Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Earth’s Magnetic Field May Reverse, Causing Significant Damage
- While the flipping of Earth’s magnetic field is concerning, it’s not much of a surprise to scientists. TechTimes reports that for the past 20 million years, we’ve seen a pole reversal roughly every 200000 to 300000 years. However, the last time we saw a full pole reversal was around 780000 years ago, according to the latest research. While 2000 years seems ages away at this point and we’ll be far gone by the time a complete flip happens, we’re already starting to see some effects based off of the existing shift in Earth’s magnetic field.
According to the European Space Agency, Earth’s poles are preparing for a shift and that could cause a major headache.
While most are aware of the north and south geographic poles, there are two different poles that extend out of them – the geomagnetic poles of the planet. TechTimes reports that the magnetic fields originate from magnetic dipoles that are swirling magnetic currents of molten iron inside the Earth’s core. Earth’s magnetic field extends millions of meters into space and has a marked impact on the functioning of our planet.
According to the European Space Agency, “”Most of the field is generated at depths greater than 3000 km by the movement of molten iron in the outer core. The remaining 6% is partly due to electrical currents in space surrounding Earth, and partly due to magnetised rocks in the upper lithosphere — the rigid outer part of Earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.”
Earth’s magnetic field serves to protect our planet from the high levels of charged particles and radiation. The main reason that ultraviolet rays from the ozone layer and solar rays from the sun don’t cause significant damage by hitting us directly is due to the magnetism.
TechTimes reports that in the last 50 years, we’ve seen a shift in the North magnetic pole that has caused charge particles from the Sun and interstellar space to cause damage to satellites orbiting above the South Atlantic. While we haven’t seen any marked effects here on Earth so far, there’s potential for some serious consequences in the next couple of thousand years that are largely unavoidable. ContinueReading
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
The Amazon Health-Care Threat Has Arrived
bloomberg.com - The great and oft-heralded Amazon.com Inc. foray into health care is here, and it's not what we expected.
The company isn't diving headlong into drug distribution or becoming a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM). Along with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., it announced a more interesting idea Tuesday -- a new company aimed at lowering the cost of employee health coverage.
Though no one sector will face the full wrath of Bezos, this joint venture is a potential competitive threat to all of health care's many middlemen.
This isn't Corporate America's first stab at controlling ballooning health-care costs. Caterpillar Inc. runs its own PBM for employees. Forty plus U.S. companies are part of the Health Transformation Alliance, founded in 2016 to "fix our broken health care system" by pooling data and uniting to wrest better terms from PBMs, among other things.
But Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan seem to have bigger ambitions than just negotiating prices with service providers. You don't need to create a whole new company or devote significant resources to do that.
A key line in the detail-light release announcing the new company is that it will be "free from profit-making incentives." That looks like a shot at PBMs and health insurers, who try to lower costs but also maximize profit for stakeholders, resulting in a perverse and very expensive system. But it could also be aimed at health-care providers, given their Byzantine pricing and the outsize share of costs they represent.
The release said the new company's "initial focus" will be on using technology to provide simpler, cheaper, and more transparent health care for employees of the three founding firms. Whatever that means, it seems likely the ultimate aim may be to independently design and run employee health coverage.
With nearly 1.2 million employees and hundreds of billions in combined revenue -- along with the combined expertise of three of the most successful companies in history -- Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan have the requisite firepower to do this.
Insurers and PBMs now must worry about other companies following this blueprint. Even scarier for them is the idea that the Amazon/Berkshire/JPMorgan company will eventually recruit other employers to join it. That's a real possibility, given the venture's ambition and the fact that it's creating a new company rather than a less-formal alliance. In the release, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon teased the idea of potentially helping "all Americans."
Incumbents aren't necessarily doomed just yet. This venture is in its infancy, and health care is complicated. The U.S. system is opaque, fragmented, and heavily regulated. Technology is often proclaimed as a health-care cost panacea, and rarely delivers.
The most effective way to reduce health-care costs is to restrict choice. People hate when they are denied their preferred care or medicine by an insurer or PBM. Imagine the reaction (and broader brand consequences) if Amazon is doing the denying.
There's also the question of negotiating power. The triumvirate may have 1.2 million employees, but UnitedHealth Group Inc. -- to take one example -- provides or manages employee health insurance for nearly 30 million people.
But because the new company isn't initially trying to make a profit and will likely aim to avoid paying high fees to middlemen, it may not have to push provider or drug prices quite as low to get a good result. Think the difference between active and passive management, but for health care.
The pedigree of the companies involved and the current lack of detail may have me reading too much into this effort. But if it's as ambitious as it sounds, then health-care incumbents are in trouble.
The company isn't diving headlong into drug distribution or becoming a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM). Along with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., it announced a more interesting idea Tuesday -- a new company aimed at lowering the cost of employee health coverage.
Though no one sector will face the full wrath of Bezos, this joint venture is a potential competitive threat to all of health care's many middlemen.
This isn't Corporate America's first stab at controlling ballooning health-care costs. Caterpillar Inc. runs its own PBM for employees. Forty plus U.S. companies are part of the Health Transformation Alliance, founded in 2016 to "fix our broken health care system" by pooling data and uniting to wrest better terms from PBMs, among other things.
But Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan seem to have bigger ambitions than just negotiating prices with service providers. You don't need to create a whole new company or devote significant resources to do that.
A key line in the detail-light release announcing the new company is that it will be "free from profit-making incentives." That looks like a shot at PBMs and health insurers, who try to lower costs but also maximize profit for stakeholders, resulting in a perverse and very expensive system. But it could also be aimed at health-care providers, given their Byzantine pricing and the outsize share of costs they represent.
The release said the new company's "initial focus" will be on using technology to provide simpler, cheaper, and more transparent health care for employees of the three founding firms. Whatever that means, it seems likely the ultimate aim may be to independently design and run employee health coverage.
With nearly 1.2 million employees and hundreds of billions in combined revenue -- along with the combined expertise of three of the most successful companies in history -- Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan have the requisite firepower to do this.
Insurers and PBMs now must worry about other companies following this blueprint. Even scarier for them is the idea that the Amazon/Berkshire/JPMorgan company will eventually recruit other employers to join it. That's a real possibility, given the venture's ambition and the fact that it's creating a new company rather than a less-formal alliance. In the release, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon teased the idea of potentially helping "all Americans."
Incumbents aren't necessarily doomed just yet. This venture is in its infancy, and health care is complicated. The U.S. system is opaque, fragmented, and heavily regulated. Technology is often proclaimed as a health-care cost panacea, and rarely delivers.
The most effective way to reduce health-care costs is to restrict choice. People hate when they are denied their preferred care or medicine by an insurer or PBM. Imagine the reaction (and broader brand consequences) if Amazon is doing the denying.
There's also the question of negotiating power. The triumvirate may have 1.2 million employees, but UnitedHealth Group Inc. -- to take one example -- provides or manages employee health insurance for nearly 30 million people.
But because the new company isn't initially trying to make a profit and will likely aim to avoid paying high fees to middlemen, it may not have to push provider or drug prices quite as low to get a good result. Think the difference between active and passive management, but for health care.
The pedigree of the companies involved and the current lack of detail may have me reading too much into this effort. But if it's as ambitious as it sounds, then health-care incumbents are in trouble.
Monday, January 29, 2018
Indian man dies after being trapped in MRI machine
chicagotribune.com - A man in the Indian city of Mumbai died Saturday night after being sucked into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, an accident that has sparked concerns about the chaotic and sometimes dangerous conditions in India's government-run hospitals.
Relatives said that Rajesh Maru had entered an MRI testing room at the hospital holding a cylinder of oxygen, after a hospital staff member gave him the okay to proceed. They didn't know that the machine was turned on, and Maru was pulled into it and trapped by the machine's magnetic force, according to local news reports.
Maru died within minutes, his hand trapped against the machine by the leaking oxygen tank. He was freed and taken to the emergency room in 10 minutes but pronounced dead on arrival.
A postmortem report said he died from excessive air entering his lung, according to the Indian Express. Authorities are investigating the incident.
"It is a tragic incident and we will cooperate with police officials," Ramesh Bharmal, the dean of Bai Yamunabai Laxman Nair Charitable Hospital, told NDTV news channel.
MRI machines work through extremely powerful magnets and radio waves that scan the body and give an image of internal tissue. When the machine is on, all metal objects must be kept away from it.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Cambodia charges foreigners after pornographic dance arrests
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodian prosecutors charged 10 foreigners Sunday with producing pornographic pictures after they were arrested at a party in Siem Reap town, near the country’s famed Angkor Wat temple complex.
Police said they raided a rented villa on Thursday where the foreigners were taking part in what organizers billed as a pub crawl and found people “dancing pornographically.” While almost 90 foreigners were detained, all but 10 were released.
