- Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window)
- Click to share on X (Opens in new window)
Month: March 2024
Home Price Key Reason Some Voters Frustrated by US Economy
WASHINGTON — Lori Shelton can’t fathom ever having the money to buy a home — and that’s a major reason why so many voters feel down on the economy ahead of this year’s presidential election.
Shelton, 67, drives an Uber to help pay rent in Aurora, Colorado. An advance on her pay covered her apartment’s security deposit. But it also cut into her next paycheck, leaving her bank account dangerously low when the rent was due — a cycle that never seems to end.
“I’m always one step behind,” said Shelton, her voice choking up. “It’s a nightmare, it’s a freaking nightmare right now.”
The United States is slogging through a housing affordability crisis that was decades in the making. At the root of this problem: America failed to build enough homes for its growing population. The shortage strikes at the heart of the American dream of homeownership — dampening U.S. President Joe Biden’s assurances that the U.S. economy is strong and underscoring the degree to which Republican Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive GOP nominee for 2024, has largely overlooked the shortage.
The lack of housing has caused a record number of renters to devote an excessive amount of income to housing, according to a Harvard University analysis. Not enough homes are for sale or being built, keeping prices elevated. Average mortgage rates have more than doubled and further worsened affordability.
In fact, the Census Bureau reported that homeownership fell slightly at the end of last year in an otherwise solid economy. If it wasn’t for shelter costs, inflation — Biden’s most pronounced economic problem — would be running at a healthy and stable 1.8%. Instead, it’s hovering around 3.2%.
Administration officials are confident that shelter inflation will soon cool, but the damage across several years is apparent to advocates and economists.
“I’ve been doing housing work for 30 years — the housing affordability challenge is the worst I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Shaun Donovan, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama years who now leads the nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners.
Donovan noted that this is an increasingly bipartisan challenge that could bring the political parties together. Expensive housing was once the domain of Democratic areas such as New York City and San Francisco. It’s now moved into Republican states as places such as Boise, Idaho, grapple with higher prices.
“It is a first-tier issue almost everywhere,” he said. “And that is changing the national politics around it in a way that I think is quite different than I’ve ever seen.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that the outcome of the November election could ultimately depend on the path of 30-year mortgage rates.
Rates currently average about 6.74%. If they dropped closer to 6%, the odds of a Biden victory would increase. But rates moving near 8% might enable Trump to prevail, Zandi said.
“Given the current housing affordability crisis, higher rates will make owning a home completely out of reach for nearly all potential first-time homebuyers,” he said. “Since homeownership is a key part of the American dream, if it appears unattainable, this will deeply impact voters’ sense of the economy.”
Biden, a Democrat, acknowledged the pain many are feeling in his State of the Union address earlier this month and in his budget proposal released on Monday.
The president wants to fund the building and preservation of 2 million housing units — a meaningful sum, but not enough to solve the shortage. He also proposed a tax credit worth up to $10,000 to homebuyers. Over the past three years, he has increased rental assistance to 100,000 households.
“The bottom line is we have to build, build, build,” Biden said Monday in a speech to the National League of Cities. “That’s how we bring down housing costs for good.”
Rapidly climbing home prices were also a festering problem under Trump, who first achieved celebrity status as a real estate developer. While president, Trump called for limiting construction in the suburbs. He claimed during the 2020 election that Biden’s policies to spur building and affordability would “destroy your neighborhood.”
During the 2018 to 2020 years of Trump’s presidency, the country’s housing shortage surged 52% to 3.8 million units, according to the mortgage company Freddie Mac.
The Associated Press contacted Trump’s campaign for his policy plans but did not get a response. The America First Policy Institute, a think tank promoting Trump’s vision, said the key is to cut government borrowing to reduce mortgage rates. The former president has pledged to reduce deficits, but an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget shows that his policies in office will have likely added more than $8 trillion to the national debt.
“The best way for us to improve access to homeownership for young people is to get interest rates back down, not to provide subsidies that cause housing unaffordability to worsen,” said Mike Faulkender, chief economist at the institute.
Lower rates might play well with voters, but most economists say they would at best offer temporary financial relief. Purchase prices would likely adjust upward in response to greater demand from falling rates.
Construction, the more enduring solution, would take years to achieve and require new rules by states and cities. The administration is trying to incentivize zoning changes, but the major choices are outside the White House’s control.
“Even as incomes are going up and the economy is doing well and inflation is coming down, people can’t buy homes,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at the brokerage Redfin. “That’s like the biggest problem for Biden because it’s not one that he can solve.”
The general rule of thumb is that people should pay no more than 30% of their income on rent or a mortgage. A typical household looking to buy a home would have to devote 41% of its income to mortgage payments, according to Redfin.
There are far-reaching economic risks because of this. High housing costs can lead people to cut back spending elsewhere. Advocates said it enables landlords to neglect their properties since there is always a ready tenant.
