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How Politics, Current Events Can Influence The Oscars

The 89th Academy Awards are upon us and, as every year, fans, critics and Hollywood insiders are divided over which nominees should go home with the coveted award. Although the idea is that films are judged on their artistic merit, there are also political considerations that can determine the winner. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.

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Science & Health
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Psychiatrist: Mass Killers Have Much in Common

Every two or three months there seems to be a mass killing somewhere. If it seems that these incidents are now more frequent, it’s because they are.

A mass shooting, where at least three or four people are killed, happens about every 64 days in the U.S.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and several prominent U.S. universities are collecting data on these crimes, including Harvard and Stanford, as are a number of forensic psychologists, such as J. Reid Meloy, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, and a faculty member of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center.

In a Skype interview with VOA, Meloy said things are evolving rapidly in the area of mass murder, regardless of weapon, and many of the cases involve lone actors.

Watch: Mass Killers Have Much In Common

That’s true in the mass killing January 31 in Quebec, when a 27-year-old man killed five worshipers at a mosque. It was also the case in Nice last Bastille Day (July 14) when a man driving a truck slammed into a crowd killing dozens of people, including children. In Orlando, Florida, last year, it was a lone gunman who opened fire at a nightclub killing 49 people. And the list goes on.

Studies by the FBI, the Harvard School of Public Health, Stanford University and others show mass killings have tripled in the past few years. In the U.S., semi-automatic rifles are the preferred weapons.

Common traits

Meloy told VOA that “these individuals typically have more in common than they do in terms of differences.” He said mass killers often have a history of psychiatric problems. They have rocky intimate relationships. And the killings are a quest for status.

In the Orlando nightclub shooting, Meloy said, the killer “attempted to burnish his reputation and perhaps inflate his notoriety by pledging allegiance during the mass murder itself, to two ideologically opposed groups. … He pledged allegiance to a Sunni group as well as to Hezbollah, which is Shia. And they, of course, have been at war for 1,300 years.”

Meloy said even if the killers claim to act on behalf of a particular cause, that’s not necessarily the reason for their actions.

“For individuals who carry out mass murders, oftentimes the pathway to violence begins with a personal grievance. It typically has three components to it. One is there’s some kind of loss; secondly, there’s the feeling of humiliation; then thirdly, there’s anger toward and blaming of a person or a group of people who have caused them to have this problem.”

Personal grievance

Meloy said terrorists will often cloak their personal grievances in an ideology and will then be morally outraged by the group that they identify with.

For example, Meloy pointed out that when a U.S. Army psychiatrist opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, the shooter closely identified with the Taliban and adopted the ideology of an Islamic radical. Meloy said the shooter’s personal grievance was the fact that he did not want to be deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Meloy said the increased use of social media is another important factor because it enables the killer to gain a level of notoriety instantaneously worldwide.

Social media also causes copycat atrocities. Meloy explained that some people become excited by seeing violence, especially if they can see it live. And that, he said, is a bad omen, because not only are people who experience violence more likely to commit it, access to social media is likely to increase the number of mass killings throughout the world.

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Economy & business
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Malawian Vintner Finding Success that Boosts Community

In southern Africa, business is booming for a popular Malawian winery, which makes Linga fruit wine. Linga is made from guava, plums and even some local flowers. The winery’s owner has been expanding into international markets while giving back to his community. For VOA, Lameck Masina has the story from Lilongwe.

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Science & Health
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Trump Administration Delays Listing Bumblebee as Endangered

The Trump administration on Thursday delayed what would be the first endangered designation for a bee species in the continental U.S., one day before it was to take effect.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service adopted a rule Jan. 11 extending federal protection to the rusty patched bumblebee, one of many types of bees that play a vital role in pollinating crops and wild plants. It once was common across the East Coast and much of the Midwest but its numbers have plummeted since the late 1990s.

