Countries around the world have their own versions of pasta. In Germany there is spaetzle, in Greece there is orzo, throughout Asia there are dishes with noodles, and in Latin America you can find countless variations of spaghetti and other pastas. Voice of America reporter Iacopo Luzi visited the famed company Pasta Mancini in Monte San Pietrangeli, Italy, to see how they make this global staple.
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Month: November 2018
Washington’s Women’s Museum Opens Exhibit of Award Winning Fashion Brand
Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts is the only museum in the world that showcases creations made exclusively by women. But in the three decades since it first opened, the museum has never had exhibitions dedicated to fashion until now. In November, it opened an exhibit dedicated to the famous American fashion house, Rodarte. Karina Bafradzhian has the story.
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NASA’s Latest Mars Probe to Attempt Landing
After traveling hundreds of millions of miles through space, NASA’s latest Mars probe will arrive Monday at the Red Planet.
Scientists have carefully chosen where they want the probe, called InSight, to land, selecting a large volcanic plain named Elysium Planitia. They say the site has few rocks and less chance of wind gusts that could potentially knock over the lander.
The spacecraft will take a crucial six minutes to enter Mars’ atmosphere, descend and land. During that time, InSight will decelerate from an initial speed of 19,300 kmh (12,000 mph) down to just 8 kmh (5 mph) when it touches down. To aid the landing, scientists have equipped InSight with a parachute, descent thrusters and shock-absorbing legs.
If all goes well, InSight will make the eighth successful landing on Mars.
“My heart is beating inside of my chest like a drum,” NASA project manager Tom Hoffman said Wednesday during a news conference about the planned landing.
Scientists say they are trying to determine whether the craft needs a small nudge to put it in the proper place for landing. Since InSight launched May 5, scientists have made four small tweaks to its path to ensure it arrives on target. Engineers were able to skip an additional nudge because the other maneuvers went so smoothly, and they say they might also be able to skip the final adjustment scheduled for Sunday.
By the time it lands, InSight will have traveled 484 million kilometers (300.7 million miles). However, once the lander is on the Martian surface, it cannot move, as it is not a rover. Scientists say it is critical that InSight land in the correct location, because wherever it lands is where it will stay.
NASA says the landing site has been particularly quiet in recent weeks, with few storms.
“We’re expecting a very plain day on Mars for the landing, and we’re very happy about that,” said Rob Grover who is overseeing the landing phase.
Once landed, Insight has a unique mission to explore Mars’ interior. While other missions have sought to better understand the planet’s surface and atmosphere, this is the first to focus exclusively on what is under Mars’ surface.
The $850 million InSight mission is planned to last about two years and will try to gather an array of information, including Mars’ below-ground temperature and seismic activity, as well as to carry out an underground mapping project.
Insight is armed with a crane, heat probe and seismometer and is able to hammer 5 meters (16.4 feet) below the surface.
Scientists are hoping the mission will help answer questions about the composition and evolution of the planet and whether Mars was formed from the same mixture of materials as Earth.
Once InSight touches down, it will wait for 16 minutes to allow the dust that it kicked up to settle down again. Then it will deploy solar arrays, a critical step that will allow the lander to power itself for the next two years. InSight also has a battery system, but that will only last one day.
The lander is expected to touch down on Mars about 3 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) on Monday. Scientists hope to know quickly whether the landing was successful but say if communication with the spacecraft is delayed, they might not know InSight’s status for several hours or even days.
NASA’s website will be broadcasting news of InSight’s approach and landing all day Monday.
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Italy Livid About Deal to Loan Leonardo Works to Louvre
So versatile were Leonardo da Vinci’s talents in art and science and so boundless his visionary imagination, he is known to the world as the universal genius.
But not to Italy’s nationalist-tilting government, which is livid about plans by the Louvre museum in Paris for a blockbuster exhibit next year with as many as possible Leonardo masterpieces loaned from Italian museums to mark the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death.
“It’s unfair, a mistaken deal,” Italian Culture Ministry Undersecretary Lucia Borgonzoni said of a 2017 agreement between a previous government and the Louvre. “Leonardo is an Italian genius,” she told The Associated Press this week.
Borgonzoni is a senator from the League, the “Italians-first” sovereignty-championing party in the nearly six-month-old populist government.
She was elaborating on comments earlier this month, in Italian daily Corriere della Sera, in which she said of Leonardo: “In France, all he did was die.”
Leonardo was born in 1452 in the Tuscan town of Vinci, Italy, and died in Amboise, France, in 1519.
Borgonzoni criticized how as part of the 2017 arrangement, Italy also pledged to program its own exhibits so they won’t compete with the Louvre mega-show.
