If you’ve been walking through downtown Nairobi lately, you may have seen Moses Odhiambo. The 29-year-old self-taught saxophonist has been drawing crowds and inspiring a love of music in young people who, like himself, are growing up on the streets.

Moses Odhiambo plays his saxophone amid the usual buzz of evening rush hour in Nairobi’s central business district.

He performs here every Tuesday and Thursday.

A small crowd gathers. Today marks one year since he started performing like this. But he is no stranger to the streets.

At 10 years old, he left home with his three brothers. Their mother couldn’t afford to feed them. Odhiambo spent several homeless years in the slums of Nairobi’s Kayole Soweto area. Through sponsorship programs, he was able to complete high school, where he played trumpet.

He showed a knack for music.   

“So the director called me and told me, before we get a professional teacher come and try teaching these students,” said Odhiambo. “So when I went there. I saw the saxophone and fell in love with it and I picked it up, taught myself from scratch up to where I am today”.

When he is not performing in the streets, Odhiamdo is teaching music in two public primary schools or giving private lessons. But the streets remain his source of inspiration.

“I could choose to be in the house and do my practice in the house but I saw that being not so productive for me so I wanted to go out and make a difference,” said Odhiambo. “Because of my background having been a street child, I thought of coming out into the streets and make a difference.”

After his performances, Odhiambo sets aside time to talk with street kids he meets.

“They can make a difference in life if indeed they pursue their passion,” he said.

Rafael Mwangi sings a song he composed. The 14-year-old has lived on the streets for over six years now.

He says “when I saw Moses play, it gave me so much hope. I felt it was time to also start singing… I started writing music and when I showed Mose my writings, he told me he could see my future.”

On Thursdays, Odhiambo is joined by another young musician, Steven Muthama, on the guitar.

Muthama says performing on the street creates a powerful connection.

“People just take time to come and listen,” said Muthama. “Tired people from work taking time to just stop in the street, not knowing you, just seeing you there, listening and appreciating, maybe dropping a shilling or two but just the time and the effort to stand there and listen is really amazing.”

Music has been Odhiambo’s ticket to a better life. He hopes to pass that opportunity on to the next generation.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

San Antonio, Texas, is home to the greatest concentration of Catholic missions in North America, including The Alamo, the state’s first mission dating to 1718. The most visited historic landmark in Texas was also a fort and the site of a battle that played a pivotal role in the state’s dramatic history.

San Antonio Missions

In the 18th century, the government of Spain established Catholic missions in the American southwest, in an attempt to exert control and expand its influence in the region. The Spanish Crown looked upon the natives as potential subjects and saw the missions as a way to convert as many of them as possible to Catholicism.

But the native tribes in what is now east Texas showed little interest in what Spain had to offer. So in 1731, the missions there were relocated westward to the San Antonio River, where, according to the U.S. National Park Service, the hunter-gatherer tribes proved “more receptive” to the Spanish message. Upon entering a mission, tribal members were expected to give up their traditional life, accept a new religion and pledge loyalty to a distant and unseen king.

Most of the missions lasted as fully functional religious sites for six decades.

A perfect union

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer, who’s on a quest to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the U.S. National Park Service, described the relationship between the Spanish government and its Catholic priests as “a perfect marriage.”

“The Crown of Spain wanted to expand the territory and the Catholic priests wanted to help spread [Catholicism], so within that, it was kind of a magical partnership,” he said. “So these mission sites preserve a lot of that heritage.”

Today the National Park Service operates the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, which helps preserve four of the five missions — San José, Concepción, San Juan and Espada. They were added to the list of national parks in 1978 under then-President Jimmy Carter.  

Meyer traveled on the scenic Mission Hike and Bike Trail that follows the San Antonio River and links all five sites. “Each of these mission sites tells part of the story in a different way, depending on how much of the site has been preserved,” he remarked.

“The outlying walls and buildings showcase where the religious figures would have lived, where the students would have lived who were being taught by the missionaries, and a lot of what the daily life would have looked like for these early Spanish colonizers,” he added.

And what life must have been like for Native Americans under Spanish rule, he noted.

“Some people would say they stole their culture from them. Other people would say they provided a means for survival in a changing world that was no longer nomadic and that was becoming agricultural,” he said.

“What’s really incredible about these sites are how well intact and preserved the churches are,” he said. “Most at least have their chapel still maintained.” In fact, all four of the churches remain active parishes, which means services are held in them every week.

