Tunisia took a step forward Friday in forming a new government following rollercoaster October elections, with the moderate Islamist Ennahda party proposing a prime minister from its own ranks to lead it.  Former junior agriculture minister, Habib Jemli, 60, will now have two months to form a government. If he fails to do so, newly elected President Kais Saied can tap another candidate.

Still, it remains uncertain whether any future government emerging from a politically fractured parliament — along with an untested president — can tackle the country’s massive economic and employment challenges.

With Tunisia considered the Arab Spring’s first and so far only relative success story, this latest twist in its bumpy post-revolutionary path is being closely watched abroad. Some analysts hail last month’s elections — where disaffected voters ousted establishment candidates in favor of political outsiders — as a messy but clear affirmation of democracy. Others fear the next government may prove just as disappointing as the last one.

“The real issue is the economy,” said analyst Hamadi Redissi, president of the Tunisian Observatory for Democratic Transition research organization. “Can it deliver what people are asking for — jobs and prosperity? That remains to be seen.”

Voters’ message

Since its 2011 revolution, the North African country has seen shrinking growth and soaring joblessness, the same toxic ingredients that triggered the uprising. Its key tourism sector is only recently rebounding following 2015 terrorist attacks. Tunisia has also earned the unwelcome record as one of the largest exporters of terrorist fighters.

Upcoming negotiations to form a new government will be a key test for Ennahda, a once-banned movement that emerged as a key part in Tunisia’s post-revolution power structure. While coming out ahead in last month’s legislative polls, it took a hit along with other establishment parties — capturing just 52 of the 217 parliamentary seats, down from its previous 69.

“We’ve heard the voters’ message,” said senior Ennahda member Abdelkarim Harouni. “We can’t fail in making the reforms Tunisians are waiting for.”

But Ennahda may have to strike an unlikely alliance with a former political nemesis to form a winning coalition, analysts say — notably media mogul Nabil Karoui’s Heart of Tunisia party, which placed second in October voting. Earlier this week, Heart of Tunisia backed Ennahda’s controversial leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, as speaker of parliament.

While claiming talks between the two parties to form a new government are not currently happening, “anything is possible,” Harouni said, noting both share similar poverty-fighting goals.

Ennahda will also need to strike a deal with other smaller parties or individuals to get the minimum 109 votes to pass legislation. At least two it has been negotiating with are adamantly against any alliance with Heart of Tunisia, analyst Redissi said.

“Ennahda and Heart of Tunisia are pragmatic,” he added. “They know Tunisia must be governed by balancing powers and managing institutions. They know the limits and the red lines.”

Still, a power-sharing deal between the two is politically risky, and supporters of both parties are reportedly unhappy about the prospects. With Karoui facing corruption allegations and a Heart of Tunisia lawmaker accused of sexual harassment, it may also undermine Ennahda’s clean government vows.

An untested president

The next government will also have to work with President Saied, a constitutional lawmaker with no political experience or party affiliation. While Tunisian presidential powers are limited to foreign and defense issues, Saied’s popularity gives him symbolic heft. His shoestring, door-to-door campaign energized voters, especially young Tunisians yearning for a return to the country’s revolutionary spirit.

Saied’s conservative social agenda, opposing gay rights and equal legal inheritance among men and women, may align with Ennahda’s. Not so his support for direct, rather than parliamentary democracy — views Ennahda’s Harouni described as little-tested “theories.”

Still the party’s biggest challenge may be itself. Ennahda will no longer be the minority member of a coalition government facing a country in crisis.

“It won’t be the government behind the scenes,” analyst Redissi said. “Young people need jobs and older people need a better life.  By picking a prime minister from its own ranks, it will have to assume responsibility.”

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From: MeNeedIt

United Airlines is removing the grounded Boeing 737 Max from its schedule until March 4, two months longer than previously planned.
                   
The change follows similar moves by American and Southwest, and reflects further delays in Boeing’s work to fix the plane after two deadly crashes.
                   
United said Friday that without the planes, it will cancel 56 flights a day in January, February and early March, down from 93 a day this month.
                   
United has 14 Max jets. All Max planes have been grounded since March, after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people.
                   
Boeing is fixing flight-control software and computers that played a role in the crashes. Boeing expects regulators to approve changes in pilot-training in January, clearing the way for U.S. airlines to resume Max flights with passengers.

