The United States and China offered competing views to regional leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Papua New Guinea, trading sharp words over trade, investment, and regional security. Washington said it can provide a better option for regional allies under is “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy. as VOA’s State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports, the APEC gathering ended without a formal leaders’ statement.
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Month: November 2018
Gene Editing Having Impact on Farming World
Humans have been genetically modifying foods for centuries. Wild tomatoes or carrots for instance don’t look much like the mass produced foods we eat today. But in these days of genetic modification, consumers have tended to keep so called “Frankenfoods” at arms length. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports a new generation of precision editing techniques may change that.
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Art Thrives Among Hunters, Fishers in Northernmost Alaska
The small town of Utqiagvik, Alaska, is the northernmost town in the United States. Entertainment is scarce and so is the list of jobs. A lot of locals still hunt and fish, and there is room for art here as well. As Natasha Mozgovaya reports, indigenous carvers have been creating beautiful figurines, intricate miniature sculptures and jewelry from very Alaskan materials.
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Marvel Superheroes and American Pop Culture
While the Space Needle may be the most recognizable structure in Seattle, Washington, there is another spectacular and futuristic building nearby: Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. Initially built as a tribute to the legendary Seattle rock musician Jimi Hendrix, it now celebrates American contemporary pop culture as a whole. One display is dedicated to the Marvel Comics Super Heroes, whose creator, Stan Lee, died at 95 earlier this week. Natasha Mozgovaya gives us a look.
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British-based Startup ARC Debuts First Motorcycle for $117,000
British-based startup ARC unveiled its first motorcycle model in Milan this week, one being described as fast, advanced and expensive. The so-called Vector costs more than $100,000, but ARC says it’s for good reason. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Climate Change Protesters Block off 5 London Bridges
Hundreds of protesters have turned out in central London and blocked off the capital’s main bridges to demand the government take climate change seriously.
A group called “Extinction Rebellion” encouraged sit-ins on the bridges Saturday as part of a coordinated week of action across the country.
Metropolitan Police said emergency vehicles were hampered from getting across London because of the “blockade” of five bridges. The force said it had asked all protesters to congregate at Westminster Bridge where officers can facilitate lawful protest.
About two dozen people were arrested on Monday after protesters blocked traffic and glued themselves to gates outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Space Station Supplies Launched, 2nd Shipment in 2 Days
A load of space station supplies rocketed into orbit from Virginia on Saturday, the second shipment in two days.
And another commercial delivery should be on its way in a couple weeks.
“What an outstanding launch,” said NASA’s deputy space station program manager, Joel Montalbano.
Northrop Grumman launched its Antares rocket from Wallops Island before dawn, delighting chilly early-bird observers along the Atlantic coast. The Russian Space Agency launched its own supplies to the International Space Station on Friday, just 15 hours earlier.
The U.S. delivery will arrive at the orbiting lab Monday, a day after the Russian shipment. Among the 7,400 pounds (3,350 kilograms) of goods inside the Cygnus capsule: ice cream and fresh fruit for the three space station residents, and a 3D printer that recycles old plastic into new parts.
Thanksgiving turkey dinners — rehydratable, of course — are already aboard the 250-mile-high outpost. The space station is currently home to an American, a German and a Russian.
There’s another big event coming up, up there: The space station marks its 20th year in orbit on Tuesday. The first section launched on Nov. 20, 1998, from Kazakhstan.
“As we celebrate 20 years of the International Space Station,” Montalbano noted, “one of the coolest things is the cooperation we have across the globe.” Then there’s the U.S. commercial effort to keep the space station stocked and, beginning next year, to resume crew launches from Cape Canaveral. “To me, it’s been a huge success,” he said.
This Cygnus, or Swan, is named the S.S. John Young to honor the legendary astronaut who walked on the moon and commanded the first space shuttle flight. He died in January.
It is the first commercial cargo ship to bear Northrop Grumman’s name. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in June. SpaceX is NASA’s other commercial shipper for the space station; its Dragon capsule is set to lift off in early December.
Experiments arriving via the Cygnus will observe how cement solidifies in weightlessness, among other things. There’s also medical, spacesuit and other equipment to replace items that never made it to orbit last month because of a Russian rocket failure; the two men who were riding the rocket survived their emergency landing. Three other astronauts are set to launch from Kazakhstan on Dec. 3.
