In spite of many attempts to replace it with a more suitable material, asphalt concrete remains the best and cheapest material for paving roads. Vulnerable to heat, ice, ultraviolet light and mechanical stress, it has a relatively short lifespan and has to be repaired or replaced at regular intervals. Swiss engineers say they may have found a formula for asphalt with self-healing properties VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From: MeNeedIt
You can finally shake it off: Taylor Swift has released her new single.
The 27-year-old singer dropped the upbeat song “Look What You Made Me Do” – which uses an interpolation from Right Said Fred’s 1991 hit “I’m Too Sexy’” – late Thursday to streaming platforms and iTunes. The song, featuring elements of pop, dance and house, includes sharp lyrics like: “Honey, I rose up from the dead I do it all the time/I got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined I check it once/Then I check it twice.”
The track ends with a voice message of Swift saying, “I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead.”
The video will premiere Sunday night on the MTV Video Music Awards.
Some felt the song was a diss toward Kanye West, whom Swift has had issues with in the past. Last year their feud hit a new height when West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released audio recordings that she said proved Swift gave West the go ahead for a Swift reference in the song “Famous.”
Swift’s voice message on her new song could be a reference to the audio Kardashian leaked. Others felt the opening lines of “Look What You Made Me Do” – ” I don’t like your little games/Don’t like your tilted stage” – was a reference to West’s recent tour, which featured a floating stage.
The anticipation of “Look What You Made Me Do” helped Swift trend heavily on social media. The song is the first single from her sixth album, “reputation,” to be released Nov. 10. A clip of the song’s video will premiere Friday on “Good Morning America.”
Swift wiped her social media pages clean last week and caused a frenzy online with video snippets of slithery snake parts. Fans dissected the clues in hopes it would reveal details about her new music, and the pop star finally announced Wednesday that a new song would come this week followed by an album three months later.
“Reputation” is the follow-up to 2014’s “1989,” Swift’s first official pop album after years of dominating in country music. “1989” launched seven hit singles, from “Shake It Off” to “Bad Blood,” and won three Grammys, including album of the year. The album helped her produce a star-studded world tour, featuring guest appearances from musicians such as Justin Timberlake and John Legend to A-List celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Chris Rock.
“Look What You Made Me Do” uses an interpolation of a melody from “I’m Too Sexy,” a No.1 hit that was written by Richard Fairbrass, Fred Fairbrass and Rob Manzoli. After the song’s release, Right Said Fred tweeted thanks to Swift and called the new song a marvelous reinvention.
Swift wrote and produced the new song with frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, who performs in the bands Bleachers and fun. Antonoff, who has produced for Lorde, Sia, Sara Bareilles and others, earned a Grammy Award for his work on three songs from Swift’s “1989.”
He also produced and co-wrote Swift and Zayn’s Top 5 hit from the “Fifty Shades Darker” soundtrack, “I Don’t Want to Live Forever,” and the two shared a Golden Globe nomination for the song “Sweeter than Fiction,” from the 2013 film “Once Chance.”
Swift’s “reputation” could become the singer’s fourth album to sell more than one million albums in its debut week, following “1989,” 2012’s “Red” and 2010’s “Speak Now.”
From: MeNeedIt
South Korea this week pushed back against the United States’ demand to renegotiate the free trade agreement (FTA) between the close allies.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the five-year-old Korea-U.S. (KORUS) FTA as a horrible deal that created a $27 billion U.S. trade deficit with South Korea last year, and has said his administration would either renegotiate or terminate it.
Agree to disagree
At Washington’s urging, an initial special session was held on Tuesday by video conference between South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong and his American counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer, to negotiate amendments to the trade pact.
Afterwards the South Korea trade minister said the two sides disagreed on the need to amend the trade deal.
“We have found that the two sides have different views on the effects of the U.S. and South Korea Free Trade Agreement, the reason behind the trade deficit, and necessity for an amendment to the U.S. and South Korea FTA,” said Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong.
South Korean officials maintain the bilateral trade deficit is not the result of the FTA, but of the underperforming South Korean economy, where demand for imports have declined, contrasted with the more robust U.S. economy.
“For the last 10 years, South Korea’s market economy was not good, so the U.S. did not get opportunities to sell its products (to South Korea). If South Korea’s economy gets better and the U.S. economy gets worse, we may face the opposite situation,” said Chung Sye-kyun, the speaker of the South Korean National Assembly on Thursday at an event organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea.
KORUS supporters in Seoul also argue the FTA benefits the U.S. economy and American workers. Last year, Korean companies like the electronics giant Samsung and the automaker Hyundai, employed 45,000 Americans and contributed $138 billion to the U.S. economy, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea.