The 10 arrested are five British nationals, two Canadians, one Norwegian, one New Zealander and one from the Netherlands. A statement on the arrests posted on the National Police website Sunday included photos showing clothed young adults rolling around together on a dance floor.
The prosecutor of the Siem Reap provincial court, Samrith Sokhon, told The Associated Press by phone that those charged face up to a year in prison if convicted.
He said after producing the photos, the foreigners shared them on social media.
“Any people producing pornography is contrary to Cambodia’s traditions,” he said.
The United Kingdom’s Foreign Office confirmed they were in contact with British nationals in Cambodia.
“We are assisting five British men arrested in Cambodia and are providing support to their families,” the office said in an emailed response to questions from the AP. ContinueReading
Police said they raided a rented villa on Thursday where the foreigners were taking part in what organizers billed as a pub crawl and found people “dancing pornographically.” While almost 90 foreigners were detained, all but 10 were released.
The 10 arrested are five British nationals, two Canadians, one Norwegian, one New Zealander and one from the Netherlands. A statement on the arrests posted on the National Police website Sunday included photos showing clothed young adults rolling around together on a dance floor.
The prosecutor of the Siem Reap provincial court, Samrith Sokhon, told The Associated Press by phone that those charged face up to a year in prison if convicted.
He said after producing the photos, the foreigners shared them on social media.
“Any people producing pornography is contrary to Cambodia’s traditions,” he said.
The United Kingdom’s Foreign Office confirmed they were in contact with British nationals in Cambodia.
“We are assisting five British men arrested in Cambodia and are providing support to their families,” the office said in an emailed response to questions from the AP. ContinueReading
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Tanzania: Plans to auction 3.5 tonnes of hippo teeth sparks outrage
independent.co.uk - Wildlife conservation groups have criticised plans by Tanzanian authorities to auction 3.5 tonnes of hippo teeth next week. They said the move could increase poaching.
Licensed dealers will be able to bid for 12,500 pieces of hippo teeth at the tourism and natural resources ministry in the city of Dar es Salaam, wildlife authorities in the east African nation said.
Conservationists said the sale could encourage the killing of the creatures, which are classified as “vulnerable” on the international “red list” of endangered species.
There are up to 130,000 hippos in sub-Saharan Africa, according to estimates.
But the animal has become increasingly threatened by a demand for their meat, skin and teeth as well as habitat loss.
A regulated trade in hippo parts is allowed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Their teeth are carved for ornaments and sold in parts of Asia.
The bones predominantly come from Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, according to CITIES data.
Even though some countries still have healthy populations, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) "discourages the consumption of hippopotamus ivory and are disappointed to see auctions such as this taking place,” said Colman O'Criodain an expert in wildlife trade at the organisation. ContinueReading
Friday, January 26, 2018
'Nutella riots' erupt in France over discounted chocolate-hazelnut spread
usatoday.com - Chaos erupted in supermarkets across France as shoppers brawled trying to get their hands on discounted Nutella.
Fights — and even riots — were reported in multiple parts of the country after the Intermarché chain began a promotion for the chocolate and hazelnut spread Thursday. More than a million 950-gram pots were slashed in price by 70% from $5.85 to $1.75.
Police had to intervene in a brawl in the northern town of Ostricourt, Le Parisiennewspaper reported. An employee at one store in Forbach, near the border with Germany, likened the scenes to an orgy, telling Le Monde newspaper that shoppers had broken items in their rush for the treat.
Video footage of the chaos shows shoppers stuffing jars of Nutella into bags
"Some customers came the night before the promotion to stash the Nutella pots in other places, so to prevent others from taking them," Jean-Marie Daragon, the manager of the Intermarché store in Montbrison, central France, told Le Progres, the local paper in the Loire Valley.
A worker at another store in L'Horme told Le Progres that all the jars were gone in 15 minutes, and one customer was given a black eye.
Ferrero, the company that produces Nutella, distanced itself from the chaos, saying it had nothing to do with the promotion.
“We want to clarify that the decision for the special offer was taken unilaterally by Intermarché,” the firm said in a statement. “We regret the consequences of this operation, which created confusion and disappointment in the consumers’ minds.”
About 800 million pounds of Nutella are said to be eaten every year in 160 countries. ContinueReading
Fights — and even riots — were reported in multiple parts of the country after the Intermarché chain began a promotion for the chocolate and hazelnut spread Thursday. More than a million 950-gram pots were slashed in price by 70% from $5.85 to $1.75.
Police had to intervene in a brawl in the northern town of Ostricourt, Le Parisiennewspaper reported. An employee at one store in Forbach, near the border with Germany, likened the scenes to an orgy, telling Le Monde newspaper that shoppers had broken items in their rush for the treat.
Video footage of the chaos shows shoppers stuffing jars of Nutella into bags
"Some customers came the night before the promotion to stash the Nutella pots in other places, so to prevent others from taking them," Jean-Marie Daragon, the manager of the Intermarché store in Montbrison, central France, told Le Progres, the local paper in the Loire Valley.
A worker at another store in L'Horme told Le Progres that all the jars were gone in 15 minutes, and one customer was given a black eye.
Ferrero, the company that produces Nutella, distanced itself from the chaos, saying it had nothing to do with the promotion.
“We want to clarify that the decision for the special offer was taken unilaterally by Intermarché,” the firm said in a statement. “We regret the consequences of this operation, which created confusion and disappointment in the consumers’ minds.”
About 800 million pounds of Nutella are said to be eaten every year in 160 countries. ContinueReading
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Cape Town heads for 'Day Zero' as water supplies dwindle
itv.com - The water supply in Cape Town will be cut off within weeks if residents do not start to ration their usage, officials in the city have warned.
April 12 has been dubbed "Day Zero" - the moment the taps will run dry as South Africa battles to deal with its worst drought in almost a century.
Levels of usable water in the dams surrounding Cape Town have been dropping by 1.4 per cent a day, and currently stand at around 17.2 per cent.
When they hit 13.5 per cent - estimated for April 12 - the pipeline will be shut down and the city's four million residents will have to queue up each day for their supply from one of 200 water collection points.
A number of trial water collection points have been set up already, and are popular with people trying to stock up.
The daily ration has been set at 25 litres. A single flush of a toilet uses around 15 litres.
Strict limits on water usage have been in place for months, asking residents to stick to 87 litres a day - but many people appear to have ignored the warnings.
"Despite our urging for months, 60 per cent of Capetonians are callously using more than 87 litres per day," she said.
"It is quite unbelievable that a majority of people do not seem to care and are sending all of us headlong towards Day Zero.
"We can no longer ask people to stop wasting water. We must force them." ContinueReading
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
What's Behind North & South Koreas' Olympic Diplomacy?
usnews.com - For many Western ears, Pyongyang and Pyeongchang sound very similar. Both are names of cities on the divided Korean peninsula. But the former is North Korea's capital and show city, and the latter is the host town of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea's Gangwon Province. It is located just 80km south of the heavily fortified border between the two countries.
Some observers may think that this choice of location was ill considered. But it allowed South Korea to claim in its application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2011 that the event would also contribute to an improvement of inter-Korean relations.
As the games approach, this is becoming more of a reality. On Jan. 17, the two Koreas agreed to march under one flag, and to field a joint women's ice hockey team. And on Jan. 20, representatives from both countries met at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss and agree the details of North Korea's participation in the Winter Olympics.
The focus of the Lausanne meeting was on Olympic protocol. The unified team at the opening ceremony on Feb. 9 will be called Korea, marching with the Korean Unification Flag, carried by an athlete from each country. The team's anthem will be the Korean folk song Arirang. Under a "wild card" system, North Korean athletes will compete in figure skating, skiing and the joint ice hockey team.
Until the final days of 2017, this looked extremely unlikely as the governments of both Korean states had not talked to each other for over two years.
Foreign policy – and sports diplomacy is part of that domain – usually happens behind closed doors, as do the processes behind it. Detailed knowledge of North Korea and the country's internal, political dynamics is also rather limited. This is the most secretive and least understood country in the world, and as a result, some issues have been overlooked or misrepresented regarding the upcoming Olympics detente. ContinueReading
Some observers may think that this choice of location was ill considered. But it allowed South Korea to claim in its application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2011 that the event would also contribute to an improvement of inter-Korean relations.
As the games approach, this is becoming more of a reality. On Jan. 17, the two Koreas agreed to march under one flag, and to field a joint women's ice hockey team. And on Jan. 20, representatives from both countries met at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss and agree the details of North Korea's participation in the Winter Olympics.
The focus of the Lausanne meeting was on Olympic protocol. The unified team at the opening ceremony on Feb. 9 will be called Korea, marching with the Korean Unification Flag, carried by an athlete from each country. The team's anthem will be the Korean folk song Arirang. Under a "wild card" system, North Korean athletes will compete in figure skating, skiing and the joint ice hockey team.
Until the final days of 2017, this looked extremely unlikely as the governments of both Korean states had not talked to each other for over two years.
