The United Nations reports world hunger is rising because conflicts and problems related to climate change are multiplying. The report finds about 815 million people globally did not have enough to eat in 2016 — 38 million more than the previous year.

The statistics in this report are particularly grim. They show that global hunger is on the rise again after more than a decade of steady decline. The report, a joint product by five leading U.N. agencies warns that malnutrition is threatening the health of and compromising the future of millions of people world-wide.

The report says 155 million children under age five suffer from stunting of their bodies and often their brains, thereby dimming prospects for the rest of their lives. It notes 52 million, or eight percent, of the world’s children suffer from wasting or low weight for their height.

Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund, Anthony Lake, says the lives and futures of countless children are blighted because of food insecurity. And those trapped by conflict are most at risk.

“Millions of children across northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere; innocent victims of a deadly combination of protracted, irresponsible conflicts; of drought, poverty and climate change… If unreached, a generation of children, more likely someday as adults, will replicate the hatred and conflicts of today,” Lake said.

The report also explores the problems of anemia among women and growing obesity among adults and children as well. This study does not present a favorable outlook for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Authors of the report say governments must set goals and invest in measures to bring down malnutrition and to promote healthy eating for healthy living.
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Farmer Russ Higgins’ ancestors settled a wide expanse of land south of Morris, Illinois, in 1858. Through the U.S. Civil War and every major event since then, there has been someone from the Higgins family planting and harvesting on the land.

Since the first plow churned up the fertile soil here nearly 160 years ago, one crop that always had a place among the fields was wheat.

“The next crop is going to go in as soon as we take this year’s soybean crop out, hopefully within the next two and half to three weeks,” Higgins told VOA, before hopping on his all-terrain vehicle to head out into his fields.

As he makes his way beyond large rolls of hay and towering corn stalks that are just about ready to harvest, the one thing that is noticeably absent is the wheat. Higgins says the reason for this is because he already has harvested the crop from his fields. It’s now out of season for the harvest and just ahead of the time to plant the new crop for the winter.

But the reason you don’t see it beyond a narrow patch on Higgins property has nothing to do with the time of year.

“When you think about what a farmer actually grows, it’s driven by demand, and that demand also is by the prices that they can receive,” said Higgins, who says that demand is not for wheat.

“I’ve watched Illinois over the last 20 years really concentrate on corn and soybean,” he noted.

What is true for Illinois is also true for Higgins, who now dedicates only a small part of his farm for wheat, which this year provided a modest return on his investment.

“We averaged about 83 bushels this year,” he said. “Truth be told, it’s probably going to be better than corn or soybeans.”

Better or not, Higgins says the climate in northern Illinois is not ideal for large scale growth of wheat, and since there’s less farmers producing it, it’s a cost prohibitive cash crop.

“There’s not a readily available market year round. We have a chance to market wheat within a three-week window once we harvest the crop. If we decide to hang on to the crop beyond that, when it comes time to deliver, we’re going to have the deliver to those terminals that are still accepting wheat, and in cases, the trucking and the mileage to those locations make it not a viable option.”

American farmers are on track to plant the fewest acres of wheat since the U.S. Agriculture Department began keeping records in 1919. Executive Director of the Illinois Wheat Association, Jim Fraley, says a major factor for wheat’s demise in the U.S. is global competition.

“It’s grown in countries that are really underdeveloped but still growing good wheat crops to help feed themselves,” Fraley told VOA from the 2017 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois.  “So the U.S. has entered into the field of play with many different countries. Countries like France, Russia, Germany… countries that can’t grow corn very well, but they have the climate to be able to grow wheat. Even Canada is a great country to produce oat, wheat.”

Fraley also points to another factor — the eating habits and dieting fads of consumers.

“There’s a big gluten-free craze, and that’s probably hurt wheat consumption a little bit,” he explained. “The thing is, we have to pretty much use our wheat domestically. We want to use it locally, and anything else we are trying to sell to other countries. That’s where were running into this world market that’s very competitive and that’s why prices are feeling some pressure right now.”

Here in the U.S., Fraley says past experience with growing wheat also is influencing a farmer’s future decisions about what to plant.

“A lot of them still remember the wheat of 10 and 20 years ago, where test weight was poor, quality was poor, and it just never paid,” Fraley explained. “But the varieties today, and the management techniques we can use in regard to fungicide application and disease management have really improved in the last few years, and it’s making wheat viable and profitable to grow here in Illinois again.”  

Profitable or not, farmer Russ Higgins says it isn’t as simple as changing the seeds a farmer plants in the ground.

“For those who have not grown wheat for a number of years, there’s a little bit of a risk with wheat,” said Higgins. “Corn and soybean yields tend to be more consistent, so I think there’s an upside to that.”