‘Korea unique standards’
The USTR released a statement Wednesday saying it will continue bilateral talks to amend or modify the agreement and specifically identified the “burdensome regulations which often exclude U.S. firms or artificially set prices for American intellectual property” as a major issue of contention.
The auto industry accounts for nearly 80 percent of the bilateral trade deficit, as American car sales in South Korea have been slow, while Korean automobile sales in the United States have soared. The American business community has long blamed the deficit in part on non-tariff related “Korea unique standards,” often linked to environmental regulations or certification procedures that they say are imposed to protect the domestic market. Foreign companies are then forced to spend an inordinate amount of time and money to deal with these regulations that are often introduced without notice or clear explanations.
South Korean authorities have downplayed charges of unfair trade practices, saying most complaints have been resolved through negotiations without the need for amending the FTA.
The South Korean Trade Minister said while this week’s meeting did not reach any agreement on how to proceed, neither side talked about terminating the FTA.
The Korea Times newspaper in Seoul on Friday published an editorial advising the South Korean government that “a good offense is the best defense” in any upcoming trade negotiations. It recommended Seoul press Washington to loosen its intellectual property rights protections and rules regarding disputes between investors and the state, and to threaten to reduce agriculture and energy imports if the situation becomes overly contentious.
The potential rift over trade comes at a time when Washington and Seoul have been emphasizing their close military alliance and joint support for increasing sanctions on North Korea to pressure the Kim Jong Un government to return to international denuclearization talks.
This week some 17,500 American and 50,000 South Koreans troops are participating in joint strategic military exercises that deal with how to respond to possible North Korean attack scenarios.
Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report
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From: MeNeedIt
When Ha Tran of Ho Chi Minh City shops for food, clothes or electronics, she avoids merchandise she can tell comes from Vietnam’s giant neighbor, China. It might not work, she said, and China is no friend of Vietnam anyway.
“China exports many low-quality products to Vietnam, but we know they don’t export products to other countries around the world (that are) that bad, so we try to avoid the products that are made in China,” said Ha, 24, a design company worker in the Vietnamese financial hub city. Vietnamese prefer to buy stuff from Japan or the West. “We’ve tried (Chinese goods) many times in the past but it turns out like they get broken very easily.”
Political ties between Vietnam and China are another “factor” discouraging purchases, she said.
Ha is hardly a shopping renegade. Consumers around Vietnam typically shun “Made-in-China” purchases to protest what they see as poor-quality goods from a country that already has a record of disputes with their country. The two sides dispute, for example, a tract of territory in the South China Sea east of Vietnam. Competing claims sparked naval battles 1974 and 1988. The two also fought a land border war in the 1970s.
Vietnamese feel China has an unfair upper hand in the maritime dispute by using its larger military to control the contested Paracel Islands.
Consumers make up a growing force in Vietnam, as the Boston Consulting Group forecasts more than a third of the country’s nearly 93 million people to be middle class or higher by 2020. Fast growth in export manufacturing has added to Vietnam’s wealth since 2012 by creating jobs.
“If they find a product that might be the same price, and they find out that one product is Chinese and another product is from Japan, Korea or anywhere else, you know which one they’re going to go for,” said Oscar Mussons, senior associate with the Dezan Shira & Associates business consultancy in Ho Chi Minh City. “Vietnamese people see them not as big brothers, but as rivals.
“This is also because of recent problems, like Chinese are hitting national icons like the islands in the South China Sea,” Mussons said. “For Vietnamese, this is something that cannot be accepted in any way, even through you don’t hear much about or the government doesn’t try to make much publicity about it.”
Vietnamese officials have tried to sideline political disputes with China since anti-Chinese riots of 2014 killed more than 20 people and threatened to scare off investors. China’s go-ahead to construct an oil rig in the disputed sea touched off the rioting.
But Vietnam still counts China as its biggest trade partner. Combined imports and exports came to $25.5 billion in the first four months of the year, according to Vietnamese media reports. Export manufacturers in Vietnam rely as well on China for raw materials.
On top of the political issues, Vietnamese consumers widely suspect China sends lower-quality merchandise to its shelves. Giant Chinese firms, often bigger than Vietnamese counterparts, can send over excess merchandise for sale at low prices because of their production run sizes.
“Generally amongst Vietnamese, China-made products are perceived to be of low quality. Some of this is fact, but some of this is also driven by social media posts and ensuing perceptions,” said Jason Moy, principal with the Boston Consulting Group in Singapore. Lower-income, less educated consumers are particularly prone to those perceptions, he added. “Hence, Chinese products are generally selected when they are the last or only option.”