Foreign policy – and sports diplomacy is part of that domain – usually happens behind closed doors, as do the processes behind it. Detailed knowledge of North Korea and the country's internal, political dynamics is also rather limited. This is the most secretive and least understood country in the world, and as a result, some issues have been overlooked or misrepresented regarding the upcoming Olympics detente. ContinueReading
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Giant centipedes can kill prey 15 times bigger than they are, thanks to this critical toxin
sciencemag.org - Centipede venoms pack a serious punch—causing rapid paralysis in lizards, cockroaches, and other animals unlucky enough to be on the invertebrate’s dinner menu. They’ve even been known to kill people, but until recently, we had no idea why. Now, scientists have identified a nasty toxin in centipede venom that wreaks havoc on the cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems of other animals—allowing centipedes to kill mice 15 times their size in 30 seconds flat. The team first purified multiple toxins from the venom of the 20-centimeter-long golden head centipede (above), which lives in forests, farmlands, and cities across eastern Asia. Then, they experimented with the toxins, one by one. They found that something called Ssm Spooky Toxin shut off the channels that pump potassium in and out of cells—channels that are critical for sending brainwaves, maintaining a regular heartbeat, and controlling a whole host of other bodily functions, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Without this one critical toxin, the venom isn’t nearly as deadly—giving scientists hope that an antivenom treatment could be made using drugs that open potassium channels. ContinueReading
(A video of one deadly centipede-mouse encounter has been posted by the scientists here, but it may disturb some viewers.)
Monday, January 22, 2018
‘Blaxit’: African Americans Moving To Africa To Escape Racism
- Digital marketer Muhammida el-Muhajir moved from New York City to Ghana to escape America's "incessant racism and prejudice" and thousands of others are doing the same, Al Jazeera reports.
From Al Jazeera:
Accra, Ghana - They have come from the big cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Thousands of them. And many refuse to return.
A new wave of African Americans is escaping the incessant racism and prejudice in the United States. From Senegal and Ghana to The Gambia, communities are emerging in defiance of conventional wisdom that Africa is a continent everyone is trying to leave.
It is estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 African Americans live in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. They are teachers in small towns in the west or entrepreneurs in the capital and say they that even though living in Ghana is not always easy, they feel free and safe.
el-Muhajir told Al Jazeera why she decided to make the move:
"I grew up in Philadelphia and then New York. I went to Howard, which is a historically black university. I tell people that Ghana is like Howard in real life. It felt like a microcosm of the world. At university, they tell us the world isn't black, but there are places where this is the real world. Howard prepares you for a world where black people are in charge, which is a completely different experience compared to people who have gone to predominantly white universities."
From Al Jazeera:
Accra, Ghana - They have come from the big cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Thousands of them. And many refuse to return.
A new wave of African Americans is escaping the incessant racism and prejudice in the United States. From Senegal and Ghana to The Gambia, communities are emerging in defiance of conventional wisdom that Africa is a continent everyone is trying to leave.
It is estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 African Americans live in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. They are teachers in small towns in the west or entrepreneurs in the capital and say they that even though living in Ghana is not always easy, they feel free and safe.
el-Muhajir told Al Jazeera why she decided to make the move:
"I grew up in Philadelphia and then New York. I went to Howard, which is a historically black university. I tell people that Ghana is like Howard in real life. It felt like a microcosm of the world. At university, they tell us the world isn't black, but there are places where this is the real world. Howard prepares you for a world where black people are in charge, which is a completely different experience compared to people who have gone to predominantly white universities."
Read the rest HERE
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Who Is Narendra Modi? India's Controversial Prime Minister May Offer A Role Model For Donald Trump
Forbes - Riding high on unprecedented polling numbers and rapid economic growth, India's controversial Prime Minister Narendra Modi will give the keynote address at the opening session of the 48th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) this Tuesday. The WEF is the annual meeting of the world's great, good, or just plain rich held every January in Davos, Switzerland.
Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, is the star attraction. His American counterpart Donald Trump may or may not make it to Davos, due to the U.S. government shutdown. If he does go, the Swiss locals may not make himvery welcome, even if the WEF grandees can't very well turn him down. Modi, by contrast, is very much the man of the moment.
International relations weren't always so smooth for Modi, who in 2005 as Chief Minister of India's Gujarat state had his U.S. visa revoked and was denied permission to enter the country. The reason? He was allegedly implicated in fomenting (or at least failing to contain and condemn) inter-ethnic riots in 2002 that resulted in more than 1000 deaths. Think of it as "India's Charlottesville," only much, much worse.
In 2014, Modi was narrowly elected India's Prime Minister with just over half the seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India's parliament), but less than one-third of the popular vote. India's first Twitter Prime Minister is widely reviled among the country's bickering intellectual elite. Modi, who rose from humble origins as a grocer's son, has been ridiculed as an uneducated chaiwala (tea seller), a label he has since embraced with pride.
Political pundits dismissed him as a knee-jerk populist who came to power by making simplistic promises of national revival. Modi stands accused of dog-whistle politics, endangering the nearly 40% of India's population that belongs to religious, ethnic, or regional minorities. He is regularly condemned as dangerous, a strongman, and adictator by Indian and Western elites.
And he is a huge success, both economically and politically. The economy is booming, and Narendra Modi is the most popular Indian leader since Mahatma Gandhi, both inside and outside the country.
Now a little more than midway through his five-year term, his job approval rating stands at 88%. If he really has oppressed 40% of the population, they must not be aware of it. ContinueReading
Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, is the star attraction. His American counterpart Donald Trump may or may not make it to Davos, due to the U.S. government shutdown. If he does go, the Swiss locals may not make himvery welcome, even if the WEF grandees can't very well turn him down. Modi, by contrast, is very much the man of the moment.
International relations weren't always so smooth for Modi, who in 2005 as Chief Minister of India's Gujarat state had his U.S. visa revoked and was denied permission to enter the country. The reason? He was allegedly implicated in fomenting (or at least failing to contain and condemn) inter-ethnic riots in 2002 that resulted in more than 1000 deaths. Think of it as "India's Charlottesville," only much, much worse.
In 2014, Modi was narrowly elected India's Prime Minister with just over half the seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India's parliament), but less than one-third of the popular vote. India's first Twitter Prime Minister is widely reviled among the country's bickering intellectual elite. Modi, who rose from humble origins as a grocer's son, has been ridiculed as an uneducated chaiwala (tea seller), a label he has since embraced with pride.
Political pundits dismissed him as a knee-jerk populist who came to power by making simplistic promises of national revival. Modi stands accused of dog-whistle politics, endangering the nearly 40% of India's population that belongs to religious, ethnic, or regional minorities. He is regularly condemned as dangerous, a strongman, and adictator by Indian and Western elites.
And he is a huge success, both economically and politically. The economy is booming, and Narendra Modi is the most popular Indian leader since Mahatma Gandhi, both inside and outside the country.
Now a little more than midway through his five-year term, his job approval rating stands at 88%. If he really has oppressed 40% of the population, they must not be aware of it. ContinueReading
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Animal-smuggling 'kingpin' arrested in Thailand
skynews.com - A man accused of being one of world's most notorious wildlife traffickers has been arrested in Thailand.
Boonchai Bach, 40, is alleged to have made a career out of helping to smuggle thousands of tonnes of rhino horns and elephant tusks from Africa to Asia.
But he was arrested by police at his base in Nakorn Panom, Thailand, next to the Mekong River, on Friday.
Bach, a Vietnamese national with Thai citizenship, is being held in relation to the trafficking of 14 rhino horns in December.
Authorities said they are also investigating allegations he supervised groups trafficking large quantities of poached elephant ivory, rhino horns, pangolins, tigers, lions, and other rare and endangered species for more than a decade.
At a news conference at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, Police Colonel Chutrakul Yodmadee told reporters that the arrest was "significant for many reasons".
"The confiscated items are high in value.
"And we are able to arrest the whole network involved, starting from the courier, the facilitator, the exporter who plan to export goods through the Thai-Laos border.
"We even got the moneyman (investor) behind the gang.
"That means we are able to arrest the whole network."
The Bach family is alleged to have run the international supply chain of illicit wildlife from Asia and Africa to major dealers in Laos, Vietnam and China, including to the notorious Vixay Keosavang.
Keosavang, based in Laos, was named Southeast Asia's biggest wildlife dealer by the New York Times in 2013.
It is claimed Boonchai Bach took up a leading role in the organisation in 2005 when he began to share power with his brother.
Freeland, a Bangkok-based anti-trafficking organisation, has been working with Thai authorities on the investigation after tracking the group for more than two decades.
Founder Steven Galster said Bach's arrest had stopped a wildlife trafficking kingpin.
He added: "The security officers of Suvarnabhumi Airport, Suvarnabhumi Airport Police Station, Thai Customs and Immigration Police at Nakhon Panom are to be congratulated for breaking open the country's largest wildlife crime case ever."
