Can children who have never been to school teach themselves basic reading, writing and math skills using only a tablet computer?

The World Bank and XPrize are betting $15 million on the idea.

“It’s a little bit out there, it’s a little bit of a crazy idea,” said Matt Keller, senior director of the Global Learning XPrize, a competition funded by the XPrize Foundation, a non-profit that spurs inventors to tackle global problems such as climate change and universal healthcare.

The inaugural Global Learning XPrize competition awards $10 million dollars to the team or company that develops the best educational app for children who have never set foot in a classroom. According to UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, approximately 263 million children around the world are not in school.

“Can you develop something that’s so intuitive, so inferential, so dynamic that you give it to a child who is illiterate in a very remote part of the world — she picks it up, she touches it and she begins to learn how to read? That’s the challenge we put out to the world,” said Keller.

The finalists

At least 198 teams were up to the challenge. From that pool, five finalists were recently selected and awarded $1 million dollars each.

The finalists will begin testing their educational apps this November. Nearly 4,000 children from 150 villages in the Tanga region of Tanzania will use tablets donated by Google to access the apps and teach themselves.

A subset of students initially will be tested on literacy and numeracy comprehension using the early grade reading assessment (EGRA) and early grade math assessment (EGMA) models. After 15 months, the same students will be re-tested. The grand prize of $10 million will be awarded to the developer team with the highest proficiency gains among students. 

XPrize is working with UNESCO, the World Food Program, and the government of Tanzania to distribute and maintain the tablets.

“Most development organizations and most aid agencies and most governments are focused on building new schools and training new teachers,” Keller told VOA News, “What we’re saying is there are a lot of kids out there who don’t access school and there are a lot of kids out there who access really bad schools. So, can you give technology to a child that’s so good that it doesn’t supplant, but supplements a learning process that she may or may not have?”

Goals for the future

By 2030, the world will need to recruit 68.8 million teachers in order to meet the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal of universal primary and secondary education, according to a 2016 report by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics.

“That’s simply not possible,” said Jamie Stuart, co-founder of educational non-profit Onebillion, which is one of the five Global Learning XPrize finalists. “So we have to look for radical alternatives in terms of children’s learning,” said Stuart.

Developers at Onebillion already have field-tested their app, Onecourse, for the past 10 years in Malawi. The app is designed so that children can use it with little or no adult assistance, and teaches children reading and numeracy using a teacher character that speaks their language.

Testing brings many challenges, the least of which involves working with populations that often never have interacted with a tablet before.

“Keeping it simple, keeping it focused on the individual needs of the child, and adapting to how they learn are the key ingredients,” said Stuart.

The other finalists are Curriculum Concepts International (CCI), a lesson-based app that incorporates games, videos and books, Chimple, which focuses on play and discovery-based learning, Kitkit School , which originally was designed for special needs children, and RoboTutor, which was developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“If we can prove that a child needs no instruction other than what’s on that device, then we begin a series of events that will lead inexorably to a device that is designed for that child, in that part of the world, with a teacher on it,” said Keller.
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From: MeNeedIt

Toyota Motor Corp. announced a $374 million investment Tuesday at five U.S. plants to support production of its first American-made hybrid powertrain.

The upgrades at Toyota’s factories in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia are part of a previously announced $10 billion in U.S. spending by the Japanese automaker. It “underscores Toyota’s confidence in the capability and global competitiveness of our North American manufacturing,” Jeff Moore, Toyota North America’s senior vice president of manufacturing, said in a statement.

Toyota said 2.5-liter engines made in Kentucky and transmissions produced in West Virginia will be used in North American-made hybrid vehicles, such as the Highlander SUV manufactured in Princeton, Indiana.

Toyota will create 50 jobs at its Huntsville, Alabama, plant, which will build engines for its cost-saving New Global Architecture production strategy to share common parts and components among different vehicles. None of the other upgrades announced Tuesday will result in immediate net job gains.

The investment includes $106 million at the Huntsville plant, a $121 million expansion of a 2.5-liter engine capacity at Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky, plant, and $115 million to add hybrid vehicle transmission production in Buffalo, West Virginia.

