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British Airways has canceled almost all its flights for 48 hours, affecting as many as 195,000 travelers, due to a strike by pilots over pay.
The U.K.’s flagship carrier said in a statement Monday that it had “no way of predicting how many (pilots) would come to work or which aircraft they are qualified to fly.”
As a result, it said it had “no option but to cancel nearly 100%” of its flights for the duration of the strike.
British Airways operates up to 850 flights a day. London’s sprawling Heathrow Airport was most affected by the work stoppage as it is the airline’s hub and is used for many of the company’s long-haul international flights.
The sprawling departure area at Heathrow Terminal 5 was almost empty, with only a handful of BA flights set to leave on Monday.
There were no queues at any of the check-in desks or security gates and only a handful of people waiting on benches. The terminal is typically quite busy.
British Airways said it stands ready to return to talks with the pilots’ union, Balpa, and that it has offered all affected customers full refunds or the option to rebook. The airline had been preparing for weeks for the strike, giving travelers advanced notice.
“We understand the frustration and disruption Balpa’s strike action has caused our customers,” it said.
“After many months of trying to resolve the pay dispute, we are extremely sorry that it has come to this.”
British Airways says it has offered pilots an 11.5% pay raise over three years but the union says its members want a bigger share of the company’s profits.
The union accuses British Airways of making big profits at the expense of workers who made sacrifices during hard times. British Airways’ parent company, IAG, made a net profit of 2.9 billion euros ($3.2 billion) last year.
Union leader Brian Strutton said pilots are determined to be heard.
“They’ve previously taken big pay cuts to help the company through hard times. Now BA is making billions of pounds of profit, its pilots have made a fair, reasonable and affordable claim for pay and benefits.”
A divisive fight over the future of a crude-oil pipeline across Minnesota is pinning presidential candidates between environmentalists and trade unions in a 2020 battleground state, testing their campaign promises to ease away from fossil fuels.
Progressive candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have condemned a Canadian company’s plan to replace its old and deteriorating Line 3 pipeline, which carries Canadian crude across the forests and wetlands of northern Minnesota and into northern Wisconsin. They’ve sided with environmental and tribal groups that have been trying to stop the project for years, arguing that the oil should stay in the ground.
Others candidates — including home-state Sen. Amy Klobuchar and front-runner Joe Biden — have remained largely silent, mindful that such projects are viewed as job creators for some of the working-class voters they may need to win the state next year.
The fight illustrates a hard reality behind the Democratic candidates’ rhetoric on climate change. For months, Democrats vying for the White House have sounded strikingly progressive on the issue, endorsing ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions and putting forward sweeping proposals for investing in the green jobs of the future. But the debate often glosses over the harder, more immediate choices between union jobs and phasing out fossil fuels. Those fights often divide Democrats and may create an opening for President Donald Trump.
Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 project has generated opposition on two main grounds: that the oil it would carry would aggravate climate change and that it would risk spills in pristine areas of the Mississippi River headwaters where Native Americans harvest wild rice. Enbridge says replacing the 1960s-era pipeline, which is increasingly prone to corrosion and cracking, will be safer for the environment while allowing it restore the line’s original capacity and ensure reliable deliveries to refineries. Labor unions, once the bedrock of Democrats’ support in northern Minnesota, backed the plan on the promise it will create scores of new jobs.
Regulators in Canada, North Dakota and Wisconsin have given the necessary approvals, and some work on those segments already has been completed. In Minnesota, the Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge is still waiting for permits while court challenges play out.
While it waits, the pipeline has become a political weapon. Democrats and Republicans in Minnesota are in a tug of war over working-class, rural voters needed to win statewide. Trump won enough of those voters to come within just 1.52 percentage points — fewer than 45,000 votes — of beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has said repeatedly he intends to win Minnesota in 2020, something not done by a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1972.
While Trump hasn’t taken a specific stand on Line 3, he’s made it clear that he’s all for oil pipelines. Soon after taking office, he signed executive actions to advance the highly disputed Keystone XL and Dakota Access projects, vowing, “From now on we are going to start making pipelines in the United States.” He backed that up in April with more orders to assert presidential power over cross-border pipelines and to make it harder for states to block them over environmental concerns.
