Actor Kevin Spacey said Sunday he is “beyond horrified” by allegations that he made sexual advances on a teen boy decades ago.

The two-time Oscar winner posted on Twitter that he doesn’t remember the encounter. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years,” he said.

In an interview with BuzzFeed, actor Anthony Rapp said Spacey befriended him while they both performed on Broadway shows. Rapp was 14 when he attended a party at Spacey’s apartment in 1986, he said. At the end of the night, an inebriated Spacey picked him up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, Rapp said.

Rapp said the 26-year-old was holding him down tightly, but he was able to get away and left the apartment.

Rapp, who is now 46 and starring in the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery”, said he came forward after allegations against Harvey Weinstein sparked conversations about sexual abuse and harassment in the entertainment industry.

Spacey, who is now 58, spoke publicly about his sexual orientation for the first time Sunday on Twitter.

“As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women,” he said. “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.”

Spacey, who has fiercely protected his private life, had never disclosed his sexuality before but said Rapp’s story encouraged him to speak.

“I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

From eye-popping colors to outfits with plunging necklines and see-through tops to more conservative wear, fashionistas and industry professionals showcased their latest eye catching designs at this year’s Lagos Fashion Week in Nigeria Mariama Diallo reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Despite a national fascination with everything new and shiny, there is a portion of America that is focused on the old and quirky. They can find what they’re looking for at antique shops, where treasures from someone’s attic share space with memorabilia from long-forgotten celebrations. Barry Richards takes us antiquing in Tennessee.
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From: MeNeedIt

People are big polluters, on the land, in the sea and even in outer space, that can include anything from a hammer that floats away from the space station, to radiation from a nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere.

“This can range from little chips of paint all the way up to spent rocket bodies and things like that,” said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory of Atmosphere and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We’ve been trying to figure out how can we most effectively eliminate this debris without causing more of a problem.”

Space debris travels so fast, even an orbiting chip of paint can poke a hole in a satellite. But Baker says something tinier, and natural, is a bigger hazard: It’s the highly charged “killer electrons” of the magnetized zone above the earth called The Van Allen Belts.

“We’ve observed them to cause very significant problems for spacecraft,” Baker said.

Electro-magnetic planetary blanket

The doughnut-shaped Van Allen Belts around our planet protect life on earth from solar winds and cosmic rays. But their highly energetic charged particles can damage the circuitry in space stations, weather satellites and other machines that travel through that region of space.

Baker notes that “killer electrons” can also come from some human activities, like the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

“Back in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, there were nuclear explosions that put huge amounts of radiation into space that caused many satellites to ‘die’ because of radiation damage,” he said. “And if that were to happen today, we know that there are over 1,400 satellites operating in space around the earth and all of those could be subject to very severe consequences.”

Most nations adhere to treaties that prohibit atmospheric weapon testing. But Baker says that’s no guarantee.

“What is worrisome to us from a political standpoint today is that there are nations, for example, North Korea and others, that may be thinking once again, and who may not be adherent to such treaties, that this might be an interesting way to mess with modern technology,” Baker said.

Mysterious space shield

Radiation particles in the Van Allen Belts already “mess” with modern technology. So when satellites must spend time in that region, they are built with thicker materials. That armor makes them heavier, and more expensive. Fortunately, spacecraft and satellites that orbit just under the Van Allen Belts don’t need this heavy shielding. Baker says that’s because, at the lower edge of the Van Allen Belts, the killer electrons abruptly stop.

He compares it to the shields that protected Captain Kirk’s ship, the Enterprise, from phasers and asteroids on Star Trek.

Scientists have known for years that something here on the earth creates an invisible bubble that clears killer electrons from the lower edge of the Van Allen Belts. Just what makes that shield has been a mystery.

But recently, Baker’s teams figured out its source. The “bubble maker” is very low frequency radio transmissions, also known as VLF. Militaries use VLF to communicate with submarines underwater. It turns out those radio waves also travel up, through the atmosphere, to the Van Allen Belts.

“So the VLF bubble is made up of these intense waves. These waves act to sort of scatter and scrub the inner part of the Van Allen Belts,” Baker said, admitting, “I would prefer that we not be messing with nature. However, in this particular case I would say that there is some evidence that this is beneficial.”