Federal law requires a 30-day waiting period before most new regulations become effective. The addition of the bumblebee to the endangered species list was scheduled for Friday. The listing would require the service to develop a plan for helping the bee recover and provide more habitat.

But in a Federal Register notice, the service announced a postponement until March 21 in keeping with a Trump administration order issued Jan. 20. It imposed a 60-day freeze on regulations that had been published in the register but hadn’t taken effect. The delay, according to the White House, was for the purpose of “reviewing questions of fact, law and policy they raise.”

With President Donald Trump pledging to cut back on federal regulations, environmentalists said they feared the bumblebee protection might be doomed.

“The Trump administration has put the rusty patched bumblebee back on the path to extinction,” said Rebecca Riley, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This bee is one of the most critically endangered species in the country and we can save it – but not if the White House stands in the way.”

The U.S. Department of Interior, which includes the Fish and Wildlife Service, “is working to review this regulation as expeditiously as possible and expects to issue further guidance on the effective date of the listing shortly,” spokeswoman Heather Swift told The Associated Press in an email.

She did not say whether a decision had been made about whether the listing would go forward.

No other pending endangered-species listings are affected by Trump’s freeze, Swift said. 

 

The rusty patched bumblebee has disappeared from about 90 percent of its range in the past 20 years. Scientists say disease, pesticide exposure, habitat loss and climate change are among possible causes. It’s among a number of bee species that have suffered steep population declines – along with monarch butterflies, another key pollinator.

The American Farm Bureau Federation opposed listing the bumblebee as endangered, saying it could lead to costly limits on land or chemical use and that private partnerships could more effectively preserve bee habitat.

“We’re excited that the administration is taking a second look,” said Ryan Yates, the group’s director of congressional relations.

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Economy & business
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World Bank: Land Rights Key to Fixing Africa’s Crowded, Costly Cities

Africa needs to reform its systems for buying and selling land and invest aggressively in urban infrastructure to create jobs, end poverty and reduce cities’ high living costs, the World Bank said Thursday.

Africa’s urban population will double over the next 25 years, reaching 1 billion people by 2040, it said.

But complicated procedures for land transactions, a lack of urban planning and under-investment in infrastructure connecting homes, jobs and shops are hampering development, the bank said.

“How can we best prepare for the unprecedented wave of people moving to towns and cities to pursue their hopes and dreams?” asked the World Bank’s vice president for Africa, Makhtar Diop, via videoconference. “African cities, in order to be drivers for economic growth, in order to be the platforms for poverty elimination, they really need to be connected and open to the world.”

Network of trains, buses needed

The bank called on governments to make transport connections in rapidly growing cities a priority, saying the lack of a reliable network of buses and trains had a negative impact on the economy.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, seven out of 10 people either spend an hour walking to work or on a minibus, which means they can only reach about 20 percent of the city’s potential jobs, the bank said in a report.

“Nairobi — a metropolis of 3 million people — in reality functions as a set of villages with very local markets because people cannot move efficiently across the city,” said Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, the bank’s director for Social, Urban, Rural, Resilience Global Practice.

Vicious cycle

African cities are almost 30 percent more expensive than other countries at similar income levels, the bank said.

Housing is 55 percent more costly, and food prices are 35 percent higher than in other low- and middle-income countries.

This creates a vicious cycle, driving up wages, reducing business profits and deterring investment.

“It’s by reducing the cost of living in African cities that we will be able to create the type of jobs that are needed for Africans to escape poverty,” Diop said.

Land prices in some African cities are as high as in the United States because there is a shortage of land that can be easily and safely traded, the report said.

“There is enough physical land; there is not enough tradable land with clear property rights,” said Ijjasz-Vasquez. “Therefore the prices have gone absolutely crazy.”

Corruption, inefficiency major problems

Corruption and inefficiency are major problems in many African land ministries. Investors risk being given fake title deeds, or finding their plot has multiple titles, experts say, with swathes of land being traded informally because they have not been demarcated.

