The life history of Holocaust survivors is being kept alive in a very real and personal way with the help of technology. Imagine speaking to a video image of a genocide survivor and getting answers back as if you’re having a conversation with the real person. That is now possible with a project called Dimensions in Testimony developed by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details on how it works.
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Month: February 2019
From Smarter Energy to Less Plastic, Caribbean Resorts Go Green
At home in the United States, Kerrie Springer takes pride in being environmentally conscious. So when she booked a week’s getaway at the Bucuti and Tara Beach Resort in Aruba, she choose the “green stay” option, agreeing to reuse her sheets and towels rather than have them changed each day.
“You don’t do that at home, so why do it at a resort?” asked Springer, who visited the resort with her husband. “Water in the Caribbean is precious, so why use it if you do not have to?”
Environmentally friendly tourism options — available at a growing string of hotels across the Caribbean — are proving popular with tourists, helping curb climate change and waste, industry groups say.
The Bucuti and Tara resort last August was certified as 100 percent carbon neutral by Natural Capital Partners, an international organization that works to promote low-carbon sustainable development.
The resort, established by Austrian Ewald Biemans in 1987, after he moved to Aruba in the 1960s, is known for its use of renewable energy, smaller portions at meal time to reduce food waste, and reuseable containers for everything from ketchup to shampoo.
Those kinds of changes are catching on around the Caribbean, with a range of hotels and resorts eliminating single-use plastics such as straws, water bottles and shampoo containers.
Others are switching to more efficient air conditioners and refrigerators and installing LED lights, officials say.
The push is part of an ongoing effort to make tourism in the region greener, said Amanda Charles, a sustainable tourism development specialist at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO).
Less Energy, Lower Bills
Loreto Duffy-Mayers, who works with Charles on hotel energy audits, said efforts to improve energy efficiency, for instance, have helped many hotels cut their energy bills 30 to 50 percent.
The Paradise Island Beach Club in the Bahamas was able to slash its energy costs, saving about a quarter million dollars a year, through measures such as installing air conditioners that turn off when a room is cool enough and unplugging unused refrigerators, she said.
The CTO’s members are 24 countries throughout the English, French and Dutch Caribbean whose economies are heavily dependent on tourism.
Charles said the group encourages members to focus on providing three kinds of benefits in their countries: environmental, social and economic.
In Aruba, for instance, tourism provides over 90 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product – and, by extension, most of its employment and tax revenue, said Frank Comito, director general of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA).
That revenue in turn funds schools, healthcare and other public services, he said.
Because the country’s sea, sun and natural beauty is the primary driver for tourism, places like Aruba also have enacted policies to conserve water and electricity and protect the environment, he said.
Comito said the hotel and tourism association offers regular webinars on sustainability issues, including waste management, sustainable design, and climate change, and guides members through environmental certification programs.
It also holds disaster risk preparedness workshops for its members – from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Jamaica – to help them prepare for worsening climate-related risks.
Charles acknowledges, however, that raising environmental awareness in the tourism sector remains a work in progress.
“Most of the CTO’s member countries have a higher budget for marketing than one for sustainable tourism initiatives,” she admitted.
High turnover among hotel staff – particularly housekeepers – can also make it difficult to ensure that green changes brought in continue to be fully implemented, she said.
But changes slowly are taking root. Biemans, of the Bucuti and Tara, said water at his resort is recycled and solar panels provide 20 percent of the facility’s electricity needs.
The resort also buys another 22 percent of its energy from a wind farm operated by the Aruban government, he said.
“We reuse every drop of water. Our meal portions are about 30 percent less and people are actually pleased with it. We do not have a single complaint. And our food waste is reused by pig farms on the island,” Biemans said. “It is good for business, the staff and customers. It saves the environment as much as it saves money. The customer has to pay less for the room, we have to pay less for energy — and in the end everybody benefits.”
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Ford to Close Oldest Brazil Plant, Exit South America Truck Business
Ford Motor Co. said on Tuesday it will close its oldest factory in Brazil and exit its heavy commercial truck business in South America, a move that could cost more than 2,700 jobs as part of a restructuring meant to end losses around the world.
Ford previously said the global reorganization, to impact thousands of jobs and possible plant closures in Europe, would result in $11 billion in charges.
Following that announcement, analysts and investors had expected a similar restructuring in South America. Ford Chief Executive Jim Hackett said last month that investors would not have to wait long for the South American reorganization plan.
The factory slated for closure is in Sao Bernardo do Campo, an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo that has operated since 1967.
It first produced a number of auto models before being switched predominantly to trucks in 2001. It makes the F-4000 and F-350 trucks, as well as the Fiesta small car, a sales laggard.
The factory closure may mean Ford is refocusing on the core of its car business in Latin America’s largest economy, based in a much newer factory in the northeastern state of Bahia. But the job cuts in Brazil’s industrial heartland represent a psychological blow for the new administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, which is battling an unemployment rate above 11 percent.
Ford’s latest cuts come as investors watch for signs of progress on the company’s alliance with Volkswagen AG, which already encompasses commercial vans and pickup trucks but may soon expand into electric and self-driving cars. The two automakers have also pledged to work together on other projects, which could include combining capacity in regions like South America.
Ford shares closed up 3.4 percent at $8.83 in New York.
“You can’t cost cut your way to prosperity in the long term,” said David Kudla, who heads Michigan-based Mainstay Capital Management, a firm that previously owned Ford stock. “We want to hear about the future, what you’re doing for mobility services and autonomous vehicles.”
The closure is also a blow to the industrial outskirts of Sao Paulo, where Brazil’s automotive industry was born and which long drove its industrial growth. It is also where imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva came to fame as a union leader who organized massive strikes that helped harken the end of the military dictatorship.
The union in Sao Bernardo did not have an immediate comment.