The Louvre declined to comment on Italy’s objections, nor say which artworks it requested from Italy, noting it’s nearly a year before the four-months-long exhibit opens on Oct. 24, 2019.
Exhibit curator, Vincent Delieuvin, part of the Louvre’s staff, also serves on the Italian Culture Ministry’s committee which evaluated proposals from museums worldwide for the celebrations. He didn’t reply to an emailed request for comment.
“While respecting the autonomy of museums, national interests can’t be put in second place,” Borgonzoni told Corriere. “The French can’t have everything.”
And it appears they won’t get all they want.
The Uffizi Galleries in Florence is considering loaning the Louvre several Leonardo drawings. But director Eike D. Schmidt said his museum is nixing the Louvre’s request for its stellar trio of Leonardo paintings because “simply, these works are so extremely fragile. No museum in the world would ever lend them.”
Last summer, when the three Leonardos were moved one flight up in the Uffizi so they would have a room all to themselves, the transfer required preparations “like it was an expedition to Mount Everest, or a space trip to the Moon,” with restoration experts on hand just in case anything got damaged, Schmidt said in a phone interview.
One of the three paintings, “Adoration of the Magi,” only came back to the Uffizi last year, after five years of restoration work in Florence.
In 2007, when “Annunciation,” a painting on wood by a 20-year-old Leonardo depicting the Archangel Gabriel proffering a lily to the Virgin, was about to leave the Uffizi for a Tokyo exhibition, a senator from the conservative Forza Italia (Let’s Go Italy) party and several Florentines chained themselves to a museum gate in a vain attempt to thwart the precious masterpiece from being flown to Japan.
The Uffizi director at the time opposed that loan, but the then-culture minister decided that the painting’s transfer as good for Italy.
For the 2019 celebrations, the Uffizi will loan an early Leonardo work, “Landscape Drawing for Santa Maria Della Neve,” to the Leonardiano Museum in Vinci. Depicting the countryside near Vinci, the drawing is displayed only for a few weeks every four years because of fears prolonged exposure to light will damage it.
Schmidt sounded hopeful the Louvre would understand the Uffizi’s refusal.
“We fully understand why the ‘Mona Lisa’ cannot travel,” he said, referring to the Louvre’s star Leonardo painting.
But while the Louvre won’t ever let the portrait of the woman with the fascinating smile leave its confines, it did send two other Leonardo paintings to Milan for an exhibition during the 2015 Expo in that northern Italian city. In all, the Louvre has five of his paintings, the most of any one museum.
Anniversary committee head Paolo Galluzzi, who directs the Galileo Museum in Florence, insisted that nationalism wasn’t a factor in evaluating anniversary proposals.
“Many could claim him. He was born in Vinci, trained in Florence, and developed in Milan,” Galluzzi said by telephone. “Politicians have different optics,” but in the “world of culture and science we don’t bother with these things.”
Ultimately, he said, what is being celebrated next year is a “universal genius.”
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Ranchers Combat Overgrazing to Protect Climate
Meredith Ellis gets a bit rapturous about the little patch of earth under her feet.
When she bought this northern Texas land several years ago, it was overgrazed and overrun with weeds. Now, she’s thrilled to find a dark green blob of fungus she rolls under her sparkly-nail-polished thumb. She picks a tiny patch of the green moss from between clumps of tall brown grass gone dormant with the fall chill.
“Look at all these little bits of biodiversity,” she said. “That’s like a little fantasy world going on in there.”
Bringing it back has been a labor of love — love of the G Bar C Ranch where she grew up, and for the 4-year-old son she’s raising here.
“Everything I do, I think about him now,” she said. “I think about his future, and what is this world going to look like when he’s my age?”
Ellis worries about the droughts, floods and other calamities he may face from climate change. She wonders if there even will be enough food to go around.
It’s a big reason why she raises her cattle a bit differently than most.
The differences not only help to combat climate change. They also provide more clean water. They can even save ranchers money. And if one project goes forward, farmers may get financial rewards for making the changes.
Meadows vs. lawns
Ellis’s fields look like meadows. Her cattle forage among an assortment of thigh-high native grasses.
Other ranches nearby look like giant lawns. Cows have grazed the grass monocultures nearly down to the ground.
The difference matters, says rangeland scientist Jeff Goodwin with the Noble Research Institute, because the native grass is “not only feeding this cow herd. It’s also feeding the underground herd: the microbes, the biology in the soil. That’s what really makes that soil an active, living, breathing system.”
It’s a system with the potential to remove tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“The more forage production that we’re getting, the deeper the root systems, the more carbon we’re sequestering out of the atmosphere,” Goodwin added.