Urban plans, that lay out zones for houses, streets and public spaces, must be respected, Ijjasz-Vasquez said.

“The efficiency of Manhattan today was due to a very simple urban plan, on one sheet of paper, that was agreed and enforced by everybody,” he said. “They were able to grow a city in an organized way that allowed it to be efficient for the next two centuries.”

Lack of decent housing an issue

Money also needs to be poured into decent housing, with up to two-thirds of residents in cities like Lagos living in slums where more than three people share a room, the bank said.

Ijjasz-Vasquez praised Senegal for introducing a law enabling people with temporary occupancy permits in urban areas to convert them into permanent title deeds at no cost.

“They can start investing in housing because their properties are more secure,” he said.

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Arts & Entertainment
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North Korea Silent About Olympic Participation as South Counts Down

South Korea has begun its one-year countdown to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and North Korea remains silent about whether it will take part in the games.

The head of the Winter Games organizing committee, Lee Hee-beom, said ahead of a celebrity packed countdown ceremony in Pyeongchang this week that anyone who loves peace can participate, even North Korea. 

Lee added he doesn’t believe tensions are increasing right now on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, however, began 2017 by boasting about his ballistic missile program after a series of missile and nuclear tests the previous year.

South Korea recently reaffirmed a plan to put a U.S. missile battery on the peninsula to counter, as Seoul’s defense ministry stated, the growing North Korean nuclear threat.

 

Teasing an appearance

The Pyeongchang games will mark 30 years since South Korea hosted its first Olympics, the 1988 summer games in Seoul.

North Korea boycotted the event but has warmed in recent years to participating in international competitions in South Korea.

Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies U.S. Korea Institute, said there is no question North Korea will compete in Pyeongchang.

“North Korea will certainly stoke a kind of a teasing about whether they’re going to send somebody to the dreaded South for the games. But they’re going to definitely field teams to the Winter Games,” he said.

Madden noted the North took a similar approach ahead of the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, before sending its athletes. 

Divided province

All of the Winter Olympic venues are located within Gangwon Province, which remains divided along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that was established at the end of the Korean War.

Compared to many places in South Korea, Madden said, the citizens in the southern half of Gangwon Province typically, “support a more dovish policy from the South Korean government toward the North.”

Since South Korea won its bid in 2011 to host the winter games, North Korea has hinted at jointly hosting sporting events for the 2018 games. Pyeongchang’s organizing committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have shut down the idea, citing the IOC charter.

Gangwon Province Governor Choi Moon-soon supported the idea, but has since withdrawn his interest. Outside the Gangneung Ice Hockey Center, where Team Korea will compete in Olympic hockey for the first time, Choi told VOA the people of Gangwon are still deeply wounded by the split of their province.

“They hope for unification, and not just for the separated families, but for the development of Gangwon Province,” said Choi.

Choi added he expects North Korea to participate in the winter games, and a scheduled North-South women’s hockey match in Gangneung this April could provide a good idea of what’s to come. According to NKNews.org, the North Korean team’s visit is still unconfirmed.

Political uncertainty

If there was ever a slim hope of a jointly hosted Winter Games, Madden said it got discarded with the political scandal that has ensnared President Park Geun-hye.

“If they [South Korea] had a popular president who was active in office, then we might be having a different conversation,” he said.

South Korea is now led by an interim government under Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn. He spoke at the countdown ceremony about a “number of adversities” South Korea has faced to successfully prepare for the games, but didn’t give specifics. 

President Park Geun-hye was impeached in December and a court ruling will determine whether her powers are restored. 

Hwang has continued Park’s hardline approach to North Korea, but even if Pyongyang angers the South and its allies, there is precedent to suggest the North’s athletes will head to Pyeongchang for the Olympics, an international event. 

Ahead of the Rio Games last summer, North Korea tested a nuclear device and launched a rocket before sending athletes to Brazil.

Plus, Madden noted, it’s international prestige and domestic propaganda for Kim Jong Un.