John Bonnell, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab, agrees that VLF “pollution” is probably benign, and he points to the high-energy radiation emitted by lightning bolts as evidence.

“We’ve had natural clearing of the radiation Belts with lightning, for as long as we’ve had lightning. So in essence, you’ve had a long-running experiment that you can look at and say, ‘Well, if we’re going to do things on sort of a sporadic basis, whereas lightning’s been doing it daily for hundreds of millions of years, the likelihood of there being a bad side effect is pretty minimal,’” he said.

Bonnell says that discovering a man-made way to clear killer electrons from the Van Allen Belt does not mean we will soon create “shields up” devices that use magnetics or radio transmissions. At least, he says, we’re not making them yet.

“It’s a fascinating possibility and it’s a fascinating technology that could enable us in the future, to explore more of the solar system with people, with robots. And so it’s definitely something that people pick away at slowly over time,” he said.

Bonnell says scientists, engineers and astronomers have teamed up to make amazing discoveries about how to study, and travel through, outer space. And while the future shape of space exploration is a mystery, our new understanding about the man-made “pollution” that shields satellites may be an important part of it.
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From: MeNeedIt

Xavier Gabriel can take some credit if the tiny Catalan mountain town of Sort is one of the most famous in Spain.

He runs a lottery shop called La Bruja de Oro, or The Golden Witch, in a town whose name, aptly, means “Luck” in Catalan. Its fortune in having sold many prize-winning tickets has made it a household name and a successful online business.

But the crisis surrounding Catalonia’s push for independence has changed life for 60-year-old Gabriel. He joined more than 1,500 companies in moving their official headquarters out of the wealthy region in recent weeks. Their main fear: that they would no longer be covered by Spanish and European Union laws if Catalonia manages to break away, dragging their businesses into unknown territory.

“The time had come to make a decision,” said Gabriel, who employs 16 people and describes himself as a proud Catalan.

​Hedging their bets

Like Gabriel’s, the vast majority of companies that moved their headquarters didn’t transfer workers or assets, such as bank holdings or production equipment. So far, it’s mainly a form of legal insurance. But as the political crisis escalates, the risk is that companies are deferring investments and hiring. There is evidence that tourists are holding off booking, perhaps frightened by images in the media of police crackdowns, street demonstrations and strikes.

And the situation risks getting worse before it improves: the central government’s decision Friday to take control of the region could spiral out of control if there is popular resistance, whether by citizens or local authorities like the Catalan police force.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the crisis is having a very damaging effect on the economy,” said Javier Diaz Gimenez, an economics professor at Spain’s prestigious IESE Business School.

Financial markets in Spain have so far fallen only modestly, reflecting investors’ apparent belief that the tensions will eventually be resolved. The Spanish government has called a regional election in Catalonia for Dec. 21 and could later consider revisions to the constitution that might placate some of the independence supporters.

But that could take some time, Diaz Gimenez says, given how confrontational both sides have been.

Banks leave

The list of businesses moving headquarters includes Catalonia’s top two banks, Caixabank and Sabadell, which are among Spain’s top five lenders. Then there is the Codorniu cava sparkling wine maker for which Catalonia is famous. Another well-known cava maker, Freixenet, is also planning to follow if the independence drive continues. Publishing giant Planeta, the world’s leading Spanish-language publisher and second biggest publisher in France, has also moved its official address out of Catalonia.

Caixabank says it suffered a moderate but temporary run on deposits because of the crisis, but said it has since recovered and was adamant the move was permanent.

Shares for Caixabank, Sabadell and some other companies have been volatile, falling after the Oct. 1 vote for independence and jumping sharply when they announced their decision to move headquarters.

Tip of the iceberg

Lottery shop owner Gabriel says ticket sales this month are up nearly 300 percent over last year, a rise he attributed to popular support for his decision to move his business.

Diaz Gimenez said the decisions to move headquarters, while not immediately affecting jobs, were “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Plans to relocate firms or invest elsewhere are going to accelerate and some of it is going to go to, say, Poland, and it’s never going to come back,” he said.

