Polo Ralph Lauren unveiled Team USA’s Olympic parade uniforms Monday and social media haters can leave the ugly sweater jokes back in Sochi.

Roundly mocked in 2014 for a chaotic, patchwork cardigan sweater, the brand went classic red, white and blue this time around for the opening ceremony and white for the closing parade of athletes in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Both have a cozy bit of technology built in to keep athletes extra warm. 

Athletes will be treated to stretchy skinny jeans and a far less busily designed sweater for opening, with a stretch knit pant – think structured sweat pant – for closing. The jeans have moto-inspired seaming. Accessories include a navy wool ski hat and USA-themed navy bandanna. On the athletes’ feet will be brown suede mountaineering boots with red laces for the outdoor opening.

And then there are the gloves. They’re more Ralph than Ralph himself, a Western style in suede with fringe in rawhide brown and decorated in hand-beaded Olympic rings and an American flag. They’re lined in white and fit over the wrists. Warm, yes. Yee haw! Lasso not included.

David Lauren, the youngest son of the brand’s namesake and the company’s chief innovation officer, was proud of the technology for the tri-colored parkas in mostly navy blue and the bombers for the end of the Winter Games.

In a process developed exclusively for the brand, the heating system is made of electronic printed conductive inks in silver and black in the shape of an America flag and bonded to the interior backs of the jackets, he said. Athletes can control basic settings using their cellphones for up to five hours of heat on high and up to 11 hours on low, fully charged.

A limited number were released for sale to fans and were selling quickly, Lauren said. All garments are American made.

The brand has been the official outfitter of the U.S. Olympic Committee and Team USA since 2008. The uniforms will also be worn by the Paralympic Games teams. 

“Every season we learn from the athletes,” Lauren said. “We work very closely with them, where we find out what makes them comfortable as they’re walking out on this amazing stage in front of the entire world.”

The story Lauren is trying to tell this time around is a celebration of the past, he said, “so we have gloves inspired by the frontier movement, we have jeans that celebrate another era of American entrepreneurship and jackets that heat up, which show that America is continuing to evolve.”

The jacket technology displays the temperature inside the garment to help the athletes decide on settings. 

The company was looking to display a boldness in the looks this year. It was about comfort, however, as opposed to playing into the tumultuous politics of the last year.

And what does Lauren say to critics who have poked fun in the past? 

“We’re very proud to work with Team USA,” he said. “This year we’re excited to say that most of the outfits have already sold out.”

Enthusiasts can buy pieces online and in a handful of Ralph Lauren stores around the country, including a customizable ski hat, Lauren said. A portion of proceeds will be donated to athletes’ training.

The uniforms were modeled in a Polo Ralph Lauren store in downtown Manhattan by sister-brother, Lauren-sponsored ice dancing team Maia and Alex Shibutani. 

“The jacket is going to be perfect for the cold weather,” Alex said. “We love the jacket especially.”

Maia was impressed by the stretch in the jeans. 

“I’m going to be wearing these all the time, definitely.”

And those gloves?

“There’s some nice detailing,” Alex offered. “There’s ‘Polo’ right there on the side.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Uganda’s cancer patients can finally breathe a sigh of relief after the country got a new cobalt-60 radiation treatment machine. But, health officials say this may not be enough because of an ever increasing number of cancer cases in the country. Halima Athumani reports for VOA from Kampala.
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From: MeNeedIt

A trade group representing U.S. auto parts makers on Monday urged the Trump administration to adopt NAFTA automotive rules that cover research, engineering, design and software development work as part of North American regional value content goals.

The proposal from the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) was sent to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as a sixth round of negotiations to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement began in Montreal.

U.S. demands for sweeping changes to automotive content rules are among the most contentious issues in the NAFTA talks, including a requirement that half the value of all North American vehicles come from the United States and a far higher content requirement of 85 percent from North America.

Canada and Mexico have said the U.S. targets are unworkable, but have not responded with counter-proposals.

They are expected to do so at the Montreal talks ending Jan 29. Lack of progress in bridging the gap on autos could jeopardize the negotiations and increase the chances that President Donald Trump follows through on his threat to seek a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA.

The U.S. auto industry, including MEMA and trade groups representing Detroit and foreign-brand automakers, have largely sided with Canada and Mexico in arguing that the U.S. proposals would hurt the industry’s competitiveness.

The MEMA letter to Lighthizer makes no mention of the proposed U.S. and regional content targets, and focuses instead on recommendations that its members believe will help retain and grow automotive jobs in the United States.