The heart of San Antonio

Mission San Antonio de Valero, more commonly known as The Alamo, was established by the Franciscans in 1718. It is not a unit of the National Park Service but owned by the state of Texas and is a National Historic Landmark. The 3-century-old compound was a mission from 1718-1793, a fort from 1803-1835 and a battlefield from 1835-1836.

Many consider The Alamo the most enduring symbol of independence in Texas.

Remember The Alamo!

The historic compound is best known as the site of a 1836 battle that marked a turning point in the state’s history. At the time, Texas was a province of Mexico, and colonists (primarily from the United States) grew resentful of increasingly centralized Mexican government. On October 2, 1835, they launched a revolution for independence.

On February 23 the next year, Mexican President Santa Anna’s army began a siege of the Alamo Mission and overran it 13 days later, killing all of the defenders — known at the time as Texians. Among the dead were well-known men such as garrison commander William Travis, American pioneer Jim Bowie and Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett.

The deadly siege motivated many Texians to join the Texian Army. They defeated the Mexican forces the following month at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the revolution, and starting Texas’ decade-long status as an independent republic, until it joined the United States as the 28th state.

Mission accomplished

Today, the Alamo compound is the state’s most visited landmark — two centuries after Spain lost most of its influence throughout the Americas.

Meyer noted that considering the historic, life-altering events that took place at The Alamo compound, “it’s not that big of a building … but it’s impressive that it’s become such a well-known part of our culture.”

“It really seems like the town has embraced this part of their history and built a lot of their current day infrastructure around it,” he added.

All five missions were designated UNESCO World Heritage sites on July 5, 2015

As he prepared to depart Texas and head west, Meyer remarked how impressed he was by the Lone Star state’s vast landscape and diverse culture.

“It’s so huge that you got a very rich diversity of natural landscapes, and with that comes a rich diversity of history,” he said.

The national parks traveler invites you to join him as he continues his journey across the American southwest by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump is re-opening for oil exploration areas that President Barack Obama had closed, a move that environmental groups have promised to fight.

In an executive order Friday, the president reversed the Obama administration’s decision to prohibit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic waters off Alaska.

The order also instructs the Interior Department to review current restrictions on energy development in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. In addition, it bars the creation or expansion of marine sanctuaries and orders a review of all areas protected within the last 10 years.

Trump cites advantages

The White House says 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried off the U.S. coastline, but 94 percent of the area is off limits.

“Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create countless new jobs and make America more secure and far more energy independent,” Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House.

The action is the latest from the Trump administration aimed at boosting domestic energy production and loosening environmental regulations.

In his first 100 days, Trump has relaxed coal mine pollution rules and ordered a review of vehicle efficiency standards and power plant greenhouse gas rules. His administration has stopped defending Obama-era pollution regulations challenged in court.

The energy industry has cheered the moves. Environmental groups have promised strong opposition.

Fragile ecosystems

Conservationists have long opposed oil drilling in the Arctic. A spill would devastate the region’s fragile ecosystems, they say, while extreme conditions raise the risks of a spill and make cleanup harder.

Fishing and tourism on the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico would suffer from an accident, too, environmentalists note.

“By his actions today, President Trump has sent a clear message that he prioritizes the oil and gas industry over the needs of working Americans in our coastal communities who depend on healthy fishing and tourism economies for their livelihoods,” Environmental Defense Fund Vice President Elizabeth Thompson said in a statement.

Reviewing and rewriting the current offshore drilling plans are expected to take several years. Environmental groups plan legal challenges to the changes.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A group of experts meeting at the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend a promising experimental Ebola vaccine in future outbreaks of this fatal disease. 

The 2013 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed 11,300 people, highlighting the need for a vaccine to control of the deadly virus.  Of 12 candidate vaccines, only one that was tested in Guinea reportedly has proven to be clinically effective.

However, the Chair of SAGE and WHO senior health adviser, Alejandro Cravioto, notes the vaccine is not yet licensed and therefore should only be used under strict conditions, such as informed consent.

“That means people have to sign saying that they want to take the vaccine and under the conditions that we call good clinical practices,” he said. “We still have something that could really be of help in case we have something that could happen in the near future.” 

Cravioto tells VOA this vaccine could be a game-changer because it has demonstrated its effectiveness and its impact in a particular setting, with a particular species of Ebola.

“It is important to keep in mind that we are not recommending or SAGE is not recommending currently, and there is no evidence to recommend wide-scale use of the vaccine and to again start to vaccinate before an occurrence of an outbreak,” he said. “We have no idea of the duration of protection that is afforded by the vaccine to start with.” 