Toyota also is investing $17 million to increase production of 2.5-liter cylinder heads at its Bodine Aluminum facility in Troy, Missouri. A $14.5 million upgrade at a Bodine plant in Jackson, Tennessee, will accommodate production of hybrid transmission cases and housings and 2.5-liter engine blocks.

“This investment is part of our long-term commitment to build more vehicles and components in the markets in which we sell them,” said Toyota Motor North America CEO Jim Lentz.
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From: MeNeedIt

The United States has imposed sanctions on eight North Korean banks and 26 bank executives amid escalating tensions with Pyongyang over its nuclear program.

“This further advances our strategy to fully isolate North Korea in order to achieve our broader objectives of a peaceful and denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday in a statement.

Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for new economic sanctions against individuals and businesses that finance trade with Pyongyang’s reclusive communist regime and fund its weapons development.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis emphasized Tuesday that the U.S. sought a peaceful resolution to escalating tensions with North Korea, despite the regime’s claim that a tweet Monday by Trump was tantamount to a declaration of war.

In New Delhi for talks with Indian officials about strengthening U.S.-India ties, Mattis said that while the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula was necessary to deter North Korea’s threats, it also supported diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully.

“And that is our goal, to solve this diplomatically, and I believe President Trump has been pretty clear on this issue,” Mattis said, following a meeting with India’s defense minister.

Hope for diplomacy

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday also stressed that the U.S. would “continue to pursue our diplomatic efforts and hope that’s the way we’ll solve this”

On Monday, Trump commented on Twitter that if North Korea carried out its threats, Kim Jong Un’s regime “won’t be around much longer.”

Speaking to reporters near U.N. headquarters in New York, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said, “Given the fact that this comes from someone who is currently holding the seat of the United States presidency, this is clearly a declaration of war.”

The world should clearly remember, he added, that “it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Ri’s characterization of the tweet “absurd.”

“We’ve not declared war on North Korea,” she said.

Although North Korea has declared “war” many times in the past, now “we’ve entered a bona fide crisis,” Van Jackson, senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, told VOA.

“Even if we’re not in a war right now, we seem to be doing everything in our power to make one happen by actions and statements that make deterrence more likely to fail,” said Jackson, a former director for Korea policy and a defense strategy adviser at the U.S. Defense Department.

Threat to bombers

Ri warned that his country might shoot down U.S. strategic bombers, even if they were not in North Korean airspace. According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency Tuesday, Lee Cheol-woo, the chief of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, said Pyongyang was spotted readjusting the position of its warplanes and boosting its defensive capabilities along its east coast.

A fighter jet from North Korea in 1969 shot down an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane, outside North Korean territorial airspace in the Sea of Japan, killing 30 sailors and one marine on board.

Speaking at a security conference on Monday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said the United States hoped to avoid war with North Korea, “but what we can’t do is discount that possibility.”

The Army lieutenant general added that the U.S. had thought through several different ways the problem with North Korea could be resolved, and “some are uglier than others.”

However, McMaster, told the conference, hosted by the Institute for the Study of War, that “there’s not a precision strike that solves the problem.”

One peaceful solution, according to McMaster, would be for Pyongyang to give access to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. But any diplomatic negotiations, McMaster said, would “have to happen under conditions that are different from previous talks.” He said, however, he was not going to come up with a list of preconditions.

Beijing’s role

Some analysts see the path to talks still running through Beijing, which recently moved to cut banking ties between China and North Korea, shut off the supply of liquefied natural gas to the North Koreans and stop imports of their textiles.

“I think that the Chinese are sending a signal to the North that they are skating on thin ice,” said T.J. Pempel, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

The North Korean foreign minister threatened on Saturday that his country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean.

Mattis responded Monday that if North Korea carried out its threat, “this would be a shocking display of irresponsibility toward global health, toward stability, toward nonproliferation.”

U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers from Guam escorted by F-16 fighter jets from a U.S. base in Japan on Saturday flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.

The Pentagon said the show of force, meant to display some of the military options available to Trump, was “the farthest north of the demilitarized zone any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea’s coast in the 21st century.”

