Space exploration is not something Chicago student Mawuto Akploh says she finds in her textbooks, or classroom discussion in her school. 

“We do physics, biology, earth and space sciences,” she told VOA. “But we never actually take the time to talk about the people who actually do those things.” 

Akploh is originally from Togo, and immigrated with her parents to the United States when she was a young child.  She now attends a Chicago area high school career academy, and just became certified as an automobile mechanic.   

Akploh says aerospace engineering wasn’t an option at her school. 

“It’s not that people don’t want to do it… it’s that people don’t know about it.” 

That lack of knowledge has, in part, fueled a shortage of students in the U.S. seeking advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math – also known as STEM.  Fields the aerospace industry depends on. 

“There is a shortage across engineering which I think is generally bad for humanity.”  Which is one reason Beth Moses hopes her career serves as an inspiration to others to answer that shortage. 

After successfully serving at NASA as the assembly manager for the International Space Station, Moses is now the chief astronaut trainer at Virgin Galactic, founded by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, seeking to be the first company consistently taking paying passengers into orbit. 

“We are doing something, and I am doing something that has never been done before,” she explained to VOA.  “There’s no road map, there’s no instruction manual, no guidance on how to do this.” 

Which is why, as Moses writes one of the new instruction manuals in the emerging field of commercial human spaceflight, the need for more engineers is critical to help her company – and others – meet the demands of a growing industry that Moses says doesn’t “come in pink or blue.” 

“In my entire time, in school and in aerospace engineering both at NASA and here at Virgin Galactic, I’ve never once had any hassle or gender issue, and there have been plenty of women around and also plenty of diversity of all kinds… age, race, points of view.” 

It was a message Moses reinforced to those gathered at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, where she was awarded the 2017 “Women in Space Science Award” from the Adler Planetarium’s Women’s Board. 

It also was a part of her pitch to hundreds of Chicago area high school students, including Mawuto Akploh, who gathered to see her speak at the place that sparked Moses’ own interest in space… the Adler Planetarium. 

In front of a large view screen in the Adler’s theater, the audience was awed by her video presentation showing test flight footage from Virgin Galactic, and what the experience of heading into space as a commercial passenger with her company might look like, when it takes off. 

Moses views the opportunity for widely available space flight as a unifying endeavor for humanity, but knows well that the final frontier of space is a difficult environment to master. 

In 2006, Richard Branson told VOA he was hopeful Virgin Galactic would be orbiting the earth soon. 

“Twenty-four months from now, my parents, my children and myself shall be popping into space,” he said with a grin. 

But a series of setbacks, including a crash in 2014 that led to the death of one of the test spacecraft’s co-pilots, has pushed that timeline back. 

Eleven years later, Branson still waits to be his company’s first passenger. 

He told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in April he hopes to see Virgin Galactic’s first sub-orbital flight by the end of 2017. 

“We are in the air and we are working our way through a test program,” Moses told VOA.  “When it is complete and the vehicle is safe, we’ll start commercial flights with Richard and his family.”   

Those are flights that more than 700 passengers have already paid more than $200,000 to experience, reinforcing to students contemplating a career in aerospace engineering that not only is it in demand, it could also be lucrative… something Mawuto Akploh is keeping in mind as she plans for college, where a course of study in physics is her top pick.
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From: MeNeedIt

Robots can see well enough to drive a car. Computers can hear our voices and respond to commands. VOA’s Arturo Martinez and Steve Baragona report that engineers are breaking through the next sensation frontier for robots: touch. Steve Baragona narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

In New York, where buildings outnumber green spaces, some people have small gardens to grow some of their own food. Now, another garden is growing in New York in a very unusual location. On a barge, floating on a river, a variety of crops are being nurtured. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about this unique, self-sustaining garden project.
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From: MeNeedIt

Fox News CEO and Co-Founder Roger Ailes died Thursday morning at 77 years old, the news organization announced.