Trade in shoes, toys and daily necessities along the land border particularly leaves cheap but possibly suspect Chinese goods in Vietnam, where lower-income people buy them for their low prices, said Le Hong Hiep, research fellow with ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Goods trucked across the border in some cases have “pushed Vietnamese merchandise out of their traditional markets,” Le said.
An organized boycott against Chinese goods after the riots of 2014 gained little traction because poorer people couldn’t afford merchandise from other places, he said.
Although Chinese smartphones are gaining a solid reputation, Ha said she once bought a made-in-China phone for her mother because it was all they could afford. It broke after “several months,” she said, so the family bought another phone.
Only Chinese thong flip-flops are worth the money, she said, because at about $1 per pair you can afford to scrap and replace a pair after a few uses.
“People are conscious of the kind of low standards, low quality of Chinese products,” Le said. “I think one of the reasons is that many of these products are consumer items and small items, and they are imported by border trade, not through official channels which normally have stricter regulations and inspections to ensure the quality.”
Shoppers with more money prefer Japanese products as top quality, especially ever-popular motor scooters and consumer electronics, Moy said.Korean food and consumer electronics are also gaining favor with consumers, he said.
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From: MeNeedIt
Amazon will close its $13.7 billion buyout of Whole Foods Market Inc. on Monday and plans to cut prices on grocery staples.
Starting Monday, Whole Foods will offer lower prices on bananas, eggs, salmon, beef, and other products. Looking ahead, the Seattle company hopes to give Amazon Prime members special savings and other in-store benefits.
Also, certain Whole Foods products will be available through Amazon.com, AmazonFresh, Prime Pantry and Prime Now.
Whole Foods shareholders approved the deal Wednesday, and the Federal Trade Commission said it would not block the deal. Amazon will pay Whole Foods shareholders $42 per share, marking an 18 percent premium from its stock price the day before the tie-up was announced on June 16.
Earlier this month, Amazon.com Inc. sold $16 billion of bonds in order to pay for the purchase.
By buying Whole Foods, Amazon is taking a bold step into brick-and-mortar, with more than 460 stores and potentially very lucrative data about how shoppers behave offline.
Meanwhile, rivals are scrambling to catch up with the e-commerce giant. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has the largest share of the U.S. grocery market, is expanding its grocery delivery service with ride-hailing service Uber and announced Wednesday that it will join forces with Google to let shoppers order goods by voice on Google devices.
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From: MeNeedIt
Experts at credit rating agencies are watching Washington’s political squabbling over budgets and spending closely, and they might make another cut in the U.S. credit rating if the Republican-controlled White House, Senate and House cannot reach an agreement.
President Donald Trump has promised to build a massive wall along the southern U.S. border in a bid to stop illegal immigration. Trump has said he will press Congress hard to fund the controversial measure, even if it stalls action on other budget issues and forces the government to shut down.
Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans who ran on promises to limit or cut government spending are reluctant to fund the measure, and most rival Democrats oppose the wall.
U.S. law provides for a “debt ceiling,” meaning the Treasury cannot borrow more money unless Congress agrees to raise the limit. That limit was reached months ago, and the federal government will apparently run out of cash by the end of September or early October if nothing changes.
The political situation is made more complex by the fast-approaching end of the budget year and the need for Congress to agree on next year’s spending priorities.
Congress and presidents have bickered over budgets in the past, and in 2011 a debt ceiling impasse prompted the Standard & Poor’s agency to make the first downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.
The Fitch agency Wednesday said failure to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner would prompt a review of the nation’s credit rating. Fitch currently gives the United States its top rating.
Moody’s experts Thursday wrote that they expected Washington politicians to work out their differences, but that failure to reach an agreement could prompt the government to shut down, disrupting the economy more and more if the impasse drags on.
Moody’s noted that a previous government shutdown prompted lenders to demand higher interest rates, raising the cost of government by about $1.3 billion in just one year.
Moody’s and other experts have urged Congress to remove the debt ceiling because it does not restrain spending but does add “to the noise” around the budget process.
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From: MeNeedIt
Patients who survive infection with the Ebola virus often continue to face numerous health problems. New research finds 80 percent of Ebola survivors suffer disabilities one year after being discharged from the hospital.
Approximately 11,000 people died in the Ebola outbreak that hit West Africa from 2014 to 2016; tens of thousands more who were infected survived.
Of those survivors, many battled vision problems and headaches that lasted for months.
Researchers at the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine are studying what’s called post-Ebola syndrome. One of the senior authors of the study, Dr. Janet Scott, says researchers are unsure why survivors experience such disabilities.