But Sao Bernardo Mayor Orlando Morando complained angrily that Ford gave no warning and failed to discuss the closure with the workers.
“The 2,800 families directly affected and another 2,000 indirectly affected deserved a chance to react. This is an act of cowardice,” Morando’s office said in a statement.
A Ford spokesman declined to provide a precise figure for job cuts but acknowledged there would be “a significant impact” and said the automaker would work with unions and other affected parties on “next steps.”
Ford South America President Lyle Watters said on Tuesday the automaker remains “committed” to South America, a region where it is not currently profitable.
Slow Growth
Sales of Ford cars and light trucks grew by 10 percent between 2017 and 2018 in Brazil, lagging a 15 percent post-recession increase for the industry as a whole.
In the trucks business, it ranked fourth, with sales less than half those of Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen.
Ford said in October it would stop building its Focus compact cars in Argentina in May 2019 as part of efforts to end its losses in the region.
Kleiton Da Silva, an employee and union representative in Ford’s surviving Bahia plant, said the carmaker was in talks to cut 650 of its workforce there, which the automaker has said totals 4,604.
The No. 2 U.S. automaker expects to record pre-tax special charges of about $460 million, with most of that recorded this year, it said in the statement.
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Is High Finance Growing a Social Conscience?
Financiers who turnaround companies by injecting them with capital are increasingly considering the environmental and social impact of their investments, according to a survey published Tuesday by consulting firm PwC.
The survey found a growing cohort of these financiers, called private equity firms, have embraced this ethical investment strategy, known as responsible investing or environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing.
For a long time, responsible investing was a niche strategy within finance. But increasingly, investors are waking up to the fact that they can do good as well as achieving financial returns.
PwC polled 162 finance companies from 35 countries, including 145 private equity companies, for its fourth Private Equity Responsible Investment Survey.
It found 91 percent of respondents have adopted or are developing responsible investment policies, up from 80 percent in 2013.
Meanwhile, 35 percent of the firms polled have formed in-house teams to ensure their investments are responsible.
“This is really showing they are taking responsible investment seriously and it is becoming more mainstream,” Phil Case, a director at PwC and co-author of the report, told Reuters.
Development goals
The survey also showed a growing awareness among financiers of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a series of targets to combat global problems, such as poverty, hunger, gender inequality and climate change.
According to the survey, 67 percent of respondents selected development goals to tackle that are relevant for the businesses they invest in. In 2016 — the year after the SDGs launched — just 38 percent did this.
“What we are seeing in the market, including private equity, is more and more firms hang their sustainability strategies — or ESG strategies — around the SDGs, so they are being seen as a very useful framework,” said Case.
However, he warned that there is scope for financiers to exaggerate their allegiance to the development goals.
“Not all firms are taking the SDGs as seriously as others,” he said.
Human rights, climate change
The survey showed that human rights and climate change were also high on the agenda for the private equity community.
It found 76 percent of respondents said they were concerned about human rights issues, such as poor labor practices within supply chains.
Meanwhile, 83 percent are concerned about the impact climate change could have on the businesses they invest in.
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US Automakers to Trump: Don’t Slap Tariffs on Imported Cars
America’s auto industry is bracing for a potential escalation in President Donald Trump’s tariff war with the world, one that could weaken the global auto industry and economy, inflate car prices and trigger a backlash in Congress.
Late Sunday, the Commerce Department sent the White House a report on the results of an investigation Trump had ordered of whether imported vehicles and parts pose a threat to U.S. national security. Commerce hasn’t made its recommendations public, and the White House has so far declined to comment. If Commerce did find that auto imports imperil national security, Trump would have 90 days to decide whether to impose those import taxes.
Trump has repeatedly invoked his duty as president to safeguard national security in justifying previous rounds of tariffs. An obscure provision in trade law authorizes a president to impose unlimited tariffs on particular imports if his Commerce Department concludes that those imports threaten America’s national security.
Whatever Commerce has concluded in this case, Trump has made clear his enthusiasm for tariffs in general and for auto tariffs in particular. Some analysts say they think Commerce has likely endorsed the tariffs, not least because the president has conveyed his preference for them.
‘Tariff Man’
Among Commerce’s recommendations “will certainly be tariffs because, hey, he’s a Tariff Man,” said William Reinsch, a former U.S. trade official and now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to a nickname that Trump gave himself.
Industry officials took part in a conference call Tuesday to discuss the possible steps Trump could take. They include tariffs of up to 25 percent on imported parts only; on assembled vehicles only; or on both vehicles and parts — including those from Mexico and Canada. The last option would be an especially unusual one given that the United States, Mexico and Canada reached a new North American trade deal late last year, and the legislatures of all three nations must still ratify it.
In public hearings last year, the idea of imposing import taxes on autos drew almost no support. Even U.S. automakers, which ostensibly would benefit from a tax on their foreign competitors, opposed the potential tariffs. Among other concerns, the automakers worry about retaliatory tariffs that the affected nations would impose on U.S. vehicles. Many U.S. automakers also depend on imported parts that would be subject to Trump’s tariffs and would become more expensive.
A similar Commerce investigation last year resulted in the Trump administration imposing taxes on imported steel and aluminum in the name of national security. The administration has adopted an extraordinarily broad view of national security to include just about anything that might affect the economy.
In addition to steel and aluminum, Trump has imposed tariffs on dishwashers, solar panels and hundreds of Chinese products. Targeting autos would further raise the stakes. The United States imported $340 billion in cars, trucks and auto parts in 2017.
‘Economic fallout’
If the administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on imported parts and vehicles including those from Canada and Mexico, the price of imported vehicles would jump more than 17 percent, or an average of around $5,000 each, according to estimates by IHS Markit. Even the prices of vehicles made in the U.S. would rise by about 5 percent, or $1,800, because all of them use some imported parts.