Art and the Meaning of Jewelry: New Exhibit Opens at the Met
Fashion changes, trends come and go, but jewelry is always present in people’s lives in one way or another. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art just opened a new exhibition dedicated to the history of jewelry and the role it plays in people’s lives. Headdresses and earrings, brooches and belts, necklaces and rings, old and new, traditional and provocative, jewelry never cease to surprise and amaze. Nina Vishneva reports. Anna Rice narrates.
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Review: ‘Creed II’ Goes More Than the Distance; It’s a KO
The weight of legacy hangs heavily over Creed II. Not just for most of the characters, who must come to grips with their own family histories, but also for the filmmakers, tasked with making a sequel to a successful spin-off of a beloved franchise. It would put any film on the ropes. Not this one.
Creed II pulls off a rather amazing feat by adding to the luster of its predecessor and propelling the narrative into a bright future while also reaching back to honor its past, resurrecting unfinished business from Rocky IV and adding a dash of Rocky III. Pound per pound, the sequel might even be better than its predecessor.
Steven Caple Jr. replaced Ryan Coogler in the director’s chair this time, but there is plenty of continuity: Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone by his side as former heavyweight champ and trainer Rocky Balboa. Also back: Tessa Thompson as Creed’s love interest, Phylicia Rashad as Creed’s mom, and Wood Harris as a coach. Max Kellerman is ringside again as color commentator.
The sequel pits Creed against man-mountain Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, in the ring in Rocky IV. That stirs up trauma for Rocky, who feels responsible for the elder Creed’s demise. Rocky went on to avenge the death by beating the elder Drago, but we also now learn what that disgrace meant for the Dragos. This film is about ghosts as much as it is a meditation on fatherhood. At one point, Kellerman says the showdown between the sons of Creed and Drago is almost like a Shakespearian drama and — laugh if you must — it feels sort of right here.
Desire — or lack of it — plays a key role in Creed II since we meet young Adonis as the new champion, at the top. Viktor Drago is at the bottom, hauling cement in Ukraine and burning for family redemption. “My son will break your boy,” Ivan Drago threatens Rocky, who sort of agrees. “When a fighter’s got nothing to lose he’s dangerous,” he warns Creed. “Listen, that kid was raised in hate. You weren’t.” Dolph Lungren returns as the elder Drago and there’s even an appearance by Brigitte Nielsen, who plays Drago’s wife in 1985 and was a real-life wife of Stallone. (Talk about keeping it in the family.)
Caple matches Coogler’s moody, gritty vision of a brutal sport conducted by mostly honorable men trying to outwit each other. There’s plenty of gore, slo-mos of smashed heads and Rocky trademarks — the glorious montages with uplifting music as fighters prepare for their shot in the ring. (Prepare to look away if you are fans of massive truck tires — many get horrible beat downs.)
Stallone got his mitts on the script — after having had a role penning all the Rocky films but sitting out writing Creed — and teams up with Cheo Hodari Coker, creator of the Netflix superhero hit Luke Cage. Onscreen, Stallone returns with his dark fedora and small bouncing ball, shuffling about and mumbling, allowing his sad eyes to do the bulk of his acting. It’s in the small moments between crusty Stallone and cocky Jordan where the film finds its sweet spot. “What are you fightin’ for?” the elder man asks the younger.
Jordan proves again that he’s a film force to be reckoned with, capable of searing and savage intensity and yet also goofy softness. This time, his swagger is tested and he must overcome intense pain and anguish. Watching him get up off the canvas again and again will make even the most uncharitable viewer cheer. As Adonis, he wants to carve his own legacy away from his father’s: “This is our chance to rewrite history. Our history,” Creed tells Rocky.
Thompson and Rashad both temper the piles of testosterone onscreen as women who steer and guide the young Adonis. Thompson’s character is battling progressive hearing loss and that is handled intelligently by the writers. There’s even a scene when Adonis is punched so hard that he falls in silence and looks over at her, both connected for a moment in enveloping quiet.
The filmmakers, meanwhile, are creating their own family legacy. Both Creed films share the same composer (Ludwig Goransson), art director (Jesse Rosenthal), special effects coordinator (Patrick White), costumer (Rita Squitiere) and location manager (Patricia Taggart). The films even have the same barber for Jordan (Kenny Duncan). And Coogler didn’t go far — he’s an executive producer.