VOA’s William Gallo contributed to this report from New Delhi.
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From: MeNeedIt

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen acknowledged Tuesday that the Fed is puzzled by the persistence of unusually low inflation and that it might have to adjust the timing of its interest rate policies accordingly.

Speaking to a conference of economists, Yellen touched upon key questions the Fed is confronting as it tries to determine why inflation has remained chronically below its inflation target of 2 percent annually. The Fed chair said officials still expect the forces keeping inflation low to fade eventually. But she conceded that the Fed may need to adjust its assumptions.

In noting the persistence of low inflation, Yellen suggested that the Fed will take care not to raise rates too quickly. But she also said the central bank should avoid raising rates too slowly. Moving too gradually, she suggested, might eventually force the Fed to have to accelerate rate hikes and thereby elevate the risk of a recession.

Most analysts expect the central bank to raise rates in December, for a third time this year, in a reflection of economic improvement. But the Fed has said its rate hikes will depend on incoming data.

In her speech in Cleveland to the annual conference of the National Association for Business Economics, Yellen went further than she has before in suggesting that the Fed could be mistaken in the assumptions it is making about inflation.

“My colleagues and I may have misjudged the strength of the labor market, the degree to which longer-run inflation expectations are consistent with our inflation objective or even the fundamental forces driving inflation,” Yellen said.

The Fed seeks to control interest rates to promote maximum employment and stable prices, which it defines as annual price increases of 2 percent. While the Fed has met its goal on employment, with the jobless rate at 4.4 percent, near a 16-year low, it has continued to miss its inflation target.

Chronically low inflation can depress economic growth because consumers typically delay purchases when they think prices will stay the same or even decline.

Inflation, which was nearing the 2 percent goal at the start of the year, has since then fallen further behind and is now rising at an annual rate of just 1.4 percent.

Yellen has previously attributed the miss on inflation this year to temporary factors, including a price war among mobile phone companies. She and other Fed officials have predicted that inflation would soon begin rising toward the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target, helped by tight labor markets that will drive up wage gains.

In her remarks Tuesday, Yellen said this outcome of a rebound in inflation is still likely. But she said the central bank needed to remain alert to the possibility that other forces not clearly understood might continue to keep inflation lower than the Fed’s 2 percent goal.

The Fed chair cautioned that if the central bank moved too slowly in raising rates, it could inadvertently allow the economy to become overheated and thus have to raise rates so quickly in the future that it could push the country into a recession.

“It would be imprudent to keep monetary policy on hold until inflation is back to 2 percent,” Yellen said.

During a question-and-answer session, Yellen said the Fed would be “looking at inflation very carefully” to determine the timing of upcoming rate hikes. But she said the data is likely to be difficult to assess, in part because of the effects of the recent devastating hurricanes, which have forced up gasoline prices.

Yellen’s remarks came a week after Fed officials left their benchmark rate unchanged but announced that they would start gradually shrinking their huge portfolio of Treasury and mortgage bonds. Those holdings had grown from purchases the Fed made over the past nine years to try to lower long-term borrowing rates and help the U.S. economy recover from the worst downturn since the 1930s.

The Fed did retain a forecast showing that officials expect to boost rates three times this year. So far, they have increased their benchmark lending rate twice, in March and June, leaving it at a still-low range of 1 percent to 1.25 percent.

Last week, the Fed said the reductions in its bond holdings would begin in October by initially allowing a modest $10 billion in maturing bonds to roll off the $4.5 trillion balance sheet each month.

Asked about how long-term loan rates might respond to reductions in the Fed’s bond portfolio, Yellen cited a study that estimated that the increase in its bond holdings had lowered such rates by about 1 percentage point.

But she said the reduction in the holdings wouldn’t likely raise rates by as much as a percentage point given that the Fed intended to keep the size of its balance sheet significantly higher than it was before the financial crisis. She said any upward pressure on rates would likely be gradual and take place over several years.

