Legendary baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, the first black manager in the U.S. major leagues, died Thursday in Los Angeles at 83.

He had been suffering from bone cancer and was in hospice care at his home.

Even if he had not become baseball’s first African-American manager, Robinson’s feats on the playing field would have been enough to earn him a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

During his career as an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, California Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers, Robinson hit 586 home runs, played in 14 All-Star games, helped lead the Orioles to three straight World Series, and was an outstanding and aggressive fielder.

He was named Rookie of the Year during his first season in 1956 playing for the Reds. 

Robinson is the only player in major league history to win the Most Valuable Player award in both the American and National leagues.

He made history in 1975 when the Cleveland Indians hired him as a player-manager, the first black manager in the major leagues. He made an impressive debut, hitting a home run on the first day. 

He later managed the Orioles, Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Montreal Expos, and Washington Nationals. He was named Manager of the Year in 1989 when he was with the Orioles.

Robinson worked as a baseball executive after retiring as a manager in 2006.
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From: MeNeedIt

Filmmaker Woody Allen has filed a $68 million lawsuit against Amazon for breach of contract, accusing the streaming giant of canceling a film deal because of a “baseless” decades-old allegation that he sexually abused his daughter.

Allen says Amazon sought to terminate the deal in June, and has since refused to pay him $9 million in financing for his latest film, A Rainy Day in New York, his lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan allege.

That film was one of several to be produced with the Oscar-winning director under a series of agreements reached after Allen made the Crisis in Six Scenes program for Amazon, which was then a new content provider.

He is seeking that $9 million along with minimum guarantees owed him for other films, totaling “in excess of $68,000,000,” according to a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in New York and obtained by AFP.

He says Amazon told him the deal had become “impracticable” because of “supervening events, including renewed allegations against Mr. Allen, his own controversial comments” and the refusal of actors to work with him.

Allen has been accused of molesting Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter, when she was seven years old in the early 1990s.

He was cleared of the charges, first leveled by his then-partner Mia Farrow, after two separate months-long investigations, and has steadfastly denied the abuse. But Dylan, now an adult, maintains she was molested.

In June last year, the same month that Amazon apparently terminated his contract, Allen backed the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment — and said he should be its poster boy.

“I’ve worked in movies for 50 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses, and not a single one has ever suggested any kind of impropriety at all,” he said in an interview with Argentina’s Canal 13 television network.

“I — who was only accused by one woman in a child custody case, which was looked at and proven to be untrue — I get lumped in with these people.”

In recent months, a string of actors who have worked with Allen have distanced themselves from him, and said they would no longer work with him.

Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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From: MeNeedIt

The first Africans to arrive in North America were so little noted by history that many are known today by only their first names: Antony and Isabella, Angelo, Frances and Peter.

Almost 400 years ago, they were kidnapped and forcibly sailed across the ocean aboard three slave ships — the San Juan Bautista, the White Lion and the Treasurer — and then sold into bondage in Virginia.

Now their descendants, along with historians and genealogists, are seeking recognition for a group of 20-some Africans they describe as critical to the survival of Jamestown, England’s first successful settlement in North America.

“We need to reclaim our history. We need to tell our story,” said Calvin Pearson, head of Project 1619, which is named after the year those first Africans landed near what became Hampton, Virginia.

A few historical markers and records mention these early slaves, but there’s been scant research on their lives. Pearson and others are working to learn more.

Before the slaves arrived, Jamestown was starving. “Basically all of those people were right off of the streets in England,” said Kathryn Knight, who in May will release a book titled “Unveiled – The Twenty & Odd: Documenting the First Africans in England’s America 1619-1625 and Beyond.”

Those colonists “didn’t know how to grow anything. They didn’t know how to manage livestock. They didn’t know anything about survival in Virginia,” Knight said. The Africans “saved them by being able to produce crops, by being able to manage the livestock. They kept them alive.”

The slaves’ arrival marked the beginning of the region’s fractured relationship with blacks. More than two centuries later, Virginia became home to the Confederate capital, and in the last week its governor has been pressured to resign for appearing in a racist photo in a 1984 yearbook.

The new arrivals were Catholic and many spoke multiple languages, according to Ric Murphy, an author and descendant of John Gowan, one of the Angolan captives.

