The U.S. was declared measles-free 15 years ago, thanks to the development of a reliable vaccine against that virus, but many American doctors now are worried that could change, because so many parents are opposed to having their children inoculated against disease. VOA’s Carol Pearson has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Leprosy, despite its horrible reputation, is a very curable disease. But there are still more than 200,000 cases reported every year, most of them in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and parts of Africa. To fully understand the disease, doctors and archaeologists are examining the skeletons of people who had the disease hundreds of years ago. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump on Thursday spoke favorably about a potentially export-boosting border adjustment tax being pushed by Republicans in the U.S. Congress, but did not specifically endorse it.

Trump, who has lashed out at U.S. companies who have moved operations to countries like Mexico, has previously sent mixed signals on the proposal at the heart of a Republican plan to overhaul the tax code for the first time in more than 30 years.

“It could lead to a lot more jobs in the United States,” Trump told Reuters in an interview, using his most positive language to date on the proposal.

Trump sent conflicting signals about his position on the border adjustment tax in separate media interviews in January, saying in one interview that it was “too complicated” and in another that it was still on the table.

“I certainly support a form of tax on the border,” he told Reuters on Thursday. “What is going to happen is companies are going to come back here, they’re going to build their factories and they’re going to create a lot of jobs and there’s no tax.”

The Mexican peso weakened slightly against the U.S. dollar immediately after Trump’s comments and was last trading at 19.68 per dollar. Earlier on Thursday, the Mexican currency hit its strongest level since Trump’s Nov. 8 election victory.

Trump also said his administration will tackle tax reform legislation after dealing with Obamacare, the health insurance system that has raised the ire of Republicans since it was put in place by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, in 2010.

Earlier on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven told CNBC the Trump administration aimed to formulate a tax plan with support from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate and pass it before August.

Business Divided

Trump spoke to Reuters after meeting with more than 20 chief executives of major U.S. companies to discuss ways to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, which was one of the linchpins of his presidential campaign.

A border adjustment has emerged as the most controversial segment of the House Republican tax reform blueprint.

The provision, which would exempt U.S. export revenues from federal taxes but impose an implicit 20 percent tax on imports, is vital to the House plan because it would raise more than $1 trillion in revenues to help pay for a corporate tax cut.

But it has divided American business.

Critics say it could fuel higher inflation, with retailers, oil refiners and automakers among those warning of higher prices for consumer goods if the measure passes.

But the proposal is music to the ears of many exporters, including U.S.-based multinational corporations, who have urged Congress to make it a part of comprehensive tax reform.

Advocates of the border adjustment tax say it would cause the already strong U.S. dollar to rise, neutralizing upward pressure on import prices.

Lawmakers and corporate lobbyists say the measure could die in Congress, potentially jeopardizing the prospects for tax reform, without Trump’s explicit endorsement.
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From: MeNeedIt

A small study in 16 people with severe anorexia has found that implanting stimulation electrodes into the brains of patients could ease their anxiety and help them gain weight.

Researchers found that in extreme cases of the eating disorder, the technique, known as deep brain stimulation (DBS), swiftly helped many of those studied reduce symptoms of either anxiety or depression, and improved their quality of life.

A few months later, the improved psychological symptoms began to lead to changes in weight, the researchers said, with the average body mass index (BMI) of the group increasing to 17.3, “a rise of 3.5 points” over the course of the study.

Anorexia is a serious eating disorder that affects about 0.5 percent of people worldwide, the majority of them teenage girls. Patients have persistent concerns about their weight, shape and size, and starve themselves to maintain a low weight.

Chronic anorexia can be fatal, and in many cases causes severe health problems including weak bones and muscles, sexual problems, infertility, heart problems and seizures.

The scientists who led this study, published Friday in The Lancet Psychiatry, said their results suggested deep brain stimulation — which involves implanting electrodes to stimulate brain areas that control dysfunctional behaviors — might alter the brain circuits that drive anorexia.

Success against tremors

DBS is already used to target brain circuits involved in Parkinson’s disease and tremors and has been shown to be very effective in reducing symptoms.

In this trial, 16 women aged between 21 and 57 who had had anorexia for an average of 18 years and were severely underweight — with an average body mass index of 13.8 — were selected. They were chosen because all other treatments had not worked and their lives were at risk from the disorder. A healthy range for BMI is 18.5 to 24.9.