The network was informed of Ailes’s death by his wife Elizabeth. News anchors struggled to control their emotions as they read a statement written by Ailes’s wife.

“I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning,” the statement said.

“During a career that stretched over more than five decades, his work in entertainment, in politics, and in news affected the lives of many millions. And so even as we mourn his death, we celebrate his life,” the statement continued.

Ailes spent 20 years as the head of Fox, but he was removed last year amid claims of sexual harassment against him.
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From: MeNeedIt

Older white Americans are nearly twice as likely as African-Americans to say they’ve saved enough for retirement, a new poll found.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey also found that African- Americans and Latinos have less financial security than whites and will rely on fewer sources of income during retirement. The retirement savings gap between white and other minority groups extends beyond pensions, 401(k)s or other retirement accounts.

The survey shows older white Americans are also more likely to collect Social Security benefits, inherit money from their families or receive income from the sale of a home or other physical assets.

The disparity in retirement readiness is a sign that the structural inequalities black and Latino workers face during their working years extend into retirement. For example, the unemployment rate among African-Americans is twice that of whites. On top of that, blacks earn less than whites with similar education and experience, research shows.

“Having good saving habits is good but black and Latino workers are just always worse off and it makes every aspect of saving for retirement harder,” said Matthew Rutledge, an economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

About 38 percent of older white Americans said they had sufficient money for retirement compared with 20 percent for African-Americans.

Four in 10 older Americans say they think they’ll outlive their retirement savings.

“Black and Latino families benefit from being close,” Rutledge said, adding that family members help to care for children and the elderly. “But it doesn’t pay off when compared to whites family’s (financial) contributions.”

Families not only pass down money, but also information on how to handle finances.

“They have learned better savings behavior from the previous generation,” he said. “Older Americans who received financial help from family are less likely to have racked up credit card debt or student loans. They can save (for retirement) rather than paying off debt.”

The poll showed whites are significantly more likely, compared to African-Americans and Latinos to say they have a retirement account. They’re also more likely than African-Americans to say they will have income from the sale of physical assets.

But even when it comes to the most basic form of income during retirement, whites are more likely to say they will receive Social Security payments – 82 percent compared to 62 percent for African-Americans and 60 percent for Latinos, the survey found.

The situation is so dire that some older African-Americans and Latinos have no sources of income for retirement -14 percent compared to 4 percent of whites, the survey found.

Maria Villanueva, 69, is one of them. Villanueva doesn’t collect Social Security payments because she didn’t pay into the system. Villanueva immigrated illegally to California in the 70s to work as a farmworker and became a legal resident after the Immigration Reform and Control Act was signed into law. The single mother worked as a domestic worker but was paid in cash.

“I didn’t know I had to pay into Social Security,” she said in Spanish. “All my life I’ve taken care of everyone except myself.”

Villanueva hoped she would be able to work into older age but she can’t because of various chronic illnesses including diabetes and arthritis. She now relies on government assistance and food stamps. She provides for her 15-year-old granddaughter.

“I try not to think about the future because I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” she said. “What if I go to sleep tonight and I don’t wake up tomorrow?”

Retired members of minority groups tend to have lower incomes and are more likely to describe their financial situation as “somewhat poor or very poor” compared to white Americans. Black Americans were also more likely to say they sometimes fall behind on bills, the poll found.

John Jackson, 66, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to an Individual Retirement Account when he worked as a manager. Now, two years into retirement, he said he’s not sure if his savings and Social Security will be enough.

Jackson, who is black, says there are many people worse off than him and that’s why he doesn’t like to complain. Worst case scenario, he said, he has a big loving family who could take care of him.

“I know God will take care of me,” he said.

Some white Americans also are fearful about having enough for retirement. For example, Karen Brooks, a 52-year-old university professor living in a suburb outside Seattle, said she’s concerned whether she’s saved enough.