This week's arrest follows the routine X-ray of cargo on a flight from Ethiopia to Bangkok in December which revealed rhino horns hidden in a suitcase.
Officials let the luggage through and then followed it to a Thai officer in the airport who was arrested along with one of Bach's relatives.
Bach was once believed to be untouchable, and campaigners hope his arrest will encourage crackdowns around the world.
Friday, January 19, 2018
100 years after "super-flu" pandemic killed millions, universal vaccine remains elusive
WASHINGTON — The descriptions are haunting. Some victims felt fine in the morning and were dead by night. Faces turned blue as patients coughed up blood. Stacked bodies outnumbered coffins.
A century after one of history's most catastrophic disease outbreaks, scientists are rethinking how to guard against another super-flu like the 1918 influenza that killed tens of millions as it swept the globe.
There's no way to predict what strain of the shape-shifting flu virus could trigger another pandemic or, given modern medical tools, how bad it might be.
But researchers hope they're finally closing in on stronger flu shots, ways to boost much-needed protection against ordinary winter influenza and guard against future pandemics at the same time.
"We have to do better and by better, we mean a universal flu vaccine. A vaccine that is going to protect you against essentially all, or most, strains of flu," said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.
Labs around the country are hunting for a super-shot that could eliminate the annual fall vaccination in favor of one every five years or 10 years, or maybe, eventually, a childhood immunization that could last for life.
Fauci is designating a universal flu vaccine a top priority for NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Last summer, he brought together more than 150 leading researchers to map a path. A few attempts are entering first-stage human safety testing.
Still, it's a tall order. Despite 100 years of science, the flu virus too often beats our best defenses because it constantly mutates.
Among the new strategies: Researchers are dissecting the cloak that disguises influenza as it sneaks past the immune system, and finding some rare targets that stay the same from strain to strain, year to year.
"We've made some serious inroads into understanding how we can better protect ourselves. Now we have to put that into fruition," said well-known flu biologist Ian Wilson of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
The somber centennial highlights the need.
Back then, there was no flu vaccine — it wouldn't arrive for decades. Today vaccination is the best protection, and Fauci never skips his. But at best, the seasonal vaccine is 60 percent effective. Protection dropped to 19 percent a few years ago when the vaccine didn't match an evolving virus.
If a never-before-seen flu strain erupts, it takes months to brew a new vaccine. Doses arrived too late for the last, fortunately mild, pandemic in 2009.
Lacking a better option, Fauci said the nation is "chasing" animal flu strains that might become the next human threat. Today's top concern is a lethal bird flu that jumped from poultry to more than 1,500 people in China since 2013. Last year it mutated, meaning millions of just-in-case vaccine doses in a U.S. stockpile no longer match. ContinueReading
A century after one of history's most catastrophic disease outbreaks, scientists are rethinking how to guard against another super-flu like the 1918 influenza that killed tens of millions as it swept the globe.
There's no way to predict what strain of the shape-shifting flu virus could trigger another pandemic or, given modern medical tools, how bad it might be.
But researchers hope they're finally closing in on stronger flu shots, ways to boost much-needed protection against ordinary winter influenza and guard against future pandemics at the same time.
"We have to do better and by better, we mean a universal flu vaccine. A vaccine that is going to protect you against essentially all, or most, strains of flu," said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.
Labs around the country are hunting for a super-shot that could eliminate the annual fall vaccination in favor of one every five years or 10 years, or maybe, eventually, a childhood immunization that could last for life.
Fauci is designating a universal flu vaccine a top priority for NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Last summer, he brought together more than 150 leading researchers to map a path. A few attempts are entering first-stage human safety testing.
Still, it's a tall order. Despite 100 years of science, the flu virus too often beats our best defenses because it constantly mutates.
Among the new strategies: Researchers are dissecting the cloak that disguises influenza as it sneaks past the immune system, and finding some rare targets that stay the same from strain to strain, year to year.
"We've made some serious inroads into understanding how we can better protect ourselves. Now we have to put that into fruition," said well-known flu biologist Ian Wilson of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
The somber centennial highlights the need.
Back then, there was no flu vaccine — it wouldn't arrive for decades. Today vaccination is the best protection, and Fauci never skips his. But at best, the seasonal vaccine is 60 percent effective. Protection dropped to 19 percent a few years ago when the vaccine didn't match an evolving virus.
If a never-before-seen flu strain erupts, it takes months to brew a new vaccine. Doses arrived too late for the last, fortunately mild, pandemic in 2009.
Lacking a better option, Fauci said the nation is "chasing" animal flu strains that might become the next human threat. Today's top concern is a lethal bird flu that jumped from poultry to more than 1,500 people in China since 2013. Last year it mutated, meaning millions of just-in-case vaccine doses in a U.S. stockpile no longer match. ContinueReading
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Ukraine Passes Bill To Restore Control Over Separatist-Held Areas
KYIV -- Ukraine's parliament has passed a bill that backers, including President Poroshenko, say will help Kyiv restore control over areas in the east that are held by Russia-backed separatists.
The bill, which has been the subject of tension and demonstrations in a country whose stability has been undermined by nearly four years of war, was adopted with support from 280 lawmakers in the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada on January 18.
It goes to Poroshenko, who backed the legislation and celebrated its passage in social-media posts after the vote.
"We will continue to pave the way for reintegration of the occupied Ukrainian lands through political and diplomatic steps," Poroshenko wrote on Twitter.
Moscow said that the draft amounted to preparation for war.
The bill labels Russia an "aggressor" and the separatist-held parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces -- part of what is known as the Donbas -- as "temporarily occupied territories."
That is the same designation given previously to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014.
In his tweet, Poroshenko called the bill's passage "a signal for the Donbas and for Crimea: You are an inseparable part of Ukraine."
The bill makes no reference to the European-backed peace deal known as the Minsk accord, leaving questions about whether it could further complicate efforts to implement the February 2015 agreement aimed at ending the war in eastern Ukraine.
The pact obliged Kyiv to adopt legislation granting substantial autonomy to the separatist-held regions -- an idea that has come under fire from many politicians in Ukraine.
Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine and pro-Kremlin politicians in Moscow claimed that the bill would badly undermine the Minsk pact, whose implementation has been described by the United States and the European Union as a condition for lifting sanctions against Russia.
"Kyiv has gone from sabotaging the Minsk agreements to burying them," said Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament's upper house.
The Russian Foreign Ministry later said in a statement, "You cannot call this anything but preparation for a new war," and warned that the bill "risked a dangerous escalation in Ukraine with unpredictable consequences for world peace and security."
Language regarding the Minsk accords was removed after much debate ahead of the first reading of the bill.
More than 10,300 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since April 2014 in the conflict, which erupted as Russia fomented separatism after Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych was pushed from power by huge pro-European protests in Kyiv.
The Ukrainian military said on January 18 that one soldier had been killed in eastern Ukraine in the previous 24 hours.
The bill supports a ban on trade and a transport blockade of the east that has been in place since 2017. Under the legislation, the only separatist-issued documents that Ukraine would recognize are birth and death certificates.
The Associated Press cited Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta research center think-tank in Kyiv, as saying the main purpose of the bill is to defend Ukraine's interests in international courts. ContinueReading
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
'New California' campaign aims to separate rural counties from coastal cities
sfgate.com: Two men frustrated with what they call an "ungovernable" California have launched a new campaign to divide the rural areas of the state from its coastal cities.
Founders of the "New California" movement, Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed, write on the campaign's website that California is "a failed state" and that "citizens of California are living under a tyrannical form of government that does not follow the California and U.S. Constitutions."
The campaign cites high taxes, and a decline in housing, health care, prisons, state parks, education, and "business climate," among other things, in both high-density and rural areas as reasons for a division.
"There's something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed," Preston told CBS Sacramento.
Unlike other, similar campaigns, this is not a secession; rather, proponents of New California want to create a brand new economy with a new constitution.
Founders of the "New California" movement, Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed, write on the campaign's website that California is "a failed state" and that "citizens of California are living under a tyrannical form of government that does not follow the California and U.S. Constitutions."
The campaign cites high taxes, and a decline in housing, health care, prisons, state parks, education, and "business climate," among other things, in both high-density and rural areas as reasons for a division.
"There's something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed," Preston told CBS Sacramento.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
McDonald's Makes Recycling Push in Latest Bid to Burnish Image
Bloomberg.com - McDonald’s Corp. is embracing recycling and will start using more environmentally friendly packaging as consumers gravitate toward brands perceived to be good corporate citizens.
The world’s largest restaurant chain, which has moved to using cage-free eggs and antibiotic-free chicken, is setting the goal of recycling customer trash at all of its restaurants across the globe by 2025. Only an estimated 10 percent of the chain’s roughly 37,000 locations offer recycling today.