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From: MeNeedIt

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is on the ballot in New Hampshire, where he hopes his patience will pay off.
                   
The Democratic presidential hopeful signed up for the first-in-the-nation presidential primary on Friday, the final day of the filing period. Though he lags behind in polls, Booker says he’s not one to switch strategies or states to focus on, as some other candidates have done.
                   
Booker’s latest trip to New Hampshire comes a day after former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick jumped into the race. Booker says it’s good to have robust competition, and that he doesn’t take it personally that some of his close friends are also running.

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From: MeNeedIt

Ten Democratic presidential candidates were expected to qualify for next Wednesday’s debate in Georgia, giving voters a smaller lineup on stage to consider even as the party’s overall field expands.

Those poised to meet the Democratic National Committee’s polling and grassroots fundraising thresholds were: former Vice President Joe Biden; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana; Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; California Sen. Kamala Harris; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; billionaire activist Tom Steyer of California; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; and entrepreneur Andrew Yang of New York.

DNC officials planned to finalize the lineup later Thursday after reviewing qualifying polls and grassroots donor lists submitted by the campaigns.

Former Obama administration housing chief Julian Castro is the most high-profile remaining candidate seen as falling short of the benchmarks. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas ended his campaign last month. Those two created headlines with their earlier debate performances, including some spirited exchanges with each other.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and author Marianne Williamson already have missed debates as the party chairman, Tom Perez, continues to raise qualification requirements.

This month, candidates were required to have reached 3% in at least four qualifying national polls since Sept. 13 or 5% in two early nominating state polls since that date, while also having collected contributions from at least 165,000 unique donors, with at least 600 each in a minimum of 20 states.

Some candidates have criticized Perez for the requirements. Some argue that the donor emphasis has forced them to spend disproportionately for online fundraising efforts that drain resources they could be using to reach voters other ways. Perez counters that candidates have had ample time to demonstrate their supporter, both in polls and through small-dollar contributors, and that any Democrat falling short this far into the campaign almost certainly isn’t positioned to win the nomination or defeat President Donald Trump.

Perez already has announced even stiffer requirements for a Dec. 19 debate. The polling marks: 4% in four national polls or 6% in two early state polls taken after Oct. 16. The donor threshold: 200,000 unique donors with at least 800 each from 20 states.

Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg — the four who top most national and early state polls — are not threatened by those goals. Harris and Klobuchar already have met them, as well. But the higher targets put pressure on several other candidates to broaden their support or risk falling out of any reasonable contention with less than three months to go before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses.

Two new candidates also could be vying for December spots.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick launched his campaign Thursday and filed to appear on New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary ballot, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering a bid as well, while already having filed paperwork for some Super Tuesday primaries.

Patrick has strong ties to Wall Street and deep-pocketed Democratic donors. Bloomberg is among the world’s wealthiest men. Both may be able to afford television advertising and other campaign operations relatively quickly. But, just as Perez has said throughout the process, debate slots intended not as rewards for the amount a campaign raises or spends, but as a recognition of how much support a candidate has attracted.

Next week’s debate will be broadcast on MSNBC from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

A band of GOP senators rebuffed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s effort to depict anti-Islamic State Kurd forces as terrorists in a contentious Oval Office meeting, as the White House allies took a far harder line against Erdogan than did President Donald Trump.
                   
Participants said Erdogan played a propaganda video for Republican senators attending Wednesday’s meeting, drawing a rebuke from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and others.
                   
Graham said Thursday that he asked Erdogan, “do you want me to get the Kurds to play a video about what your forces have done?”
                   
The lawmakers also told Erdogan that he is risking economic sanctions by going ahead with a new Russian anti-aircraft missile system.
                   
The exchange behind the scenes was far more confrontational than the reception Trump gave Erdogan in public.

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From: MeNeedIt

U.N. agencies say early next year, several countries will begin testing a nuclear technique that sterilizes male mosquitoes to control the spread of dengue, Zika and chikungunya to humans. Guidance for testing countries has been developed by the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization.

The World Health Organization says diseases transmitted by mosquitoes account for 17 percent of all infectious diseases globally. It says every year, more than 700,000 people die from diseases such as malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.  