Crutsinger reported from Washington, Kang from Cleveland.
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From: MeNeedIt

Inside the Woodridge Neighborhood Library in the U.S. capital, a wall is plastered with ominous warning signs: “Reading This Book Display Is Banned” and “No Books to See Here.” Below the messages are shelves with books that have been banned, at one time or another, in parts of the United States. They include books in the popular Harry Potter series, banned for “witchcraft,” and the classic futuristic novel Brave New World, which has been banned for sexual content.

Although no books have been removed from libraries or schools in Washington, the display is part of Banned Books Week, which runs through September 30. The annual event points out the perils of censorship and emphasizes the freedom to read.

Among the groups sponsoring Banned Books Week is the American Library Association (ALA), which releases an annual list of the 10 most challenged books — works that have been targeted for removal from a library or school curriculum.

“Some of the themes could be dealing with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues, race and religion,” said Julius Jefferson Jr. of the ALA’s intellectual freedom committee. Most requests for books to be banned “you see coming from parents, because they feel they are not appropriate for their children,” he added.

Such topics may include “families with two dads or two moms,” said Linnea Hegarty, executive director of Washington’s DC Public Library Foundation. 

“Books about war are often banned, particularly if they talk about political issues,” she added, and also books about mental illness, because “some parents don’t want their children to be exposed to that.”

Transgender issues, profanity, Cosby

The books on this year’s ALA list were mostly written for children or young adults, such as Drama, by Raina Telgemeier, which includes transgender characters, and Mariko Tamaki’s This One Summer, which some critics have said is offensive due to profane language and instances of drug use.

In a first this year, a book was listed not due to its content or style, but because the author is under fire. Comedian and children’s story-teller Bill Cosby wrote a series of books called Little Bill. The series is being challenged because of sexual assault allegations against Cosby.

As part of Banned Books Week, hundreds of copies of six other books that may be challenged or banned have been placed in museums, restaurants and coffee shops around Washington, for anyone to take home for free. They are wrapped in black paper and hidden among other books on sale.

At the Duende District Bookstore in Washington, customer Lyric Prince discovered Fahrenheit 451, a science-fiction novel that depicts an American society where books are outlawed, and firemen burn any contraband literature. Some people object to the burning of a Bible in the story.

Prince is not surprised that books like this novel published more than 60 years ago are still banned today, because “a lot of places in this country don’t exactly take kindly to progressive ideas.”

Another customer, Katie Schwartz, found The Giver, criticized for its violence in a story about a world of conformity. Schwartz can’t believe books are still banned in the U.S., especially since the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech.

“It’s an American right to express yourself however you see fit,” she said. “It’s also an American right to avoid things by choice that you don’t agree with, and books are very easily avoided if you don’t agree with them.”

The American Library Association, which keeps tabs on challenges and bans, is aware of about 250 challenges last year, but it says very few succeed, and books hardly ever wind up truly banned.
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From: MeNeedIt

The latest Republican effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system appears to have failed after another Republican senator came out against the plan.

Senator Susan Collins from Maine became the third Republican senator to oppose the measure, saying Monday night, “This is simply not the way that we should be approaching an important and complex issue that must be handled thoughtfully and fairly for all Americans.”

Collins’ announcement came after the Congressional Budget Office said the attempt to end the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, would reduce health insurance coverage for “millions” of people.

With 52 seats in the 100-member Senate, Republicans could afford only two “no” votes from their ranks if the health reform bill were to pass, given unified opposition from Democrats.

Previously, two Republicans, John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky, had announced their opposition to the legislation.

The only remaining hope for Republican party leaders is to change opponents’ minds.

Earlier Monday, U.S. senators alternately criticized or defended the last-ditch Republican attempt to end Obamacare at the only committee hearing to examine the bill.

Wheelchair-bound demonstrators chanting “No cuts to Medicaid” delayed the start of the hearing by nearly 20 minutes to the irritation of the Senate Finance Committee’s chairman, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah.

“If you want a hearing, you’d better shut up,” Hatch warned before calling a brief recess so police officers could remove the protesters. When the hearing resumed, he pleaded, “Let’s have a civil discussion.”

At issue is Graham-Cassidy, the Republican bill that would break up Obamacare, transfer funding to all 50 U.S. states to craft their own health care programs, and pare back federal dollars for Medicaid, a program that pays medical costs for the poor and disabled. Republicans have until the end of the month to pass the bill with a simple majority vote in the Senate.

