Brazil’s President Michel Temer launched an infrastructure concessions program on Tuesday that he said should raise 45 billion reais ($14.43 billion) in investment in building and operating roads, port terminals, railways and power transmission lines.

Temer said the program was key to restoring an attractive business environment as Brazil struggles to emerge from its worst-ever recession.

“There will be 45 billion reais in new investment in the energy, transport and sanitation sectors which will lead to the creation of 200,000 new direct and indirect jobs,” Temer said.

Inaugurating a meeting of the Program for Partnerships and Investments (PPI), which will oversee the tendering of the concessions, Temer said 55 projects would be launched with private-sector partners.

“We are leaving behind a deep recession and entering in a phase of prosperity where private investment will be decisive,” said the president, who has said his top priority is curbing unemployment running above 12 percent.

Data on Tuesday showed a surprise acceleration in Brazil’s deep economic downturn in the final quarter of 2016, stepping up pressure on President Michel Temer and the central bank to do more to promote growth.

The economy showed a steeper-than-expected decline of 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, following a 0.7 percent drop in the previous three months.

Wellington Moreira Franco, the minister coordinating the PPI, said the federal government would propose 35 concessions in energy transmission.

The government said in a statement it would also launch the early renovation of five railway concessions in return for commitments on investment.

The government said it would launch concessions for new areas in the ports of Santana, Itaqui and Paranagua and extend contracts in Santos, Vila do Conde and Niteroi.

With its budget squeezed by the deep recession, Temer’s government is betting that an increase in private investment can help revive the economy despite political turbulence caused by a sweeping anti-corruption investigation.

($1 = 3.1179 reais)
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From: MeNeedIt

Staying up late into the night, Lilia Lobato Martinez watched endless YouTube videos to teach herself the computer code she used to help build her prize-winning Ool app for volunteers in Guadalajara, Mexico.

In her country, she is usually the only woman in tech competitions, which often hand out men’s T-shirts to the winners.

Now the 18-year-old electrical engineering student is using the $10,000 she won for her app in last year’s international girls-only Technovation competition to further develop Ool, which has so far linked over 1,000 volunteers with 20 non-profit groups in Mexico’s second-biggest city.

“A lot of people were constantly complaining everything’s wrong, but I found that no one was going out to the street to volunteer,” said Lobato. “So I decided to develop an app that’s a compendium of all the non-profit organizations, so we can learn what Mexico is building.”

A male-dominated field

With plans to eventually set up a center to teach children to code, she said many of her female friends shied away from IT development because it was male-dominated. Only four out of 40 students on her degree course are women, she pointed out.

Across Latin America, the participation of girls and women in technology and science has lagged far behind men, experts say.

And while awareness of the need to correct the imbalance is growing, social and economic pressures mean many are still pushed into other areas or expected to start work straight after school rather than going into higher education.

“Boys think it’s easy for them and they expect to be smart in technology … it’s not expected for girls, and that’s reinforced by the education system quite often,” said Gloria Bonder, Buenos Aires-based UNESCO chair on women, science and technology in Latin America.

The portrayal of women in the media, and a lack of role models also contribute to making it a system-wide problem, added Bonder, who is working on a Central American pilot project to incorporate gender equality into science and technology education.

While 44 percent of all science research positions — including social sciences — in the region are held by women, they are under-represented in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), according to UNESCO.

For example, in Peru and Colombia, around a third of natural science researchers are women, but they account for just a quarter of engineering and technology researchers.

Now a number of projects are striving to improve access for girls and give them the skills and confidence to compete in those jobs.

Developers’ boot camp

One of these is the Laboratoria coding academy in Lima, which spots talent “where no one else is looking,” said its chief executive, Mariana Costa Checa.

More than 1,000 women applied for 70 places at its intensive boot camp where candidates from low-income backgrounds train as front-end web developers.

The application process involves a series of rigorous tests, alongside interviews with candidates’ families to reduce the drop-out rate for the course, which also runs in Santiago, Mexico City and the Peruvian city of Arequipa, and helps participants land jobs with companies such as IBM.

