U.S. President Donald Trump touted the continued growth of the U.S. economy on Sunday, saying it is “better than it has been in many decades.”
“Businesses are coming back to America like never before,” Trump said in a Twitter remark, a likely theme of his State of the Union address on Tuesday. “Unemployment is nearing record lows. We are on the right track!”
He said, “Chrysler, as an example, is leaving Mexico and coming back to the USA,” an exaggeration of Chrysler’s expansion plans. Fiat Chrysler, the world’s eighth biggest auto manufacturer, says it is investing $1 billion to manufacture its profitable Ram pickup trucks in the midwestern state of Michigan, shifting the production from Mexico, but at the same time is not cutting any of its vehicle manufacturing jobs in Mexico.
The U.S. jobless rate has held steady at 4.1 percent for the last three months, the lowest figure in 17 years. The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, advanced at a 2.3 percent pace last year, Trump’s first year in office, up from 1.5 percent in 2016.
The U.S. economy, however, slowed in the last three months of 2017, expanding at a 2.6 percent annual rate, down from the 3.2 percent figure in the July-to-September period.
Attack on Jay-Z
In praising the U.S. economic performance, Trump also attacked Jay-Z, after the rap musician had assailed Trump in a Saturday news talk show over the president’s recent reported vulgar descriptions of people from Haiti and Africa as he seeks to block their immigration to the United States.
“Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!” Trump said. The black unemployment rate in the U.S. has fallen to 6.8 percent, which is still higher than the 3.7 percent figure for whites.
Jay-Z told CNN interviewer Van Jones that economic advances for blacks do not outweigh Trump’s attacks on predominantly black countries.
“Everyone feels anger, but after the anger, it’s really hurtful because he’s looking down on a whole population of people. And he’s so misinformed because these places have beautiful people,” Jay-Z said, adding, “It’s not about money at the end of the day. Money doesn’t equate to happiness. It doesn’t. That’s missing the whole point.
“You treat people like human beings,” he said.
From: MeNeedIt
To mark World Leprosy Day, the World Health Organization is calling for the eradication of this ancient disfiguring disease by combating the stigma and discrimination that discourages people from seeking the help they need.
Leprosy, a hideously disfiguring disease that has blighted the lives of countless millions since Biblical days, is curable. And yet, the World Health Organization reports more than 200,000 people, most in Southeast Asia, are affected with the disease and new cases continue to arise every year.
Leprosy is a chronic bacterial disease with a slow incubation period of about five years. In some cases, symptoms may occur within one year, but can take as long as 20 years to appear.
Leprosy was eliminated globally as a public health problem in 2000, but the disease persists in individuals and communities. WHO spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, tells VOA this is unacceptable, as an effective treatment exists that can fully cure people of leprosy.
“Since ’95, WHO has provided this multi-drug therapy free of cost to all leprosy patients in the world,” he said. “In 2016, WHO launched global leprosy strategy, 2016-2020, accelerating toward a leprosy-free world. This is basically to revamp the efforts for leprosy control. The strategy focuses on avoiding disabilities, especially among children.”
This year’s World Leprosy Day focuses on preventing disabilities in children. WHO reports children account for nearly nine percent of all new cases of leprosy, including almost seven percent of those with visible deformities.
The U.N. health agency notes early diagnosis and early treatment can prevent disability. It says disabilities do not occur overnight, but happen after a prolonged period of undiagnosed and untreated disease.
Unfortunately, it notes many people do not seek help until it is too late and deformities already have appeared. This is because of the stigma and discrimination associated with leprosy.
WHO is calling for laws discriminating against people with leprosy to be abolished and replaced with policies promoting inclusion of such people within society.
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From: MeNeedIt
For musicians from the West African nation of Burkina Faso, a nomination for a Grammy Award should have been the crowning achievement of a musical career.
Instead, musicians based in Bobo-Dioulasso, whose work is featured on the three-disk compilation “Bobo Yeye,” didn’t even know they had been nominated or that the album even existed.
“As a musician, I am totally disappointed to learn that we have spent time moaning, suffering and that someone else can just make a compilation of our music and that it is going for an award,” musician Stanislas Soré told VOA French to Africa Service on Friday.
Soré is a member of the Volta Jazz group, whose songs are part of the album titled “Bobo Yeye, Belle époque in Upper Volta,” which is nominated for two Grammy Awards.
It is a compilation of recordings in the 1970s in Bobo, second-largest city of Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta.
The news of the Grammy nomination surprised the musicians, who wondered how their music was put on CDs and distributed worldwide without their knowledge or consent. It turns out French music producer Florent Mazzoleni made the compilation produced by The Numero Group, a Chicago-based production company.
“These are artists that I have always admired and I wrote about 20 books on African music, including a book in 2015 called ‘Burkina Faso Modern Music Voltaic,’” Mazzoleni said in a phone interview.
