Ear infections are one of those things almost everyone has to deal with. They’re painful, but generally easily treatable. But for many people, chronic ear infections can significantly affect their hearing and their quality of life. Polish doctors may have discovered a tiny solution for what can be a big problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The co-founder of Microsoft, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, has given a passionate defense of foreign aid and voiced fears that the political climate in the US and Britain could see aid budgets cut. In a speech in London this week, he warned that withdrawing aid would create a ‘leadership vacuum that others will fill.’ Henry Ridgwell reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The gigantic black and white portraits of children started appearing on walls around a suburban neighborhood of Havana two years ago, the work of Cuban artist Maisel Lopez.

The sober, finely painted portraits contrast with Cuba’s dilapidated buildings and pot-holed streets, colorful vintage cars and peeling pink, apricot and turquoise paint on eclectic architecture.

With nearly 30 murals completed, Lopez said he is only getting started on his “Colossi” series, a striking endeavor in the Communist-run country where street art is rare.

“I want to keep expanding further afield,” said Lopez, 31, who started painting the walls of homes and shops in his home district of Playa and is now completing his first mural in neighboring Marianao.

A chubby girl with wispy blond hair wistfully rests her chin on her hands, while a black boy with angular features peers at passersby with a slight air of defiance.

The murals are unusual in a country where public spaces are tightly controlled and posters and murals mainly have political themes or depict figures like Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Only one other artist in Havana, Yulier Rodriguez, has an equally recognizable assortment of street art. His figures are alien, the murals colorful. Lopez’s subjects are realistic and monochrome.

Lopez said in an interview last week that political art led him to paint murals. He helped with several celebrating the Bolivarian revolution during a cultural mission in 2009 to Cuba’s socialist ally Venezuela.

“A mural is constantly in interaction with the public,” said Lopez, whose work is inspired by Cuban independence hero Jose Marti, who said “children are the hope of the world.”

“That’s why I paint the children big, to mark their importance,” he said.

Unlike many street artists, including Rodriguez, Lopez seeks permits to paint on walls. While initially hard to get, he gained trust as he developed the series, he said.

Each colossus is several meters tall and takes Lopez four days to a week to paint. Each depicts a child living in the vicinity. He does not charge to paint them.

Instead, he earns a living teaching art classes and selling canvas portraits that can fetch up to $1,500.

Locals have declared themselves fans and guardians of his work, looking after it as people stop to take photographs.

“It’s really striking and gives life to the street,” said Vivian Herrera, 47, who runs a bakery next to one of the murals.

“It’s like the girl is really there, with her big, open eyes.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Philosopher, humanitarian and physicist Albert Einstein is the subject of new TV series “Genius,” which delves into the drama and passion of the man who developed the theory of relativity and helped initiate the U.S. effort to build an atomic bomb.

Executive producer Ron Howard told reporters at the TV show’s launch at the Tribeca Film Festival that he had always been fascinated by Einstein.

“But I never realized how many twists and turns and, you know, there were in his life, and how much drama there was,” Howard said on Thursday.

The 10-part series for the National Geographic channel shows Einstein’s personal struggles and “how complicated, sexy, you know – kind of bohemian – a lot of his relationships were,” Howard said.

Australian Geoffrey Rush plays the older Einstein, with Britain’s Emily Watson and American actress Gwendolyn Ellis portraying older and younger versions of his second wife, Elsa.

“He wasn’t just a scientist,” Watson said of Einstein, who died in 1955. “He was a philosopher, a humanist. He was an immigrant. He was at the center of so many political events in the 20th century, or close to the center of them, and had incredibly complicated relationships in his life.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The United Nations’ World Health Organization says millions of lives could be saved if people infected with viral hepatitis were tested and treated for these potentially fatal diseases.

New WHO data from the just released Hepatitis 2017 report show an estimated 325 million people globally are living with chronic hepatitis B or hepatitis C virus infections.

WHO said hundreds of thousands of people infected with these diseases are dying because they lack access to life-saving testing and treatment. The agency noted that most people are untested and do not even know that they are infected.

Consequently, WHO said they remain untreated and are at risk of “a slow progression to chronic liver disease, cancer and death.”