Some Democratic candidates have been eager to draw a contrast. Sanders, a Vermont senator, was the first to come out against Line 3. In January, he tweeted a video of himself listening to indigenous activists about the proposal and wrote: “The dangerous Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota would send a million barrels of tar sands oil — the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world — through the headwaters of the Mississippi River, tribal treaty lands and sacred wild rice beds. It must be stopped.”
Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, weighed in just ahead of a recent visit to Minnesota by tweeting: “The Line 3 pipeline would threaten Minnesota’s public waters, lands, and agricultural areas important to several Tribal Nations. I’m with @MN_350 and Minnesota organizers fighting to #StopLine3 and protect our environment.”
She was referring to MN350, a climate change group that’s part of the opposition. Its spokesman, Brent Benson, called on other candidates who’ve spoken out against climate change to oppose Line 3, too.
“It’s folly to be promoting fossil fuel infrastructure in the middle of a climate crisis,” Benson said. “Presidential candidates have an opportunity and a duty to point that out.”
Other Democrats have not taken clear positions on the project. The campaigns of Biden and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokesman for Sen. Kamala Harris of California didn’t address whether she has a position on Line 3, but pointed out that she opposed the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
Klobuchar has also avoided taking a position. She has said she wants to ensure a thorough environmental and scientific review to determine if the Line 3 project should move forward. Minnesota regulators signed off on the main environmental review last year, although an appeals court has ordered additional study on the potential impacts to the Lake Superior watershed. But she recently returned $5,600 in donations from an Enbridge project manager after a liberal watchdog group, the Public Accountability Initiative, revealed them.
In contrast to the divided Democrats, Minnesota Republicans have made it clear that they support Line 3, and that they see it as a winning strategy for 2020, coupled with other issues that split Democrats along ideological and geographic lines, such as copper-nickel mining to northeastern Minnesota.
Just before her visit to Minnesota, Warren also tweeted her opposition to a proposed Twin Metals mine near Ely. Like her position against Line 3, it drew an angry response from labor unions.
“Why would you want to be against something that will create so many jobs, and living (wage) jobs, within an area that desperately needs it?” Mike Syversrud, president of the Iron Range Building and Construction Trades Council, told the online news site MinnPost.
When Republican Jason Lewis launched his U.S. Senate campaign at the Minnesota State Fair, the former congressman said he would focus on greater Minnesota — the mostly rural part outside the Minneapolis-St. Paul area — to make up for Democratic strength in the cities. He highlighted the 8th Congressional District, which covers northeastern Minnesota and has swung from blue to red. Lewis said Trump’s campaign is “dead serious about Minnesota,” and that he expects them to follow the same strategy.
“Greater Minnesota is turning red, deep red. … I don’t know how a Democrat’s going to win the 8th District promising to give pink slips to every trade union member on the Iron Range, promising to stop Enbridge, to stop copper mining, to stop logging, to stop people from having jobs on the Iron Range,” Lewis said.
President Donald Trump’s rally in North Carolina will serve as a measure of his clout in trying to elect a Republican to the House in a closely watched special election that’s seen as a tossup race.
It will be his first campaign rally since a tough end of summer that saw slipping poll numbers, warning signs of an economic slowdown and a running battle over hurricane forecasts.
Trump will visit the state Monday night on the eve of the House election. He enjoys wide popularity within his own party, but a GOP defeat in a red-leaning state could, when combined with a wave of recent bad headlines, portend trouble for his reelection campaign.
The rally may also pose a different sort of test: It will be held just over a 100 miles from the site of a Trump rally in July where “send her back” chants aimed at a Somali-born American congresswoman rattled the Republican Party and seemed to presage an ugly reelection campaign.
Trump’s appearance Monday on behalf of Republican Dan Bishop is shaping up as a test of the president’s pull with voters. The special election could offer clues about the mindset of Republicans in the suburbs, whose flight from the party fueled the GOP’s 2018 House election losses.
The House district flows eastward from the prosperous Charlotte suburbs into rural areas hugging the South Carolina border. State officials invalidated last November’s election following allegations of voter fraud by a GOP operative.
