The U.S. has had its share of famous on-screen dogs, from Lassie to Benji. In China, the big-screen star is a lovable mutt named ‘Juice.’ But Juice is getting on in years, so what’s a movie company to do? Turn to cutting-edge biotech, of course. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Month: December 2018
Elon Musk’s Boring Company Set to Unveil Its First Los Angeles-Area Tunnel
The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s underground transit venture, planned an unveiling of its first tunnel Tuesday, two years after the billionaire entrepreneur complained about Los Angeles traffic and vowed to “just start digging” as a remedy.
Musk has advertised his 2-mile (3.2 km) tunnel as the first step toward developing a high-speed subterranean network for whisking vehicles and pedestrians below the congested streets of the second-largest city in the United States.
The tunnel, an initial proof-of-concept, has been excavated along a path that runs not through Los Angeles but beneath the tiny adjacent municipality of Hawthorne, where Musk’s Boring Company and his SpaceX rocket firm are headquartered.
In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said the big reveal would include “autonomous transport cars & ground to tunnel elevator cars.”
Boring’s website describes a system of passenger- and automobile-carrying “skates” that can zip through the tunnels by way of electric power once they are lowered underground from street level.
Musk, best known as head of the Tesla Inc electric car manufacturer and energy company, launched his foray into public transit after complaining in December 2016 that L.A.’s traffic was “driving me nuts,” promising then to “build a boring machine and just start digging.”
In May, the company gave the world a preview of the first tunnel, posting a fast-forward video of the interior shot by a camera traveling the length of the cylindrical passageway, which measures about 12 feet (3.7 m) in diameter.
Musk also created a stir by promising free trips through the tunnel once it opened — “like a weird little Disney ride in L.A.” — to get public feedback before proceeding with a larger system.
It remained doubtful, however, whether permits Musk received to dig what was then billed as an experimental tunnel would allow the public inside.
“There will be no cars or people in the research tunnel,” according to the minutes of a special Hawthorne City Council meeting in August 2017 to review an easement for the project.
On its website, the Boring company said that “due to unbelievably high demand, tours through the Hawthorne test tunnel are by invitation only.”
If successful, the Hawthorne tunnel is envisioned as eventually connecting to a network of other tunnels, yet to be approved or built.
Last month, the Boring Company scrapped plans for a slightly longer 2.7-mile segment under a West Los Angeles neighborhood, settling litigation brought by community groups opposed to that project.
But Musk’s company announced it was moving ahead with a proposed tunnel across town to connect Dodger Stadium, home of the city’s Major League Baseball team, to the existing subway line.
In June, Boring was selected by the city of Chicago to build a 17-mile underground transit system linking that city’s downtown to O’Hare International Airport. The company also has proposed an East Coast Loop that would run from Washington, D.C., out to the Maryland suburbs.
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French Pair Invent Plastic-to-fuel Recycler Fit for African Bush
A French actor and a self-taught inventor have designed a low-tech machine that converts plastic waste into diesel and petrol, which they say could help fight pollution and provide fuel for remote communities in developing countries.
Proponents of plastics-to-fuel technology say the sector could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the next five years, and that by melting plastics into fuel they are providing a solution to the planet’s plastic waste crisis.
Opponents worry that the process creates harmful fumes.
“The idea is to encourage the collection of waste before it ends up in the oceans with a machine that fits in a shipping container and can create an income,” said Samuel Le Bihan, who has starred in French movies such as “Disco” and “Mesrine.”
For three-and-a-half years Le Bihan has bankrolled the development of the crude machine — dubbed Chrysalis — in a hangar in Puget-Theniers in the hills behind the Riviera city of Nice. Its designer is a 35-year-old self-taught scientist.
Plastic pellets are fed into a closed reactor where they are broken down at 450 degrees centigrade to produce diesel, gasoline and a carbon residue that can be used in crayons.
“A kilo of plastic gives a liter of liquid. It’s separated between diesel and petrol,” said creator Cristofer Costes.
With 50,000 euro additional financing from the local authority, the two men plan to create a larger prototype capable of converting 50 kilograms of plastic into fuel every 80 minutes.
Simple in design, it will be reparable even in the depths of the African bush, said Costes.
Every year about 260 million tons of plastic is produced.
U.N. data shows eight million tons of plastic — bottles, packaging and other waste — enters the ocean each year, killing marine life and entering the human food chain.
Conservationists have warned that plastic pollution in the oceans could outweigh fish by 2050.