Comparing brain scans from before and after the treatment, the researchers found there were changes in regions linked to anorexia, suggesting the DBS was able to directly affect the related brain circuits. This included less activity in the putamen, thalamus and cerebellum among other areas, the scientists said, and more activity in the peripheral cortical areas, which are also linked to social perception and behavior.

Andres Lozano, a professor at Canada’s University of Toronto who led the study, said that while the results showed some early promise, more research would be needed.

“Anorexia remains the psychiatric disorder with the highest mortality rate, and there is an urgent need to develop safe, effective, evidence-driven treatments that are informed by a growing understanding of brain circuitry,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

SpaceX made good on a 250-mile-high delivery at the International Space Station on Thursday, after fixing a navigation problem that held up the shipment a day.

Everything went smoothly the second time around as the station astronauts captured the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship as the two craft sailed over Australia. On Wednesday, a GPS system error prevented the capsule from coming too close.

The Dragon — loaded with 5,500 pounds of supplies — rocketed away Sunday from NASA’s historic moon pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now leased by SpaceX, the pad had been idle since the close of the shuttle program almost six years ago.

The station’s six-person crew will accept another shipment Friday, this one from the Russians.

Given the Dragon’s delayed arrival — liftoff also occurred a day late — the astronauts were under orders to open the capsule as soon as possible to retrieve sensitive science experiments.

“Sorry about the delays,” Mission Control radioed. “Now the real work starts.”

“Congratulations Dragon on a successful journey from Earth and now welcome on board,” said French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who used the station’s big robot arm to grab the capsule.

At the top of the crew’s unloading list: 40 mice that are part of a wound-healing experiment. Before the flight, researchers made small wounds in the animals’ femurs then applied a new type of bandaging. Scientists want to see how quickly the wounds heal in weightlessness.

Other newly arrived research: highly infectious MRSA bacteria, triple-contained so it doesn’t get loose up there; stem cells; and instruments for studying lightning and the Earth’s ozone layer.

Besides France’s Pesquet, the space station is home to two Americans and three Russians.
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From: MeNeedIt

Activists are urging Unilever, a major investor in Myanmar, to speak out against the country’s treatment of its Rohingya minority, which the U.N. has said may be called “crimes against humanity.”

More than 10,000 people have joined the Facebook group for the campaign, known by the #WeAreAllRohingyaNow, and hundreds have signed on. A letter sent this week to Unilever CEO Paul Polman asked the company to clarify its stance on the Rohingya.

“Silence in the face of genocide, whilst doing business, is simply not an option,” said Britain-based campaign organizer Jamila Hanan. “Multinational corporations must start to speak out. They must be obliged to use their power and influence to help bring about a more just society in the regions in which they operate.”

Unilever did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Citizenship rights

Rights groups accuse the Myanmar army of burning homes, mass killings and rape in their sweeping counterinsurgency campaign in Rakhine state, where most of the estimated 1 million Rohingya live.

The Muslim Rohingya have long faced systematic discrimination in Myanmar, a majority-Buddhist country. Most do not have citizenship and are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even when they’ve lived in Myanmar for generations. The #WeAreAllRohingyaNow group is seeking a restoration of citizenship rights denied to the Rohingya by a military government in 1982.

Hanan says the group chose to target Unilever because it has been responsive to activists in the past. 

Advocate for social responsibility

Unilever, with some $55 billion in revenue last year, is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies. Billions across the world buy Unilever-made Dove soap, Lipton tea, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

The company’s first factory in Myanmar opened in 2013. It now manufactures food and shampoo near Yangon.

Polman is a major advocate for corporate social responsibility and has won dozens of awards in eight years at Unilever’s helm. He recently signed an open letter to the U.N. citing concerns about Myanmar’s military offensives in Rakhine State, but not on behalf of Unilever, which has kept silent on the country’s politics.
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From: MeNeedIt

Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis planned to open this year’s State of the City speech by thanking Caterpillar Inc. for its longtime commitment to the central Illinois town, declaring “We wouldn’t be Peoria without Caterpillar.”

It’s been that way for decades in Peoria and in other company towns across the United States. A major employer provided generations of locals with jobs and gave the cities a central identity, while executives helped keep cultural institutions, Rotary clubs and higher-end housing markets healthy.

