may not be a winning strategy.
“If this was a prez [presidential election] year, these strong jobs reports would matter so much more for the elections,” CNN election analyst Harry Enten said Friday on Twitter. “As is, the economy is not strongly correlated with midterm outcomes.”
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Pakistani Engineer Turns Straw Waste Into Fuel
A Pakistani engineer has designed a system to help developing countries avoid fuel imports by making ethanol with the millions of tons of straw that are wasted each year. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Rare Finds and Loyal Customers at New York’s Poster Museum
Not many museums can say they have 500,000 items on display, but the Poster Museum in New York can. Established in 1973 in Manhattan by a passionate collector, the museum has the largest collection of posters in the world. Olga Loginova has the story.
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African Farmers, Small Businesses Aided by Tech-Driven Insurance
Most African farmers and small businesses operate with no way to protect themselves if disaster strikes. But that may be starting to change. A handful of companies are now offering inexpensive, tech-driven micro-insurance and are making it easy for ordinary Africans to sign up. Neha Wadekar reports for VOA from Nigeria and Kenya.
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US Backs Young Africans Seen as Continent’s Future Leaders
Young African leaders from 48 countries are in the United States for the Mandela Washington Fellowship’s annual summit, training and networking across the civil, enterprise and public sectors. As Haydé Adams FitzPatrick reports, U.S. officials say supporting the next generation of African leaders is in America’s interest.
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States Vow to Continue Fight Against Trump’s Car Fuel Rules
State prosecutors who pre-emptively sued months ago to block anticipated efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken car fuel-efficiency standards blasted the Trump administration Thursday for doing so and vowed to continue their fight in the courts.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the rollback of Obama-era mileage standards would imperil the state’s efforts to curb greenhouse gases and clean up some of the nation’s most polluted air.
Becerra also promised another lawsuit if the administration makes good on plans to revoke a longstanding waiver allowing California and other states to set their own stricter auto emissions standards. At least twelve other states and the District of Columbia follow California’s rules.
Becerra connected climate change to the deadly wildfires burning out of control throughout the state.
“The Earth is not flat, and climate change is real,” Becerra said at a news conference. “Can someone please inform the folks at the White House and our federal government of those facts?”
Officials in the Trump administration said their actions would make autos more affordable and that would make roads safer because more motorists would be driving newer cars with the latest safety features.
Becerra and attorneys general from 16 other states sued in May to stop the EPA from scrapping standards that would have required vehicles by 2025 to achieve 36 miles per gallon (58 kilometers per gallon) in real-world driving, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) over the existing standards. The Trump proposal would freeze standards at 2020 levels when vehicles will be required to hit an average of 30 miles per gallon (48 kilometers per gallon) in real-world driving.
States that joined the lawsuit said the change would end up costing more money at the pump because vehicles won’t go as far on a gallon of gas, and more misery for those suffering pollution-exacerbated maladies such as asthma.
“This has to be absolutely one of the most harmful and dumbest actions that the EPA has taken,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said. “It’s going to cost drivers here and across the country hundreds of millions of dollars more at the pump.”
Pollution from cars, trucks and other on-road vehicles is California’s single-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to state data.
California has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. It met its 2020 goals four years early, but hitting the next target will be much harder without cleaner vehicles. The state has struggled to rein in vehicle pollution. Transportation accounts for the biggest chunk of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and is the only sector where emissions went up in 2016, the most recent data available.
The lawsuit filed in May in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia alleged the plan to dump the mileage standards violated the federal Clean Air Act and didn’t follow the agency’s own regulations.
The lawsuit is proceeding, and Becerra said lawyers will now pore over the documents filed with the proposal to help make their case.
Other states that joined in the lawsuit were: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia. All have Democratic attorneys general.
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Apple is 1st Public US Company to be Valued at $1 Trillion
Apple made history Thursday when it became the first publicly listed U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion.
The tech giant’s share price climbed well over 2 percent in mid-session trading, boosting it about 9 percent higher since Tuesday, when it announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and a buyback of $20 billion worth of its own shares.
The Silicon Valley company’s stock has skyrocketed more than 50,000 percent since it went public in 1980, greatly exceeding the S&P 500’s impressive 2,000 percent gain during the same period.
Apple’s success was fueled in large part by its iPhone, which transformed it from a niche player in the burgeoning personal computer sector into a global technological powerhouse.