They came from a royal city and “were quite informed and educated, and several of them, based upon what they did in the latter part of their years, clearly were leaders in the community in one form or the other,” Murphy said. “Many of them became landowners, which is quite different from the false narrative of what an enslaved person was.”

In Jamestown, historian Mark Summers leads tourists down paths that Angelo — also known as Angela — walked after being sold to a Captain William Pierce.

Like many of that first group, her life is largely a mystery. In fact, her entire known biography “could probably fit on a 3×5 index card,” Summers said. But being able to show people where she lived and walked is a spiritual experience for some, he said.

For African-Americans, “this is the same thing as going to Plymouth Rock,” said Summers, who works at the Historic Jamestowne park. “Here’s a place where you can stand and say, ‘We set foot here, and we can still walk this ground.’”

The first Africans were among more than 300 taken out of the Ndongo region of Angola, a Portuguese colony of mostly Catholic Africans, on the San Juan Bautista bound for Mexico. That ship was attacked and plundered by the White Lion and the Treasurer, which together seized about 60 slaves. After stopping in the Caribbean and trading some of the slaves for provisions, the White Lion sailed for Virginia with its human cargo.

Englishman John Rolfe, who would later marry Pocahontas, documented the White Lion’s arrival at what was then called Point Comfort.

“He brought not anything but 20, and odd Negars, which the Governor and Cape Merchant bought for victualle,” Rolfe wrote in a letter in January 1620, meaning that the colony purchased the slaves with provisions.

A 1620 census showed 17 African women and 15 African men in Jamestown.

Although sold into servitude, many of those original Angolans fared better than the millions of African slaves who came to North America later, said John Thorton, a Boston University professor of African American studies and history.

“They had a better chance at a better future than almost anybody who followed them because they were the first,” Thorton said. “A lot of them ended up owning property, and they ended up owning slaves of their own.”

By intermingling with the English colonists, some had children who ended up passing for white and merging into early colonial society, Thorton said.

Some, like the Catholic John Pedro, met with tragedy, Pearson said.

Pedro “ended up owning quite a bit of land in Virginia. When the English Civil War broke out, it was Protestants versus Catholics,” Pearson said. Pedro moved to Maryland to live with other Catholics, but he was captured in a battle and executed.

Antony and Isabella became servants for a Captain William Tucker, gained their freedom around 1635 and started a homestead in Kent County, Virginia, Pearson said. Around 1623, they had a son named William Tucker who “became the first documented African child born in English-occupied North America.”

Descendants of Antony and Isabella are buried at a Hampton cemetery that has been in use since the 1600s, Pearson said.

Knight has a different interpretation of those early records, concluding that Frances gave birth to Peter first, making him the first African child born in Virginia.

Described in later records as a “Negro carpenter,” Peter married and received his freedom with the promise of paying 10,000 pounds of tobacco to his master around 1676. He made the last payment in 1682, Knight said.

Murphy, who wrote “Freedom Road: An American Family Saga from Jamestown to World War,” said it’s important for black people to know about these first Africans because it “helps us have more ownership of American history.”

Pearson, whose organization plans to honor the anniversary of the Africans’ arrival on Aug. 24, agrees.

“From here, we see the beginnings of the Africa imprint on what would become the United States of America. It’s worth remembering.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Apple Inc has moved its modem chip engineering effort into its in-house hardware technology group from its supply chain unit, two people familiar with the move told Reuters, a sign the tech company is looking to develop

a key component of its iPhones after years of buying it from outside suppliers.

Modems are an indispensable part of phones and other mobile devices, connecting them to wireless data networks. Apple once used Qualcomm Inc chips exclusively but began phasing in Intel Corp chips in 2016 and dropped Qualcomm from iPhones released last year.

Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, took over the company’s modem design efforts in January, the sources said. The organizational move has not been previously reported.

Srouji joined Apple in 2008 to lead chip design, including the custom A-series processors that power iPhones and iPads and a special Bluetooth chip that helps those devices pair with its AirPods wireless headphones and other Apple accessories.

The modem efforts had previously been led by Rubén Caballero, who reports to Dan Riccio, the executive responsible for iPad, iPhone and Mac engineering, much of which involves integrating parts from the company’s vast electronics supply chain.

Apple declined to comment. Technology publication The Information previously reported that Apple was working to develop its own modem chip.

