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Two Critically Ill After Drinking Wolfsbane Tea

Two people are critically sick in San Francisco after drinking tea from the same Chinatown herbalist. 

 

The tea leaves bought at Sun Wing Wo Trading Company contained the plant-based toxin aconite, the Department of Public Health said Friday. 

 

A man in his 50s last month and a woman in her 30s this month became critically ill within an hour of drinking the tea, and both remain hospitalized, health officials said. 

 

Each person grew weak then had life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms that required resuscitation and intensive care. 

 

Aconite, also known as monkshood, helmet flower and wolfsbane, is used in Asian herbal medicines. But it must be processed properly to be safe. 

 

Health officials are working to find the original source of the tea leaves, and they are warning others to stop consuming it.

 

“Anyone who has purchased tea from this location should not consume it and should throw it away immediately,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, health officer for the city and county of San Francisco. “Aconite poisoning attacks the heart and can be lethal.”

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Arts & Entertainment
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Somalis in Kenya Fight Stereotypes Through Film

You’ve heard of Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood, but have you heard of Eastleighwood? Eastleigh is a primarily Somali district of Nairobi known to some as little Mogadishu. A group of young people there has been making films to counter stereotypes and radicalization. Rael Ombuor has the story for VOA from Nairobi.

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Economy & business
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US Job Gains Make Higher Interest Rates a Near Certainty

The first jobs report on President Donald Trump’s watch is a good one. The private sector added 235,000 jobs in February, more than expected, and a sign that the economy and consumer confidence are healthy. But the jobs report also means that higher borrowing costs, for consumers and businesses, are expected in the coming days and weeks. Mil Arcega reports.

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Silicon Valley & Technology
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Converting Heat to Electricity

Humankind wastes a lot of energy, but thanks to new technologies, it is increasingly affordable to harvest and use it. At a recent energy summit in Washington, one of the participating commercial firms exhibited photovoltaic cells that turn waste heat into electricity. VOA’s George Putic reports.

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Arts & Entertainment
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In Maryland, Visitors Can Follow Harriet Tubman’s Footsteps

A new visitors’ center on the Eastern Shore explores the history of one of Maryland’s most famous figures, the Underground Railroad conductor, abolitionist and Civil War spy Harriet Tubman.

 

The $21 million Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center is in Church Creek, about a two-hour drive from Baltimore. It opens Saturday to the public, four years after its groundbreaking.

Free events scheduled for the grand opening weekend include children’s activities, presentations by a Tubman re-enactor, tours of a legacy garden that will discuss escape methods used by Tubman, and talks by rangers and others.

 

A ribbon-cutting was held at the site on Friday, designated by the U.S. Congress in 1990 as Harriet Tubman Day. Tubman died on March 10, 1913, at a home for the elderly she founded in Auburn, New York.

 

Tubman’s great-great-niece, Valerie Manokey, attended the ribbon-cutting and said she feels “pride, honor, love and resolution,” now that the center is opening.

 

“We made it,” said Manokey, who is 81 and lives in nearby Cambridge, Maryland. “And I am truly proud to say: ‘Yes, I am the niece of Harriet Tubman.”

 

History

 

Visitors will see a short video introduction to Tubman’s life and her formative years in Maryland. A permanent exhibit focuses on Tubman and the Underground Railroad resistance movement in Maryland, including Tubman’s brutal treatment at the hands of slave owners, her escape to freedom, and her later rescues of hundreds of slaves.

The center consists of four connected buildings depicting Tubman in sculpture during different stages of life, from her youth to her work on the Underground Railroad. Videos and panel illustrations on the walls tell of her strong sense of family, community and religious faith. Her roles in the Civil War as a nurse, scout and spy are represented. The center also has a shop and a research library.

 

Looking at Tubman

 

The center includes a new bronze bust of a youthful Tubman, who was born as a slave named Araminta Ross in 1822 in Madison, about 10 miles away. The bust is displayed on a pedestal so that the top of the head reaches her height – just 5 feet tall. The base includes wood from a former Maryland landmark – the 460-year-old Wye Oak – and a cedar tree.

