The World Health Organization rescinded Sunday its appointment of Zimbabwe’s longtime President Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador.

“I have listened carefully to all who have expressed their concerns, and heard the different issues that they have raised. I have also consulted with the Government of Zimbabwe and we have concluded that this decision is in the best interests of the World Health Organization,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

Tedros, who became head of the WHO in July, had announced his appointment of Mugabe two days earlier during a conference in Uruguay, saying that Zimbabwe could “influence his peers in his region” and praising the country’s commitment to providing health care for all.

But over two dozen organizations quickly released a statement slamming the decision, saying health officials were “shocked and deeply concerned” — citing Mugabe’s record of human rights abuses and claiming that the country’s healthcare system has collapsed under his nearly 30-year rule.

The United States called the appointment of Mugabe by WHO’s first African leader “disappointing.”

The United States has maintained sanctions on Zimbabwe since 2003, citing the leader’s use use of millions of dollars to travel abroad, human rights abuses, and accusations of electoral fraud.
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From: MeNeedIt

When the propaganda film, “The Founding of an Army,” hit theaters in China recently, the reaction wasn’t quite what the ruling Communist Party might have hoped for.

Instead of inspiring an outpouring of nationalism and self-sacrifice for the state, it was roundly mocked for trying to lure a younger audience by casting teen idols as revolutionary party leaders.

Viewers more used to seeing the idols play love interests in light-hearted soap operas responded to the film by projecting “modern-day romantic narratives on the founding fathers of the nation,” said Hung Huang, a well-known social commentator based in Beijing. “It was hilarious.”

Limiting Western influence

While China’s resurgent Communist Party once pushed its policies on an unquestioning public, it now struggles to compete for attention with the country’s booming entertainment industry and the celebrity culture it has spawned.

“Chinese people are increasingly ignoring party propaganda and are much more interested in movie stars, who represent a new lifestyle and more exciting aspirations,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

President Xi Jinping, who will cement his authority with his expected endorsement to a second five-year term at this week’s national party congress, has placed a priority on stamping out too much Western influence in Chinese society in part so the party can dictate the values the youth should embrace.

Authorities have responded by taking aim at everything from gossip websites to soap opera story lines to celebrity salaries. Instead of selfish, rich stars, the state is promoting performers who are all about patriotism, purity and other values that support the party’s legitimacy.

​Party values vs. youth interests

The results have at best been mixed and at worst ham-fisted and out of touch.

One problem is that the party’s values often clash with what young Chinese want to watch, according to Hung. Among the more popular shows watched by Chinese youth are those that center on palace intrigue, martial arts fantasies, high school romances or single, independent women.

“While the government could once dictate to young people what they should value and how they should lead their lives, they find themselves completely without the tools to do that now,” she said.

In the 1970s, the state was able to promote people seen as paragons of youthful devotion and selflessness, but Hung said that no longer works because young Chinese — like their counterparts in the West — now prefer to follow celebrity gossip and have the tools with which to do so.

Just this month, teen idol Lu Han, also known as China’s Justin Bieber, announced he had a girlfriend, triggering a flood of shares, responses and 4 million “likes” within a few hours that briefly crashed the country’s popular Weibo microblog service.

A recent commentary in The Global Times, a party newspaper with a nationalistic stance, railed against such celebrity worship, saying China had now surpassed the West in that regard.

That was likely a reason the government-backed China Alliance of Radio, Film and Television moved last month to cap the pay of actors, whose salaries had hit historic highs as young Chinese and a burgeoning middle class increasingly spend on movie tickets and goods.

​Gossip sites closed

In another move earlier this year, authorities closed 60 popular celebrity gossip and social media accounts and called on internet giants such as Tencent and Baidu to “actively propagate core socialist values, and create an ever-healthier environment for the mainstream public opinion.”

The tension between popular culture and state propaganda isn’t new in China. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s lieutenants railed against spiritual pollution. But it has gained new traction since Xi came to power in 2012 and officials began a wide-ranging crackdown on perceived societal ills from corruption to dissent to — now — entertainment.

“Xi Jinping has been advocating a revision to traditional, Confucian moral standards,” Lam said. “The definition of what is vulgar or morally problematic has been inflated and expanded so that it has become all-encompassing.”

Shows about the pursuit of great wealth and luxury that used to be tolerated under Xi’s predecessor, aren’t anymore.

The government has demanded that broadcasters “resist celebrity worship” and limit the air time dedicated to film and TV stars.

“The party does not want these entertainment programs to compete with news programs and ‘morality shows,’” said Jian Xu, a Chinese media research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

The government has also tried to shape some celebrities into party-sanctioned role models.