Luxury brands would absorb the sharpest increase: $5,800 on average, IHS concluded. Mass-market vehicle prices would rise an average of $3,300.
If the tariffs were fully assessed, IHS predicts that price increases would cause U.S. auto sales to fall by an average of 1.8 million vehicles a year through 2026. Auto industry officials say that if sales fall, there almost certainly will be U.S. layoffs. Dealers who sell German and some Japanese brands would be hurt the most by the tariffs.
“The economic fallout would be significant, with auto tariffs hurting the global economy by distorting prices and creating inefficiencies, and the impact would reverberate across global supply chains,” Moody’s Investors Service said in a report. “The already weakening pace of global expansion would magnify global growth pressures, causing a broader hit to business and consumer confidence amid tightening financial conditions.”
Congress could resist the auto tariffs. Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., and Mark Warner, D-Va., have introduced legislation to reassert congressional control over trade. Their bill would give Congress 60 days to approve any tariffs imposed on national security grounds. It would also shift responsibility for such investigations away from Commerce to the Pentagon.
Some analysts say they suspect that Trump intends to use the tariffs as leverage to pressure Japan and Europe to limit their auto exports to the United States and to prod Japanese and European automakers to build more vehicles at their U.S. plants.
Reinsch notes that Trump’s top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, worked in the Reagan administration, which coerced Japan into accepting “voluntary” limits on its auto exports.
“This is the way Lighthizer thinks,” Reinsch said.
Even if the tariff threat resulted in negotiations, Europe and Japan would have demands of their own. A likely one: Compelling the U.S. to drop its longstanding 25 percent tax on imported light trucks.
Trump is “pursuing something that, as near as I can tell, the domestic [auto] industry doesn’t want,” Reinsch said. “Once he pursues it, he is going to be under pressure to give up the one thing the auto industry really does want” — the U.S. tariff on imported light trucks.
‘Cloud of uncertainty’
For now, many in the industry are upset that the Commerce Department report remains secret, feeding uncertainty.
“The 137,000 people who work for Toyota across America deserve to know whether they are considered a national security threat,” Toyota said in a statement Tuesday. “And the American consumer needs to know whether the cost of every vehicle sold in the U.S. may increase.”
The American International Automobile Dealers Association this week called the Commerce Department’s investigation “bogus.”
“Now, dealerships must continue to operate under a cloud of uncertainty, not knowing if at any moment their products will be slapped with 25 percent tariffs, raising vehicle and repair costs by thousands of dollars and slashing sales,” the association’s CEO, Cody Lusk, said in a statement.
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New NASA Lander to Post Daily Reports on Red Planet Winter
And now for the weather on Mars: NASA’s newest lander is offering daily reports on the red planet’s frigid winter.
Starting Tuesday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is posting the highs and lows online, along with wind speed and atmospheric pressure from the InSight lander.
On Sunday, InSight recorded a high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 17 Celsius) and a low of minus 138 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 95 Celsius). Compare that with Sunday’s coldest U.S. temperature: minus 27 degrees (minus 3 Celsius) in Taylor Park, Colorado.
Scientists need to know the local Mars weather to determine if InSight’s seismometer is registering real marsquakes or simply wind or pressure changes.
InSight landed near the Mars equator in November. NASA’s Curiosity rover is also providing weather updates, while roaming around Mars.
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Keira Knightley Film Calls for Unity in Divided Times
Keira Knightley said her new film The Aftermath, set in the bombed-out ruins of Hamburg just after the end of World War II, had important lessons on building bridges that were very relevant for today’s divided societies.
The romantic drama sees Knightley play Rachael Morgan, who moves to Germany to be with her husband, a British colonel who has a leading role in the reconstruction effort in Hamburg. They move in with a German widower and his troubled daughter.
Her co-stars — Australian Jason Clarke who plays her husband Lewis, and Swedish Alexander Skarsgard who plays a German architect — also attended the world premiere Monday at London’s Picturehouse Central.
“It’s very relevant for now. It’s about building bridges, it’s about how we see each other as human beings and we don’t demonize each other and that’s obviously something that we need to do right now,” Knightley said.
The port city of Hamburg suffered a devastating bombing raid by the Allied forces in July 1943, known as “Operation Gomorrah,” that killed some 40,000 people and caused the destruction of swathes of the city.
“I knew nothing about the rebuilding of Germany … I haven’t thought about how unbelievably difficult it must have been to not only physically rebuild these places but also mentally for English and German people … who had been enemies, who had literally killed each other for six years, to suddenly forgive and move forward,” Knightley said.
Clarke said: “We’ve benefited so much from the Lewis Morgans who put Europe together … guys like him built it up and made Germany and Europe what it is today, we all stand on the threshold of wanting to tear it down.”
The Aftermath opens in cinemas in Britain on March 1, and in the United States on March 15.
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Meet the Sea Squirt, Sucking Up Plastic Particles From the Sea
A rubbery sea creature with an irritating habit of clinging to ships and invading beaches could help measure plastic pollution as it can filter tiny particles from the ocean and store them in its soft tissue.
Israeli researchers have found that ascidians – round, palm-sized animals also known as sea squirts can thrive in dirty industrial areas and pristine waters alike, allowing them to detect and analyze waste and its impact in various regions.
A staggering amount of plastic flows into the ocean each year. The United Nations says it is as if a garbage truck full of plastic was dumped into the water every minute, a rate some estimates show could lead to oceans carrying more plastic than fish in 30 years.
But the long-term impact of the waste, particularly tiny pieces called microplastic, is still not fully understood.
“[Sea squirts] just sit in one place all their life and filter the water, like a pump,” said Gal Vered of Tel Aviv University, and who co-published the researchers’ findings in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.