The bust was made by Eastern Shore artist Brendan Thorpe O’Neill, who studied photos of Tubman in her 60s, then sought to show how she would have appeared when younger. Thorpe sculpted another bust of Tubman in 2014 for display at Government House, the governor’s mansion in Annapolis.

 

What She Saw

The visitor center is on a 17-acre site next to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge . It includes sweeping views of the marshy refuge, and paths through a landscape that has changed little since Tubman’s time in the early to mid-1800s. It preserves routes she likely would have navigated as an adult leading other slaves to freedom.

 

Journeys, Old and New

 

The visitor center is a gateway to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, a self-guided driving tour. The route includes 125 miles of countryside and shoreline in Maryland’s Dorchester and Caroline counties. It offers 36 points of interest, including places where Tubman lived and historically significant sites related to the Underground Railroad.

 

Visiting

 

The center is managed in a partnership of the Maryland Park Service and the National Park Service, and is a sister park to the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn.

This new center includes environmentally friendly elements, such as rain barrels, vegetative roofs and bio-retention ponds. A 2,600-square-foot pavilion outside has a stone fireplace and picnic tables. It’s open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. There is no entry fee. A park website says there are no food or drink options at the site, but visitors are welcome to pack lunch or snacks and use the water fountains.

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Economy & business
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Jobs Report No Longer Phony, Trump Says, Now That It’s His

President Donald Trump is embracing government numbers he once maligned as “phony” as he tries to take credit for the latest U.S. jobs report.

The new administration on Friday promoted Labor Department statistics that show U.S. employers added 235,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.7 percent from 4.8 percent.

“Great news for American workers: economy added 235,000 new jobs, unemployment rate drops to 4.7% in first report for (at)POTUS Trump,” tweeted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. “Not a bad way to start day 50 of this administration,” he later said.

Watch: US Job Gains Make Higher Interest Rates a Near Certainty

What a difference a year makes

What a difference from last year’s presidential campaign, when Trump repeatedly assailed the report’s legitimacy.

 

Back then, candidate Trump denounced “phony unemployment numbers” he claimed had been invented to make the Democrats look good.

“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35,” he said last February, on the day of the New Hampshire presidential primary.

“The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics,” he said.

That’s last year’s 5 percent, not the new numbers reported on his watch.

Numbers ‘very real now’

Asked about the apparent disconnect, Spicer offered a smile and a quip: “I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly: ‘They may have been phony in the past but they are very real now.’”

During a speech at the Detroit Economic club last year, Trump pointed to figures that show one in five American households do not have a single member in the labor force. He failed to mention the one in five includes children, young people in school and senior citizens who are retired.

Though the jobless report has been criticized by others for omitting people who aren’t actively searching for work, it provides a benchmark that is similar to most other nations.

Weather makes difference

While business and consumer confidence have risen since the presidential election, economists also say it’s too soon for Trump to be taking credit for jobs.

“No new economic policies have yet been enacted,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West. Instead, he pointed to an unusually mild winter that likely boosted hiring by construction firms.

Cold weather in February typically shuts down work sites across much of the country. But last month was the second-warmest February since 1895, helping construction firms add the most new jobs in a decade.

Optimism on the rise

A survey of small businesses shows that their optimism is up since the election, reaching the highest level in 12 years in January, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. Other measures also show greater business confidence.

But many of the corporate announcements of new jobs that Trump has promoted – by ExxonMobil, Intel and Ford, for example – will take place over many years and were already planned before the election.

Trump and Republicans have been quick to claim credit nonetheless.

“The February jobs report exceeded expectations by 50,000 jobs,” said the Republican National Committee in an email, “another sign President Donald Trump’s pro-growth agenda is spurring businesses to hire ‘aggressively.’”

Spicer offers apology

Spicer, meanwhile, may have jumped the gun with his tweets. A 1985 rule bars executive branch officials from commenting publicly on economic data until at least an hour after its release. Jason Furman, President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, said on Twitter that the rule was intended to prevent White House officials, some of whom see the report a day early, from immediately spinning the data.

Spicer downplayed that mini-controversy, saying he didn’t think happily touting news that had been widely reported was “exactly a market disruption.”’

