The roster of American musicians was impressive: Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, Booker T. and the MGs. They arrived in Europe in 1967, bringing with them the powerful, soulful Memphis Sound. Ahead was a tour with stops in London, Paris and elsewhere.

These artists from the Stax Records music studio captivated audiences with their music born from blues and gospel — a mesmerizing sound created from the black experience in the U.S. last century.

Fifty years later, a group of young musicians educated at Stax Music Academy are newly bringing the music of Memphis back to Europe. They are set to perform at festivals and music halls in England, France and Ireland from July 9 until July 22, joining Stax legends Mavis Staples and William Bell for a couple of shows.

The teenage musicians are eager to follow in the footsteps of their influential predecessors. Created in 2000, their academy is an after-school program for youngsters from some of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods who learn how to dance, sing and play instruments. They pay nothing to attend.

“Just to be able to say that I was part of this upcoming overseas tour, being able to sing songs by Otis Redding and William Bell, it’s monumental not only for Memphis, but for Stax,” said Johnathon Lee, a 17-year-old academy vocalist. “To know that Stax music is still relevant today, and to know that was done in 1967, that’s monumental as well.”

Before it went bankrupt, Stax Records in Memphis generated some of America’s most memorable soul music of the 1960s and 1970s, including songs like Redding’s “Dock of the Bay,” Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” and Booker T. and the MGs’ “Green Onions.” Driven by tight horn and rhythm sections and strong-voiced singers, the Memphis Sound had a raw, emotional quality to it. Some Stax songs were energetic and raucous, others smooth and sexy.

Stax had a sister record label called Volt, so when they put together the 1967 trip, it was called the Stax/Volt European Tour.

The tour came at a time when Stax was having trouble getting its music aired on larger U.S. radio stations because of racial issues during the civil rights era, said Al Bell, who at the time was the music label’s national promotions director. So, when the Stax musicians hopped off a plane in London, they were surprised by the welcome they received.

“It stunned us. We didn’t know how to act,” Bell said. “All these white people in the airport and everywhere, hollering about Stax, calling the artists’ names.”

In Paris, fans “were going crazy” over the Stax musicians, especially Redding, Bell said.

“If there was ever a question in my mind about our music being acceptable to the masses and to whites, Paris, France, removed that completely from my mind,” he said.

Bell said Europeans told him that they viewed the music as an art form that comes from the African-American culture.

“And I’m saying, what?” Bell said, laughing. “We hadn’t even thought about having a `culture,’ let alone our music being considered an art form because it came out of slavery.”

When they returned to Memphis, the Stax artists used the momentum from the successful tour to churn out hits.

“When we came out of Europe, you couldn’t tell us nothing,” Bell said. “Writers got to writing, producers got to producing. You couldn’t get the musicians out of the studio.”

Some of the momentum stalled when Redding was killed in a plane crash in December 1967.

Bell later ran Stax before the company was forced into involuntary bankruptcy in 1975. Bell was indicted on bank fraud charges related to the company’s demise, but was acquitted.

The glory days of Stax Records are gone, but the Stax Music Academy is going strong. About a dozen teenagers ranging in age from 15 to 18 will be on the Europe tour, and they’ve spent hours rehearsing in the academy’s studios.

It will be the first time Lee will travel out of the country, and he’s looking forward to staying in new places and eating foreign foods. He called the trip “a big deal.”

“I’m a little nervous, but I’m excited,” Lee said. “I’m ready to venture out.”
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From: MeNeedIt

3-D printing has given artists and engineers a way to create some of their most daring visions. But it is giving Argentine inventor Gino Tubaro a chance to change lives by building customized prosthetic limbs. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Sudanese doctors and aid workers are urging the government to declare a state of emergency over a cholera outbreak and delay the start of the school year, which began Sunday.