But while a Creed III is almost guaranteed, there may be dangers ahead if the filmmakers choose to keep reopening old wounds or plundering story lines from the past. And the creep toward more cinematic bombast needs to be watched vigilantly. (Remember how nuts the last few Rocky films got?) Having said that, this spin-off franchise is clearly in very good hands — ones that are heavily wrapped, protected by a glove and aiming for your gut.
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‘A Private War’ Underscores Risks Journalists Take
Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman has often put his life on the line while filming award-winning documentaries such as Cartel Land, chronicling wars of Mexican drug cartels, and throwing a light on the atrocities of the Islamic State group in City of Ghosts.
Now, Heineman is releasing his first feature film, A Private War, about another subject close to his heart: Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, who staked her life on the war fronts of Sri Lanka, Iraq and Syria in order to bring attention to the plight of war victims.
In A Private War, Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike transforms herself into Colvin, a gritty, fierce, inquisitive American journalist who dedicated her life to reporting on atrocities around the world.
Pike evokes the journalist’s inexorable drive to cover wars to show the world the plight of war victims and bring truth to light. She also portrays Colvin as a person suffering from PTSD and addiction to alcohol and to her job. And there was the physical toll. Colvin lost her left eye in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Sri Lanka in 2001.
Her actions, presence
“Getting into her physicality, which meant changing everything, I had to learn to smoke convincingly, because for Marie, everything was better with a cigarette — every conversation, every car drive,” Pike told VOA. “I had to see the way with which she gestured with her hands — she had these wide-apart fingers. I had to work out how the eye patch made her angle her head differently — how she could penetrate you and sear you with one eye as good as someone else could dress you down with two.”
In an onscreen soliloquy about her inner demons as Colvin, Pike outlined the personal conflicts that defined the British journalist.
“I fear growing old, but then I also fear dying young,” she said. “I am most happy with a vodka martini in my hand, but I can’t stand the fact that the chatter in my head won’t go quiet until there is a quart of vodka inside me. I hate being in a war zone, but I also feel compelled, compelled, to see it for myself.”
WATCH: ‘A Private War’ Examines War Correspondent’s Physical, Psychological Scars
Regarding Colvin’s heavy drinking, Pike said, “Should we even call it alcoholism? I really had to judge and walk a very fine line and find out where the truth lay, because it is not that we are defining her by a drinking problem. But she clearly had one.”
Filmmaker Heineman described his deep connection to Colvin. A storyteller who took grave risks to document drug cartels and IS to the world, he wanted to do justice to the complexity of Colvin’s character and her courage as she unflinchingly reported from Homs, Syria, in 2012 during Bashar al-Assad’s heavy bombardment of the city.
This is where Colvin lost her life. Through Colvin’s commitment, Heineman said he wanted to show the risks that journalists take to uncover the truth to the world.
Power of storytelling
“Journalists are the bedrock of a free and independent society. You might not always agree with what they say, but the fact that journalism has been politicized, as our whole world has been politicized and our countries have been politicized and divided, is really sad to me,” the filmmaker said. “The fact that journalists have been demonized in this country, in other countries, the fact that a journalist was recently obviously killed, in Turkey [Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi], I think that’s one of the reasons why I make films.
“I think film, journalism, storytelling has the ability to bring people together to create dialogue, to create two sides of a conversation,” he told VOA.
As a documentarian, Heineman wanted to give this real-life texture to his film. In a scene where Colvin discovers a mass grave in Iraq, the local women and men gathered around mourning are real victims of war.
“The women in that scene were Iraqi women crying about real trauma that they experienced, and at the end of that scene, like in any documentary that I made, something unforeseen happened: They started chanting and doing this prayer for the dead,” Heineman said.
Pike related a similar experience she had while filming an unscripted scene with a refugee woman huddled with her kids in a safe house. The scene was depicting the siege of Homs.
Through an interpreter, the woman told Pike how she fed her baby only sugar and water because she could not produce milk to breastfeed after the trauma of losing one of her kids to a bomb attack.