Evictions can worsen health and educational outcomes for children and exact an even wider cost on society, said Zach Neumann, a Denver-based lawyer who provides more than $30 million annually in rental assistance through the nonprofit Community Economic Defense Project.
The cumulative costs of evicting poorer renters are “$20,000 to $30,000 a year when you include shelter nights and emergency room visits,” Neumann said. “It’s really overwhelming when you think about the total numbers and these folks are fighting to have a roof over their heads.”
While there is bipartisan agreement on the need for more housing, there has yet to be a significant plan that has passed the House and Senate. Biden has proposed housing aid throughout his administration that never materialized.
“Had Congress passed some of the investments that the president has called for since the beginning of the administration, had they done that three years ago, as he was advocating, we’d have affordable units coming online right now,” said Daniel Hornung, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council.
But Mark Calabria, who was director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency during the Trump administration, said that many of the federal tools to increase housing such as the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit could further push up demand without adding enough construction.
“My worry would be we’ve done a number of things that increased demand when the problem is supply,” said Calabria, now an adviser with the libertarian Cato Institute.
But for renters such as Lori Shelton in Colorado, the debate about how to add housing supply is cold comfort when she owes rent now. She’s previously dealt with the threat of eviction and late fees. She gets some rent money from her son, but she has also relied at times on her church to cover the $2,399 a month.
“I don’t think the majority of us have that savings account,” she said. “If you spend that much on your rent and your groceries and your car and your bills, you don’t have much for a fallback.”
…
Home Buying Costs Could Fall in Big US Real Estate Group Settlement
Kenyan Doctors Strike; Patients Left Unattended or Turned Away
NAIROBI, Kenya — Doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals began a nationwide strike Thursday, accusing the government of failing to implement a raft of promises from a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 after a 100-day strike that saw people dying from lack of care.
The Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union said they went on strike to demand comprehensive medical cover for the doctors and because the government has yet to post 1,200 medical interns.
Davji Bhimji, secretary-general of KMPDU, said 4,000 doctors took part in the strike despite a labor court order asking the union to put the strike on hold to allow talks with the government. And Dennis Miskellah, deputy secretary general of the union, said they would disregard the court order the same way the government had disregarded three court orders to increase basic pay for doctors and reinstate suspended doctors.
Miskellah said medical interns make up 27% of the workforce in Kenya’s public hospitals, and their absence means more sick people are being turned away from hospitals. Some doctors, however, have remained on duty to ensure patients in the intensive care units don’t die.
In an interview with broadcaster Citizen TV, Miskellah said doctors were committing suicide out of work-related frustration, while others have had to fund-raise to get treated for sickness due to a lack of comprehensive health coverage.
The impact of the strike was felt across the country with many patients left unattended or being turned away from hospitals across the East African nation.
Pauline Wanjiru said she brought her 12-year-old son for treatment on his broken leg, which had started to produce a smell, but she was turned away from a hospital in Kakamega county in western Kenya.
In 2017, doctors at Kenya’s public hospitals held a 100-day strike — the longest ever held in the country — to demand better wages and for the government to restore the country’s dilapidated public-health facilities. They also demanded continuous training of and hiring of doctors to address a severe shortage of health professionals.
At the time, public doctors, who train for six years in university, earned a basic salary of $400 to $850 a month, similar to some police officers who train for just six months.
…
Namibia to Begin HPV Vaccine Rollout in April
Windhoek, Namibia — A top Namibian health official tells VOA the southern Africa country is set to begin distribution of the HPV vaccine to adolescent girls in April as a preventative measure in the fight against cervical cancer.
Namibia has a population of about 1 million women ages 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer.
Each year, about 375 women in Namibia are diagnosed with the disease, and the fatality rate is over 50%.
The Human Papillomavirus Vaccine, known as HPV, has been proven to greatly lessen the chance of getting cervical cancer.
Ben Nangombe, executive director at Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services, says health workers will begin vaccinating about 183,000 girls between the ages of nine and 14 next month.
He says the ministry has been allocated $7 million to procure single dose vaccines for this purpose.
Mehafo Amunyela, who works at the #Be Free Youth Program in the capital’s Katutura Township, told VOA that vaccine hesitancy could be a hurdle to fully immunizing the target population. She said she hopes that through awareness campaigns, children and their families can be educated about the advantages of getting the vaccine.
“We saw the reaction of the public toward the COVID vaccine when it came out, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and remember that the reason we don’t have illnesses like polio is because of vaccines, that they worked then, and they still do now,” she said.
The Cancer Association of Namibia says the vast distances between most towns and villages in Namibia could present another logistical challenge in the immunization program.
The association says to achieve the target of immunizing 183,000 girls, awareness campaigns should be undertaken in the different indigenous languages spoken in the country.
With the rollout of the HPV vaccine, Namibia is on the path to do its part in meeting the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 90% of girls worldwide by 2030, with the long-term goal of eliminating cervical cancer within the next century.