The district has been held by the GOP since 1963. In 2016, Trump won the district by 11 percentage points. Should Bishop defeat Democrat Dan McCready, it could let Trump assert that he pulled Bishop over the top. If McCready prevails or Bishop wins by a whisker, it will suggest GOP erosion and raise questions about Trump’s and his party’s viability for 2020.
“This will tell us if Trump can carry candidates through suburban districts or not,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which represents moderate Republicans. If not, she said, the GOP must “work harder to address the concerns of suburban individuals, mainly women.”
While the stakes for the House are high, Trump’s trademark rallies inevitably become more about him than the local candidate, as he uses the stage to settle political scores, sharpen attacks and take on perceived foes. After a light rally schedule of late, the president will have plenty of new material to work with.
Chief among them are the White House’s worries about the impact an economic downturn could have on a president who has made a strong economy his central argument for a second term. Trump advisers worry that moderate Republican and independent voters who have been willing to give him a pass on some of his incendiary policies and rhetoric would blame him — and, in particular, his trade war with China — for slowing down the economy.
Trump has increasingly turned to culture-war issues to rev up his core supporters. He’s leveled harsh criticism at majority African American cities, like Baltimore, and delivered repeated broadsides against four liberal Democratic congresswomen of color.
Those attacks have been cheered by Trump’s advisers, who are bullish on running a campaign critical of Democrats they cast as socialist and unpatriotic. But they went too far for many Republicans, who recoiled when the crowd at a Trump rally in Greenville, North Carolina, in July erupted into a “send her back” chant about Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
In the hours before the rally, Trump is expected to visit coastal North Carolina to inspect the damage left by Hurricane Dorian. He spent considerable effort over the last week defending his erroneous claim that Alabama was likely to face significant impact from the storm .
McCready has not had any public events in the district with Democratic presidential hopefuls, appearances that might not help him in the moderate area as those candidates jostle to appeal to liberal voters. But former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., two rival candidates, have emailed fundraising solicitations on his behalf. Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence will also campaign in the district on Monday for the Republican.
Democrats captured 39 GOP-held House districts in the 2018 midterm elections, more than enough to give them majority control of the chamber. Much of that turnover occurred in suburbs, largely in Democratic strongholds like California and New Jersey but also in red-leaning communities near places like Dallas, Oklahoma City and Atlanta. GOP alarm bells have been ringing about the suburbs ever since.
Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor and congressman, joined the Republican race against President Donald Trump on Sunday, aiming to put his Appalachian trail travails behind him for good as he pursues an admittedly remote path to the presidency.
“I am here to tell you now that I am going to get in,” Sanford said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” ″This is the beginning of a long walk.”
When asked why he was taking on an incumbent who’s popular within the party, Sanford, who has acknowledged his slim chances by saying he doesn’t expect to become president, said: “I think we need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican. I think that as the Republican Party, we have lost our way.”
Sanford joins Joe Walsh, a former tea-party-backed, one-term congressman from Illinois, and Bill Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, as primary challengers to Trump.
“This vanity project is going absolutely nowhere,” said Drew McKissick, the South Carolina Republican Party chairman.
Sanford tweeted that he respects “the view of many Republican friends who have suggested that I not run, but I simply counter that competition makes us stronger.”
“Humbly I step forward,” he said.
The 59-year-old Sanford has long been an outspoken critic of Trump’s, frequently questioning his motivations and qualifications during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and calling Trump’s candidacy “a particularly tough pill to swallow.”
Ultimately, though, Sanford said he would support Trump in the 2016 general election, although he had “no stomach for his personal style and his penchant for regularly demeaning others,” continuing a drumbeat that the then-candidate release his tax returns.
As Sanford sought reelection to his post representing South Carolina’s 1st District in 2018, drawing a primary challenger who embraced Trump, the president took interest in the race. State Rep. Katie Arrington repeatedly aired ads featuring Sanford’s on-air critiques of Trump and attached the “Never Trump” moniker to Sanford, a condemnation in a state that Trump carried by double digits in 2016.