Thanks to their wholesome image and uplifting, patriotic lyrics, the TFboys, China’s first home-grown boy band, have risen to fame because of “political opportunities” they’ve been given, Xu said. The band is pursued by adoring fans and has performed twice on the coveted Lunar New Year gala hosted by state broadcaster China Central Television; it has also been promoted by the Communist Youth League.

Stars deviating from the party’s image of purity and moral acceptability, however, have been punished. In a high-profile drug crackdown in 2014, authorities publicly chastised a succession of celebrities caught using drugs, including Jackie Chan’s son, Jaycee Chan, and singer Li Daimo, forcing them to apologize on state television.
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From: MeNeedIt

Despite laws banning child marriage, rights groups in Pakistan say the problem continues, partly because of a desire to follow tradition, and partly because of poverty. No matter the reason, development experts say early marriage hurts the education and health prospects for girls. Sahar Majid brings us this report by Saman Khan from VOA’s Urdu service in Lahore.
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From: MeNeedIt

Autistic children often have social difficulties. They tend to linger on the edges of social groups at school and have fewer friendships than those without the condition. But that can change, if their classmates understand them and give them a chance. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, an Australian mother wrote and illustrated a children’s book to help kids do that. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

Hong Kong’s last remaining stock market floor traders are taking their final orders as the exchange prepares to shut its trading hall.

The bourse’s operator, Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, says it will close the trading hall by the end of the month and turn the space into a showcase for the city’s financial markets.

Yip Wing-keung, a trading manager at brokerage Christfund Securities, donned his red trading jacket for the last time Friday, his final day on the floor. He and the other few floor traders left have been moving out ahead of the closure.

Computerized trading

The shutdown marks the end of an era for the stock market, which symbolized the city’s ascent as an Asian finance hub. Activity on the floor, one of a few such venues left worldwide, dwindled as stock dealing became fully computerized.

“I feel sadness and regret,” said Yip, who has been a floor trader since the hall was opened in 1986 after four previous exchanges were merged. “Hong Kong is one of the world’s financial centers, but if we don’t have the stock market trading hall, it will be a little sorrowful. This is my own individual reflection.”

Yip said the floor traders resisted the closure. They sent a protest letter to the government but it was in vain.

“We wrote it but were overruled,” he said. “We can’t stop the times from changing.”

Peers disappearing, too

Hong Kong’s stock exchange, Asia’s third biggest by volume, follows other global peers like Tokyo, Singapore and London that have eliminated their trading floors.

In the U.S., floor traders at the New York Stock Exchange still provide the backdrop for financial TV news reports and bell-ringing ceremonies. But Chicago and New York commodity futures trading pits, where traders used old-fashioned “open outcry” techniques, have shut in recent years as volume fell to 1 percent of the total.

Hong Kong Exchanges stopped updating stats for floor trading in 2014, when it accounted for less than 1 percent of monthly turnover.

From 900 desks to 62

In the 1980s and 1990s the hall housed more than 900 trading desks. The exchange’s most recent count showed only 62 dealing desks were leased, with about 30 traders showing up on an average day. On a visit to the hall this week, only about seven traders could be seen.

Back in its heyday, floor trading was computer-assisted but dealers still needed to talk to each other to complete transactions, either by phone or in person, depending on how far away they sat from each other, Yip said.

“If they were too far you had to use the internal phone line, but if you couldn’t get through, you had to run over to them,” he said. “So you saw lots of people running back and forth.”

These days, Yip just punches orders into his computer.

“Now it’s more comfortable” but relationships with other traders are not as good as they used to be, Yip said.

He doesn’t look forward to returning to his head office.

“It won’t be so free,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Parents of small children have long been hearing about the perils of “screen time.” And with more screens, and new technologies such as Amazon’s Echo speaker, the message is getting louder.

And while plenty of parents are feeling guilty about it, some experts say it might be time to relax a little.

Go ahead and hand your kid a gadget now and then to cook dinner or get some work done. Not all kids can entertain themselves quietly, especially when they are young. Try that, and see how long it takes your toddler to start fishing a banana peel out of the overflowing trash can.

“I know I should limit my kid’s screen time a lot, but there is reality,” said Dorothy Jean Chang, who works for a tech company in New York and has a 2-year-old son. When she needs to work or finds her son awake too early, “it’s the best, easiest way to keep him occupied and quiet.”

Screen time, she says, “definitely happens more often than I like to admit.”