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Economy & business
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Wind Passes Water as US Renewable Energy Source

Wind energy has surpassed hydropower as the biggest source of renewable electricity in the United States following the sector’s second-biggest quarter ever for new installations, a wind industry trade group said Thursday.

Wind installations totaled 82,183 megawatts at the end of 2016, enough to power 24 million homes, the American Wind Energy Association said in its fourth-quarter market report.

By comparison, U.S. hydroelectric capacity is about 80,000 megawatts, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

Big fourth quarter for wind

Wind installations soared to 6,478 MW in the fourth quarter, accounting for nearly 80 percent of all of last year’s wind installations. The fourth quarter was the industry’s largest for installed capacity since the fourth quarter of 2012.

The 8,303 MW added for the year represented more than $13.8 billion in investment.

Just three turbine makers — General Electric Co, Vestas Wind Systems A/S and Siemens AG — accounted for up to 95 percent of the U.S. turbine market in 2016.

Texas has more than 20 MW of installed wind capacity, or nearly a quarter of the market. Iowa is the second-biggest wind state, and Oklahoma overtook California for third place at the end of 2016.

The first offshore wind project in the United States also came online in the fourth quarter, the 30 MW Block Island wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island.

More wind power coming

More than 10,000 MW of wind is under construction in the United States, about half of which is in Texas. New Mexico’s wind industry is growing rapidly, with 1,300 MW under construction. Once completed, those projects will double the size of New Mexico’s installed wind capacity. 

Corporations and others outside the utility industry have become major purchasers of wind energy, accounting for 39 percent of capacity contracted in 2016. Projects for Google, Amazon and General Motors were completed in the fourth quarter.

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Silicon Valley & Technology
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Immediacy Twitter Provides Overrated, Some Experts Say

Donald Trump was an avid Twitter user during his campaign for the U.S. presidency, and in his nearly three weeks in office, he hasn’t stopped. While most of Trump’s 24.4 million followers like the immediacy the commander in chief’s tweets provide, others are more critical.

“I don’t think there’s any connection between immediacy and sincerity. I think immediacy is overrated. It may be times when it’s absolutely necessary, but most of what President Trump tweets should be delayed and should be given more thought,” Theodore Glasser, professor of communication at Stanford University, told VOA.

“Do I love the different tweets that Trump has been putting out … absolutely not,” said Scott Goodstein, founder and chief executive officer of Revolution Messaging, a digital communications strategy company.

But as someone who’s spent the past decade pioneering digital strategy and technology for political campaigns, Goodstein said, “I love that in America I get the ability to organize and do rapid response on platforms like Twitter … the ability for the American citizenry to ask questions, engage and be part of that conversation they weren’t part of prior to Twitter, and social media has, to me, made our country better.”

Trump explained his use of Twitter as “a way of bypassing [the] dishonest media.” He has labeled the media the “opposition party” and says he calls “his own shots largely based on an accumulation of data.”

In January, he tweeted 206 times and had about 25 million interactions — consisting of retweets, replies and likes — more than any other world leader, according to data pulled from CrowdTangle, which tracks how links are shared on social media platforms.

But he is not the first U.S. president who has tried to use the popular medium of the moment to bypass mainstream media.

Radio, TV

Franklin D. Roosevelt used “fireside chats” on radio “to talk directly to the country, and that was done periodically and it was very effective,” Glasser said. Roosevelt led the nation through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, and some say that by using his radio broadcasts, he was able to quell rumors and directly explain his policies.

President John F. Kennedy is considered to be one who mastered the television medium, while President Richard Nixon “went out of his way to avoid the press and didn’t have a good relationship with them,” Glasser said.

Barack Obama was the first American presidential candidate to organize on major platforms like Facebook and YouTube, along with more niche platforms like Black Planet, Asian Avenue and others, said Goodstein, who was in charge of that during Obama’s 2007 election campaign. The Obama White House used digital technology to its fullest later to disseminate information. Right now, @BarackObama has 84.4 million followers, third highest on a list kept by twitaholic.com.