Brooks is, by most standards, better off financially than Jackson. She has a pension from her work as a school teacher. She is also contributing about 15 percent of her current income to a retirement account and she may even receive a small inheritance. But her biggest source of worry is that she didn’t save when she went back to graduate school.

“I’m pretty smart and I’ve done well,” she said. “I’m saving for retirement but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough. It’s frightening even talking about it now.”

The survey was conducted Feb. 14 through March 13 by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

It involved interviews in English and Spanish with 1,683 people aged 50 and older nationwide who are members of NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. It includes oversamples of 332 African Americans and 308 Hispanics. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Donald Trump Jr. traveled to Dubai and met a billionaire business partner in the city-state, discussing “new ideas” as the Emirati’s real estate firm still lists possible plans for future joint projects while Trump’s father is in the White House.

The Trump Organization has said it won’t make new foreign deals while Donald Trump serves as America’s 45th president. That didn’t affect the Trump International Golf Club in Dubai’s opening in February , while a previously planned Trump-branded golf course designed by Tiger Woods is still being built nearby.

Both projects are being built by Dubai’s DAMAC Properties, owned by Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani. His company has paid the Trump Organization’s subsidiaries between $1 million to $5 million for the projects, according to a U.S. Federal Election Committee report submitted in May 2016.

Sajwani’s Instagram account posted a picture Tuesday night showing him with Trump, who now runs the Trump Organization with his brother Eric, at a table covered in a spread of Middle Eastern food and a plate of French fries.

 “It was great having my dear friend and business partner Donald Trump Jr. over for lunch,” a caption with the photo read. “Discussing new ideas and innovation always make our meetings even more interesting.”

DAMAC did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting. However, recent regulatory filings made by the company suggest possible future plans with the Trump Organization.

DAMAC mentioned the Trump Organization in a prospectus for a sukuk, a type of Islamic bond, launched in April on the NASDAQ Dubai exchange. That filing noted DAMAC’s “product expansion also includes branding arrangements with … the Trump Organization.” It also listed plans for a “luxury boutique hotel to be operated by the Trump Organization” at DAMAC Hills, a massive development of villas and apartment buildings in Dubai’s desert that surrounds the newly opened Trump golf course.

Similar language had been included in previous regulatory filings by DAMAC, but its presence in documents after Trump’s election suggests the real estate company is keeping its options open. Days before becoming president, Trump had told journalists that DAMAC had offered the Trump Organization $2 billion in deals after his election, something DAMAC also confirmed.

Meanwhile, a quarterly earnings filing Monday made by DAMAC’s holding company listed a newly created subsidiary called Trump International Golf Club LLC, in which it described as holding a 100 percent legal and economic interest. The UAE-based entity lists its principal activity as being the “golf club,” without elaborating.

The Trump Organization has no new deals in the works in Dubai, company spokeswoman Amanda Miller said Wednesday. The company declined to answer other questions.

DAMAC’s first-quarter net profits of $240 million were down 16 percent compared to last year’s $285 million. The lower profits come as weak global oil prices squeeze Mideast countries, whose citizens form about half of DAMAC’s clientele.

DAMAC’s managing director also resigned Thursday, the company said in a regulatory filing. It offered no reason for his departure.  

Experts have raised concerns that existing Trump business abroad could run afoul of the so-called “emoluments clause” of the U.S. Constitution. That clause bars public officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments and companies controlled by them without the consent of Congress. Already, a liberal-funded watchdog group has filed a lawsuit citing the clause.

Others criticize Trump family members for traveling with Secret Service details while on private business trips, something afforded to them as direct relatives of the president.

While in Dubai, Trump also gave a commencement speech Sunday at the American University in Dubai, a private university founded in 1995 that has some 2,700 students. The university did not announce Trump would be making a commencement speech on its website ahead of time.

“When I look back on what my father did in this past election, and the risk he took, to me I’m far more impressed with the fact that he tried than by the fact he actually won,” Trump said in the 14-minute speech.”For a billionaire to step away from an amazing life and spend $75 million to go up against an incredible Republican field and then go up against one of the great political machines ever assembled… to do that was amazing.”

