A load of space station supplies rocketed into orbit from Virginia on Saturday, the second shipment in two days.

And another commercial delivery should be on its way in a couple weeks.

“What an outstanding launch,” said NASA’s deputy space station program manager, Joel Montalbano.

Northrop Grumman launched its Antares rocket from Wallops Island before dawn, delighting chilly early-bird observers along the Atlantic coast. The Russian Space Agency launched its own supplies to the International Space Station on Friday, just 15 hours earlier.

The U.S. delivery will arrive at the orbiting lab Monday, a day after the Russian shipment. Among the 7,400 pounds (3,350 kilograms) of goods inside the Cygnus capsule: ice cream and fresh fruit for the three space station residents, and a 3D printer that recycles old plastic into new parts.

Thanksgiving turkey dinners — rehydratable, of course — are already aboard the 250-mile-high outpost. The space station is currently home to an American, a German and a Russian.

There’s another big event coming up, up there: The space station marks its 20th year in orbit on Tuesday. The first section launched on Nov. 20, 1998, from Kazakhstan.

“As we celebrate 20 years of the International Space Station,” Montalbano noted, “one of the coolest things is the cooperation we have across the globe.” Then there’s the U.S. commercial effort to keep the space station stocked and, beginning next year, to resume crew launches from Cape Canaveral. “To me, it’s been a huge success,” he said.

This Cygnus, or Swan, is named the S.S. John Young to honor the legendary astronaut who walked on the moon and commanded the first space shuttle flight. He died in January.

It is the first commercial cargo ship to bear Northrop Grumman’s name. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in June. SpaceX is NASA’s other commercial shipper for the space station; its Dragon capsule is set to lift off in early December.

Experiments arriving via the Cygnus will observe how cement solidifies in weightlessness, among other things. There’s also medical, spacesuit and other equipment to replace items that never made it to orbit last month because of a Russian rocket failure; the two men who were riding the rocket survived their emergency landing. Three other astronauts are set to launch from Kazakhstan on Dec. 3.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Fashion changes, trends come and go, but jewelry is always present in people’s lives in one way or another. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art just opened a new exhibition dedicated to the history of jewelry and the role it plays in people’s lives. Headdresses and earrings, brooches and belts, necklaces and rings, old and new, traditional and provocative, jewelry never cease to surprise and amaze. Nina Vishneva reports. Anna Rice narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt

The weight of legacy hangs heavily over Creed II. Not just for most of the characters, who must come to grips with their own family histories, but also for the filmmakers, tasked with making a sequel to a successful spin-off of a beloved franchise. It would put any film on the ropes. Not this one.

Creed II pulls off a rather amazing feat by adding to the luster of its predecessor and propelling the narrative into a bright future while also reaching back to honor its past, resurrecting unfinished business from Rocky IV and adding a dash of Rocky III. Pound per pound, the sequel might even be better than its predecessor.

Steven Caple Jr. replaced Ryan Coogler in the director’s chair this time, but there is plenty of continuity: Michael B. Jordan returns as Adonis Creed, with Sylvester Stallone by his side as former heavyweight champ and trainer Rocky Balboa. Also back: Tessa Thompson as Creed’s love interest, Phylicia Rashad as Creed’s mom, and Wood Harris as a coach. Max Kellerman is ringside again as color commentator.

The sequel pits Creed against man-mountain Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, who killed Adonis Creed’s father, Apollo Creed, in the ring in Rocky IV. That stirs up trauma for Rocky, who feels responsible for the elder Creed’s demise. Rocky went on to avenge the death by beating the elder Drago, but we also now learn what that disgrace meant for the Dragos. This film is about ghosts as much as it is a meditation on fatherhood. At one point, Kellerman says the showdown between the sons of Creed and Drago is almost like a Shakespearian drama and — laugh if you must — it feels sort of right here.

Desire — or lack of it — plays a key role in Creed II since we meet young Adonis as the new champion, at the top. Viktor Drago is at the bottom, hauling cement in Ukraine and burning for family redemption. “My son will break your boy,” Ivan Drago threatens Rocky, who sort of agrees. “When a fighter’s got nothing to lose he’s dangerous,” he warns Creed. “Listen, that kid was raised in hate. You weren’t.” Dolph Lungren returns as the elder Drago and there’s even an appearance by Brigitte Nielsen, who plays Drago’s wife in 1985 and was a real-life wife of Stallone. (Talk about keeping it in the family.)

