Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila’s blend of indie rock and lyrics about social and political injustice has won a passionate following among fans seeking an alternative to Arab pop with its romantic themes.

But securing a firm footing in the Middle East has been difficult for the band. Jordanian authorities cancelled its concert in June, for the second year in a row. Lebanese radio stations steer clear of its music.

“They don’t know where to place us,” said Hamed Sinno, 29, the openly gay vocalist of the five-member band formed in 2008 that has stirred controversy in the region with songs tackling oppression, classism, sectarianism and homophobia.

“We can’t play in Syria, we can’t play in Palestine, we can’t play in Jordan apparently, we obviously can’t play in Saudi,” he said, listing places where conflict or social conservatism prohibit them from performing.

And things don’t seem to be changing in the region, Sinno said, so the band has been playing more abroad.

Mashrou’ Leila has played concerts in cities including Paris, London, New York and San Francisco since its 2015 album Ibn El Leil reached number 13 on the Billboard world album chart.

The band’s music has broken away from the norm in a region whose pop stars steer clear of social issues, singing mostly of romances. Arabic music doesn’t really have a tradition of “teenagers rebelling or expressing a lot of anger,” Sinno said.

“Are we the rebellious teenagers of the Middle East? No, I think we’re just a band that’s writing about our lives and about the stuff that affects us,” he said.

“And because of the way we are as individuals and people, a lot of what does inspire us is political, because that’s the stuff that we freak out about on a daily basis.”

The band’s most recent song, Roman, focuses on overcoming betrayal, with references to Judas and Jesus.

The video was directed by a woman, Jessy Moussallem, and is dominated by women, their hair and hijabs flapping in the wind side by side in the back of a truck as Sinno sings among them.

“I think it’s literally speaking about what I would like to see and what I think men should do, especially in the Middle East, which is just to shut up and sit back,” Sinno said in an interview ahead of a concert in the Lebanese town of Ehden.

Focusing on the Music, Not the Audience

At sunset, young fans gathered at the venue, wearing shirts emblazoned with the Arabic numeral “3”, the symbol of Mashrou’ Leila’s latest and third album. Others wore Nirvana and Beatles T-shirts.

Both Lebanese and non-Lebanese fans said they liked the band because it is not at all like traditional Arabic music.

“They have this sort of Western twang,” a Lebanese fan, Anthony, said. “The way he sings and vocalizes, it’s not very clear what he’s saying.”

In fact, Sinno said the music they most identified with growing up came out of the United States and Britain.

The band draws inspiration from R&B, jazz, rock, Seattle grunge and metal, he added, and they listen to a lot of Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Madonna and Fleetwood Mac.

Beirut, with its eclectic mixture of noise and language, also had a big influence on the band.

Asked if he believes the band’s music had alienated audiences, Sinno said that’s always a risk, but one he’s willing to take.

Critics in the region often focus on Sinno’s way of singing: he elongates words so they are often incomprehensible. The Arabic word for jasmine hung in the air for 11 seconds in a live rendition of “Shim el Yasmine”, or “Smell the Jasmine.”

An hour after listening to the band rehearse in Ehden, someone unfamiliar with their music looked up and said: “You know, I think I can hear them sing the occasional Arabic word.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

The port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon wants the world to know it’s ready for business.

British safety managers are training local hires to operate heavy machinery and Chinese technicians are running diagnostics on two new container cranes that tower over the harbor, just 28 kilometers (18 miles) from the Syrian border.

After six years of civil war in Syria, markets across the Middle East are anticipating a mammoth reconstruction boom that could stimulate billions of dollars in economic activity. Lebanon, as Syria’s neighbor, is in prime position to capture a share of that windfall and revive its own sluggish economy.

Battles still rage in Syria’s north and east, and in pockets around the capital, Damascus, but the survival of President Bashar Assad’s government now appears beyond doubt.

That is introducing an element of stability into forecasts not seen since 2011, when the war broke out. The Damascus International Fair, a high-profile annual business event before the war, opened on Thursday evening for the first time since war broke out. The 10-day event kicked off with much fanfare, with participants from 43 countries and hundreds of attendees.

The World Bank estimates the cost to rebuild Syria at $200 billion.

For Lebanon, that could be just the stimulus it needs — the tiny Mediterranean country’s growth rate has hovered around 1.5 percent since 2013. And though the capital, Beirut, has grown visibly richer over the years, Tripoli and the impoverished north have lagged behind.

“Lebanon is in front of an opportunity that it needs to take very seriously,” said Raya al-Hassan, a former finance minister from northern Lebanon who now directs the Tripoli Special Economic Zone project that’s planned to be built adjacent to the port.