“I’m not sure we’ve quite gotten to the bottom of it yet,” Scott said. “The idea that you go through something as horrific as Ebola and just walk away from that unscathed was always a bit of a vain hope. So, it could be the inflammatory response. It could be damage to the muscles, and it could be the persistence of virus in some cases. It could be all of those things.”
Scott says problems found in Ebola survivors’ eyes may provide clues to what is happening elsewhere in the body.
“They show some quite distinct scarring patterns,” she said. “There’s definitely scar tissue there. We can see it in the eyes. We can’t see it in the rest of the body, but I’m sure it’s in the rest of the body because the patients are coming in with this huge range of problems.”
The disabilities were reported in past Ebola outbreaks, as well. However, because past outbreaks were smaller and there were few survivors, researchers were not able to do major, long-term studies on the aftereffects.
This time, said Scott, “There are 5,000 survivors or thereabouts in Sierra Leone, and more in Guinea and Liberia. So, it’s an opportunity from a research point of view to find out the full spectrum of sequelae … the things that happen after an acute illness.”
Military Hospital 34 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, also took part in the study, helping to recruit 27 Ebola survivors and 54 close contacts who were not infected. About 80 percent of survivors reported disabilities compared to 11 percent of close contacts.
“The problems we’re seeing in Ebola survivors, this is not due just to the tough life in Sierra Leone. This is more than likely down to their experience in Ebola,” Scott said.
The research was led by Dr. Soushieta Jagadesh, who said “a year following acute disease, survivors of West Africa Ebola Virus Disease continue to have a higher chance of disability in mobility, cognition and vision.”
“Issues such as anxiety and depression persist in survivors and must not be neglected,” she added.
Scott hopes the findings can be used to provide better care in the event of another Ebola outbreak, no matter where it is. In the West Africa outbreak, the first goal was to contain the epidemic, followed by reducing the death rate.
“If I was treating an Ebola patient again, it has to be more than just surviving,” Scott said. “You have to try to make people survive well. Surviving with half your body paralyzed or with your vision impaired and being unable to care for your family or earn a living isn’t really enough. So, what I would like to do is to focus on that aspect to make people survive better and survive well.”
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From: MeNeedIt
Imagine a post office for space. That is the job of U.S. space company NanoRacks. Just down the street from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, NanoRacks is one of many companies benefitting from the U.S. space program’s support for a broader range of commercial interests.
“There has been a shift in federal funding into more of this commercial space transportation program,” said David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute and professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University in Houston.
“What that has allowed these companies to do is essentially have an anchor client, an anchor customer and then build up their manifest and build up their client base and think of lots of new ways of accessing space for many different purposes,” Alexander added.
Watch: US Space Company Makes History with Client from China
The space business
For a price, NanoRacks can help almost anyone, anywhere send an experiment or small satellite to the International Space Station in orbit around the Earth. The company made history this summer with a client from China.
“We’re all about democratizing access to space. It’s really important to me that we involve as many nations as possible,” NanoRacks Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Manber said.
The company has helped deliver space experiments and satellites of customers from 30 countries, including academic institutions in Eastern Europe, Peru and Vietnam.
The Beijing Institute of Technology, one of NanoRacks’ latest customers, became the first from China to have an experiment brought onboard the International Space station.
“They’re doing an experiment on DNA and how it mutates in microgravity,” Michael Lewis, chief technology officer of NanoRacks, said.
The research operation in China did not respond to VOA’s request for an interview, but NanoRacks’ Manber said findings from the Chinese experiment could have groundbreaking implications.
“They’ve shown abnormal results when DNA is subjected to space. That could mean, we can’t travel to Mars,” Manber said.
Getting Chinese experiment to ISS
Getting the Chinese experiment to the International Space Station was complicated because U.S. federal law prohibits NASA from working directly with China because of fears the Chinese could steal U.S. technology.
“First we brought it to the Obama administration. They were very concerned there was no ties to the People’s Liberation Army,” Manber said.
After two years, NanoRacks received approval from U.S. lawmakers.
A statement from NASA said, “NASA complied with all legal requirements to notify the Congress of this activity, and all of the ISS (International Space Station) partners approved the inclusion of the experiment from the Beijing Institute of Technology.”
However, there was one stipulation.
“We had to make sure that there was no technology transfer. No IT connection to the space station,” Lewis said. “We had a creative solution. We said, ‘OK, we’ll make sure that we plug in the experiment, and it’s not even connected data wise,’” he added.
Lewis said the self-contained autonomous Chinese experiment flew to the International Space Station on the SpaceX CRS-11 Dragon spacecraft. The experiment received only power from the space station and spent about three weeks there before returning to Earth.
