A Bulgarian skier has come out of retirement for another shot at Olympic gold. He competed in Sochi under the Balkan country’s flag, but at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, he’d be a one-man team. Arash Arabasadi reports.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Wearable technology is finding its way into many workouts. The thinking is that constantly monitoring their body can help people get the most out of their time at the gym. That’s the idea behind Orange theory, the newest U.S. fitness fad. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Mathilde Krim, a prominent AIDS researcher who galvanized worldwide support in the early fight against the deadly disease, has died. She was 91.

Krim was founding chairman of The Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR. The nonprofit says she died at her home in King’s Point, New York, on Monday.

amfAR Chief Executive Officer Kevin Robert Frost says in a statement “so many people alive today literally owe their lives” to her.

Krim was a geneticist with experience in cancer research when AIDS first surfaced in the early 1980s. Over the next several decades, she mobilized a vast army of celebrities and others to help raise money and to lessen the disease’s stigma.

In 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Ethiopian Airlines says it has finalized an agreement with Zambia to re-launch the southern African country’s national carrier.

The partnership with Zambia comes as Ethiopian Airlines is opening new routes and hubs and is acquiring new aircraft.

In a statement Tuesday, the airline said it will have a 45 percent stake in the Zambian carrier and it aims to make the Zambian capital, Lusaka, its newest aviation hub. The remaining 55 percent will be acquired by the Zambian government which is aiming to revive the country’s aviation sector after Zambia Airways ceased operations on January 2009.

“The launching of Zambia Airways will enable the traveling public in Zambia and the Southern African region to enjoy greater connectivity options,” said Ethiopian Airlines CEO, Tewolde Gebremariam. “It is only through partnerships among African carriers that the aviation industry of the continent will be able to get its fair share of the African market, currently heavily skewed in favor of non-African airlines.”

Gebremariam told The Associated Press earlier this month his company is also exploring opportunities in other African countries including Mozambique, Djibouti and Congo.

Ethiopian Airlines currently operates from hubs in Lomé, Togo with ASKY Airlines and in Lilongwe, Malawi. Its main hub is in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Ethiopian Airlines currently flies to more than 100 destinations. Airline officials say that recent currency devaluations in some African countries and a subsequent rise in jet fuel prices could hamper its profits.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Bitcoin slid as much as 18 percent on Tuesday to a four-week low, as fears of a regulatory crackdown on the market spread after reports suggested it was still possible that South Korea could ban trading in cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin’s slide triggered a selloff across the broader cryptocurrency market, with biggest rival Ethereum down 23 percent on the day at one point, according to trade website Coinmarketcap, and the next-biggest, Ripple, plunging by as much as a third.

Bitcoin traded as low as $11,191.59 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange. By 1400 GMT it has edged up to $11,650, but that was still down more than 14 percent, leaving it on track for its biggest one-day fall since September.

Jamie Burke, chief executive of Outlier Ventures, a venture capital firm that is one of the biggest holders of top-10 cryptocurrency IOTA, said the belief the market was overdue a correction was making traders jittery and that was exacerbating the scale of the moves.

“Anybody that understands the technology knows there’s going to be a correction – it’s going to be a big correction and it’s going to be indiscriminate, because there are no established fundamentals for anybody to distinguish between where there is and isn’t value,” Burke said.

“There’s no way you can rationalize that there’s any value in the market at the moment; everything is significantly overpriced,” he added. Burke holds a number of top-20 cryptocurrencies in a personal capacity.

South Korean news website Yonhap reported that Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon had told a local radio station that the government would be coming up with a set of measures to clamp down on the “irrational” cryptocurrency investment craze.

South Korea said on Monday that its plans to ban virtual coin exchanges had not yet been finalized, as government agencies were still in talks to decide how to regulate the market.

Further China Crackdown

That came amid news that a senior Chinese central banker had said authorities should ban centralized trading of virtual currencies and prohibit individuals and businesses from providing related services.

China shut down exchanges operating on the mainland last year – a move that also sparked a selloff, though the market later recovered.

“It’s mainly been regulatory issues which are haunting (bitcoin), with news around South Korea’s further crackdown on trading the driver today,” said Think Markets chief strategist Naeem Aslam, who holds what he described as “substantial” amounts of bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple.

“But we maintain our stance. We do not think that the complete banning of cryptocurrencies is possible,” he said.