Ahmad Tamer, the port manager, estimates Syria’s reconstruction will create a demand for 30 million tons of cargo capacity annually.

Syria’s chief ports, Tartous and Latakia, also on the Mediterranean Sea, have a combined capacity of 10 to 15 million tons, he says. He wants Tripoli port to be ready to step in for a portion of the rest.

“We could provide up to 5 or 6 or 7 million tons,” he says.

The port is nearing the completion of the first phase of an expansion project first drawn up in 2009, then revised with an eye on Syria in 2016. Capital investment has reached around $400 million, according to the port manager.

On a map, Tamer pointed to a vacant quadrant where preparations are underway to build silos to hold grain destined for regional markets.

Syria’s conflict has decimated its food production, which included an average of 4.1 million tons of wheat annually before the war, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

In 2017, it managed to produce just 1.8 million tons.

Lebanon’s businessmen and politicians have always maintained close relations with Syrian counterparts. Syria is among Lebanon’s largest trade partners, and arguably its most reliable supplier of cheap labor. Lebanon, in exchange, is the banker to many of Syria’s enterprises and its wealthy elites.

These ties give Lebanon — and Tripoli in particular — an edge over competitors vying for the Syrian market.

The city’s location is also attracting foreign investment. Tripoli port signed a 25-year lease with the Emirati port operator Gulftainer in 2013, to manage and invest in the terminal.

“Our aim was to invest here in anticipation of Syria’s reconstruction,” said Ibrahim Hermes, the CEO of Lebanon’s subsidiary of Gulftainer.

Lebanon is now a fixture on itineraries of prospective investors. Hermes said he has seen delegations arriving from Europe, Asia and especially China, to scope out trade opportunities.

Before the war in Syria, goods coming through Lebanon’s ports used to transit as far afield as Iraq — saving ships from having to take the sea journey through the Suez Canal and around the Arabian Peninsula.

There is talk now that Tripoli could even be a terminal in China’s trillion-dollar new “Silk Road” project, carving a trade route from east Asia to Europe.

The Chinese firm Qingdao Haixi Heavy-Duty Machinery Co. sold the two 28-story container cranes now at the port. Safety signs inside the structures are posted in English and Mandarin.

“Tripoli can be a main transshipment hub for the eastern Mediterranean,” said Ira Hare, a sunburned British manager working for Gulftainer.

Lebanon has officially sought “dissociation” from the Syrian war so as not to fuel rancor among political parties split between those aligned with Damascus and those against it.

But there is also an air of inevitability about the re-normalization of relations, as Assad looks, for the short-term at least, to stay on in power.

Syria’s chief champion in Lebanon, the militant Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside Assad’s forces, evinces little doubt.

“Our national interest is for the border between Lebanon and Syria to be open … because, tomorrow the routes will open to Iraq and to Jordan and we want to be able to transport Lebanese goods,” Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech this week.

A Hezbollah minister, Hussein Hajj Hussein, is one of two Cabinet ministers headed to Syria this week in a highly controversial visit, the first since the start of the war. Prime Minister Saad Hariri, an Assad critic, said the visit did not have government backing.

Damascus also knows it will be brought back in from the cold.

The Damascus International Fair, which promises to attract investors from Russia, China, Iran, and other places, is a telling indicator of the mood in the Syrian capital.

Europe and the United States are hesitant to finance the reconstruction projects so long as Assad, a pariah to the West, remains in power. But Russia, China, and Iran, as well as investors in Lebanon and the Middle East, are showing no signs of hesitation.

“As soon as there is a political agreement to end the war, we will be among the first countries to play a role in reconstruction,” said al-Hassan, the former finance minister.
…

From: MeNeedIt

While Monday’s total solar eclipse in the U.S. will be a once-in-a-lifetime sky show for millions, there’s a small group of people who have experienced it all before and they can’t get enough of it.

Glenn Schneider has seen 33. Fred Espenak has watched 28. Donald Liebenberg has logged 26. For newbie Kate Russo, it’s 10 and counting.

These veteran eclipse chasers spend lots of money and craft intricate plans all to experience another mid-day darkening of the sky. Many work in science and related fields and they’ll travel around the world, even to Antarctica, to see one more.

“I do this not so much as an avocation, but as an addiction,” said Schneider, a University of Arizona astronomy professor.

Russo, a psychologist in Ireland who wrote a book about people’s eclipse experiences, said some people find the experience life-changing. That happened to her.