Similar technologies to the Chrysalis have already been developed by companies looking to help solve one of the greatest environmental problems facing humanity.
British firm Recycling Technologies says their machine — the RT7000 — can transform hard-to-recycle waste plastic into a novel raw material, called Plaxx, which can then be re-used by the plastics industry.
“If people see that plastic waste has a value they won’t chuck it away,” said Le Bihan. “I can’t imagine how many tons of plastic waste there is lying around that we could treat.”
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NASA’s 1st Flight to Moon, Apollo 8, Marks 50th Anniversary
Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon.
To this day, that 1968 mission is considered to be NASA’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous undertaking. That first voyage by humans to another world set the stage for the still grander Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later.
There was unprecedented and unfathomable risk to putting three men atop a monstrous new rocket for the first time and sending them all the way to the moon. The mission was whipped together in just four months in order to reach the moon by year’s end, before the Soviet Union.
There was the Old Testament reading by commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders.
Lastly, there was the photo named “Earthrise,” showing our blue and white ball — humanity’s home — rising above the bleak, gray lunar landscape and 240,000 miles (386 million kilometers) in the distance.
Humans had never set eyes on the far side of the moon, or on our planet as a cosmic oasis, surrounded completely by the black void of space. A half-century later, only 24 U.S. astronauts who flew to the moon have witnessed these wondrous sights in person.
The Apollo 8 crew is still around: Borman and Lovell are 90, Anders is 85.
To Lovell, the journey had the thrill and romance of true exploration, and provided an uplifting cap for Americans to a painful, contentious year marked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, nationwide riots and protests of the Vietnam War.
The mission’s impact was perhaps best summed up in a four-word telegram received by Borman. “Thanks, you saved 1968.”
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine — who at age 43 missed Apollo — marvels over the gutsy decision in August that year to launch astronauts to the moon in four months’ time. He’s pushing for a return to the moon, but with real sustainability this next go-around.
50-50 chances
The space agency flipped missions and decided that instead of orbiting Earth, Borman and his crew would fly to the moon to beat the Soviets and pave the way for the lunar landings to come. And that was despite on its previous test flight, the Saturn V rocket lost parts and engines failed.
“Even more worrisome than all of this,” Bridenstine noted earlier this month, Apollo 8 would be in orbit around the moon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. “In other words, if there was a failure here, it would wreck Christmas not only for everybody in the United States, but for everybody in the world.”
As that first moon shot neared, Borman’s wife, Susan, demanded to know the crew’s chances. A NASA director answered: 50-50.
Borman wanted to get to the moon and get back fast. In his mind, a single lap around the moon would suffice. His bosses insisted on more.
“My main concern in this whole flight was to get there ahead of the Russians and get home. That was a significant achievement in my eyes,” Borman explained at the Chicago launch of the book Rocket Men last spring.
Everyone eventually agreed: Ten orbits it would be.
Liftoff of the Saturn V occurred on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 21, 1968.
On Christmas Eve, the spaceship successfully slipped into orbit around the moon. Before bedtime, the first envoys to another world took turns reading the first 10 verses from Genesis. It had been left to Borman, before the flight, to find “something appropriate” to say for what was expected to be the biggest broadcast audience to date.
“We all tried for quite a while to figure out something, and it all came up trite or foolish,” Borman recalled. Finally, the wife of a friend of a friend came up with the idea of Genesis.
“In the beginning,” Anders read, “God created the heaven and the Earth …”
Borman ended the broadcast with, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”
On Christmas morning, their spacecraft went around the moon for the final time. The engine firing needed to shoot them back to Earth occurred while the capsule was out of communication with Mission Control in Houston. Lovell broke the nervous silence as the ship reappeared: “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”
Back in Houston, meanwhile, a limousine driver knocked on Marilyn Lovell’s door and handed her a gift-wrapped mink stole with a card that read: “To Marilyn, Merry Christmas from the man in the moon.” Lovell bought the coat for his wife and arranged its fancy delivery before liftoff.
Splashdown occurred in the pre-dawn darkness on Dec. 27, bringing the incredible six-day journey to a close. Time magazine named the three astronauts “Men of the Year.”
Earthrise
It wasn’t until after the astronauts were back that the significance of their Earth pictures sank in.
Anders snapped the iconic Earthrise photo during the crew’s fourth orbit of the moon, frantically switching from black-and-white to color film to capture the planet’s exquisite, fragile beauty.