Along with computer programs like JavaScript, it teaches workplace skills that are crucial for women who have little experience of formal-sector employment, said Costa.

She expects some Laboratoria graduates will go on to develop technical solutions for problems in their communities.

“The first thing we look for is a job, because it gives them economic stability, and for our average student, it triples their income,” said Costa.

It also gives them “a new perspective in life,” she added. “It starts changing the way they look at the world — and I think there’s enormous value in then bringing that change to their own communities.”

Many girls are on their own

With many girls from poor families under pressure to start earning as soon as they finish school, Rebeca Vargas, president of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation, said most of those who signed up for the international STEM mentoring program she helped set up in Mexico’s Puebla state did so without telling their parents.

Nearly all are now studying STEM subjects at college or university.

“Some of the girls we worked with last year had to sell bread and food on the street to be able to earn money to eat,” said Vargas, whose foundation developed the program with Mexico’s public education secretariat and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Girls take a different route

Families often expect girls to pay their way at home but not to seek senior positions at corporations or well-paid jobs.

“They’re supposed to work but they’re not supposed to be educated,” Vargas said.

Wendy Arellano Martinez, who won a scholarship to study biotechnology engineering at the prestigious Monterrey Technology Institute after the mentoring program, is now part of a team developing a project to make  spectacle frames from recycled plastic bottles for older people on low incomes.

“We’re going to be looking for funds from organizations or foundations to help us distribute our products to people who need them but don’t have the resources,” said the 18-year-old student from Puebla. “I want to give the same support that I received.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Researchers are developing a blood test that can tell not only whether someone has cancer, but in what organ the tumors are lurking. The test could mean more prompt, potentially life-saving treatment for patients.

Researchers describe their blood test as a kind of dual authentication process. It is able to detect the presence of dying tumor cells in blood as well as tissue signatures, to signal to clinicians which organ is affected by the cancer.

There already are tests that screen for traces of DNA released by dying cancer cells. Such blood tests show promise in the treatment of patients to see how well anti-cancer therapies are working.

But researchers at the University of California, San Diego discovered a new clue, using organ-specific DNA signatures, that leads them to the particular organ that is affected. 

The finding makes the new blood test potentially useful as a screening tool in people suspected of having cancer.

UC-San Diego bioengineering professor Kun Zhang is senior author of a paper in Nature Genetics about the experimental test.

“So when you try to do these kinds of early screening or early detection [tests], these people are healthy. So if you take a blood draw and then you do a test, and you find some signature of cancer, that is not enough because you do not know what to do next,” Zhang said. “And so, in this case, we developed a method where we can say whether there is a cancer growing in the body and if the answer is ‘Yes,’ we can also say something about where does it grow.”

The test screens for a DNA signature called a CpG methylation haplotype, which is unique for each tissue in the body.

When a cancer grows in an organ, it competes with healthy tissue for nutrients and space, killing off healthy cells, which release their DNA into the bloodstream. 

The haplotype signatures, identified by the blood test, could tell doctors what cells are being destroyed, and therefore what organ is being invaded by cancer. Zhang says knowing a tumor’s location is especially crucial for early detection and treatment.

Researchers created a database of complete CpG methylation patterns for 10 different normal tissues: the lungs, liver, intestine, colon, brain, pancreas, spleen, stomach, kidney and blood. To put together the genetic marker database, the investigators also analyzed tumor and blood samples of cancer patients.

They screened the blood samples of 59 patients with lung or colorectal cancer, comparing those findings to people without cancer.

“It could be potentially used as a screening test,” Zhang said. “So I think that is the real potential. We need to do a few more rigorous clinical observations before we can get to that point.”

Zhang envisions eventually using the blood test to look for markers of cancer as part of routine blood work.
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From: MeNeedIt

It’s hard to teach young women about getting ahead through technology when they don’t even have enough light to study. That was the problem facing The Green Girls Project in Cameroon. So project leaders took a break from their lessons and focused on solving that problem. The result is enlightening. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

The generation gap is being bridged, one relationship at a time, through partnerships in an expiremental program between U.S. universities and retirement homes. Faith Lapidus explains.
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From: MeNeedIt

Thai veterinarians on Monday removed 915 coins from a 25-year-old sea turtle which had been swallowing items thrown into her pool for good luck, eventually limiting her ability to swim.