Proponents argued the status quo will bankrupt America.

“By 2027, we’re going to be spending more on Medicaid than on the [U.S.] military,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who co-authored the bill with Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, testifying as a witness before the committee. “We’re going to send this money back to the states. … My goal is to get the money and power out of Washington, closer to where people live.

“We’re going to get a better outcome,” Graham added.

Opponents accused Republicans of rushing to pass a poorly-crafted bill that will leave dozens of states with less health care funding.

“This Trumpcare bill is a health care lemon, a disaster in the making,” said the committee’s top Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon. “It’s going to be a nightmare for tens of millions of Americans, and it makes a mockery of the president’s promise of better insurance for everybody, at lower cost.”

President Donald Trump has blasted Senate Republicans for failing to repeal and replace Obamacare, one of the party’s core promises to voters since the law was enacted in 2010.

“7 years of Repeal & Replace and some senators not there,” Trump lamented on Twitter on Sunday. A day earlier, he tweeted, “Large Block Grants to States is a good thing to do. Better control & management.”

Democrats noted that a bipartisan effort was under way to fix Obamacare’s shortcomings without scrapping the law entirely, but said the effort has been undermined by Graham-Cassidy, the latest in a series of Republican attempts to reform health care on their own.

“Millions of lives are at stake. Let’s return to the bipartisan negotiations,” urged Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. “This is exactly how we should approach health care in our country.”

Republican leaders tried on Sunday night to persuade senators on the fence to vote for Graham-Cassidy by adding additional health care funding to their states, including the states of Maine, Arizona and Kentucky.

McCain provided the decisive “no” vote that torpedoed a previous Republican health care bill in July. The Arizona senator argued the bill had not been properly vetted in committee, a criticism he repeated last week in explaining his opposition to Graham-Cassidy.

Dachog Duzor in Washington contributed to this report.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Trump administration announced Monday that it would offer at least $200 million in grant funding annually for programs that offer science, technology, engineering, math (STEM), and particularly computer science education.

With 6 million job openings in the United States, administration officials said it was making the pledge to extend computer science education because of a skills gap.

Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Donald Trump and an adviser to the administration, said less than half of kindergarten through 12th grade schools in the U.S. offer a single computer course. She plans to head to Detroit on Tuesday with tech leaders from Microsoft, Code.org and others.

“As a country we want to embrace innovation, but we need to plan for it,” she said.

The grant program is not new. President Trump was expected to sign a presidential memorandum on the program Monday at the White House, directing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to prioritize STEM education, with a focus on computer science, in existing competitive grant programs.  STEM education involves specific disciplines taught together in an interdisciplinary and applied approach.

The announcement is expected to be followed Tuesday with pledges from businesses, such as Google and Facebook.

Ivanka Trump noted that women make up 22 percent of the technology work force, down from 35 percent in 1990. While designing their programs, grant seekers should keep “gender and racial diversity in mind,” she said.

The program’s goal is to offer every student in the country access to technology education, said a senior administration official.

“We want it to reach across the country,” said the official. “Certainly that includes areas that are under-represented…We can’t allow our students to be left behind.”
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From: MeNeedIt

As lawmakers propose banning the sale of shark fins in the U.S., a pair of scientists is pushing back, saying the effort might actually harm attempts to conserve the marine predators.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced a bill this year designed to prevent people from possessing or selling shark fins in America, much to the delight of conservation groups such as Oceana. But marine scientists David Shiffman and Robert Hueter said this approach could be wrongheaded.

Shiffman and Hueter authored a study that appears in the November issue of the journal Marine Policy, saying that the U.S. has long been a leader in shark fisheries management and that shutting down the U.S. fin trade entirely would remove a model for sustainability for the rest of the world.

The U.S. also is a minor contributor to the worldwide shark fin trade, and countries with less regulated fisheries would likely step in to fill the void if America left the business altogether, Shiffman said.

“Removing that from the marketplace removes a template of a well-managed fishery,” said Shiffman, a shark researcher with Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “It’s much easier for us to say, here’s a way you can do this.”

