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It’s a good idea for people to get an annual physical … and it’s important for animals, too. The London Zoo hosted its annual weigh-in for thousands of its animals recently, enticing the creatures with food to get their measurements. The documentation process is an extensive and time-consuming exercise for the zoo keepers, but a crucial one, say zoo officials. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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From: MeNeedIt
The metalcore band We Came as Romans says vocalist Kyle Pavone has died at 28.
The Troy, Michigan, group tweeted about the death Saturday, saying: “Kyle’s tragic loss came too early in his life and those of his bandmates. All are devastated by his passing.” The death was confirmed by a band publicist, Amy Sciarretto. No further details about the cause were released.
A group of friends founded the band under another name in 2005. Pavone joined in 2008. The group’s 2013 album,”Tracing Back Roots” hit No. 8 on the Billboard 200 album chart and No. 1 on Billboard’s independent album chart.
A week ago, Pavone tweeted a line from the band’s song “Promise Me”: “Will i be remembered or will i be lost in loving eyes.”
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From: MeNeedIt
Musician Jamey Turner chose an unconventional career path by becoming a glass harpist. He plays music with glasses filled with water. He uses his fingertips to rub the rim of the glasses to create a range of musical tones. VOA’s Deborah Block watched Turner play the glass harp in Alexandria, Virginia, where people seemed to be awestruck by the sounds he created.
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From: MeNeedIt
A Russian artist is going back to the roots of photography, rejecting the digital trappings and the assembly-line convenience of the modern age, by designing and creating wooden cameras the way they were built a hundred years ago. Combining craftsmanship with the principles of old school photography, some consider his creations art forms in themselves. And as VOA’s Julie Taboh reports, his wooden cameras, and the unique photographs he takes with them, are attracting buyers from around the world.
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From: MeNeedIt
Scientists have used multibeam sonar and a remotely operated craft to locate the remains of the USS Abner Read, which was sunk nearly 75 years ago after hitting a Japanese mine off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The ship had been sent to look for Japanese submarines following the only World War II battle to be fought on North American soil. VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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From: MeNeedIt
Thirty-six million people currently live with AIDS, a disease that claimed the lives of nearly 1 million people last year. Experts predict that by 2030, 100 million people will have been infected with the HIV virus.
Despite the alarming numbers, there have been great strides in treatment. HIV is no longer a death sentence, and researchers say people receiving treatment for HIV are able to live normal lives and do not pose a risk to others when they are being treated proactively.
But success carries a price: complacency. Funding for AIDS research and treatment has declined, and in some places, so has government interest.
“When we talk to ministers of finance, they always say to me, ‘I thought HIV was over because I don’t see anybody dying,’” said Dr. Deborah Birx, a U.S. Global AIDS coordinator who oversees the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
J. Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “We’re not reaching goals.” He added, “There’s going to be a struggle to hold ground. … There’s a widening deficit of political will and financial capacity that we face some really daunting challenges in prevention.”
Dr. Chris Beyrer, with Johns Hopkins Medicine, predicted that things will get worse if governments and civilians continue their complacency.
“We are not done with AIDS,” he said. “It is much too early to declare victory, and the risks of a resurgent epidemic are real.”
Birx, Morrison and Beyrer discussed the challenges in ending AIDS at a program in Washington to evaluate the messages from this year’s International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.
New infections are down from 3.4 million a year, but they’re stuck at 1.8 million per year. And there are 17 million people living with HIV who cannot be reached. They are in high risk groups: young women, particularly young African women; men who have sex with men; IV drug users; those in prisons and other closed settings; sex workers and their clients; and transgender people.
“Those key populations and young women account for over 50 percent of new infections, and they are really hard to reach,” Morrison said.
Though it’s relatively easy to prevent HIV transmission during childbirth, Beyrer said about 30 percent of all infants born with HIV worldwide are born in Nigeria.
In the U.S., HIV is increasingly an infection in communities with high rates of poverty and in black and Hispanic populations.
The National Institutes of Health announced Aug. 20 that getting these groups into care is critical to ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S. NIH also announced an international program to reduce the stigma around the virus so more people with the disease can seek treatment.
Experts agree it is possible to end the HIV pandemic, even without a vaccine. But to do this, governments and communities need to be involved, funding needs to be continued, and everyone with HIV needs to be treated.
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From: MeNeedIt
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will not lack for urgent topics to address when he gives the keynote speech Friday to an annual gathering of global central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Fed watchers will be listening for anything Powell has to say about financial turmoil in emerging markets, the economic threats posed by the growing trade war launched by President Donald Trump, and Trump’s criticism of the Fed’s recent interest rate hikes.
Investors will especially want to hear whether Powell addresses the central question of whether any of those developments might lead the Fed to alter its plan to raise interest rates two more times this year and to keep raising them next year as well.
If Powell sounds confident that the economy won’t be unduly hurt by the administration’s tariffs on imports and the retaliatory tariffs they have provoked or by a currency crisis in developing markets, Fed watchers will likely conclude that the central bank will maintain a course of gradual rate hikes to reflect a robust economy.
But if Powell strikes a message of concern, it could be read as a sign that the Fed is considering slowing its hikes. A slower pace of rate increases would be intended to encourage continued borrowing and spending by companies and individuals to drive economic growth.
Political pressure
Amid the grandeur of the Grant Teton Mountains, Powell will be the lead-off speaker at the conference, which has been sponsored for more than three decades by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
It will be Powell’s first chance to respond publicly to Trump’s recent criticism, which critics say amounted to an intrusion on the Fed’s longstanding independence from political influence. Two top Fed officials made clear Thursday that Trump’s criticism won’t affect their decisions on whether to continue raising rates. The Fed is widely expected to resume doing so at its next policy meeting late next month.