SAGE recommends the so-called ring strategy that was used in the 1970s to eradicate smallpox to deliver the Ebola vaccine.  This involves vaccinating people who are infected with the virus and all those who have come in contact with them. 

This method creates a buffer zone or protective ring around the patient to prevent the spread of infection.
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From: MeNeedIt

Facebook is acknowledging that governments or other malicious non-state actors are using its social network to sway political sentiment, including elections.

That’s a long way from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion in November that the idea that bogus information on Facebook influenced the U.S. presidential election was “pretty crazy.” It also illustrates how the world’s biggest social network has been forced to grapple with its outsized role in how the world communicates, for better or for worse.

In an online posting Thursday, the company said that it would monitor efforts to disrupt “civic discourse” on Facebook. It is also looking to identify fake accounts, and says that it will warn people if their accounts have been targeted by cyber-attackers.
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From: MeNeedIt

United Nations officials say at least 11 people have died from a mysterious illness in Liberia, and tests have been negative for the Ebola virus.

The World Health Organization said Friday that authorities are looking into whether the people were sickened by something they ate or were exposed to a chemical or bacteria.

Five others remain hospitalized in Sinoe County, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) outside the capital, after complaining of abdominal pains. Two are critically ill.

The cases over the past week have evoked painful memories in Liberia, where more than 4,800 people died during the Ebola epidemic.

Those who fell sick this week all had attended a relative’s funeral. That was how many Ebola victims contracted the disease when they came in contact with victims’ corpses.
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From: MeNeedIt

The latest economic data indicate the U.S. economy is growing at the slowest rate in three years. The GDP or gross domestic product, the broadest measure of all goods and services produced in the country, increased at a disappointing 0.7 percent annual rate, according to new government estimates released Friday.  That’s the weakest performance since 2014, as consumer spending stayed flat and business inventories remained small.  

Analysts say that’s bound to be a disappointment to U.S. President Donald Trump who predicted strong economic growth on day one, once he took over the White House. 

“Remember candidate Trump talked about GDP of about 5 percent and paraphrasing, perhaps something much, much stronger,” said Bankrate.com senior analyst Mark Hamrick. 

“Most economists believe the track for the U.S. economy for the intermediate future is going to be very familiar to what has been seen over the last number of years, and that’s somewhere between one and probably 2.5 percent on an annual basis.”

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.1 percent pace in the fourth quarter of 2016.  But economists say first quarter estimates tend to be notoriously low for a number of reasons.  

“In some years it’s been because of bad weather that kept people in their homes, keeping them from purchasing things but it’s also believed to be somewhat flawed statistically — meaning that what’s actually happening in the economy isn’t being perfectly captured by government statistics,” Hamrick tells VOA.  “It ends up being an estimate and most of them are not perfect”.

Most economists say the first quarter estimate should not be seen as a true measure of U.S. economic health. 

Other indicators suggest a more positive outlook. The U.S. unemployment rate is near a 10-year low at 4.5 percent, consumer and business sentiment are rising and major U.S. stock indexes are near record highs.
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From: MeNeedIt

Another protest march will take place in Washington Saturday. The People’s Climate March targets President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo action on climate change. A movement that began with a few scientists has grown to include everyone from low-income people of color to major corporations. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Drug overdose deaths in the United States continue to rise. The majority of those deaths can be attributed to opioids, synthetic or natural drugs that when used correctly relieve pain. But, according to health authorities, nearly 100 Americans die every day from opioid abuse. While the nation tries to figure out ways to end the flood of opioids on U.S. streets, others are trying to help those who are trying to put opioid abuse behind them. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Employers can legally pay women less than men for the same work based on differences in the workers’ previous salaries, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower-court ruling that said pay differences based exclusively on prior salaries were discriminatory under the federal Equal Pay Act.

That’s because women’s earlier salaries are likely to be lower than men’s because of gender bias, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Seng said in a 2015 decision.

1982 law cited

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit cited a 1982 ruling by the court that said employers could use previous salary information as long as they applied it reasonably and had a business policy that justified it.

“This decision is a step in the wrong direction if we’re trying to really ensure that women have work opportunities of equal pay,” said Deborah Rhode, who teaches gender equity law at Stanford Law School. “You can’t allow prior discriminatory salary setting to justify future ones or you perpetuate the discrimination.”

Activists held rallies around the country earlier this month on Equal Pay Day to highlight the wage gap between men and women. Women made about 80 cents for every dollar men earned in 2015, according to U.S. government data.