Packaging for items like bags, soda cups and boxes for burgers will also be more environmentally friendly by 2025, meaning the materials will be “recycled, renewable or certified” by third-parties organizations that track deforestation, according to Francesca DeBiase, the company’s chief supply chain and sustainability officer. McDonald’s is currently about halfway toward that goal, she said.
“Customers have told us that packaging waste is the top environmental issue we should address,” she said.
Under Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook, who took over in March 2015, McDonald’s has succeeded in luring diners back into its restaurants. He’s achieved this by offering all-day breakfast and fine-tuning value offerings. The chain has also embraced digital ordering and taken measures to improve the food’s taste.
McDonald’s shares surged 41 percent last year, marking a third straight annual gain. The stock rose 0.8 percent in the first two weeks of 2018, closing at $173.57 on Jan. 12. ContinueReading
Monday, January 15, 2018
A New Clue to the Mystery Disease That Once Killed Most of Mexico
theatlantic.com - In the decades after Hernán Cortés invaded Mexico, one of the worst epidemics in human history swept through the new Spanish colony. A mysterious disease called “cocolitzli” appeared first in 1545 and then again in 1576, each time killing millions of the native population. “From morning to sunset,” wrote a Franciscan friar who witness the epidemic, “the priests did nothing else but carry the dead bodies and throw them into the ditches.”
In less than a century, the number of people living in Mexico fell from an estimated 20 million to 2 million. “It’s a massive population loss. Really, it’s impressive,” says Rodolfo Acuña-Soto, an epidemiologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. What can even kill so many people so quickly?
The Spanish, infamously, brought a litany of diseases unknown to the indigenous population—smallpox, measles, typhus—so some experts have suggested cocoliztli is simply one of those. Others, like Acuña-Soto, have argued it is an unknown viral hemorrhagic fever native to Mexico. The cause of cocoliztli has never been conclusively identified.
Now, DNA from 16th-century cocolitzli victims has offered up a somewhat unexpected new candidate: Salmonella enterica, or the bacteria that causes paratyphoid fever. The DNA evidence comes from the teeth of 11 people buried in a large Mixtec cemetery in southern Mexico. Prior archaeological work had linked the burials to the 1545 cocolitzli epidemic, and the city was likely abandoned after the disease killed so many of its inhabitants.
“Teeth are an excellent source of DNA,” says Kirsten Bos, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who worked on the new study. Dental pulp—the soft, living tissue inside teeth—is full of blood vessels and thus any pathogens that once circulated in the blood. And hard enamel on the outside protects the DNA of those pathogens for centuries.
Bos and her team have previously identified plague bacteria in the teeth of Black Death victims, but the cocolitzli samples presented a different challenge. Scientists already suspected that the Black Death was caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, but no one is as certain about the exact cause of cocolitzli. So Bos’s team repurposed a method called metagenomics that sequences all of the DNA in a sample, generating a long list of all bacteria present in the teeth. One researcher went through the list by hand, and a specific strain of Salmonella enterica popped up repeatedly. Dental pulp samples from five people who died before European contact but buried in the same site contained no significant amounts of S. enterica.
Paratyphoid fever spreads through food or water contaminated with the feces of a sick person. Today, it usually breaks out when people live in poor, crowded conditions. It’s possible that the Spanish, in addition to bringing the bacteria, relocated people and instituted agricultural practices that exacerbated its spread. The symptoms, broadly, match up, though historical accounts—written before the advent of germ theory—are evocative if not clinically specific. For example, the Franciscan friar Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote in 1576:
The fevers were contagious, burning, and continuous, all of them pestilential, in most part lethal. The tongue was dry and black. Enormous thirst. Urine of the colors sea-green, vegetal-green, and black, sometimes passing from the greenish color to the pale. Pulse was frequent, fast, small, and weak—sometimes even null. The eyes and the whole body were yellow. This stage was followed by delirium and seizures. Then, hard and painful nodules appeared behind one or both ears along with heartache, chest pain, abdominal pain, tremor, great anxiety, and dysentery.
The study authors acknowledge that S. enterica may have interacted with other circulating pathogens. The method does not rule them out. In particular, the team can only detect DNA, but some viruses carry RNA instead. “If all these people died from RNA viruses, we will never know, at least not with these techniques,” says Nicolas Rascovan, a microbiologist at Aix-Marseille Université, who also studies dental-pulp DNA among people in the Americas.
Acuña-Soto still favors his viral hemorrhagic-fever hypothesis, and he notes that Salmonella has never caused another epidemic as deadly as cocoliztli in recorded history. The strain most similar to the one found in the 16th-century teeth is rare and not well-studied, but it has a 10 to 15 percent mortality rate today. It is also not entirely known whether Salmonellawas present in the Americas before contact with the Spanish or how pervasive it was in Europe.
Regardless, the application of metagenomics to “ancient” DNA is opening a new window into the ancient world. The field of ancient DNA has largely focused on human DNA, says Rascovan. “Now the new step in the ancient DNA field is to start focus on our cohabitants, which are the microbes.” The presence of Salmonella in cocoliztl victims has provoked more questions than it has answered, and the wide applications of this technique to ancient microbes may prompt yet more questions about our ancestors that we did not know to ask. ContinueReading
In less than a century, the number of people living in Mexico fell from an estimated 20 million to 2 million. “It’s a massive population loss. Really, it’s impressive,” says Rodolfo Acuña-Soto, an epidemiologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. What can even kill so many people so quickly?
The Spanish, infamously, brought a litany of diseases unknown to the indigenous population—smallpox, measles, typhus—so some experts have suggested cocoliztli is simply one of those. Others, like Acuña-Soto, have argued it is an unknown viral hemorrhagic fever native to Mexico. The cause of cocoliztli has never been conclusively identified.
Now, DNA from 16th-century cocolitzli victims has offered up a somewhat unexpected new candidate: Salmonella enterica, or the bacteria that causes paratyphoid fever. The DNA evidence comes from the teeth of 11 people buried in a large Mixtec cemetery in southern Mexico. Prior archaeological work had linked the burials to the 1545 cocolitzli epidemic, and the city was likely abandoned after the disease killed so many of its inhabitants.
“Teeth are an excellent source of DNA,” says Kirsten Bos, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who worked on the new study. Dental pulp—the soft, living tissue inside teeth—is full of blood vessels and thus any pathogens that once circulated in the blood. And hard enamel on the outside protects the DNA of those pathogens for centuries.
Bos and her team have previously identified plague bacteria in the teeth of Black Death victims, but the cocolitzli samples presented a different challenge. Scientists already suspected that the Black Death was caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, but no one is as certain about the exact cause of cocolitzli. So Bos’s team repurposed a method called metagenomics that sequences all of the DNA in a sample, generating a long list of all bacteria present in the teeth. One researcher went through the list by hand, and a specific strain of Salmonella enterica popped up repeatedly. Dental pulp samples from five people who died before European contact but buried in the same site contained no significant amounts of S. enterica.
Paratyphoid fever spreads through food or water contaminated with the feces of a sick person. Today, it usually breaks out when people live in poor, crowded conditions. It’s possible that the Spanish, in addition to bringing the bacteria, relocated people and instituted agricultural practices that exacerbated its spread. The symptoms, broadly, match up, though historical accounts—written before the advent of germ theory—are evocative if not clinically specific. For example, the Franciscan friar Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote in 1576:
The fevers were contagious, burning, and continuous, all of them pestilential, in most part lethal. The tongue was dry and black. Enormous thirst. Urine of the colors sea-green, vegetal-green, and black, sometimes passing from the greenish color to the pale. Pulse was frequent, fast, small, and weak—sometimes even null. The eyes and the whole body were yellow. This stage was followed by delirium and seizures. Then, hard and painful nodules appeared behind one or both ears along with heartache, chest pain, abdominal pain, tremor, great anxiety, and dysentery.
The study authors acknowledge that S. enterica may have interacted with other circulating pathogens. The method does not rule them out. In particular, the team can only detect DNA, but some viruses carry RNA instead. “If all these people died from RNA viruses, we will never know, at least not with these techniques,” says Nicolas Rascovan, a microbiologist at Aix-Marseille Université, who also studies dental-pulp DNA among people in the Americas.
Regardless, the application of metagenomics to “ancient” DNA is opening a new window into the ancient world. The field of ancient DNA has largely focused on human DNA, says Rascovan. “Now the new step in the ancient DNA field is to start focus on our cohabitants, which are the microbes.” The presence of Salmonella in cocoliztl victims has provoked more questions than it has answered, and the wide applications of this technique to ancient microbes may prompt yet more questions about our ancestors that we did not know to ask. ContinueReading
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Strong earthquake in southern Peru leaves one dead, dozens injured
LIMA (Reuters) - A strong magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the coast of southern Peru on Sunday morning, leaving one dead and several dozen injured while causing homes and roads to collapse.