The company was co-founded by the late Steve Jobs, a product innovator who helped prevent the company’s collapse in the late 1990s.
As the company’s market value climbed over the decades, it revolutionized how consumers communicate with each other and how companies conduct business on a daily basis.
WHO Quick-Starts Efforts to Tackle New Ebola Outbreak in Congo
The World Health Organization says expert staff and equipment have been sent to northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo to quick-start the process of combating a new outbreak of Ebola.The last outbreak of this fatal virus in Congo was declared over just a week ago.
Ebola is a constant threat in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the virus thrives in heavily forested areas. This latest outbreak is the 10th since the first one was discovered in 1976.
The World Health Organization says this new outbreak in North Kivu province is 2,500 kilometers away from Equateur Province, the site of the previous outbreak, and there is no link between the two.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says the DRC Ministry of Health informed WHO Wednesday that four of six samples taken in North Kivu tested positive for Ebola virus.
He says it is crucial to gain access to the area as quickly as possible.He says having people and material in the country from the outbreak in Equateur is very helpful in tackling the outbreak.
“We really need to get into the area to do epidemiological investigations, try to find cases, try to work with health workers, to strengthen infection prevention and control measures and also to start with the contact tracing,” he said. “It is, on the other hand, worrying that this area is a conflict zone.It is an area with lots of displacement, so the access can be hampered in that way.”
The virus was discovered in a village near the city of Beni in North Kivu, which hosts more than one million displaced people. The province shares borders with Rwanda and Uganda, with a lot of cross border movement due to brisk trade.
Jasarevic says WHO will work with these neighboring countries to try to prevent the virus from crossing over.
He says identifying the type of Ebola virus that is circulating is a priority, as that will tell scientists whether the vaccine used to help contain the outbreak in Equateur province can also be used in North Kivu.
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US Farmers Want ‘Trade Not Aid’
The rolling fields of green soybean plants growing on Fred Grieder’s Illinois farm would be a welcome sign most years … an indicator of a promising harvest in the fall.
But this isn’t most years.
Tariffs are turning away potential customers overseas, and Grieder estimates he could lose around $100 an acre if the trade war continues.
“It’s a squeeze,” he told VOA from his farm outside Bloomington, Illinois.
Lose $100, get $14 in aid
It’s a squeeze the Trump administration has acknowledged, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to plan a $12 billion aid package to help farmers like Grieder.
“If you take the $12 billion, assuming it will all go to beans, which it won’t, and divide that by our planted acreage, that’s about $14 an acre” in government aid, he said.
Grieder says the aid does not even come close to making up for the $100 loss per acre he expects.
Since May, the price per bushel for soybeans has dropped almost 20 percent over the escalating trade war between the United States and China. Tariffs threaten to cut off important export markets, cutting into profits even as U.S. farmers brace for a fifth year of declining farm income.
It’s not that Grieder isn’t grateful for the aid package, but he says he would just rather have “trade over aid.”
“We appreciate the fact that the USDA is concerned about us, and want to make us whole,” he explained. “But the reality is the numbers, in a large trade war like this, are overwhelming.”
Man-made disaster
“This is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster. It’s not an act of God, some would call it an act of foolishness,” said Mark Albertson, director of strategic market development for the Illinois Soybean Association.
Albertson said he believes the trade dispute with China is a greater threat to farmers than the drought of 2012.
“We had mechanisms in place to deal with that, and we always knew that the very next year we would be able to plant our crops again and hope for the best. In this case, we don’t know that,” he said. “We don’t know what the next year brings. We don’t have necessarily hope of the trade war going away very soon, and it looks like Brazil is all too eager to take away our market share with China.
“If they get used to purchasing more and more Brazilian soybeans, that spells bad news for us. That’s the overall concern, and an aid package does nothing to solve that problem,” Albertson said.
Biggest worry: Competitors
It’s also farmer Grieder’s biggest concern.
“Brazil, one of our largest competitors, they are always expanding,” he said. “So this could affect our markets years down the road, and I’m probably more worried about that than I am the short wash out here.”
Albertson said another major challenge is what to do with the soybeans that can’t be sold.
“It looks like we may end up putting a record amount of soybeans in storage, and when that happens, we know from history the prices will go south,” he added.