The disease, which is passed through contaminated water, has surfaced in five states, including the capital, Khartoum. The U.S. Embassy said last month that fatalities had been confirmed, and Egypt has begun screening passengers from Sudan at Cairo’s international airport.

Some 22,000 cases of acute watery diarrhea have led to at least 700 fatalities since May 20, said Hossam al-Amin al-Badawi, of the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, adding that it is most likely cholera, but the government refuses to test for it.

Doctors say cholera, a bacterial infection linked to contaminated food or water, has surfaced in the states of Khartoum, Al-Jazeera, Sennar, White Nile and North Kordofan, and are urging the government to seek international aid.

The fast-developing, highly contagious infection can spread in areas without clean drinking water or with poor sanitation. If left untreated, it can cause death from dehydration.

Sudan’s official news agency SUNA meanwhile announced the opening of the school year, saying that authorities had the outbreak of “acute watery diarrhea” under control.

Activists and the opposition say President Omar al-Bashir’s government refuses to acknowledge the cholera outbreak because it would reveal failures in the country’s crumbling health system, where corruption is rife.

Neighboring South Sudan is grappling with the “the longest, most widespread and most deadly cholera outbreak” since the it won independence in 2011, according to the U.N. Since the outbreak began a year ago, over 11,000 cases have been reported, including at least 190 deaths, according to the World Health Organization and South Sudan’s government.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Samsung Electronics said Sunday it will start selling refurbished versions of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone this week in South Korea.

The Note 7 was recalled last year because its batteries would overheat and catch fire. The refurbished versions will use different batteries.

The new Galaxy Note FE phone, built with unused components of the Note 7, will cost $611, a significant drop in price from the Note 7’s price tag of nearly $1,000.

Samsung recalled the Note 7 less than a month after its launch when reports of the phone’s batteries catching fire emerged.

The company released another Note 7 with replaced batteries, but those batteries also overheated and Samsung discontinued the Note 7.

Earlier this year, the tech giant released the results of an investigation that determined the phone fires were the result of flaws in the design and production of batteries supplied by two battery makers.

Close to 3 million Note 7s were returned to Samsung, prompting environmental groups to urge the South Korean company to reuse the electronics parts of the Note 7 to reduce waste.

“The latest launch of the Galaxy Note FE … has a significant meaning as an environment-friendly project that minimized the waste of resources,” Samsung said in a statement.

Samsung said it has not decided if it will sell the Note FE internationally.
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From: MeNeedIt

Qatar’s stock market fell sharply Sunday as a deadline for Doha to accept a series of political demands by four Arab states was expected to expire later in the day with no sign of a resolution.

The Qatari stock index sank as much as 3.1 percent in thin trading, bringing its losses to 11.9 percent since June 5, when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and trade ties, accusing Doha of backing militants.

Stocks tumbled across the board Sunday, with 41 lower and only one higher. Qatar National Bank, the largest listed lender in the Gulf, lost 3.1 percent.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ukraine has blamed Russian security services for a massive cyberattack that started in the last week in Ukraine and eventually spread to computers across the world.

Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU, said in a statement Saturday the attack bore resemblances to past hacks of Ukrainian infrastructure by the Russian security services.

“The available data, including those obtained in cooperation with international antivirus companies, give us reason to believe that the same hacking groups are involved in the attacks, which in December 2016 attacked the financial system, transport and energy facilities of Ukraine, using TeleBots and BlackEnergy,” the statement said.

Russia has denied involvement in the recent attack that halted operations at large companies and government agencies in more than 60 countries around the world. The hackers encrypted data on infected machines and demanded a ransom to give it back to its owner.

Europol Director Rob Wainwright called Tuesday’s hack “another serious ransomware attack.” He said it bore resemblances to the previous “WannaCry” hack, but it also showed indications of a “more sophisticated attack capability intended to exploit a range of vulnerabilities.”

The WannaCry hack sent a wave of crippling ransomware to hospitals across Britain in May, causing the hospitals to divert ambulances and cancel surgeries. The program demanded a ransom to unlock access to files stored on infected machines.