Now many of those midsize communities are looking for a new identity as more companies trade their longtime hometowns for major cities with easier access to global markets and to the lifestyle talented young workers want, with public transit, nightlife and trendy restaurants.

Caterpillar’s recent decision to move 300 top headquarters jobs to the Chicago area made Peoria the latest city with a vacuum to fill. In 2014, Decatur, Illinois, lost Archer Daniels Midland to Chicago after 40 years in the town. ConAgra Foods moved 1,000 jobs last year from Omaha to Chicago.

Jobs follow the people

Some companies also are leaving suburban areas for downtowns, though the suburbs are still a popular choice. General Electric is moving its executives from a suburban campus in Fairfield, Connecticut, to downtown Boston, and McDonald’s said last year it will relocate downtown Chicago from a sprawling headquarters in suburban Oak Brook.

A study by the virtual think tank CityObservatory.org found the number of jobs located within three miles of the city center grew by nearly 2 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Center city jobs grew slightly faster than those in the periphery in one recent seven-year period, a reversal from much of the past several decades.

“I don’t know that I’d call it a trend yet but it certainly is becoming one,” said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor and senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute. “Maybe for the first time in history, rather than having people follow where jobs are … we’re beginning to see jobs following people instead.”

By a 2-to-1 margin, young college graduates are now choosing a place to live first, then finding a job, said Joe Cortright, director of CityObservatory.org.

For companies recruiting top talent, “the biggest competitive advantage is to be in the city,” Cortright said.

Urban-rural divide grows

The change is adding to the divide between urban and smaller communities in the U.S., especially in the Midwest, which is beset with sagging manufacturing industries.

“We joke about that there’s the great state of Chicago, and then there’s the rest of Illinois,” said Bishop Harold Dawson Jr., a lifelong Peoria resident and pastor of New Life Christian Church.

Like many locals, Dawson can rattle off a list of relatives whose livelihoods in Peoria have depended on Caterpillar. The company, known as CAT for short, established its first plant in Peoria in 1909 and employs more than 12,000 workers in the area, even after several layoffs.

The city of about 110,000 has been trying to breathe more life into its downtown and a scenic stretch along the Illinois River. But while new restaurants, coffee shops and apartments are opening, Ardis acknowledged few people would call the area dynamic. And parts of the city’s core are seeing growing poverty.

The headquarters move has been a blow to the city’s collective morale.

“There is emotion around” the decision, said Jeff Griffin, president of the Peoria Area Chamber. “Peoria is not unique in that tragedy across the country.”

Shift to small businesses

Griffin said he and his counterpart in Omaha talked recently about the importance of diversifying the local economy, relying on small business rather than large corporations.

“Part of the big challenge is leadership needs to recognize the rules have changed,” Murphy said. “They need to think about how they build their cities and the amenities they offer, and be really clear about what their competitive advantages are today, not what they were 100 years ago.”

A city should perhaps think about spending on public transit rather than highways, he said.

Improving the atmosphere of downtown seems to be helping some midsize cities recoup from the loss of major businesses, urban experts say.

Finding a new identity

In Greenville, South Carolina, where the decline of the textile industry left a huge gap in the economy, leadership arranged to remove a four-lane bridge that obstructed the view of a scenic waterfall, and added trees and cafes and sidewalks. A downtown that was once “dead” is now “beautiful and hugely successful,” Murphy said. In addition to drawing tourists, the city has a booming advanced manufacturing industry, anchored by companies such as BMW.

But other places, such as Decatur, are struggling to find a new identity. The city has the second-highest unemployment rate in Illinois, and Moody’s Analytics warns the lack of jobs could push the city back into recession.

Across the Midwest and Northeast in particular, a number of midsize cities are facing “big challenges,” Cortright said.

“What do we do with the Peorias?” he added. “I don’t’ think we know what the answer to that is.”

Peoria has a growing health care industry and is home to other companies such as Maui Jim sunglasses and Bump Box, a monthly delivery of skincare and other products for pregnant women.

Ardis said the city just has to find more.

“We’re not just going to roll over and play dead,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Before Donald Trump won the November election, many analysts were sharply critical of his economic proposals. Some predicted big declines in financial markets, hiring slowdowns and a heightened risk of recession.