The Cupertino, California-based company has posted job listings for modem engineers in San Diego, a hub for wireless design talent because of Qualcomm’s longtime presence there and a place where Apple has said it plans to build up its workforce.

Apple’s effort to make its own modem chips could take years, and it is impossible to know when, or in what devices, such chips might appear.

“When you’re Apple, everything has to be good,” said Linley Gwennap, president of chip industry research firm The Linley Group. “There’s no room for some substandard component in that phone.”

5G on horizon

Apple’s investment in modem chips comes as carriers and other phone makers are rolling out devices for the next generation of faster wireless networks known as 5G.

Rival handset makers Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd already make their own modems.

Making its own modem chips would likely cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year in development costs, analysts said, but could save it money eventually.

Modem chips are a major part of the cost of Apple devices, worth $15 to $20 each and likely costing Apple $3 billion to $4 billion for the 200 million or so iPhones it makes a year, said Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.

Apple may also benefit by combining its modem chips with its processor chips, as Samsung, Huawei and most other phone makers do. That saves space and battery life, two important considerations if Apple introduces augmented reality features into future products.
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From: MeNeedIt

F.A. Cole was 11 when her stepmother told her to dress up for a special occasion near her hometown of Freetown, Sierra Leone. 

It was, instead, a traumatic occasion, Cole recalls 34 years later. Her stepmother turned her over to a small group of women, who led her into a forest and bound and blindfolded her. Then someone put a razor blade to her genitals.  

“Two or four of the women held me down. They spread my legs open and pinned me down, and then the woman who was the cutter, she sat on my chest,” Cole recounts. “As she began to cut my clitoris, I began to fight and scream and wriggle under her, just looking for somebody to help me, somebody to come to my rescue.” 

No one came then. But the United Nations has been working to eradicate female genital mutilation. To raise awareness, the U.N. since 2003 has sponsored an International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM to raise awareness. The annual observance was on Wednesday.  

FGM is widespread in parts of Africa and also practiced here in the United States. The procedure has sparked a global clash between those who define it as a cultural tradition and those who say it’s a dangerous ritual that should end. 

Lingering questions 

Cole recalls days of excruciating pain and years of wondering why she was cut.  

“When I came to America and I started doing research, and I started talking about my story, that’s when I realized the damage — not just the sexual damage, but the psychological damage that was done,” says Cole, who now lives in Washington and campaigns to end FGM.   

The World Health Organization identifies three types of FGM most common in Africa. In type one, the clitoris is partially or totally removed. Type two goes further, including the labia. And type three involves removing the labia and stitching to narrow the vaginal opening. 

The cultural practice can have serious medical consequences. Physicians at major U.S. medical centers and teaching hospitals worry whether American doctors are equipped — medically and culturally — to treat women who have been circumcised.  

Dr. Ranit Mishori, a professor of family medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, recalls an experience in the second month of her residency. A woman from Djibouti, in East Africa, was in labor.  

“I was getting ready to do a pelvic examination, and I put my gloves on and suddenly I realize I can’t put my fingers in there because the whole area is closed off,” Mishori said of the patient’s vagina. “I had no idea what that meant. I called my senior physicians and they had no idea what was going on. The bottom line is a lot of doctors don’t know what to expect, don’t know how to handle these types of emergencies.” 

A call for communication and respect 

That experience inspired Mishori to teach other doctors about FGM, especially as they treat more immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  

She stresses communication and cultural humility. 

“We can’t forget that some women are very proud [of being circumcised], because that ensures their marriageability and economic prospects,” Mishori says, adding that medical personnel must learn “to ask about it in a nonjudgmental way.” 

Respectful questioning, she says, is “more important than how to deal with the medical complications, even though they are there. In some women, the cutting has healed. There are no scars, maybe … but the long-term effects are here and here,” she adds, pointing first to her head, then her heart. 

Not everyone agrees the practice should be banned.  

Anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu, who lives in Washington and also is from Sierra Leone, says she was circumcised, not mutilated. She was an adult when she chose to undergo the procedure — the most minimal type of circumcision. 

Ahmadu testified on behalf of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who was among eight people facing federal charges over the genital mutilations of nine girls from Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota. As the Associated Press reported, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman in November dismissed mutilation and conspiracy charges against the defendants, saying the 1996 law banning the practice was unconstitutional.       