That’s increasingly important. Scientists warn that the world needs to do more than just stop producing greenhouse gases in order to avoid the worst of climate change. Carbon dioxide needs to be actively removed from the atmosphere in order to keep the planet from potentially catastrophic warming.
While engineers puzzle over high-tech solutions, a recent report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine says nature offers tools that are ready to go today.
Valuable ecosystem services
Grasslands and the soils beneath them act as giant carbon sinks, the report notes.
But not if they are overgrazed.
Around the world, one estimate says, about 200 million hectares are overgrazed, an area roughly the size of Mexico.
One study estimates that optimizing grazing could cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 89 million metric tons, roughly the same as permanently parking 19 million cars.
Plus, overgrazed land erodes more easily. That’s a double whammy. Ranchers lose fertile soil, and it ends up muddying drinking water downstream, which increases the cost to make it tap-ready.
On the other hand, healthy grassland soils that store carbon also store and filter water.
Those benefits should be worth money, Goodwin said. They’re known as ecosystem services, and the Noble Research Institute is working to develop a marketplace for them. Ranchers would earn credits based on their soil’s carbon content and its water storage and filtration capacity.
Some major food and beverage companies are interested in the market. Many have set goals to improve sustainability up and down their supply chains.
“There’s not really a solid path forward” for many of them to meet those goals, Goodwin said. “We feel like we’re sitting in a very good position to be able to provide that opportunity.”
All profits from the soil
Many of the steps ranchers could take to earn ecosystem service credits would help their bottom lines anyway.
“A lot of people want to talk about soil health building as a thing to do for the environment. But really, it’s something we need to be doing for our profitability as well,” said Michael Vance, managing partner at Stark Ranch, a short drive from Ellis’ operation.
“All your profit comes from the soil,” he added.
He stood in a field where cattle had recently been grazing, but you’d never know it. The grass still stood tall. His neighbors don’t understand why he doesn’t let the cows graze it all the way down. They think he’s wasting it.
“We get phone calls where people want to drive a bailer in here and bail up this grass, but they don’t realize the positives that come by leaving it standing,” he said.
The field grows more grass when cattle are moved off it sooner. That means Vance buys less feed.
Even if it’s more profitable, it’s not easy for people to change their ways, and ranchers are a conservative bunch.
“You realize things that you were raised doing, things that your dad and your granddad did, maybe weren’t the best things to do,” Vance said, “from an environmental perspective, maybe from even a profitability perspective.”
Financial incentives might help other ranchers make changes, he adds.
The Noble Research Institute plans to launch a pilot ecosystem services market in 2019 and is aiming for a full rollout in 2022.
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Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Developed in Australia Shows Promise
Australian researchers have made a breakthrough in the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis using immunotherapy. Their world-first trial has produced promising results for the majority of patients enrolled, they said, including a reduction in fatigue and improvements in mobility and vision.
The treatment targets the Epstein-Barr virus in the brain that Australian researchers believe plays a role in the development of Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, a disease of the central nervous system. Immune cells extracted from patients’ blood have been “trained” in a laboratory to recognize and destroy the virus.
“What happens in MS, there is an immune reaction going on in your brain that is represented as if that your immune system is attacking the brain cells,” said Rajiv Khanna, a professor at Queensland’s QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. “Once that happens, your normal function in the brain gets impaired. We are trying to develop a treatment that could actually, sort of, make the immune system to work properly rather than going in the wrong direction.”
Researchers hope the treatment could stop the progression of MS. They say the trial is significant because they have shown the technique is safe and has had positive improvements in an autoimmune disease.
Seven of the 10 participants in the Queensland trial have reported positive changes, including Louise Remmerswaal, a mother from Queensland.
“Ever since the trial, it has just improved so much that now I can go out and spend time with my family and friends,” she said.
Further research is planned in Australia and the United States.
The new therapy is developed by the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane and the University of Queensland.
The results of the clinical trial have been published in the peer-reviewed journal, JCI Insight.
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New Statue of Liberty Museum Dedicated to Protecting Liberty
With unparalleled views of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan, a new 2,400-square-meter (26,000-square-foot) museum celebrating the statue’s legacy is set to open in 2019. VOA’s Ramon Taylor takes a peek into the building that is still under construction and pays homage to the universal concept of liberty and Lady Liberty’s more than 4 million annual visitors.
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Study Estimates Shortage of Insulin by 2030
A new report on diabetes is warning of a future worldwide shortage of insulin because of the increasing number of people who are developing the disease’s type 2 and require the hormone to stay healthy and alive. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Preservation Hall: Home to American Jazz
Presidents, prime ministers and Hollywood stars have visited what from the outside may look like an old, shabby jazz club in New Orleans. In this case, however, appearances are quite deceiving. Musicians call this place the holy grail of clubs and home to American jazz. Maia Kay went to the famous Preservation Hall that tells the story of jazz.