Hepatitis B virus is transmitted between people through contact with blood or other body fluids. Hepatitis C virus is spread through direct contact with infected blood.

Latest estimates show that viral hepatitis caused 1.34 million deaths in 2015 and that some 1.75 million people were newly infected with hepatitis C, bringing the total number of people living with this disease globally to 71 million.

Comparable to TB

Gottfried Hirnschall, director of WHOs department of HIV/global hepatitis program, said that the number of deaths from viral hepatitis was comparable to that of tuberculosis.

However, he noted that hepatitis kills more people than HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and significantly more than malaria.

“What is, however, the difference between hepatitis and those three other diseases is that the trend for hepatitis is upwards. We are seeing an increase in mortality while for the other three diseases, it has been going down over the years,” Hirnschall said. “Since 2000 and 2015, we have seen a 22 percent increase from one million, as I said, to 1.34 million.”

Hirnschall said there was a range of interventions and tools, including highly effective vaccines and medicines that can prevent hepatitis from becoming a chronic and fatal disease.

WHO estimates 257 million people worldwide were living with chronic hepatitis B in 2015. However, it noted that new infections have been falling dramatically thanks to increased coverage of HBV vaccination among children.

Hepatitis B is mainly transmitted in the first years of life from mother to child and is most prevalent in the Western Pacific and African regions.

While this safe and effective vaccine has been around since 1982, nations have been slow to use it. But Ana Maria Henao Restrepo, team leader of the department of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, observed that this has changed.

She said 95 percent or 185 countries now use the hepatitis B vaccine in routine immunization programs.

“That is great and as I mentioned because of this, 85 percent of the infants worldwide are protected with three doses of hepatitis B vaccine. Where we are lagging behind is on the first dose that is given after birth. It is very important to prevent infections from the mother,” she said.

Restrepo said only 50 percent of countries were delivering this vaccine. Without this vaccine, she said “people become chronically infected and require medication and diagnosis” throughout their lifetime.

Unsafe injections

Unsafe injections in health care settings and injecting drug use are the most common modes of hepatitis C transmission. The problem is most widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean and European regions.

While using clean needles and syringes will prevent transmission of the disease, Gottfried Hirnschall said there is a highly effective drug that can cure hepatitis C within a relatively short time.

“A person needs to take a single tablet or a tablet every day for two to three months and most of the people will be cured.”

He said few people have availed themselves of this treatment for a long time because of the exorbitantly high $84,000 price tag.

“They were very high to start with. They are still very high in many countries, particularly in high-income countries,” he said.

“But, as the report also points out, the price of these treatments has come down considerably. It costs as little as $200 in some countries now, per cure for treatments, which is quite striking.”

Hirnschall said the new possibilities of cure for hepatitis C and the possible elimination of hepatitis B through vaccination have created some positive momentum and greater public attention on these heretofore “silent epidemics.”

“The momentum has clearly been driven by the excitement around some new opportunities we do now have,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

As economic and political leaders gather in Washington for the annual spring meetings of the World bank and International Monetary Fund — new warnings Thursday about the impact of rapid change on the global economy. At issue, the pace of technological advance and its Impact on jobs, particularly in developing economies. Mil Arcega has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Catch a wave, and you’re sitting on top of the world. You’re also sitting on top of a unique biome. What does that do to our bodies? One surfer, who is also a chemistry graduate student, is trying to find out what all this wave time is doing to surfers’ bodies. This report by Kevin Enochs is narrated by Robert Raffaele.
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From: MeNeedIt

For Prince fans, Friday’s one-year anniversary of his shocking death from an accidental drug overdose will be a time for sadness and celebration.

At his Paisley Park home and recording studio-turned-museum, a full four days of events are on tap, ranging from concert performances by his former bandmates to panel discussions.

Fans who can’t afford those high-priced tickets can head to a street party outside First Avenue, the club he made world famous in “Purple Rain.” And the Minnesota History Center is staging a special exhibit of Prince memorabilia, including his iconic “Purple Rain” suit.

Here’s a look at how Prince’s home state will honor his legacy and mourn his loss:

Paisley Park

Prince’s home base in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen is marking the anniversary with a roster of shows from artists such as his old band The Revolution, Morris Day and the Time and New Power Generation. Also on the docket: panel discussions featuring such speakers as his old band mates — think Lisa (Coleman) and Wendy (Melvoin) from “Purple Rain” and The Revolution — along with many more.