“People that were thinking about investing in Spain and Barcelona are starting to think again,” he said. “It’s not just Catalonia. It’s the mismanagement by Spain, which is proving that it’s not a serious country because it cannot solve this thing.”

Spanish economy humming

The turmoil, ironically, comes just as Spain has been enjoying some of the fastest economic growth in Europe.

Its economy, the fourth-largest in the 19-country eurozone, grew by a hefty quarterly rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter. The government has maintained its forecast for growth in 2017 at 3.1 percent, but revised its estimate for 2018 from 2.6 percent to 2.3 percent because of the political crisis. Moody’s credit rating agency has warned that a continued political impasse and, ultimately, independence for Catalonia would severely hurt the country’s credit rating.

Billions at stake

Tourism seems to be taking the biggest hit so far.

Experts say spending in the sector in Catalonia in the first two weeks of October — that is, following the independence referendum — was down 15 percent from a year earlier.

Tourism represents about 11 percent of Spain’s 1.1-trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) gross domestic product, with Catalonia and its capital, Barcelona, providing a fifth of that, being the most popular destinations for visitors.

Exceltur, a nonprofit group formed by the 25 leading Spanish tourist groups, expects growth in tourism this year to ease from an estimated 4.1 percent to 3.1 percent.

Reservations in Barcelona alone are down 20 percent compared with last year, it said. If the trend continues in the final three months of the year, it could lead to losses of up to 1.2 billion euros ($1.41 billion) in the sector, which in turn could affect jobs.

Analysts fear that the independence movement’s stated aim of continuing to create as much social and economic chaos for Spain as possible could exacerbate the situation. The Catalan National Assembly group has been openly talking about a boycott against Spain’s top companies and major strike activity.

“Spain, its tourism, everything is very dependent on image,” Diaz Gimenez said. “And this is just killing it.”
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From: MeNeedIt

At the 2015 Paris summit, world leaders pledged to take steps to avoid catastrophic climate change. This November in Bonn, Germany, U.N. negotiators will be back, working out the details of how to cut emissions of planet-warming gases. It is the first conference since President Donald Trump said the United States would withdraw from the agreement. That leaves questions about the direction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. As VOA’s Steve Baragona reports, the answer is not straightforward.
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From: MeNeedIt

Australian lawmakers in the state of Victoria will debate a bill to allow medically assisted dying, a highly controversial issue fraught with arguments over who, if anyone, should be able to decide the timing of his or her own death.

Victoria’s lower house of parliament passed legislation October 20 that would allow what the bill calls “voluntary assisted dying.” The 47-37 vote came after contentious debate that lasted more than 24 hours.

Once the bill was passed, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters he was “very proud” of the vote.

“We have taken a very big step towards giving many, many Victorians the dignity and compassion they have been denied for far too long,” Andrews said.

The vote in the upper house, the 40-member Legislative Council, is  also expected to be close. Australian reports said 19 members of the upper house supported the bill, 11 were thought to oppose it, and the votes of the remaining 10 were uncertain.

Those who oppose assisted dying — including the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Melbourne Anglican Diocese, in the area affected by next week’s vote — urge the medical community to concentrate on developing better palliative care. The term means making a patient as comfortable as possible when an illness cannot be cured.

Setting boundaries

Five nations have legalized assisted dying: Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Assisted death usually involves issuance of prescription for drugs that will end life at the time and place of the patient’s choosing. Most patients eligible for it are terminally ill and near death.

But patients in other circumstances have argued that they, too, should be able to choose assisted dying, including psychiatric patients and elderly people in good health who feel that they have completed their lives and are ready to go.

In 2014, Belgium became the first nation to expand access to assisted dying to include terminally ill children, although not those with psychiatric disorders. It does allow mentally ill adults access to that option, although not all doctors are keen on granting it.

The Associated Press reported that, in Belgium, the mental illnesses most common among people who request euthanasia are depression, personality disorder and Asperger’s syndrome. Belgians with dementia can also request the medications used for assisted dying.

In addition to the countries that allow assisted dying, which is defined as hastening the process for a patient who is already dying, assisted suicide — death for someone who is not terminally ill — is legal in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Canada, and six U.S. states plus Washington, D.C.