“Oh my God, look at that picture over there!” Anders said. “There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!”
Before the flight, no one had thought about photographing Earth, according to Anders. The astronauts were under orders to get pictures for potential lunar landing sites while orbiting 70 miles (112 kilometers) above the moon.
“We came to explore the moon and what we discovered was the Earth,” Anders is fond of saying.
His Earthrise photo is a pillar of today’s environmental movement. It remains a legacy of Apollo and humanity’s achievement, said professor emeritus John Logsdon of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, forever underscoring the absence of political borders as seen from space.
Anders wondered then — and now — “This is not a very big place, why can’t we get along?”
Lovell remains awestruck by the fact he could hide all of Earth behind his thumb.
“Over 3 billion people, mountains, oceans, deserts, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,” he recalled at a recent anniversary celebration at Washington’s National Cathedral.
Astronaut-artist Nicole Stott said the golden anniversary provides an opportunity to reintroduce the world to Earthrise. She and three other former space travelers are holding a celebration Friday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, 50 years to the day Apollo 8 launched.
“That one image, I think, it just gives us the who and where we are in the universe so beautifully,” she said.
By July 1969, Apollo 8 was overshadowed by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moon landing. But without Apollo 8, noted George Washington’s Logsdon, NASA likely would not have met President John F. Kennedy’s deadline of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Borman and Anders never flew in space again, and Soviet cosmonauts never made it to the moon.
Lovell went on to command the ill-fated Apollo 13 — “but that’s another story.” That flight was the most demanding, he said, “But Apollo 8 was the one of exploration, the one of repeating the Lewis and Clark expedition … finding the new Earth.”
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New Brazilian Minister: Even Military Must Compromise on Pensions
Every Brazilian, including current and former members of the armed forces, will have to compromise under the next administration’s pension reform plan, a former general set to become government minister said in an interview.
Retired General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz told Reuters in Brasilia last week that it was “inadmissible” in today’s world for some Brazilians employed in the public sector to retire in their 40s or 50s.
On December 4, right-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said he planned to tackle the overhaul of Brazil’s fiscally burdensome pension system with piecemeal reforms that can pass Congress, starting with an increase in the minimum age of retirement.
Many economists say cuts to Brazil’s social security system are essential to controlling a huge federal deficit and regaining Brazil’s investment-grade rating.
“There are some professions that will need to cede some things, as is the case with the justice system workers, the prosecutor’s office, and all public sector employment,” Santos Cruz said. “The military is in the same situation. The idea of retirement, for example, is going to have to be tweaked.”
One of a group of former army generals who have become close advisers to Bolsonaro, Santos Cruz will be Bolsonaro’s main liaison with Congress, state and local governments, when he takes office on January 1.
Brazil would have to take a long hard look at the age people stop working in order to protect public finances, said Santos Cruz, who is 66.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain and staunch defender of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, had pledged to protect military pensions and retirement rights, but the realization that they are responsible for nearly half of the pensions deficit led his economic advisers to push him to rethink that stance. In recent comments, Bolsonaro has said he is willing to countenance a minimum age for military retirement.
Santos Cruz also said any austerity measures should be leveled against top-earning public workers, for whom the pain is relatively less, rather than lower paid employees.
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Greek Lawmakers Approve New Budget — With More Austerity
Greek lawmakers approved the heavily indebted country’s budget for 2019 late Tuesday, the first since Greece exited an eight-year bailout program.
The budget lawmakers passed with a 154-143 vote still is heavy on austerity measures to ensure Greece registers a hefty surplus, in compliance with its debt relief deal with international creditors.
Earlier Tuesday, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said the proposed budget was Greece’s first in 10 years to be drafted “under circumstances of relative financial and political freedom” from bailout creditors.
“Today we have the opportunity to vote for a budget that now reflects the priorities of the Greek government, and not of [its] supervising institutions,” he said during a parliamentary debate.
As the debate drew to a close, more than 2,000 people demonstrated peacefully outside parliament in two separate protests called by labor unions.
The budget submitted by the left-led government foresees Greece’s battered economy growing 2.1 percent in 2018 and 2.5 percent in 2019. The debt load is set to decline from 180.4 percent of output this year to 167.8 percent next year.
Greece owes most of that debt to European partners and the International Monetary Fund. The debt relief deal secured favorable repayment terms, but in return the country must achieve budget surpluses for decades to come.