“They can really give us a picture of what the whole reef, the whole ecosystem felt during its life.”
As a bonus, sea squirts are related in evolutionary terms to human beings. So studying them and the plastic inside them could be more insightful than looking at creatures like fish or clams.
“Although we don’t look alike at all, we have similar systems,” said Noa Shenkar, of Tel Aviv University’s zoology department and museum of natural history.
Durable and dangerous
Plastic never disappears. Over time it breaks down into microplastics, ranging from the size of a grain of rice on down. They mix with tiny plastic beads found in products like cosmetics and cleaners that were flushed away.
These are eaten by wildlife, filling their bellies, exposing them to chemical additives and, potentially, entering the food chain, said Vered.
Vered searched piers and rocks in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, eventually finding a cluster of sea squirts on a brick.
Back in her lab, a gentle push on one squirt’s belly saw the creature let loose the eponymous squirt of water. Invisible to the naked eye are the microplastics, perhaps once part of a bag or bottle, and that were found at all the sites they tested along Israel’s coasts.
“We as humans invented a material that can last for hundreds, thousands of years, and then we use it as a single-use product. It’s quite a paradox,” she said.
Report: US Doctors Overprescribed Deadly Drug Fentanyl to Patients
Fentanyl, a highly dangerous painkiller at the heart of the U.S. opioid epidemic, has been overprescribed by doctors, according to a report Tuesday that accused health authorities and manufacturers of being too lax in their oversight.
The drug is a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and which is largely sold on the black market.
But it is prescribed in certain cases of cancer under what are supposed to be very tight restrictions, in the form of lozenges, lollipops or sprays under the tongue. It is supposed to be used only on cancer patients for whom other opioid painkillers have been insufficient.
The report in Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, said that this was not the case, however.
The investigation, carried out by experts from Johns Hopkins University, said that of the thousands of patients who had been prescribed fentanyl, between a third and half of them should never have received the drug.
One doctor in five did not know that fentanyl was only supposed to be used by opioid-tolerant cancer patients, the researchers found.
As a result, it has been wrongly prescribed for far less serious conditions like lower back pain or chronic headaches.
“The drug can kill you,” said one of the authors of the report Caleb Alexander, co-director at the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at Johns Hopkins.
“There’s no question that individuals have died from inappropriate prescribing of these products,” he said.
“The whole point of this program was to prevent exactly the use that commonly occurs,” he said of fentanyl, which has become the deadliest drug in an epidemic that killed 70,000 people in the United States in 2016.
The team of researchers battled for four and a half years to get 5,000 pages of documents on the fentanyl program from the FDA.
Legally, doctors are allowed to prescribe a drug for an ailment other than the one it is indicated for. The role of the FDA is to regulate the laboratories that make the drugs, not the doctors.
But as part of their oversight responsibility, manufacturers “were supposed to monitor and potentially disenroll prescribers who violated the terms of the program. And yet not a single prescriber was identified and disenrolled,” said Alexander.
An FDA spokesperson said the agency shared the concerns raised in the report.
“The FDA will soon be sharing planned next steps … to make sure the program is working to mitigate the risks of these medicines and that they’re prescribed only to opioid-tolerant patients,” the spokesperson said.
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Twitter Tightens EU Political Ad Rules Ahead of Election
Twitter said Tuesday it is tightening up rules for European Union political ads ahead of bloc-wide elections this spring, following similar moves by fellow tech giants Facebook and Google.
The social media company said it is extending restrictions already in place for federal elections in the United States.
Under the new rules, which will also apply in Australia and India, political advertisers will need to be certified.
It’s also taking steps to increase transparency. Ads, in the form of “promoted tweets,” from the past seven days will be stored in a publicly accessible database showing how much was spent, how many times it was seen and the demographics of the people who saw it.
Facebook and Google have put in similar systems ahead of the EU vote in May, as the U.S. tech companies respond to criticism they didn’t do enough to prevent misuse of their platforms by malicious actors trying to sway previous elections around the world.
“This is part of our overall goal to protect the health of the public conversation on our service and to provide meaningful context around all political entities who use our advertising products,” the company said in a blog post .
Hundreds of millions of people are set to vote for more than 700 European Union parliamentary lawmakers.
Political advertisers can start applying now for certification under Twitter’s stricter ad rules, which take effect March 11, by providing more information such as photo ID or a company identification number.
Twitter defines political ads as those bought by a party or candidate or that advocate for or against a candidate or party.
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US Supreme Court Rebuffs Defamation Suit Against Cosby
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday for a second time declined to take up a case related to sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Cosby, refusing to consider reviving a defamation lawsuit against the comedian filed by a woman who said he falsely called her a liar after she accused him of raping her in 1974.
The justices turned away an appeal by Kathrine McKee, an actress and former Las Vegas showgirl, of a lower court ruling in Massachusetts that threw out her lawsuit. Separately, Cosby was sentenced last September to three to 10 years in prison in Pennsylvania for sexually assaulting another woman in 2004.
The Supreme Court last October snubbed an appeal by Cosby in another defamation case, allowing a lawsuit brought by former model Janice Dickinson to go forward against the entertainer best known for his starring role in the 1980s hit television series “The Cosby Show.”
McKee went public with her rape accusation against Cosby in a 2014 interview with the New York Daily News. She is one of more than 50 women who in recent years have accused Cosby of sexual assault dating back to the 1960s by using drugs to incapacitate them.
An attorney for Cosby then sent a letter to the newspaper, suggesting McKee was a liar and calling her an unreliable source. In the letter, Cosby’s lawyer said McKee had admitted lying to get hired as a showgirl.
McKee sued Cosby for defamation in 2015 in federal court in Boston, saying the letter made false statements and harmed her reputation.