Cryptocurrencies enjoyed a bumper year in 2017 as mainstream investors entered the market and as an explosion in so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) – digital token-based fundraising rounds – drove demand for bitcoin and Ethereum.

The latest tumble leaves bitcoin down around 40 percent from a record high near $20,000 hit in mid-December, wiping about $130 billion off its total market value – the unit price multiplied by the number of bitcoins that have been released into the market.

A director at Germany’s central bank said on Monday that any attempt to regulate cryptocurrencies must be on a global scale as national or regional rules would be hard to enforce on a virtual, borderless community.

The latest plunge in the market came as wealth management firm deVere Group, which has $12 billion under advisement, said it was launching a cryptocurrency app that would allow users to store, transfer and exchange five of the biggest digital coins, citing “soaring global demand”.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Milan has long been the world’s ready-to-wear fashion leader. Now, dogs are getting in on the city’s sartorial scene with a new line of haute couture for canines.

Dog-a-Porter, by the Milan brand Temellini, offers clothing custom-fit for different breeds, ranging from the tiny Chihuahua to the stately greyhound. The line includes cashmere knits, nylon bomber jackets with tiny arms, Sherlock Holmes-style capes and lined raincoats.

The capes cost 170 euros ($208 and synthetically filled hooded parkas go for 210 euros ($256) to reflect the extra time it takes to get the fine stitching on the elasticized sleeves just right.

Designer Giovanna Temellini says fashionable dog clothes aren’t just an indulgence since her luxury outerwear protects pooches accustomed to being indoors when they are brought outside.
…

From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization has added all of Sao Paulo state to its list of areas at risk for yellow fever.

That puts the megacity of Sao Paulo on the list and means that the organization is recommending that all international visitors to the state be vaccinated.

Tuesday’s announcement comes as an outbreak is gathering steam in Brazil ahead of Carnival, a major draw for foreign tourists. The WHO says 11 human cases have been confirmed through last week and hundreds more found in monkeys.

Much of Brazil is considered at risk for yellow fever, but the coast was largely considered safe. Last year, however, Brazil saw an unusually large outbreak of the disease, including in areas not previously at risk. In response, Brazil rushed to vaccinate millions of people.
…

From: MeNeedIt

There are plenty of reasons why the sport of bobsleigh is sometimes referred to as Formula One on ice but few as obvious as Italy’s World Cup sleds.

Resplendent in Ferrari red, and with a set of team sponsor Pirelli’s P-Zero tires painted on the sides, they are even liveried to look like racing cars.

Ferrari, Formula One’s most glamorous and successful team, have worked with the Italian federation, whose sleds run without sponsor branding at the Olympics, since 2010 and in the run-up to next month’s Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Former rivals BMW, title sponsors of the World Cup, have long partnered the U.S. bobsleigh team while McLaren teamed up with Britain’s bob and skeleton athletes for the 2014 Sochi Games in Russia.

“There’s always the link between the Formula One companies, or any motor company, and skeleton and bobsleigh,” says Rachel Blackburn, the engineer who has been involved in Britain’s skeleton program since 2006 and who used to work for McLaren.

“There’s the Ferrari sleds and the BMW sleds, … when we were at McLaren it kind of made a good story,” she told Reuters by telephone from her home in Dubai.

That somewhat manufactured rivalry has died down in the years since Sochi, with McLaren no longer involved and Ferrari’s presence distinctly low key.

But the worlds of grand prix motor racing and sliding sports still have plenty in common.

Bobsleigh, luge and skeleton are among the fastest of Olympic sports, with bobsleds reaching speeds in excess of 150 kph (93 mph). Drivers are subjected to gut-wrenching G-forces, crashes can be fatal.

And then there is the ongoing debate about cost controls, the direction of future rules, preserving a level playing field and obsessive secrecy — all endlessly recurring themes in Formula One.

Tea-tray

Blackburn said skeleton, where riders hit 130 kph (81 mph) on what has glibly been compared to an oversized tea-tray, sits somewhere between Americas Cup yachts and Formula One cars in terms of speed and aerodynamics.

“Applied engineering is far more interesting than the pure stuff, so when its applied to something that’s fun and exciting it does make it a lot easier to solve problems,” she said.

“There is the Americas Cup, sailing, Formula One and the high speed ice sports as well. It’s the same concept. In the skeleton we’re still looking at chassis dynamics, it’s not dissimilar.”