The country also secured a cash buffer from creditors so it would not have to tap bond markets until the rates demanded by investors to buy Greek government bonds drop.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told lawmakers Tuesday that the country is not locked out of bond markets by high borrowing costs — even though his government has so far shelved stated plans to issue bonds shortly after the end of Greece’s last bailout, in August.
“[It] is a myth” that Greece can’t tap bond markets, Tsipras said. “You can be certain that we will again make a market exit, with a very good rate.”
Greece depended on bailout loans from 2010 until August 2018, and imposed crippling cutbacks to secure the money. Its finances are still subject to creditor scrutiny, albeit less intense than before.
Tsipras’ government is playing up citizen assistance programs that are intended to bring some 900 million euros in tax cuts and welfare benefits to less well-off Greeks. The money for the relief measures is supposed to come from a surplus generated by high taxes and constrained public spending.
However, labor unions say that’s not enough.
“Funding in the budget both for education and for health is much lower than our expectations,” Giannis Paidas, head of the Adedy civil servants’ union, said during the smaller of Tuesday’s two central Athens protests.
“It is the same and worse as during previous bailout-era years,” Paidas added. “There will be a 1 billion-euro increase in taxation. As you understand, this increase will burden working Greeks.”
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World-Famous T.Rex Sue Gets New Lair in Chicago
Sue, the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever unearthed, gets to show off its new lair this week at the Field Museum in Chicago.
The museum on Friday will unveil the 40-1/2-foot-long (12.3-meter) Sue, one of the world’s best-known dinosaur fossils, in the giant meat-eater’s new permanent exhibition space after 10 months of work moving and remounting the huge bones. Sue’s bones were mounted in a way that reflects new understanding about the species acquired over the past two decades.
One major change was the addition of gastralia, bones resembling an additional set of ribs spanning the belly that may have provided structural support to help the dinosaur breathe.
“The gastralia form a basket of bones in the abdominal wall and really help us visualize the size and girth of Sue. We also adjusted the shoulder blades to fit with what we now consider to be the correct wishbone, and this had the effect of bringing the arms lower and closer to the midline. Sue can now clap,” said paleontologist Pete Makovicky, the museum’s associate curator of dinosaurs.
Sue is named for the woman who discovered the fossils in South Dakota in 1990. It is not clear whether the actual dinosaur was female or male. The museum bought the fossils at auction for $8.4 million and put Sue on display in 2000.
“Adjustments were also made to the ribcage and the right leg is less flexed. Finally, we gave the mount a slightly wider gape for dramatic effect,” Makovicky added. “The new exhibit is a smaller, more intimate space, so the sheer size of the skeleton comes across in a much more visceral way.”
T. rex, one of the largest land predators ever, roamed western North America during the twilight of the age of dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period, alongside horned dinosaurs, armored dinosaurs, duckbilled dinosaurs, flying reptiles called pterosaurs, birds with and without teeth and other creatures.
An asteroid impact off the coast of Mexico 66 million years ago doomed the dinosaurs and many other land and sea creatures, though mammals survived the calamity and later became dominant.
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Mexico Budget Plan Races Past First Congressional Hurdle
The finance committee of Mexico’s lower house of Congress on Tuesday rapidly approved the revenue section of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 2019 draft budget, auguring speedy passage in the legislature his party controls.
Lopez Obrador’s leftist government only unveiled the budget proposal on Saturday night. It met with a positive initial response from financial markets, with investors warming to his commitment to keep a lid on spending.
The president’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) and its allies dominate Congress, having won the first outright majority in more than two decades.
Having been approved by the finance committee without changes, the revenue section is expected to go to the floor of the lower house on Tuesday afternoon. Once approved, the revenue budget proposal moves to the Senate.
The budget is a major test of Lopez Obrador’s credibility, which was shaken when he said on Oct. 29 he was scrapping a partly built $13 billion new Mexico City airport on the basis of a referendum that was widely panned as illegitimate.
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SpaceX Halts US Satellite Launch for National Security Mission
Elon Musk’s SpaceX halted Tuesday’s launch of a long-delayed navigation satellite for the U.S. military, postponing for at least a day the space transportation company’s first designated national security mission for the United States.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a roughly $500 million global positioning system (GPS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin Corp, was due to take off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral shortly after 9:30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT), but was stopped minutes before takeoff.
“This abort was triggered by the onboard Falcon 9 flight computer,” a SpaceX official narrating the launch sequence said without providing additional details. He said SpaceX would attempt the launch on Wednesday morning.
