Brazil’s Congress is unlikely to pass pension reform legislation this year, far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday, a blow to investor hopes that caused the country’s currency to weaken in futures markets.

Investors snapped up Brazilian assets in the wake of Bolsonaro’s election victory last month, cheered by his party’s stronger-than-expected showing in congressional races, which raised hopes he could make quick advances on fiscal reforms.

Many economists say cuts to Brazil’s social security system are essential to controlling a huge federal deficit and regaining Brazil’s investment-grade rating.

Last week, Bolsonaro said he would like to see some form of pension reform passed this year to make it easier to deal with the deficit after he takes office on Jan. 1.

On Monday, however, he told reporters in Rio de Janeiro that after speaking with his chief economic advisor Paulo Guedes, passing a 2018 pension reform bill looked increasingly unlikely.

He added that the reform would not just be based on crunching the numbers, but would also have to take into account the social impact of the overhaul.

Brazil’s currency, the real, weakened against the U.S. dollar in futures markets after his comments.

Bolsonaro also said that no decision had yet been taken on the next head of state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, with more names for the chief executive position set to come out on Tuesday.

Separately, Guedes said on Monday that World Bank chief financial officer and former Brazilian finance minister Joaquim Levy had accepted Bolsonaro’s offer to lead state development bank BNDES.
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From: MeNeedIt

Diversity in the comic and graphic novel industry in the United States has increased with the growing number of artists who have international backgrounds. VOA’s Dhania Iman reports from San Diego, Calif., on two Asian-American authors who are contributing to the industry’s diversity.
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From: MeNeedIt

The typical image of ballerinas is of agile dancers in shiny pink slippers. An American company began offering brown-toned slippers last year, and last month, Britain’s oldest ballet apparel supplier began offering shoes made to better match the skin color of nonwhite dancers. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called Monday for a new public works spending program to stimulate the economy amid growing concerns about global risks. 

The spending, which is expected in the first half of next fiscal year starting in April, will focus on strengthening infrastructure to withstand earthquakes and frequent flooding, according to a presentation made at the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP). 

Some of Japan’s top government advisers also called for stimulus to offset a decline in consumption expected after an increase in the nationwide sales tax in October next year. 

The rush to approve public works spending and other measures to support consumption highlights growing concern among policymakers about the economy. 

“The prime minister asked me to take firm measures to ensure that our economic recovery continues,” Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said at the end of the CEFP meeting. “He also said the public works spending program expected at the end of this year should be compiled with this point in mind.” 

Japan’s economy is forecast to contract in July-September, and a recent slump in machinery orders suggests any rebound in the following quarters is likely to be weak if exports and business investment lose momentum. 

Government ministers will compile a preliminary public works plan by the end of this month and then submit a final version of the plan by year’s end, according to documents used at the CEFP meeting. 

Urgent matter

Members of the CEFP did not say how large the spending program should be or how the government should fund the package. At the meeting, Abe said compiling the package has become an urgent matter, according to a government official. 

Japan’s government is considering a 10 trillion-yen ($87.77 billion) stimulus package to offset the impact of a sales tax hike next year, sources told Reuters last week, as concerns about consumer spending and the global economy grow. 

Increasing spending on public works started to gain support after a strong earthquake in September caused a blackout in the northern island of Hokkaido and a series of typhoons damaged transport infrastructure in western Japan. 

The advisers on the CEFP are academics and business leaders who are considered close to Abe, so their recommendations often influence policy decisions. 

The CEFP met earlier Monday to debate consumer prices and fiscal policy, which is where the advisers made their recommendations. 

The advisers did not lay out the specific steps the government should take to stimulate consumption, but government officials have previously said they are considering shopping vouchers for low-income earners and more spending on public works. 

The nationwide sales tax is scheduled to rise to 10 percent in October 2019 from 8 percent currently. The government already plans to exempt food and some daily goods from the tax hike to soften the blow, but there is still a lot of concern that the tax hike will wreck consumer spending and sentiment. The economy was tipped into a recession the last time the tax was raised in 2014. 