Although cervical cancer is preventable and curable, the disease claimed 350,000 lives worldwide in 2022 according to the WHO.
…
US Senate Considers Bill That Could Ban TikTok in United States
The White House is urging senators to quickly begin considering a bill that would address national security concerns related to the social media app TikTok. The House approved the measure earlier this week. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports. Camera: Saqib Ul Islam.
…
Former US Treasury Chief Mnuchin Looking to Buy TikTok
Observers: US Investments in Philippines Seen Easing Reliance on China
Taipei, Taiwan — During a trade mission visit to Manila this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced plans to invest more than $1 billion in the Philippines’ tech sector and help double the number of semiconductor factories in the country.
Observers say the pledge and visit highlight the Southeast Asian nation’s growing importance to Washington and will also help reduce the Philippine economy’s reliance on China.
“U.S. companies have realized that our chip supply chain is way too concentrated in just a few countries in the world,” Raimondo said in remarks at a business forum on Tuesday.
“Forget about geopolitics. Just at that level of concentration, you know the old adage, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ Why do we allow ourselves to be buying so many of our chips from one or two countries? That’s why we need to diversify,” Raimondo said.
American business executives from 22 businesses, including Alphabet’s Google, Visa and Microsoft, joined Raimondo on the trip.
Possible expansion of chip industry
JC Punongbayan, resident economist and columnist of the online news website Rappler.com, said that while the Philippines is one of the key centers in the global electronics industry chain, it does not yet have the ability to manufacture smartphone or computer chips. The Philippines currently has 13 semiconductor factories that focus on assembly, packaging and testing.
“This commitment by the U.S. government to boost the local semiconductor industry is a welcome development because right now, even if semiconductors have figured prominently in trade statistics, these are not high value-added. So basically, we import a lot of components and then export them after assembly and packaging,” Punongbayan told VOA’s Mandarin Service.
“Hopefully, these investments by the U.S. government and private sector partners will enable the Philippines to export higher value-added goods in the future,” he said.
Punongbayan believes that at a time when the Philippines is working hard to amend its regulations and hoping to attract more foreign direct investment, the promised investment from U.S. companies could provide a strong boost to the capital-starved country.
“We have had some difficulties when it comes to attracting foreign investments. And in fact, from 2020 to 2023, foreign direct investments dropped by more than 6% on an annual basis. So, we really need these investments in order to boost the economy,” Punongbayan said.
“And the billion-dollar investment pledge of the U.S. is several times the actual foreign direct investments that have come in recent years — in fact, almost nine times the foreign direct investment from the U.S. in 2023. These are very crucial to Philippine development,” he said.
During Raimondo’s two-day visit, U.S. companies committed to invest in the digital and energy sectors, areas that are in line with Manila’s overall development plans and will help the Philippines’ industrial upgrading and transformation, Punongbayan said.
Defense and economy
Dindo Manhit, president of the Stratbase ADR Institute for Strategic and International Studies, a policy think tank in the Philippines, said that over the years, the Philippines’ economic growth has been mainly driven by strong consumption.
These investment commitments by U.S. companies will accelerate local economic growth, Manhit said, benefiting both the public and private sectors and positively affecting areas such as the Philippines’ manufacturing supply chain and business process outsourcing.
He said these investments could also allow Manila to fully understand that strengthening its alliance with Washington will not only bring it defense assistance but also economic security.
“Because we all share values, democratic values. We value jobs for people. In the case of the Philippines, imagine if we can create jobs that could provide better income for Filipinos,” Manhit said. “Then we will see the strong partnership with the U.S. not limited to national security only, but also economic security.”
Washington’s pledges of economic support for the Philippines comes at a time of rising tensions between Manila and Beijing over sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea.
Earlier this month, Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo warned that Manila is facing severe “economic coercion” from China. He also said the Philippines relies heavily on trade relations with China and hopes to expand economic and trade connections with other countries, including establishing formal free trade agreement negotiations with the European Union as soon as possible.
Punongbayan said that despite the disputes in the South China Sea, Manila continues to import a large amount of goods from China, which is the largest source of the country’s trade deficit. That shows how difficult it is for the country to decouple its economy from China, and why it is imperative for Manila to lessen its dependence on Beijing.
Greater interest from the United States to invest in the Philippines is a step in the right direction, he said.
“If we import a lot from China, then indirectly we are boosting China’s economy at the same time. And of course, part of the revenues coming from these payments to China will go to the Chinese government,” Punongbayan said. “So indirectly, in a way, the Philippines is funding China’s incursions in the West Philippine Sea.”
Manhit, however, said compared with other Southeast Asian countries, the Philippine economy is not very dependent on China.
According to recent poll by Stratbase ADR Institute for Strategic and International Studies, the country Filipinos most want to maintain good economic relations with is the U.S., followed by Japan, while China ranks at the bottom.