The 9th Circuit ruling came in a lawsuit by a California school employee, Aileen Rizo, who learned in 2012 while having lunch with her colleagues that her male counterparts were making more than she was.

Attorney: Logic hard to accept

Her lawyer, Dan Siegel, said he had not yet decided the next step, but he could see the case going to the U.S. Supreme Court because other appeals courts have decided differently.

“The logic of the decision is hard to accept,” he said. “You’re OK’ing a system that perpetuates the inequity in compensation for women.”

Fresno County public schools hired Rizo as a math consultant in 2009 for $63,000 a year. The county had a standard policy that added 5 percent to her previous pay as a middle school math teacher in Arizona. But that was not enough to meet the minimum salary for her position, so the county bumped her up.

Equal Pay Act of 1963

The Equal Pay Act, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1963, forbids employers from paying women less than men based on sex for equal work performed under similar working conditions. But it creates exemptions when pay is based on seniority, merit, quantity or quality of work or “any other factor other than sex.”

The county argued that basing starting salaries primarily on previous pay prevents subjective determinations of a new employee’s value. The 5 percent bump encourages candidates to leave their positions to work for the county, it said.

The 9th Circuit sent the case back to Seng to consider that and other justifications the county provided for using previous salaries.
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From: MeNeedIt

Lawmakers are nearing agreement on sweeping spending legislation to keep the lights on in government, after the White House backed off a threat to withhold payments that help lower-income Americans pay their medical bills.

It was the latest concession by the White House, which had earlier dropped a demand for money for President Donald Trump’s border wall. Even with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the Trump administration is learning that Democrats retain significant leverage when their votes are needed on must-pass legislation.

A temporary funding bill expires Friday at midnight, and GOP leaders late Wednesday unveiled another short-term spending bill to prevent a government shutdown this weekend, something Republicans are determined to avoid.

There appears little chance of that as lawmakers worked to resolve final stumbling blocks on issues like the environment, though a short-term extension of existing funding levels is likely.

“The fundamental issue is keeping the government open, that’s our focus,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., a top member of the vote-counting team in the House.

At the same time, House Republicans had a breakthrough on their moribund health care legislation as a key group of conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus, announced it would support a revised version of the bill. Freedom Caucus opposition was a key ingredient in the legislation’s collapse a month ago, a humiliating episode for Republicans that called into question their ability to govern given that they’ve been promising for seven years to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Yet whether the Freedom Caucus support would be enough remained uncertain. One key moderate, GOP Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, dismissed the Freedom Caucus about-face as “a matter of blame-shifting and face-saving” for a bill going nowhere. Even if the legislation passes the House it will face major hurdles in the Senate and is certain to be extensively revised if it survives at all.

The changes in the bill would let states escape requirements under Obama’s health care law that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates, and cover a list of specified services like maternity care. Conservatives embraced the revisions as a way to lower people’s health care expenses, but moderates saw them as diminishing coverage.

Despite some optimism among House leaders for a quick vote on the health bill, the outcome was difficult to predict. The White House has been exerting intense pressure on House GOP leaders to deliver any tangible legislative accomplishments ahead of Trump’s 100-day mark, something that has yet to occur aside from Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The massive spending measure, which would wrap together 11 unfinished spending bills into a single “omnibus” bill, represents the first real bipartisan legislation of Trump’s presidency.

Democratic votes are needed to pass the measure over tea party opposition in the House and to provide enough support to clear a filibuster hurdle in the Senate, which has led negotiators to strip away controversial policy riders and ignore an $18 billion roster of unpopular spending cuts submitted by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

The outlines of a potential agreement remained fuzzy, but aides familiar with the talks said Trump would emerge with border security funding that’s unrelated to the wall and a $15 billion down payment for military readiness accounts on top of $578 billion in already-negotiated Pentagon funding. Democrats won funding for medical research, Pell Grants and foreign aid.

But negotiators rejected Trump’s demands for $1 billion to begin construction of his promised wall along the length of the 2,000-mile (3218.54-kilometer) U.S.-Mexico border. And after a dispute between Mulvaney and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the administration agreed to keep funding cost-sharing payments under Obamacare that go to reimburse health insurers for reducing deductibles and co-payments for lower-income people.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

AP-WF-04-27-17 0724GMT

 
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From: MeNeedIt

“At the beginning of my fishing career, all the world told me that the trade was for men,” says Chrifa Nimri, “but now all my colleagues respect and call me captain.”