“Then the woman said to me as Marie — and it was caught on camera — she said, ‘I don’t want this, please, I don’t want this just to be words on paper. I want the world to know that a generation is dying here. I want the world to know my story.’ ”
Pike said that at that moment, she felt what drove Colvin — the journalist’s grave responsibility to bear witness to people’s suffering, no matter the cost.
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Federal Reserve Policymakers See Rate Hikes Ahead, Note Worries
Federal Reserve policymakers on Friday signaled further interest rate increases ahead, but raised relatively muted concerns over a potential global slowdown that has markets betting heavily that the Fed’s rate hike cycle will soon peter out.
The widening chasm between market expectations and the rate path the Fed laid out just two months ago underscores the biggest question in front of U.S. central bankers: How much weight to give a growing number of potential red flags, even as U.S. economic growth continues to push down unemployment and create new jobs?
“We are at a point now where we really need to be especially data dependent,” Richard Clarida, the newly appointed vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said in a CNBC interview. “I think certainly where the economy is today, and the Fed’s projection of where it’s going, that being at neutral would make sense,” he added, defining “neutral” as interest rates somewhere between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent.
But that range that implies anywhere from two more to six more rate hikes, and Clarida declined to say how many more increases he would prefer.
He did say he is optimistic that U.S. productivity is rising, a view that suggests he would not see faster economic or wage growth as necessarily feeding into higher inflation or, necessarily, requiring higher interest rates. But he also
sounded a mild warning.
“There is some evidence of global slowing,” Clarida said. “That’s something that is going to be relevant as I think about the outlook for the U.S. economy, because it impacts big parts of the economy through trade and through capital markets and the like.”
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan, in a separate interview with Fox Business, also said he is seeing a growth slowdown in Europe and China.
“It’s my own judgment that global growth is going to be a little bit of a headwind, and it may spill over to the United States,” Kaplan said. .
The Fed raised interest rates three times this year and is expected to raise its target again next month, to a range of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent. As of September, Fed policymakers expected to need to increase rates three more times next year, a view they will update next month.
Over the last week, betting in contracts tied to the Fed’s policy suggests that even two rate hikes might be a stretch. The yield on fed fund futures maturing in January 2020, seen by some as an end-point for the Fed’s current rate-hike cycle, dropped sharply to just 2.76 percent over six trading days.
At the same time, long-term inflation expectations have been dropping quickly as well. The so-called breakeven inflation rate on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, has fallen sharply in the last month. The breakeven rate on five-year TIPS hit the lowest since late 2017 earlier this week.
Those market moves together suggest traders are taking the prospect of a slowdown seriously, limiting how far the Fed will end up raising rates.
But not all policymakers seemed that worried. Sitting with his back to a map of the world in a ballroom in Chicago’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans downplayed risks to his outlook, noting that the leveraged loans that some of his colleagues have raised concerns about are being taken out by “big boys and girls” who
understand the risks.
He told reporters he still believes rates should rise to about 3.25 percent so as to mildly restrain growth and bring unemployment, now at 3.7 percent, back up to a more sustainable level.
Asked about risks from the global slowdown, he said he hears more talk about it but that it is not really in the numbers yet.
But the next six months, he said, bear close watching.
“There’s not a great headline” about risks to the economy right now, Evans told reporters. “International is a little slower; Brexit — nobody’s asked me about that, thank you; [the slowing] housing market: I think all of those are in the mix for uncertainties that everybody’s facing,” he said.
“But at the moment, it’s not enough to upset or adjust the trajectory that I have in mind.”
Still, Evans added, the risks should not be counted out: “They could take on more life more easily because they are sort of more top of mind, if not in the forecast.”
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Report: Russia Has Access to UK Visa Processing
Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian website The Insider are suggesting that Russian intelligence has infiltrated the computer infrastructure of a company that processes British visa applications.
The investigation, published Friday, aims to show how two suspected Russian military intelligence agents, who have been charged with poisoning a former Russian spy in the English city of Salisbury, may have obtained British visas.
The Insider and Bellingcat said they interviewed the former chief technical officer of a company that processes visa applications for several consulates in Moscow, including that of Britain.
