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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1982 law cited

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

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

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

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

Attorney: Logic hard to accept

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

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

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

Equal Pay Act of 1963

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AP-WF-04-27-17 0724GMT

 
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From: MeNeedIt

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

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

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

No women on board

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

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

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

Changes on shore

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

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

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

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

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

An international look

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hooking new opportunities

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

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

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

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

Anti-vaccine activists endured a cold, rainy day in Washington one recent Friday, to rally against childhood vaccines.

Gabriele Cashman drove for five hours to support the anti-vaccine cause. She and her husband don’t want anyone to force anything on their children when they have them. 

“As parents, it’s our decision whether or not we want to vaccinate,” she said.

Watch: Top Doctors Address Vaccine Safety

The anti-vaccine movement has gained so much momentum that doctors like Peter Hotez are alarmed. Hotez works on vaccines at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. 

“We now, in the state of Texas, have 50,000 kids whose parents are opting them out of getting vaccinated,” he said.

Hotez said these children generally live in communities near each other. He is concerned that only an outbreak of measles will convince these parents that vaccines save lives and prevent disability.

The activists don’t believe the science. Instead, they believe vaccines can cause anything from autism to severe allergies.

But Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health says while children can have an adverse reaction, it’s so rare, that it’s unmeasurable. Fauci heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and oversees the development of vaccines.

Side effects that children may have are usually minor, according to Dr. Linda Fu, a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. 

“The most common side effects to any of these vaccines are pain at the injection site and fever for 24 to 48 hours,” Fu said.

Still, anti-vaccine activists, like Irine Pi, who helped organize the protest in Washington, are convinced harmful ingredients are added to vaccines. The preservative thimerosal was removed from vaccines in the U.S. by 2003, to help alleviate parents’ concerns that it caused autism. Numerous studies in the U.S. and elsewhere show it has no negative effect on children. But Pi is adamant that harmful ingredients are in vaccines routinely given to children.

“Now it’s aluminum that has been added. Add to that formaldehyde, polysorbate, and add to that significant human aborted fetal cell lines, bovine cells, pigs, sheep, monkey, dog. These cells are not meant to be injected into the human body,” Pi said.

Again, the science says otherwise. Fu has a specialty in immunizations. She told VOA, “The vaccines that the children are getting today are more pure and are very safe and effective.”

They are so effective that Dr. Flavia Bustreo at the World Health Organization says young people have no memory of the diseases they prevent.

“Currently, if you speak with any young mother or young father in Italy, where I come from, they don’t know diphtheria. They’ve never seen it. They don’t know that you can lose your child from diphtheria,” she said.

The World Health Organization has an online site to help parents find reliable information on vaccine safety. The CDC does the same.

Hotez wants the U.S. government to launch a campaign to persuade parents to vaccinate their children, but Fauci disagrees.

“I think that there will be a certain number of people, a certain percentage of people, who no matter what you say to convince them with evidence, they’re not going to be convinced, but I think the approach towards people who are anti-vaccinating is to respect their opinion and don’t denigrate them and don’t criticize them, but try to explain to them on the basis of solid evidence why the risk/benefit of vaccines clearly, clearly favors very, very heavily towards vaccinating your children,” Fauci said.

Hotez is now writing books for parents about vaccines. He says scientists have to get away from their laboratories and talk to people about vaccines.

Otherwise, he says, children will suffer and die from diseases that can be prevented.
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From: MeNeedIt

Rain didn’t stop dozens of activists from gathering in Washington on a recent Friday to rally against childhood vaccines. They want President Trump to establish a committee to look into vaccine safety. VOA’s Carol Pearson spoke to the activists and to some of the world’s top doctors about vaccine safety.
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From: MeNeedIt

Scientists at the University of Cape Town in South Africa say they have tested a new experimental drug they believe could not only treat but also eradicate malaria, a deadly disease that strikes 200 million people each year. The compound has worked successfully in mice and monkeys. If it proves successful in humans, it could become a significant breakthrough in the treatment of the deadly disease. Zlatica Hoke has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

A new study says a low-cost and widely available drug could save the lives of one in three mothers who would otherwise bleed to death after childbirth. The global trial of more than 20,000 women also found the drug reduced the need for urgent surgery to control bleeding, such as a hysterectomy, by more than one-third. VOA’s Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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From: MeNeedIt