Researchers eventually found a way to thwart the hack, but only after about 300 people had already paid the ransom.

The most recent hack has been largely contained, but now some researchers are questioning the motivation behind the attack. They say it may not have been designed to collect a ransom, but instead to simply destroy data.

“There may be a more nefarious motive behind the attack,” Gavin O’Gorman, an investigator with U.S. antivirus firm Symantec, said in a blog post. “Perhaps this attack was never intended to make money [but] rather to simply disrupt a large number of Ukrainian organizations.”

Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab similarly noted that the code used in the hacking software wouldn’t have allowed its authors to decrypt the stolen data after a ransom had been paid.

“It appears it was designed as a wiper pretending to be ransomware,” Kapersky researchers Anton Ivanov and Orkhan Mamedov wrote in a blog post. “This is the worst case news for the victims – even if they pay the ransom they will not get their data back.”

The computer virus used in the attack includes code known as Eternal Blue, a tool developed by the NSA that exploited Microsoft’s Windows operating system, and which was published on the internet in April by a group called Shadowbrokers. Microsoft released a patch in March to protect systems from that vulnerability.

Tim Rawlins, director of the Britain-based cybersecurity consultancy NCC Group, says the attacks continue to happen because people have not been keeping up with effectively patching their computers.

“This is a repeat WannaCry type of outbreak and it really comes down to the fact that people are not focusing on what they should be focusing on, the very simple premise of patching your systems,” Rawlins told VOA.
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From: MeNeedIt

The World Health Organization’s new director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, began his five-year term Saturday.

The former Ethiopian health and foreign minister is the first African chosen to head the organization.   

Tedros, who goes by his first name, won the office by a clear majority, defeating British and Pakistani candidates in May in the first WHO election decided by member countries.

He is facing a slew of challenges as he takes the helm of the sprawling organization with a funding shortfall of approximately $2.2 billion that is

responsible for improving health care around the world.

After his election, he said the concept of health as a human right would be at the heart of whatever he does at WHO.

“Half of our population does not have access to health care.” He said that could and should be remedied through universal health care coverage, which would address the issue of health as a human right and act as a spur to development.

“All roads should lead to universal health coverage and it should be the center of gravity of our movement,” he said.

Tedros has said one of his first orders of business would be to strengthen WHO’s ability to respond swiftly and effectively to emergencies because “epidemics can strike at any time” and the WHO must be prepared.

Tedros is taking over the reins of the organization from Margaret Chan of China who led WHO for nearly ten years.
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From: MeNeedIt

One of Dakar Fashion Week’s biggest events is free and high-end — a fashion show in a working class neighborhood. The event’s founder, Senegalese designer Adama Paris, says the “Street Show” is her favorite show of the week because she gets to take fashion back to the streets where it belongs.

Just across the street from where fast-moving public buses pause briefly to pick up passengers, Moussa Diouf lines up Nike, Adidas and Puma shoes on a short cement wall. The wall sits on one side of a makeshift catwalk in the Niary Tally neighborhood of Dakar, Senegal.

Across the flashy stage, Nicole Coly sells shiny fabrics by the meter in her small corner store. Lace is one of her top sellers right now, she says.

These fashion vendors flank a large catwalk set up for the 15th annual Dakar Fashion Week’s “Street Show.” In addition to their traditional fashion shows in high-class hotels, every year DFW holds a free fashion show in a working class neighborhood of Dakar.

“This show is my favorite show, because we’re bringing back fashion to the streets,” says Paris, a designer and Dakar Fashion Week founder. “For the years coming, I want this show to become more popular because it’s important to inspire the young people and come to this street with high fashion. Fashion is from the streets, so basically what we’re doing is taking back fashion where it belongs.”