A trial judge in Springfield, Massachusetts in 2017 dismissed her claims, saying the lawsuit was barred by the U.S.
Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
The appeals court said that by deliberately wading into the controversy, McKee had become a public figure, requiring her to prove Cosby acted with malice — meaning he knew his statements were false — to win a defamation claim.
McKee told the justices that she “should not be victimized twice over” by making it harder for her to prove defamation merely because she went public as an alleged victim.
Cosby, 81, was found guilty in April 2018 of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for the drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand, a former Temple University administrator, at his Philadelphia home in 2004. He was sentenced in that case on Sept. 25.
Future Rabbis Plant With Palestinians, Sow Rift With Israel
Young American rabbinical students are doing more than visiting holy sites, learning Hebrew and poring over religious texts during their year abroad in Israel.
In a stark departure from past programs focused on strengthening ties with Israel and Judaism, the new crop of rabbinical students is reaching out to the Palestinians. The change reflects a divide between Israeli and American Jews that appears to be widening.
On a recent winter morning, Tyler Dratch, a 26-year-old rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Boston, was among some two dozen Jewish students planting olive trees in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani in the southern West Bank. The only Jews that locals typically see are either Israeli soldiers or ultranationalist settlers.
“Before coming here and doing this, I couldn’t speak intelligently about Israel,” Dratch said. “We’re saying that we can take the same religion settlers use to commit violence in order to commit justice, to make peace.”
Dratch, not wanting to be mistaken for a settler, covered his Jewish skullcap with a baseball cap. He followed the group down a rocky slope to see marks that villagers say settlers left last month: “Death to Arabs” and “Revenge” spray-painted in Hebrew on boulders and several uprooted olive trees, their stems severed from clumps of dirt.
This year’s student program also includes a tour of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron, a visit to an Israeli military court that prosecutes Palestinians and a meeting with an activist from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which is blockaded by Israel.
The program is run by “T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights,” a U.S.-based network of rabbis and cantors.
Most of T’ruah’s membership, and all students in the Israel program, are affiliated with the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements — liberal streams of Judaism that represent the majority of American Jews. These movements are marginalized in Israel, where rabbis from the stricter Orthodox stream dominate religious life.
The T’ruah program, now in its seventh year, is meant to supplement students’ standard curricular fare: Hebrew courses, religious text study, field trips and introductions to Jewish Israeli society. Though the program is optional, T’ruah says some 70 percent of the visiting American rabbinical students from the liberal branches of Judaism choose to participate.
The year-long program is split into one semester, focused on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and another, on alleged human rights abuses inside Israel.
T’ruah claims its West Bank encounters aren’t one-off acts of community service, but experiences meant to be carried home and disseminated to future congregations.
“We want to propel them to action, so they invite their future rabbinates to work toward ending the occupation,” said Rabbi Ian Chesir-Teran, T’ruah’s rabbinic educator in Israel.
The group began its trip in the most Jewish of ways, a discussion about the weekly Torah portion that turned into a spirited debate about the Ten Commandments.
“The Torah says don’t covet your neighbor’s fields, and we’re going to a Palestinian village whose private land has been confiscated for the sake of covetous Jews building settlements,” Chesir-Teran said.
As their bus trundled through the terraced hills south of Hebron, students listened to a local activist’s condensed history of the combustible West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
As part of interim peace deals in the 1990s, the West Bank was carved up into autonomous and semi-autonomous Palestinian areas, along with a section called Area C that remains under exclusive Israeli control.
The destinations of the day — the Palestinian villages of At-Tuwani and Ar-Rakkes — sit in Area C, also home to around 450,000 Israeli settlers. Palestinians seek all of the West Bank as the heartland of a hoped-for independent state.
The group was guided by villagers to their olive trees — an age-old Palestinian symbol and a more recent casualty of the struggle for land with Israeli settlers.
Israeli security officials reported a dramatic spike last year in settler violence against Palestinians.
Yishai Fleisher, a settler spokesman, blamed the attacks on the “atmosphere of tension” in the West Bank. “We’re against vigilantism, unequivocally,” he said.
As Israeli soldiers watched from the hilltop, Palestinians and Jews dug their fingers into the crumbling soil, setting down roots where holes torn out of the field hinted at recent vandalism.
Dratch said he came of age in Pennsylvania during the violent years of the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. “My religious education was steeped in fear of Palestinians,” he said.
But in college, Dratch’s ideas about Israel changed. Dratch says he still supports Israel, while opposing its policies in the West Bank. “I realized I could be Zionist without turning my back on my neighbor, on Palestinians,” he said.
With hundreds of young American rabbis sharing such sentiments, some in Israel find the trend alarming.
“I worry about a passion for social justice becoming co-opted by far-left politics among future American Jewish leaders,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish research center in Jerusalem.
“Future rabbis are marginalizing themselves from the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews,” he added.
As Israel heads toward elections in April, opinion polls point to another victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious, nationalist allies.
In the U.S., meanwhile, surveys show American Jews, particularly the younger generation, holding far more dovish views toward Palestinians and religious pluralism. Netanyahu’s close friendship with President Donald Trump has further alienated many American Jews, who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Two weeks after visiting At-Tuwani, the group received disheartening news: half of the 50 trees they’d planted had been uprooted, apparently by settlers. The students scrambled to make plans to replant.
Dratch said that while his time in Israel has provided him with plenty of reasons to despair, he still harbors hope for change.
“We’ll be sharing these stories to give people a full picture of what it means to care about this place,” he said.
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Chanel Source: Haute-couture Designer Karl Lagerfeld Has Died
German haute-couture designer Karl Lagerfeld, artistic director at Chanel and an icon of the global fashion industry for over half a century, has died, a source at the French fashion house said on Tuesday. He was 85.