Mazzoleni said he wanted “to pay tribute to all those people in the shadows, who made the culture of Bobo-Dioulasso.”
At the time, he said, Upper Volta was a poor country with limited ability for people to communicate with the outside world or record music. “People recorded with what they could get and yet they managed to create one of the most fascinating modern music of the continent,” Mazzoleni said.
Disagreement over book, compilation
But the artists themselves are not happy, saying he has been unfair to them. They pointed out that when they met him, he talked only about a book project.
“All I know, there was this white guy who came here; he tried to get information on what life was like in the orchestras of the old days. We understood he was going to make a book of the history of our music. But when it comes to producing a compilation or stuff like that, we’ve never talked about that, never, never, ever,” Soré, of Volta Jazz, said.
His account was backed up by Nouhoun Traoré Banakourou, saxophonist and guitarist of the group Echo Del Africa, who acknowledged that he worked with Mazzoleni on a book project, but not a compilation.
“What he is doing now is not what he offered me. When he came for the book, my son asked him for a gift for me. He gave me 200,000 CFA francs (around $380) that day,” Nouhoun Traoré recalls.
“He took a recording of our boss, Tanou Bassoumalo, an old recording, and told me he would see if he can recover the tracks and fix them. He left and never came back. Nor did he call me, or say anything else,” Traoré said.
The French producer denies these allegations. He claims to have followed all the necessary steps. “I have all the permissions, all the contracts,” he told VOA.
“I met the founders of the group, the people who had the contracts at the time, what more do you want me to tell you? Obviously, I cannot meet everyone. Obviously, when you have a project like this that comes to fruition, people talk about it and the fact that it is nominated for the Grammy Awards, it attracts the interest of some people,” Mazzoleni said.
Whatever the outcome at the award ceremony on Sunday in Madison Square Garden, Burkinabe musicians and citizens see it as an honor for their music and culture, which is getting world exposure, despite the controversy.
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From: MeNeedIt
Without the use of traditional instruments and in an interconnected world, what makes a Chinese composition distinctively Chinese? The Juilliard School’s Focus! Festival 2018 seeks to challenge our preconceptions of the 1.4 billion-population nation, led by a cast of contemporary Chinese composers and acclaimed Juilliard orchestral students. VOA’s Ramon Taylor sat down with one of China’s most prominent young conductors and the festival’s founding director on the evolving commonalities and differences of orchestral music, East and West.
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From: MeNeedIt
Officials trying to settle differences over how to update the North American Free Trade Agreement have made some progress and hope politicians decide the talks should continue, Steve Verheul, Canada’s chief negotiator, told Reuters on Saturday.
The United States, Canada and Mexico are due to finish the sixth of seven planned rounds of NAFTA discussions on Monday, with several major issues far from being resolved.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who describes the $1.2 trillion pact as a disaster, has frequently threatened to walk away from it unless major changes are made.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo will hold a news conference later Monday to announce the next steps.
Asked whether he thought the three ministers would decide there is enough momentum to continue with the next round, Verheul said: “Well, that’s our hope.”
Later in the day, he told reporters: “We’re moving in a slightly more positive direction. We’ll take that encouragement where we can.”
On balance, a ‘positive’
A Mexican official, who asked not to be named, said “we don’t foresee a negative reaction to the round. We believe the balance will be positive.”
Work is moving ahead on less contentious parts of NAFTA, the Mexican official and a Canadian source close to the talks said Saturday, and the three nations have closed a chapter on measures to fight corruption.
Canada and Mexico initially dismissed some of the main U.S. demands as unworkable but later made it clear they were ready to be more flexible.
During the sixth round, Canada raised what it called creative ways of meeting U.S. demands for higher North American content in autos, a sunset clause that would allow one party to quit the treaty after five years, and major changes to existing conflict resolution mechanisms.
“I think we have demonstrated we have engaged on most of the big issues,” Verheul said in his remarks to Reuters. “We’ve made progress on some of the smaller ones, so I think [it was] not a bad week.”
The Mexican official said that Canada’s proposals on rules of origin for autos, the sunset clause and conflict resolution mechanism were “positive, inasmuch as they are an attempt to move things forward.”
Speaking separately, a second Canadian government source said Ottawa was cautiously optimistic about the round, given that the U.S. side had not summarily rejected the proposals for compromise.
But the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said much would depend on Lighthizer’s reaction on Monday.
Fear for pact’s future
Markets and industries are worried about the possible collapse of the $1.2 trillion pact.
“It’s unclear to us that anything that anyone does here will be enough … which is concerning for agriculture,” said Brian Innes, president of the Canadian Agri-food Trade Alliance.
“Our position with all the political parties is that the negotiations must go on,” said Juan Pablo Castanon, president of the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, the umbrella group representing Mexican private sector interests at the talks.