“Eclipse chasing isn’t just a hobby or interest,” Russo wrote in an email from Wyoming, where she traveled to see Monday’s eclipse. “Eclipse chasing is a way of life. It becomes who you are.”

Monday’s eclipse will cut a 70-mile-wide (112-kilometer) path of totality across the country, when the moon moves between Earth and the sun, blocking it for as much as 2 1/2 minutes. It’s the first coast-to-coast full eclipse since 1918. Many of the big eclipse chasers are planning to be in Oregon or Wyoming because there’s a better chance of clear weather there in August. They’ll be ready to drive hundreds of miles if need be to find good weather.

Total solar eclipses happen on average every 18 months or so, but they usually aren’t near easy-to-drive highways. Norma Liebenberg has been to a dozen, mostly joining her avid eclipse watcher husband, Donald, in remote places like Libya, Zambia and Western China.

“It’s sort of mind-boggling that there are 1,000 people out in these isolated places to see it,” she said. She even forgave her husband when he missed their first anniversary to go to a clouded-out eclipse in the South Pacific.

There’s a compulsiveness to eclipse chasers, especially photographers, said Dr. Gordon Telepun, an Alabama plastic surgeon who has seen only three.

“It’s very anxiety-producing, it’s very challenging,” said Telepun, who even developed a talking phone app that times an eclipse so photographers don’t miss anything. “It’s an adrenaline rush man, I’m telling you.”

Telepun said his hero is “Mr. Eclipse” Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist, who explains why chasers are the way they are.

“It’s the closest any of us will come to being an astronaut and being in space,” Espenak said.

Eclipse chasers say their first always hooks them.

Schneider, who got a telescope at age 5, planned out his first eclipse precisely. He was 14 in 1970 and he traveled from New York City to East Carolina University’s stadium. He had choreographed how he was going to spend the 2 minutes 53 seconds of darkness. Then came the moment.

“I was frozen in place,” he recalled. “I had binoculars around my neck for two and a half minutes and I never picked them up.”

When it was over “I was shaking. I was crying. I was overwhelmed,” he said. “It was at that instant when I said ‘Yeah, this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life’.”

Now Schneider takes his grown daughter with him to eclipses. And he invented what he calls the “lug-o-scope,” a telescope that folds into its own luggage to make his eclipse chasing easier.

“Flexibility is probably No. 1,” Schneider said. “Keeping your options and open and be ready to take that option if that’s what’s needed.”

A veteran of 28 eclipses, Espenak often leads groups of 50 some people to view eclipses, lecturing both about the beauty and the science. Except when the hour grows close and the skies get dark, he goes silent.

“On eclipse day he’s all business. He does not want to be diverted from his checklist of everything he wants to do,” explains University of Tennessee’s Mark Littmann, co-author with Espenak of the book “Totality.” “It’s like you’re kind of trying to chat with a pilot coming in for an emergency landing. It isn’t that he’s just not friendly, it’s just not the right time anymore.”

Donald Liebenberg has seen and blogged about his 26 eclipses for Clemson University, where he does research. He holds the record for most time in totality because the retired federal scientist used to view them by airplane whenever possible. In 1973, he convinced the French to let him use the supersonic Concorde for eclipse viewing and he flew at twice the speed of sound. He got 74 minutes of eclipse time in that one flight.

After spending more than 60 years flying around the world, this time the Liebenbergs are only going as far as their driveway.

This eclipse is coming directly to them in South Carolina.
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From: MeNeedIt

Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist and who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humor to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health, has died. He was 84.

Gregory died late Saturday in Washington, D.C. after being hospitalized for about a week, his son Christian Gregory told The Associated Press. He had suffered a severe bacterial infection.

As one of the first black standup comedians to find success with white audiences, in the early 1960s, Gregory rose from an impoverished childhood in St. Louis to win a college track scholarship and become a celebrated satirist who deftly commented upon racial divisions at the dawn of the civil rights movement.

“Where else in the world but America,” he joked, “could I have lived in the worst neighborhoods, attended the worst schools, rode in the back of the bus, and get paid $5,000 a week just for talking about it?”

Gregory’s sharp commentary soon led him into civil rights activism, where his ability to woo audiences through humor helped bring national attention to fledgling efforts at integration and social equality for blacks.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey tweeted, “Dick Gregory’s unflinching honesty & courage, inspired us to fight, live, laugh & love despite it all.” A tweet by actress/comedian Whoopi Goldberg said, “About being black in America Dick Gregory has passed away, Condolences to his family and to us who won’t have his insight 2 lean on R.I.P”

Gregory briefly sought political office, running unsuccessfully for mayor of Chicago in 1966 and U.S. president in 1968, when he got 200,000 votes as the Peace and Freedom party candidate. In the late ’60s, he befriended John Lennon and was among the voices heard on Lennon’s anti-war anthem “Give Peace a Chance,” recorded in the Montreal hotel room where Lennon and Yoko Ono were staging a “bed-in” for peace.