Lagerfeld, instantly recognizable in his dark suits, pony-tailed white hair and sun glasses, was best known for his association with Chanel but delivered collections for LVMH’s Fendi and his own eponymous label.
Rumours of Lagerfeld’s ill-health had swirled after he missed Chanel’s January show in Paris.
“We have lost a creative genius who helped to make Paris the fashion capital of the world and Fendi one of the most innovative Italian houses,” LVMH chairman and chief executive Bernard Arnault said in a statement.
“We owe him a great deal: his taste and talent were the most exceptional I have ever known.”
A true craftsman who combined artistic instinct, business acumen and commensurate ego, Lagerfeld was known for his strikingly visual fashion show displays and extravagant outfits.
Born in Hamburg in 1933, Lagerfeld made his debut with designer Pierre Balmain as an apprentice before moving on to Patou and Chloe and then Italian brand Fendi. He gained a rock-star status after he joined Chanel in 1983.
He earned the nicknames “Kaiser Karl” and “Fashion Meister”.
“We are deeply saddened to learn the news of Karl Lagerfeld’s passing today. His unrivalled contribution to the fashion industry changed the way women dress and perceive fashion,” Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council said in a statement.
French celebrity online magazine Purepeople said Lagerfeld died on Tuesday morning after being taken to hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine just outside Paris the night before.
A spokesman for Chanel was not immediately available for comment.
Artists Create Contemporary Take on Ancient Art Form
Levitating objects and plastic boxes may not seem to have anything to do with landscape painting, but they are the contemporary take on an ancient Chinese art style called “shan shui hua” or mountain water painting.
Dating back more than 1,000 years, this style of landscape painting, which uses brush and ink, has evolved over time. The art form is evolving once again in an exhibit called “Lightscapes: Re-envisioning the Shanshuihua” at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles.
The goal of Nick Dong and Chi-Tsung Wu, the two artists in the exhibit, is to connect the new, digital generation to this traditional type of art and to capture its essence in a new way through modern technology.
The exhibit forces the viewer to slow down and experience a different world. That’s one of the objectives of the ancient masters of Chinese shan shui paintings.
Escape from reality
“Actually, it was for all these artists to create a world which they want to hide, avoid, escape from reality. So, they create a mountain (and) imagine they could live there,” said Dong, an artist born in Taiwan who now lives in Northern California.
Trained in both Chinese and Western art styles, Dong and Wu use experimental materials and light in the various art pieces in the exhibit.
In a contemporary approach to what’s real and what is not, one installation involves a slowly moving light directed at clear plastic boxes attached to a wall.
“If we see this through the light, through the different perspective, we could see there’s another world behind that,” Wu said about his installation called Crystal City.
That other world Wu referenced are shadows that look more real and solid than the actual plastic boxes. Wu said the art installation is symbolic of the modern digital age.
“We spend most of our time in our daily life, no matter to work or to our social life or our entertainment, all on this cyberspace,” he said.
That space is an escape for many people similar to the landscape paintings.
Philosophy and the spiritual
To capture the philosophical elements of the landscape painting, magnets are used to levitate objects to show that there is a force between everything in nature.
Another art piece in the exhibit is a take on one’s relationship with the universe. To view Dong’s representation of heaven, one has to step into a room filled with mirrors from ceiling to floor. There is a stool in the middle of the room.
“We’re all searching. We’re all longing for growth, become better and, ultimately, good enough to go to heaven. So, in my mind, heaven is a place of selfless, so eventually once you’ve entered the installation, at first you’ll see a lot of your reflection. But once you sit down, you trigger the mechanism of the room. The mirror actually starts to reflect, and you yourself will disappear within the space. You vanish. All you have is this empty, wide-open space. For me, it’s the ultimate evolution,” Dong explained.
The art pieces in the exhibit are ways the artists hope the modern-day viewer will be able to experience what the ancient artists of the landscape paintings were trying to achieve.
“They (ancient scholars) were able to say, ‘We’re seeking a spiritual outlet. We’re seeking a way to refine the spirit and refine the soul.’ This work, today, it’s hard to have that experience with the traditional artwork because they’re such a contained device. You see them in a museum under glass, and they’re hard to approach,” said Justin Hoover curator of the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles.
Contemporary artists hope their use of lighting and experimental materials will make an ancient art form more tangible and real in the 21st century.
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Artists Emulate Ancient Art With Modern Technology
Dating back more than 1000 years ago, the style of Chinese landscape painting that uses brush and ink has evolved over time. This traditional art form is evolving once again in an exhibit called “Lightscapes: Re-envisioning the Shanshuihua.” It is on display at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles. The goal: to connect the new, digital generation to this type of art and capture its essence in a new way. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details
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Scientist Who Popularized Term ‘Global Warming’ Dies at 87
A scientist who raised early alarms about climate change and popularized the term “global warming” has died. Wallace Smith Broecker was 87.
The longtime Columbia University professor and researcher died Monday at a New York City hospital, according to a spokesman for the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Kevin Krajick said Broecker had been ailing in recent months.
Broecker brought “global warming” into common use with a 1975 article that correctly predicted rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would lead to pronounced warming. He later became the first person to recognize what he called the Ocean Conveyor Belt, a global network of currents affecting everything from air temperature to rain patterns.
“Wally was unique, brilliant and combative,” said Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer. “He wasn’t fooled by the cooling of the 1970s. He saw clearly the unprecedented warming now playing out and made his views clear, even when few were willing to listen.”
In the Ocean Conveyor Belt, cold, salty water in the North Atlantic sinks, working like a plunger to drive an ocean current from near North America to Europe. Warm surface waters borne by this current help keep Europe’s climate mild.