He said the poll not only shows that China does not have as strong an economic influence on the Philippines as Beijing claims, but also that Filipinos are unanimously willing to expand economic cooperation with countries that share common democratic values, or values of human rights and the rule of law.
…
World’s Largest Drone Maker Expands in US Amid Rights Abuse Allegations
washington — Chinese drone maker DJI is expanding in the U.S. with its first flagship store in New York City amid allegations of links to human rights abuses and ties to China’s military.
DJI’s “first concept” North American store on New York’s Fifth Avenue welcomes customers into a futuristic, minimalist space to shop. The company describes itself on its website as “the world’s leader in civil drones and creative camera technology.”
“We continue to see growing consumer demand throughout North America as we expand our consumer product portfolio,” said Christina Zhang, senior director of corporate strategy at DJI.
Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, the company was founded in 2006. DJI, also known as Da Jiang Innovations, has become the world’s largest drone maker, having achieved global dominance in less than 20 years. The company now supplies 70% of the world’s consumer drones and nearly 80% of U.S. consumer drones.
Abuse allegations
On March 5, the day of DJI’s official store opening in New York, the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), a Washington research and advocacy group, released a report titled Surveillance Tech Series: DJI’s Links to Human Rights Abuses in East Turkistan.
The report accuses DJI of being involved in mass surveillance and rights violations against Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other Muslim communities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which the group calls East Turkistan.
“DJI is directly involved in mass surveillance schemes in East Turkistan and has supplied public security agencies with tools to surveil and target Uyghurs, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz people,” the UHRP report said. “Xinjiang public security departments entered into seven procurement orders with DJI that were worth nearly US$300,000 between 2019 and 2022.”
The report stated that DJI sells drones to Xinjiang’s paramilitary organization, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which the U.S. government sanctioned because of its “connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities” in Xinjiang.
“Other documents show tenders worth US$47,000 for DJI drones for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps,” the UHRP report stated.
The report also said that a DJI drone captured footage of dozens of individuals, seemingly Uyghur prisoners, blindfolded and shackled at a train station in southern Xinjiang. The video, first released on YouTube in 2019, garnered widespread media attention.
“It’s unethical to support a company that knowingly engages in egregious rights violations,” Nuzigum Setiwaldi, the report’s author, told Voice of America.
The U.S. and several Western parliaments have accused China of genocide in Xinjiang, targeting Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim populations. The U.N. human rights office released a report saying the human rights violations in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity. China criticized Western nations for spreading “lies” about human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet.
A spokesperson from DJI told VOA the company has not engaged in any activities, including sales distribution and product development, that violate or abuse human rights.
“Like other manufacturers, we do not have control over how our products are used as they are available off the shelf,” wrote a DJI spokesperson in an email response. “However, we have demonstrated – through years of investments in product safety and security initiatives – that our products are developed for peaceful and civilian use only.”
Chinese military company or not?
In 2022, The Washington Post reported that DJI obscured ties to Chinese government funding.
In the same year, the U.S. Department of Defense classified DJI as a “Chinese military company.” As of January, DJI remains on the list of such companies operating in the United States. The department said it maintains companies on the list to counter China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, which supports the modernization of the Chinese army.
Reuters reported that former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who ran the U.S. Justice Department from 2015 to 2017 and is now with the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison law firm, wrote a letter to the Defense Department last July on behalf of DJI, urging the removal of her client from the Pentagon’s Chinese military companies list.
In her letter, Lynch cited the importance and urgency of such a move because of the wide use of and dependence on DJI products by a variety of U.S. stakeholders.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned in January that Chinese-made drones posed “significant risk” to U.S. national security and critical infrastructure.
“[T]he PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law compels Chinese companies to cooperate with state intelligence services, including providing access to data collected within China and around the world,” CISA said in its cybersecurity guidance on Chinese manufactured drones or unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
However, DJI’s spokesperson told VOA that DJI “is not a Chinese military company.”
According to DJI, the company remains one of the few drone companies that clearly “denounce and actively discourage” the use of drones in combat.
“We do not pursue business opportunities for combat use or operations. Our distributors, resellers and other business partners globally have also committed to following this policy when they sell and use our products,” DJI spokesperson said.
…
Malawi Testing Genetically Modified Maize to Fight Hunger, Agricultural Pests
Malawi has embarked on trials of genetically modified maize aimed to curb recurrent hunger and pests like fall armyworms and caterpillars. The trials come amid concerns about the possible effects genetically modified organisms have on health and the environment. Lameck Masina reports from Lilongwe.
…
Spacex Hoping to Launch Starship Farther in 3rd Test Flight
BOCA CHICA, Texas — SpaceX’s Starship, a futuristic vehicle designed to eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, was poised for a third uncrewed test launch Thursday that Elon Musk’s company hopes will carry it farther than before, even if it ends up exploding once again in flight.
The spacecraft, mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, was due for liftoff as early as 8 a.m. EDT from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica, Texas.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration just granted a license for the test flight on Wednesday afternoon.