The coins and other objects removed from the turtle named Omsin — piggy bank in Thai — weighed 5 kg (11 lb). The turtle itself weighed 59 kg (130 lb).

The green sea turtle, living at a conservation center in Sriracha, Chonburi, east of the Thai capital of Bangkok, had been finding it hard to swim normally because of the weight.

The vets said they believed the seven-hour-long operation was the world’s first such surgery.

“We think it will take about a month to ensure she will fully recover,” said Nantarika Chansue, of Chulalongkorn University’s veterinary science faculty, adding that the turtle would need six more months of physical therapy.

There was no immediate estimate of the value of the coins, some of them foreign and many corroded.
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From: MeNeedIt

Everglades National Park, in southern Florida, includes more than half a million hectares of wetlands. National parks traveler Mikah Meyer immersed himself in the River of Grass with treks through mud-filled swamps and close encounters with some of the park’s avian and reptilian residents, and talked with VOA’s Julie Taboh about his adventure.
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From: MeNeedIt

If there are hooligans planning to crash the 2018 World Cup football (soccer) finals in Russia, a Russian lawmaker thinks he has a solution.

Parliament member Igor Lebedev has even drawn up rules for what he calls “draka” – the Russian word for “fight.” There would be 20 unarmed fighters on each side taking on one another in a stadium at a scheduled hour. He said these fights between different fan groups could attract thousands of spectators.

“If visiting fans, for example, begin picking fights they receive an answer — your challenge is accepted. Let’s meet at the stadium at the set time. You can acquaint yourselves with the rules on our site,” Lebedev wrote on his party’s website. Russia would be a pioneer in a new sport, he said.

Last year, organized groups of Russian football fans, many with martial arts training, fought English fans on the streets of Marseille during the European Championship.

Some fan groups in Russia already hold illicit fights along similar lines of what Lebedev is proposing, typically pre-arranged mass brawls in rural locations, away from police. A Russian Premier League game on Saturday between CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg was marred by clashes between groups of rival fans who fought one another and tried to break through a security fence.

Lebedev, who represents the opposition Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, is also on the board of the Russian Football Union.

His comments come only 15 months from the kickoff of football’s 2018 World Cup which will be hosted by Russia with 12 venues in 11 cities.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

On the dusty streets of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou soldiers searched visitors to the pan-African Fespaco film festival on Thursday night after they’d emptied their pockets and passed through a metal detector. Close by a soldier manned a heavy machinegun mounted to the back of a military pick-up.

Other international events in West Africa, including the Paris-Dakar Rally and Mali’s Festival in the Desert music event, have been relocated or cancelled due to the threat posed by jihadist groups.

Burkina Faso’s government, however, has been insistent that Fespaco, one of Africa’s pre-eminent film festivals, would continue despite security concerns since a deadly raid last year by al-Qaida militants, the first major attack of its kind in the country.

While security in Burkina Faso remains fragile, this year’s festival, which closed on Saturday, drew robust attendance.

Hubert Kabre, a bank employee in Ouagadougou, has attended the festival for the past three decades and wasn’t about to let al-Qaida militants deter him this year.

“We’re not going to allow ourselves be controlled by terrorists,” he said as he waited, ticket in hand, for the second evening screening at the CineBurkina cinema. “This is the best response.”

Until not long ago, landlocked Burkina Faso, an ally of the West against jihadist groups in the arid West African Sahel region, had largely been spared the violence that plagued its neighbors and all but destroyed tourism and cultural events.

That changed in January last year when militants loyal to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) stormed the packed Cappuccino restaurant and the high-end Splendid Hotel in downtown Ouagadougou in a raid that left 30 people dead and dozens more wounded.