Although unlikely to have had a significant impact on the results, Trump endorsed Arrington just hours before the polls closed, tweeting that Sanford “has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign” and that “He is better off in Argentina” — a reference to Sanford’s secret 2009 rendezvous to South America for an extramarital affair while his in-the-dark gubernatorial staff told reporters he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Asked Sunday if that incident could be a distraction to his campaign, Sanford said that the aftermath had forced him to attain a new “level of empathy.”
“I profoundly apologize for that,” he added, noting that South Carolina voters subsequently forgave him politically and sent him back to Congress.
Todd Phillips’ dark comic book film “Joker” won the Golden Lion Award at the 76th Venice International Film Festival on Saturday and cemented its place as a legitimate contender for the rest of the awards season.
Jury president Lucretia Martel announced the winners of the prestigious award during a ceremony on the Lido. The Golden Lion previously put a spotlight on films that went on to be major awards season players, such as “Roma” and the film academy’s 2018 best picture winner, “The Shape of Water.”
“I want to thank Warner Bros. and DC for stepping out of their comfort zone and taking such a bold swing on me and this movie,” Phillips said with star Joaquin Phoenix by his side on stage.
Phoenix did not win the best actor prize — it went to Italian actor Luca Marinelli for the Jack London adaptation “Martin Eden” — but the director of “Joker” dedicated much of his speech to the talents of his leading man.
In the film, he transforms from struggling stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck into Batman’s classic nemesis.
“Thank you for trusting me with your insane talents,” Phillips said to Phoenix.
Actress Emmanuelle Seigner holds the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for the film ‘An Officer and a Spy’ on behalf of her husband Roman Polanski at the closing ceremony of the 76th edition of the Venice Film Festival, Venice, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 7,…
Grand jury prize
Roman Polanski’s Dreyfus affair film, “An Officer and a Spy,” won the grand jury prize, which recognizes other strong contenders for the Golden Lion.
Polanski, who fled the U.S. after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl and has been a fugitive for over 40 years, was not at the ceremony to accept the award.
The inclusion of “An Officer and a Spy” among the 21 films competing for the Golden Lion was widely criticized, although it was welcomed warmly by Venice Film Festival audiences. Jury president Martel issued a statement saying that while she does not “separate the art from the artist,” she bore no prejudice toward Polanski’s film.
Roy Andersson won best director for “About Endlessness,” although hip complications prevented him from accepting the award in person.
Actress Ariane Ascaride took the best actress prize for the French domestic drama “Gloria Mundi.” Olivia Colman won best actress in Venice last year for “The Favorite,” and went on to win the best actress Oscar.
Director and writer Yonfan, holds the award for Best Screenplay for the film ‘No. 7 Cherry Lane at the closing ceremony of the 76th edition of the Venice Film Festival, Venice, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Best screenplay went to Yonfan for the animated film “No. 7 Cherry Lane,” about Hong Kong in 1967. He thanked Hong Kong for giving him the freedom to create.
Toby Wallace won best new talent award for his work in Shannon Murphy’s “Babyteeth.”
“We can’t believe we’re here in general, so anything extra is super nice,” Wallace said.
He thanked co-stars Eliza Scanlen and Ben Mendelsohn, as well as Murphy, his director. She was one of only two female directors in the main competition.
“(Murphy) led us into this project with so much honesty,” Wallace said.
Adapted from Rita Kalnejais’ comedic stage play, “Babyteeth” is about an ill teenage girl who falls in love with a small-time drug dealer.
The jury that chose the winner of the Golden Lion and other top awards was headed by Martel, an Argentine director, and included director Mary Harron, actress Stacy Martin, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and Toronto International Film Festival executive director Piers Handling.
Notable also-rans
Notable films in the main competition leaving the Lido empty-handed include the Brad Pitt space epic “Ad Astra,” Steven Soderbergh’s Meryl Streep-led Panama Papers comedy “The Laundromat” and Noah Baumbach’s divorce drama “Marriage Story,” with Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver.
The Venice Film Festival also handed out prizes to a diverse array of films in other sections, like Venice Classics, Virtual Reality and Horizons.
Venice Classics
In Venice Classics, best documentary went to “Babenco: Tell Me When I Die,” about the late Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco, who was known for his socially conscious works. Director Barbara Paz said the prize was very important to her country.
“We must say ‘no’ to censorship,” Paz said. “Long (live) freedom of expression, long (live) Brazil cinema.”