An admirer of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Gregory embraced nonviolence and became a vegetarian and marathon runner.

He preached about the transformative powers of prayer and good health. Once an overweight smoker and drinker, he became a trim, energetic proponent of liquid meals and raw food diets. In the late 1980s, he developed and distributed products for the popular Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet.

When diagnosed with lymphoma in 2000, he fought it with herbs, exercise and vitamins. It went in remission a few years later.

He took a break from performing in comedy clubs, saying the alcohol and smoke in the clubs were unhealthy and focused on lecturing and writing more than a dozen books, including an autobiography and a memoir.

Gregory went without solid food for weeks to draw attention to a wide range of causes, including Middle East peace, American hostages in Iran, animal rights, police brutality, the Equal Rights Amendment for women and to support pop singer Michael Jackson when he was charged with sexual molestation in 2004.

“We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn’t it either. I’m going to be an American Citizen. First class,” he once said.

Richard Claxton Gregory was born in 1932, the second of six children. His father abandoned the family, leaving his mother poor and struggling. Though the family often went without food or electricity, Gregory’s intellect and hard work quickly earned him honors, and he attended the mostly white Southern Illinois University.

“In high school I was fighting being broke and on relief,” he wrote in his 1963 book. “But in college, I was fighting being Negro.”

He started winning talent contests for his comedy, which he continued in the Army. After he was discharged, he struggled to break into the standup circuit in Chicago, working odd jobs as a postal clerk and car washer to survive. His breakthrough came in 1961, when he was asked to fill in for another comedian at Chicago’s Playboy Club. His audience, mostly white Southern businessmen, heckled him with racist gibes, but he stuck it out for hours and left them howling.

That job was supposed to be a one-night gig, but lasted two months — and landed him a profile in Time magazine and a spot on “The Tonight Show.”

Vogue magazine, in February 1962, likened him to Will Rogers and Fred Allen: “bright and funny and topical … (with) a way of making the editorials in The New York Times seem the cinch stuff from which smash night-club routines are rightfully made.” ″I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second,” he said in Phil Berger’s book, “The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-up Comics.” ″I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man.”

His political passions were never far from his mind — and they hurt his comedy career. The nation was grappling with the civil rights movement, and it was not at all clear that racial integration could be achieved. At protest marches, he was repeatedly beaten and jailed.

He remained active on the comedy scene until recently, when he fell ill and canceled an August 9 show in San Jose, California, followed by an August 15 appearance in Atlanta. On social media, he wrote that he felt energized by the messages from his well-wishers, and said he was looking to get back on stage because he had a lot to say about the racial tension brought on by the gathering of hate groups in Virginia.

“We have so much work still to be done, the ugly reality on the news this weekend proves just that,” he wrote.

He is survived by his wife, Lillian, and 10 children.
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From: MeNeedIt

The head of New York City’s largest evangelical church has resigned from President Donald Trump’s unofficial panel of evangelical advisers, one of the latest resignations in a string of high-profile withdrawals from advisory boards serving the president.

A.R. Bernard, head of the 37,000-member Christian Cultural Center, announced this week he submitted a formal letter to Trump on Tuesday announcing his withdrawal.

Tuesday was the day Trump gave a press conference from Trump Tower in New York City, in which he doubled down on his assertions that “many sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend when a counterprotester was killed at a white supremacist rally

Bernard was one of a few dozen leaders, reports The Washington Post, who gave advice to the president through the White House liaison office. Other members of the advisory group include a mix of Southern Baptist and Pentecostal church leaders.

Several other members of the board, including Southern Baptist Pastor Jack Graham, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference’s Tony Suarez, and televangelist Mark Burns, told the Post that they plan to stay on the council.

Meanwhile the Commerce Department is also losing members of its board of “digital economy” advisers.

This week more than half of the 15 members of the expert board set up last year by President Obama resigned this week in the wake of the Charlottesville comments. Among them are Zoe Baird, president and CEO of the Markel Foundation; Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the tech organization Mozilla; David L. Cohen, senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Comcast; and Microsoft president and chilef legal officer Brad Smith.