The social media platform, created a little over a decade ago, had 317 million monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2016, according to statistics portal statista.com.

Brazil

In Brazil, ousted President Dilma Rousseff, who has 5.7 million followers, was a great example of someone “who used the tool [Twitter] during the election and then turned it off essentially and stopped listening when they started governing; that was a huge mistake,” said Goodstein, who also worked in that country.

He said Rousseff had the ability to build a giant Twitter following during her first election, and he criticized her for “not engaging in her base voters and her general electorate … around issues of people protesting building around the Olympics when it was first announced. She had the ability to go over the media, talk directly to her citizenry. Unfortunately, she did not, and you saw these protests grow bigger and bigger.”

Rousseff has vowed to appeal what she called a “parliamentary coup,” and some of her supporters continue to call her Brazil’s only legitimate president, as shown in a recent picture posted on her Twitter page.

Mexico

The feud between Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Trump continued when the U.S. president reaffirmed his campaign promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico, and that if Mexico wasn’t going to pay for the wall, Pena Nieto should cancel a scheduled visit in Washington a week after Trump was inaugurated.

In Mexico, after congratulating Trump and tweeting that his country would work with the U.S. to strengthen their relationship, Pena Nieto took to the same medium to inform his 6.21 million followers, and the White House shortly afterward, that he would not attend the meeting with Trump.

Gambia

While some leaders have been using the medium for years and have followings in the millions, others are just starting. Newly elected Gambian President Adama Barrow announced to his 11,000 followers that he was back after going into exile in neighboring Senegal, fearing his life was in danger. Barrow defeated President Yahya Jammeh in December’s elections, but the veteran leader of 22 years did not want to cede power.

Since joining Twitter in December, Barrow has sent 62 tweets, mostly about the postelection crisis, his return home and cabinet announcements.

Rwanda

Since June 2016, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has tweeted only 23 times, including one retweet to his 1.59 million followers. Mostly in English and sometimes in Kinyarwanda, the posts varied but included a congratulatory message to the Cleveland Cavaliers on their National Basketball Association title last year. He revealed that as a supporter of Cleveland’s opponent, the Golden State Warriors, he was outnumbered in his house by Cavs fans.

India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined Twitter in 2009 and today has 27 million followers of his personal page and 16 million of the PM office’s page. He sent 233 tweets in January. Although not all tweets generate responses, he had about 2.8 million interactions.

The subjects of his tweets in English and Hindi have varied; he has asked for people’s thoughts about his new personal app, shared pictures of rallies he’s attended in Ghaziabad, and discussed such issues as demonetization, sanitation coverage in rural areas and defense of the sanctity of institutions above politics. He’s one of a few leaders who reply to their followers.  

Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s English-language page shows he sent about 15 tweets in January, and subjects included a conversation with Trump and a videoconference in which he was briefed on tests of a new jet fighter.

All the tweets have links to the official Kremlin website for longer articles. He has 489,000 followers on the page’s English version and 3.59 million on the official Kremlin page, which tweets in Russian.

Twitter’s problems

Whether one’s followers are in the millions or hundreds, people don’t always engage with every tweet. Goodstein said there are also problems Twitter needs to address, including spam, robot tweets and idle accounts. But he also said the Twittersphere is engaged enough that those who tweet authentically will be able to draw others into conversations.

The biggest mistake that politicians make on Twitter is that they want to use it as “a one-way communication and forget the word ‘social,’ ” Goodstein said. The medium is not meant to be used as a public relations device to send out old-fashioned press releases, he said.

Glasser said Twitter has a place in the political landscape but cautioned that it’s dangerous to use in matters of diplomacy. For example, he said, “it’s not a useful tool for announcing policy. One hundred forty characters doesn’t provide enough room for context, nuance and sophistication that public diplomacy requires.”

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