Authorities walked back earlier statements that a second person had died and that 17 people were missing in a mine, signs that the human toll of the quake may not be as drastic as previously feared.
The quake hit offshore at 4:18 a.m. local time (0918 GMT) at a depth of around 36 km (22.4 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean 40 km from the town of Acari.
Arequipa Governor Yamila Osorio said on Twitter that a 55-year-old man died in the town of Yauca after being crushed by rock. Jorge Chavez, chief of Peru’s Civil Defense Institute, told local radio station RPP that 65 people were injured but withdrew his earlier statement that a second person had died in the town of Bella Union.
“The victim reportedly found in Bella Union has not been confirmed,” Chavez said. “Officially, we only have one death.”
Chavez said damage to roads was impeding help from arriving to the most-affected zones, which are mainly rural and remote. Aid workers and supplies would be flown in from nearby cities, he added.
On Twitter, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said he would travel to the towns of Acari and Chala “to verify the magnitude of the damages and send the corresponding humanitarian aid.”
Health Minister Abel Salinas Rivas told RPP that rescue workers spoke with representatives of the informal Estrella mine and confirmed that no one was missing from there. Rivas had said earlier that 17 people were missing after the mine east of Chala suffered damages following the quake.
Several municipalities were without electricity, and many roads and adobe houses had collapsed, Osorio said. Many residents of Lomas, a coastal town, were evacuated after feeling an aftershock.
Earthquakes are common in Peru, but many homes are built with precarious materials that cannot withstand them.
In 2007 an earthquake killed hundreds in the region of Ica.
Peruvian maritime authorities said the quake did not produce a tsunami on the coast.
Peru is the world’s No. 2 copper producer, although many of the mines in the south are located far inland from where the quake struck. A representative of Southern Copper Corp said there were no reports of damage at its Cuajone and Toquepala mines in the Moguegua and Tacna regions.
Jesus Revilla, a union leader at the Cerro Verde copper mine in Arequipa, said there were no reports that operations had been affected.
The quake was also felt in northern Chile, Peru’s southern neighbor.
Chile’s National Emergency offices said there were no reports of injuries, damage to infrastructure, or interruption of basic services. The nation’s navy said the quake did not meet the conditions that would produce a tsunami off its coast. ContinueReading
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Walmart is abruptly closing 63 Sam's Club stores and laying off thousands of workers
businessinsider.com: Walmart is closing 63 Sam's Club stores across the US, the company told Business Insider on Thursday afternoon, after reports of abrupt store closings began to emerge.
The closings will impact about 9,400 employees, a Walmart official said.
In some cases, employees were not told their store had closed before showing up to work on Thursday. Those employees learned their store would be closing when they found the store's doors locked and a notice announcing the closing, Sam's Club workers told Business Insider. At some stores, employees were turned away by police officers.
Ten of the affected stores will be turned into e-commerce distribution centers, and employees of those stores will have the opportunity to reapply for positions at those locations, a Walmart official said.
The remaining stores will stay open for several weeks before closing permanently. All of the affected stores were scrubbed from the Sam's Club website on Thursday morning.
Sam's Club CEO John Furner notified employees of the closures in a company-wide email sent Thursday.
"After a thorough review, it became clear we had built clubs in some locations that impacted other clubs, and where population had not grown as anticipated," Furner said in the email. "We will be closing some clubs, and we notified them today. We'll convert some of them into eCommerce fulfillment centers — to better serve the growing number of members shopping with us online and continue scaling the SamsClub.com business."
Sam's Club membership fees — which cost $45 annually — will be refunded to customers affected by the closings, a Walmart official said.
The closings will impact about 9,400 employees, a Walmart official said.
In some cases, employees were not told their store had closed before showing up to work on Thursday. Those employees learned their store would be closing when they found the store's doors locked and a notice announcing the closing, Sam's Club workers told Business Insider. At some stores, employees were turned away by police officers.
Ten of the affected stores will be turned into e-commerce distribution centers, and employees of those stores will have the opportunity to reapply for positions at those locations, a Walmart official said.
The remaining stores will stay open for several weeks before closing permanently. All of the affected stores were scrubbed from the Sam's Club website on Thursday morning.
Sam's Club CEO John Furner notified employees of the closures in a company-wide email sent Thursday.
"After a thorough review, it became clear we had built clubs in some locations that impacted other clubs, and where population had not grown as anticipated," Furner said in the email. "We will be closing some clubs, and we notified them today. We'll convert some of them into eCommerce fulfillment centers — to better serve the growing number of members shopping with us online and continue scaling the SamsClub.com business."
Sam's Club membership fees — which cost $45 annually — will be refunded to customers affected by the closings, a Walmart official said.
Friday, January 12, 2018
Saudi football clubs call on women fans to kick off historic weekend matches
JEDDAH: Saudi football clubs are appealing directly to female fans for support through ad campaigns and social media as women are allowed into stadiums for the first time on Friday.
The official Twitter account for Al-Ittihad directed a tweet toward the club’s female fans on Tuesday. It said that women were powerful agents in the success of the team, just like their male counterparts.Two weeks ago, a campaign was launched for fans to show their support for their favorite teams through SMS texts. Al-Ittihad’s tweet is riding on the hype surrounding women attending the club’s match.
Al-Ittihad’s offical tweet generated a massive response from the team’s lovers and haters alike. Elaaf tweeted: “We’re finally being addressed as a part of Ittihad’s fanclub.”
Many couldn’t believe they were finally being noticed. One Twitter user said: “I never thought I’d live to see such a tweet, we’re all here for you.”
Others such as Twitter user Shikha provided proof of their contribution by posting photos of the sent text, while many women declared they were now switching support to Al-Ittihad for being the first to address them as an audience.
One die-hard fan tweeted: “I will attend the classico match and I’ll even pay for tickets for other girls attending.”
Dedicated Al-Ittihad female fans are preparing to attend the club’s first match of the year against Al-Hilal on Jan. 13, in Riyadh’s King Fahd International Stadium. Al-Ahli fans will be called on to show up for a Jeddah match against the visiting Al-Batin team on Friday in the King Abdullah Sports City stadium.
The General Sports Authority (GSA) revealed the seating plan for the Riyadh match. Inside the stadium, women will occupy the northern area through gates two, three and four, and the southern area through gates 40, 41 and 42. They are are expected to fill 7,500 seats.
Head of the Saudi Federation for Sports Media, Raja Al-Sulami, told Arab News that they have made the stadium ready to receive women. He added: “In cooperation with the Saudi Federation for Community Sports, we have made all necessary arrangements to receive them in an atmosphere that respects their privacy.” He added that there are 14,000 seats at the Jeddah’s “Shining Jewel” stadium ready for the occasion. ContinueReading
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Brexiteers back second EU referendum to stop 'soft' departure from bloc
LONDON (Reuters) - Two of Britain’s most prominent Brexit campaigners endorsed a second referendum on leaving the European Union on Thursday as the best way to stop EU supporters from trying to water down, or even halt, the country’s departure from the bloc.
Britons shocked the political establishment in June 2016 by voting 52 to 48 percent in favor of ending more than four decades of political, economic and legal ties with the EU.
But, with the nation still deeply polarized, disillusion over the complexity of withdrawal setting in and pessimism about the economic impact of Brexit rising, many in the fervently anti-EU camp fear an eventual “soft” withdrawal that would keep key ties and foil any clampdown on immigration.
Nigel Farage, a central figure in the “Leave” campaign ahead of the referendum and in its surprise outcome, said he was warming to the idea of holding a second vote to settle the argument on whether leaving was the right decision or not.
“Maybe, just maybe, I‘m reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum ... on EU membership,” the former leader of the small UK Independence Party told Channel Five’s “The Wright Stuff” show.
“I think if we had a second referendum on EU membership we’d kill it off for a generation. The percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round.”
Opinion polls show little sign of a change of heart among voters. A poll in December showed 51 percent would now keep EU membership and 41 percent wanting out. But pollster BMG said that shift was largely among those who did not vote - notably many young people - in 2016; around nine in 10 “Leave” and “Remain” voters hold fast to their views.
Asked about Farage’s comments, May’s spokesman said: “We will not be having a second referendum.” ContinueReading
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
US: Teacher handcuffed after questioning superintendent’s pay raise during school board meeting
KAPLAN, La. — A Louisiana teacher who spoke out about a superintendent’s pay raise during a Vermilion Parish school board meeting on Monday was escorted out and handcuffed by a marshal, according to KATC.
Deyshia Hargrave, a middle school language arts teacher, spoke prior to the vote and questioned the school board’s decision to consider a $38,000 raise for Superintendent Jerome Puyau.
“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person of leadership getting any type of raise,” Hargrave said. “I feel like it’s a slap in the face to all the teachers, cafeteria workers and any other support staff we have. We work very hard, with very little, to maintain the salaries we have.”