“We want free trade, but not at any cost,” he said.
The talks were initially scheduled to wrap up by the end of March to avoid clashing with Mexico’s presidential election in July. Guajardo told Reuters on Friday that the process could be extended if need be.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist front-runner in the presidential race, said on Friday that the renegotiation should wait until after the election so that the next government, which he aims to lead, would get a say in the treaty’s future.
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From: MeNeedIt
Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki won her first grand slam title Saturday at the Australian Open in Melbourne, besting Romanian Simona Halep, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4.
“I have to take a second to hug Daphne,” Wozniacki told reporters after being awarded the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup at the prize ceremony. “It’s a dream come true, and my voice is shaking. It’s a very emotional moment.”
Wozniacki is the first player from Denmark to win a major singles title. It came nine years after her first attempt in 2009, when she lost the U.S. Open final to Kim Clijsters. She also lost the U.S. Open in 2014, to Serena Williams.
Wozniacki also paid tribute, apologetically, to her opponent. “I want to congratulate Simona. I know today is a tough day and I’m sorry I had to win,” she told reporters.
Halep, like Wozniacki, had played two major singles finals in the past without a win.
“Maybe the fourth time will be with luck,” she said before leaving the court at Laver Arena.
The competitors both took medical timeouts in their final, grueling match on a sweltering summer day.
Halep complained of dizziness and a headache when taking her timeout. After the end of the match, she said she was spent. “It was close again, but the gas was over in the end,” she said of her loss. Wozniacki, she said, “was better. She was fresher. She actually had more energy in the end.”
Wozniacki told reporters that the best thing about Saturday’s win was that she would never again have to answer a question about when she was going to win a Grand Slam title.
Now, she said, “I’m just waiting for the question, ‘When are you going to win the second one?’ ”
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From: MeNeedIt
The world has another ally in the war against microplastics. Just before Christmas, the Italian government voted to ban the tiny beads that show up primarily in beauty products by 2020. Italy joins a growing list of countries, the United States included, that have banned microplastic products. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt
In a surprise move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself Friday and stopped the approval process for the proposed Pebble Mine copper and gold mine project in southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.
“It is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
President Donald Trump has championed increased domestic mining, and the EPA’s decision to halt the Pebble Mine’s approval process comes as a surprise.
“Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection,” Pruitt said.
The Obama administration blocked the proposed mine in 2014 over environmental concerns. Last year, Pruitt reversed that decision, allowing the Canadian company behind the mine project to apply for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Pebble Limited Partnership, comprising Canadian miners Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd and First Quantum Minerals Ltd, is planning to mine 1.2 billion tons of material, including 287 million pounds of copper.
Environmentalists, commercial and sport fishermen, many Alaska Native tribal organizations and even some Republican politicians have all criticized the project, which would be built on land near Lake Clark National Park.
Alaska Governor Bill Walker, an independent, applauded the decision and thanked Pruitt “for listening to my input and that of thousands of Alaskans” who oppose the mine.
Pruitt indicated the mine could ultimately be approved.
“This decision neither deters nor derails the application process of Pebble Limited Partnership’s proposed project,” he said.
“The project proponents continue to enjoy the protection of due process and the right to proceed. However, their permit application must clear a high bar, because EPA believes the risk to Bristol Bay may be unacceptable,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt
Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation three weeks ago praised Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke after he announced nearly all federal waters off the state’s coast could be offered for petroleum lease sales.
But after hearing from critics who do not want drilling in their home waters, U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young are backtracking.
In a letter Friday to Zinke, the delegation requested that most Alaska waters from the state’s Panhandle to the Bering Strait be removed from the proposed five-year drilling plan.
Instead, they urged lease sales in only three areas: Cook Inlet, where petroleum platforms have extracted oil and natural gas for decades, and the Arctic waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
“We believe the strongest near-term offshore program in Alaska is one that focuses on the Chukchi, Beaufort and Cook Inlet,” they wrote. “Such a program will maximize agency resources and reflect the areas with the broadest support for development among Alaskans.”
Zinke announced the proposed lease sale plan Jan. 4. He said revisions could be made after public comment.
Immediate opposition
The proposal excluded only one area of Alaska: the North Aleutian Basin, home to Bristol Bay and the world’s largest run of sockeye salmon.
The proposal drew immediate opposition from governors in East and West Coast states. After Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, met with Zinke, the secretary announced that drilling would be “off the table” for waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean off Florida.
Subsistence resources
In Alaska, proposed lease sales in the Bering Sea drew strong condemnation from the Bering Sea Elders Group, an association of Alaska Native elders appointed from 39 tribes, and Kawerak Inc., a regional nonprofit organization, which said oil and gas activities pose a serious threat to marine life.