She’s not alone. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group focused on kids’ use of media and technology, said in a report Thursday that kids ages 8 and younger average about 2 hours and 19 minutes with screens every day at home. That’s about the same as in 2011, though it’s up from an hour and a half in 2013, the last time the survey was conducted, when smartphones were not yet ubiquitous but TV watching was on the decline.

While the overall numbers have held steady in recent years, kids are shifting to mobile devices and other new technologies, just as their parents are. The survey found that kids spend an average of 48 minutes a day on mobile devices, up from 15 minutes in 2013. Kids are also getting exposed to voice-activated assistants, virtual reality and internet-connected toys, for which few guidelines exist because they are so new.

​Mixed message

Some parents and experts worry that screens are taking time away from exercise and learning. But studies are inconclusive. 

The economist Emily Oster said studies have found that kids who watch a lot of TV tend to be poorer, belong to minority groups and have parents with less education, all factors that contribute to higher levels of obesity and lower test scores. For that reason, it’s “difficult to draw strong conclusions about the effects of television from this research,” Oster wrote in 2015.

In fact, the Common Sense survey found that kids whose parents have higher incomes and education spend “substantially less time” with screens than other children. The gap was larger in 2017 than in previous years.

Rules relaxed

For more than a quarter century, the American Academy of Pediatrics held that kids under 2 should not be exposed to screens at all, and older kids should have strict limits. The rules have relaxed, such that video calls with grandma are OK, though “entertainment” television still isn’t. Even so, guidelines still feel out of touch for many parents who use screens of various sizes to preserve their sanity and get things done.

Jen Bjorem, a pediatric speech pathologist in Leawood, Kansas, said that while it’s “quite unrealistic” for many families to totally do away with screen time, balance is key.

“Screen time can be a relief for many parents during times of high stress or just needing a break,” she said.

Moderation

Bjorem recommends using “visual schedules” that toddlers can understand to set limits. Instead of words, these schedules have images — dinner, bed time, reading or TV time, for example. 

Another idea for toddlers? “Sensory bins,” or plastic tubs filled with beads, dry pasta and other stuff kids can play around with and, ideally, be just as absorbed as in mobile app or an episode of “Elmo.”

Of course, some kids will play with these carefully crafted, Pinterest-worthy bins for only a few minutes. Then they might start throwing beans and pasta all over your living room. So you clean up, put away the bins and turn on the TV.

In an interview, Oster said that while screen time “is probably not as good for your kid as high-quality engagement” with parents, such engagement is probably not something we can give our kids all the time anyway.

“Sometimes you just need them to watch a little bit of TV because you have to do something, or you need (it) to be a better parent,” Oster said.
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From: MeNeedIt

A California judge on Friday threw out a $417 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit by a woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer after using its talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder for feminine hygiene.

The ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maren Nelson marked the latest setback facing women and family members who accuse J&J of not adequately warning consumers about the cancer risks of its talc-based products.

The decision followed a jury’s decision in August to hit J&J with the largest verdict to date in the litigation, awarding California resident Eva Echeverria $70 million in compensatory damages and $347 million in punitive damages.

New trial

Nelson on Friday reversed the jury verdict and granted J&J’s request for a new trial. Nelson said the August trial was underpinned by errors and insufficient evidence on both sides, culminating in excessive damages.

Mark Robinson, who represented the woman in her lawsuit, in a statement said he would file an appeal immediately.

“We will continue to fight on behalf of all women who have been impacted by this dangerous product,” he said.

J&J in a statement said it was pleased with the verdict, adding that it will continue to defend itself in additional trials.

The judge added that there also had been misconduct of the jury during the trial.

J&J said declarations by two jurors after the trial showed that three members of the 12-person jury who voted against finding the company liable were improperly excluded from determining damages.

Nearly 5,000 plaintiffs

J&J says it faces lawsuits by 4,800 plaintiffs nationally asserting talc-related claims. Many of those cases are in California, where Echeverria’s case was the first to go to trial, and in Missouri, where J&J has faced five trials.

The Missouri litigation led to four verdicts against J&J in which juries issued verdicts totaling $307 million. The company has won one trial.

But the Missouri cases, which have largely been brought by out-of-state plaintiffs, have faced jurisdictional questions after the Supreme Court issued a ruling in June that limited where personal injury lawsuits could be filed.

On Tuesday, a Missouri appellate court threw out a $72 million verdict by a jury in February 2016 to the family of a deceased Alabama woman after ruling the case should not have been tried in St. Louis.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Salva Kiir opened South Sudan’s first-ever kidney hospital Thursday in Juba, calling it a breakthrough for the country’s medical care.