Advisers at the CEFP meeting also threw their support behind the government’s plan to encourage mobile phone carriers to lower smartphone fees, saying they hoped the move would increase households’ disposable incomes. 
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From: MeNeedIt

Dragon’s blood, mandrake root and devil’s snare were used for potions and spells in the Harry Potter series. But in real life, the creepy-named plants were used for medicinal purposes and could be purchased at an apothecary, also known as a pharmacy. Today, one of the best preserved apothecaries in the United States has been turned into a small museum in historic Alexandria, Virginia. Deborah Block reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

University of Pennsylvania researchers say that for the first time they have linked social media use to increases in depression and loneliness.

The idea that social media is anything but social when it comes to mental health has been talked about for years, but not many studies have managed to actually link the two.

To do that, Penn researchers, led by psychologist Melissa Hunt, designed a study that focused on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.

The results were published in the November issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

How study worked

The study was conducted with 143 participants, who before they began, completed a mood survey and sent along photos of their battery screens, showing how often they were using their phones to access social media.

“We set out to do a much more comprehensive, rigorous study that was also more ecologically valid,” Hunt said. That term, ecologically valid, means that the research attempts to mimic real life.

The study divided the participants into two groups: The first group was allowed to maintain their normal social media habits. The other, the control group, was restricted to 10 minutes per day on each of the three platforms: Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.

The restrictions were put in place for three weeks and then the participants returned and were tested for outcomes such as fear of missing out (FOMO), anxiety, depression and loneliness.

​Results of study

The results showed a very clear link between social media use and increased levels of depression and loneliness.

“Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness,” Hunt said. “These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study.”

She calls her findings the “grand irony” of social media.

What is it about social media that’s just so depressing?

Hunt says that it’s two major things. The first is that social media invites what Hunt calls “downward social comparison.” When you’re online, it can sometimes seem that “everyone else is cooler and having more fun and included in more things and you’re left out,” she said. And that’s just generally demoralizing.

The second factor is a bit more nuanced. 

“Time is a zero-sum game,” Hunt told VOA. “Every minute you spend online is a minute you are not doing your work or not meeting a friend for dinner or having a deep conversation with your roommate.”

And these real life activities are the ones that can bolster self-esteem and self worth, Hunt said.

What to learn

So what’s the takeaway?

People are on their devices, and that’s not going to change, she said. But as in life, a bit of moderation goes a long way. 

“In general, I would say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life,” she added.

Hunt pointed out a few caveats to the study. First, it was done exclusively with 18- to 22-year-olds, and it is unclear if the depressing effects of social media will cross generational lines to older or younger people, Hunt said. But she expects her results should generalize at least for people through the age of 30.

Hunt says she is now beginning a study to gauge the emotional impact of dating apps.
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From: MeNeedIt

It is almost mid-November, and the fall leaves are finally showing off their beautiful colors in the Washington area and elsewhere on the U.S. East Coast. With higher than average temperatures in September and October in Washington, it took longer for the brilliant shades of red, yellow and orange to come out. This year the trees are putting on quite a display, as VOA’s Deborah Block shows us.
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From: MeNeedIt

Conversion therapy and social exile for being gay is the subject of two award-winning independent films this season. “The Happy Prince” by Rupert Everett and “Boy Erased” by Joel Edgerton are based on real life stories of gay men treated as pariahs by their communities. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke with the filmmakers and authors of the stories about the challenges gays and lesbians continue to face.
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From: MeNeedIt

Conversion therapy and social exile for being gay are the subjects of two award-winning independent films this season. The Happy Prince by Rupert Everett and Boy Erased by Joel Edgerton are based on real life stories of gay men treated as pariahs by their communities.

‘The Happy Prince’

In 1897, literary giant Oscar Wilde has fallen from grace for his openly romantic homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. After a two-year prison sentence, Wilde emerges, a human wreck, impoverished and ostracized from society.

Rupert Everett, an openly gay director, script writer and actor, directed and scripted the film and interprets Wilde. He says he wanted to show that in 19th century England, no man, not even a recognized figure such as Wilde, was impervious to social rejection for being homosexual.

WATCH: ‘The Happy Prince,’ ‘Boy Erased,’ Two Films on Gay Exclusion

Everett told VOA that although the film harkens to a different era, it serves as a reminder that despite progress in the West, gays around the world still face discrimination and persecution. He points to the fact that even forward thinking England decriminalized homosexuality as late as 1975 and notes in the epilogue of his film that as late as last year, under what is known as Turing’s Law, England pardoned Wilde for “homosexual crimes.”