Caple matches Coogler’s moody, gritty vision of a brutal sport conducted by mostly honorable men trying to outwit each other. There’s plenty of gore, slo-mos of smashed heads and Rocky trademarks — the glorious montages with uplifting music as fighters prepare for their shot in the ring. (Prepare to look away if you are fans of massive truck tires — many get horrible beat downs.)

Stallone got his mitts on the script — after having had a role penning all the Rocky films but sitting out writing Creed — and teams up with Cheo Hodari Coker, creator of the Netflix superhero hit Luke Cage. Onscreen, Stallone returns with his dark fedora and small bouncing ball, shuffling about and mumbling, allowing his sad eyes to do the bulk of his acting. It’s in the small moments between crusty Stallone and cocky Jordan where the film finds its sweet spot. “What are you fightin’ for?” the elder man asks the younger.

Jordan proves again that he’s a film force to be reckoned with, capable of searing and savage intensity and yet also goofy softness. This time, his swagger is tested and he must overcome intense pain and anguish. Watching him get up off the canvas again and again will make even the most uncharitable viewer cheer. As Adonis, he wants to carve his own legacy away from his father’s: “This is our chance to rewrite history. Our history,” Creed tells Rocky.

Thompson and Rashad both temper the piles of testosterone onscreen as women who steer and guide the young Adonis. Thompson’s character is battling progressive hearing loss and that is handled intelligently by the writers. There’s even a scene when Adonis is punched so hard that he falls in silence and looks over at her, both connected for a moment in enveloping quiet.

The filmmakers, meanwhile, are creating their own family legacy. Both Creed films share the same composer (Ludwig Goransson), art director (Jesse Rosenthal), special effects coordinator (Patrick White), costumer (Rita Squitiere) and location manager (Patricia Taggart). The films even have the same barber for Jordan (Kenny Duncan). And Coogler didn’t go far — he’s an executive producer.

But while a Creed III is almost guaranteed, there may be dangers ahead if the filmmakers choose to keep reopening old wounds or plundering story lines from the past. And the creep toward more cinematic bombast needs to be watched vigilantly. (Remember how nuts the last few Rocky films got?) Having said that, this spin-off franchise is clearly in very good hands — ones that are heavily wrapped, protected by a glove and aiming for your gut.
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From: MeNeedIt

Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman has often put his life on the line while filming award-winning documentaries such as Cartel Land, chronicling wars of Mexican drug cartels, and throwing a light on the atrocities of the Islamic State group in City of Ghosts.

Now, Heineman is releasing his first feature film, A Private War, about another subject close to his heart: Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, who staked her life on the war fronts of Sri Lanka, Iraq and Syria in order to bring attention to the plight of war victims. 

In A Private War, Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike transforms herself into Colvin, a gritty, fierce, inquisitive American journalist who dedicated her life to reporting on atrocities around the world. 

Pike evokes the journalist’s inexorable drive to cover wars to show the world the plight of war victims and bring truth to light. She also portrays Colvin as a person suffering from PTSD and addiction to alcohol and to her job. And there was the physical toll. Colvin lost her left eye in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Sri Lanka in 2001. 

Her actions, presence

“Getting into her physicality, which meant changing everything, I had to learn to smoke convincingly, because for Marie, everything was better with a cigarette — every conversation, every car drive,” Pike told VOA. “I had to see the way with which she gestured with her hands — she had these wide-apart fingers. I had to work out how the eye patch made her angle her head differently — how she could penetrate you and sear you with one eye as good as someone else could dress you down with two.” 

In an onscreen soliloquy about her inner demons as Colvin, Pike outlined the personal conflicts that defined the British journalist. 

“I fear growing old, but then I also fear dying young,” she said. “I am most happy with a vodka martini in my hand, but I can’t stand the fact that the chatter in my head won’t go quiet until there is a quart of vodka inside me. I hate being in a war zone, but I also feel compelled, compelled, to see it for myself.” 