Shark fins are most often used in a soup considered a delicacy in Asia. Shark fins that American fishermen harvest are often shipped to Asia for processing.

Environmentalists and animal advocates have long blamed shark fin soup for the decline of certain shark species. Their criticism of shark fin soup often includes arguments against “finning,” which is a practice that’s illegal in the United States and involves removing the fins from recently caught, often live sharks and discarding the animals.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. states have bans in place on the sale of fins, and sharks were afforded new protections with the Shark Conservation Act of 2010. But the country still has hundreds of shark fishermen, and they are allowed to have the shark’s fins removed for sale during processing on land.

Booker’s proposal would change that, making it illegal for any person to “possess, transport, offer for sale, sell, or purchase shark fins or products containing shark fins.” The bill was approved by a commerce and science committee in May, and a similar bill has been proposed in the House of Representatives.

More than 100 scientists have endorsed the bill, said Kristin Lynch, a spokeswoman for Booker.

“Unfortunately, current laws have proven inadequate at stopping the trade of fins from threatened and endangered sharks,” she said.

Marine conservation group Oceana is standing by Booker’s proposal, said Lora Snyder, a campaign director for the group. Shutting down the fin trade is akin to getting the U.S. out of the ivory business, she said.

A “near total” ban on commercial elephant ivory took hold in the U.S. last year, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The U.S. fin trade needs to be shut down in part because violations of the “finning” ban have continued to take place, Snyder said. An investigation by Booker’s office earlier this year showed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has investigated more than 500 incidents of alleged shark finning since 2010.

“Yes, we are better, but just because we are better doesn’t mean we are good,” Snyder said. “There are other threats facing sharks, but this is a very important step in the right direction.”

Some commercial fishing groups have vowed to fight efforts to shut down the fin trade. About a quarter of the value of a shark is in its fins, and the rest is in its meat, Shiffman and Hueter’s study said.

That means the fin ban is essentially an effort to shut down shark fishing altogether, said Jeff Oden, a Hatteras, North Carolina, fisherman who started fishing for sharks about 30 years ago.

“They want to stop it, just period,” he said. “Forget the fact that we fish sustainably in this country.”
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From: MeNeedIt

She has already captured hearts across Asia by taking on corrupt politicians and fighting bad guys who tried to shut girls’ schools — and now even the United Nations has been wowed by a superheroine whose only weapons are pens and books.

Move over Superman and Batman. Here comes Pakistan’s superheroine Burka Avenger who might soon be spreading her message of peace and tolerance on behalf of the U.N.

The Emmy-nominated animated TV series has won global accolades since its 2013 launch, with its female protagonist – a teacher called Jiya – putting on the Islamic veil at night and transforming into an all-action heroine to tackle social ills.

Now the U.N. is seeking to tap her popularity as it ramps up a campaign that emphasizes women’s role in peace-building to combat extremism.

“We have a lot of shared goals,” the series’ creator, Pakistani pop star Haroon Rashid, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Islamabad.

“The whole concept [of Burka Avenger] came about because I was reading about girls’ schools being shut down and bombed by extremists, and women and girls are threatened with violence. That’s why the superheroine was created,” he said.

Rashid will be speaking at a U.N. Women conference in the Thai capital Bangkok this week which will look at using creative approaches to promote women’s role in peace-building.

Although there is no official partnership yet, the U.N. agency and Rashid both said they were keen to explore collaboration, including by making Burka Avenger an ambassador.

“Burka Avenger can be a great messenger not only for women’s issues but because it’s animation, you can highlight very sensitive issues, it makes them [appear] softer,” Rashid said.

Fight Extremism From a Young Age

“Burka Avenger” was launched first in Pakistan, then Afghanistan, India and this year in Indonesia. It has been produced in different languages including Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, Pashto and Indonesian.

The series has won numerous accolades, including the Peabody Award, International Gender Equity Prize and the Asian Media Award, while the protagonist Jiya was named one of the most influential fictional characters of 2013 by Time magazine.

Orphaned as a child, Jiya was adopted by a master of a mystic martial art called Takht Kabaddi, which uses pens and books as weapons to take on enemies.