“I apologize if we were a little excited and we’re so glad to see so many fellow Americans back to work.”

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Economy & business
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Wall Street Celebrates 8 Years of Bull Market 

Happy birthday to the U.S. bull market! Eight years ago, the S&P 500 closed at 676.53, the low point for the worst bear market in equities since the Great Depression.

“No one would have ever believed it possible at the time, but at 97 months old, this now ranks as the second-longest bull market since World War II,” said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial. “On a percentage basis, though, both the 1950s and 1990s bull markets saw larger percentage gains.”

Detrick essentially says that age is just a number.

“We don’t believe bull markets die of old age; they die of excesses. This bull might be old, but we aren’t seeing the same type of overspending, overborrowing or overconfidence we’ve seen at other major market peaks.

“This doesn’t mean there won’t be pullbacks along the way, because there will be, but it does suggest this old bull could still have a few tricks up his sleeve.”

Stocks boosted by jobs

U.S. stocks ended higher Friday on the back of a very solid employment report. U.S. job growth increased more than expected in February, and wages rose steadily. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 235,000 jobs last month as the construction sector recorded its largest gain in nearly 10 years, thanks to unseasonably warm weather. And perhaps it reflects President Donald Trump’s infrastructure spending plans.

The unemployment rate fell one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.7 percent, even as more people entered the labor market.

Oil slick

U.S. crude oil prices fell below $50 a barrel to their lowest levels since mid-December early Thursday, after the Energy Information Administration reported an 8 million-barrel rise in U.S. stockpiles last week. That was about four times as much as analysts had expected, and marked the ninth week in a row of inventory gains.

J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, points out in a note that “as supplies keep posting new record highs, energy sector stocks now bring up the rear in sector performance year to date, down more than 6 percent.”

Anticipated interest rate hikes

All eyes will be on the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, when the Federal Open Market Committee delivers its decision on interest rates.

Following the strong employment report, traders have essentially priced in a rate hike, giving a better-than-even chance of two more rate hikes during 2017, with a small chance of a fourth increase. Based on the price of fed funds futures contracts traded at CME Group, it appears the risk is to the downside, should the Fed not raise rates, or, conversely, if the central bank decides on a rise of more than 25 basis points.

If the Fed were to keep rates unchanged, it would send a signal that it does not have much confidence in the economy, and that could cause a spike in market volatility.

Trading week ahead

This month has been an unusually busy month for global markets, and that will continue next week. In addition to the Fed, the Bank of Japan and Bank of England are set to meet, the Netherlands holds an election, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is holding a news conference and the G-20 finance ministers are meeting in Germany.

Stateside, investors will have a fresh set of retail sales data, as well as the Consumer Price Index, housing starts and leading indicators.

Debt ceiling

By the end of Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury is expected to reach its maximum debt ceiling, which means Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will have to scramble to ensure the country can continue to keep paying its bills in full and on time.

The debt limit is the total amount of money that the U.S. government is authorized to borrow to meet its obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds and other payments.

Failing to increase the debt limit would have catastrophic economic consequences and is considered unthinkable. It would cause the government to default on its legal obligations, an unprecedented event in American history. Mnuchin sent a letter to Congress this week addressing the issue.

Merkel to meet Trump

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with Trump in the U.S. capital on Tuesday, and the results of their talks will be watched closely to see if Berlin and Washington can get past a variety of potential strains to the trans-Atlantic relationship that have arisen this year.

During the U.S. political campaign, Trump said Merkel’s policy of accommodating immigrants was steering Germany toward “disaster.” And in contrast to Trump’s policies, Merkel has insisted that Europe can never isolate itself socially and economically from its neighbors.

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Silicon Valley & Technology
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California Ready to Open Its Roads to Driverless Cars 

Cars with no steering wheel, no pedals and nobody at all inside could be driving themselves on California roads by the end of the year, under proposed new state rules that would give a powerful boost to the fast-developing technology.

For the past several years, tech companies and automakers have been testing self-driving cars on the open road in California. But regulators insisted that those vehicles have steering wheels, foot controls and human backup drivers who could take over in an emergency.

On Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles proposed regulations that would open the way for truly driverless cars.