Unlike the first two test flights last year, aimed mainly at demonstrating that the spacecraft’s two stages can separate after launch, the third test flight will involve an attempt to open Starship’s payload door and reignite one of its engines in space.
Each of the previous flights were routed toward a planned crash landing near the Hawaiian islands in the Pacific, while the latest flight is targeting a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean.
Even if it achieves more of its test objectives than before, SpaceX acknowledges a high probability that Starship’s latest flight will end up like the first two, with the vehicle blowing itself to bits before its intended trajectory is complete.
Regardless of how well it performs on Thursday, all indications are that Starship remains a considerable distance from becoming fully operational.
Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire founder and CEO, has said the rocket should fly hundreds of uncrewed missions before carrying its first humans. And several other ambitious milestones overseen by NASA are needed before the craft can execute a moon landing with American astronauts.
Still, Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade, and ultimately flying to Mars.
Closer to home, Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in company’s commercial launch business that already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit.
For Thursday, SpaceX is aiming to at least exceed Starship’s performance with its Super Heavy booster during their inaugural test launch together last April, when the spacecraft exploded over the Gulf less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight.
That flight went awry from the start. Some of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and the lower-stage rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship, leading to termination of the flight.
The second test flight in November made it farther than the first, and managed to properly achieve stage separation, but the spacecraft exploded about eight minutes after launch.
SpaceX’s engineering culture, considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry’s more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition.
NASA, SpaceX’s biggest customer, has a lot riding in the success of Starship, which the U.S. space agency is giving a central role in its Artemis program, successor to the Apollo missions that put astronauts on the moon for the first time more than 50 years ago.
While NASA Administrator chief Bill Nelson has embraced Musk’s frequent flight-testing approach, agency officials in recent months have made clear their desire to see greater progress with Starship’s development as the U.S. races with China to the lunar surface.
…
US House Passes Bill Forcing TikTok to Separate From Chinese Parent Company
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would force short-video app TikTok, used by about 170 million Americans, to separate from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson says the Senate may not approve the bill.
…
‘Man in Iron Lung’ Dead at 78
Washington — A polio survivor known as the “man in the iron lung” has died aged 78, according to his family and a fundraising website.
Paul Alexander of Dallas, Texas contracted polio at the age of six, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and reliant on a mechanical respirator to breathe for much of the time.
Though often confined to his submarine-like cylinder, he excelled in his studies, earned a law degree, worked in the legal field and wrote a book.
“With a heavy heart I need to say my brother passed last night,” Philip Alexander posted on Facebook early Wednesday. “It was an honor to be part of someone’s life who was as admired as he was.”
Christopher Ulmer, a disability advocate running a fundraiser for Alexander, also confirmed his death in a GoFundMe update posted on Tuesday.
“His story traveled wide and far, positively influencing people around the world. Paul was an incredible role model that will continue to be remembered,” said Ulmer.
A prior update on Alexander’s official TikTok account said he had been rushed to the emergency room after contracting Covid-19.
Iron lungs are sealed chambers fitted with pumps. Raising and lowering the pressure inside the chamber expands and contracts the patient’s lungs.
Invented in the 1920s, their use fell away after the invention of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk, which became widely available in 1955 and helped consign the devastating paralytic illness to history.
Alexander held the official Guinness World Record for time spent in a lung.
According to his Guinness page, he was able to leave the device for periods of time after he learned to “frog breathe” with the help of a physical therapist.
This involved “using his throat muscles to force air into his lungs, gulping down air one mouthful at a time.” Eventually, he only returned to his iron lung at night to sleep.
As a practicing lawyer, he was able to represent clients in court in a special wheelchair that held his paralyzed body upright.
Seventy-five-year-old Martha Lillard of Shawnee, Oklahoma is reportedly the last surviving person in an iron lung.
…
UN: Childhood Deaths at Record Low, but Progress ‘Precarious’
UNITED NATIONS — The number of children worldwide who died before age 5 reached a record low in 2022, the United Nations said in a report published Tuesday, as for the first time fewer than 5 million died.
According to the estimate, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2022, a 51% decrease since 2000 and a 62% drop since 1990, according to the report, which still warned such progress is “precarious” and unequal.
“There is a lot of good news, and the major one is that we have come to a historic level of under-five mortality, which … reached under 5 million for the first time, so it is 4.9 million per year,” Helga Fogstad, director of health at the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told AFP.
According to the report, prepared by UNICEF in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, progress was particularly notable in developing countries such as Malawi, Rwanda and Mongolia, where early childhood mortality has fallen by more than 75% since 2000.
“Behind these numbers lie the stories of midwives and skilled health personnel helping mothers safely deliver their newborns … vaccinating … children against deadly diseases, and [making] home visits to support families,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.
But “this is a precarious achievement,” the report warned. “Progress is at risk of stagnation or reversal unless efforts are taken to neutralize the numerous threats to newborn and child health and survival.”