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Egyptian Falconers Raise Awareness on World Falconry Day
Millions of migrating birds pass through Egypt on their migratory flyway mainly seeking food, water and shelter, every year. But experts say Egypt, an essential transit point on the birds’ nomadic journey, has become a very dangerous place for migrating birds, with many being illegally shot or trapped. Egyptian Falconers gathered recently in the desert of Borg Al-Arab to mark the sixth annual World Falconry Day on November 17. Hamada Elrasam reports from Egypt.
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S&P 500 Slides Into ‘Correction’ for Second Time This Year
U.S. stocks closed lower after a shortened session Friday, bumping the benchmark S&P 500 index into a correction, or drop of 10 percent below its most recent all-time high in September.
Energy companies led the market slide as the price of U.S. crude oil tumbled to its lowest level in more than a year, reflecting worries among traders that a slowing global economy could hurt demand for oil.
“Oil is really falling sharply, continuing its downward descent, and that appears to be giving investors a lot of concern that there’s slowing global growth,” said Jeff Kravetz, regional investment director at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management. “You have that, and then you have the recent sell-off in tech and in retail, and then throw on there trade tensions and rising rates.”
Losses in technology and internet companies and banks outweighed gains in health care and household goods stocks. Several big retailers declined as investors monitored Black Friday for signs of a strong holiday shopping season.
Trading volume was lighter than usual, with the markets open for only a half day after the Thanksgiving holiday.
The S&P 500 index fell 17.37 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,632.56. The index is now down 10.2 percent from its last all-time high set Sept. 20. The last time the index entered a correction was in February.
The latest correction came as investors worry that corporate profits, a key driver of stock market gains, could weaken next year.
“The market is repricing and trying to assess where we’re going to be in the early part of 2019,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 178.74 points, or 0.7 percent, to 24,285.95. The Nasdaq composite dropped 33.27 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,938.98. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 0.40 point, or 0.03 percent, to 1,488.68.
Crude oil prices fell for the seventh straight week on worries that a slowing global economy could hurt demand, even as oil production has been increasing.
The benchmark U.S. crude contract slid 7.7 percent to settle at $50.42 per barrel in New York. That is the lowest since October 2017. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 6.1 percent to close at $58.80 per barrel in London.
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members have recently signaled a willingness to consider production cuts at the oil cartel’s meeting next month. Such cuts would prop up oil prices. The U.S. has been increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia and OPEC to not cut production.
The slide in oil prices weighed on energy stocks. Concho Resources, a developer and explorer of oil and natural gas properties, slumped 6.3 percent to $126.96.
Tesla fell 3.7 percent to $325.83 after the electric auto maker said it intends to cut prices for its Model X and Model S cars in China to make them more affordable.
Traders had their eye on retailers as Black Friday, the traditional start to the crucial holiday shopping season, began. Shares in L Brands, operator of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, added 2 percent to $29.97. Other retailers put investors in a selling mood. Kohl’s fell 3.7 percent to $63.83, while Target lost 2.8 percent to $67.35. Macy’s dropped 1.8 percent to $32.01.
Rockwell Collins climbed 9.2 percent to $141.63 after Chinese regulators conditionally approved the sale of the maker of communications and aviation electronics systems to United Technologies Corp.
Investors will be watching next week when Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump meet at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina for signs that the two leaders can find common ground to begin unwinding the spiraling trade dispute.
The dispute between the U.S. and China has weighed on the market, stoking traders’ worries that billions in escalating tariffs imposed by both countries on each other’s goods will hurt corporate earnings at a time when the global economy appears to be slowing.
“If you can get President Trump and President Xi to even just come closer with their rhetoric and make a bit of progress on the trade front, that could be the catalyst for markets to move higher,” Kravetz said.
It may take more than a meeting to work out deep-seated issues between Washington and Beijing, which resumed talks over their trade dispute earlier this month. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has asked its allies to stop using telecommunications equipment from Huawei, which is Chinese-owned. The report cited people familiar with the matter.
Bond prices fell Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.05 percent from 3.04 percent late Wednesday.
The dollar fell to 112.88 yen from 112.97 yen late Thursday. The euro weakened to $1.1330 from $1.1406. The pound eased to $1.2810 from $1.2876.
Gold declined 0.4 percent to $1,223.20 an ounce. Silver dropped 1.8 percent to $14.24 an ounce. Copper slid 1 percent to $2.77 a pound.