“Our job at the Fed is to make decisions on monetary policy and supervision without regard to political considerations, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do that,” Robert Kaplan, head of the Fed’s Dallas regional bank, said in an interview with CNBC. Kaplan said he foresees three to four more rate hikes over the next nine to 12 months.
Similarly, Esther George, head of the Kansas City Fed, said she expects the central bank to raise rates twice more this year, with more next year.
“Expressions of angst about higher interest rates are not unique to this administration,” she said in a separate interview with CNBC.
This week, Trump complained in an interview with Reuters that he was “not thrilled” with Powell’s Fed for raising rates. It marked the second time this summer that Trump had publicly criticized the policymaking of the Fed.
That broke a tradition that the White House should refrain from attacks on the Fed because such criticism can shake the confidence of financial markets and that the Fed is committed to keeping inflation under control without regard to political considerations.
Seven interest rate hikes
The Fed has raised its key policy rate seven times since late 2015 after seven years of keeping the rate at a record low near zero to help the economy recovery from the Great Recession. Five of those rate hikes, including two this year, have occurred with Trump in the White House. In June, the Fed boosted its projection for expected hikes this year from three to four.
The Fed’s policy rate stands in a range of 1.75 percent to 2 percent. The rate hikes are intended to prevent the economy from overheating and inflation from accelerating. But higher rates make borrowing costlier and can depress stock prices. Trump has complained that the Fed’s efforts are hampering his attempts to boost growth with his $1.5 trillion tax cut, deregulation and tougher enforcement of trade agreements.
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From: MeNeedIt
John Lennon’s killer has been denied parole for a 10th time and will remain behind bars for at least two more years.
Mark David Chapman appeared before New York’s parole board on Wednesday. In a denial decision obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, the board said it had determined Chapman’s release “would be incompatible with the welfare and safety of society and would so deprecate the serious nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.”
Chapman, 63, shot and killed the former Beatle outside Lennon’s Manhattan apartment on Dec. 8, 1980. He is serving 20-years-to-life in the Wende Correctional Facility in western New York.
“You admittedly carefully planned and executed the murder of a world-famous person for no reason other than to gain notoriety,” the parole panel wrote in its denial decision. “While no one person’s life is any more valuable than another’s life, the fact that you chose someone who was not only a world renown person and beloved by millions, regardless of the pain and suffering you would cause to his family, friends and so many others, you demonstrated a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life and the pain and suffering of others.”
It said releasing Chapman would not only “tend to mitigate the seriousness of your crime,” but also would endanger public safety because someone might try to harm him out of anger or revenge or to gain similar notoriety.
As Chapman faced the parole panel Wednesday, politicians and fans called for his release to be denied during a rally at Strawberry Fields, Lennon’s memorial in Central Park across from his former home.
Jonas Herbsman, the attorney for Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.
A transcript of the parole hearing wasn’t immediately released. At previous hearings, Chapman has said he still gets letters about the pain he caused and was sorry for choosing the wrong path to fame.
Chapman will be up for parole again in August 2020.
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From: MeNeedIt
George Clooney can raise a glass, even if he’s not starring in any hit movies.
The 57-year-old tops the 2018 Forbes’ list of highest-paid actors with $239 million in pretax earnings. Forbes credits up to $1 billion that a British conglomerate said it would pay for Casamigos Tequila, which Clooney co-founded in 2013 with two entrepreneurs. The actor’s wealth also includes additional earnings from endorsements and older movies.
The rankings include on-screen and outside earnings.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson ranked second with $124 million pretax. Forbes says a huge social media following helped Johnson nearly double his 2017 earnings because he’s able to negotiate an extra seven figures over his standard contract for promotion.
Robert Downey Jr. was third with $81 million, followed by Chris Hemsworth with $64.5 million and Jackie Chan’s $45.5 million.
From: MeNeedIt
A best-selling author and Newsweek correspondent has a book coming out on President Donald Trump and the women in his life.
Gallery Books announced Thursday that Nina Burleigh’s “Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women” will be published October 16. Burleigh, Newsweek’s national political correspondent, will draw on investigative journalism and feminist analysis, according to Gallery Books. She will write about Trump’s mother, his three wives, his sisters, daughters and female employees. She will also write about the more than a dozen women who have alleged harassment or other sexual misconduct – allegations he has denied.
Burleigh’s previous books include “The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox” and “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.”
From: MeNeedIt
Facebook banned a quiz app from its platform for refusing an inspection and concerns that data on as many as 4 million users was misused.
The social media company said Wednesday that it took action against the myPersonality app after it found user information was shared with researchers and companies “with only limited protections in place.”
Facebook said it would notify the app’s users that their data was misused. It’s only the second time Facebook has banned an app, after it blocked one linked to political data mining firm Cambridge Analytica that sparked a privacy scandal.
The company said myPersonality was “mainly active” prior to 2012, and it wasn’t clear why Facebook was taking action now.
The app was created in 2007 by researcher David Stillwell and allowed users to take a personality questionnaire and get feedback on the results.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal sparked a wider investigation in March by Facebook, which said it had investigated thousands of apps and suspended more than 400 apps over data sharing concerns.
Cambridge Analytica obtained data on up to 87 million users. It was collected by an app, “This Is Your Digital Life,” created by researcher Aleksandr Kogan, which Facebook banned after it found out.
From: MeNeedIt