“We believed in his message and not necessarily the contrived message that was put out there in the media,” he added.

The university did not answer repeated emails and telephone calls asking if Trump received any payment for his speech. Security guards turned away an Associated Press journalist at the university’s gate Wednesday.
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From: MeNeedIt

Apple will reportedly announce an update to its lineup of laptops at its annual developer conference, known as WWDC, in June.

The report from Bloomberg suggests Apple is responding to increased competition from rival Microsoft.

According to the report, Apple will announce three new laptops: The MacBook Pro will get a quicker processor, as will the 12-inch MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Air. The processors, according to Bloomberg, will be Intel’s newest, seventh generation chips.

Apple’s laptops account for 11 percent of the company’s annual $216 billion in sales. iPhones make up nearly two thirds of the company’s sales.

Rival Microsoft recently unveiled its own Surface Laptop as a possible competitor to MacBook Air. That device reportedly boots up quickly and has a touchscreen.

According to Bloomberg, the new MacBook Pro would share the same basic external look of the current models.

It has been seven years since Apple redesigned the MacBook Air and more than a year since the company released a new MacBook Pro. The 12-inch MacBook saw its last update last spring.

Apple will also reportedly announce an upgrade to its macOS operating system.

The WWDC will start June 5.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. stocks, the dollar, and government bonds were down in Wednesday’s midday trading as many analysts said investors have been shaken by a series of controversial actions and comments from President Donald Trump. The major U.S. stock indexes fell 1.1 percent or more.

The faltering markets follow Trump’s firing of the FBI chief, sharing secrets with top Russian officials, and allegations that the president may have tried to block an investigation into actions by a top aide who was fired.

Stocks had risen to a series of record highs after Trump’s election, as investors bet that his promises to cut taxes and regulation would boost economic growth and corporate profits.

Investors may have second thoughts, though, after legislative efforts to repeal and replace a health care law stalled, and the tax cut agenda is tangled in political bickering.

Even Trump’s Republican allies say calls for congressional and other investigations of the administration’s actions are a distraction and a worry for lawmakers trying to move his agenda forward against determined opposition from Democrats.
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From: MeNeedIt

Scientists say they have identified the “sea monster” that washed ashore on an Indonesian beach.

The badly decomposing carcass measures over 15 meters long and baffled scientists since it washed up on Seram Island last week.

Marine biologists now believe the carcass is a dead baleen whale, largely because of a visible skeleton, which would rule out speculation that the creature was a giant squid.

“Giant squid are invertebrates and there are clearly bones visible, so I am very comfortable saying it’s some type of rorqual whale,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation in an interview with the Huffington Post. “Certain species of baleen whales (rorquals) have ‘ventral grooves’ which run from their chin to their belly button. It is stretchy tissue that expands when they feed.”

Alexander Werth, a whale biologist at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia agrees with the assessment after seeing photos of the carcass on social media that showed the nearly amorphous carcass surrounded by blood in the water. He added that the carcass probably stinks “to high heaven.”

“That’s yet another reason you don’t want to be close to these things, not because it’s a scary, spooky creature, but [because] it would just be releasing some pretty foul, noxious gases,” Werth told Live Science.

Locals have asked the government for help in removing the whale.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ashin Wirathu, the Burmese Buddhist monk known for whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar, is the subject of a new documentary airing at France’s renowned Cannes Film Festival, which starts Wednesday.

By filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, “The Venerable W” will appear in a special screening at one of the most prestigious cultural events in the world, marking the culmination of Wirathu’s journey from an obscure rabble-rouser to international infamy.

But his path to notoriety abroad points to questions back home about how much of a role the media have played in fueling his rise. Some believe he has been given too much of a platform for his hateful views or that coverage of his activities merits a more thoughtful approach.