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Health Officials: More Birth Defects in US Areas With Zika

The mosquito-born Zika virus may be responsible for an increase in birth defects in U.S. states and territories even in women who had no lab evidence of Zika exposure during pregnancy, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

Areas in which the mosquito-borne virus has been circulating, including Puerto Rico, southern Florida and part of south Texas, saw a 21 percent rise in birth defects strongly linked with Zika in the last half of 2016 compared with the first half of that year, the U.S.

The WHO says dengue has increased dramatically in recent years due to factors such as environmental changes, urban sprawl, and transportation and travel, putting half the world’s population at risk of catching the diseases.

Jeremy Bouver is a medical entomologist at the joint Food and Agriculture Organization and International Atomic Energy Agency. He says a novel technique that uses radiation to sterilize male mosquitoes offers new opportunities for controlling disease. He describes the Sterile Insect Technique as a form of insect birth control.

“You release sterile males that will out compete the wild males in the field and they will induce sterility in the females so that their eggs will not hatch,” Bouver said. “And, so, you will control the next generation. And, if you do that for a long time enough, you will be able to reduce and even, in some cases, eliminate the target population.”  

Why Mosquitos Bite Some But Not Others

British researchers may have unlocked the secret of why mosquitos find some people attractive, and leave others alone.  “What we found is that mosquitos have a keen sense of smell and when they find a smell they like, they attack,” says James Logan at the Centre for Sustainable Pest and Disease Management in Harpenden, England.Only a handful of the nearly 400 chemical excreted by the body attract the pests.

The technique was developed in the late 1950s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and has been successfully used to control insect pests from attacking crops and livestock, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly.

A pilot program that will start early next year will be the first time the Sterile Insect Technique will be tested targeting human diseases.  The countries where the trials will take place will be announced next year, although a few likely candidates reportedly include the United States, France and Brazil.

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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. government recorded a $134 billion budget deficit in October, the first month of the new fiscal year, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

That compared to a budget deficit of $100 billion in the same month last year, according to the Treasury’s monthly budget statement.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a $133 billion deficit for the month.

Unadjusted receipts last month totaled $246 billion, down 3% from October 2018, while unadjusted outlays were $380 billion, a rise of 8% from the same month a year earlier.

The U.S. government’s fiscal year ends in September each year. Fiscal 2019 saw a widening in the deficit to $984 billion, the largest budget deficit in seven years, a result of the Trump administration’s decision to cut taxes and increase government spending.

Those figures reflected the second full budget year under U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, and a time when the country had an expanding tax base with moderate economic growth and an unemployment rate near a 50-year low.

When adjusted for calendar effects, the deficit for October remained at $134 billion compared with an adjusted deficit of $113 billion in October 2018.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have a healthy 10-point lead ahead of an election on Dec. 12, a poll by Savanta ComRes showed on Wednesday, extending their advantage over Labour after the Brexit Party stood down candidates.

The poll, carried out for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, showed the Conservative Party with 40%, up 3 points from a poll last week, ahead of Labour on 30%, up 1 point.

The poll was conducted after Nigel Farage said his Brexit Party would not put candidates up in Conservative-held seats, a major boost to Johnson. The Brexit Party will still stand candidates in Labour-held seats.

“The Brexit Party’s decision not to stand in Conservativeseats is likely to have an obvious positive impact on the overall Conservative vote share,” said Chris Hopkins, Head of Politics at ComRes.

 “But it’s those Labour-held seats that the Conservatives need to win for a majority, and the Brexit Party could still scupper those best-laid plans.”

The poll showed the Liberal Democrats on 16% and the Brexit Party on 7%. Voting analysis website Electoral Calculus said the vote shares implied a Conservative majority of 110 seats. The online poll of 2,022 adults was carried out on Nov. 11-12.

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From: MeNeedIt

Microsoft is bringing holograms to the office. The company recently started shipping its 2nd version of HoloLens, a headset that allows users to touch and interact with 3D holograms in everyday settings. Various industries have begun experimenting with the new computing device and VOA’s Tina Trinh had a chance to check it out.

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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalized 833,000 people — an 11-year high in new oaths of citizenship — in fiscal 2019, which ended Sept. 30. This fiscal year, USCIS administered the Oath of Allegiance to 60 of America’s newest citizens, from 51 countries, during a special naturalizing ceremony Tuesday at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Saqib Ul Islam talked to some of the new citizens about how they feel and what they are looking forward to as a U.S. citizen.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is beefing up patrols by civilian militias across the nation as political rivals call for mass demonstrations against him.