“Yes, it’s very shocking and also the fact that they decided to pardon as opposed to apologize because pardon obviously infers to a crime to start with and we agree that homosexuality is not a crime,” Everett said. “It’s a good reminder what can happen even in our countries with the waves of populism that are kind of rolling over us. So, I feel it really is a film for Trump’s America in a way, I hope.”

​‘Boy Erased’

American gay author Garrard Conley, who wrote the memoir-turned-movie Boy Erased about being forced to undergo gay conversion therapy after coming out to his conservative Baptist family in Arkansas, echoes Everett’s warning. He tells VOA that many American communities have a very conservative view of the LGBTQ community.

“This rather insidious idea that was implanted in us from basically birth, which was that to be openly LGBTQ meant that you were either a predator or you were going to be beaten or you were going to end up dying of AIDS. And those were the stories that we were told,” he said.

The only child of a Baptist pastor father and a hairdresser mother, at the age of 19, Conley was sent to a sexual conversion facility in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2004. There, he had to surrender his personal belongings and cut off any communication with friends and family until he abandoned his gay identity. Conley describes the emotional harm he and others endured while attending the program.

Actor and filmmaker Joel Edgerton tells VOA he was captivated by Conley’s memoir and was deeply disturbed by Conley’s loss of freedom because of his sexual identity. He decided to direct the story for the large screen. Actors Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe interpret Conley’s parents, and Lucas Hedges interprets Conley’s character. Edgerton plays Victor Sykes, a conversion therapist, who uses pseudo science, shaming and torture to “treat” his patients.

Edgerton says he made Boy Erased to bring to light the mistreatment and dehumanization young people encounter in these conversion programs. 

“I challenge people who are running these programs — and there are a large percentage of people who work as staff in these programs, who identify as ex-gay and knowing that the reason they are there is because they are trying to help repress their own sexuality — is to really tune in to the fact that, is it really working for themselves, and why if it is not inherently working for themselves, are they then trying to push these ideas onto kids?”

Despite the film showing Conley’s family as unaccepting and responsible for subjecting him to conversion therapy, it does not vilify the parents but rather presents them as victims of the mindset of a fundamentalist community and the trappings of charlatans.

“The film is about dismantling misconceptions and helping young gay people find their voice,” Conley tells VOA. “And this is why we play the long game, with not making easy villains because it’s a longer battle. These kids that are currently either in conversion therapy or going through it or some way about to go through it, are surrounded by family members, pastors, people in the community, who are deciding their faith for them.

“So, our jobs in many ways is to educate those people and maybe, they are not on the right side yet, but they can at least agree on one thing, which is: this is torture. So, if we get them to agree on that, we can save lives,” Conley said.

“At the day’s end,” the author added, “we got to choose how we love, when we love, what we do with our lives and no one gets to tell you how to do that.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A wheelchair used by the late British physicist Stephen Hawking has sold at auction for almost $400,000, with the money going to charity.

The motorized wheelchair, which was used by Hawking after he was paralyzed with motor neuron disease, had been expected to sell for around $20,000 in the online auction organized by Christie’s.

A copy of Hawking’s doctoral thesis, called “Properties of expanding universes” from 1965 sold for $767,000, much more than the estimate of $200,000.

Proceeds from the auction will go to two charities, the Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at age 22 and given just a few years to live. However, he lived to the age of 76, dying in March.

Hawking explored the origins of the universe, expanding scientific thinking about black holes and became a well-known figure in pop culture.

A script from one of his appearances on the television series “The Simpsons” was one of the 22 items in the auction, selling for more than $8,000.

Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, said the sale gave “admirers of his work the chance to acquire a memento of our father’s extraordinary life in the shape of a small selection of evocative and fascinating items.”

Other items sold at the auction included an early edition of Hawking’s best-selling book, “A Brief History of Time,” marked with a thumbprint, a collection of his medals and awards, and essays.