In other commodities trading, wholesale gasoline plunged 7.9 percent to $1.39 a gallon. Heating oil lost 4.8 percent to $1.88 a gallon. Natural gas fell 3.2 percent to $4.31 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Major indexes in Europe finished mostly higher after shaking off an early slide.
Traders were weighing the latest developments in the negotiations for Britain’s exit from the European Union. Both sides were finalizing the terms of the divorce Friday and expected to sign off on the deal Sunday, though it’s unclear whether the British Parliament will pass the deal.
The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares slipped 0.1 percent. Germany’s DAX index rose 0.5 percent, while France’s CAC 40 gained 0.2 percent.
Earlier in Asia, South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.6 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.4 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 bucked the trend, gaining 0.4 percent. Shares fell in Taiwan and rose in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday.
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In Era of Online Retail, Black Friday Still Lures a Crowd
It would have been easy to turn on their computers at home over plates of leftover turkey and take advantage of the Black Friday deals most retailers now offer online.
But across the country, thousands of shoppers flocked to stores on Thanksgiving or woke up before dawn the next day to take part in this most famous ritual of American consumerism.
Shoppers spent their holiday lined up outside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., by 4 p.m., and the crowd had swelled to 3,000 people by the time doors opened an hour later. In Ohio, a group of very determined women booked a hotel room Thursday night to be closer to the stores. In New York City, one woman went straight from a dance club to a department store in the middle of the night.
Many shoppers said Black Friday is as much about the spectacle as it is about doorbuster deals.
Kati Anderson said she stopped at Cumberland Mall in Atlanta on Friday morning for discounted clothes as well as “the people watching.” Her friend, Katie Nasworthy, said she went to the mall instead of shopping online because she likes to see the Christmas decorations.
“It doesn’t really feel like Christmas until now,” said Kim Bryant, shopping in suburban Denver with her daughter and her daughter’s friend, who had lined up at 5:40 a.m., then sprinted inside when the doors opened at 6 a.m.
Brick-and-mortar stores have worked hard to prove they can counter the competition from online behemoth Amazon. From Macy’s to Target and Walmart, retailers are blending their online and store shopping experience with new tools like digital maps on smartphones and more options for shoppers to buy online and pick up at stores. And customers, frustrated with long checkout lines, can check out at Walmart and other stores with a salesperson in store aisles.
Consumers nearly doubled their online orders that they picked up at stores from Wednesday to Thanksgiving, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks online spending.
Priscilla Page, 28, punched her order number into a kiosk near the entrance of a Walmart in Louisville, Ky. She found a good deal online for a gift for her boyfriend, then arrived at the store to retrieve it.
“I’ve never Black Friday-shopped before,” she said, as employees delivered her bag minutes later. “I’m not the most patient person ever. Crowds, lines, waiting, it’s not really my thing. This was a lot easier.”
The holiday shopping season presents a big test for a U.S. economy, whose overall growth so far this year has relied on a burst of consumer spending. Americans upped their spending during the first half of 2018 at the strongest pace in four years, yet retail sales gains have tapered off recently. The sales totals over the next month will be a good indicator of whether consumers simply paused to catch their breath or feel less optimistic about the economy in 2019.
The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, is expecting holiday retail sales to increase as much as 4.8 percent over 2017 for a total of $720.89 billion. The sales growth would be a slowdown from last year’s 5.3 percent but yet remain healthy.
The retail economy is also tilting steeply toward online shopping. Over the past 12 months, purchases at non-store retailers such as Amazon have jumped 12.1 percent as sales at traditional department stores have slumped 0.3 percent. Adobe Analytics reported Thursday that Thanksgiving reached a record $3.7 billion in online retail sales, up 28 percent from the same period a year ago. For Black Friday, online spending was on track to hit more than $6.4 billion, according to Adobe.
Target reported that shoppers bought big-ticket items like TVs, iPads and Apple Watches. Among the most popular toy deals were from Lego, L.O.L. Surprise from MGA Entertainment, and Mattel’s Barbie. It said gamers picked up video game consoles like Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.
Others reported stumbling onto more obscure savings. At a Cincinnati mall, Bethany Carrington scored a $29 all-in-one trimmer for her husband’s nose hair needs and, for $17, “the biggest Mr. Potato Head I’ve ever seen.”
Black Friday itself has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score doorbusters into a whole month of deals. Plenty of major stores including Macy’s, Walmart and Target started their deals on Thanksgiving evening. But some families are sticking by their Black Friday traditions.
“We boycotted Thursday shopping; that’s the day for family. But the experience on Friday is just for fun,” said Michelle Wise, shopping at Park Meadows Mall in Denver with her daughters Ashleigh, 16, and Avery, 14.