Earlier this week, Trump announced he had dissolved two business advisory committees composed of top American corporate executives, after at least seven CEOs announced they were resigning from the councils because of his remarks. Also, all 17 members of a presidential advisory committee on the arts announced their resignations in a letter on Friday over his comments about the Charlottesville rally, saying, “The false equivalencies you push cannot stand.”
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From: MeNeedIt

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the era of nuclear nightmares — of the atomic arms race, of backyard bomb shelters, of schoolchildren diving under desks to practice their survival skills in the event of an attack — seemed to finally, thankfully, fade into history.

Until now.

For some baby boomers, North Korea’s nuclear advances and President Donald Trump’s bellicose response have prompted flashbacks to a time when they were young, and when they prayed each night that they might awaken the next morning. For their children, the North Korean crisis was a taste of what the Cold War was like. 

“I’m not concerned to where I can’t sleep at night. But it certainly raises alarms for Guam or even Hawaii, where it might be a real threat,” said 24-year-old banker Christian Zwicky of San Bernardino, California.

People of his parents’ generation were taught to duck and cover when the bombs came.

“Maybe those types of drills should come back,” Zwicky said.

He isn’t old enough to remember the popular 1950s public service announcement in which a cartoon character named Bert the Turtle teaches kids how to dive under their desks for safety. But Zwicky did see it often enough in high school history classes that he can hum the catchy tune that plays at the beginning. That’s when Bert avoids disaster by ducking into his shell, then goes on to explain to schoolchildren what they should do.

“I do remember that,” says 65-year-old retiree Scott Paul of Los Angeles. “And also the drop drills that we had in elementary school, which was a pretty regular thing then.”

Even as a 10-year-old, Paul said, he wondered how much good ducking under a desk could do if a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city fell nearby. No good at all, his teacher acknowledged.

Then there were backyard bomb shelters, which briefly became the rage during the missile crisis of 1962, when it was learned the Soviets had slipped nuclear-tipped missiles into Cuba and pointed them at the United States.

After a tense, two-week standoff between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that some believe brought the world the closest it’s ever come to nuclear war, the missiles were removed and the shelters faded from public interest.

Now they, too, seem to be having a revival.

“When Trump took office it doubled our sales, and then when he started making crazy statements we got a lot more orders,” says Walton McCarthy of Norad Shelter Systems LLC of Garland, Texas. “Between now and a year ago, we’ve quadrupled our sales.”

His competitor, California-based Atlas Survival Shelters, says it sold 30 shelters in three days last week. During its first year in business in 2011 it sold only 10.

Bill Miller, a 74-year-old retired film director living in Sherborn, Massachusetts, thinks these days are more nerve-wracking than the standoff in October 1962.

“I think it’s much, much crazier, scarier times,” he said. “I think the people who were in charge in the Kennedy administration had much more of a handle on it.”

Nathan Guerrero, a 22-year-old political science major from Fullerton, California, agrees, saying he learned in history class that the “shining example” of a way to resolve such a conflict was how Kennedy’s brother and attorney general, Robert Kennedy, brokered the tense negotiations.

“But knowing the way the current administration has sort of been carrying itself, it doesn’t look like they are keen to solving things diplomatically,” he said.

“As a young person, honestly, it’s pretty unsettling,” he continued.

Had he given any thought to building a backyard bomb shelter?

“I’d be lying if I said such crazy things haven’t crossed my mind,” he said, laughing nervously. “But in reality it doesn’t strike me as I’d be ready to go shopping for bunkers yet.” Instead, he studies for law school and tries “not to think too much about it.”

Other Americans are more sanguine about the possibility of nuclear war. Rob Stapleton has lived in Anchorage, Alaska, since 1975, and he is aware that Alaska has been considered a possible target because it is within reach of North Korean missiles.

“There’s been some discussion about it around the beer barrel and I’m sure the United States is taking it seriously, but we’re not too concerned around here,” he said.

Alaska is so vast and spread out, said Stapleton, that he and his friends can’t imagine why North Korea would waste its time attacking The Last Frontier.

“I mean sure you’d be making a statement, but you’d not really be doing any damage,” he said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

A prosthetic hand is a critical tool that allows amputees to find normalcy in their lives, but some elements, such as complete freedom of movement and sensations of touch, are not the same as a real hand.

“They’ve come a long way and they have a long way to go,” said amputee Charity McFarland, who lost her left hand in a car accident almost four years ago.

McFarland said of the accident, “All I saw were lights and I basically was trying to avoid getting hit, but then the accident happened, so it was like a rollover. They told me that I rolled over three times.”

An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.S are missing a limb, according to research at Rice University in Houston.

While existing prosthetic limbs allow amputees to regain some of their abilities, there are very few devices that provide sensory feedback for the users.