Researchers pointed to already worrying signs, saying that reduction in under-5 deaths has slowed at the global level and notably in the sub-Saharan Africa region.
In total, 162 million children under the age of 5 have died since 2000, 72 million of whom perished in the first month of life, as complications related to birth are among the main causes of early childhood mortality.
Between the ages of 1 month and 5 years, respiratory infections, malaria and diarrhea become the main killers — ailments that are all preventable, the report points out.
To reach the U.N.’s goal of reducing under-5 deaths to 25 per 1,000 births by 2030, 59 countries will need urgent investment in children’s health, researchers warned. And without adequate funding, 64 countries will miss the goal of limiting first-month deaths to 12 per 1,000 births.
“These are not just numbers on a page; they represent real lives cut short,” the report said.
The numbers also reveal glaring inequalities across the world, as the sub-Saharan Africa region accounted for half of all deaths of children under age 5 in 2022.
Babies born in countries with high early childhood mortality, such as Chad, Nigeria or Somalia, are 80 times more likely to die before their 5th birthday than babies born in countries with low childhood mortality rates, such as Finland, Japan and Singapore.
“Where a child is born should not dictate whether they live or die,” WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
…
Japan Private Rocket Explodes Just After Launch
Tokyo — A rocket made by a Japanese company exploded just after launch on Wednesday, with public broadcaster NHK showing footage of the fiery failure.
Tokyo-based startup Space One had been aiming to become the first Japanese private firm to successfully place a satellite into orbit.
Its 18-meter solid-fuel Kairos rocket blasted off from the startup’s own launch pad in Wakayama prefecture in western Japan, carrying a small government test satellite.
But seconds after the launch, the rocket erupted into a ball of flame, with black smoke filling the launch pad area.
Burning debris was seen falling onto the surrounding mountain slopes as sprinklers began spraying water.
“The launch of the first Kairos rocket was executed, but we took a measure to abort the flight,” Space One said in a statement, adding that “details are being investigated”.
The failure marks a blow to Japan’s efforts to enter the potentially lucrative satellite-launch market.
The government wants to assess if it can quickly launch temporary, small satellites when and if its existing spy satellites malfunction.
Kairos had been hoped to put the satellite into orbit around 51 minutes after launch.
Space One was established in 2018 by a team of major Japanese tech businesses, including Canon Electronics, IHI Aerospace, construction firm Shimizu and the government-owned Development Bank of Japan.
Last July another Japanese rocket engine exploded during a test around 50 seconds after ignition.
The solid-fuel Epsilon S was an improved version of the Epsilon rocket that had failed to launch the previous October.
Its testing site in the northern prefecture of Akita was engulfed in flames and a huge plume of grey smoke rose into the sky.
The malfunction came after Tokyo in March 2023 had seen its second attempt to launch its next-generation H3 rocket fail after liftoff.
Last month though Japan’s space agency toasted a successful blast-off for its new flagship rocket, the H3, after years of delays and two previous failed attempts.
The H3 launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan, sparking cheers and applause at JAXA control center.
It has been mooted as a rival to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and could one day deliver cargo to bases on the moon.
That followed Japan’s successful landing in January of an unmanned probe on the moon, albeit at a wonky angle, making it just the fifth country to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface.
…
US House Expected to Pass Bill Forcing Chinese Company to Give Up TikTok
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to approve legislation Wednesday that would force the popular TikTok video app to either separate from its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance or sell the U.S. version of the software.
The bipartisan Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “gives TikTok six months to eliminate foreign adversary control — which would include ByteDance divesting its current ownership — to remain available in the United States,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the committee.
“All TikTok would have to do is separate from CCP-controlled ByteDance. However, if TikTok chose not to rid itself of this CCP control, the application would no longer be offered in U.S. app stores. But TikTok would have no one but itself to blame,” the lawmakers said in a prepared statement.
Here’s what we know about the legislation and what happens next in the U.S. Senate.
Why is TikTok under scrutiny?
“The concern is that TikTok could transfer personal information to its parent company ByteDance, who in turn could transfer it to the Chinese government,” Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.
Chin-Rothmann said concerns by some members of Congress about the Chinese Communist Party potentially controlling TikTok’s algorithm for propaganda purposes have not yet been proven.
“That’s not to say that, in the future, there’s not a risk that the Chinese government could exert pressure,” she said.
What does TikTok say about the legislation?
TikTok on Monday called the legislation a “ban” and has repeatedly denied the allegations against it. In a statement last week on X, formerly Twitter, the company said the “legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States.”
How do lawmakers view the legislation?
The bill has strong support from House Democrats and Republicans, despite congressional offices receiving floods of phone calls from Americans concerned about losing access to the social media app.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last week, “It’s an important bipartisan measure to take on China, our largest geopolitical foe, which is actively undermining our economy and security.”
What about the Senate?