The man, who fled Russia last year and applied for asylum in the United States, said he had been coerced to work with agents of the main Russian intelligence agency FSB, who revealed to him that they had access to the British visa center’s CCTV cameras and had a diagram of the center’s computer network. The two outlets say they have obtained the man’s deposition to the U.S. authorities but have decided against publishing the man’s name, for his own safety.
The Insider and Bellingcat, however, did not demonstrate a clear link between the alleged efforts of Russian intelligence to penetrate the visa processing system and Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, who have been charged with poisoning Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March this year.
The man also said that FSB officers told him in spring 2016 that they were going to send two people to Britain and asked for his assistance with the visa applications. The timing points to the first reported trip to Britain of the two men, who traveled under the names of Alexander Petrov and Anatoly Boshirov. The man, however, said he told the FSB that there was no way he could influence the decision-making on visa applications.
The man said he was coerced to sign an agreement to collaborate with the FSB after one of its officers threatened to jail his mother, and was asked to create a “backdoor” to the computer network. He said he sabotaged those efforts before he fled Russia in early 2017.
In September, British intelligence released surveillance images of the agents of Russian military intelligence GRU accused of the March nerve agent attack on double agent Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. Bellingcat and The Insider quickly exposed the agents’ real names and the media, including The Associated Press, were able to corroborate their real identities.
The visa application processing company, TLSContact, and the British Home Office were not immediately available for comment.
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Take A Weight Off: ‘Grand K’ Kilo Being Retired
In a historic vote, nations on Friday unanimously approved a groundbreaking overhaul to the international system of measurements that underpins global trade and other vital human endeavors, uniting behind new scientific definitions for the kilogram and other units in a way that they have failed to do on so many other issues.
Scientists, for whom the update represents decades of work, clapped, cheered and even wept as the 50-plus nations gathered in Versailles, west of Paris, and one by one said “yes” or “oui” to the change, hailed as a revolution for how humanity measures and quantifies its world.
The redefinition of the kilogram, the globally approved unit of mass, was the mostly hotly anticipated change. For more than a century, the kilogram has been defined as the mass of a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy kept in a high-security vault in France. That artefact, nicknamed “Le Grand K,” has been the world’s sole true kilogram since 1889.
But now, with the vote, the kilogram and all of the other main measurement units will be defined using numerical values that fit handily onto a wallet card. Those numbers were read to the national delegates before they voted.
Scientists at the meeting were giddy with excitement: Some even sported tattoos on their forearms that celebrated the science.
Nobel prize winner William Phillips called the update “the greatest revolution in measurement since the French revolution,” which ushered in the metric system of meters and kilograms.
Jon Pratt of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology said the vote left him “a basket case” and “extremely emotional.”
“Those units, those constants chosen now, include everything we know, everything we have always known and provide that springboard for us to go pursue those things that we don’t know,” he said. “That was just leaving me in a puddle of tears.”
The Grand K and its six official copies, kept together in the same safe on the edge of Paris and collectively known as the “heir and the spares,” will be retired but not forgotten. Scientists want to keep studying them to see whether their masses decay over time.
Benefits of the change
The change will have no discernable impact for most people. Bathroom scales won’t suddenly get kinder and kilos and grams won’t change in supermarkets.
But the new formula-based definition of the kilogram will have multiple advantages over the precision-crafted metal lump that set the standard from the 19th century to the 21st, through periods of stunning human achievement and stunning follies, including two world wars.
Unlike a physical object, the new formula for the kilo, now also known as “the electric kilo,” cannot pick up particles of dust, decay with time, or be dropped and damaged.
It is expected to be more accurate when measuring very, very small or very, very large masses and help usher in new innovations in science, industry, climate study and other fields.
With time, as the science behind the new definition becomes more accessible and affordable, it should also mean that countries won’t have to send their own kilograms back to France to be checked occasionally against Le Grand K, as they have done until now, to see whether their mass was still accurate.
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South Africa Cannabis Ruling Leads to Pot-Themed Products
Now that South Africa’s highest court has relaxed the nation’s laws on marijuana, local entrepreneurs are trying to cash in on the popular herb. Among the latest entries to the market: several highly popular cannabis-laced alcohol products, which deliver the unique taste, though without the signature high. Marijuana activists say this could just be the beginning and that the famous plant could do much more for the national economy. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Johannesburg.