Media attention for anti-Muslim views

“He has been famous because of the interviews and because of the posts in the local media,” said Thitsa Hla Htway, secretary of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Myanmar.

He urged journalists to not report his more repugnant musings and to report on more diverse issues.

“What I want to stress is that they should just stay away from him and his popularity will go down. There are many important issues in Myanmar which are more important than him,” he said.

In and out of prison

This wasn’t the feeling five years ago, when Myanmar was emerging from military rule and grappling with ascendant Buddhist nationalist forces in the form of the 969 movement and Ma Ba Tha, the Committee to Protect Race and Religion.

Sentenced to prison for 25 years in 2003 for inciting violence, Wirathu was released in an amnesty in 2012, the same year that saw the first of several deadly riots to plague the country’s transition to democracy from nearly five decades of military rule.

‘Time magazine’ interview

Though Myanmar has long struggled to contain religious enmity, the story was not often heard outside of the country due to its isolation. That changed with a 2013 TIME magazine issue that put Wirathu on the cover and sought to explain the man’s connection to the mayhem.

The initial coverage was revealing, but over the years, Wirathu was interviewed by countless journalists, including the author of this article. Doubt crept into the worthiness of the enterprise for many journalists.

Social media star

But his following on social media is enormous, his posts can be inflammatory, and the fact that he has not faced strong pushback implies he has connections.

Thiha Saw, the director of the Myanmar Journalism Institute, said he credits Wirathu’s rise more to the explosion of internet access that has occurred in recent years. He added that mainstream media outlets in Myanmar have been cautious about not giving Wirathu an unnecessary amount of exposure.

Supported military

But his level of influence remains an open question. He supported the military-backed ruling party in a 2015 election contest against Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won easily. This past March, Wirathu was hit with a ban on giving sermons for one year.

Even so, he was allowed to travel to a part of northern Rakhine State this month that has been largely closed off to observers since Rohingya militants attacked border posts in October, killing nine and setting off a crackdown that has resulted in accusations of possible crimes against humanity.

British journalist Oliver Slow, the chief of staff for the weekly magazine Frontier Myanmar, said in his personal opinion there needs to be a mix of scrutiny and restraint in the reporting.

Journalists want more scrutiny of Wirathu

“I think obviously he [Wirathu] needs to be heavily scrutinized. His group and the people behind him have the potential to cause massive issues, so I think it’s important to be reporting on him and what they are doing,” Slow said. “But I think we pretty much know all his views now, they’ve been aired for the past four or five years. His views on Muslims, his views on religion, have been so well aired, I just don’t really see any benefit any more of interviewing him.”

Matthew Smith, executive director of the NGO Fortify Rights, said in an email he isn’t persuaded by arguments the media has disproportionately fueled Wirathu’s rise to power, even if Wirathu has benefited from the attention.

“Wirathu is a populist demagogue with a considerable following and powerful connections behind the scenes,” Smith said. “But he and his followers have unarguably used international media attention to their advantage, to build their prominence and advance nationalist and racist narratives.”

Smith wants more investigative coverage of Wirathu.

“We see the occasional profile piece and don’t find those terribly helpful. Most foreign readers, particularly in the West, regard Buddhism as a tranquil religion of peace, so editors have endless fodder in stories of an extremist monk who preaches hatred.”

Schroeder, the filmmaker, did not immediately respond to a request for an interview sent through his production company.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A computer virus that exploits the same vulnerability as the global “ransomware” attack has latched on to more than 200,000 computers and begun manufacturing digital currency, experts said Tuesday.

The development adds to the dangers exposed by the WannaCry ransomware and provides another piece of evidence that a North Korea-linked hacking group may be behind the attacks.

WannaCry, developed in part with hacking techniques that were either stolen or leaked from the U.S. National Security Agency, has infected more than 300,000 computers since Friday, locking up their data and demanding a ransom payment to release it.