As the trade war continues, Grieder’s routine remains the same. He hopes strong global demand for soybeans outside China will make up for decreasing prices. He’s waiting to see if President Donald Trump’s trade tactics will work before permanent damage is done to the reputation — and reliability — of U.S. grain products.
“I support what he’s trying to do. I can’t say that I support his methods,” Grieder said.
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US Farmers Want ‘Trade Not Aid’
Since May, the price per bushel of soybeans has dropped almost 20 percent in the wake of an escalating trade war between the United States and China. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, despite plans for a massive aid package by the Trump administration, what producers want most is reliable access to the world’s largest markets.
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Chinese Actress Drops off Social Media Amid Tax Rumors
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has disappeared from social media amid rumors she is the target of a tax evasion investigation.
Fan, 36, usually maintains a prominent presence on China’s main microblogging service Weibo, where she has more than 62 million followers. However, her account hasn’t been updated since June 2, when she wrote about the work of her charitable foundation.
Her boyfriend, actor Li Chen, has not updated his account since July 6.
Unconfirmed reports circulating online say both have been barred from leaving China as the authorities look into claims that Fan was given dual contracts for her work: a public one giving her official salary and a private one stating her actual, much higher, pay.
Chinese media reports say neither Fan, her production company nor agent can be reached, boosting speculation that all have been caught up in the probe. Police rarely comment on such investigations until a conclusion has been reached.
However, in a June 3 statement, Fan’s production company stated that Fan had never signed any Cying-yang contract, so named because of their dual natures.
Wealthy entertainer
Fan has appeared in dozens of movies and TV series in China, but is best known internationally for her role as Blink in 2014’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
She is one of China’s wealthiest entertainers, pulling down tens of millions of dollars for her roles, along with substantial amounts in appearance fees and product endorsements.
Chinese authorities have sought to rein in high salaries for actors that can eat up much of a production’s budget. In June, regulators capped pay at 40 percent of a total TV show’s production budget and 70 percent of the total paid to the actors in films.
Career-ending cases
Criminal cases can be career-ending for Chinese celebrities because the communist authorities, who possess ultimate control over what content is released, have ordered offenders blacklisted.
China’s last major celebrity scandal was in 2014, when Jaycee Chan, an aspiring entertainer and the son of actor Jackie Chan, was sentenced to six months in prison for allowing others to smoke marijuana in his Beijing apartment.
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Alarms on Russian Meddling Sounded on Capitol Hill
One day after Facebook shut down 32 fake social media accounts that spewed politically divisive messages, U.S. lawmakers were warned that Russian efforts to confuse and polarize the American people are as robust and pernicious as ever. VOA Senate correspondent Michael Bowman reports both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are concerned.
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Small LA Theater Amplifies Voice of Hispanic Community
A small theater in the heart of a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles is giving voice to the immigrant community there. The place has provided a stage for new artists at risk of social exclusion. Some of them had been catapulted to the Hollywood sets. Arturo Martinez has this report narrated by Cristina Caicedo Smit.
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Conservation Detection Dogs Sniff out Threatened Species
Canines have served as working dogs for thousands of years. They guard our homes, help in search and rescue missions and assist people with disabilities. But now scientists are training a special group of Australian dogs to use their sensitive noses — and ears — to help find one of Australia’s most endangered creatures. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Print Yourself a Mobile House
Imagine this – a fully autonomous 3D-printed mobile house that can survive any weather and is completely self-powered. This is not a technological dream – it’s the ambitious project of a Ukrainian company called PassivDom. It’s working on the prototype of a printed home in Reno, Nevada. VOA’s Iuliia Iarmolenko gives us a look inside the 3D-printed walls of the futuristic house.
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Pakistan Halts Decline of Critically Endangered Vulture
The population of the white-backed vulture, which inhabits Africa and parts of South and Southeast Asia, has declined significantly over the past several decades to the point that it is now considered an endangered species. But a decade-long conservation effort in Pakistan appears to have stopped the vulture’s decline, as Ayaz Gul reports from Islamabad.
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Congress Passes Bill Forcing Tech Companies To Disclose Foreign Software Probes
The U.S. Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military.
The legislation, part of the Pentagon’s spending bill, was drafted after a Reuters investigation last year found software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence services.
The final version of the bill was approved by the Senate in a 87-10 vote on Wednesday after passing the House last week. The spending bill is expected to be signed into law by Trump.
Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to probe the internal workings of software, known as source code, could help Moscow discover vulnerabilities they could exploit to more easily attack U.S. government systems.
The new rules were drafted by Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
“This disclosure mandate is the first of its kind, and is necessary to close a critical security gap in our federal acquisition process,” Shaheen said in an emailed statement.
“The Department of Defense and other federal agencies must be aware of foreign source code exposure and other risky business practices that can make our national security systems vulnerable to adversaries,” she said.
Disclosure + database
The law would force U.S. and foreign technology companies to reveal to the Pentagon if they allowed cyber adversaries, like China or Russia, to probe software sold to the U.S. military.
Companies would be required to address any security risks posed by the foreign source code reviews to the satisfaction of the Pentagon, or lose the contract.
The legislation also creates a database, searchable by other government agencies, of which software was examined by foreign states that the Pentagon considers a cyber security risk.
It makes the database available to public records requests, an unusual step for a system likely to include proprietary company secrets.
Tommy Ross, a senior director for policy at the industry group The Software Alliance, said software companies had concerns that such legislation could force companies to choose between selling to the U.S. and foreign markets.
“We are seeing a worrying trend globally where companies are looking at cyber threats and deciding the best way to mitigate risk is to hunker down and close down to the outside world,” Ross told Reuters last week.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the legislation.
Source code revealed
In order to sell in the Russian market, technology companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, SAP SE and McAfee have allowed a Russian defense agency to scour software source code for vulnerabilities, the Reuters investigation found last year.
In many cases, Reuters found that the software companies had not informed U.S. agencies that Russian authorities had been allowed to conduct the source code reviews. In most cases, the U.S. military does not require comparable source code reviews before it buys software, procurement experts have told Reuters.
The companies had previously said the source code reviews were conducted by the Russians in company-controlled facilities, where the reviewer could not copy or alter the software. The companies said those steps ensured the process did not jeopardize the safety of their products.
McAfee announced last year that it no longer allows government source code reviews. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said none of its current software has gone through the process.
SAP did not respond to requests for comment on the legislation. HPE and McAfee spokespeople declined further comment.
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British Businesses Told to Do More to Close ‘Obscene’ Gender Pay Gap
More British businesses should be made to report the difference in how much they pay male and female staff, lawmakers said Thursday, citing “obscene” gender pay gaps in some companies.
Businesses and charities with more than 250 workers must publish figures on their gender pay gap each year under a law introduced last year, but they account for less than half Britain’s workforce.
On Thursday a parliamentary committee said smaller firms tended to be more unequal, urging the government to extend the reporting requirement to all businesses with more than 50 employees.
Shine a light wider
“Companies are failing to harness fully the talents of half the population,” said Rachel Reeves chairwoman of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.
The first round of reporting completed this year helped to shine a light on how men dominate the highest paid jobs in Britain, the committee said in a report. Yet more has to be done to bridge the country’s pay gap — one of the largest in Europe, it said.
“Our analysis found that some companies have obscene and entirely unacceptable gender pay gaps of more than 40 percent,” Reeves said.
The committee said the government should require companies to publish a blueprint to address discrepancies in salary and report annually on their progress. This year only 5 percent set themselves a target, it said.
“We have to move on from simply reporting the pay gap, to taking action to close it,” said Sam Smethers, the head of women’s rights group, the Fawcett Society.
Persistent problem
As in many other countries, gender pay inequality has been a persistent problem in Britain despite sex discrimination being outlawed in the 1970s, and has sparked a public debate in recent years over why wages are still so different for men and women.
The overall gender pay gap in Britain stands at 18.4 percent, according to government data published last year.
But for more than 1 in 10 large businesses the gap is higher than 30 percent, the report said.
“Employers have to adjust to the increasing need for flexible working and champion policies that enable caring responsibilities to be shared equality between women and men,” said Niki Kandirikirira of campaign group Equality Now.
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Dispute Over 3D-Printed Guns Raises Many Legal Issues
A little-known dispute over 3D-printed guns has morphed into a national legal debate in the last week, drawing attention to a technology that seems a bit of sci-fi fantasy and — to gun-control advocates — a dangerous way for criminals to get their hands on firearms that are easy to conceal and tough to detect.