A rite of passage 

Ahmadu says circumcision is a rite of passage into womanhood in Kono culture. She believes anti-FGM campaigners are putting African cultures under siege. 

“The grand narrative of mutilation is completely inappropriate,” says Ahmadu. “… It’s really important that FGM campaigners understand that the messages that they’re sounding out to women, they’re not working, they’re not effective,” she says. “What they’re doing is driving the practice underground.”  

She says some families are reacting to the pressure by bringing in their daughters for circumcision at younger ages — sometimes even as babies. She advocates that girls should have a choice in whether to undergo the procedure and that they should wait until at least age 16  to understand the cultural significance. 

“This is a coming-out ceremony, where they are celebrated and they are now women,” Ahmadu says. 

It was no celebration for Cole, who says her circumcision made her less desirable to men in Sierra Leone.  

“It was supposed to make me more marriageable, but I’m 45 and still single,” she says. “So what was that?” 

This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa service. 
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From: MeNeedIt

Californians are bracing for what could be the next big earthquake. Scientists have developed a new early warning system relying on sensors and an algorithm to help prepare. Deana Mitchell reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The United Nations has declared Feb. 6 International Zero Tolerance Day for Female Genital Mutilation. 

Contrary to popular perception, female genital mutilation, or FGM, is relatively widespread in the United States as well. Indeed, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 500,000 women and girls have either undergone, or are at risk of undergoing the procedure. Most, but not all, are immigrants to the U.S. 

In November, a federal judge declared a 1996 federal law banning FGM unconstitutional. 

To find out more, VOA’s Adam Phillips spoke with Ghada Khan, coordinator of the U.S. End FGM/C Network. That’s an umbrella group of 26 grassroots American groups fighting to end the practice. 

Here is a transcript of the interview.

Phillips: What are the main ethnic or demographic groups that practice FGM in America today?

Khan: Female genital mutilation is something that cuts across socioeconomic status, different religions, different cultures and different areas.

There is no one set group that actually performs it. But the main underlying factor is control of female sexuality.

There is a lasting impact on women when they are physically harmed to control their sexuality, but also the messaging (is) that their sexuality is not something to be celebrated, and that there needs to be some control over their own bodies. 

Phillips: What does female genital mutilation actually involve for a woman, physically? 

Khan: In come cases, the entire outer and inner lips of the vagina are cut and the clitoris is also removed. And sometimes the entire outer lips of the vagina are sewn up to leave only a small hole for urination and menstruation. In some cultures, that hole is measured by the size of a corn kernel. You can imagine that sex after that type of procedure is done is extremely painful. 

Some cultures might just cut the top of the clitoris or the clitoral hood; even that can impact the woman’s sensation during sex. 

Phillips: But why would anyone want to limit the pleasure that women have during sex? How is that in anyone’s interest?

Khan: People want to control women and have them not be able to have sex except with their husbands. And also, controlling their experience during sex can also limit their desire for having extramarital relationships. But also (preventing women from) having pleasure during sex is in and of itself a form of control.

Phillips:  But it’s not just the sexual health of women that is affected, correct? It’s also their overall health, and even their mortality that can be at stake.

Khan: The plethora of adverse health outcomes that come with this are many. (They include) impacting women’s labor and delivery outcomes (and) ranging from infections to hemorrhaging, to even death. 

Phillips: Are there any other non-political, non-gender-based reasons for the practice?

Khan: There are cultures that think FGM is more hygienic, and that it keeps a woman clean. And in some cultures, it’s also seen as a way to increase fertility, when it fact it does not. These are all misconceptions and myths that come along with the practice. 

Phillips: I know in Africa at least, the rates of FGM have gone down enormously, thanks largely to activism that has gone on at the grassroots. 

Khan: We’re excited about that. It gives us hope that this can be stopped, and we thank them for their efforts. 

Phillips:  What was your reaction to the ruling in Detroit (Michigan) last November striking down the anti-FGM law?

Khan: At the U.S. End FGM/C Network, we were of course very disappointed in the judge’s decision to deem the federal statute against FGM unconstitutional.This law has been in place since 1996, and it’s been at the center of U.S. efforts, both nationally and internationally.

It really was a blow to all of us, but especially to survivors. However, we see some opportunities in that it raises awareness of the issue here.