Otherwise, he said, Europe would be a deep freeze, with average winter temperatures dropping by 20 degrees Fahrenheit or more and London feeling more like Spitsbergen, Norway, which is 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Broecker said his studies suggested that the conveyor is the “Achilles heel of the climate system” and a fragile phenomenon that can change rapidly for reasons not understood. It would take only a slight rise in temperature to keep water from sinking in the North Atlantic, he said, and that would bring the conveyor to a halt. Broecker said it is possible that warming caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases could be enough to affect the ocean currents dramatically.
“Broecker single-handedly popularized the notion that this could lead to a dramatic climate change ‘tipping point’ and, more generally, Broecker helped communicate to the public and policymakers the potential for abrupt climate changes and unwelcome ‘surprises’ as a result of climate change,” said Penn State professor Michael Mann.
In 1984, Broecker told a House subcommittee that the buildup of greenhouse gases warranted a “bold, new national effort aimed at understanding the operation of the realms of the atmosphere, oceans, ice and terrestrial biosphere.”
“We live in a climate system that can jump abruptly from one state to another,” Broecker told the Associated Press in 1997. By dumping into the atmosphere huge amounts of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, “we are conducting an experiment that could have devastating effects.”
“We’re playing with an angry beast — a climate system that has been shown to be very sensitive,” he said.
Broecker received the National Medal of Science in 1996 and was a member of the National Academy of Science. He also served a stint as the research coordinator for Biosphere 2, an experimental living environment turned research lab.
Broecker was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in suburban Oak Park.
He joined Columbia’s faculty in 1959, spending most of his time at the university’s laboratory in Palisades, New York. He was known in science circles as the “Grandfather of Climate Science” and the “Dean of Climate Scientists.”
“His discoveries were fundamental to interpreting Earth’s climate history,” said Oppenheimer. “No scientist was more stimulating to engage with: he was an instigator in a good way, willing to press unpopular ideas, like lofting particles to offset climate change. But it was always a two-way conversation, never dull, always educational. I’ll miss him.”
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Cheap and Green: Pyongyang Upgrades Its Mass Transit System
Pyongyang is upgrading its overcrowded mass transit system with brand new subway cars, trams and buses in a campaign meant to show leader Kim Jong Un is raising the country’s standard of living.
The long-overdue improvements, while still modest, are a welcome change for the North Korean capital’s roughly 3 million residents, who have few options to get to work or school each day.
First came new, high-tech subway cars and electric trolleybuses — each announced by the media with photos of Kim personally conducting the final inspection tours. Now, officials say three new electric trams are running daily routes across Pyongyang.
Transport officials say the capacity of the new trams is about 300, sitting and standing. Passengers must buy tickets in shops beforehand and put them in a ticket box when they get on. The flat fare is a dirt cheap 5 won (US$ .0006) for any tram, trolleybus, subway or regular bus ride on the public transport system. The Pyongyang Metro has a ticket-card system and the Public Transportation Bureau is considering introducing something similar on the roads as well.
Private cars are rare
Privately owned cars are scarce in Pyongyang. Taxis are increasingly common but costly for most people. Factory or official-use vehicles are an alternative, when available, as are bicycles. Motorized bikes imported from China are popular, while scooters and motorcycles are rare.
The subway, with elaborate stations inspired by those in Soviet Moscow and dug deep enough to survive a nuclear attack, runs at three- to five-minute intervals, depending on the hour. Officials say it transports about 400,000 passengers on weekdays. But its two lines, with 17 stations, operate only on the western side of the Taedong River, which runs through the center of the city.
“The subway is very important transportation for our people,” subway guide Kim Yong Ryon said in a recent interview with The AP. “There are plans to build train stations on the east side of the river, but nothing has started yet.”
The lack of passenger cars on Pyongyang’s roads has benefits. Traffic jams are uncommon and, compared to Beijing or Seoul, the city has refreshingly clean, crisp air. Electric trams, which run on rails, and electric trolleybuses, which have wheels, are relatively green transport options.
Crowded and slow
But mass transit in Pyongyang can be slow and uncomfortable.
The tram system, in particular, is among the most crowded in the world.
Swarms of commuters cramming into trams are a common sight during the morning rush hour, which is from about 6:00 to 8:30. Getting across town can take about an hour.
Pyongyang’s tram system has four lines. In typical North Korean fashion, one is devoted to taking passengers to and from the mausoleum where the bodies of national founder Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il, lie in state.
The city’s red-and-white trams look familiar to many eastern Europeans. In 2008, the North bought 20 used trams made by the Tatra company, which produced hundreds of them when Prague was still the capital of socialist Czechoslovakia.
North Korea squeezes every last inch out of its fleet.
Red stars are awarded for every 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) driven without an accident, and it’s not unusual to see trams with long lines of red stars stenciled across their sides. One seen in operation in Pyongyang last month had 12 — that’s 600,000 kilometers (372,800 miles), or the equivalent of about 15 trips around the Earth’s circumference.
The numbers work
Impossible as that might seem, the math works.
Ri Jae Hong, a representative of the Capital Public Transportation Bureau, told an AP television news crew the main tram route, from Pyongyang Station in the central part of town to the Mangyongdae district, is 21 kilometers from end to end. He said a tram might do the full route there and back on average six times a day.
By that reckoning, it would take just over 198 days of actual driving to win that first red star.
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Brazil’s Bolsonaro Fires Senior Minister, Investor Sentiment Sours
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday fired one of his most senior aides and cabinet members, Gustavo Bebianno, amid a scandal involving campaign financing for some of his party’s congressional candidates.
Bebianno was secretary general of the president’s office.
His departure punctuated Bolsonaro’s first cabinet crisis since he took office on Jan. 1 and has cast a shadow over the young government’s plans.
Brazilian markets fell on Monday as investors feared that the brewing scandal could hurt Bolsonaro’s ability to pass a pension overhaul seen as key to fiscal and economic recovery.