The gun industry calls the outcry an overreaction that preys on unwarranted fears about a firearm that can barely shoot a round or two without disintegrating.
It also raises a host of constitutional questions involving First Amendment protections for free speech and Second Amendment rights to own guns.
Here are some questions and answers about the debate.
Q. What is behind the dispute?
A. Cody Wilson, the founder of Texas-based Defense Distributed, first posted downloadable blueprints for a handgun called the Liberator that could be made using a 3D printer in 2013. Within days it had been downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were saved by people outside the United States.
The dispute between Wilson and the federal government went on for years until this past June when they reached a settlement that paved the way for Wilson to resume posting the designs.
The State Department decision came amid an obscure administrative change — begun under the Obama administration — in how the weapons are regulated and administered. Military grade weapons remain under the purview of the State Department, while commercially available firearms fall under the Commerce Department. The settlement with Wilson determined that 3D-printed firearms are akin to more traditional firearms that aren’t subject to State Department regulations.
Wilson resumed sharing his blueprints for the gun the day the settlement went into effect last week.
Q. Why does Wilson want the authority to post the designs on his website?
A. Wilson calls it a First Amendment issue. He believes the First Amendment gives him a constitutional right to disseminate the code to make a gun with a 3D printer.
“This is a very, very, very easy First Amendment question that I think people might be hesitant to accept because it involves guns and people don’t like guns,” said his lawyer, Josh Blackman.
And Wilson has a strong legal claim that distribution of the information is different than actually making an all-plastic firearm.
While it is a violation of the federal Undetectable Firearms Act to make, sell or possess a firearm that can’t be detected by magnetometers or metal detectors, what Wilson is doing is simply providing the information on how to make such a firearm.
“What Defense Distributed was doing was not making and then shipping the weapons overseas,” said Chuck James, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private lawyer with the Washington, D.C.-area firm of Williams Mullen. “They were making the data available on the web where it would be available to someone overseas.”
Q. What kind of gun designs are available on the website?
A. Defense Distributed shows a variety of designs. The code for a 3D-printed gun is for what he calls the Liberator, which gets its name from a pistol American forces used during World War II.
His design includes a metal firing pin and a metal block. His site also includes blueprints to make various AR-platform long guns and some other handguns using more traditional means and materials.
Q. Are 3D-printed guns legal?
A. In 1988, the U.S. enacted the Undetectable Firearms Act, making it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess a firearm that couldn’t be detected by a metal detector. That law has been renewed several times by Congress and remains in effect.
If 3D-printed guns contain enough metal to be flagged by a metal detector, they are considered legal under U.S. law.
Gun-control advocates argue that the risks are too great to allow 3D-printed guns because even if they’re designed to include metal, it’s too easy for someone to not include those pieces or to remove them to skirt detection.
“It’s an absurdity. You can take the piece of metal out and put it back in at your own whims and you can take it out and walk through a metal detector undetected,” said Jonas Oransky, legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety.
Q. How well do 3D-printed guns work?
A. Gun experts and enthusiasts recoil at the suggestion that a 3D-printed gun is a true threat, calling the firearms mere novelties.
Unlike traditional firearms that can fire thousands of rounds in their lifetime, 3D-printed guns are notorious for usually lasting only a few rounds before they fall apart. They don’t have magazines that allow the usual nine or 15 rounds to be carried; instead, they usually hold a bullet or two and then must be manually loaded afterward. And they’re not usually very accurate either.
A video posted of a test by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2013 showed one of the guns produced from Wilson’s design — the Liberator — disintegrating into pieces after a single round was fired.
“People have got this Star Trek view” of the guns being futuristic marvels, said Chris Knox, communications director for The Firearms Coalition, a gun-rights group. “We’re not talking about exotic technology.”
Others are quick to point out that normal guns are readily available in the U.S. with little regulation, making 3D-printed guns a major hassle compared with regular weapons.
Q. What’s the status of the debate?
A. A federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order blocking Wilson from continuing to post the designs on his site. A hearing is to be held in that case next week.
In the meantime, President Donald Trump criticized the Department of Justice advising the State Department to reach a settlement with Wilson without first consulting with him.
Wilson’s website currently displays a banner asking people to help “to uncensor the site.” Clicking a link directs the person to a page to pay membership dues ranging from $5 a month to $1,000 for a lifetime.
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