If low prices for corn and soybean continue to sink a farmer’s overall profits, however, Higgins says the upside could be a return to wheat. “If the time comes for the prices increase, you might see a return of some of the wheat acres, or if you see more livestock come back in the area.”

But that’s a big “if,” and if there’s one thing a farmer likes less than low prices for the crops he’s growing, it’s uncertainty about the weather and environment, and how they will affect the yield a farmer can depend on when it comes time to harvest.

 
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When Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Coast, the Islamic Circle of North America arranged shelter. After it passed, they provided relief. Its volunteers — made up of immigrant and nonimmigrant, Muslim and non-Muslims — has opened minds and hearts wherever they go, to their shared desire to give back to the country.
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When Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Coast, the Islamic Circle of North America arranged shelter. After it passed, they provided relief. Its volunteers — made up of immigrant and nonimmigrant, Muslim and non-Muslims — has opened minds and hearts wherever they go, to their shared desire to give back to the country.
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When Hurricane Irma battered the Florida Coast, volunteers of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) arranged shelter.

After it passed, they provided relief — from flood-damaged homes in Naples to uprooted tree trunk clearings in Cooper City, Florida.

Abdulrauf Khan, a Pakistani immigrant and Assistant Executive Director at ICNA Relief USA — a network of disaster relief and social services — has been through all of it. Anytime a natural calamity strikes, he’s present.

Khan describes his motives as two-fold: a desire to assist his neighbors, while empowering his three children.

“I have a son who is 18 years old,” he begins to recount a vivid memory. “He asked me five years ago, ‘dad, what have you done for this country?’”

It’s a simple question that would provide clarity to Khan’s mission.

“We have to work and we have to make sure our children feel that ownership of the country,” he said. “We have to give back.”

‘A basic part of the religion’

From Hurricanes Harvey to Irma, there are many Texans who embrace the work of Muslim relief volunteers, and select others who are hesitant to grant their trust, based solely on religion. But regardless of their reception, ICNA answers the call to assist, and changes some minds in the process.

“Charity is a big part of Islam, and giving back to the community is a big part of Islam,” says Aqsa Cheema, administrative coordinator for ICNA Relief South Florida.

Cheema, a 22-year old first-generation Pakistani-American who assisted with Irma relief, says she has been in the habit of giving back since she was a kid, attending mosque.

“You go along with it, and you get the chance to distribute food and do things that can benefit the community,” she says. “That’s just a basic part of the religion.”

Open hearts, open arms

Earlier in the week, as Irma’s ruthless winds pounded the state indiscriminately, ICNA facilitated shelter for Floridians — any and all Floridians —  in a Boca Raton-based Islamic Center.

Some of their guests said they had never met a Muslim.

“It was their first experience coming to an Islamic Center,” Khan said. “They felt like, ‘this is what we feel like when we go to church, when we go to synagogue’” — welcome, and at home.

Cheema, who is studying to be a social worker, describes her work as enriching, but never complete.

“That lack of true fulfillment is what keeps me going,” she says.

“I accept the fact that I can’t help everyone, but maybe if I help one person, and someone sees me helping that person, they will be like, ‘hey, you know what? It felt nice to bring a smile on a person’s face. I can help them too.’”

 
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During natural disasters, why do some companies open their doors to the community while other take advantage of its members? Tina Trinh explores the reasons why businesses react the way they do and the cost to their public image.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Thursday that the United States was seeking to add a five-year sunset provision to the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide a regular, “systematic re-examination” of the trade pact.

Ross told a forum hosted by Politico that both he and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had agreed on the need for such a sunset provision for quite a while and would “put it forward” in the NAFTA modernization talks, but it was unclear whether Canada and Mexico would back it.

U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are set to reconvene for a third round of talks in Ottawa on Sept. 23-27.

Ross said that a sunset provision was needed because forecasts for U.S. export and job growth when NAFTA took effect in 1994 were “wildly optimistic” and failed to live up to expectations.

He said the termination clause currently in NAFTA that allows a country to exit after a six-month notice period has never been triggered, and “it’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t be.”

But Ross and U.S. President Donald Trump have both talked about quitting NAFTA if it can’t be renegotiated to reduce U.S. trade deficits with Mexico and Canada.

“The five-year thing is a real thing, would force a systematic re-examination,” Ross said. “If there were a systematic re-examination after a little experience period, you’d have a forum for trying to fix things that didn’t work out the way you thought they would.”

Politico first reported that USTR had circulated the sunset proposal with other federal agencies.
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Informal mining in Brazil is seen by many as a scourge polluting the Amazon rainforest, poisoning indigenous tribes and robbing the nation of its wealth.