Locals inspired

This fashion week show is open to the public, and 11 of the more than 30 designers from nine countries are participating to show off their new lines. A few meters away from the models rehearsing before the show, local tailor Al Hassane Diallo says he is looking forward to seeing new designs.

“I am very inspired because I see what is new. I see something that I didn’t know about before,” Diallo says.

The 25-year-old tailor is just wrapping up one of his busiest seasons of the year, a few days after the end-of-Ramadan parties have quieted down.

Down the street from the tailor shop, Ramatoulaye, a 21-year-old communications student sits next to her grandmother while sporting stylish sunglasses. 

“I adore what Adama Paris does,” she says of the Dakar Fashion Week founder and Senegalese designer. “She’s a star.”

Ramatoulaye’s friend, Marie Beye, chimes in: “She could have chosen a nice hotel (for this fashion show), but she loves her country.”

No cheap or little show

As the music starts, children line up in the front row and clap loudly for the different sartorial creations. The crowd dances along as golden-clad models sway down the runway in Paris’ golden, shiny dresses to the French rapper Maitre Gims’ song, Sapeur Comme Jamais (Dressed Like Never Before). 

“I don’t want to do, just do a cheap or little show,” Paris said of the Niary Tally fashion event. “I just want to do just actually what were doing in fancy places.”

Another designer comes out with funky dresses that highlight the colorful wax fabric so popular in West African streets, as models march down the runway, knees high, to the 1950s American song, Lollipop. This year there are 100 models walking in the street parade — more than any other year.

In it’s 15th year, DFW has grown from six designers its first year, to 36 this year from nine countries.

After this night’s street parade, the catwalks of Dakar will move to an upper-crust hotel, but for this night, it’s Niary Tally’s moment in the spotlight.
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From: MeNeedIt

Pop music icon Beyonce is throwing her superstar power behind a new effort to bring safe, clean water to children in Burundi in a partnership with UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency said Friday.

Plans call for the project, BEYGOOD4BURUNDI, to help build wells and improve hygiene education and water and sanitation facilities in schools, UNICEF and the U.S. star said in online statements.

Two in five people in Burundi in East Africa have no access to clean water, and water- and sanitation-related diseases are among the leading causes of death among children in the nation of 12 million people, they said.

One in 12 children in Burundi dies before age 5, according to UNICEF.

“Access to water is a fundamental right. When you give children clean and safe water, you don’t just give them life, you give them health, an education and a brighter future,” Beyonce, 35, said in the statement.

Beyonce said more than 2 million people in Burundi spend more than 30 minutes a day collecting water, forcing children to miss school and putting girls in particular danger as they walk miles in search of wells.

One of the most popular singers in the world, Beyonce has sold more than 100 million records as a solo artist. She has three children, including twins born earlier this month, with her husband, rap star and entrepreneur Jay Z.

Expertise plus influence

“This unique partnership combines UNICEF’s decades of expertise in providing clean water to children in Burundi and around the world with the power and influence of the entertainment world to bring about social change,” said Caryl Stern, chief executive of UNICEF USA, in a statement.

Asked how much money the entertainer and UNICEF were putting toward the water project, neither the agency nor a representative for Beyonce responded immediately to requests for information.

The first phase of BEYGOOD4BURUNDI focuses on four rural regions of the landlocked East African nation, which has been racked by civil unrest and violence as well as drought and malnutrition.

It was plunged into crisis in April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he planned to run for a third term, which the opposition said was unconstitutional and violated a peace deal that had ended the country’s civil war 10 years earlier.

Nkurunziza was re-elected, but some opponents took up arms. At least 700 people have been killed, and rights groups estimate more than 400,000 people have been forced from their homes.
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From: MeNeedIt

Many businesses still struggled Friday to recover hopelessly scrambled computer networks, collateral damage from a massive cyberattack that targeted Ukraine three days ago.