If the mission is successful it will mark a victory for Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur who has tried for years to break into the market for lucrative military space launches, long dominated by Lockheed and Boeing Co.
SpaceX sued the U.S. Air Force in 2014 in protest over the military’s award of a multibillion-dollar, non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed.
SpaceX dropped the lawsuit in 2015 after the Air Force agreed to open up competition, according to SpaceX’s website.
The next year, SpaceX won a $83 million Air Force contract to launch the GPS III satellite, which will have a lifespan of 15 years, Air Force spokesman William Russell said by phone.
Tuesday’s launch was to be the first of 32 satellites in production by Lockheed under contracts worth a combined $12.6 billion for the Air Force’s GPS III program, Lockheed spokesman Chip Eschenfelder said.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Florida to attend the launch, which he called “an important step forward as we seek to secure American leadership in space.”
“Once fully operational, this latest generation of GPS satellites will bring new capabilities to users, including three times greater accuracy and up to eight times the anti-jamming capabilities,” said Russell.
The GPS satellite launch was originally scheduled for 2014 but has been hobbled by production delays, the Air Force said. The next GPS III satellite will launch in mid-2019, Eschenfelder said, while subsequent satellites undergo testing in the company’s Colorado processing facility.
The launch marks SpaceX’s first so-called National Security Space mission as defined by the U.S. military, SpaceX said. The Hawthorne, California-based company has previously launched payloads for the Department of Defense in 2017 that were not designated as a National Security Space missions.
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RSF: Violence Against Journalists Hits Unprecedented Levels
The murder of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a year when more than half of all journalists killed were targeted deliberately reflects a hatred of the media in many areas of society, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday.
At least 63 professional journalists around the world were killed doing their jobs in 2018, RSF said, a 15 percent increase on last year. The number of fatalities rises to 80 when including all media workers and citizen journalists.
“The hatred of journalists that is voiced … by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists,” RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement.
Khashoggi, a royal insider who became a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and began writing for the Washington Post after moving to the United States last year, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
Khashoggi’s death sparked global outrage. Saudi officials have rejected accusations that the crown prince ordered his death.
The Paris-based body said that the three most dangerous countries for journalists to work in were Afghanistan, Syria and Mexico.
Meanwhile, the shooting of five employees of the Capital Gazette newspaper propelled the United States into the ranks of the most dangerous countries.
The media freedom organization said 348 journalists are being detained worldwide, compared with 326 at this time in 2017. China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold more than half the world’s imprisoned journalists.
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Grocery Store Using Unmanned Vehicles for Delivery
U.S. supermarket chain Kroger Co said on Tuesday it has started using unmanned autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries Scottsdale, Arizona in partnership with Silicon Valley startup Nuro.
The delivery service follows a pilot program started by the companies in Scottsdale in August and involved Nuro’s R1, a custom unmanned vehicle.
The R1 uses public roads and has no driver and is used to only transport goods.
Kroger’s deal with Nuro underscores the stiff competition in the U.S. grocery delivery market with supermarket chains angling for a bigger share of consumer spending.
Peers Walmart Inc and Amazon.com Inc have also invested heavily in their delivery operations by expanding their offerings and shortening delivery times.
Walmart, Ford Motor Co and delivery service Postmates Inc said last month they would collaborate to deliver groceries and other goods to Walmart customers and that could someday use autonomous vehicles.
Kroger said the service would be available in Scottsdale at its unit Fry’s Food Stores for $5.95 with no minimum order requirement for same-day or next-day deliveries.
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China’s Xi Calls for Reform Implementation, Offers No New Measures
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for the implementation of reforms but offered no new specific measures in a highly anticipated speech that marked the 40th anniversary of China’s move towards market liberalization.
In a speech lasting nearly an hour-and-a-half, Xi called for support of the state economy while also guiding the development of the private sector, and said China will expand efforts at opening up and ensure the implementation of major reforms.
“We must, unswervingly, reinforce the development of the state economy while, unswervingly, encouraging, supporting and guiding the development of the non-state economy,” Xi said during a speech at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Xi was speaking on the day China marked as the 40th anniversary of the start of late leader Deng Xiaoping’s campaign of “reform and opening up,” which led to explosive industrial growth that made China’s economy the world’s second-largest.
“Opening brings progress while closure leads to backwardness,” he added.
“Every step of reform and opening up is not easy. In the future, we will be inevitably faced with all sorts of risks and challenges, and even unimaginable tempestuous storms,” said Xi, stressing the role the ruling Communist Party.