Hargrave also expressed frustration that “performance goals” were cited as the reason for the raise when teachers are responsible for helping the school system reach those goals.
After the board approved the raise, Hargrave was again recognized by the board and voiced her frustrations. According to KATC, at least one school board member ruled her “out of order” at one point during the discussion.
While she was being recognized by the superintendent, an Abbeville city marshal approached her and asked her to leave. Shortly after being escorted out of the meeting, Hargrave was handcuffed by an Abbeville city marshal.
It remains unclear whether the marshal was acting on his own accord or on orders of the board members, according to KATC.
Deyshia Hargrave, a middle school language arts teacher, spoke prior to the vote and questioned the school board’s decision to consider a $38,000 raise for Superintendent Jerome Puyau.
“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person of leadership getting any type of raise,” Hargrave said. “I feel like it’s a slap in the face to all the teachers, cafeteria workers and any other support staff we have. We work very hard, with very little, to maintain the salaries we have.”
Hargrave also expressed frustration that “performance goals” were cited as the reason for the raise when teachers are responsible for helping the school system reach those goals.
After the board approved the raise, Hargrave was again recognized by the board and voiced her frustrations. According to KATC, at least one school board member ruled her “out of order” at one point during the discussion.
While she was being recognized by the superintendent, an Abbeville city marshal approached her and asked her to leave. Shortly after being escorted out of the meeting, Hargrave was handcuffed by an Abbeville city marshal.
It remains unclear whether the marshal was acting on his own accord or on orders of the board members, according to KATC.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
North Korea agrees to send athletes to South Korea Olympics
nbcnews.com: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea will send a delegation of officials and athletes to next month's Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, it was announced Tuesday after the first high-level talks between the countries in more than two years.
The two nations also agreed to hold military talks aimed at reducing animosity along their tense border and to "actively cooperate" in the Games, which open on Feb. 9 in PyeongChang some 50 miles from the boundary.
The sensitive discussions, held in Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), were closed to outside observers.
“We have high expectations that the Olympics turn out to be a peace festival with special guests from the North," said South Korea’s unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon.
His North Korean counterpart, Ri Son Gwon, added that he was optimistic about the talks as long as their “innocent intention and cooperation are united.”
In the past, talks have not gone smoothly.
Duyeon Kim, a visiting senior research fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum, a think tank in Seoul, said previous summits were plagued by posturing and “nitpicking.”
“It’s clear that the North is focused on the atmospherics and the PR aspects of these talks this time,” she said. “The big question will be what actions North Korea shows after the Winter Olympics. How will Kim Jong Un prove he is serious about inter-Korean relations?”
During the latest talks, North Korea brought up sending a large entourage — including a high-level delegation, a performing arts group, athletes, cheerleading teams, media and others — to the Games, said South Korean Deputy Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung.
The South raised other possible areas of cooperation, such as reuniting families separated by the Korean War in 1950-53 and ways to ease military tensions, Chun added.
The discussions came afer the U.S. and South Korea on Thursday announced the suspension of military exercises during the Games.
"When the ancient Greeks used to hold the Olympics, they held a truce," said Moon Chung-in, a special adviser on foreign affairs and national security to South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. "We are living in a civilized world. It is the logical choice." ContinueReading
Monday, January 8, 2018
Fighter pilot chases UFO, urges world leaders to take the threat of aliens seriously
foxnews.com: An American pilot who claims to have chased an alien aircraft has warned world leaders to take UFO sightings seriously.
Retired US Navy pilot commander David Fravor spoke out in support of ex US government intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, who last week revealed he ran a real life "X Files" UFO research department at the Pentagon named the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) funded by £16 million ($22m) “black ops money” from Congress.
Elizondo secured the release of previously classified US Defense Department videos of UFO encounters - one of which shows the craft Fravor saw darting off at an incredible speed.
Commander Fravor, 53, was flying one of two fighter jets on a routine training mission about 100 miles into the Pacific ocean off San Diego when they were diverted to check out an aircraft spotted on radar from their navy cruiser the USS Princeton.
The operations operator said they had been tracking up to a dozen mystery aircraft over two weeks but hadn't had manned planes deployed when they showed up.
The object first appeared at 80,000 ft, then hurtled towards the sea, stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering before dropping out of radar. ContinueReading
Retired US Navy pilot commander David Fravor spoke out in support of ex US government intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, who last week revealed he ran a real life "X Files" UFO research department at the Pentagon named the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) funded by £16 million ($22m) “black ops money” from Congress.
Elizondo secured the release of previously classified US Defense Department videos of UFO encounters - one of which shows the craft Fravor saw darting off at an incredible speed.
Commander Fravor, 53, was flying one of two fighter jets on a routine training mission about 100 miles into the Pacific ocean off San Diego when they were diverted to check out an aircraft spotted on radar from their navy cruiser the USS Princeton.
The operations operator said they had been tracking up to a dozen mystery aircraft over two weeks but hadn't had manned planes deployed when they showed up.
The object first appeared at 80,000 ft, then hurtled towards the sea, stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering before dropping out of radar. ContinueReading
Sunday, January 7, 2018
World of heat as southeast Australia swelters
theaustralian.com.au: The western Sydney suburb of Penrith was possibly the hottest place on the planet yesterday (Jan 7), reaching 47.3C as the NSW capital recorded its highest temperature since World War II.
The heat across the peak population centres in NSW was so extreme it plunged about 9000 homes into blackouts affecting Bateau Bay and Blue Haven on the central coast and Lane Cove, Gladesville, Bankstown and Punchbowl in Sydney.
The blackouts, according to Ausgrid, were related to “severe weather conditions”.
A heatwave caused by sweltering northerly air across central Australia swept across NSW, Victoria and South Australia at the weekend, prompting authorities to slap total fire bans on several states.
NSW residents were instructed by the Rural Fire Service to “head back home and sit in the aircon”, as temperatures soared in the greater Sydney and Hunter Valley regions.
Cricket fans braved the heat for the Ashes Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where the mercury soared to 41C by midday, though a thermometer in the sun on the pitch recorded 57C.
Penrith recorded its hottest day in 80 years at 3.25pm, the hottest place in Australia and potentially the world.
It did not manage to break the hottest record in the area of 47.8C, which was recorded at an old observation site in Richmond in 1939 when it was not part of greater Sydney.
The Bureau of Meteorology had initially forgotten about the site and had to rescind an earlier announcement of a record for greater Sydney.
BOM duty forecaster Helen Reid said the weekend’s temperatures were well above 40C in central NSW as well as most places west of the ranges.
“We saw a weak trough in the southeast of NSW, in combination with a strong high pressure system over the Tasman Sea,” Ms Reid said. “That combination provided a good flow of hot northerly air in the central part of Australia, which dragged lots of heat through the state.”
The heat across the peak population centres in NSW was so extreme it plunged about 9000 homes into blackouts affecting Bateau Bay and Blue Haven on the central coast and Lane Cove, Gladesville, Bankstown and Punchbowl in Sydney.
The blackouts, according to Ausgrid, were related to “severe weather conditions”.
A heatwave caused by sweltering northerly air across central Australia swept across NSW, Victoria and South Australia at the weekend, prompting authorities to slap total fire bans on several states.
NSW residents were instructed by the Rural Fire Service to “head back home and sit in the aircon”, as temperatures soared in the greater Sydney and Hunter Valley regions.
Cricket fans braved the heat for the Ashes Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where the mercury soared to 41C by midday, though a thermometer in the sun on the pitch recorded 57C.
Penrith recorded its hottest day in 80 years at 3.25pm, the hottest place in Australia and potentially the world.
It did not manage to break the hottest record in the area of 47.8C, which was recorded at an old observation site in Richmond in 1939 when it was not part of greater Sydney.
The Bureau of Meteorology had initially forgotten about the site and had to rescind an earlier announcement of a record for greater Sydney.
BOM duty forecaster Helen Reid said the weekend’s temperatures were well above 40C in central NSW as well as most places west of the ranges.
“We saw a weak trough in the southeast of NSW, in combination with a strong high pressure system over the Tasman Sea,” Ms Reid said. “That combination provided a good flow of hot northerly air in the central part of Australia, which dragged lots of heat through the state.”
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Macron tells Erdogan: No chance of Turkey joining EU
BBC: French President Emmanuel Macron has told his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that there is no chance of progress towards Turkey joining the European Union at present.
At a joint news conference in Paris, Mr Macron said there were differences over human rights since Turkey's purges following a failed coup in 2016.
Mr Erdogan said Turkey was tired of constantly imploring to join the EU.
He lashed out at a journalist who asked about claims Turkey sent arms to Syria.
"When you ask your questions, be careful on this point. And do not speak with the words of another," he said.
Mr Macron said it was time to end the hypocrisy of pretending that there was any prospect of an advance in Turkey's membership talks with the EU.
"As far as the relationship with the European Union is concerned, it is clear that recent developments and choices do not allow any progression of the process in which we are engaged," he said.