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Trump to Award Presidential Medal of Freedom to Donor’s Wife
Miriam Adelson is a doctor, philanthropist and humanitarian, but is perhaps best known as the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate considered one of the nation’s most powerful Republican donors. She gets to add a new title Friday when President Donald Trump honors her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Miriam Adelson is among seven people Trump is recognizing with the medal, the highest honor America can give a civilian.
The other recipients include retiring Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, one of the longest-serving senators in U.S. history; Alan Page, who was elected to the Minnesota Supreme Court after an NFL career with the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears; and Roger Staubach, the Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboys quarterback.
Posthumous honors are being granted to Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth and Antonin Scalia, the conservative Supreme Court justice.
The Adelsons gave Trump’s presidential campaign a $30 million boost in the final months of the 2016 race. The couple followed up this election cycle by donating $100 million to the Republican Party for last week’s midterms.
Miriam Adelson, 73, is an Israeli-born, naturalized U.S. citizen who earned a medical degree from Tel Aviv University and founded a pair of drug abuse treatment and research centers in Las Vegas and Tel Aviv. She and her husband own the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Israel Hayom newspapers.
The Adelsons are also avid supporters of Israel. Their passion for strengthening the country, along with Israel-U.S. relations, has helped keep such policy priorities as relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem front and center in the Republican Party and the Trump administration.
Trump moved the embassy in May, and Sheldon Adelson, who had offered to personally fund the move, was seated in the front row for the ceremony.
Robert Weissman, president of public interest group Public Citizen, said it was difficult to believe the decision to recognize Miriam Adelson was based on merit.
“It’s emblematic of the corrupt and transactional presidency of Donald Trump, and it is a shame, but not a surprise, that he is corroding and corrupting a civic treasure, an honor like the Medal of Freedom,” Weissman said.
Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said Trump used the process that previous administrations have followed to settle on his group of honorees. The process was coordinated by the office of the staff secretary, taking into account recommendations from the public, relevant presidential advisory bodies, the Cabinet and senior White House staff, she said.
The award is given to individuals “who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
Miriam Adelson said she is “deeply humbled and moved by this exceptional honor.”
“Liberty is at the heart of my decades of work against substance abuse. Drug dependency is enslavement, for the user and his or her family and society, and treatment an emancipation,” she said in a statement released Thursday by Las Vegas Sands Corp., a company owned by Sheldon Adelson that operates hotels and casinos around the world. “Together, my husband, Sheldon, and I have dedicated our lives to freedom: to a free market that benefits the greater good and to philanthropic endeavors that succor those suffering from poverty and disease.”
E. Fletcher McClellan, a political science professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, said there are no limitations on who can receive the presidential honor.
“He has total discretion as to who and when and how,” said McClellan, who has studied the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Christopher Devine, a politics professor at the University of Dayton, questioned Miriam Adelson’s impact on American culture or national interests as compared to past recipients like Oprah Winfrey or Bruce Springsteen. Both Winfrey and Springsteen received medals from President Barack Obama, whom they supported politically.
“This is what leaves many people wondering whether President Trump singled her out for an award as something of a thank-you for her and husband Sheldon Adelson’s very substantial donations to Republican candidates and causes over the years, including ones in support of Trump’s election in 2016,” said Devine, who wrote a book about the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Devine said that while Miriam Adelson isn’t the first campaign contributor to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the size of her campaign contributions sets her apart from the rest.
Somalia Struggles to Treat PTSD from War, Poverty
Somalia’s 30 years of chronic conflict have left an estimated 1 in 3 people affected by mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, there are only three licensed psychiatrists in the entire country. Mohamed Sheikh Nor reports from Mogadishu on Somalia’s huge mental health challenges.
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Ebola Outbreak in DRC Could Stretch Well into Next Year
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has already killed hundreds of people, could continue for several months. That’s the latest warning from a senior World Health Organization official. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Experts: Without Proof of Ownership, Land Laws Worthless
Land laws mean nothing unless communities can prove their ownership, researchers said Thursday, calling for better tools to map the land and stave off conflict over property.
From South Africa to the Amazon rainforest, battles over land and who owns it are unleashing unprecedented conflict and labyrinthine legal cases as governments and companies seek to exploit ever more of the world’s natural resources, from trees to minerals to rubber.