Researchers from Rice University, the University of Pisa and the Italian Institute of Technology are working to allow amputees to better perceive what their prosthesis is doing.

McFarland heard about the research and volunteered to help. The focus of the research is to create what are called haptic devices to better replicate a biological hand for amputees.

“Haptics is anything that has to do with the sense of touch. Any textures that you discern or even the ability to realize that you’re making contact with something. How much pressure you’re putting on it, if it’s slipping, all of those are haptic sensations,” said Rice University graduate student Janelle Clark, who was one of the researchers who measured how well test subjects could distinguish the sizes of objects grasped by a prosthesis with and without haptic feedback.

The tests include a rocker placed onto the subject’s remaining limb that moves back and forth and stretches the skin so the person can sense what the prosthesis is doing. The amount of stretch correlates to how opened or closed the prosthetic hand is on the user.

“The idea behind the research that we’re doing here is to create haptic devices that are simple, they’re intuitive, they’re not going to break and so that people can start to have an understanding of what’s going on with their prosthetic without looking at it all the time,” Clark said.

Researchers found blindfolded test subjects were able to more than double their ability to distinguish the size of objects grasped with a prosthetic hand when they received haptic feedback from a skin-stretch device.

McFarland, however, wasn’t one of them. “I still wasn’t able to sense what it was doing completely,” she said.

“This is going to be a long-term project… to create some sort of artificial hand that has the same capabilities, but maybe there are other changes in the short term that would also be appreciated,” Rice researcher Clark said.

For now, McFarland says she would appreciate a prosthesis that looks like a hand and allows the fingers to move and the wrist to bend and rotate just like a real hand.
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From: MeNeedIt

How does a former stay-at-home mom become an employee of a tech company that could be worth more than $1 billion?

For Ellein Cheng, mom to a 5½- and a 2½-year-old, the answer involved a “returnship.”

So-called returnships are internships that target men and women who have been out of the workforce, either for childrearing or other caregiving. It gives them a chance to retrain in a new field.

In Cheng’s case, the former math teacher and tutor took a returnship at AppNexus, an online advertising company.

For companies, returnships are an opportunity to tap into more mature and professionally diverse talent pools. For participants who may be out of the workforce, it’s a chance to refresh their networks, learn new skills and try on new roles.

Beneficial arrangement

For both parties, it’s a low-risk, low-commitment arrangement. Companies can achieve their goals to make the employee ranks more diverse. Job seekers can potentially find full-time work.

Cheng’s returnship was set up by Path Forward [[www.pathforward.org/]], a New York-based nonprofit that works with tech companies to coordinate 16-week, paid assignments for those who have been away from the labor market for two or more years because of caregiving.

The organization partners with tech companies that range in size from 30-person startups to behemoths such as PayPal, which has more than 10,000 employees.

“What these companies of every size in the tech sector have in common is rapid growth, and also not enough talent to fulfill their needs,” said Tami Forman, executive director at Path Forward.

Women re-entering the workforce often struggle to explain the gap in their resume and find employment harder to come by, Forman said.

“They often get feedback from companies and recruiters and hiring managers that makes them believe that they’ll never be hired, that no one will ever overlook their gap,” she said. The organization says it gets results — 40 out of the 50 women who have gone through the program were offered ongoing employment at the companies in which they interned.

Teaching background

In her job search, Cheng applied for teaching positions but was also open to other fields. The product support work struck a chord with her in its appeal for candidates “passionate about learning and teaching.”

The program gave both managers and participants the chance to see if a long-term opportunity would be the right fit for them.

It also provided a dose of inspiration.

Other employees were “inspired to see people stepping out of their comfort zone, taking a big risk, working on something they haven’t done before,” Lorraine Buhannic, senior director of talent acquisition at AppNexus, said.

For Cheng, the inspiration came from a more personal place — her daughters.

They are growing up “in a world that is changing so quickly with technology, and I just want to be part of that,” she said. “I want to grow with them, I want to learn with them.”

In the end, the match worked. After the returnship, AppNexus hired Cheng as a product support specialist.

Now working in the fast-paced world of online advertising, Cheng says she doesn’t feel she has left her old self behind.

“I’m still obviously learning a lot, because I’m switching careers completely, but at the same time, still bringing the teaching element part of it every day to work,” she said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

When the ebola crisis erupted in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent staff to help West African countries contain the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research and supported pharmaceutical giants to produce a vaccine that would save lives but not turn a profit.

In his budget proposal, President Donald Trump seeks big cuts in spending on global health research. Those cuts could affect work being done to end malaria and AIDS and protect against other infectious diseases. 