The 69-year-old Tunisian fisherwoman is one of a very small female minority in a very male-dominated profession – commercial fishing.

Around the world, the dangerous work of hauling in the catch at sea is overwhelmingly performed by men. But if you expand the definition of fishing to include processers and marketers of seafood, workers in small-scale and artisanal fisheries, and collectors of clams and other shellfish, women account for a substantial part of the global industry.

No women on board

Sara Skamser has worked in or around commercial fishing for nearly her entire adult life. In her early 20s, she arrived on the Oregon coast and collected her first paychecks salmon fishing and crabbing in local waters. Then Skamser asked for jobs on bigger boats home-ported in Newport — better pay and bigger adventure and all. But, she recalls, none of those skippers would hire her.

“No. They said no.” She mimics them. “’Uh, I know you could do the job. Gosh, you’re probably stronger than me. Uhhh, but I don’t think my wife would like it.’ Or, ‘Uhhh. I would feel terrible if you got hurt on my boat.’”

This was in the early 1980s. To this day in the Pacific Northwest, women hold fewer than 4 percent of the commercial fishery licenses issued by the U.S. states. Elsewhere in the world, social norms helped to keep the gender disparity in place. For example, in Mexico, Peru, Senegal and Vietnam, which all have major marine fisheries, 4 percent or fewer of the workers on fishing boats are women.

Changes on shore

But pull back the lens a little bit and there’s evidence of change. Skamser provided one of many oral histories that formed the basis of a research project on the role of women in the northwestern U.S. commercial fishing industry. Grad student Sarah Calhoun and Professor Flaxen Conway of Oregon State University along with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center researcher Suzanne Russell in Seattle analyzed the results, which were published in the journal Marine Policy.

Conway, a sociologist, says they found women are playing a larger role on the regulatory and business side.

“I think if you look at the scientists, you look at the processing, you look at the marketing. … Once you broaden that out to fisheries in general, then I would absolutely say there are more women in science positions and management positions than there have been in my career, in my 27-year-long career.”

“We’re seeing an increase on the business side more so than ever before,” added social scientist Russell. “Women always worked the business side of things, but now with the complexity and all the reporting, trading and bycatch requirements, it’s pretty intense.”

One of Conway’s takeaways was that the traditional, behind-the-scenes role of a fisherman’s wife has become an increasingly complex and critical job. “Whether it’s regulation, safety, marketing, research, it’s all caring for that fishing family business and making those products get to the table that we enjoy.”

An international look

A separate research team cast a wider net – examining women’s contributions to the fishing industry in Mexico, Peru, Senegal, South Africa and Vietnam. Sarah Harper of the University of British Columbia led that study, whose results appeared in the latest edition of the journal Coastal Management.

“In terms of going out on fishing boats, I think it is still predominantly male-dominated. But certainly when we look at some of the small scale fisheries, the collection of shellfish and fish from shore, women are much more involved and definitely underestimated and undercounted in this area.”

Harper says subsistence fishing by women to feed their families is easily overlooked. So, she says, is who goes crabbing in Vietnam or fishing from boats in lagoons.

When harvest by women is overlooked, Harper says that makes it harder for governments to accurately gauge the pressure on a seafood resource and sustainably manage a fishery.

“When you’re looking at managing fisheries and potentially trying to rebuild fisheries and implement conservation measures, you really need to know who is fishing and where.  If there are fisheries that only men are focused on in certain regions and we’re only focused on those, we’re not getting the whole picture.”

Harper says she is encouraged to see United Nations bodies take an interest in gender equality in fisheries and be more gender-inclusive when making policy and management recommendations.

Hooking new opportunities

Sara Skamser is still involved in the industry, but not on a fishing vessel. She makes her voice heard on several local advisory boards, and founded a successful fishing net and gear company called Foulweather Trawl with her husband in Oregon. She also deals with some of the fishermen who wouldn’t hire her decades ago.

“Bottom line of all of that is that I invoice those people now and occasionally there’s a large invoice. I just look at ’em. I give them the look. Like, ‘Uh, huh. Probably should’ve hired me. You would’ve gotten that for free,’” she says with a chuckle.

There are online forums dedicated to women in fishing and elevating their profile.  One in particular on Facebook called “Chix Who Fish” celebrates victories such as getting a boot maker and a foul weather gear maker to add product lines tailored to the shapes of women’s bodies.

American “chicks” who fish have no use for gender-neutral titles by the way, according to Flaxen Conway. “They don’t want to be called a woman fisherman. They just want to be called a fisherman.”
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From: MeNeedIt