“On the science side, a lot of us scientists would welcome the partnerships. There’re other issues we don’t think about. Much of the Chinese space program is done through the military and the technology development they have gone through in the last few years, again, have been very successful,” Alexander said.
Aside from national security concerns, scientists and businesses are pushing for more international collaboration in space.
“You can’t do deep space exploration alone. The American government cannot do it without the American private sector, and America cannot do it without international colleagues. It’s too expensive. It’s too longer term,” Alexander said.
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From: MeNeedIt
President Donald Trump’s comments at a Phoenix rally that he will probably end up terminating the North American Free Trade Agreement brought cheers from the crowd but groans from the state’s top business group.
Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Glenn Hamer posted a video calling any termination a “terrible mistake” within hours of Trump’s remarks Tuesday night. Hamer is in Mexico on a trade mission with a bipartisan delegation of about two dozen state lawmakers.
“It would be a mistake that the administration would feel each and every day,” Hamer said. “And why would that be? The administration has set a noble goal of 3 percent growth. You can’t get there if your start unraveling trade agreements.
“You need good tax policy, you need good regulatory policy and you need good trade policy,” he said.
Trump hints NAFTA is done
Trump said at the campaign-style rally that he believes Mexico and Canada are coming out ahead on the 23-year-old trade agreement. Renegotiations began in recent weeks.
“Personally, I don’t think we can make a deal, because we have been so badly taken advantage of,” Trump said. “I think we’ll end up probably terminating NAFTA at some point, OK? Probably.”
Modernizing agreement
Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain have called for modernizing an agreement they say has brought huge benefits for Arizonans.
Flake has put on a full court press in recent months, launched an effort in May to highlight what he calls the agreement’s “huge boon to Arizona and the U.S.” He’s put out videos featuring people and businesses that have benefited from the trade pact.
On Wednesday, he said he won’t stop that effort.
“I will continue to speak up for the countless Arizonans whose jobs and businesses rely on the billions of dollars that NAFTA injects into our state’s economy,” Flake said in a statement.
From: MeNeedIt
SpaceX has unveiled a sleek white spacesuit for astronauts on its crewed flights coming up next year.
Chief executive Elon Musk made the big reveal via Instagram on Wednesday. He says it’s not him in the new suit, rather a SpaceX engineer.
SpaceX is developing a crew version of its Dragon cargo capsule for NASA astronauts. Boeing is also working to get U.S. astronauts flying again from home soil. Boeing is going blue for spacesuits for its Starliner capsules.
U.S. astronauts last rocketed away from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2011. They’ve since been riding Russian rockets to get to the International Space Station.
Musk says the new SpaceX suit has been tested on Earth — and works. He says it was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function.
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From: MeNeedIt
Food alone cannot solve the world’s malnutrition crises but only three countries are looking beyond hunger to the other major driver, according to a global study released Thursday.
Water, sanitation and hygiene, usually treated by governments and NGOs as a separate policy area from food and nutrition, make up the second leading cause of stunted growth in children, after underweight births, said the report.
But only Cambodia, Niger, and Zimbabwe among the 10 countries covered by the report are linking their response to malnutrition and water by bringing together the responsible agencies, according to charity WaterAid.
“Improving child health is a long-term issue. It’s not as simple as giving food and that improves malnutrition — right?” Dan Jones of WaterAid told Reuters.
Jones said governments that treat food and water separately cannot prevent malnutrition. Instead, they must tackle the poor sanitation that causes malnutrition, via infection and disease.
In 2016, 155 million children younger than five were stunted due to a lack of nutrition, according to the United Nations World Health Organization.
Diseases caused by dirty water and lack of sanitation such as gut infections, intestinal worms, and diarrhea prevent young bodies from absorbing the nutrients needed for growth, according to WaterAid, which produced the report with charities Action Against Hunger and SHARE.
Jones said malnutrition can leave children with invisible cognitive, emotional and physical damage.
Yet the effects are clear, and span all areas of development, from economic growth to schooling, said Jones.
“If they have clean water … girls, when they grow up to be mothers, are more likely to give birth to healthy children, and to be able to help them to grow and develop and provide them with clean water and food — and those children can go to school and concentrate in school,” said Jones.
Jones singled out Cambodia for linking up its response.
One in three Cambodian children younger than five is stunted, but Prime Minister Hun Sen has brought together the ministries responsible for nutrition, health, agriculture, and water and sanitation to create a joint response.
“It sounds very obvious, but those ministers really talking to each other can make a huge difference,” Jones said.
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From: MeNeedIt