WATCH: ‘A Private War’ Examines War Correspondent’s Physical, Psychological Scars

Regarding Colvin’s heavy drinking, Pike said, “Should we even call it alcoholism? I really had to judge and walk a very fine line and find out where the truth lay, because it is not that we are defining her by a drinking problem. But she clearly had one.” 

Filmmaker Heineman described his deep connection to Colvin. A storyteller who took grave risks to document drug cartels and IS to the world, he wanted to do justice to the complexity of Colvin’s character and her courage as she unflinchingly reported from Homs, Syria, in 2012 during Bashar al-Assad’s heavy bombardment of the city. 

This is where Colvin lost her life. Through Colvin’s commitment, Heineman said he wanted to show the risks that journalists take to uncover the truth to the world. 

Power of storytelling

“Journalists are the bedrock of a free and independent society. You might not always agree with what they say, but the fact that journalism has been politicized, as our whole world has been politicized and our countries have been politicized and divided, is really sad to me,” the filmmaker said. “The fact that journalists have been demonized in this country, in other countries, the fact that a journalist was recently obviously killed, in Turkey [Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi], I think that’s one of the reasons why I make films. 

“I think film, journalism, storytelling has the ability to bring people together to create dialogue, to create two sides of a conversation,” he told VOA. 

As a documentarian, Heineman wanted to give this real-life texture to his film. In a scene where Colvin discovers a mass grave in Iraq, the local women and men gathered around mourning are real victims of war.  

“The women in that scene were Iraqi women crying about real trauma that they experienced, and at the end of that scene, like in any documentary that I made, something unforeseen happened: They started chanting and doing this prayer for the dead,” Heineman said. 

Pike related a similar experience she had while filming an unscripted scene with a refugee woman huddled with her kids in a safe house. The scene was depicting the siege of Homs. 

Through an interpreter, the woman told Pike how she fed her baby only sugar and water because she could not produce milk to breastfeed after the trauma of losing one of her kids to a bomb attack.  

“Then the woman said to me as Marie — and it was caught on camera — she said, ‘I don’t want this, please, I don’t want this just to be words on paper. I want the world to know that a generation is dying here. I want the world to know my story.’ ”  

Pike said that at that moment, she felt what drove Colvin — the journalist’s grave responsibility to bear witness to people’s suffering, no matter the cost.  
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From: MeNeedIt

Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman’s film “A Private War,” about Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, brings attention to the danger journalists face reporting on the plight of war victims. VOA’s Penelope Poulou describes how and why “A Private War” was a labor of love, a docudrama delving into Colvin’s psyche.
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From: MeNeedIt

Federal Reserve policymakers on Friday signaled further interest rate  increases ahead, but raised relatively muted concerns over a potential global  slowdown that has markets betting heavily that the Fed’s rate hike cycle will soon peter out.

The widening chasm between market expectations and the rate path the Fed laid out just two months ago underscores the biggest question in front of U.S. central bankers: How much weight to give a growing number of potential red flags, even as U.S. economic growth continues to push down unemployment and create new jobs?

“We are at a point now where we really need to be especially data dependent,” Richard Clarida, the newly appointed vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said in a CNBC interview. “I think certainly where the economy is today, and the Fed’s projection of where it’s going, that being at neutral would make sense,” he added, defining “neutral” as interest rates somewhere between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent.

But that range that implies anywhere from two more to six more rate hikes, and Clarida declined to say how many more increases he would prefer.

He did say he is optimistic that U.S. productivity is rising, a view that suggests he would not see faster economic or wage growth as necessarily feeding into higher inflation or, necessarily, requiring higher interest rates. But he also

sounded a mild warning.

“There is some evidence of global slowing,” Clarida said. “That’s something that is going to be relevant as I think about the outlook for the U.S. economy, because it impacts big parts of the economy through trade and through capital markets and the like.”

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan, in a separate interview with Fox Business, also said he is seeing a growth slowdown in Europe and China.

“It’s my own judgment that global growth is going to be a little bit of a headwind, and it may spill over to the United States,” Kaplan said. .

The Fed raised interest rates three times this year and is expected to raise its target again next month, to a range of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent. As of September, Fed policymakers expected to need to increase rates three more times next year, a view they will update next month.