Under the rules, road-testing of such vehicles could begin by the end of 2017, and a limited number could become available to customers as early as 2018, provided the federal government gives the necessary permission.

Other states allow tests

Currently, federal automobile standards require steering wheels, though Washington has shown a desire to encourage self-driving technology.

While a few other states have permitted such testing, this is a major step forward for the industry, given California’s size as the most populous state, its clout as the nation’s biggest car market and its longtime role as a cultural trendsetter.

The proposed regulations also amount to the most detailed regulatory framework of any state.

“California has taken a big step. This is exciting,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who tracks government policy on self-driving cars.​

Rules maybe ready by year’s end

The rules are subject to a public hearing and a comment period and could change. Regulators hope to put them in effect by December.

The proposal is more than two years overdue, reflecting complex questions of safety and highly advanced technology.

“We don’t want to race to meet a deadline,” said Bernard Soriano, a leader of the motor vehicle agency’s self-driving program. “We want to get this right.”

In one important change from prior drafts, once a manufacturer declares its technology is road-ready, it can put its cars on the market. That self-certification approach mirrors how federal officials regulate standard cars, and represents a big victory for such major players as Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project.

Also under the proposed regulations, any driverless car still must be remotely monitored and able to pull itself over safely in an emergency.

Consumer Watchdog objects

A Waymo spokesman had no immediate comment. The chief skeptic of the technology, California-based Consumer Watchdog, said the proposal does not protect the public.

“The new rules are too industry-friendly,” Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson said in a statement.

The technology is developing quickly. More than a year ago, a Waymo prototype with no steering wheel or pedals drove a blind man on city streets in Texas.

Are they safer?

Supporters say the cars may one day be far safer than those with humans at the wheel, since the machinery won’t drive distracted, drunk or drowsy.

During road-testing in California, self-driving cars with human backup drivers are believed to have caused a few collisions.

A year ago, Waymo reported that during the 424,331 miles its cars had driven themselves, a human driver intervened 11 times to avoid a collision. In an update earlier this year, Waymo said its fleet had driven 636,868 miles in autonomous mode; it did not say how many crashes were avoided.

In all, 27 companies have Department of Motor Vehicles permits to test on California roads.

Waymo was able to legally put its prototype on the road in Texas because state law there does not prohibit a fully driverless car. Other states have explicitly invited the technology onto its roads, including Michigan, whose governor signed a bill in December that allows the public testing of cars with no driver.

In the meantime, the industry has been lobbying the U.S. Transportation Department and Congress for rule changes that could speed the introduction of truly driverless cars.

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Arts & Entertainment
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‘Avatar 2’ Movie ‘Not Happening’ in 2018, James Cameron says

The sequel to all-time box office champion “Avatar” has been delayed again and will not be arriving in movie theaters as expected in 2018, director James Cameron has said.

Cameron told the Toronto Star that he was working on all four planned movie sequels simultaneously and had no firm release date for “Avatar 2.”

“Well 2018 is not happening. We haven’t announced a firm release date,” the Oscar-winning director told the newspaper in an interview published on Thursday, when asked about progress on “Avatar 2.” “What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases. So we’re not making ‘Avatar 2.’ We’re making ‘Avatar 2,’ 3, 4 and 5. It’s an epic undertaking.

“It took us four-and-a-half years to make one movie and now we’re making four. We’re full tilt boogie right now,” Cameron added.

The 2009 release of Twentieth Century Fox movie “Avatar,” a fantasy adventure set in the distant magical world of Pandora, smashed box office records, taking in an as yet unrivaled $2.8 billion worldwide.

The sequel was first set for a 2014 release and has been delayed at least three times since then.

Fox did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Cameron’s remarks.

Meanwhile, Disney this week gave fans a first glimpse of its Pandora theme park attraction that is due to open at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in May.

The Pandora attraction features a Na’vi River Journey, floating mountains, luminescent plants, and an Avatar Flight of Passage ride – all inspired by the movie and its upcoming sequels, according to features on Disney-owned TV shows “Good Morning America” and “The View.”

Pandora, the World of Avatar is due to open within the park’s Animal Kingdom on May 27.

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