The bill could face a much harder road to passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said it will face consideration in the appropriate committees.
“I will listen to their views on the bill and determine the best path,” Schumer said in a statement.
Some Senate Democrats, including Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, have expressed doubts about the legality of singling out a social media app in legislation. He has introduced alternative legislation more broadly targeting apps that collect personal data.
But Warner told CBS News on Sunday that the TikTok app is a serious national security concern.
“If you don’t think the Chinese Communist Party can twist that algorithm to make it the news that they see reflective of their views, then I don’t think you appreciate the nature of the threat,” Warner said.
How do the leading 2024 presidential candidates feel about the bill?
The White House said it welcomes the legislation, even though the Biden campaign joined TikTok recently as an effort to reach out to younger voters.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the bill ensures “ownership isn’t in the hands of those who may do us harm.”
Former President Donald Trump — who initially called for a ban of the app in 2020 — has now changed course, arguing that Facebook will be empowered if TikTok is no longer available.
“There’s a lot of good, and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you’re going to make Facebook bigger,” the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee told U.S. cable network CNBC in a phone interview this week.
What happens once the bill passes the House?
Apart from constitutional concerns over preventing U.S. citizens from exercising their right to free speech, the bill could also be difficult to legally enforce and face challenges in U.S. courts.
“Chinese export control laws could potentially prevent the sale of TikTok’s algorithm,” Chin-Rothmann said. “A divestiture would be very logistically difficult, in general. TikTok is one of the largest companies in the world. So, any buyer would have to be very large, as well. They would have to have a strategic interest in purchasing TikTok, and then the merger would have to not raise antitrust concerns in the United States.”
…
Scientists in Alaska Develop Cloud-Based Data to Predict Volcanic Eruptions
Scientists in Alaska are developing a cloud-based approach to storing and analyzing data about volcanoes, in hopes of increasing the speed with which they can predict eruptions. Phil Dierking has our story. (Camera and Produced by: Philip Dierking)
…
Four Astronauts From Four Countries Return to Earth After Six Months in Orbit
Cape Canaveral, Florida — Four astronauts from four countries caught a lift back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to end a half-year mission at the International Space Station.
Their capsule streaked across the U.S. in the predawn darkness and splashed into the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Panhandle.
NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, a Marine helicopter pilot, led the returning crew of Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.
They moved into the space station last August. Their replacements arrived last week in their own SpaceX capsule.
“We left you some peanut butter and tortillas,” Moghbeli radioed after departing the orbiting complex on Monday. Replied NASA’s Loral O’Hara: “I miss you guys already and thanks for that very generous gift.”
O’Hara has another few weeks at the space station before leaving aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule.
Before leaving the space station, Mogensen said via X, formerly known as Twitter, that he couldn’t wait to hear “birds singing in the trees” and also craved crunchy food.
NASA prefers multiple travel options in case of rocket trouble. Boeing should start providing astronaut taxi service with a two-pilot test flight in early May.
…
US Inflation Rises in February in Sign Price Pressures Remain Elevated
WASHINGTON — Consumer prices in the United States picked up last month, a sign that inflation remains a persistent challenge for the Federal Reserve and for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, both of which are counting on a steady easing of price pressures this year.
Prices rose 0.4% from January to February, higher than the previous month’s figure of 0.3%, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Compared with a year earlier, consumer prices rose 3.2% last month, faster than January’s 3.1% annual pace.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called “core” prices also climbed 0.4% from January to February, matching the previous month’s increase and a faster pace than is consistent with the Fed’s 2% target. Core inflation is watched especially closely because it typically provides a better read of where inflation is likely headed.
Pricier gas pushed up overall inflation, with pump prices rising 3.8% just from January to February. Grocery prices, though, were unchanged last month and are up just 1% from a year earlier. The cost of clothing, used cars and rent also increased in February, raising the inflation figure.
Despite February’s elevated figures, most economists expect inflation to continue slowly declining this year. At the same time, the uptick last month may underscore the Fed’s cautious approach toward interest rate cuts.
Overall inflation has plummeted from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, although it’s now easing more slowly than it did last spring and summer. The prices of some goods — from appliances to furniture to used cars — are falling after clogged supply chains during the pandemic sent prices soaring higher. There are more new cars on dealer lots and electronics on store shelves.
By contrast, prices for dental care, car repairs and other services are still rising faster than they did before the pandemic. Car insurance has shot higher, reflecting rising costs for repairs and replacement. And after having sharply raised pay for nurses and other in-demand staff, hospitals are passing their higher wage costs on to patients in the form of higher prices.
Voter perceptions of inflation are sure to occupy a central place in this year’s presidential election. Despite a healthy job market and a record-high stock market, polls show that many Americans blame Biden for the surge in consumer prices that began in 2021. Although inflationary pressures have significantly eased, average prices remain far above where they stood three years ago.