Trump’s proposed 2018 budget calls for an 18 percent funding cut for NIH and a 17 percent cut for the CDC. 

Impact on health security

“If these cuts as proposed were enacted, it would have severe impact on health security,” said Stephen Morrison, who heads the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Watch: Proposed US Budget Cuts Could Have Severe Impact on Health Security

And in the long run could be costlier because it’s far cheaper to be ready for a disease outbreak than to fight one once it starts, Jami Bay Nishi of the Global Health Technologies Coalition said.

“The National Academy of Medicine put out a report estimating that responding to a pandemic threat costs $60 billion,” she said. “Yet, ongoing investment in preventative research in attempts to mitigate against a future threat is $1 billion per year.”

U.S. investments, Nishi said, have produced malaria drugs that have saved 750,000 lives and an inexpensive meningitis vaccine that has prevented nearly 400,000 deaths.

The NIH has been instrumental in the fight against AIDS and malaria. AIDS deaths are now close to half of what they were in 2005, according to the U.N. AIDS agency, and researchers seem to be closing in on a malaria vaccine.

In addition, large pharmaceutical companies, like Johnson and Johnson, need the government to back research, especially for drugs for low-income countries. said Jamie Taylor of Johnson and Johnson.

“We can’t do it on our own, and that’s definitive,” she said.

If cuts become routine

But, Morrison observed, the president’s budget request isn’t a done deal.

“He’s not going to get all that he wants, but he’s going to get something,” he said.

The main problem, as Morrison and others see it, is if budget cuts continue, the U.S. will lose its position as a world leader in medical research, and the world will be more vulnerable to the spread of infectious disease. 

Elizabeth Cameron, from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, says bioterrorism could also become a greater risk to the U.S.

“(It’s) absolutely vital that we get to a point where we’re able to respond to any disease threat that comes our way no matter how it comes our way,” Cameron said.

And, finally, Nishi argues, U.S. research and development (R&D) creates jobs that would be lost by budget cuts.

“U.S. government investments in global health R&D not only save millions of lives around the world, but they support U.S. jobs, the U.S. economy and U.S. health security,” she said.

But the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department thinks budget cuts can be made without any loss of research.

“I think what the budget is trying to do, in the first step in this process, is trying to bring focus to the kinds of things that we ought to be able to do to get a bigger bang for our buck,” said Dr. Tom Price, secretary of HHS.

Congress will tackle these issues when the lawmakers return from their summer recess in September.
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From: MeNeedIt

As national parks traveler Mikah Meyer wrapped up the last leg of his journey across the western state of Utah, he appears to have saved the best for last — with visits to Bryce and Zion national parks — the last two of the five national parks that make up the ‘Mighty 5.’

Hoodoo! Who knew?

Mikah was one of millions of visitors who are drawn to Bryce Canyon National Park each year. The park is home to the world’s largest collection of hoodoos — giant pillars of rock that were sculpted by erosion millions of years ago.

“What makes this place unique is that it’s not just like one, or two, or three, like you’ll see in many places,” Mikah noted. “It’s thousands!”

“Native Americans believe the hoodoos were former humans that were turned into rock,” Mikah explained. “I don’t know the whole story,” he added, but that was one explanation provided about the ancient formations that rise from the earth seemingly out of nowhere.

Observing the odd-shaped pillars from one of the many overlooks was special, Mikah said, but even better was “hiking down into them and exploring the hoodoos up close.” He especially liked looking up at some of the hoodoos that were supporting massive rocks on top of their thin pillars …  

“You wonder at what moment… that giant rock is going to come tumbling down and will I be underneath it when it does?”

Mikah had arrived at the park just in time for the sunset, which gave the surreal landscape a warm, golden glow.

“Man, am I glad I did!” he gushed. “I parked the car… ran out to the overlook and looked at the view and said to myself ‘this is a 10 — it’s a 10 park.’ I mean the view was just so incredible… at sunset or not… it is one of the most other worldly places I’ve seen in the United States.”

During his visit to Bryce Canyon, Mikah encountered an unexpected obstacle: a group of cows standing in the middle of the road, refusing to give way. At one point, he was worried one of the animals was going to charge his van, but instead, it took off, leading away the rest of the herd.

Utah’s first national park

The bovine roadblock was just a momentary distraction as Mikah made his way to Zion National Park, which welcomed almost 5 million visitors last year, making it the fifth-most visited national park in the United States.

Many consider Zion the granddaddy of all the Utah parks.