For others it is a way of life.

Brazilian garimpos, or wildcat mines, are operated by small crews of men, often caked in red-brown mud and working with rudimentary pans, shovels and sluice boxes that have been used for centuries.

More sophisticated operations use water cannons and boats sucking mud from the bottoms of rivers. Regardless of the method, searching for gold and other minerals like cassiterite and niobium is dirty, dangerous and often illegal.

“Looking for gold is like playing in a casino,” said a 48-year-old miner.

Miners asked not to be named, saying they feared the police as much of their work is illegal.

Started as a teen

He started in the wildcat mines as a teenager in the area around Crepurizao,  a ramshackle frontier town of 5,000 with a dirt landing strip that is a gateway for informal mining in the region.

Garimpos are in the spotlight as Brazil debates opening an area known as Renca in the northern Amazon forest to mining, which has met with stiff resistance from environmentalists.

Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho argues that licensed mining will be an improvement over the estimated 1,000 people currently mining in the reserve illegally.

Crepurizao lies hundreds of miles south of Renca, but gives a window into life in the garimpos caught up in the debate.

On brink of poverty

Living in makeshift homes of wood and plastic, miners in the area ship some 60 kilograms (132 lbs) of gold per month, according to traders.

That much pure gold is worth millions of dollars on the global market, but high costs and layers of traders in the local market leave most miners living on the brink of poverty.

Basic staples can cost four or five times the price in the nearest city, an eight-hour bus ride away.

Fuel stations, a general store, a bar, an evangelical church and prostitutes vie for the income and attention of the miners, known as garimpeiros, when they aren’t working or lazing in hammocks.

Most unlicensed

There are 2,113 licensed garimpo sites in Brazil, according to ministry data, but environmental experts and two government officials, who asked not to be named, said far more small-scale mines skip the licensing and ignore regulations altogether.

In Crepurizao, where mines often cluster close together, it was unclear which operations were licensed.

The total area worked by garimpeiros in Brazil is thought to be small. But chemicals like mercury, which miners in Crepurizao dump to separate gold from grit, can leave a large footprint of contamination.

In March last year, a government-backed study of indigenous villages in the northern state of Roraima revealed alarming levels of mercury.

One group of villagers had more than double the level of mercury considered to be a serious health risk — such as damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, heart and reproductive process — detected in their hair.

New oversight

The Mining and Energy Ministry said a new oversight agency created in a decree by President Michel Temer, now pending congressional approval, would allow more effective government coordination and inspections to restrict illegal mining.

Congressman Leonardo Quintao, who sits on the committee considering the new agency, said it will be able to raise more funding for oversight. He said the regulations target licensed miners, while illegal mining remains a matter for the police.

Still, one enforcement officer, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said the government had left miners like those in Crepurizao in a precarious limbo.

“You can’t just pull them out of the garimpos and the cities that are living off gold. And the government does not offer them structure and decent conditions,” said the officer. “So they’re stranded there without the minimum conditions for survival.”

 
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Larry and Elida Dimas didn’t have much to begin with, and Hurricane Irma left them with even less.

The storm peeled open the roof of the old mobile home where they live with their 18-year-old twins, and it destroyed another one they rented to migrant workers in Immokalee, one of Florida’s poorest communities. Someone from the government already has promised aid, but Dimas’ chin quivers at the thought of accepting it.

“I don’t want the help,” said Dimas, 55. “But I need it.”

Dimas is one of millions of Floridians who live in poverty, and an untold number of them have seen their lives up-ended by Irma. Their options, already limited, were narrowed even further when the hurricane destroyed possessions, increased expenses and knocked them out of work.

Not far from Dimas in impoverished Immokalee, located on the edge of the Everglades, Haitian immigrant Woodchy Darius, a junior at Immokalee High School, must decide whether to return to class when school reopens or head to the fields to pick berries once the land is dry enough to work again.

“The rent is $375, and if I don’t have the money they’ll kick us out,” said Darius, 17. He lives in a grubby apartment building with bare concrete floors, burglar-proof doors and cinder-block walls that make it resemble a jail more than home.

The Census Bureau estimates about 3.3 million people live in poverty in Florida – nearly 16 percent of the state’s 20.6 million population. For them, the amusement parks of Orlando or President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach might as well be on Mars.

Many work by the hour in restaurants, gas stations, hotels, stores and other businesses forced to close for days after Irma, depriving them of paychecks. Others are day laborers or migrants who earn money by the pound picking produce that’s sold in stores nationwide. Still others are retirees on fixed incomes or disability checks whose budgets already were tight before Irma.