The Heritage Valley Health System couldn’t offer lab and diagnostic imaging services at 14 community and neighborhood offices in western Pennsylvania. DLA Piper, a London-based law firm with offices in 40 countries, said on its website that email systems were down; a receptionist said email hadn’t been restored by the close of business day.

Dave Kennedy, a former Marine cyberwarrior who is now CEO of the security company TrustedSec, said one U.S. company he is helping is rebuilding its entire network of more than 5,000 computers.

“It hit everything, their backups, servers, their workstations, everything,” he said. “Everything was just nuked and wiped.”

Kennedy added, “Some of these companies are actually using pieces of paper to write down credit card numbers. It’s crazy.”

Some attacks are unreported

The cyber attack that began Tuesday brought even some Fortune 1000 companies to their knees, experts say. Kennedy said a lot more “isn’t being reported by companies who don’t want to say that they are hit.”

The malware, which security experts are calling NotPetya, was unleashed through Ukraine tax software, called MeDoc. Customers’ networks became infected downloading automatic updates from its maker’s website. Many customers are multinationals with offices in the eastern European nation.

The malware spread so quickly, worming its way automatically through interconnected private networks, as to be nearly unstoppable. What saved the world from digital mayhem, experts say, was its limited business-to-business connectivity with Ukrainian enterprises, the intended target.

Had those direct connections been extensive — on the level of a major industrial nation — “you are talking about a catastrophic failure of all of our systems and environments across the globe. I mean it could have been absolutely terrifying,” Kennedy said.

Microsoft said NotPetya hit companies in at least 64 nations, including Russia, Germany and the United States. Victims include drug giant Merck & Co. and the shipping company FedEx’s TNT subsidiary. Trade in FedEx stock was temporarily halted Wednesday.

Danish shipping giant still struggling

One major victim, Danish shipping giant A.P. Maersk-Moller, said Friday that its cargo terminals and port operations were “now running close to normal again.” It said operations had been restored in Spain, Morocco, India, Brazil, Argentina and Lima, Peru, but problems lingered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Elizabeth, New Jersey; and Los Angeles.

An employee at an international transit company at Lima’s port of Callao told The Associated Press that Maersk employees’ telephone system and email had been knocked out by the virus — so they were “stuck using their personal cellphones.” The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to reporters.

Back in Ukraine, the pain continued. Officials assured the public that the outbreak was under control, and service has been restored to cash machines and at the airport.

But some bank branches remain closed as information-technology professionals scrambled to rebuild networks from scratch. One government employee told the AP she was still relying on her iPhone because her office’s computers were “collapsed.” She, too, was not authorized to talk to journalists.

 Security researchers now concur that while NotPetya was wrapped in the guise of extortionate “ransomware” — which encrypts files and demands payment — it was really designed to exact maximum destruction and disruption, with Ukraine the clear target.

FBI joins investigation

Computers were disabled there at banks, government agencies, energy companies, supermarkets, railways and telecommunications providers.

Ukraine’s government said Thursday that the FBI and Britain’s National Crime Agency were assisting in its investigation of the malware.

Suspicion for the attack immediately fell on hackers affiliated with Russia, though there is no evidence tying Vladimir Putin’s government to the attack.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine have been tense since Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Pro-Russian fighters still battle the government in eastern Ukraine.

U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment about who might be responsible for the attack. The White House did not immediately respond to questions seeking its reaction to the attack.

Russian hackers blamed before

Experts have blamed pro-Russian hackers for major cyberattacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016, assaults that have turned the eastern European nation into the world’s leading cyber warfare testing ground.

A disruptive attack on the nation’s voting system ahead of 2014 national elections is also attributed to Russia.

Robert M. Lee, CEO of Dragos Inc. and an expert on cyberattacks on infrastructure including Ukraine’s power grid, said the rules of cyber espionage appear to be changing, with sophisticated actors — state-sponsored or not — violating what had been established norms of avoiding collateral damage.