The attack struck a blow to the city’s relaxed vibe, and for a time the future of Fespaco, which has been held every two years since 1969, appeared in doubt.

During the week of this year’s festival at least two attacks occurred in Burkina Faso near the border with Mali. The first targeted a police station and the second killed two people at a school.

Edith Ouedraogo, 25, had initially planned not to go to the festival fearing it would be too dangerous, but later changed her mind.

“I had friends who kept inviting me. As soon as they’d say ‘Hey, we’re going to Fespaco’, I’d say no, no, no. I’m not going where there are jihadists,” she said.

Security forces were out checking vehicles and identification papers at roads into the capital a week before the festival started and a heavy security presence was visible at all of the venues. But for those who attended, it was worth it.

“We don’t have cinemas. Our films don’t circulate in the commercial distribution circuit in Africa. So missing Fespaco would mean not experiencing the thing we love the most,” said Tunisian filmmaker Mohamed Challouf.

“Felicite” a film about a Congolese nightclub singer’s struggle to care for her son following a motorcycle accident, by Senegalese director Alain Gomis won the top prize this year.

“When you stay at home … [the jihadists] can achieve what they want,” said Tako Daouda, 30, following an encore screening of “Felicite” on Saturday night. “You have to go out and take those people on and say ‘No’.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Strathmore arts and culture center in North Bethesda, Maryland, is best known for its music center. But alongside music concerts and performances the mansion is a venue for showcasing visual arts, including its annual juried exhibition. Mandana Tadayon tells us more
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From: MeNeedIt

“I am the most presidential person you will ever see,” says a man in a dark suit and red tie, sounding much like President Donald Trump. He’s sporting Trump’s characteristic hairdo, but exaggerated, resembling more of the teased bouffant style popular in the 1960s.

The audience at this performance in Washington laughs at this “fake” Trump, who adds, “Millions of women marched after my inauguration, one day in office, and I have already managed to get more middle aged women off the couch than Michelle’s (Obama) ‘get up and move’ campaign did in 8 years!”He looks at his cellphone as two women beside him sing, “tweet, tweet.”

These are the Capitol Steps, a Washington political satire comedy group, which for 35 years has been poking fun at political officials, including 5 past presidents.And now, with a new chief executive in town, the group has created fresh skits and songs for their performances, which are held mostly in Washington.

“We take an existing song and put new words to it,” explains Elaina Newport, a founding member of the group, who helps write the material.“We’ll try to have a good pun and find something that makes fun of the politician.”

Seeking the spotlight

Instead of being offended, Newport says most politicians “think it’s funny, and want to show the public they have a good sense of humor.”

She recalls that George H.W. Bush, president from 1989-1993, was an especially good sport. “We went to the White House to perform and we were being careful not to do anything that would offend him,” Newport says.“After the show he came up on stage and said ‘I know you have more songs about me.I want to see them.’”Another time, she says, he “got on stage and sang with us.”

But one U.S. senator actually got mad, she says and laughs, “because we didn’t have any songs about him in the show.”

Newport points out that the jokes are not meant to be mean.

“We could do most of the songs “right in front of the person that they’re about,” she says. “We’ve always had a tradition of being bi-partisan, getting everybody.” 

That includes Hillary Clinton, whose Capitol Steps portrayal responds to her email scandal by singing, “I’m not indicted and I’m so excited,” to the catchy music of the 1982 Pointer Sisters hit, “I’m So Excited.” Former president Bill Clinton is depicted wearing a hat and dark sunglasses, and saying he never asked for wife’s email “because I was too afraid that she’d ask me for mine.”

A confident, bare-chested Russian president, Vladimir Putin, dances across the stage singing “Putin on a Blitz,” instead of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

Laughter and applause

The political humor found a receptive audience.

“I think that we just need to sit back and laugh about it every now and then,” says Mary Tomei, a high school student from New York.

“A little more irreverence would do the country good. It helps to laugh at yourself,” agrees Bob McCunney from Boston.