The facility — a welcome positive sign in conflict-torn South Sudan — is to provide free services to all kidney patients in the country, including foreigners who have been residing there for at least six months.

However, the government has not explained how it will pay for the services. Oil production is the country’s main revenue-producer, and output remains far below normal as the country endures its fourth year of a civil war.

The Al Cardinal group of companies, headed by investor Asraf Seed Ahmed, built the hospital, which boasts 10 dialysis machines and the capacity to treat at least 50 patients a day, although no transplants will be performed for the time being.

As Asraf turned over management of the hospital to the government Thursday, he called on Kiir to ensure that the hospital remains well-staffed and continues to provide free care to all patients.

“Mr. President, I want this center to be taken care of. If this center is managed well, it means citizens will get good services. I call upon all the organizations and foreign embassies here to work and provide for the other needs of South Sudanese citizens,” Asraf said.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony, guests clapped and women ululated as Kiir said citizens can now receive “first-class treatment right here at home.”

“They will no longer have to travel abroad for diagnosis and long-term care,” he said.

Dr. Maker Isaac, director of Juba Teaching Hospital, said the new facility will receive 20 patients each month, but the overwhelming majority of kidney patients will be referred to other countries for treatment.

Isaac said a large number of South Sudanese patients suffered from suspected kidney diseases, many of whom died because there were no facilities available to treat or diagnose the disease.

“People die in front of us and we believe this death can be prevented simply by cleaning the blood of the patient, but we were unable to do anything. We just watch them die,” he told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

“Now, kidney patients can receive treatment, free of charge. This will make a very huge impact in the care of the patients in South Sudan,” Isaac said.
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From: MeNeedIt

A mass transit strike in the Philippines this week risks more disruptive collective action unless drivers and the government settle differences over costly upgrades to an aging yet iconic vehicle fleet, analysts say.

Thousands of drivers and operators of “jeepneys” went on strike Monday and Tuesday. The government called for two days off work and school to minimize disruption for commuters. Jeepneys are distinctly Philippine vehicles that are about the size of small buses and provide most urban mass transit.

President Rodrigo Duterte wants the aging fleet replaced by January 1 to combat air pollution. But operators may lack the money for vehicle replacements. Experts say a new strike could erupt without compromise by officials, disrupting already difficult commutes in major cities such as the capital, Manila.

“They have to meet in the middle,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila. “So, it’s more of a communication problem to probably try to address both areas, making government aware of certain things. They just have to do a compromise somewhere.”

Costly demand

The drivers went on strike to draw attention to the role of their smoke-belching but colorfully decorated vehicles. Some people carried flags and placards; a few blocked roads. Smaller strikes were held last month and in February for the same cause.

The Philippine government last year approved a modernization program to replace jeepneys older than 15 years with low-polluting vehicles, such as solar-powered ones.

It has neither offered financing to the operators nor addressed a likely increase in passenger fares on newer jeepneys, said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

“It seems like the government is already set to implement the phase-out of the jeepneys by January of next year,” Atienza said. “So it appears to disregard the livelihood of a mass of jeepney drivers who will lose their jobs. They won’t [have] money to pay for the new units, so many of them will be jobless.”

A political camp called Piston Partylist is speaking out for drivers’ interests in the legislature, adding a political element to the dispute. Experts expect more strikes over the next two months unless drivers reach a deal with the government.

Cultural icon

Jeepneys emerged after U.S. colonization of the Philippines ended in 1946. In much of the country, passengers can hail them from any roadside. They pay according to distance traveled, sometimes as little as 14 cents (seven pesos). Passengers normally sit on two long benches facing each other in a pickup truck-style bed covered with a roof. Passengers help one another pass fares up to the driver and pass back any change.

Operators often paint the vehicles in their own style and name them after women or religious figures, making the vehicles a hallmark of Philippine culture.

In Philippine cities, jeepneys provide most of the local mass transit because of the lack of bus systems or wide-reaching commuter rail networks.

Reaching a compromise on vehicle replacement could be tough in today’s political climate, said Christian de Guzman, vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s in Singapore. He cites a “heightened level of noise” and “confrontational politics” since Duterte took office in June last year.

“If you go to social media, there’s certainly a great degree of polarization that has happened over a fairly short amount of time,” de Guzman said. “Since Duterte has come in, there’s this ‘with-us-or-against-us’ type of mentality.”

Threat of more strikes

The strike earlier this week “barely affected the riding public,” the presidential office said on its website.

But repeated transit strikes or a prolonged one would eat away at commerce if people face trouble getting to work, analysts say. Low-paid commuters would also need to pay more for taxis or ride-sharing apps.