“These basins are where tribes from our region have harvested subsistence resources for millennia and where local people from our region fish and crab commercially,” Kawerak said in an announcement.
Drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, home to polar bears, walrus and ice seals that support the subsistence economies of coastal villages, is strongly opposed by environmental groups. They say the harsh climate makes spills inevitable and that cleanup of a major spill would be impossible in waters choked by or covered in sea ice.
Oil estimates
However, federal regulators say the Beaufort Sea, off Alaska’s north coast, holds an estimated 8.9 billion barrels of oil and the Chukchi, off Alaska’s northwest coast, holds an estimated 15.4 billion barrels.
Royal Dutch Shell spent $2.1 billion on Chukchi Sea leases in 2008, invested another $5 billion overall in U.S. Arctic waters, and pulled out after drilling a dry hole in 2015.
Murkowski, Sullivan and Young contend drilling in Arctic waters can be done safely. They said they strongly support the inclusion of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas for lease sales between 2019 and 2024, while at the same time urging “meaningful consultation” with communities.
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From: MeNeedIt
A U.S. trade commission on Friday handed an unexpected victory to Bombardier Inc. against Boeing Co., in a ruling that allows the Canadian company to sell its newest jets to U.S. airlines without heavy duties, sending Bombardier’s shares up 15 percent.
The U.S. International Trade Commission’s unanimous decision was the latest twist in U.S.-Canadian trade relations that have been complicated by disputes over tariffs on Canadian lumber and U.S. milk and President Donald Trump’s desire to renegotiate or even abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Trump, who did not weigh in on the dispute personally, took his “America First” message to the world’s elite on Friday, telling a summit that the United States would “no longer turn a blind eye” to what he described as unfair trade practices.
The ITC commissioners voted 4-0 that Bombardier’s prices did not harm Boeing and discarded a U.S. Commerce Department recommendation to slap a near 300 percent duty on sales of the company’s 110- to 130-seat CSeries jets for five years. It did not give a reason immediately.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the commission’s finding “shows how robust our system of checks
and balances is.”
Boeing’s shares closed flat.
“It’s reassuring to see that facts and evidence matter,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “This part of the trade policy process works unimpeded despite President Trump’s protectionist rhetoric.”
Removing ‘uncertainty’
The decision will also help Bombardier sell the CSeries in the United States by removing “a huge amount of uncertainty,” at a time when its Brazilian rival Embraer is bringing its new E190-E2 jet to market, a source familiar with the
Canadian plane and train maker’s thinking said.
The ITC had been expected to side with Chicago-based Boeing. The company alleged it was forced to discount its 737 narrow-bodies to compete with Bombardier, which it said used government subsidies to dump the CSeries during the 2016 sale of 75 jets at “absurdly low” prices to Delta Air Lines.
Bombardier called the trade case self-serving after Boeing revealed on December 21 that it was discussing a “potential combination” with Embraer. Boeing denied the trade case was motivated by those talks.
Boeing to look at options
The dispute may not be over. “This can still be appealed by Boeing,” Andrew Leslie, parliamentary secretary to Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia
Freeland, told reporters in Montreal.
Boeing said it would not consider such options before seeing the ITC’s reasoning in February.
But Boeing said it was disappointed the commission did not recognize “the harm that Boeing has suffered from the billions of dollars in illegal government subsidies that the Department of Commerce found Bombardier received and used to dump aircraft in the U.S. small single-aisle airplane market.”
Bombardier, Delta and the U.S. consumer advocacy group Travelers United all called the ITC decision a victory for consumers and airlines.
The decision may end up helping Trump’s goal of boosting U.S. jobs as the CSeries jets for U.S. airlines will be built in the United States rather than Canada.
Through a venture with European planemaker Airbus SE, which has agreed to take a majority stake in the CSeries this year, Bombardier plans to assemble CSeries jets in Alabama to be sold to U.S. carriers starting in 2019.
Sweet surprise
Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders promised to push ahead “full throttle” with the Alabama plans. “Nothing is sweeter than a surprise, a surprise victory,” he said.
The case had sparked trade tensions between the United States and its allies Canada and the United Kingdom. Ottawa last year scrapped plans to buy 18 Super Hornet fighter jets from Boeing.
The well-paid jobs associated with the CSeries are important both to Ottawa and the British government. Bombardier employs about 4,000 workers in Northern Ireland.
The British prime minister’s office said it welcomed the decision, “which is good news” for the British industry, while Canada’s innovation minister said the ITC came to the “right decision” on Bombardier.
Former ITC Chairman Dan Pearson praised the decision. “Not a single commissioner was willing to buy Boeing’s arguments,” he said. “I think ‘America First’ is a policy of the White House and the Commerce Department. But it’s not the policy of an independent agency [like the ITC].”
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From: MeNeedIt