Besides giving audiences a good laugh, Newport hopes the Capitol Steps can help ease tensions in a very politically divided America. “I think political satire can make us all relax and get along better, and even if you disagree with the person sitting next to you at the show, you can laugh at the same jokes.” 
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From: MeNeedIt

Twitter introduced new safety measures this week meant to crack down on online harassment and protect people from viewing offensive material, but some free-speech advocates are concerned the changes could lead to censorship of unpopular ideas.

The social media company announced Wednesday that it would start hiding potentially menacing tweets, even if the tweets or accounts in question hadn’t been reported as abusive.

“We’re working to identify accounts as they’re engaging in abusive behavior, even if this behavior hasn’t been reported to us,” the company said in a statement announcing the changes. “Then, we’re taking action by limiting certain account functionality for a set amount of time, such as allowing only their followers to see their Tweets.”

The so-called stealth bans could be placed on accounts, the company’s statement said, if a Twitter user sent unsolicited messages to another user who was not following the sender.

Twitter said it would “act on accounts” only when it was confident abuse had taken place, based on the algorithms it uses to identify illicit posts.

This new automated stealth ban capability became a cause of consternation for Suzanne Nossel, executive director of the free-speech advocacy group PEN America, because she said it could easily become a solution “where there is really no problem that needs to be solved.”

‘Mistaken’ moves?

“To take action when there hasn’t been a complaint raises the concern of whether there will be mistaken blocking of accounts or suspending of accounts,” she said. “That raises a risk.”

Twitter has been under pressure to address abusive speech and trolling on its platform in recent months after celebrities and others complained of sustained, coordinated abuse campaigns.

Actress Leslie Jones notably swore off the social media service for a brief time last year after she was targeted by online trolls and harassed with racism and death threats. The incident led to a personal meeting between Jones and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and several months later the company began introducing new tools to address online abuse.

Twitter expanded its “mute” feature to allow users to block specific words or phrases from showing up in their notifications. It expanded users’ ability to report hateful conduct. And it retrained its support teams on dealing with online abuse.

These types of changes that allow users to have more control over what content they see and whom they interact with are positive steps, Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told VOA.

Control for users

The ACLU encourages companies to focus less on a top-down approach to censorship and more “on tools that allow users to control their experience on the platform,” she said.

“Attempts to put the thumb on the scale on the censorship side are prone to error and prone to human biases,” Bhandari said.

Newer tools introduced by Twitter, though, give the company a far greater role in controlling what content gets seen.

In February, Twitter began pre-emptively hiding what it called “potentially abusive or low-quality tweets” from conversations on the website. The tweets will still be visible to users, but only to “those who seek them out.”

“Our team has also been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward,” Twitter said in a February statement.

VOA contacted Twitter multiple times for clarification on guidelines used to identify “low-quality” tweets but received no response.

Twitter also introduced a “safe search” feature in February that automatically removes tweets that contain “potentially sensitive content” from search results. A request for clarification on how this content is identified was not returned.

Being a private company, Twitter has no real obligation to preserve free speech on its website. But Twitter has billed itself as a platform for free expression, and on the Twitter rules page, it says it believes in “speaking truth to power.”

Global town square

This is a role both PEN America and the ACLU take seriously. Both Nossel and Bhandari referred to the website as a sort of global town square, where everyone’s voice has equal weight.

“As a practical matter, decisions made by Twitter have a huge impact on the messages that we receive, and I hope that Twitter and other companies take those responsibilities seriously,” Bhandari said.

Nossel noted that Twitter has a financial incentive to be cautious on issues involving the balance between allowing free expression and stopping abuse.

“The power and influence of their platform depends on the free flow of ideas, so I think there are commercial reasons why they would not want to limit [free speech],” she said. “And I think for their users, they do have a kind of softer, implicit contract that they are going to be a platform in which you can express things freely.”

Bhandari said it’s important to find that balance, because if Twitter “allows a heckler’s veto to take over,” it will have a chilling effect on speech that’s similar to pre-emptively hiding content.

“One of the really important parts of that has to be transparency,” she said.
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From: MeNeedIt