By midday Friday, there had not been widespread reports of the deal-inspired chaos that has become central to Black Friday lore — fistfights over discounted televisions or stampedes toward coveted sale items.
Two men at an Alabama mall got into a fight, and one of the men opened fire, shooting the other man and a 12-year-old bystander, both of whom were taken to the hospital with injuries. Police shot and killed the gunman. Authorities have not said whether the incident was related to Black Friday shopping or stemmed from an unrelated dispute.
Candice Clark arrived at the Walmart in Louisville with her daughter Desiree Douthitt, 19, looked around and remarked at how calm it all seemed. They have long been devotees of Black Friday deals and for years braved the crowds and chaos. Clark’s son, about 10 years ago, got hit in the head with a griddle as shoppers wrestled over it. They saw one woman flash a Taser and threaten to use it on anyone who came between her and her desired fondue pot.
They’ve watched over the years as the traditional madness of the day has dissipated as shopping transitioned to online and stores stretched their sales from a one-day sprint to a days-long marathon.
“It seems pretty normal in here,” said Roy Heller, as he arrived at the Louisville Walmart, a little leery of Black Friday shopping, but pleasantly surprised to find that he didn’t even have to stand in line.
He had tried to buy his son a toy robot on Amazon, but it was sold out. Friday morning, he frantically searched the internet and found one single robot left, at a Walmart 25 miles from his home. He bought it online and arrived an hour later to pick it up.
Employees delivered his bag, he held it up and declared: “I got the last one in Louisville!”
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France Asks: Should ex-Colonizers Give Back African Art?
From Senegal to Ethiopia, artists, governments and museums are eagerly awaiting a report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron on how former colonizers can return African art to Africa.
The study by French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr, being presented to Macron on Friday in Paris, is expected to recommend that French museums give back works that were taken without consent, if African countries request them. That could increase pressure on museums elsewhere in Europe to follow suit.
The experts estimate that up to 90 percent of African art is outside the continent, including statues, thrones and manuscripts. Tens of thousands of works are held by just one museum, the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, opened in 2006 to showcase non-European art — much of it from former French colonies. The museum wouldn’t comment ahead of the report’s release.
The head of Ethiopia’s Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Yonas Desta, said the report shows ”’a new era of thought” in Europe’s relations with Africa. “I’m longing to see the final French report,” he told The Associated Press.
Senegal’s culture minister, Abdou Latif Coulibaly, said: “It’s entirely logical that Africans should get back their artworks. … These works were taken in conditions that were perhaps legitimate at the time, but illegitimate today.”
The report is just a first step. Challenges ahead include enforcing the report’s recommendations, especially if museums resist, and determining how objects were obtained and whom to give them to.
The report is part of broader promises by Macron to turn the page on France’s troubled relationship with Africa. In a groundbreaking meeting with students in Burkina Faso last year, Macron stressed the “undeniable crimes of European colonization” and said he wants pieces of African cultural heritage to return to Africa “temporarily or definitively.”
“I cannot accept that a large part of African heritage is in France,” he said at the time.
The French report could have broader repercussions. In Cameroon, professor Verkijika Fanso, historian at the University of Yaounde One, said: “France is feeling the heat of what others will face. Let their decision to bring back what is ours motivate others.”
Germany has worked to return art seized by the Nazis, and in May the organization that coordinates that effort, the German Lost Art Foundation, said it was starting a program to research the provenance of cultural objects collected during the country’s colonial past.
Britain is also under pressure to return art taken from its former colonies. In recent months, Ethiopian officials have increased efforts to secure the return of looted artifacts and manuscripts from museums, personal collections and government institutions across Britain, including valuable items taken in the 1860s after battles in northern Ethiopia, Yonas said.
In Nigeria, a group of bronze casters over the years has strongly supported calls for the return of artifacts taken from the Palace of the Oba of Benin in 1897 when the British raided it. The group still uses their forefathers’ centuries-old skills to produce bronze works in Igun Street, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Eric Osamudiamen Ogbemudia, secretary of the Igun Bronze Casters Union in Benin City, said: “It was never the intention of our fathers to give these works to the British. It is important that we get them back so as to see what our ancestors left behind.”
Ogbemudia warned the new French report should not remain just a “recommendation merely to make Africans to calm down.
“Let us see the action.”
‘Green Book,’ Features Unlikely Black-White Friendship During Jim Crow Era
‘Green Book,’ by filmmaker Peter Farrelly, tells the story of an unlikely friendship between two men, a world-renowned African-American classical pianist and an Italian-American bouncer. Their friendship develops during a concert tour in the American South during the 1960s as they navigate by the Green Book, a guidebook advising African-American motorists where to safely sleep, eat or travel during the Jim Crow era. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports on the dramatization of this real life story.