Fans who could afford it spent $999 for VIP passes for the Paisley schedule, and the estate said those were sold out. A relatively cheaper option — $549 general admission passes — was still available midweek.

Prince’s siblings, who are on track to inherit an estate valued around $200 million, are hosting an all-night dance party in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley with Dez Dickerson, Apollonia Kotero, Andre Cymone and others.

First Avenue

The downtown Minneapolis club where Prince filmed key parts of “Purple Rain” is hosting late-night dance parties Friday and Saturday with tracks from the late superstar.

A memorial street party outside the club is also on tap for Saturday. It will be reminiscent of the one that drew thousands of mourners on the night of Prince’s death to cry, dance and sing along.

Pieces of History

Prince’s “Purple Rain” costume — purple jacket, white ruffled shirt and studded pants — was put out for display at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul through Sunday.

The museum is also marking the anniversary by featuring handwritten lyrics to an unreleased song, “I Hope We Work It Out,” signed by Prince in 1977. Prince performed it for record executives when he first signed with Warner Bros.

Painting the Town Purple

Several landmarks in Minneapolis will be lit up in Prince purple, including U.S. Bank Stadium, Target Field, the IDS Center, and the Interstate 35W and Lowry Avenue bridges over the Mississippi River.
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From: MeNeedIt

An award-winning documentary has captured the innovative ways farmers and others are trying to make the planet a greener, more sustainable place.

Winner of the 2016 César for best documentary, the French equivalent of an Oscar, Tomorrow charts a road trip in which co-directors Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent roam the globe in search of solutions to environmental problems.

Their journey takes them to Icelandic volcanoes, Indian slums and French farmlands, among other places, to tell the stories of ordinary people fighting climate change.

The decision to steer away from doomsday narratives — most recently seen in Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Before the Flood” — came from the realization that such an approach failed to spur people into action, Dion said.

“When we focus on catastrophe, and on things that raise fear, it triggers mechanisms in the brain of rejection, flight and fear,” the longtime environmental activist said in a phone interview ahead of the film’s U.S. release Friday.

The film begins in the United States, where two California professors discuss their milestone 2012 study concluding climate change may signal a new cycle of mass extinction.

Soon afterward, Dion and Laurent — a French actress known for her role in “Inglourious Basterds” — hit the road.

Public plantings

In Britain, they visit the market town of Todmorden where residents have seized public spaces to plant fruit, vegetables and herbs — which pedestrians are encouraged to pick.

In the French city of Lille, the CEO of an envelope company shows them how bamboo is grown in the factory’s wastewater to feed a wood boiler that powers the unit’s central heating.

And in Copenhagen, local planners explain how building a labyrinth of bike paths is part of efforts to become first carbon-free capital by 2025.

“We don’t make the cities to make the cars happy, to make the modernistic planners and architects happy,” Jan Gehl, a local architect and urban planner, says in the film. “We have to make the cities so that citizens can have a good life and a good time.”

Dion said he was confident the film would appeal to American viewers despite the many U.S. lawmakers who are skeptical about climate change and oppose regulation to combat it.

Since being sworn in January, President Donald Trump has taken several steps to undo climate change regulations put in place by the previous administration.

Trump also promised during his election campaign to pull the United States out of the global climate change pact reached in Paris in 2015.
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From: MeNeedIt

Marijuana enthusiasts in the United States celebrate April 20 — or 4/20 — as an informal holiday, but this year they have something else to get excited about: New polling data show support for legalization of the drug is at an all-time high.

Sixty percent of Americans say they support the legalization of marijuana, according to a poll released Thursday by Quinnipiac University. The same poll taken in December 2012 showed 51 percent of respondents supported legalization.

“From a stigmatized, dangerous drug bought in the shadows, to an accepted treatment for various ills, to a widely accepted recreational outlet, marijuana has made it to the mainstream,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a statement.

According to the poll, an overwhelming 94 percent of respondents said they support the use of marijuana by adults for medicinal purposes — also the highest level of support seen in the poll’s history.