Most of those places do not grant foreigners permission to apply for assisted suicide, but Switzerland does, which has led to a growing number of people traveling to Switzerland to seek it — an act given the macabre nickname “suicide tourism.”

A study of “suicide tourists” from 2008 to 2012, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, said 611 people went to Switzerland, mostly to Zurich, in those four years to seek help in ending their lives. Forty-four percent of those cases were from Germany, and 21 percent were from Britain. Twenty-one of those people were from the United States.

Forty-seven percent of those foreign patients cited neurological diseases as the reason they wanted to end their lives; 25 percent cited rheumatic or connective tissue diseases. Only 3 percent to 4 percent cited mental illness.

Selective process

In none of the places where assisted dying is legal are all requests for assistance granted.

A Netherlands-based study published in 2015 in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that the rates of requests granted between 1990 and 2011 ranged from 32 to 45 percent.

And issuance of a prescription for the drugs used in assisted death does not always mean the patient will use them. In the U.S. state of Oregon, only about a third of the people issued permission to end their lives end up using the prescription to do so.

In the Victorian parliament, the legislation would set the legal age for assisted dying at 18 and above, and the illness the patient suffers from must be “causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that is tolerable to the person.”

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating voiced disapproval of the measure the day it passed in the lower house. He called the vote a “truly sad moment for the whole country.” He said he hoped the upper house would reject the bill, or in his words, “beat this deeply regressive legislation.”

The current Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has said he has reservations about assisted dying but will not stand in the way of the Victorian parliament.
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From: MeNeedIt

Things are weird, as usual, in Key West.

A pair of Vikings push a stroller full of stuffed chimps down Duval Street. A man with a ponytail swallows a steel sword. People dressed only in body paint and glitter wander and jiggle from bar to bar.

Fantasy Fest, one of Key West’s major tourist draws of the year, is in full swing. And that’s a relief for Florida Keys business owners trying to weather the economic storm that hit after Hurricane Irma battered the middle stretch of the tourism-dependent island chain.

Bucket list trip

The festivities have not disappointed Gary Gates from Buffalo, New York, who planned this “bucket list” trip 10 months ago with six friends.

“We were coming whether there was a hurricane or not,” the former NFL cameraman said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. To come down here and actually see people dressed in all kinds of costumes — or no costumes at all — was something that I needed to see.”

Gates flew into Key West and has not left during its annual 10-day festival of costume parties and parades, so he has not seen the devastation that lingers more than a month since Hurricane Irma made landfall Sept. 10 about 20 miles north of the city.

​Middle Keys hit hardest

The mostly residential middle stretch of the island chain took the brunt of the hurricane’s 130-mph winds. The area is almost entirely brown, with debris piled alongside the highway and mangroves stripped bare. A stranded boat was christened the SS Irma with spray paint and offered “free” to drivers passing by.

But at opposite ends of the 120-mile-long island chain, tourist attractions in Key Largo and Key West escaped significant damage.

Dolphins Plus Bayside was ready for visitors three days after Irma’s landfall, but business has been down by half compared to last fall, said Mike Borguss, the third generation in his family to run the Key Largo attraction.

Some staff now live with friends or in temporary trailers parked outside their damaged homes, but the dolphins swim up to the water’s edge to check out new people toting cameras, and an adjacent hotel property is open for weddings and other events that had to be canceled elsewhere in the Keys because of Irma, said Art Cooper, Borguss’ cousin and curator at Dolphins Plus Bayside.

“The water’s pretty, the weather’s beautiful and we wish you were here,” Cooper said.

​Tourism down significantly

Scott Saunders, president and CEO of Fury Water Adventures, estimated tourism in Key West has been about a third of what it was at this time last fall, even though the city’s hotels, restaurants, cruise ship operations and beaches quickly reopened after the storm.

“There’s no reason not to be doing everything we did last year,” Saunders said before one of his fleet’s sunset cruises. “We should be having that tourist base down here, but we haven’t had any.”

Jodi Weinhofer, president of the Lodging Association of the Florida Keys and Key West, blames news coverage of Irma, but not the hurricane itself, for the downturn.

