Brazil’s cash-strapped government is drawing up a voluntary redundancy plan for federal civil servants aimed at reducing its bloated payroll and saving about 1 billion reais ($318 million) a year, the Planning Ministry said on Monday.

It will also offer public employees a shorter workday in the latest effort to cut payroll costs and reduce a gaping budget deficit that cost Brazil its investment grade credit rating.

The ministry said in a statement that the plan would be announced this week.

The government’s income and spending estimates published last week show a payroll bill for this year of 284.5 billion reais. That marked the second largest outlay after social security benefits, which total an estimated 559.8 billion reais.

A two-year recession has reduced tax revenues and forced the government to freeze spending as it seeks to meet a 139 billion-real budget deficit target for 2017.

Political turbulence stirred by corruption charges against President Michel Temer has delayed approval in Congress of an unpopular overhaul of Brazil’s generous pension system that is the main cause of the budget deficit.

($1 = 3.1468 reais)
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From: MeNeedIt

Conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking to add an amendment this week to spending legislation that would slash the number of staff at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The budget research office, known as the CBO, has drawn recent Republican criticism, including from the White House, after it concluded that Republican proposals to replace Obamacare would lead to 23 million more Americans being uninsured if they became law.

Representative Mark Meadows, head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Monday his colleague Morgan Griffith has offered an amendment to an appropriations bill the House is expected to take up this week that would cut the CBO’s staff of 235 by 89 employees, saving about $15 million.

“They ought to be aggregators,” Meadows said of the CBO at a National Press Club lunch. “There’s plenty of think tanks that are out there. We ought to take a score from Heritage, from AEI [American Enterprise Institute], from Brookings, from the Urban Institute and bring them together for a composite score.”

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, as is the American Enterprise Institute. The Brookings Institution and Urban Institute are liberal-leaning think tanks based in Washington.

The CBO is one of a handful of analysis units of Congress whose employees strive for political impartiality, providing dependable and neutral information that lawmakers can use when making often complex budget, tax and other decisions. Its staff includes economists, public policy analysts, lawyers and editors.

In May, after Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the CBO’s healthcare analysis “absurd” and questioned its continued existence, Democrats defended the office, saying Republican attacks were irresponsible.

“When Trump administration officials either disagree with or do not understand the impacts of their own policies, they prefer to attack the nonpartisan analysts who are doing their jobs with integrity and expertise,” Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democratic House leader, said at the time.

The CBO was created in 1974 during a spending dispute between the Democratic-controlled Congress and Republican President Richard Nixon after he withheld funds for government programs that did not support his political positions.
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From: MeNeedIt

The popularity of drones keeps growing, both for personal and commercial use. Instead of humans controlling them, researchers are working on ways to teach the unmanned vehicles how to navigate and avoid obstacles. In Switzerland, researchers are training drones to recognize their surroundings and build 3D maps. VOA’s Deborah Block explains how.
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From: MeNeedIt

On August 21, 2017 people in many parts of United States will be able to enjoy a rare visual spectacle – a total eclipse of the sun. Although the moon passes between the sun and our planet relatively often, a total eclipse is visible only occasionally and only in some parts of the globe. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Sometimes, it’s the simplest ideas that can have the biggest impact. When it comes to wheelchair technology, any advances are welcome, but one simple idea may forever change the way wheelchairs work. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

A new eye in the sky will soon help scientists monitor environmental changes with frequent, high-resolution pictures of dozens of selected areas of the earth. Faith Lapidus reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. state of California made news last week when it voted to extend its cap and trade legislation, designed to combat climate change, until 2030. Despite California’s clean image, parts of the state are battling an old enemy: smog. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

You may have heard of the downward dog pose in yoga, or the cobra or the cow. Now, get ready for the goat, it’s goat yoga. Faith Lapidus explains.
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From: MeNeedIt

Afghanistan’s all-girl robotics team returned Saturday to Kabul after its successful trip to Washington for the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge, and several officials representing the presidential palace welcomed the girls home, calling them role models.

In the ceremony, Abdullah Abdullah, chief executive of the national unity government, said, “Despite the differences between the Afghan and other teams, Afghan girls were able to achieve a silver medal.”

Abdullah promised to facilitate their participation in future competitions.

Teenagers from around the world demonstrated their skills in designing, building and programming robotic devices at the competition. The annual international robotics event aims to build bridges between high school students with different backgrounds, languages, religions and customs, and to ignite in them a passion for the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

It took an intervention from U.S. President Donald Trump and other officials to allow the girls of the Afghan robotics team to receive visas after two rejections, letting them travel to the United States to participate in the robotics event.

Washington experience

One of their biggest surprises once in Washington? The tight security.

“The security that we see here is not in Herat, Afghanistan,” team member Kawsar Roshan told VOA in Washington during the last day of the competition.

“This is a peaceful city. People are not fighting each other, and it is a friendly environment,” said team member Fatima Qaderian.

Member Lida Azizi said she learned “unity and teamwork” at the robotics competition.

The team made it to Washington only a day before the event began. U.S. Embassy in Kabul had refused their initial visa applications, but were granted entry to the country after the intervention by high-level U.S. officials.

On Tuesday, Trump’s eldest daughter and a senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, visited he team and its sponsors. She had previously tweeted that she was looking forward to welcoming them.

Ayub Khawreen of VOA’s Afghan service contributed to this report.
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From: MeNeedIt

Food halls, communal dining spaces featuring a variety of food vendors under one roof, are becoming a popular option for dining out in New York City. In a city where high rents and operating costs have made it difficult for aspiring restaurateurs to establish themselves, food halls offer an alternative path to profit. Foodies, culinary upstarts and investors are flocking to get a seat at the table. VOA reporter Tina Trinh explores.
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From: MeNeedIt

Nigeria’s top female golfer, Uloma Mbuko, has won more than 200 trophies in her 17-year career as an international player. Now, she’s passing on her crown, training the next crop of young golfers in Nigeria. VOA’s Chika Oduah reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

To understand the significance of the so-called Monkey Trial, one must try to imagine the America of 1925; specifically, the southern state of Tennessee. 

Under pressure by a coalition of strict Christians, Tennessee became the first state in the United States to pass a law — the Butler Act — that deemed it illegal to “teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animal.”

The act alarmed many in the legal community, including the recently formed American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which persuaded John Scopes, a 24-year-old high school science teacher and football coach from Illinois, to test the constitutionality of the law in what became known as “The Monkey Trial.” 

The trial also attracted intense media attention, including live radio broadcasts of the trial for the first time in history, according to an award-winning documentary by PBS’s American Experience on the trial.

Attorney Clarence Darrow represented Scopes; William Jennings Bryan, a Democratic conservative, represented both Tennessee and the fundamentalists who were deeply opposed to Charles Darwin’s theory.

“I knew, sooner or later, that someone would have to stand up to the stifling of freedom that the anti-evolution act represented,” Scopes wrote in his 1967 book Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes.

The trial ended on July 21 with a guilty verdict and $100 fine.

A year later, the ACLU issued its appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which upheld the law, but overturned the conviction of Scopes on a legal technicality.

Decades later in 1967, Tennessee repealed the act and teachers were free to teach the theories of Darwin without breaking the law.
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From: MeNeedIt