The Briton, who lent her name to the “Project BlackRoc” that helped Amy Williams and Lizzy Yarnold win golds in 2010 and 2014, now chairs the world governing body’s Skeleton Material Committee.

James Roche, the aero expert and other half of “BlackRoc” who also went to McLaren after the 2010 Games, married Yarnold last year and has turned his talents to Americas Cup yachting with Ben Ainslie Racing.

Together Blackburn and Roche helped design the “super sled,” also known as “Mervyn,” that may help Yarnold become the first British athlete to defend a Winter Olympics title.

Yarnold spoke before the season started about the thrill of being presented with new developments for the Games, and the accompanying buzz of secrecy.

Blackburn, who now has her own consultancy, compared that to a Formula One team testing pre-season while keeping the latest front wing developments firmly under wraps until the opening race.

“Athletes come and go and you don’t want your work getting spread around the world before you’ve made it work. so there is quite a bit of secrecy,” she said. “With some of the things … they will just be brought out at the very last minute. They’ll be things we’ve worked on but not rolled out until the Games because we don’t want Germany, Canada, America copying something.”

Painful process

Although the sled’s structural innards are seen only by the competing nation and competition inspectors, Blackburn said there were few real secrets from past Games as coaches and athletes moved around.

Most of the loopholes have also been closed and Blackburn, an advocate for change, said it remained “an incredibly painful process” to bring the rules into a more modern era and encourage innovation.

A skeleton sled has a carbon fiber pan on the outside but the chassis is made from steel, a material that is both heavy and expensive as well as distinctly low-tech compared to other options.

“There’s lots of different materials now that could be used that are much easier and cheaper to manufacture,” said Blackburn. “With the onset of 3-D printing, if somebody wanted to get something custom made they could probably do that now but not with steel. The fact that we still limit things to steel makes it quite a lot trickier for small nations now to get things made, especially to the precision that skeleton sleds require given the speeds and the temperatures they are going through.”

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

A Brazilian court on Monday ordered the world’s largest iron ore miner Vale SA to repair environmental damages its operations caused in land belonging to a community of descendants of escaped slaves in northern Brazil.

Federal prosecutors announced the ruling in a statement that said the electricity transmission lines and a bauxite pipeline damaged soil and silted up rivers in the Moju “quilombola” territory in the northeast of  Pará state.

The court also ordered Vale to set up a project to generate income for the 788 families affected by the company’s operations and compensate them with cash until it was implemented.

No value was given for the cost of the reparations Vale must pay. The Rio de Janeiro-based company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a separate case, federal prosecutors recommended the suspension of Vale’s dredging operations in the Sepetiba Bay in Rio de Janeiro state after a virus killed 200 gray porpoises.

Vale said it had not been officially informed about the recommendation. It said in a statement that all its operations in the bay where it has a terminal are duly licensed and monitored by the authorities.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Fighting in Ukraine that erupted in 2014 escalated the spread of HIV throughout the country as millions of infected people were uprooted by violence, a study published Monday found.

Conflict-affected areas such as Donetsk and Luhansk, two large cities in the east of Ukraine, were the main exporters of the HIV virus to other parts of the country such as Kyiv and Odessa, the report found.

Ukraine has among the highest HIV rates in Europe, with an estimated 220,000 infected in a country of about 45 million.

An international team of scientists led by Oxford University and Public Health England analyzed viral migration patterns and found a correlation between the war-related movement of 1.7 million people and the spread of HIV.

“The war changed a lot of things in Ukraine and the HIV epidemic is one of them,” said lead author Tetyana Vasylyeva of Oxford University’s Zoology department.

“When we conducted our analysis, we were able to show that the viral spread from the East to the rest of the country had been intensified after the war.”

The HIV epidemic has shifted from being associated with drug injections in the 1990s to most new infections now being spread by sexual transmission, Vasylyeva told Reuters.

Half of HIV-infected people in Ukraine are unaware of their infection status and around 40 percent of newly diagnosed people are in the later stages of the disease, she added.

Almost 37 million people worldwide have the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Since the first cases of HIV were reported more than 35 years ago, 35 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses, according to the United Nations AIDS program (UNAIDS), which is seeking to end the public health threat by 2030, in line with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

A Russia-backed insurgency erupted in Ukraine’s industrialized east in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a cease-fire deal brokered by Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis.

Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO that it supports the rebels with troops and weapons.

The health study also found an alarmingly high resistance, compared to the rest of Europe, to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) a common treatment for HIV, said senior author and medical virologist, Gkikas Magiorkinis.

“It’s a worrying development and the policymakers should be alerted because it’s going to be very, very difficult to use it [PrEP] in the near future in Ukraine,” Magiorkinis told Reuters.

Ukraine must scale-up interventions to prevent further transmissions of HIV, and seek international support to prevent a new public health tragedy, he said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

The European Union’s trade tsar has no idea what Donald Trump will tell his audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, but she is clear what the EU’s message to the U.S. president will be.

America is shooting itself in the foot by withdrawing from global leadership on trade, Cecilia Malmstrom, the 49-year-old Swede who has served as Europe’s trade commissioner for the past three years, told Reuters.

Under Malmstrom’s direction, the EU has juggled a dizzying array of trade talks over the past year. In July it clinched a preliminary deal with Japan. And early this year it hopes to seal agreements with Mexico and the Latin American Mercosur bloc.

The retreat of the United States under Trump has played a big role in this push, Malmstrom says. Countries around the world are desperate for new trading partners, and the EU, confident again after years of economic crisis and Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the bloc, has eagerly filled the gap.

“We have shown that we have overcome that acute crisis, so many countries are turning to Europe for leadership and for partnership,” said Malmstrom, who will also be in Davos.

“With other countries we are now setting the standards and that is also why it is bad for the U.S. to withdraw because there are standards set now and they will be global.”

Since coming into office one year ago on a promise to put America first, Trump has pulled Washington out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), threatened to scrap the 90s-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and to introduce steel tariffs that could hit European allies as well as China.

But Malmstrom singled out Washington’s confrontational stance towards the World Trade Organization (WTO) as particularly worrying.

The Trump administration has blocked the appointment of judges to a WTO body that rules on trade disputes. If the United States does not shift its stance, that body could cease to function altogether, Malmstrom said.

She described a WTO ministerial meeting in December as a “disgrace.” The meeting in Buenos Aires failed to reach any agreements, such as on ending fishing subsidies, and descended into acrimony, in the face of stinging criticism from the United States.

“We want American leadership in the world. They shouldn’t disengage,” Malmstrom said.

Trump will be the headliner in Davos one year after Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to the ski resort in the Swiss Alps and signalled a readiness to assume a leadership role in free trade created by an inward-looking Washington.

Malmstrom described the Xi speech as “brilliant” in terms of content and timing – just three days before Trump’s inauguration.

But she said there had been no change in China’s behavior towards Europe since then. If anything, the hurdles to European investment in China have grown.

The EU seemed to have gained a free trade ally in the world’s second largest economy, but Malmstrom said Beijing had not backed up Xi’s speech with action.

“Maybe he really believes in these things, but we haven’t seen it yet in China,” she said. “We want to work in China and we want China to invest here, but the level playing field is not there. We haven’t seen anything concrete in our trade relationship.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

Indigenous women in Latin America must be at the center of efforts to adapt agriculture to deal with the threat of climate change and help tackle hunger and poverty, said a top U.N. food official.

Jose Graziano da Silva, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said women were too often left out of development schemes, despite expert knowledge of the environment passed down through generations.

“They have fundamental roles in the spiritual, social and family arenas and are seed guardians — critical carriers of specialized knowledge,” Graziano da Silva told a Mexico City forum.

“Their social and economic empowerment is … a necessary condition to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in their communities,” he said, according to a statement.

Poor health care, malnutrition and illiteracy are other issues faced by indigenous women who generally have little access to the political arena, he said.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, indigenous people comprise 15 percent of those affected by hunger and extreme poverty, despite making up just 8 percent of the population in the region where 45 million identify as indigenous.

Women suffer the most. Wage levels for indigenous women in the region are often four times less than those for men, said the United Nations’ food agency.

Indigenous women can play a key role in adapting agriculture and diet to cope with climate change, said the FAO, with traditional indigenous land comprising 22 percent the world’s territory and 80 percent of its biodiversity.

The organization said it would ramp up projects to boost indigenous women’s leadership in countries including Bolivia, Paraguay, India and the Philippines this year.

In Mexico, traditional healer and Nahua speaker Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez is a candidate in July’s election, the first indigenous woman to run for the country’s presidency.
…

From: MeNeedIt