Participants in major events such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations leadership summit scheduled for Nov. 10 to 14 in Manila use private cars, leading to little disruption. If the summit coincides with a strike, delegates will find relatively little traffic in the typically gridlocked city.

“It’s sad to say, but if you ask me, traffic was tolerable,” Ravelas said, recounting the strike this week. “It just highlights the main problem, which is too many vehicles.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A malaria outbreak has killed at least four people at a refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, according to local residents and health officials.

Hundreds of people have come down with the infectious disease at the Kalobeyei refugee complex in Kenya’s Turkana County.

“Already four to six people have died due to malaria,” Galama Guyo, a health care professional at Kalobeyei, told VOA’s Horn of Africa service. “Weekly, we report more than 200 malaria cases, especially people with low body resistance [immunity].”

Health care providers do not have enough drugs to treat patients, and there is no major hospital in the area, so some patients have to travel to up to 30 kilometers for treatment, he said.

The type of malaria hitting the camps is plasmodium falciparum, one of four types common in the Horn of Africa, said Guyo.

The U.N. refugee agency is tracking the situation at Kalobeyei and the nearby town of Kakuma, says the agency’s communication director in Nairobi, Yvonne Ndege.

“Our health partners have mobilized some resources to ensure they procure enough drugs and diagnostic kits to treat the increased cases of malaria that we have seen in Kakuma and Kalobeyei,” she said. “UNHCR is also planning to provide additional drugs to help address the situation.”

Located in a very arid region, Kalobeyei hosts thousands of African immigrants, mostly from Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan.
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From: MeNeedIt

Los Angeles police say they are investigating a possible sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein — the first involving the producer in the city.

Police spokesman Sal Ramirez says the department has interviewed a possible sexual assault victim who reported an incident that occurred in 2013.

He says the investigation is ongoing and he could not answer any questions about when the interview or incident took place.

Police in New York and London are also investigating the fallen movie mogul over allegations of sex abuse in those cities.

“Mr. Weinstein obviously can’t speak to anonymous allegations, but he unequivocally denies allegations of non-consensual sex,” his representative Sallie Hofmeister wrote in a statement.

Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment or abuse by more than three dozen women, including several top actresses including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie.

He was fired from The Weinstein Co., the film company he co-founded, earlier this month after several harassment incidents were detailed in The New York Times. Additional allegations, including from three women who said Weinstein sexually assaulted them, were included in a subsequent article by The New Yorker. Two of the women, including Italian actress Asia Argento, were named while the third accuser wasn’t identified.

Argento told the magazine that in 1997 Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at a hotel in France when she was 21 years old.

Weinstein, 65, resigned from the board of directors of his former company earlier this week. He has not been seen in public since last week.

The Oscar winner has been expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America has started the process of expelling him.
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From: MeNeedIt

With U.S. midterm elections barely a year away, lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a bipartisan proposal to regulate online political advertising in the United States, an effort prompted by revelations that Russian elements spent large sums on internet ads targeting Americans ahead of the 2016 U.S. election.

“Our entire democracy was founded on the simple idea that the people in our country should be self-governing,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, at a news conference.

“Our democracy is at risk,” Klobuchar added. “We recently learned that $100,000 was spent in [Russian] rubles on Facebook political ads during the 2016 election. We know that [Russian-funded] ads were purchased in other venues, as well.”

To prevent a repeat, Klobuchar, along with Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, unveiled the Honest Ads Act, which would require Facebook, Twitter, Google and other technology giants to post information about the source of political ads, just as U.S. television and radio broadcasters are required to do.

The bill has the backing of Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Unfortunately, U.S. laws regulating transparency in political campaigns have not kept pace with rapid advances in technology, allowing our adversaries to take advantage of these loopholes to influence millions of American voters with impunity,” McCain said in a statement.

The bill also would require tech companies to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure that foreign entities are not using social media platforms for political purposes. Earlier this year, Facebook shut down a multitude of suspicious accounts that targeted elections in France.

Since its creation, the internet has been more free-wheeling and less regulated than other media forms, a feature that technology firms and others have argued is critical to its success.

Warner, a former cellphone executive, insisted he has no desire to alter cyberspace’s fundamental nature.

“We don’t want to slow down innovation in the internet,” the Virginia senator said. “But I think Americans deserve to know if the ads they are seeing are generated by Americans or generated by foreign interests.”

Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter will have a chance to weigh in on the legislation when they testify in an open hearing the Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled for next month.
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From: MeNeedIt