The talks were in effect halted following Mr Erdogan's crackdown after the coup.
But the French president also said it was important to keep a close relationship with Ankara, and that perhaps this was the moment to explore an option short of full EU membership - a partnership, as he described it, that would anchor the Turkish people in Europe.
Both men hailed co-operation in the fight against the Islamic State group. ContinueReading
Friday, January 5, 2018
Canada’s unemployment rate plunges to lowest in 40 years
FinancialPost.com: Canada’s unemployment rate plunged to the lowest in more than 40 years, suddenly raising the odds of a Bank of Canada rate hike this month.
The jobless rate fell to 5.7 per cent in December, Statistics Canada said Friday in Ottawa, the lowest in the current data series that begins in 1976. The number of jobs rose by 78,600, beating expectations and bringing the full-year employment gain to 422,500. That’s the best annual increase since 2002.
The economy showed unexpected resiliency as the year came to an end, with the figures indicating rapidly diminishing slack in the labor market that may quicken the expected pace of interest-rate increases by the Bank of Canada. Since September, Canada added 193,400 jobs — the biggest three-month gain since at least 1976. ContinueReading
The jobless rate fell to 5.7 per cent in December, Statistics Canada said Friday in Ottawa, the lowest in the current data series that begins in 1976. The number of jobs rose by 78,600, beating expectations and bringing the full-year employment gain to 422,500. That’s the best annual increase since 2002.
The economy showed unexpected resiliency as the year came to an end, with the figures indicating rapidly diminishing slack in the labor market that may quicken the expected pace of interest-rate increases by the Bank of Canada. Since September, Canada added 193,400 jobs — the biggest three-month gain since at least 1976. ContinueReading
Thursday, January 4, 2018
'Raw Water' Is a New Health Trend. But Is It Safe?
While the beverage isn’t widespread yet, a number of untreated water startups have cropped up in states ranging from California to Maine, according to the Times. They’re attracting those with misgivings about tap water treatment processes and additives, as well as people who want to preserve the natural substances found in virgin water.
But is the stuff even safe?
The water system in the U.S. isn’t perfect — there are aging pipes and infrastructure issues, for example, and lead contamination like that in Flint, Mich. — but it has greatly improved public health over the past century. After the U.S. introduced filtration, chlorination and sanitation practices for public drinking water, the burden of water-borne illnesses such as cholera and typhoid fever plummeted almost to zero, says Kellogg Schwab, a professor of water and public health at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It was truly instrumental in improving public health in the United States,” Schwab says. “Having a central treatment process of our drinking water and then distributing it out to the individual homes and businesses is a tremendous asset that we, as a country, take for granted.”
Drinking untreated water, and the pathogens that can lurk within it, could expose Americans to disease outbreaks once again, says Vince Hill, chief of the CDC’s Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch. “When water isn’t treated, it can contain chemicals and germs that can make us sick or cause disease outbreaks,” he says. “Anything you can think of can be in untreated water, really,” ranging from agricultural runoff and naturally occurring chemicals to bacteria and viruses.
And while community tap water is treated to remove 91 different contaminants, there’s little data showing what’s in raw water. “That’s the part that is concerning, because there are many sources of water contamination that can affect spring water,” Hill says.
As for concerns about fluoride — a chemical added to community water supplies to help prevent tooth decay — Vincent Casey, a senior water sanitation and hygiene manager at clean water nonprofit WaterAid, says it’s not harmful at the levels found in drinking water, even though it is hazardous at high concentrations. (Due to its potential health consequences, some vocal opponents have called for an end to water fluoridation.)
“In low quantities, it is scientifically proven that it is beneficial to dental health,” Casey says. “If a water company or a utility is carrying out its treatment to the right standards, there shouldn’t be instances where these concentrations are going to hazardous levels at all.”
If you’re concerned about your tap water, Hill says, it’s better to invest in a home filtration or testing system than to turn to untreated water.
Casey agrees. “If you’ve got the luxury of a treated, piped water supply to your home available, it’s not really a good idea to drink untreated water,” he says. “There are obviously many people in the world who don’t have that luxury.” ContinueReading
Related: Stay away from romaine lettuce, Consumer Reports advises
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Iceland equal pay law set to end gender pay gap
usatoday.com-
Until now women in Iceland have earned an average 19% less than their male colleagues. But those days are over. A new law makes equal pay for equal work a must in the country — irrespective of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality.
The new law, which went into effect New Year's Day, covers about 150,000 workers in the country. The measure applies to 1,200 companies in Iceland that have at least 25 workers, and the firms will have to publish their wage scales.
There are courses to help the companies implement the new pay scales. Upon completion, the companies get a certificate that have to be renewed every three years.
The measure intends to close the gender pay gap by 2022. Although other countries have made similar moves, for now Iceland is the global pioneer.
"The legislation is basically a mechanism that companies and organizations ... evaluate every job that's being done, and then they get a certification after they confirm the process if they are paying men and women equally," Dagny Osk Aradottir Pind of the Icelandic Women's Rights Association, told Al Jazeera. ContinueReading
Further Reading: Introduction to how capitalism works
“Equal Pay for Equal Work” – socialist or capitalist?
Feminism is incompatible with capitalism
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Amazon.com to Buy Target Corporation?
Actually, it Makes Some Sense.
investorplace.com: It remains to be seen if the eye-opening prediction that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) will acquire Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) this year was just a savvy publicity stunt, or an actual expectation. With TGT stock jumping nearly 2% on the mere mention of the idea though, the market may well be leaning towards the latter.
It was Loup Venture co-founder Gene Munster’s, by the way (yes, the same Munster that used to handicap stocks for Piper Jaffray), that made the call. He explained within a report dissecting a total of eight predictions for 2018 “Target is the ideal offline partner for Amazon for two reasons, shared demographic and manageable but comprehensive store count.”
It’s an idea that would have been laughable just a couple of years ago. While few could argue that Amazon isn’t the king of e-commerce, moving into the brick-and-mortar world wasn’t quite Jeff Bezos’ milieu.
In light of some recent acquisitions though — not the least of which was buying grocery chain Whole Foods Market — the idea doesn’t seem far-fetched at all today. More important, to current Target shareholders, such a deal may be the last bastion of hope for a graceful exit of an increasingly-troubled trade. Munster also thinks, should a deal go through, Amazon’s offer would be on the order of 15% more than the current per-share price of TGT stock.
With that as the backdrop, there are more arguments in favor of this proposed pairing then Munster laid out.
investorplace.com: It remains to be seen if the eye-opening prediction that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) will acquire Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) this year was just a savvy publicity stunt, or an actual expectation. With TGT stock jumping nearly 2% on the mere mention of the idea though, the market may well be leaning towards the latter.
It was Loup Venture co-founder Gene Munster’s, by the way (yes, the same Munster that used to handicap stocks for Piper Jaffray), that made the call. He explained within a report dissecting a total of eight predictions for 2018 “Target is the ideal offline partner for Amazon for two reasons, shared demographic and manageable but comprehensive store count.”
It’s an idea that would have been laughable just a couple of years ago. While few could argue that Amazon isn’t the king of e-commerce, moving into the brick-and-mortar world wasn’t quite Jeff Bezos’ milieu.
In light of some recent acquisitions though — not the least of which was buying grocery chain Whole Foods Market — the idea doesn’t seem far-fetched at all today. More important, to current Target shareholders, such a deal may be the last bastion of hope for a graceful exit of an increasingly-troubled trade. Munster also thinks, should a deal go through, Amazon’s offer would be on the order of 15% more than the current per-share price of TGT stock.
With that as the backdrop, there are more arguments in favor of this proposed pairing then Munster laid out.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Iran unrest: New protests as Rouhani plays down violence
BBC: There are reports of protests breaking out in Iran for a fifth day, despite a statement from the president that the unrest "is nothing".
Anti-government chanting and burning cars were reported as night fell in the capital, Tehran, while police said an officer was killed in a central city.
President Hassan Rouhani said protests were an "opportunity, not a threat" but vowed to crack down on "lawbreakers".
The US meanwhile stepped up support for the protesters' "bold resistance".
The protests began last Thursday in the city of Mashhad, initially against price rises and corruption but now with wider anti-government sentiment.
The latest reports speak of a heavy police presence in the capital. The Mehr news agency reported a taxi being set alight. Police had used tear gas and water cannon the previous evening to quell a rally in Tehran's Engheleb Square.
State media were also quoting a police spokesman as saying that shots had been fired at police in Najafabad, near Isfahan in central Iran, killing one officer and wounding three.
Social media postings spoke of fresh protests in Birjand in the east, Kermanshah in the west and Shadegan in the far south-west.
In a statement on the presidency website, Mr Rouhani sought to play down the violence.
He said: "This is nothing. Criticism and protest are an opportunity not a threat."
But he also vowed to act against "rioters and lawbreakers".
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