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China: WTO Changes Must Support Developing Countries
China will go along with changes meant to update global trade rules so long as they protect Beijing’s status as a developing country, a Cabinet official said Friday.
The deputy commerce minister, Wang Shouwen, said any changes also must address protectionism and abuse of export controls and security reviews — a reference to Beijing’s trade clash with U.S. President Donald Trump.
China agreed in June to work with the European Union to propose changes to the World Trade Organization to address technology policy, subsidies and state industry — all areas in which Beijing faces complaints. U.S. officials complain the global trade referee is too bureaucratic and slow to adapt to changing business conditions.
Wang said each country’s “development model” must be respected — a reference to China’s state-dominated economy, which has provoked repeated complaints Beijing is violating its market-opening obligations.
Beijing has accused Trump of wrecking the global trading system by going outside the WTO to hike tariffs on Chinese imports. Trump says that was necessary because the global body is unable to respond to complaints about Chinese technology theft, subsidies and state-led industry development.
China is “willing to assume obligations” that are “compatible with our own level of development,” Wang said at a news conference.
“We will not allow other members to deprive China of the special and differential treatment that developing members deserve,” he said.
Wang gave no details of changes Beijing might support. But he said they also must address agricultural subsidies — a frequent complaint by developing countries against industrialized economies — and “discrimination against state enterprises,” a reference to restrictions on Chinese government companies abroad.
Beijing’s insistence that it is a developing country and entitled to special protections despite having grown into the second-largest global economy and a major manufacturer rankles its trading partners. That might dampen chances of reaching agreement on WTO reforms that would satisfy the United States, Europe and other governments.
Other governments dislike Trump’s tactics but echo U.S. complaints about Chinese market barriers and technology policy.
Washington and Beijing have imposed penalty tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods in their dispute over U.S. complaints that China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.
The United States, Europe and other governments also object to Chinese plans including “Made in China 2025” for state-led creation of competitors in robotics and other technology. American officials worry those might erode U.S. industrial leadership.
The EU filed a WTO challenge in June to Chinese rules on technology licensing that it said improperly discriminate against foreign companies.
Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are due to meet this month in Buenos Aires during a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies. Private sector analysts say there is little chance that meeting by itself will produce a settlement.
Wang, the commerce official, gave no details of Xi’s possible negotiating stance. But he said China hopes G-20 members can have an “effective discussion” about WTO reform.
“China hopes the G-20 meeting can support the multilateral trading system (and) oppose unilateralism and trade protectionism,” he said.
Wang warned that an issue that “endangers the WTO’s existence” is the status of judges to mediate disputes. The Trump administration has blocked the appointment of judges to the WTO’s appeal body, leaving only three members on the seven-seat panel.
That is a dispute “between the United States and all other WTO members,” said Wang. “We believe this should be resolved as soon as possible.”
Ebola in Congo Now Infecting Newborn Babies, UN Says
The World Health Organization says a worrying number of the newest Ebola cases amid Congo’s ongoing outbreak are in patients not usually known to catch the disease: babies.
In an update published this week, the U.N. health agency reported 36 new confirmed cases of Ebola, including seven in newborn babies and infants younger than 2 years old. Six cases were reported in children aged between 2 and 17 and one case was in a pregnant woman.
While Ebola typically infects adults, as they are most likely to be exposed to the lethal virus, children have been known in some instances to catch the disease when they act as caregivers.
Few cases of Ebola in babies have been reported, but experts suspect transmission might happen via breast milk or close contact with infected parents. Ebola is typically spread by infected bodily fluids. WHO noted that health centers have been identified as a source of Ebola transmission, with injections of medications “a notable cause.”
WHO called Congo’s current epidemic “complex and challenging.” Congo’s health ministry says there are 346 confirmed cases, including 175 deaths, in what has become the worst Ebola outbreak in the country’s recorded history.
The outbreak has been plagued by security problems, with health workers attacked by rebels in districts where the virus has been spreading. Earlier this month, Ebola containment operations were paused after seven U.N. peacekeepers and 12 Congolese soldiers were killed, but all activities have resumed.
The increasing number of cases in children and health workers — 39 health workers have been infected to date — suggests outbreak responders are having major problems stopping the virus in health clinics and convincing people to seek help when they develop symptoms. This is the first time this part of Congo has faced an Ebola outbreak.
WHO said the risk of the outbreak spreading to neighboring countries remains “very high” but it does not recommend travel restrictions. Uganda this month started vaccinating health workers against Ebola in a heavily traveled border district near the outbreak.