In a short video clip released late on Monday, Bolsonaro said he took the decision to dismiss Bebianno due to “differences of opinion on important issues,” although he did not elaborate.
Bebianno, who helped coordinate government affairs and was acting president of Bolsonaro’s right-wing Social Liberal Party for the election campaign last year, denies any wrongdoing.
Analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Monday, before Bebianno was dismissed, that the scandal is unlikely to dent Bolsonaro’s approval ratings. Despite the dubious optics, the president can claim to be taking a tough stand against an aide accused of illicit activity.
But the timing could not be worse. Days before unveiling its landmark pension reform proposal, the government is mired in scandal, even if it is one that probably will not have much lasting impact on the administration or pension reform.
“It is indicative, however, of a political team in disarray,” they wrote, adding that everything points to “an end result that will probably lead to the approval of a less ambitious version of the government’s proposal for pension reform.”
The scandal is denting investor sentiment, which had brightened last week after early details of Bolsonaro’s social security reform proposals were released. The full package will be presented to senior lawmakers on Wednesday.
Brazil’s Bovespa stock market fell 1 percent on Monday, the dollar rose almost 1 percent to 3.7350 reais and January 2020 interest rates rose two basis points to 6.39 percent.
Last week, the Bovespa rose 2.3 percent, within touching distance of its record-high 98,588. Interest rates fell 15 basis points, the biggest weekly drop in two months, and the real also rose.
The Bebianno scandal got personal after one of Bolsonaro’s sons branded him a liar on Twitter, putting pressure on the president to dismiss him just weeks into his term.
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Tycoons Tell Mexico’s President That Unions ‘Extorting’ Businesses
A group representing some of Mexico’s biggest companies told left-wing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday that politicians should resist “extortion” by labor unions after strikes and blockades in recent weeks.
Alejandro Ramirez, president of the Mexican Business Council, said strikes at factories in the northern state of Tamaulipas and blockades of railways by a teachers union had caused more than a billion dollars in losses and could cause businesses to close.
Critics of Obrador
Members of the group, including Mexico’s second-richest man, German Larrea, who controls mining and transport conglomerate Grupo Mexico, were critics of Lopez Obrador before his July 1 election, warning voters should be wary of populism.
“In labor matters, we look favorably on Mexicans starting a new era of union freedom that will allow the end of old protectionist practices for a few unions and companies,” said Ramirez, chief executive of cinema chain Cineopolis.
“Freedom of association and respect of the rule of law should be the axis of this new labor reform. For that reason, we make a respectful call to lawmakers of all parties that it doesn’t just guarantee union freedom but also avoids union extortion.”
Lower prices on services
Since taking office, Lopez Obrador and members of the ruling party have sought regulation in areas ranging from banking and pensions to mining to make services cheaper for consumers.
The former Mexico City mayor wants to encourage investment to drive growth, but some worry regulation will be heavy handed and unpredictable.
MORENA, the party created by Lopez Obrador, is planning a reform to make it easier for workers to form independent unions.
Traditionally, unions have allied with the former party of power, the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Lopez Obrador brought veteran union leader Napoleon Gomez into his party as a senator. Gomez has a history of conflict with Grupo Mexico, including strikes.
Gomez last week founded a federation called the International Workers Confederation.
First meeting since election
Monday’s event was the first time the group met with Lopez Obrador since he took office in December. Earlier in the day, he met the Council for Investment Promotion, Job Creation and Growth, a body he created to advise on economic policy.
Labor strikes in January at manufacturers in the Mexican city of Matamoros on the U.S. border cost about $50 million a day in unfulfilled international contracts.
Teachers from the National Committee of Education Workers blocked railroad tracks for weeks in January to protest labor demands.
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The Real ‘Jaws’: Great White Shark’s Genetic Secrets Revealed
The great white shark, one of the most fearsome predators in the world’s oceans in both fact and fiction, is a formidable creature — right down to its genes.
Scientists on Monday said they have decoded the genome of Earth’s largest predatory fish, detecting numerous genetic traits that help explain its remarkable evolutionary success, including molecular adaptations to enhance wound healing as well as genomic stability such as DNA repair and DNA damage tolerance.
The great white shark, whose scientific name is Carcharodon carcharias, boasts a very large genome, 1-1/2 times bigger than the human genome.
In theory, large genomes with a lot of repeated DNA, like this shark possesses, and its large body size should promote a high incidence of genome instability, with much more DNA and many more cells seemingly vulnerable as targets for damage through an accumulation of routine mutations.
Just the opposite seems to be the case for this shark, thanks to adaptations in genes involved in preserving genome integrity.
“This knowledge, in addition to providing understanding into how sharks work at their most fundamental level — their genes — may also be useful in downstream applications to human medicine to combat cancers and age-related diseases that result from genome instability,” said Mahmood Shivji, director of the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center and Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.
This species, star of the 1975 Hollywood blockbuster “Jaws” and its multiple sequels, roams the world’s oceans, primarily in cool coastal waters.
Gray with a white underbelly and torpedo-shaped body, it can reach 20 feet (6 meters) long, weigh 7,000 pounds (3.18 tons) and dive to nearly 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) deep. It uses its mouthful of large, serrated teeth to rip into prey including fish, seals and dolphins, swallowing mouth-sized chunks of flesh whole.
Sharks are an evolutionary success story, thriving for more than 400 million years. Our species appeared roughly 300,000 years ago.
The great white shark also displayed genetic adaptations in several genes that play fundamental roles in wound healing. For example, a key gene involved in producing a major component of blood clots was found to have undergone adaptations.
“These adaptations and enrichments of essential wound-healing genes may underlie the ability of sharks to heal from wounds so efficiently,” said Cornell University’s Michael Stanhope, co-leader of the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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