“There was over a $100 million worth of negative press,” Weinhofer said.

Tourism big business in Keys

Tourism is a $2.7 billion industry in the Keys, supporting 54 percent of all jobs in the island chain, according to Monroe County’s Tourist Development Council.

Some jobs have been lost to Irma. Last week, Hawks Cay Resort on Duck Key, about 35 miles northeast of Irma’s landfall, let go 260 workers amid ongoing repairs. The Islamorada Resort Company said its four properties in the Middle Keys will be closed for renovations over the next six months.

But up and down the island chain, bars, marinas and mom-and-pop establishments able to reopen have been hiring laid-off workers and keeping people from moving away, Daniel Samess, CEO of the Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce.

About 70 percent of roughly 35 hotels and motels in the Middle Keys are open, though those rooms mostly are filled by displaced residents and state and federal recovery workers. Officials plan to provide alternative housing and open those hotel rooms fully to tourists within the next two months, Samess said.

Final sweeps for debris in some parts of the Keys are scheduled Sunday, which also is the finale for Fantasy Fest. So far, the amount of broken tree branches and remnants of homes and belongings wrecked by Irma could fill over 133 Goodyear Blimps, according to Monroe County officials.

The cleanup will help create a good impression for visitors to Key West long before they arrive in the southernmost city in the continental U.S., said Key West Mayor Craig Cates.

“It’s a scenic cruise in your car coming down, and it’s very important that they get it cleaned up,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

The latest movie adaptation of Steven King’s terrifying book “IT” brought in a record $123 million in its opening weekend. But in real life, there’s nothing fun about being scared, so why do people flock to scary movies, and around Halloween, haunted houses and participate in other frightening activities? New research has the answer. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The ever expanding field of consumer technology just got several dozen new specimens, showcased at the Netherlands’ first Consumer Electronics Show. None are expected to spectacularly change our lives … but at least some of them may prove to be truly useful. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Laws criminalizing consensual gay sex have been scrapped in about 25 countries in the last 20 years, but more than 70 nations still have such prohibitions, a U.N. expert said Friday in a first-of-its-kind report at the General Assembly.           

And in many places around the world, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people live in “a crucible of egregious violations” of human rights, enduring violence and discrimination, said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.’s first independent expert investigating violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation. The world body’s Human Rights Council appointed him last year, in a move that met significant opposition amid deep international divisions on gay rights.

Addressing a U.N. General Assembly committee for the first time Friday, Muntarbhorn noted “a global trend toward decriminalization of consensual same-sex relations.” At least five countries — Belize, Lesotho, Mozambique, Palau and Seychelles — have scrubbed such laws in the last five years.

“The gaps are, however, ubiquitous,” Muntarbhorn added.

Besides the dozens of countries where it’s a crime — sometimes punishable by death — for people of the same gender to have sex, some countries also have criminal laws aimed at transgender people.

While some laws are rarely applied, they still fuel other forms of discrimination, Muntarbhorn said. He called for reforming all criminal laws against same-sex relations and for establishing more anti-discrimination laws.

Muntarbhorn’s job became a flashpoint last year, when African nations tried to stop his work. They questioned its legal basis and said the U.N. was delving into national matters and prioritizing LGBT issues over discrimination based on race or religion.

A proposal to suspend Muntarbhorn ultimately lost a General Assembly vote, 77-86, with 16 abstentions.

His work has continued to face headwinds. Few countries have responded when contacted about alleged rights violations, Muntarbhorn said, adding that all details of the communications were confidential.

“Precisely because this mandate was so heated, so caustic, from the beginning, my humble intention during this year was to calm the situation through quiet engagement,” said Muntarbhorn, a Thai law professor who has served in other U.N. posts. He’s resigning as of Tuesday, citing illness in his household.

His successor is to be named in December.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

In 2015, 92 million Americans used prescription opioids to alleviate or manage pain, with 11.5 million reporting they misused them. Now more than ever, patients are seeking alternative treatments to avoid using potentially addictive pain pills. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff introduces us to a Washington doctor who is helping people manage their pain and combat their addictions.
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From: MeNeedIt