Researchers at security firm Proofpoint said the related attack, which installs a currency “miner” that generates digital cash, began infecting machines in late April or early May but had not been previously discovered because it allows computers to operate while creating the digital cash in the background.

Proofpoint executive Ryan Kalember said the authors may have earned more than $1 million, far more than has been generated by the WannaCry attack.

Like WannaCry, the program attacks via a flaw in Microsoft Corp’s Windows software. That hole has been patched in newer versions of Windows, though not all companies and individuals have installed the patches.

Suspected links to North Korea

Digital currencies based on a technology known as blockchain operate by enabling the creation of new currency in exchange for solving complex math problems. Digital “miners” run specially configured computers to solve the problems and generate currency, whose value fluctuates according to market demand.

Bitcoin is by far the largest such currency, but the new mining program is not aimed at Bitcoin. Rather it targeted a newer digital currency, called Monero, that experts say has been pursued recently by North Korean-linked hackers.

North Korea has attracted attention in the WannaCry case for a number of reasons, including the fact that early versions of the WannaCry code used some programming lines that had previously been spotted in attacks by Lazarus Group, a hacking group associated with North Korea.

Security researchers and U.S. intelligence officials have cautioned that such evidence is not conclusive, and the investigation is in its early stages.

In early April, security firm Kaspersky Lab said that a wing of Lazarus devoted to financial gain had installed software to mine Moreno on a server in Europe.

A new campaign to mine the same currency, using the same Windows weakness as WannaCry, could be coincidence, or it could suggest that North Korea was responsible for both the ransomware and the currency mining.

Kalember said he believes the similarities in the European case, WannaCry and the miner were “more than coincidence.”

“It’s a really strong overlap,” he said. “It’s not like you see Moreno miners all over the world.”

The North Korean mission to the United Nations could not be reached for comment, while the FBI declined to comment.
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From: MeNeedIt

Pregnant women who come down with the flu are at greater risk of illness requiring hospitalization. A new study found that in resource-poor countries, flu vaccination reduced the risk of illness to mother and baby.  

An estimated 40 percent of the world’s population lives in subtropical and tropical zones, where influenza sometimes circulates year-round. Yet influenza vaccine is rarely used.

Mark Steinhoff is director of the Global Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio. He said the influenza virus, which is often mild in healthy people, can result in hospitalization of pregnant women.  

With a growing fetus pressed up against their lungs, Steinhoff says, women with the flu can have trouble breathing.  He also said a pregnant woman is  more susceptible to illness as the growing baby siphons off her natural defenses.

But in a first-of-its-kind study, Steinhoff and colleagues found vaccinating women year-round in a developing country, Nepal near the Indian border, dramatically reduced the incidence of influenza in mothers and benefited their babies.

The study was published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

“It reduced disease in the mothers and in the infants by about 60 percent reduction in the second year. It’s really quite remarkable. But it also reduced the rate of low birth weight — that is, kids born less than 2.5 kilos. It reduced that by 16 percent,” said Steinhoff.

Babies benefited from the shots because they received antibodies against the illness from their mothers while in the womb.

The study

The study ran between April 2011 and September 2013 and involved a total of 3,693 mothers between the ages of 15 and 40.   

There were two phases of the trial, with one group of women being vaccinated in the first year and a different group of pregnant women the following year.  Half of the women received a placebo.

Because influenza in some countries can circulate year-round, there’s no particular flu season as in more temperate climates. The women were therefore vaccinated at various times with a shot that contained three inactivated flu strains. Each group was followed for up to 180 days to see whether they developed fevers and body aches.

Steinhoff said the benefits of influenza vaccination have long been known in the United States and other Western countries.

“The vaccine you know was developed many years ago. It was known to be safe. There were no bad reactions to it,” Steinhoff said.

He said it’s up to individual countries to decide whether they want to launch influenza vaccination campaigns for pregnant women. In the meantime, he said, researchers will be obtaining additional data on year-round immunization programs in developing countries.
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From: MeNeedIt