In total, the auction raised $1.8 million for charity. Hawking’s family is donating other items from Hawking’s archive to the British government in lieu of paying inheritance tax.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Belgium-based SWIFT financial messaging service will be disconnecting some Iranian banks this weekend, said SWIFT chief executive Gottfried Leibbrandt at an event in Paris on Friday.

Earlier this week, SWIFT had already stated that it would be suspending some unspecified Iranian banks’ access to its messaging system in the interest of the stability and integrity of the global financial system.

In a brief statement issued earlier this week, SWIFT had made no mention of U.S. sanctions coming back into effect on some Iranian financial institutions on Monday, as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to force Iran to curtail its nuclear, missile and regional activities.

SWIFT’s statement on Nov. 5 said that suspending the Iranian banks access to the messaging system was a “regrettable” step but was “taken in the interest of the stability and integrity of the wider global financial system.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration next week will issue a ban on the sale of fruit and candy flavored electronic cigarettes in convenience stores and gas stations, an agency official said, in a move to counter a surge in teenage use of e-cigarettes.

The ban means only tobacco, mint and menthol flavors can be sold at these outlets, the agency official said, potentially dealing a major blow to Juul Labs Inc, the San Francisco-based market leader in vape devices.

The FDA also will introduce stricter age-verification requirements for online sales of e-cigarettes. The FDA’s planned restrictions, first reported by The Washington Post and confirmed to Reuters by the official, do not apply to vape shops or other specialty retail stores.

There has been mounting pressure for action after preliminary federal data showed teenage use had surged by more than 75 percent since last year, and the FDA has described it as an “epidemic.”

“E-cigs have become an almost ubiquitous — and dangerous — trend among teens,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in September. “The disturbing and accelerating trajectory of use we’re seeing in youth, and the resulting path to addiction, must end. It’s simply not tolerable.”

That growth has coincided with the rise of Juul, whose sales of vaping devices grew from 2.2 million in 2016 to 16.2 million devices last year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency threatened in September to ban Juul and four other leading e-cigarette products unless their makers took steps to prevent use by minors. The FDA gave Juul and four big tobacco companies 60 days to submit plans to curb underage use, a compliance period that is now ending.

The planned restrictions on flavors in convenience stores are likely to have the biggest impact on Juul, which sells nicotine liquid pods in flavors such as mango, mint, fruit and creme, previously called creme brulee.

Juul competitors

The only other e-cigarette competitors sold at convenience stores are those marketed primarily by tobacco companies such as Altria Group Inc, British American Tobacco Plc, Imperial Brands Plc and Japan Tobacco Inc.

Those products, sold under the MarkTen, blu, Vuse and Logic brands, have lost market share as Juul has risen to prominence over the last year, growing from 13.6 percent of the U.S. e-cigarette market in early 2017 to nearly 75 percent now, according to a Wells Fargo analysis of Nielsen retail data.

E-cigarette products represent a small share of revenue for major tobacco companies, whereas Juul’s business is built entirely on the vaping devices. Revenue from e-cigarette devices made up less than 1 percent of British American Tobacco’s global revenue for the first six months of 2018, according to a company filing from July.

Altria last month announced it would stop selling its pod-based electronic cigarettes, generally smaller devices that use pre-filled nicotine liquid cartridges, in response to the FDA’s concerns about teen usage. The company also said it would restrict flavors for its other e-cigarette products to tobacco, menthol and mint.

Representatives from Altria, British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Japan Tobacco did not respond to requests for comment Thursday evening. A Juul spokeswoman declined to comment.

The companies have previously said their products are intended for adult use and that they work to ensure retailers comply with the law.

Divisive products

Juul has previously said the company wants to be “part of the solution in keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of young people” but that “appropriate flavors play an important role in helping adult smokers switch.”

Meredith Berkman, a founder of Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes, which seeks to curb underage use, said the agency’s move was a “good first step,” but added that “the final step should have happened yesterday.”

“Why not do away with flavors altogether, why not do away with online sales altogether?” she said.

E-cigarettes have been a divisive topic in the public health community. Some focus on the potential for the products to shift lifelong smokers onto less harmful nicotine products, while others fear they risk drawing a new generation into nicotine addiction.

Last year the FDA, under Gottlieb, extended until 2022 a deadline for e-cigarette companies to comply with new federal rules on marketing and public health.
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From: MeNeedIt