Over the last week, betting in contracts tied to the Fed’s policy suggests that even two rate hikes might be a stretch. The yield on fed fund futures maturing in January 2020, seen by some as an end-point for the Fed’s current rate-hike cycle, dropped sharply to just 2.76 percent over six trading days.

At the same time, long-term inflation expectations have been dropping quickly as well. The so-called breakeven inflation rate on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, has fallen sharply in the last month. The breakeven rate on five-year TIPS hit the lowest since late 2017 earlier this week.

Those market moves together suggest traders are taking the prospect of a slowdown seriously, limiting how far the Fed will end up raising rates.

But not all policymakers seemed that worried. Sitting with his back to a map of the world in a ballroom in Chicago’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans downplayed risks to his outlook, noting that the leveraged loans that some of his colleagues have raised concerns about are being taken out by “big boys and girls” who

understand the risks.

He told reporters he still believes rates should rise to about 3.25 percent so as to mildly restrain growth and bring unemployment, now at 3.7 percent, back up to a more sustainable level.

Asked about risks from the global slowdown, he said he hears more talk about it but that it is not really in the numbers yet.

But the next six months, he said, bear close watching.

“There’s not a great headline” about risks to the economy right now, Evans told reporters. “International is a little slower; Brexit — nobody’s asked me about that, thank you; [the slowing] housing market: I think all of those are in the mix for uncertainties that everybody’s facing,” he said.

“But at the moment, it’s not enough to upset or adjust the trajectory that I have in mind.”

Still, Evans added, the risks should not be counted out: “They could take on more life more easily because they are sort of more top of mind, if not in the forecast.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Now that South Africa’s highest court has relaxed the nation’s laws on marijuana, local entrepreneurs are trying to cash in on the popular herb. Among the latest entries to the market: several highly popular cannabis-laced alcohol products, which deliver the unique taste, though without the signature high. Marijuana activists say this could just be the beginning and that the famous plant could do much more for the national economy. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Johannesburg.
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From: MeNeedIt

Place names in Arlington County have never been a simple matter. A major fight broke out when National Airport was named for Ronald Reagan in 1998. A fight continues over whether to name a park next to the airport for Nancy Reagan. And in the 1920s, the Postal Service refused to establish a post office in Arlington because the street names were so confusing and haphazard.

So it is fitting that as Arlington officials celebrated Amazon’s decision to locate a new headquarters in the area, there was a bit of confusion over the place name.

Amazon announced Tuesday that it was coming to National Landing, a place people had not heard of because it doesn’t exist. Economic development officials who were wooing the online retailing giant came up with the name as a way to describe the multiple neighborhoods that were being offered as a site.

Those neighborhoods — Crystal City and Pentagon City in Arlington County, and Potomac Yard in the city of Alexandria — span multiple jurisdictions, so the name allowed Alexandria and Arlington to work cooperatively without marketing one locality over another.

Unfortunately, because the yearlong process of wooing Amazon had been so secretive, the moniker that had become so commonplace in the economic-development discussions had zero recognition among the general public. So Amazon’s use of the name in its big announcement left people scratching their heads.

Some people confused it with National Harbor, a new development in Maryland that has attracted one of the biggest casinos on the East Coast. Comedian Remy Munasifi, who made his name poking fun at Arlington in a YouTube rap that has been viewed more than 2 million times, suggested that Arlington National Cemetery would soon be renamed “Kindle Shores.”

Rep. Don Beyer, whose congressional district encompasses the neighborhoods, got in on the act when he suggested that the location of a new $1 billion graduate campus be dubbed “Hokie Landing.” The campus was a key incentive offered to Amazon by Virginia, which promised to double the number of students who graduate each year with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science and related fields.

No official steps were ever taken to rename the region, and local officials have made clear they have no intention of trying to rename Crystal City or any other neighborhood.

In a tweet posted by Arlington Economic Development on Thursday, Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz explained that National Landing was simply “a way to avoid saying, ‘Parts of Arlington, parts of Alexandria.’ ”

Christina Winn, director of business investment for Arlington Economic Development, said officials never imagined “there would be so much conversation” about the concept. Winn said there’s no intention to supplant or override the name of Crystal City, which draws its name from a big chandelier in one of the first apartment buildings to go up in the area in the 1960s.