“We think it lines up very well with the president’s initiatives and his stated goals for NAFTA and other free trade agreements,” Ann Wilson, MEMA’s senior vice president of government affairs, told Reuters. “What we have been trying to do is find other ways of getting to the president’s objectives without getting to a 50 percent domestic requirement.”

Counting the well-paid engineering, design, research and software development as part of a vehicle’s value content would provide an incentive for companies to retain jobs doing this work now largely done in the United States.

The proposal also urges the Trump administration to preserve “tariff-shifting” for automotive parts as a means to retain the higher value-added work being done on sophisticated automotive electronics and other systems.

Currently, companies that import components and materials into North America and convert them into automotive parts can “shift,” or apply, NAFTA tariff-free benefits to such inputs.

For example, off-the-shelf electronics parts from Asia such as lidar and radar units, cameras, sensors and circuit boards currently gain this benefit as they are assembled into vehicle crash avoidance systems. Steel tubing converted to fuel injectors also can gain such benefits.

But the current USTR autos proposal would require that virtually all components be subject to a “tracing list” to verify their North American origin so they can count toward regional value targets.

The tracing list would be expanded to steel, glass, plastic resins and other materials, under the proposal.

Industry executives have argued that these requirements are likely to push auto and parts companies to source more products outside the region and simply pay the low 2.5 percent U.S. tariffs on many parts.

MEMA also urged Lighthizer to negotiate an agreement that provides incentives to U.S. companies to train and expand the U.S. workforce, as parts companies struggle to fill open positions amid rising retirements. The group also urged that aftermarket parts be subject to the same NAFTA rules as original equipment parts.
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From: MeNeedIt

Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, winner of the National Book Award for fiction, is now a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle prize.

Other finalists announced Monday include Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West for fiction, Roxane Gay’s Hunger for autobiography and Masha Gessen’s The Future is History, winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction. The celebrated author-journalist John McPhee will receive a lifetime achievement award and Carmen Maria Machado, author of the story collection Her Body and Other Parties, will be honored for best debut book. The author-critic Charles Finch will receive a citation for “excellence in reviewing.”

The critics circle chose five nominees in each of six competitive categories: fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, biography, poetry and criticism. Winners will be announced March 15.

Fiction nominees besides Ward’s haunting story of family and race in the American South include Hamid’s best-selling tale of young lovers who become refugees, Exit West; Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour; Joan Silber’s Improvement and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, her first novel since winning the Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small of Things.

Besides Gessen, nonfiction nominees were Jack E. Davis for Gulf: The Making of An American Sea, Frances FitzGerald for The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Kapka Kassabova for Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe and Adam Rutherford for A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes.

In biography, the finalists were Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires, Edmund Gordon’s The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography, Howard Markel’s The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek, William Taubman’s Gorbachev: His Life and Times and Kenneth Whyte’s Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times.

Autobiography finalists besides Gay’s Hunger were Thi Bui’s An Illustrated Memoir, Henry Marsh’s Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon, Ludmilla Petrushevskay’s The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia and Xiaolu Guo’s Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China.

In poetry, the nominees were Nuar Alsadir for Fourth Person Singular, James Longenbach for Earthling, Layli Long Soldier for Whereas, Frank Ormsby for The Darkness of Snow and Ana Ristovic for Directions for Use.

Edwidge Danticat, a prize-winning novelist and memoir writer, is a finalist in criticism for The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. The poet Kevin Young is also a criticism nominee for Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. The others cited were Carina Chocano for You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages, Camille T. Dungy for Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History and Valeria Luiselli for Tell Me How it Ends.

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, is comprised of around 1,000 critics and book review editors.
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From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization’s director general is calling on its 192 member states to adopt universal health care as the best way of guaranteeing health for all.

This is the first time Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has addressed the 34-member executive board since assuming his post in July as the first African head of the World Health Organization. And the former Ethiopian health minister was not shy about touting his accomplishments during his first six months in office.

He said a plan to transform the WHO into a stronger, more relevant organization has been developed. Tedros proudly noted he had achieved gender parity in the WHO’s top ranks, with women outnumbering men.

Tedros said the WHO has built strong political momentum on non-communicable diseases and tuberculosis, and that a new initiative to combat the health effects of climate change in small island developing states has been launched. He appeared most enthusiastic about his vision to achieve health for all.