“You Will Die at Twenty,” from Sudanese director Amjad Aby Alala, was awarded the Luigi de Laurentiis award for a debut film.
“I’m really feeling honored and happy,” Alala said. “I’m from a country that has no cinema because we are under regime that didn’t want to support cinema.”
Virtual Reality
“Daughters of Chibok,” about Boko Harem’s abduction of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria, won best VR story.
Nigerian director Joel Kachi Benson said he wanted to, “Take the world to Chibok and show them these women who for five years have been living in pain because their daughters are still missing.”
Horizons
In the Horizons sections, director Saim Sadiq accepted the award for best short film for “Darling,” about the transgender community in Pakistan.
The Horizons special jury prize went to “Verdict,” about domestic abuse in the Philippines, from director Raymund Ribay Gutierrez.
“The struggle for battered women continues, and I hope the film can reach people that can make a difference,” Gutierrez said.
Finally, the Horizons best film award went to the Ukrainian film “Atlantis,” directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych, about a near-future dystopia in eastern Ukraine and a former soldier suffering from PTSD.
Sudan’s first Cabinet since the ouster of president Omar al-Bashir was sworn in Sunday as the African country transitions to a civilian rule following nationwide protests that overthrew the autocrat.
The 18-member Cabinet led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, which includes four women, took oath at the presidential palace in Khartoum, an AFP correspondent reported.
It is expected to steer the daily affairs of the country during a transition period of 39 months.
The line-up was formed after Sudan last month swore in a “sovereign council” — a joint civilian-military ruling body that aims to oversee the transition.
The 18 ministers were seen greeting members of the sovereign council, including its chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in images broadcast by state television from the palace.
“We have to put in a lot of efforts to meet our people’s demands,” Information Minister Faisal Mohamed Saleh told reporters after the swearing in ceremony.
“The world is watching us. It is waiting to see how we can solve our issues.”
The sovereign council itself is the result of a power-sharing deal between the protesters and generals who had seized power after the army ousted Bashir in April.
Hamdok’s Cabinet, which has the country’s first female foreign affairs minister, is expected to lead Sudan through formidable challenges that also include ending internal conflicts in three regions.
Rebel groups from marginalized regions of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan states had waged long wars against Bashir’s forces.
“The road ahead is not easy. We will face many challenges but we have to work on them,” said Walaa Issam, Minister for youth and sports.
‘200-day program’
Sudan’s power-sharing deal aims to forge peace with armed groups.
Hamdok’s Cabinet will also be expected to fight corruption and dismantle the long-entrenched Islamist deep state created under Bashir.
Bashir had seized power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989 and ruled Sudan with an iron fist for three decades until his ouster.
It was a worsening economic crisis that triggered the fall of Bashir, who is now on trial on charges of illegal acquisition and use of foreign funds.
The key challenge facing the new government is reviving the ailing economy.
“We have a 200-day program for reviving the economy in a way that could help reduce the cost of living for our people in the near term,” said Finance Minister Ibrahim Ahmad Al-Badawi.
“We also have a long term plan to restructure the overall economy,” he said, adding that the country was soon expecting new donations to help tackle some immediate challenges.
According to doctors linked to the umbrella protest movement that led to Bashir’s fall, more than 250 people have been killed in protest-related violence since December.
Of that at least 127 were killed in early June during a brutal crackdown on a weeks-long protest sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum. Officials have given a lower death toll.
Taking another page out of President Donald Trump’s playbook, Israel’s prime minister is trying to pass a law requiring video cameras at Israeli polling stations ahead of next week’s vote — an effort that’s drawing charges of racism and incitement.
The 11th hour move, allegedly meant to prevent fraud in Arab voting stations, could have a tough time passing parliament on such short notice.
It’s nonetheless become an effective campaign tool for embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to galvanize his supporters. During April’s vote, Netanyahu’s Likud party deployed activists with cameras at polls in Arab communities.
Critics accuse him of diverting attention from a flawed campaign, undermining the country’s democratic institutions and potentially setting the stage for a Trump-like rejection of the results if he loses.