With an estimated 70 percent of the world unmapped, more than 5 billion people lack proof of ownership, according to the Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy.
Laws no safeguard
Speaking at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual two-day Trust Conference, which focuses on a host of human rights issues, experts said the existence of laws in itself was no safeguard against abuse.
South Africa enshrines security of tenure in its constitution but the government rides roughshod over locals by promoting controversial mining deals, said Aninka Claassens, director of the University of Cape Town’s Land and Accountability Research Center.
More than two decades after the end of apartheid, whites still own most of the land in resource-rich South Africa and ownership remains a highly emotive subject ahead of next year’s national election.
“Our constitution means nothing unless people affected can prove their land rights, that’s why recorded rights are so important,” she said. “Mining is destroying livelihoods and land.”
Who owns what, where
Mapping property rights is crucial to understand “who owns what, where and how,” said Anne Girardin, land surveyor at the Cadasta Foundation, which develops digital tools to document and analyze land and resource rights information.
“That allows you to monitor changes in land resources, but also to better protect them,” she added.
More than 200 activists protecting their land and environment were killed in 2017, according to a survey of 22 countries by Global Witness, marking the deadliest year since the human rights group began collecting data.
Better and more coordinated information is needed to ward off more deadly conflicts, the experts said, citing satellite images and smartphones as tools that could document land.
Technology is plentiful but resources are scattered, Girardin said.
“It would take all the land surveyors we have 200-300 years to map the world’s undocumented land, so we need to be more pragmatic and work together,” she said.
Communities document land
Rampant deforestation means communities should rush to document their own land rather than wait for governments to act, said Nonette Royo, executive director of the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, which helps indigenous people.
“In the world, forest area the size of Belgium disappears every year,” she said.
For Claassens, land rights should be mapped and recorded in accordance with who uses land as well as who actually owns it.
“Who uses the land? Most often, it’s women,” she said, adding that women were often excluded from property records.
Women are key in the fight for land rights from Brazil to Cambodia, often deployed at the frontline to ward off development and protect family plots, fields and villages.
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‘Perfect Time,’ Ethical Businesses Say, to Drive Social Change
Ethically driven businesses are becoming increasingly popular and profitable but they can face threats for shaking up the existing order, entrepreneurs said on Social Enterprise Day.
When Meghan Markle wore a pair of “slave-free” jeans on a royal tour of Australia last month, she sparked a sales stampede and shone a spotlight on the growing number of companies aiming to meet public demand for ethical products.
“Right now is the perfect time to have this kind of business,” said James Bartle, founder of Australia-based Outland Denim, which made the $200 (150 pound) jeans. “There is awareness and people are prepared to spend on these kinds of products.”
Social Enterprise Day
Social Enterprise Day, which celebrates firms seeking to make profit while doing good, is being marked in 23 countries, including Australia, Nigeria, Romania and the Philippines, led by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), which represents the sector.
Outland Denim is one such company, employing dozens of survivors of human trafficking and other vulnerable women in Cambodia to make its jeans, which all contain a written thank-you message from the seamstress on an internal pocket.
Bartle said he wanted to create a sustainable model that gives people power to change their future through employment.
More companies are striving to clean up their supply chains and stamp their goods as environmentally friendly and ethical, with women and millennials, people born between 1982 and 2000, driving the shift to products that seek to improve the world.
“For-profits create the mess, and then the not-for-profits clean it up,” said Andrew O’Brien, director of external affairs at SEUK, which estimates that 2 million British workers are employed by a social enterprise. “We are an existential threat to that system, by coming through the middle and forcing businesses to change the way they do business.”
Risky business
Britain has the world’s largest social enterprise sector, according to the U.K. government. About 100,000 firms contribute 60 billion pounds ($76 billion) to the world’s fifth largest economy, SEUK says.
Elsewhere in the world, it can be a risky business.
“I get threats,” said Farhad Wajdi who runs Ebtakar Inspiring Entrepreneurs of Afghanistan, which helps women enter the workforce by training and providing seed money for them to operate food carts in the war-torn country. “I can’t go to the provinces.”
His work has met resistance in parts of Afghanistan, a conservative society where women rarely work outside the home.
“A social enterprise can lead to sustainable change in those communities,” Wajdi said on the sidelines of the Trust Conference in London. “It can propagate gender equality and create friction for social change at a grassroots level.”