Xi was speaking amid mounting pressure to accelerate reforms and improve market access for foreign companies as a bitter trade war with the United States weighs on the Chinese economy.
China’s heavy support of its sprawling state sector has been a point of contention with the United States.
The trade war has spurred some Chinese entrepreneurs, government advisers and think tanks to call for faster economic reforms and the freeing up of a private sector stifled by state controls and struggling to gain access to credit.
Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed early this month to a 90-day truce in the trade dispute, which halted the threatened escalation of punitive tariffs while the two sides continue negotiations.
In his speech, Xi enumerated the accomplishments of China’s development.
“Grain coupons, cloth coupons, meat coupons, fish coupons, oil coupons, tofu coupons, food ticket books, product coups and other documents people once could not be without have now been consigned to the museum of history,” he said. “The torments of hunger, lack of food and clothing, and the hardships which have plagued our people for thousands of years have generally gone and won’t come back.”
Numerous luminaries in attendance were cited for their contributions to China’s economic reforms including the heads of online giants Alibaba, Tencent Holdings and Baidu and car maker Geely Automobile Holdings.
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Emily Blunt’s Terrifying Moment As the New Mary Poppins
She takes on a beloved movie character and dances with penguins, but what really terrified British actress Emily Blunt was descending slowly from the clouds as the new Mary Poppins.
More than 50 years after it first charmed audiences worldwide, Blunt stars in the sequel “Mary Poppins Returns” as the magical English nanny with a no-nonsense demeanor but a twinkle in the eye.
The Walt Disney movie, starting its global roll-out this week, is set 20 years after the musical fantasy that made Julie Andrews a star.
Despite new music, a new cast and new director Rob Marshall, “Mary Poppins Returns” pays homage to the original 1964 film, including the arrival of the singing nanny from the skies above London.
This time, however, Poppins floats down holding a battered kite rather than her parrot umbrella but with her signature carpet bag still in hand.
Blunt said she was “terrified” filming the scene while hoisted high up on a crane. “It’s very high. Rob (Marshall) wanted to do one shot where I start in the air and I come down and the cameras are here and I walk straight into my close-up.”
”We did about four takes and then I was like, ‘Rob – please say you have it now. Have you got it? Just say you have it,'” said the actress, best known for her roles in thriller “A Quiet Place” and comedy “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Like the original, “Mary Poppins Returns” features fantasy sequences, dance numbers, animated dancing penguins. There’s even a cameo for a tap-dancing Dick Van Dyke, 93, who played Bert, the cheery London chimney sweep, in the 1964 film.
However Andrews, 83, who won an Oscar for her performance as Mary Poppins, has placed herself outside the spotlight, with no role in the sequel and no appearances at red carpet events.
Blunt, 35, said Andrews has been supportive of her taking on the role.
“I was very moved that she wanted this just to be my version of Mary Poppins and embraced as that, rather than her coming in at some point and being a distraction,” she said.
“I hear she’s just seen the film and loved it, so that means a lot to us,” Blunt added.
“Mary Poppins Returns,” which has been nominated for four Golden Globe awards, also stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, British actors Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw, and Meryl Streep in a cameo role.
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With Tensions Rising Between US and China, Silicon Valley Rethinks its Bonds
American tech companies have long looked to China as a key partner to help build and sell cutting-edge devices and services. But tensions are rising between Washington and Beijing, and Silicon Valley may be caught in the middle. Michelle Quinn reports.
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China Hopes for ‘Orderly’ Brexit, Calls for More Open EU Economy
China hopes Britain’s exit from the European Union can happen in an orderly way and that the bloc will reduce hurdles to Chinese investment and keep its markets open, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, has watched Brexit nervously, worried not only about potential market turmoil from a disorderly departure but about losing Britain’s supportive voice for free trade within the EU.
“China hopes to see Brexit proceed in an orderly fashion and stands ready to advance China-EU and China-UK relations in parallel,” the ministry said in a lengthy policy document on EU ties.
The EU and China are often at loggerheads over trade and other issues, with the EU sharing many of the same concerns as the United States about market access, trade imbalances and intellectual property rights protection.
The bloc is China’s largest trading partner while China is its biggest trading partner after the United States.
The EU has been pressing for better access to the Chinese market for its companies, while China has complained about what it sees as unfair restrictions on Chinese investments in the EU.
Despite events such as Brexit, China said the EU has remained committed to integration, pressed on with reforms and played a major role in regional and international affairs.