Bianca Andreescu displayed the same brand of big-serving, big-hitting, in-your-face tennis that Serena Williams usually does.
And now the 19-year-old from Canada is a Grand Slam champion, earning her first such title while preventing Williams from collecting a record-tying 24th.
Andreescu took charge early in the U.S. Open final, going up by a set and two breaks, then held off a late charge by Williams to win 6-3, 7-5 for the championship Saturday night.
“Being able to play on this stage against Serena, a true legend in this sport, is amazing,” said Andreescu, who was appearing in her first major final, while Williams was in her 33rd. “Oh, man, it wasn’t easy at all.”
This is the second year in a row that Williams has lost in the final at Flushing Meadows. This one had none of the controversy of 2018, when she got into an extended argument with the chair umpire while being beaten by Naomi Osaka.
Still trails Court
Williams has now been the runner-up at four of the seven majors she has entered since returning to the tour after having a baby two years ago. The 37-year-old American remains stuck on 23 Grand Slam singles titles, one shy of Margaret Court’s mark for the most in history.
“I’m just so proud that I’m out here and competing at this level. My team has been so supportive through all the ups and downs and downs and downs and downs,” Williams said. “Hopefully, we’ll have some ups soon.”
Andreescu, the first player from Canada to win a major singles title, went up 5-1 in the second set and served for the victory there, even holding a match point at 40-30. But Williams erased that with a forehand return winner off a 105-mph serve.
That launched a four-game run for Williams, who broke Andreescu again to make it 5-all.
“I was just fighting at that point,” said Williams, a six-time U.S. Open champion. “Just trying to stay out there a little bit longer.”
The Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd was overwhelmingly supporting Williams, not surprisingly, and spectators got so loud as she tried to put together a successful comeback that Andreescu covered her ears with her hands after one point.
“I just tried to block everything out,” Andreescu said afterward. “I’m just glad with how I managed, really.”
Suddenly, this was a contest.
Or so it seemed.
Not Williams’ best
But as well as Andreescu handled everything — herself, her far-more-experienced and successful opponent, and even the moment — Williams was far from her best, especially while serving. She got broken for the sixth time in the final game.
This was the largest age gap in a Grand Slam final, and it came almost exactly 20 years to the day since Williams won the U.S. Open for her first major title in 1999, a year before Andreescu was born.
Andreescu is the first woman to win the trophy at Flushing Meadows in her main-draw tournament debut in the Open era, which started in 1968 when professionals were allowed into Grand Slam tournaments. She has participated in only four majors in her brief career.
Former top officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are assailing the agency for undermining its weather forecasters as it defends President Donald Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian had threatened Alabama.
They say NOAA’s action risks the credibility of the nation’s weather and science agency and may even risk lives.
The critics served both Republican and Democratic presidents. Among them are four former top NOAA officials and a former disaster response chief.
On Friday, a NOAA statement from an anonymous spokesperson lent support to Trump’s warning days earlier that Alabama faced danger from Dorian. Alabama had never been included in official hurricane advisories and his information was outdated.
The statement undermined a National Weather Service tweet from Sunday that had said Alabama would see no impact from Dorian.
People around the world are living longer according to the World Health Organization. By 2020 there will be more people who are 60 or older than children younger than 5. Many adult children are painfully seeing their parents experience cognitive decline and symptoms of dementia. What if virtual reality, or VR, can help prevent or delay the onset of cognitive decline? VOA’s Elizabeth Lee visits one VR lab at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles with the details.
A senior Iranian nuclear official said Saturday that the clock was ticking for other parties to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal and that it had the capacity to raise its uranium enrichment beyond 20%, although it had no plans to do so for the time being.
“We have started lifting limitations on our Research and Development imposed by the deal … it will include development of more rapid and advanced centrifuges … all these steps are reversible if the other side fulfills its promises,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s nuclear agency, said in a televised news conference.
“The U.N. nuclear watchdog has been informed about our new nuclear steps and it still has access to our nuclear sites.”
Anyone who has tried booking interesting and affordable accommodations in New York City knows how difficult it is. Renting a room for less than $30 a night sounds impossible. But it’s true, even if the accommodations are a bit… unconventional. Elena Wolf has the story narrated by Anna Rice.