But just a little more than a month since Trump became the 45th U.S. president, U.S. stocks have enjoyed the longest winning streak in decades, hiring continues to beat expectations and consumer confidence is soaring.

Were naysayers wrong?

VOA spoke with an early critic of Trump’s economic plans, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, to ask him if the experts got it wrong.

Zandi’s answer was a crisp “No.”

 “If Mr. Trump got precisely what he wanted, the policy proposals that he had put forward, what would happen to economy? And the answer is, the economy would go into a deep recession.”

Zandi told VOA he stands by his initial assessment before Trump became president, saying that from a policy perspective, he has yet to deliver on his campaign promises.

“What he wanted was 11 million undocumented workers to leave the country. What he wanted was a 45 percent tariff on China, 35 percent on Mexico. What he wanted was tax cuts and government spending increases that would increase the budget deficit by $10 trillion over 10 years. So if that is what he got, that would lead to a recession. That hasn’t changed.”

Others see good signs

But others say the record run-up in stock prices reflects renewed investor optimism under Trump, much of it driven by expectations of corporate tax cuts and fewer regulations. PNC senior analyst Gus Faucher says it’s about higher profits in the short term.

“So they (investors) are expecting stronger U.S. economic growth under President Trump, both real growth — that is after inflation — but also perhaps higher inflation, and that’s going to boost profits as well,” he said. “And then also it looks like we’ll get corporate income tax cuts, so that means more profits to distribute to the shareholders so that’s good news for stock prices.”

Faucher says investors will be disappointed if Trump fails to introduce concrete proposals to boost growth, such as corporate income tax cuts or a major infrastructure jobs program, but he says, in general, the economic outlook is much better than it was just a few months ago.

Enthusiasm wanes

But enthusiasm surrounding Trump’s economic agenda may be waning.

Goldman Sachs says investor confidence may have reached its peak. And Kevin Kelly at Recon Capital Partners says markets may be close to reaching a tipping point.

“Now, it’s focusing on, OK, are we going to get deregulation or are we going to get taxes? Are things going to be weighing for a while? Is it going to be a second half of the year story? I think that’s what’s kind of seeping into the market right now.”

Some economists say Trump’s protectionist, anti-trade positions pose another risk to the larger global economy. 

Trump has turned his back on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he wants to renegotiate the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Critics of NAFTA say the North American trade deal destroyed millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States.

But Zandi of Moody’s says, “The United States is at the center of the global economy. It’s taken hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and brought them into the middle class. Think about Brazil, think about Eastern Europe, think about China and Asia. Consumers have also benefited enormously from cheaper goods. If we pull back on globalization, the world suffers and we will also suffer.”

Congress likely to back policies

Despite reports of disarray in the early days of the Trump administration, Zandi believes a Republican majority in both houses of Congress is likely to approve most of Trump’s policy proposals. 

But some economists wonder, given the Republican party’s brand of fiscal conservatism, if lawmakers approve Trumps proposed tax cuts, how is the administration going to pay for a major infrastructure jobs program, or new border agents, and of course, that giant border wall between the U.S. and Mexico?
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From: MeNeedIt

Before Donald Trump won the election, many analysts were sharply critical of his economic proposals. However, in Trump’s first month in office, U.S. stocks have hit a series of record highs and consumer confidence improved. Did analysts get it wrong? Economist Mark Zandi, an early critic of Trump’s economic plans, said it’s still too soon to tell. Mil Arcega reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

An international team of astronomers, using an array of ground and space telescopes, has discovered an astonishing seven Earth-sized planets in a system just 40 light years away.

Water, water everywhere

The seven planets, according to a press release, “all have masses less than or similar to the Earth.”

According to scientists, the temperatures on the planets “are low enough to make possible liquid water on the surfaces…” as the planets are in that perfect habitable or “goldilocks zone,”

Michaël Gillon, of the STAR Institute at the University of Liège in Belgium, is the study’s lead author. Gillon says he is delighted by the findings. “This is an amazing planetary system — not only because we have found so many planets, but because they are all surprisingly similar in size to the Earth!”

The new findings are outlined in today’s journal Nature.

Dwarf stars – who knew?