“I think what makes Zion so spectacular is this combination of red and orange rock, and lush green forests and plants,” Mikah said. “So many places are either lush greenery or stark canyons in orange and reds, but Zion National Park has both.”

Zion Canyon is the main focus of the park, Mikah explained, where “on every side you look, there is another peak that looks like a mountain in its own right, except they’re all together, all lined up on each side of the canyon.”

Angels Landing – a devilish climb

One of the most popular hikes is up Angels Landing, a 454 meter (1,488-foot) tall rock formation that’s considered by many to be the most challenging and dangerous trail in the park.

“What makes it so popular and so well-known is that for the last portion — maybe the last half mile — you are up on a very thin strip of rock; and it’s thin enough that the park service puts a bunch of chains that people can hold onto because since 2004, six people have fallen and died.”

It does look intimidating, Mikah admitted, “because you’re going along this thin strip of rock and either side you look, there’s very quick, dramatic drops all the way to the canyon floor and you see the shuttles driving by and the river passing through, so I think it’s popular because of this risk element that’s added into these dramatic views.”

But Mikah was undaunted, and described his four-hour roundtrip hike as a “very cool experience.”

Patriotic hike

On his second day of his visit, Mikah was invited by a group of experienced hikers on a 4-hour, back-country hike up a high plateau made up of sheer rock face, which had no trail.

“To get there, it was climbing on all fours, it was sliding down sheer rock faces, some of the guys cut their legs and they said, ‘oh, you know, it happens. Now that just proves that I was out here today.”

When he reached the peak, his fellow hikers asked him to sing, which he agreed to… belting out the National Anthem over the canyon.

“These gentlemen I was hiking with, most of them have never heard a Countertenor — which is a male Alto or Soprano — so I think they were shocked and surprised by that,” Mikah said, adding that he was surprised by the echo of his voice bouncing off the canyon walls, “so we all got something unexpected!”

The Mighty 5

As Mikah wrapped up his journey across Utah, he observed that the “Mighty 5” parks — Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks — are especially popular among foreign tourists.

“It’s an incredibly international audience at all these five sites,” he explained. “More so than any other site I’ve been to, tenfold.”

After spending time in those magical places himself, Mikah can understand why.

“The concept of how long nature and animal life has survived on its own without any human interference creating these majestic spaces that have changed by centimeters every year, and we’re witnessing this one speck of time in its marvelousness… it’s definitely a lot to wrap your mind around.”

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website TCBMikah.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

NASA launched the last of its longtime tracking and communication satellites Friday, a vital link to astronauts in orbit as well as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The end of the era came with a morning liftoff of TDRS-M, the 13th satellite in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network. It rode to orbit aboard an unmanned Atlas V rocket. There were handshakes all around two hours later, when the satellite successfully separated from the rocket’s upper stage.

“We’re going to really celebrate this one,” said launch director Tim Dunn.

NASA has been launching TDRS satellites since 1983. The 22,300-mile-high constellation links ground controllers with the International Space Station and other low-orbiting craft including Hubble.

“It’s like our baby,” said NASA’s Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation.

“People have invested their soul and their sweat into making it happen” over the decades, Younes said on the eve of launch. “This spacecraft has served us so well.”

This latest flight from Cape Canaveral was delayed two weeks after a crane hit one of the satellite’s antennas last month. Satellite maker Boeing replaced the damaged antenna and took corrective action to prevent future accidents. Worker error was blamed.

The rocket and satellite cost $540 million.

Space shuttles hoisted the first-generation TDRS satellites. The second in the series was aboard Challenger’s doomed flight in 1986. It was the only loss in the entire TDRS series.

TDRS-M is third generation. NASA’s next-generation tracking network will rely on lasers. This more advanced and robust method of relaying data was demonstrated a few years ago during the moon-orbiting mission LADEE. NASA hopes to start launching these high-tech satellites by 2024. Until then, the space agency will rely on the current network.

NASA needs seven active TDRS satellites at any given time, six for real-time support and one as a spare. The newest one will remain in reserve, until needed to replace aging craft.

Besides serving other spacecraft, the satellites help provide communication to outposts at the South Pole. In 1998, the network provided critical medical help to a doctor diagnosed with breast cancer.
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From: MeNeedIt

As national parks traveler Mikah Meyer wraps up the last leg of his journey across the western state of Utah, he appears to have saved the best for last – with visits to Bryce and Zion national parks — the last two of the five national parks that make up the ‘Mighty 5.’ He shared highlights of his experiences in some of the most stunning desert landscapes he’s seen on his epic national parks journey so far with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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From: MeNeedIt