Beijing has promised to look at the possibility of reaching a “top notch” free trade deal with Britain post-Brexit.
The Brexit process is currently deadlocked with just over 100 days until Britain is due to leave the EU.
On trade, China’s white paper said the EU should ease high-tech export controls on China and facilitate mutual investment.
The government will significantly ease market access and endeavor to foster a “stable, fair, transparent, law-based and predictable business environment that protects the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment and treats Chinese and foreign firms registered in China as equals,” it said.
“China hopes that the EU will keep its investment market open, reduce and eliminate investment hurdles and discriminatory barriers, and provide Chinese companies investing in Europe a fair, transparent and predictable policy environment and protect their legitimate rights and interests.”
The EU last month provisionally agreed on rules for a far-reaching system to coordinate scrutiny of foreign investments into Europe, notably from China in the wake of a surge in Chinese investments, to end what a negotiator called “European naivety.”
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Rediscovering Truth: African Storytellers Tap Into Rich Tradition
Why don’t chickens fly? When did the moon learn to be kind?
Those and other mysteries were unravelled by dozens of African storytellers in Nairobi on Saturday, helping keep alive oral traditions increasingly under threat in the internet and smartphone age.
“To have that storyteller in front of you with an audience being able to interact is something very precious that we are in danger of losing,” said Maimouna Jallow, who organized the one-day Re-Imagined Storytelling Festival in Kenya’s capital.
Although written history has existed for centuries in West Africa, elsewhere on the continent knowledge and morality have mostly been transmitted through performance art, including the spoken word.
Tales from East African villages
For her research, Jallow collected folk tales from East African villages. “Nearly everywhere I went people had no recollection of their own stories, and the generation who used to tell these stories are now in their 80s,” she told Reuters.
“For me it was really important to see how we preserve not only the stories but in particular the culture of telling (them).”
With nods to giants of African culture such as Thomas Sankara and Fela Kuti, those narrated in Nairobi addressed issues common to African societies, ranging from war and materialism to humility and respect for children, often with a contemporary twist.
Storytelling relevant for rapper
For Alim Bamara, a rapper from Sierra Leone who grew up in London, storytelling has never been more relevant or topical.
“There’s a story about truth, and how truth knocked on people’s doors, and was always rejected and turned away,” he told Reuters.
“One day, parable took truth home, and fed truth and clothed truth in story. “Now truth… knocked on those people’s doors and this time was readily welcomed.”
Accompanying some performances was Gambian kora (African harp) player Sanjally Jobarteh, whose family has kept alive oral histories for over seven centuries.
Why chickens don’t fly?
For Usifu Jalloh, from Sierra Leone, storytelling can help validate existence.
“When Africans were enslaved, and when invaders came in, the first thing they did was wipe out the identity of the people that they conquered and superimposed theirs on top,” he said. “When you know your story, you have a lot of power. When you forget your story you are just like a sheep.”
So why don’t chickens fly? Because chicken squandered all the wealth given to him as king of the sky. When the other birds found out, he was banished from the air and became man’s favorite food.
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Wondrous Extinct Flying Reptiles Boasted Rudimentary Feathers
A microscopic examination of fossils from China has revealed that the fur-like body covering of pterosaurs, the remarkable flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs, was actually made up of rudimentary feathers.
The surprising discovery described by scientists on Monday means that dinosaurs and their bird descendants were not the only creatures to boast feathers and that feathers likely appeared much longer ago than previously known. Pterosaurs were only distantly related to dinosaurs and birds.
Birds need feathers to fly. That was not the case with pterosaurs. Short, hair-like feathers covered their bodies and wings but lacked the strong central shaft of avian flight feathers, the researchers said. They may have provided insulation and other benefits, as hair does for mammals.
“They were not flight feathers,” said paleontologist Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University, who led the research published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. “They looked fuzzy, and they didn’t have complicated feathers.”
The researchers examined beautifully preserved Jurassic Period fossils roughly 160 to 165 million years old of two small pterosaurs called anurognathids from northeastern China.
Apparently forest dwellers and insect eaters, they possessed 18-inch (45 cm) wingspans, short tails and superficially frog-like faces.
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to master flight, followed much later by birds and bats. Scientists have known since the 19th century that pterosaurs had a fur-like body covering and there has been a long-running scientific debate about how to classify it.
Many of the filaments, under the microscope, showed branching like in feathers but not hair.