Niche? Window dressing?
There is, however, a danger that social enterprise will remain a niche form of business or become window-dressing for firms that just want to improve their public image.
“I don’t want social enterprise to become the next (corporate social responsibility), another (public relations) move,” said Melissa Kim, the founder of Costa Rican-based Uplift Worldwide, which supports social enterprises.
“To me this is just good business, and good sustainable business is not just about the environment and human rights … if you care about your relationships internally and externally you will stay in business.”
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45 Years After Her Nomination, Cicely Tyson Gets Her Oscar
Cicely Tyson received her first and only Oscar nomination in 1972. It was for best actress for her work in “Sounder,” which she thinks of as her first major role. She wasn’t called to the stage that year — Liza Minnelli was for “Cabaret” — but now 45 years later, Tyson is finally getting her Oscar.
“It is an emotionally wrenching matter to me,” Tyson said.
Tyson, 93, is no stranger to awards and honors. She’s won three Emmys (two in the same year for “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” and one for “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All”), a Tony award (for “The Trip to Bountiful”), been a Kennedy Center honoree and, in 2016 was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. Now she can add one more award to that list as she prepares to accept her honorary Oscar at the 10th annual Governors Awards Sunday in Hollywood.
“I come from lowly status. I grew up in an area that was called the slums at the time,” Tyson said. “I still cannot imagine that I have met with presidents, kings, queens. How did I get here? I marvel at it.”
When film academy President John Bailey called her to inform her that the Board of Governors voted unanimously to give her the award, she “went to water.”
“It is the last thing in the world that I ever expected,” Tyson said, thinking, “I hadn’t done a major movie since ‘The Help.'”
Tyson has worked since the 2011 film, with roles in “Last Flag Flying’ and the television show “How to Get Away With Murder,” but ‘The Help’ was the last film that had anyone mentioning her name alongside Oscar. Oprah even called her and predicted she’d get a nomination, to which she responded: “My role was two seconds!’
“I am extremely grateful to the Board that they even know my name,” Tyson added with a hearty laugh.
She is being honored Sunday along with publicist Marvin Levy and composer Lalo Schifrin.
Born in Harlem, Tyson started out as a model and theater actress, eventually landing a role in the film “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” in 1968. Her pursuit of acting caused a rift with her mother, who disapproved, but Tyson said she was her “motivating force.”
“I was determined to prove her wrong,” Tyson said.
Plus, she learned quickly that she had a larger purpose than just acting. On the press tour for “Sounder,” which took her to parts of the United States that she hadn’t yet been to, she remembers a man in a press conference telling her that watching the film made him realize that he was prejudiced.
“He said, ‘You know, I could not accept the fact that your older son was referring to his father as daddy. That’s what my son calls me,'” Tyson said. “And I thought to myself, `My God. My God.’ It was those kinds of experiences as I went across the country promoting ‘Sounder’ that made me realize that I, Cicely Tyson, could not afford the luxury of being an actress. There were some issues that I definitely had to address and I chose my profession as my platform.”
It led to a lifetime of activism and humanitarianism off screen. Tyson even has a performing arts school named after her in New Jersey and frequently goes on tour to speak to children. On screen Tyson has portrayed women like Coretta Scott King and Harriet Ross Tubman. She decided early that she would only take jobs that “speak to something,” which is also why she ends up saying “no” a lot.
“My honorary Oscar proves to me that I was on the right track and I stayed on it,” Tyson said.
And while most of the time “no” works, sometimes it doesn’t. Tyson tried to say no to wearing a terrifically large hat to Aretha Franklin’s funeral only to be overruled by her designer. The hat would become a viral highlight.
“I never thought in my career that I would be upstaged by a hat! And I did not want to wear it,” Tyson said. “I said, ‘I can’t wear that hat, I will be blocking the view of the people behind me, they won’t be able to see and they’ll call me all kinds of names.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘Put the hat on.'”
She came around, eventually, thinking of the hat as homage to Franklin’s appearance at Obama’s inauguration.
As for whether or not she’ll don a similarly spectacular piece of art on her head Sunday night at the Governors Awards? Tyson just laughs.
“Oh no!” she said. “I won’t even mention it to him.”
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