“At least half the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services. And almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty every year because of out-of-pocket health spending. This must end,” he said.

Tedros said recent visits to Kenya, Madagascar and Rwanda convinced him that universal health coverage is not a pipe dream. He said all three countries are creating affordable health care systems.

“I am more convinced than ever that UHC [universal health care] is not only the best investment in a healthier world, it is also the best investment in a safer world. As you have heard me say, universal health coverage and health security are two sides of the same coin,” he said.

The WHO chief said he hoped to advance this issue at the World Health Assembly in May. He said he would ask as many countries as possible to make commitments at the WHA regarding the action they will take toward achieving universal health coverage at home.
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From: MeNeedIt

The International Monetary Fund says the global economy grew at a faster than expected 3.7 percent pace in 2017 and will do better this year and next.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde called predictions of strengthening growth “very welcome news.” She spoke Monday in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual World Economic Forum.

IMF experts say 120 nations, representing three-quarters of the global economy, saw growth last year. IMF experts said tax cuts in the United States will have a positive but “short term” impact on the economy.

Lagarde urged political and economic leaders to take advantage of good times to make reforms that will soften the impact of the next, inevitable, economic downturn.

She said there is “significant” uncertainty in the year ahead, where a long period of low interest rates may have inflated the value of stocks and other assets to unsustainable levels. She also says a rise in debt levels is a concern.

Growth must be more inclusive, she added. She also said more efforts to retrain people displaced by automation, create opportunities for young people and bring more women into the labor force will all help.

Lagarde is only one of many leaders expected to speak at the Davos gathering. U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to address fellow heads of state and others later this week, but White House officials say Washington’s current political impasse that has shut down many normal functions of government make that trip “not very likely.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Kid Rock has donated about $122,000 from sales of merchandise promoting his potential U.S. Senate campaign to a voter-registration organization.

The Detroit-area rocker, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, teased the public for months. At a September concert, he was introduced as Michigan’s “next senator.”  In October, he confirmed he wasn’t running.

Kid Rock’s publicist, Jay Jones, said in an email to The Detroit News that money raised from political merchandise was sent to CRNC Action, an affiliate of the College Republican National Committee that did voter-registration work last summer at Kid Rock concerts.

Ted Dooley, president of CRNC Action, says the donation was made in December. He says registering voters at the concerts was “pretty much like other voter registration work we do… except a lot more fun.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Some New Caledonian crows craft hooked tools out of branched twigs, and Scottish biologists have discovered why – the birds can extract food from cracks and crevises several times faster than by using straight twigs.

“It is a painstaking sequence of behaviors,” explains Professor James St. Clair, from the University of St. Andrews, the lead author of the new study in the current issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution.  “Crows seek out particular plant species, harvest a forked twig, and then, firmly holding it underfoot, carve, nibble and peel its tip, until it has a neat little hook.”

Watch a New Caledonian crow make and use a hooked tool (Credit Rutz Group)

The Scottish team conducted experiments to record how long wild-caught crows took to extract food from a range of naturalistic tasks, using either hooked or non-hooked tool designs.  Depending on the task, they found that hooked tools were between two and 10 times more efficient than non-hooked tools.

Although it takes the crow a while to create the hook, getting food more quickly means it has more time and energy for reproduction and avoiding predators.  The researchers do not know whether the hook-making know-how is inherited or learned by observation, but because hooked-tool users will live longer and leave more offspring, the skill is expected to spread.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Once a hugely productive gold mine in the western state of South Dakota, it is now being used as an underground research lab where scientists are trying to learn more about the universe. VOA’s Lesya Bakalets and Serge Sokolov went to the former mine to report on what is now a world class research lab that attracts scientists from across the globe.
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From: MeNeedIt

Australia has filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization that accuses Canada of placing “discriminatory” rules on the sales of imported wine.

Canada is Australia’s fourth-biggest wine market. Officials in Canberra say rules in Canada unfairly discriminate against overseas wine.

An official protest has been lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against regulations in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where wine produced locally can be sold in grocery stores but imports must be sold in a “store within a store” with a separate cash register.

Canberra’s objection also targets policies in other provinces, including Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, as well as federal practices in Canada, which could breach a WTO agreement. They mean higher prices for foreign wines, as well as other barriers to sale, according to the Australian complaint.

“Australia is seeing its market share and that market erode. That concerns me, it concerns wine exporters,” said Australian trade minister Steve Ciobo. “Potentially this could cost Australian jobs, so I want to make sure we are on the front foot about protecting Australia’s interests.”