University of Bristol paleontologist and study co-author Mike Benton said four types of pterosaur feathers were observed: downy feathers; single filaments; bundles of filaments; and filaments with tufts at the end. Tiny pigment-related structures indicated these feathers were ginger-brown in color.
Birds, many meat-eating dinosaurs and some plant-eating dinosaurs are known to have had feathers, though these looked different from those seen on the pterosaurs.
“We feel the simplest thing for the present is to call them all feathers because they show branching, the fundamental distinguishing character of a feather,” Benton said.
Pterosaurs and dinosaurs both appeared roughly 230 million years ago during the Triassic Period. The researchers said the appearance of feathers in both groups suggests feathers first evolved perhaps 250 million years ago in a common ancestor of pterosaurs and dinosaurs.
Pterosaurs, the biggest of which had 35-foot (10.7-meter)wingspans, went extinct along with the dinosaurs after an asteroid impact 66 million years ago.
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Mexico to Raise Base Wage, New Leader Pledges to Lift Buying Power
Mexico’s wage commission said on Monday it planned to hike the country’s minimum wage by 16 percent to around $5 per day and leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged further increases to keep salaries apace with inflation.
The salary commission, made up of government, business and labor representatives, said the daily minimum wage would rise to 102.68 pesos from 88.36 pesos on Jan. 1, the biggest such hike since 1996.
“During many years the minimum wage has lost its purchasing power. Some say it has lost 70 percent of its purchasing power over the last 30 years,” said Lopez Obrador.
“We’re never going to have wage (increases) below inflation,” said Lopez Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1.
Low wages have helped to attract foreign companies to Mexico and create jobs, but also encourage migration to the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump argues that low wages south of the border kill U.S. jobs.
Lopez Obrador has called for doubling the minimum wage in northern states that border the United States in a bid to reduce inequality with neighboring U.S. areas.
In the area within 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the U.S. border, the minimum wage will be increased to 176.72 pesos per day, Mexican employers’ confederation Coparmex said in a statement.
Lopez Obrador’s maiden budget, delivered on Saturday, was welcomed by markets for pledging to stick to fiscal discipline, but the wage policy raised concerns that it could hit inflation and spark higher interest rates.
Benito Berber, chief economist for Latin America at Natixis, said Lopez Obrador’s new take on wages, including the commitment to keep pace with inflation, could push Mexico’s central bank to raise interest rates on Thursday.
“It seems the government is willing to accept higher inflation and perhaps stickier inflation,” Berber said. “Banxico has been clear that wage increases above productivity would entail tight monetary policy.”
($1 = 20.1160 Mexican pesos)
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Scientists Spot Solar System’s Farthest Known Object
Astronomers have spotted the farthest known object in our solar system — and they’ve nicknamed the pink cosmic body “Farout.”
The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery Monday.
“Farout” is about 120 astronomical units away — that’s 120 times the distance between Earth and the sun, or 11 billion miles. The previous record-holder was the dwarf planet Eris at 96 astronomical units. Pluto, by comparison, is 34 astronomical units away.
The Carnegie Institution’s Scott Sheppard said the object is so far away and moving so slowly it will take a few years to determine its orbit. At that distance, it could take more than 1,000 years to orbit the sun.
Sheppard and his team spied the dwarf planet in November using a telescope in Hawaii. Their finding was confirmed by a telescope in Chile.
“I actually uttered “farout” when I first found this object, because I immediately noticed from its slow movement that it must be far out there,” Sheppard wrote in an email. “It is the slowest moving object I have ever seen and is really out there.”
It is an estimated 310 miles (500 kilometers) across and believed to be round. Its pink shade indicates an ice-rich object. Little else is known.
The discovery came about as the astronomers were searching for the hypothetical Planet X, a massive planet believed by some to be orbiting the sun from vast distances, well beyond Pluto.
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Country Band Alabama Mark 50 Years with New Tour
Country band Alabama will mark their 50th year together with a new tour in 2019, more than a year after founding member Jeff Cook announced that he has Parkinson’s disease.
The Grammy-winning trio of Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry and Cook formed in 1969 in Fort Payne, Alabama, and went on to dominate the sound of country music in the 1980s, scoring dozens of No. 1 hits, including classics like “Mountain Music” and “Dixieland Delight.”
Guitarist and fiddle player Cook announced in 2017 that he had been diagnosed with the chronic neurological disorder years ago and he would limit his touring with the band. Cook will perform on their new tour, which begins Jan. 10 in Detroit, as much as he’s physically able.
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