Still, she said, if Arlington and Alexandria team up on another economic-development pitch in the future, she said that the moniker might be revived.

“It worked once,” she said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Somalia’s 30 years of chronic conflict have left an estimated 1 in 3 people affected by mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, there are only three licensed psychiatrists in the entire country. Mohamed Sheikh Nor reports from Mogadishu on Somalia’s huge mental health challenges.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has already killed hundreds of people, could continue for several months. That’s the latest warning from a senior World Health Organization official. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Climate change, steel and migration have emerged as sticking points in the final communique that world leaders will issue at the end of the Group of 20 summit in Argentina later this month, an Argentine government official said on Thursday.

Those issues were the “most complicated” areas of discussion, said Argentina’s Pedro Villagra Delgado, the lead organizer, or “sherpa,” for the summit of leaders from key industrialized and developing economies. 

But he told a press briefing he was optimistic these issues would be resolved in time.

The G20 communique is a non-binding agreement on key international policy issues and will be presented at the conclusion of the two-day summit, which begins on Nov. 30.

Climate goals concern United States

Villagra Delgado said the United States was resistant to including language that outlined guidelines for climate goals in the document.

After withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement last year, the United States broke with other G20 member countries who have pledged to end coal usage and take steps to reach the goals outlined in the accord.

Villagra Delgado also said China disagreed with the rest of the G20 countries on steel, but did not provide further details over the specifics of their disagreement.

The United States has skirmished with a number of its trading partners — including China — over steel, imposing a 25 percent duty on imports of steel and a tariff of 10 percent on aluminum.

Other countries objected to including language about immigration in the communique, Villagra Delgado said, but would not elaborate on which countries expressed concern.

WTO reform may be on table

Reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) may also be a topic of discussion at this month’s meeting, Villagra Delgado said, but added that specific issues to be discussed in the G20 sessions were still being worked out.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the WTO, while China has claimed the 20-year-old organization’s dispute resolution mechanisms are outdated in the current global economy.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman expects to get new loans from the International Monetary Fund as early as December, once parliament passes a budget of stability that refrains from making pre-election populist moves, he said Thursday.

Securing IMF assistance will also unlock loans from the World Bank and the European Union. Groysman also said Ukraine was in negotiations with Washington for a new loan guarantee for sovereign debt.

Groysman negotiated a new deal with the IMF last month aimed at keeping finances on an even keel during a choppy election period next year. The new loans are contingent on his steering an IMF-compliant budget through parliament.

“This budget is a budget of stability and continuation of reforms,” Groysman said in an interview with Reuters. “This is fully consistent with our IMF program.”

“Yes. We are counting on a tranche in December,” he added, when asked about when IMF loans were expected, though he did not elaborate on the possible size of the loan.

Ukraine’s government approved a draft budget in September but it will typically undergo a slew of amendments before parliament finally approves it. 

Tax proposal dropped

Groysman said a proposal to change how companies are taxed — on withdrawn capital, rather than profits — had been dropped from the budget because of the IMF’s concerns.

He also said he would not bow to opposition parties’ demands to reverse a recent increase in household gas tariffs, a step that his government reluctantly took to qualify for more IMF assistance.

“Populism led to the weakness of Ukraine,” he said. “This should not be allowed.” 

The IMF and Kyiv’s foreign allies came to Ukraine’s rescue after it plunged into turmoil following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for separatist rebels occupying the eastern industrial Donbass region. 

The United States has also sold coal to plug a domestic shortage caused by rebels taking control of mines in the east. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited Ukraine this week. 

In response to a question about whether Ukraine would continue to buy coal from the United States and potentially also liquefied natural gas, Groysman said that “liquefied gas is very interesting for Ukraine. We talked about the whole spectrum of our cooperation in the energy sector.”

As for coal, he added, “we will buy it from our international partners until we cover the domestic deficit.” 

Washington has also previously issued loan guarantees for Ukrainian debt. Groysman said another such guarantee was “under discussion.” 
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From: MeNeedIt