There has also been debate over Jiya’s choice of disguise, the burqa.

The all-encompassing veil has typically been viewed as symbol of female repression in the West but the cartoon presents it in a different light, as a symbol of female empowerment.

U.N. Women Asia-Pacific head Miwa Kato said cartoons can help prevent extremism from a young age.

“We often look to law enforcement to prevent extremism but it starts very early from a child’s age, through TV and entertainment,” Kato told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“A girl and superhero using pens and books as weapons can make us start having a conversation, at home or in schools.”

“Burka Avenger” is set for more launches in Asia – including Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Brunei, Singapore and Bangladesh – but after four seasons and 52 episodes, Rashid said he has no plans to work on new episodes immediately although he is planning a full-length feature film.

“We believe that will help spread the message on a larger scale, to a larger audience,” the pop star said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Iraq on Sunday urged foreign countries to stop importing crude directly from its autonomous Kurdistan region and to restrict oil trading to the central government.

The call, published in statement from Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office, came in retaliation for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s plan to hold a referendum on independence on Monday.

The central government’s statement seems to be directed primarily at Turkey, the transit country for all the crude produced in Kurdistan. The crude is taken by pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast for export.

Baghdad “asks the neighboring countries and the countries of the world to deal exclusively with the federal government of Iraq in regards to entry posts and oil,” the statement said.

The Iraqi government has always opposed independent sales of crude by the KRG, and tried on many occasions to block Kurdish oil shipments.

Long-standing disputes over land and oil resources are among the main reasons cited by the KRG to ask for independence.

Iraqi Kurdistan produces around 650,000 barrels per day of crude from its fields, including around 150,000 from the disputed areas of Kirkuk.

The region’s production volumes represent 15 percent of total Iraqi output and around 0.7 percent of global oil production. The KRG aspires to raise production to over 1 million barrels per day by the end of this decade.

Kurdish oil production has been dominated by mid-sized oil companies such as Genel, DNO, Gulf Keystone and Dana Gas. Major oil companies such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Rosneft also have projects in Kurdistan but they are mostly at an exploration stage.

However, Rosneft, Russia’s state oil major, has lent over $1 billion to the KRG guaranteed by oil sales and committed a total of $4 billion to various projects in Kurdistan.
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From: MeNeedIt

A spy satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office has been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying the classified NROL-42 satellite lifted off at 10:49 p.m. PDT Saturday. All systems were going well when the launch webcast concluded about three minutes into the flight.

National Reconnaissance Office satellites gather intelligence information for U.S. national security and an array of other purposes including assessing impacts of natural disasters.

U.S. officials have not revealed what the spacecraft will be doing or what its orbit will be.

United Launch Alliance is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. ride-hailing firm Uber is prepared to make concessions as it seeks to reverse a decision by London authorities not to renew its license in the city, which represents a potentially big blow for the fast-growing company, a newspaper reported.

The Sunday Times also quoted sources close to London’s transport body as saying the move was encouraging and suggested the possibility of talks.

“While we haven’t been asked to make any changes, we’d like to know what we can do,” Tom Elvidge, Uber’s general manager in London, told the newspaper. “But that requires a dialogue we sadly haven’t been able to have recently.”

A spokesman for Transport for London (TfL) declined to comment.

The Sunday Times said Uber’s concessions were likely to involve passenger safety and benefits for its drivers, possible limits on working hours to improve road safety and holiday pay.

TfL stunned the powerful U.S. start-up Friday when it deemed Uber unfit to run a taxi service for safety reasons and stripped it of its license from Sept. 30, although the company can continue to operate while it appeals.

The regulator cited failures to report serious criminal offenses, conduct sufficient background checks on drivers and other safety issues.

Uber responded by urging users in London to sign a petition that said the city authorities had “caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.” The move echoed Uber’s strategy in disputes with other cities.

By 2200 GMT Saturday, more than 600,000 people had signed although it was not clear how many of them were in London.

A spokesman for Uber said around 20,000 Uber drivers had emailed the city’s mayor directly to object to the decision.
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From: MeNeedIt