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‘Ralph’ Sequel Packs a Punch With Strong Female Characters
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” may star an arcade bad guy with powerful hammer-like fists, but the animated sequel is also packing a punch with strong female characters.
Sarah Silverman, who returns as the voice of Vanellope von Schweetz, credits Disney for including more impactful female roles in the new film, which comes out Wednesday. Her character is one of the leading ladies, along with new cast members Gal Gadot’s Shank and Taraji P. Henson, who plays Yesss.
“I love it,” said Silverman, an outspoken comedian known for advocating for women’s rights. “You see how far Disney has allowed itself to grow and change, and be more inclusive and more progressive? You can’t keep on existing if you don’t change and grow with the times. With me, Taraji and Gal’s character, it’s nice to see.”
In the past, Disney has been criticized for having a lack of self-sufficient female characters who focused more on their physical appearance and being reliant on a man. That pattern began to change over the years in films such as “Tangled,” ″Brave” and “Frozen.”
With the “Ralph” sequel, the studio is taking “girl power” a step further as directors Phil Johnston and Rich Moore wanted to incorporate more “strong and complicated” female characters.
“This studio is the birthplace of a lot of these stereotypes,” said John C. Reilly, the voice of the massive, overall-wearing Ralph. “It’s really an amazing and commendable thing that Disney has recognized. … As a man, it’s not really my lane to talk about these issues. But I do think if things are going to change, men and women have to both talk about this stuff and embrace gender equality, and think of women’s rights as humans. I was a strong advocate for balance in our story.”
The sequel is a follow up to the 2012 Oscar-nominated “Wreck-it Ralph.” This time, Ralph and Vanellope’s friendship is tested after leaving Litwak’s video arcade to travel through a Wi-Fi connection that ultimately delivers them into the fast-paced internet dimension. They venture into an unfamiliar world exploring major brands from Twitter to Amazon, online shopping, the dark web and visits inside Walt Disney Studio’s website.
Johnston said the film’s imaginary of the internet mimics the look of a New York City or Tokyo. It’s where Ralph and Vanellope meet Gadot’s Shank, a gritty street-racing star, and Henson’s Yesss, who is the head algorithm of the trend-making website BuzzzTube.
“It’s like they’re small-town kids who are now in the big city,” said Moore, who directed the first “Ralph” film and the Academy Award-winning “Zootopia.” ″This is a movie about change. I’m glad that we took the more challenging road.”
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” offers an animated glimpse inside their parent company’s website showing several characters from Marvel to “Star Wars.” The film also highlights the Disney princesses in a scene where all stereotypes and cliches associated with the animated icons are dealt with head-on.
Initially, the princess scene faced backlash from fans in August after a publicity photo surfaced online showing Princess Tiana with lighter skin and a thinner nose compared to the version in the black character’s stand-alone Disney movie, “The Princess and the Frog.” The studio ultimately reanimated the character after meeting with actress Anika Noni Rose, who voiced Tiana in the 2009 film, and members of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy organization.
“Our goal is to make this film as perfect as possible as we can,” Johnston said. “I hope everyone knows we love this character as much as anyone.”
Henson called Tiana’s reanimation a “brilliant move” by Disney.
“If you know about it, you do better,” said the actor, who is black. “But Disney has a history of pleasing the people and appealing to the people. They’re a standup company. They did the right thing. I’m glad I’m in the film. I’m glad I’m in business with people who are on the right side of history, with no ego. Listening to the people who pay their money to see the film is a smart business move, but it also shows you care.”
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Ranchers Combat Overgrazing to Fight Climate Change
As the impact of climate change becomes clearer, experts say the world needs to do more than just stop producing greenhouse gases. Aggressive steps also must be taken to pull them out of the atmosphere. While engineers puzzle over high-tech solutions, scientists say nature offers tools today. The world’s grasslands can soak up tons of carbon dioxide. VOA’s Steve Baragona visited a Texas cattle ranch working to restore overgrazed land so it can join the fight against climate change.
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WHO: Nigeria Malaria Prevention Campaign Working
The World Health Organization (WHO) says a campaign to distribute anti-malaria drugs to children in Nigeria’s Borno state seems to be making an impact, with fewer cases reported. Nigeria is still the world’s highest malaria-burdened country with 25 percent of all cases worldwide. As Timothy Obiezu reports from Maiduguri, there’s still far more that needs to be done to check the spread of the disease.
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British Firm Creates Novel Way to Recycle Plastic
The problem with plastics is a well-known refrain by now: It never goes away and far too little of it is being recycled. That means it is turning up in every corner of our planet, from our beaches to our bodies. But one British firm has figured out a new way to recycle plastics, and customers are waiting in line. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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