We need to really unite on this to push for an appeal and to make sure that the evidence and the voices of survivors are amplified and are part of the main national conversation. 

This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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From: MeNeedIt

Last year was the fourth warmest on record and the outlook is for more sizzling heat approaching levels that most governments view as dangerous for the Earth, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday.

Weather extremes in 2018 included wildfires in California and Greece, drought in South Africa and floods in Kerala, India. Record levels of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, trap ever more heat.

Average global surface temperatures were 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times in 2018, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, based on data from U.S., British, Japanese and European weather agencies.

“The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years.”

To combat warming, almost 200 governments adopted the Paris climate agreement in 2015 to phase out the use of fossil fuels and limit the rise in temperatures to 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times while “pursuing efforts” for 1.5C (2.7F).

“The impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt – in coastal flooding, heat waves, intense precipitation and ecosystem change,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Last year, the United States alone suffered 14 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each, led by hurricanes and wildfires, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

NOAA and NASA contribute data to the WMO.

This year has also started with scorching temperatures, including Australia’s warmest January on record. Against the global trend, parts of the United States suffered bone-chilling cold from a blast of Arctic air last week.In WMO records dating back to the 19th century, 2016 was the hottest year, boosted by an El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, ahead of 2015 and 2017 with 2018 in fourth.

The British Met Office, which also contributes data to the WMO, said temperatures could rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial times, for instance if a natural El Nino weather event adds a burst of heat.

“Over the next five years there is a one in 10 chance of one of those years breaking the (1.5C) threshold,” Professor Adam Scaife of the Met Office told Reuters of the agency’s medium-term forecasts.

“That is not saying the Paris Agreement is done for … but it’s a worrying sign,” he said. The United Nations defines the 1.5C Paris temperature target as a 30-year average, not a freak blip in a single year.

The United Nations says the world is now on track for a temperature rise of 3C or more by 2100. The Paris pact responded to a 1992 U.N. treaty under which all governments agreed to avert “dangerous” man-made climate change.

A U.N. report last year said the world is likely to breach 1.5C sometime between 2030 and 2052 on current trends, triggering ever more heat waves, powerful storms, droughts, mudslides, extinctions and rising sea levels.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has cast doubt on mainstream climate science and promotes the coal industry, plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. He did not mention climate change in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

Patrick Verkooijen, head of the Global Center on Adaptation in the Netherlands, told Reuters that the WMO report showed “climate change is not a distant phenomenon but is here right now.”

He called for more, greener investments, ranging from defenses against rising seas to drought-resistant crops.
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From: MeNeedIt

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that President Donald Trump had a “quite productive” dinner with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. He says they discussed a wide range of subjects, from the state of the economy to the Super Bowl and Tiger Woods’ golf game.

Talking to reporters at the White House, Mnuchin said that Trump was very engaged during the casual dinner Monday night. It took place in the White House residence and marked the first time Powell and Trump have met since Powell took office as Fed chairman a year ago.

Mnuchin said that Powell’s comments were consistent with what he has been saying publicly about the economy. The Fed said in a statement that Powell did not discuss the future course of interest rates.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

It may be hard to believe as a large swath of the U.S. thaws out from a bitter polar vortex, but spring is coming early, according to handlers for some of the country’s most famous prognosticating groundhogs.

Just before 7:30 a.m. Saturday, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow in Pennsylvania at sunrise and didn’t see his shadow. Nearly the same series of events unfolded about 300 miles (483 kilometers) to the east, where Staten Island Chuck’s handlers also revealed the same prediction.

The festivities have their origin in a German legend that says if a furry rodent casts a shadow on Feb. 2, winter continues. If not, spring comes early.

In reality, Phil’s prediction is decided ahead of time by the group on Gobbler’s Knob, a tiny hill just outside Punxsutawney. That’s about 65 miles (105 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio stopped attending Staten Island’s Groundhog Day ceremony in 2015, a year after he accidentally dropped the furry critter that died a week later.

And he wasn’t the only New York City mayor who struggled with the holiday. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg was bitten at a Groundhog Day ceremony in 2009.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

In advance of World Cancer Day (February 4), the World Health Organization is issuing new cancer pain control guidelines aimed at ending the needless suffering experienced by millions of people afflicted with this illness. 