Australia’s complaint to the WTO is similar to one made by the United States, which has accused Canada of placing unfair limits on the sale of imported wine.

In October, the U.S. said British Columbia was favoring local vineyards by giving their wine an exclusive retail outlet in grocery store shelves and cutting out U.S. competition.

A spokesman for Canada’s international trade minister said the federal government works to ensure its liquor policies “are consistent with our international trade commitments”.

Under WTO rules, Canada has 60 days to settle the dispute with Australia.

After that, Canberra could ask the WTO to adjudicate, which could result in Canada being forced to change its laws or risk trade sanctions.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Iran’s supreme leader has ordered the Revolutionary Guard to loosen its hold on the economy, the country’s defense minister says, raising the possibility that the paramilitary organization might privatize some of its vast holdings.

The comments this weekend by Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami appear to be a trial balloon to test the reaction of the idea, long pushed by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate. Protests over the country’s poor economy last month escalated into demonstrations directly challenging the government.

But whether the Guard would agree remains unclear, as the organization is estimated to hold around a third of the country’s entire economy.

Hatami, the first non-Guard-affiliated military officer to be made defense minister in nearly 25 years, made the comments in an interview published Saturday by the state-run IRAN newspaper. He said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered both the country’s regular military and the Guard to get out of businesses not directly affiliated to their work.

“Our success depends on market conditions,” the newspaper quoted Hatami as saying.

He did not name the companies that would be privatized. The Guard did not immediately acknowledge the supreme leader’s orders in their own publications, nor did Khamenei’s office.

The Guard formed out of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its political system, which is overseen by Shiite clerics. It operated parallel to the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during the country’s long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s. It runs Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well its own intelligence operations and expeditionary force.

In the aftermath of the 1980s war, authorities allowed the Guard to expand into private enterprise.

Today, it runs a massive construction company called Khatam al-Anbia, with 135,000 employees handling civil development, the oil industry and defense issues. Guard firms build roads, man ports, run telecommunication networks and even conduct laser eye surgery.

The exact scope of all its business holdings remains unclear, though analysts say they are sizeable. The Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which long has been critical of Iran and the nuclear deal it struck with world powers, suggests the Guard controls “between 20 and 40 percent of the economy” of Iran through significant influence in at least 229 companies.

In his comments, Hatami specifically mentioned Khatam al-Anbia, but didn’t say whether that too would be considered by the supreme leader as necessary to privatize. The Guard and its supporters have criticized other business deals attempting to cut into their piece of the economy since the nuclear deal.
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From: MeNeedIt

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister urged global oil producing nations on Sunday to extend their cooperation beyond 2018, but said this might mean a new form of deal rather than continuing the same supply cuts that have boosted prices in recent months.

It was the first time that Saudi Arabia had publicly raised the possibility of a new form of coordination among oil producers after 2018. Their agreement on supply cuts, originally launched last January, is set to expire in December this year.

Cooperation ‘here to stay’

Khalid al-Falih, speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting later in the day of the joint ministerial committee, which oversees implementation of the cuts, said extending cooperation would convince the world that coordination among producers was “here to stay.”

“We shouldn’t limit our efforts to 2018, we need to be talking about a longer framework of cooperation,“ Falih said. ”I am talking about extending the framework that we started, which is the declaration of cooperation, beyond 2018.

“This doesn’t necessarily mean sticking barrel by barrel to the same limits or cuts, or production targets country by country that we signed up to in 2016, but assuring stakeholders, investors, consumers and the global community that this is something that is here to stay. And we are going to work together.”

Falih said the global economy had strengthened while supply cuts, of which Saudi Arabia has shouldered by far the largest burden, had shrunk oil inventories around the world. As a result, the oil market will return to balance in 2018, he said.

$70 a barrel oil

Falih and energy ministers from the United Arab Emirates and Oman noted that the rise of the Brent oil price to three-year highs around $70 a barrel in recent weeks could cause an increase in supply of shale oil from the United States.

But both Falih and UAE minister Suhail al-Mazroui said they did not think the rise in prices would hurt global demand for oil.

Kuwait’s oil minister Bakheet al-Rashidi said any discussion among producers on the future of the agreement on supply cuts would not occur Sunday, but was expected to happen at a meeting in June. OPEC and other producers led by Russia are next scheduled to meet to discuss oil policy in June.
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From: MeNeedIt