The planets were discovered orbiting around a small, ultracool (as in temperature) star called TRAPPIST-1.

It is similar to another dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, that’s just 4.2 light years away from Earth. It also made news last year when scientists discovered an Earth-like planet, dubbed Proxima b, in its orbit that is also in the goldilocks zone.

These Earth-like planets are no surprise to Alan Boss, an astrophysicist who spoke to VOA about Proxima b a few months ago. Back then he said there may be as many as “1.2 habitable Earths per star.”

Finding the planets was an international effort. Astronomers had already discovered three Earth-sized planets orbiting the star last year. Those were discovered by monitoring so-called ‘transits,’ when planets cross in front of the star, dimming their light.

So researchers decided to take a closer look and monitored  the star “for months with different telescopes in Chile, Morocco, Hawaii, La Palma and South Africa, and in September 2016, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope monitored TRAPPIST-1 for 20 days.”

Their work discovered four more planets, all of which “could potentially have liquid water on their surfaces.”

The researchers say all of the planets are about the same sizes as Earth or Venus, but any resemblance to our solar system ends there.

For one, everything is smaller on TRAPPIST-1, beginning with the star itself, which is only about 8 percent the size of our sun, making it just a bit larger than our largest planet, Jupiter. That puts all seven of these planets “in far closer orbits than we see in the solar system.”

And more information is on the way. The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched in 2018 and will be able to take an even closer look at the planets around TRAPPIST-1.

Brice-Olivier Demory, one of the authors and a professor at the University of Bern’s Center for Space and Habitability, says adding the Webb Telescope into the mix will allow us to move beyond looking for planets, and instead start looking for life. “The James Webb Space Telescope,” he says, “Hubble’s successor, will have the possibility to detect the signature of ozone if this molecule is present in the atmosphere of one of these planets…This could be an indicator for biological activity on the planet.”

He says that making definitive statements concerning life beyond Earth will never be simple, but like Boss told VOA last year,” I expect to still be alive when it happens.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. home resales surged to a nearly 10 year high in January.

Wednesday’s report from the National Association of Realtors says existing home sales jumped 3.3 percent to an annual rate of 5.69 million homes.

The report says sales are being hampered by the smaller-than-usual number of homes available for sale.  The real estate industry group also says sales were up 3.8 percent from the same period a year ago.  

Sales growth was stronger than many experts predicted, perhaps because they thought rising prices and interest rates might cool the market a bit.

Economists may get more insight in possible interest rate hikes later Wednesday when Federal Reserve officials publish notes from their most recent policy meeting.  

 
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From: MeNeedIt

There is some good news for cat lovers. Turns out those reports that people who grew up with cats have a higher risk of mental illness are not true.

Writing in the journal Psychological Medicine, researchers from University College London say a common parasite associated with cats, Toxoplasma Gondii, which is associated with mental health issues, does not cause mental issues in people who grew up around cats.

Lead author Dr. Francesca Solmi said, “The message for cat owners is clear: there is no evidence that cats pose a risk to children’s mental health.”

She said, “Previous studies reporting links between cat ownership and psychosis simply failed to adequately control for other possible explanations.”

Solmi said, “In our study, initial unadjusted analyses suggested a small link between cat ownership and psychotic symptoms at age 13, but this turned out to be due to other factors. Once we controlled for factors such as household overcrowding and socioeconomic status, the data showed that cats were not to blame.”

Researchers say their study of those who grew up around cats is “significantly more reliable” than studies that suggested a link between cat ownership and mental disorders because the subjects were monitored for nearly 20 years, rather than asking people with mental illness to remember details from their childhood, as was the case with studies suggesting a link.

Furthermore, they say those studies were relatively small with “gaps” in the data.

“Our study suggests that cat ownership during pregnancy or in early childhood does not pose a direct risk for later psychotic symptoms,” said senior author James Kirkbride. “However, there is good evidence that T. Gondii exposure during pregnancy can lead to serious birth defects and other health problems in children. As such, we recommend that pregnant women should continue to follow advice not to handle soiled cat litter in case it contains T. Gondii.”

For this study, researchers investigated 5,000 people born in 1991 or 1992 who were part of an 18-year ongoing health study. Data from the study showed whether cats were in the house when the mother was pregnant or had cats while the children were growing up.
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From: MeNeedIt