Seventy-three percent of Americans said they oppose enforcement of federal laws against marijuana in states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana.

Currently, 29 states have legalized marijuana use for medicinal purposes, and eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational use.

Marijuana advocates across the country held events to observe the annual 4/20 quasi-holiday. In Washington, D.C., activists had plans to give free joints to congressional staffers on Capitol Hill, while in California, which voted to legalize marijuana last fall, tens of thousands were expected at events ranging from marijuana cooking classes to a massive party in Golden Gate Park.
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From: MeNeedIt

The head of the International Monetary Fund says she “has every reason to believe” that the global lender can cooperate with the Trump Administration to support and improve global trade.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde spoke in Washington as economic and political officials gathered from around the world at this week’s meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.

Candidate Donald Trump blamed what he called unfair trade for the loss of many jobs in the United States, and proposed tax increases for imported goods. President Trump recently signed an order to give U.S. firms a better shot at selling goods to the U.S. government, and has been sharply critical of immigration policies.

Lagarde says trade is one of the “pillars” of prosperity. She vowed to continue to support the growth of trade, seeking ways to make it more efficient and fair, and fight against protectionist measures.

Lagarde said the global economy is “picking up momentum,” because of “sensible” policies in many nations. Speaking a little earlier, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said he is “encouraged” to see stronger economic prospects after years of “disappointing” global growth. He said growth is hampered by conflict, climate shocks, the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and famine in certain areas.
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From: MeNeedIt

Anti-corruption activists in Nigeria say the president’s suspension of two top officials is only a first step and must be followed up with more action.

On Wednesday, Buhari suspended national intelligence agency chief Ayo Oke, who was linked to more than $40 million found in an empty Lagos apartment, and the secretary of his government, David Babachir Lawal, who allegedly collected money on a phony contract.

Abdulkarim Dayyabu is chairman of the Movement for Justice in Nigeria, a non-governmental organization.  He says the suspensions are overdue.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” Dayyabu told VOA’s Hausa Service on Thursday.  “Someone like Buhari ought to take immediate measures against any official accused of corruption; he should not wait for too long.”

Abdulmajid Dan Bilki Kwamanda is a member of the ruling APC coalition who recommends the president move against other aides.

“Buhari is finally fighting corruption from within.  He must continue to look inwards and confront his senior officials who are accused of corruption head-on,” he said.”

Another activist, Naja’atu Mohammed, is skeptical that the suspended officials will be held accountable, saying the administration shielded Lawal previously when senators accused him of corruption.

“We are looking for results,” she told VOA.

There have been calls, including one from Nigeria’s Senate, for the removal of Lawal over his alleged complicity in the mismanagement of funds meant for a presidential initiative on northeastern Nigeria

Rholavision Engineering, a company owned by Lawal, received payments of about $500,000 from a contract he awarded for the clearing of “invasive plant species” in Yobe state.

Oke, director-general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), is embroiled in the discovery of $43 million in cash by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

So far, no one has claimed ownership of the money, which was in both local and foreign currencies.

Ownership of the apartment complex in which the funds were found, Osborne Towers Lagos, is still unclear, but the building is occupied by many powerful Nigerians including the former chairman of the opposition party, Ahmadu Muazu, whose PDP ruled Nigeria for years under former president Goodluck Jonathan.

Government spokesman Femi Adesina said the government has launched an investigation into the funds.

Another presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, told VOA’s Umar Farouk Musa in Abuja that Buhari has given two probe panels, headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, two weeks to investigate and submit their findings.

The suspensions follow recent discoveries of large amounts of money by the EFCC in strange places, including homes of senior government officials.

Last month, the EFCC found about $1.25 million abandoned in large bags at the Kaduna airport.

Earlier, nearly $10 million was seized from the home of a former head of Nigeria’s National Petroleum Company, NNPC, in the northern state of Kaduna.

The EFCC also uncovered yet another unclaimed $1 million in two shops at a shopping mall in Victoria Island, Lagos.  

A new government initiative to reward whistleblowers is encouraging many Nigerians to reveal the secret locations of money stashed away by corrupt officials. The EFCC, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, has offered to give up to 5 percent of amounts recovered to the informants, whose identities it protects.
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From: MeNeedIt