Maduro in a national broadcast Tuesday ordered the nation’s 3.2 million militia members to patrol Venezuela’s streets. He gave the command seated between the nation’s top-ranking military leaders.

The heightened patrols overlap with a Saturday protest called by opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido, who has led a nearly year-long campaign to oust Maduro with backing from the U.S. and 50 other nations.

Guaido has not managed to rally large demonstrations in recent months.

However, a wave of political unrest has struck several Latin American nations, and Bolivian socialist leader Evo Morales abruptly resigned Sunday.

Maduro says the same “imperialist” forces that undermined Bolivia’s president seek to oust him.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

A Michigan teenager was the recipient of what could be the first double lung transplant on a person whose lungs were severely damaged from vaping, health officials said Tuesday.

Doctors at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit described to reporters Tuesday the procedure that saved the 17-year-old’s life and pleaded for the public to understand the dangers of vaping.

The teen was admitted in early September to a Detroit-area hospital with what appeared to be pneumonia. He was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit and taken Oct. 3 to Henry Ford Hospital where the transplant was performed Oct. 15. The double lung transplant is believed to be the first performed on a patient due to vaping.

Doctors found an “enormous amount of inflammation and scarring” on the teen’s lungs, said Dr. Hassan Nemeh, surgical director of thoracic organ transplant at Henry Ford. “This is an evil I haven’t faced before. The damage that these vapes do to people’s lungs is irreversible. Please think of that — and tell your children to think of that.”

Health officials declined to release the teen’s name and said he is expected to recover. They also did not specify what the teen vaped or how long he vaped.

“We asked Henry Ford doctors to share that the horrific life-threatening effects of vaping are very real!” his family said in a statement released by the hospital. “Our family could never have imagined being at the center of the largest adolescent public health crisis to face our country in decades.”

“Within a very short period of time, our lives have been forever changed. He has gone from the typical life of a perfectly healthy 16-year old athlete — attending high school, hanging out with friends, sailing and playing video games — to waking up intubated and with two new lungs, facing a long and painful recovery process as he struggles to regain his strength and mobility, which has been severely impacted.”

The boy had his 17th birthday after initially being admitted to the hospital.

More than 2,000 Americans who vape have gotten sick since March, many of them teenagers and young adults, and at least 40 people have died.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week announced a breakthrough into the cause of a vaping illness outbreak, identifying the chemical compound vitamin E acetate as a “very strong culprit” after finding it in fluid taken from the lungs of 29 patients. Vitamin E acetate previously was found in liquid from electronic cigarettes and other vaping devices used by many who got sick and only recently has been used as a vaping fluid thickener.

Many who got sick said they had vaped liquids that contain THC, the high-inducing part of marijuana, with many saying they received them from friends or bought them on the black market.

E-cigarettes and other vaping devices heat a liquid into an inhalable vapor. Most products contained nicotine, but THC vaping has been growing more common.

Henry Ford doctors did not say Tuesday what the lung transplant recipient vaped. They did say that he was critically ill when he arrived at Henry Ford where he was placed Oct. 8 on an organ transplant waiting list. His lung damage due to vaping was so severe and he was so close to death that the teen immediately was placed at the top of the transplant waiting list, they said.

“Vaping-related injuries are all too common these days. Our adolescents are faced with a crisis,” said Dr. Lisa Allenspach, pulmonologist and the medical director of Henry Ford’s Lung Transplant Program. “We are just beginning to see the enormous health consequence jeopardizing the youth in our country … these vaping products should not be used in any fashion.”

The 17-year-old’s case does not open any new ethical considerations about transplants for people how who irreparably damage their own lungs by vaping, Nemeh told The Associated Press.

“It won’t change what we do on a routine basis. We will still evaluate every patient as an individual patient,” he said. “We hope sharing this patient’s story prevents anyone else from experiencing a vaping injury that would require a transplant.”

Nemeh added that lung transplants have been considered for ex-smokers who have quit and demonstrated that they quit smoking, but transplants are not routinely done for people over the age of 70.
“Children do receive priority over an adult for a transplant from a pediatric donor,” he said. “The United Network for Organ Sharing creates the rules and then offers the organs to recipients who are a match. We don’t decide who gets an offer.”

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From: MeNeedIt