In his State of the Union speech last week, Biden highlighted steps he has taken to reduce costs, like capping the price of insulin for Medicare patients. The president also criticized many large companies for engaging in “price gouging” and so-called “shrinkflation,” in which a company shrinks the amount of product inside a package rather than raising the price.
“Too many corporations raise prices to pad their profits, charging more and more for less and less,” Biden said.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled in congressional testimony last week that the central bank is getting closer to cutting rates. After meeting in January, Fed officials said in a statement that they needed “greater confidence” that inflation was steadily falling to their 2% target level. Since then, several of the Fed’s policymakers have said they believe prices will keep declining. One reason, they suggested, is that consumers are increasingly pushing back against higher prices by seeking out cheaper alternatives.
Most economists expect the Fed’s first rate cut to occur in June, although May is also possible. When the Fed cuts its benchmark rate, over time it reduces borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and business loans.
One factor that could keep inflation elevated is the still-healthy economy. Although most economists had expected a recession to occur last year, hiring and growth were strong and remain healthy. The economy expanded 2.5% last year and could grow at about the same pace in the first three months of this year, according to the Federal Reserve’s Atlanta branch.
Last week, the Labor Department said employers added a robust 275,000 jobs in February, the latest in a streak of solid hiring gains, and the unemployment rate stayed below 4% for the 25th straight month. That is the longest such streak since the 1960s.
Still, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9%, and wage growth slowed. Both trends could make the Fed feel more confident that the economy is cooling, which could help keep inflation falling and lead the central bank to begin cutting rates.
…
Xi Jinping Sees AI, Unmanned Tech Boosting Military’s Capabilities
Taipei — During China’s top legislative meetings this year, which wrapped up Monday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered the military to develop what he called “new quality combat capabilities,” a phrase analysts say highlights a focus on the use of artificial intelligence, high-tech and intelligent warfare. It also could signal, they say, plans to build forces of unmanned ships and submarines to support military operations.
Speaking at a gathering of the People’s Liberation Army or PLA and Armed Police Force delegates to the National People’s Congress late last week about “new quality combat capabilities,” Xi called on the military to deepen its reforms and promote innovation to enhance strategic capabilities in emerging areas.
During the meeting, six representatives from the military spoke about a range of topics from defense capabilities in cyberspace and the application of AI to the development and use of unmanned combat capabilities.
Chung Chieh with the National Policy Foundation in Taipei said that based on Xi’s remarks at the meeting and comments in past speeches, his “new quality combat capability” seems to refer to intelligent combat capabilities.
“His (Xi’s) current goal is to achieve the so-called integrated development … as fast as possible,” Chieh said.
With the use of AI, for example, militaries are looking to speed up the pace of combat, shorten the time it takes for a range of tasks, such as discovering targets, carrying out strikes as well as near instant operations and even simultaneous control of many unmanned combat vehicles, he said. For major military powers, whoever can master the new combat mode first will gain the upper hand.
A report Sunday in the PLA Daily said that following the meeting, lawmakers highlighted the need to make technology a “core capability” to enhance China’s strategic power.
One lawmaker, Hao Jingwen, talked about how drone swarm technologies in air, sea and land have been developed and successively deployed in regional conflicts.
“China needs to realize the important roles, emerging areas and new quality combat capabilities could play in modern warfare, be aware of their development trends, plan battlefield applications of advanced technologies in advance, and conduct active research in fields such as big data, the Internet of Things and AI, so as to be able to win future warfare,” the PLA Daily quoted Hao as saying.
Ying-Yu Lin, an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University, said that while “new quality combat capabilities” seek to draw on scientific and technological capabilities, it’s hard to say how they’d be used to meet Xi’s standards — or how widely used the capabilities might be in the future.
“In fact, China itself is still trying to figure out how to do it, and it cannot clearly point out what its new quality combat capabilities are. If it wants to fight technological warfare in the future, its training methods and the talents it needs will definitely be a little different from the past,” Lin told VOA.
Lin believes that since new quality combat capabilities are based on technological development, it is bound to eliminate the traditional mentality of military training and recruit high-tech professional talents. However, he said, such talents may have better options with foreign companies or private enterprises and may not want to join the PLA.
During the plenary meeting, Xi also emphasized the need to coordinate preparation for maritime military conflicts, the protection of maritime rights and interests, maritime economic development, and to enhance maritime strategic capabilities.
Analysts said Xi’s remarks revealed Beijing’s ambitions to become a sea-power country and control sea communication lines.
Chieh said taken together the remarks about “new quality combat capability” and “preparation for maritime military conflicts” are a sign that unmanned autonomous ships will be a key development project for the PLA.
“Maybe in the future, at sea, or even in distant oceans, the Chinese Communist Party will use a large number of unmanned vehicles, such as unmanned ships and even unmanned submarines, to support its maritime operations and control of sea lines of communication,” he said.
Adrianna Zhang from VOA’s Mandarin Service contributed to this story.
…