Cancer is a leading cause of death globally.  The World Health Organization reports there are more than 18 million new cases every year and 9.6 million deaths, most in low-or middle-income countries.

Great advances have been made in the treatment of cancer, but measures to relieve the horrific pain experienced by patients lag woefully behind.  WHO hopes to remedy this with its new guidance on pain management.

Director of WHO’s Department for the Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Etienne Krug, says controlling pain should be an essential part of cancer treatment.  Yet, he says pain is very often neglected as part of that treatment, a situation he considers unacceptable.

“Nobody, cancer patients or not cancer patients should live or die in pain in the 21st century.  We have the knowledge of how to treat pain,” said Krug. “We have the medicines of how to address it.  It is a question of making sure everybody has that knowledge and everybody has access to the necessary treatment.” 

Krug says the situation is most acute in the poorer countries because pain management systems tend not to be in place.  But he notes even in the rich countries people are still living and dying in pain.

WHO says opioid painkillers like oral morphine are an essential treatment for moderate to severe cancer pain.  But WHO Noncommunicable Coordinator, Cheriana Varghese says some governments have enacted regulatory and legal barriers against their use in reaction to the global scare of opioid and morphine addiction.

“When a government of a country wants to introduce opioids, there is always this looming danger that this is going to get out of hand,” Varghese said. “And, so the governments are more conservative because of this.”

Varghese says there are sufficient safeguards against the abuse of opioids and morphine.   He says these painkillers should be given only by trained health care providers, doctors and nurses.  He adds oral preparation should be given whenever possible to prevent addiction.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

The trade dispute between the U.S. and China is disrupting Silicon Valley.

What had been a steady flow of Chinese money into tech firms appears to be slowing. Investors are concerned about the “headline risk” of doing business with Chinese investors.

And in some cases, U.S. startups are shunning Chinese investment.

These changes come after years of investment and collaboration between China and Silicon Valley. But the trade dispute, coupled with U.S. policymakers’ concerns about Chinese investments in sensitive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, have increased scrutiny of cross border deals on all sides.

A drop in investment

In 2018, Chinese firms invested more than $2 billion in U.S. technology firms, but that was a drop of nearly 80 percent from the year before, according to a Forbes report citing S&P Global Market Intelligence.

While Chinese investors took stakes in roughly the same number of U.S. tech deals — 80 compared to 89 in 2017 — that was off from the peak in 2016 when Chinese investors were part of 107 deals. Among the biggest recipients of Chinese investment in 2018 were Farasis Energy, a battery maker, and Epic Games, a gaming company, according to the Rhodium Group.

While deals continue to come together in 2019, the recent indictment of a Huawei executive has added to a new chill between the two regions, according to observers in Silicon Valley.

​A technology war

In China, the battle is seen as less about Huawei and its alleged wrongdoing and more as a proxy for a “technology war” between countries over technological supremacy.

“The Huawei incident seems like an action against an individual corporation, but it is actually bigger than this,” said Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar. “This is about one state’s technology war against another state, about which one will occupy the technology high ground in the future.”

One recent change in the U.S. has been the expansion of a government program that reviews foreign investment in areas deemed sensitive.

Despite the expanded U.S. regulatory reviews, Chinese investments in U.S. tech firms are mostly getting through, said Chuck Comey, a partner at Morrison Foerster, a law firm.

As for Chinese companies buying or merging with U.S. tech ones? 

“It ain’t happening,” he said.

​Saying ‘no’ to Chinese investment

The increased tensions have given investors — and even some potential recipients of investment — some pause. One U.S. company, which had accepted Chinese investment in the past, told Reuters that it declined investment from Chinese investors in its most recent round.

“We decided for optical reasons it just wouldn’t make sense to expose ourselves further to investors coming from a country where there is now so much by way of trade tensions and IP tensions,” said Carson Kahn, CEO of Volley, an artificial intelligence training firm.

At a recent event in Silicon Valley about China and U.S. investments, speakers on a panel discussed how the geopolitical tensions affected their business. While several predicted that in the long run, the current friction between the two countries will have a minimal effect on cross-border business between China and Silicon Valley, there was a sense that an era has ended.

“We’ve kind of taken for granted,” said Kyle Lui, a partner at DCM, a global venture capital firm, “that the prior decade plus there’s been lots of strong collaboration between the U.S. and China.”
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From: MeNeedIt