Besides NotPetya, he pointed to the May ransomware dubbed “WannaCry,” a major cyberassault that some experts have blamed on North Korea.

“I think it’s absolutely reprehensive if we do not have national-level leaders come out and make very clear statements,”  he said, “that this is not activity that can be condoned.”

                 
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From: MeNeedIt

Backyard cooks looking to grill this summer have another option: hot dogs without “added nitrites.”

Are they any healthier?

Oscar Mayer is touting its new hot dog recipe that uses nitrite derived from celery juice instead of artificial sodium nitrite, which is used to preserve the pinkish colors of processed meats and prevents botulism. Kraft Heinz, which owns Oscar Mayer, says sodium nitrite is among the artificial ingredients it has removed from the product to reflect changing consumer preferences.

The change comes amid a broader trend of big food makers purging ingredients that people may feel are not natural.

But nitrites are nitrites — and the change makes little difference — according to those who advise limiting processed meat and those who defend it.

Kana Wu, a research scientist at Harvard University’s school of public health, said in an email that it is best to think of processed meat made with natural ingredients as no different from meat made with artificial nitrites.

Wu was part of a group that helped draft the World Health Organization report in 2015 that said processed meats such as hot dogs and bacon were linked to an increased risk of colon cancer. She notes WHO did not pinpoint what exactly about processed meats might be to blame for the link.

Known carcinogens

One concern about processed meats is that nitrites can combine with compounds found in meat at high temperatures to fuel the formation of nitrosamines, which are known carcinogens in animals. It’s a chemical reaction that can happen regardless of the source of the nitrites, including celery juice.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture caps the amount of artificial nitrites that can be added to meats to prevent excessive use, said Andrew Milkowski, a retired Oscar Mayer scientist who consults for the meat industry. Meat makers also add ingredients to processed meat like bacon that help block the formation of nitrosamines, he said.

Though the terms nitrates and nitrites are used interchangeably, the meat industry says it’s mainly sodium nitrite that companies currently use to cure meats such as hot dogs, cold cuts and bacon.

For Oscar Mayer hot dogs, the packages now list ingredients like celery juice that has been treated with bacterial culture. That turns the naturally occurring nitrates in celery juice into nitrites that serve a similar purpose.

While the nitrites derived from celery juice are no better, the switch may nevertheless help address negative consumer perceptions, said Milkowski, who also teaches at the University of Wisconsin’s department of animal sciences.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest agrees nitrites from natural sources aren’t that different from artificial nitrites in processed meats. But the group has cited the WHO report in calling for a cancer warning label on processed meats, regardless of how they’re made. It also says nitrite-preserved foods tend to be high in salt and should be limited or avoided anyway. The American Cancer Society also suggests limiting processed and red meat, citing a variety of reasons.

The meat industry has contested the WHO’s finding, saying it is based on studies that show a possible link but don’t prove a cause, and that single foods shouldn’t be blamed for cancer. Many health experts also say there’s no reason to worry about an occasional hot dog or bologna sandwich.

‘Right direction’

And while natural preservatives may not make hot dogs any healthier, they fit with the growing preference for ingredients like celery juice that people can easily recognize.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said Kristin Kirkpatrick, a dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic.

An interesting wrinkle worth noting is that federal regulations require processed meats without added nitrites or nitrates to be labeled as “uncured” and to state that they have no nitrates or nitrites added — except those naturally occurring in the alternative ingredient. That’s the language you’ll now find on Oscar Mayer hot dog packages, though the products previously only had added nitrites.

The meat industry has contested the required language of meat being “uncured,” because it says the products are still cured, albeit with nitrites derived from other ingredients.
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From: MeNeedIt

As technology has become part of our daily life, it’s increasingly been used to intimidate victims of domestic violence. In Australia, an organization is helping victims discover smart devices abusers might be using to invade their privacy and control them from afar. As Faiza Elmasry has the story. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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From: MeNeedIt