Fleeing Irma wasn’t an option for those who lacked transportation to get to a shelter, couldn’t afford gas to drive north and couldn’t rent a hotel room. The likely costs associated with cleaning up or finding a new place to live pushed them closer to the edge than ever.

After Irma, Gwen Bush scrambled to find a place just to sleep after flood waters rose around her home.

A security worker for Amway Center in Orlando, Bush hadn’t worked in the days leading up to Irma because concerts and other events had been canceled as the storm approached. It’s not certain when the arena will be open for business, and she was down to her final $10 before the storm.

“I’ve been through some hurricanes and some storms living here but I can say on my life this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Bush, 50, a lifelong resident of Orlando. “How do you recover from this, losing all of your stuff?”

David and Andrea Jewell survive on disability checks and live on a sailboat they bought for $1,000 on eBay years ago. David Jewell, 51, can’t imagine now living on land; both consider the ocean – like the dolphins they watch – their only real neighbors.

After the storm, the Jewells stayed on cots in the gym at a community center in Jacksonville. They tried to figure out if they could get a new boat if theirs was destroyed. Maybe, they decided, they could just cut back on food and find another cheap one with their next disability checks.

“There aren’t any answers,” he said, “so I guess I’ll have to roll with it.”

But in one bit of good news, they later learned from a friend that their boat is still floating.

For some poor people, there’s at least a little upside to the devastation.

Guatemalan immigrant Aura Gaspar totaled up storm-related expenses of about $600 while using a twig-fired grill to stew chicken on her front stoop in Immokalee; she has three school-age children to feed and a 2-week-old baby.

But Gaspar said husband Juan Francisco got a job cleaning up storm debris in the Fort Myers and Naples area. He needed to get busy, she said through a translator: Their storm preparations cost nearly twice as much as his weekly pay of $320.

“We had to prepare the house so it would protect us,” said Gaspar, 28.

Beside his ruined Immokalee mobile home, Dimas is trying to get back on his feet, but it’s tough.

Dimas earns a meager living cooking hamburgers and chicken in a food truck parked by his home, and some customers already have returned – he said he sold all 40 of the hamburgers that were still safe to cook Tuesday.

Dimas needs to replace the income from his rental trailer, already condemned after being split open by the wind. Dimas had used that money to help feed his two teenagers and pay for the rescue inhalers he needs for his asthma. Losing it will only make it harder for Dimas to do what he says is one of his favorite things – providing free or cut-rate food to those who have even less.

Coping with Irma’s aftermath is only making life tougher for people with little who live in places including unincorporated Immokalee, said Dimas.

“A lot of people work. They work hard here. They don’t ask for nothing. They just go to work, come home and something like this happens, it’s ….,” Dimas said. “I don’t know what to say.”

He stopped talking and turned away to keep from crying.
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President Donald Trump has blocked the acquisition of a U.S. computer chip manufacturer by a Chinese company, calling it a threat to national security.

The Chinese-owned Canyon Bridge Fund has sought to take over Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp.

The U.S. Treasury Department, acting under Trump’s orders, said Wednesday it is prohibiting the deal. It says the president determined that it would put national security at risk and that negotiations would not reduce that risk.

“The national security risk posed by the transaction relates to, among other things, the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer…the importance of semiconductor supply chain integrity to the U.S. government, and the use of Lattice products by the U.S. government.”

Trump acted after both Lattice and Canyon Bridge lobbied the administration hard to allow the deal to go thorough.

China has not yet reacted to the Treasury’s announcement. Trump has vowed to crack down on what he says are unfair Chinese trade practices, including alleged intellectual property theft.

The administration’s perception that China is failing to put enough pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear program has also put a strain in ties between Washington and Beijing.
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As Congress looks into ways to fix the immigration system, often with the goal of safeguarding job opportunities for U.S. workers, at least one immigration organization argues that current federal regulations fail to protect foreign visa holders from job misrepresentation, recruitment fees, exploitation, fraud and discrimination.

Four women who came to the U.S. on temporary visas were part of a panel discussion Tuesday in Washington to raise awareness of a system they said often treats human beings like commodities.

“In the workplace, there were about 80 of us, women, and we had a hard time,” Adareli Hernandez, a former H-2B worker, said in Spanish during a discussion hosted by the Center for Migrant Rights (CDM), a Mexico-based organization with an office in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hernandez, who is from Hidalgo, Mexico, looked for two years before she was finally able to get a H-2B seasonal non-farm work visa to work at a chocolate packing factory in Louisiana.

Inequality in workplace

While men who worked at the factory earned higher wages by carrying and stacking boxes, women were relegated to packing chocolates on assembly lines with no time off for illness.

“We weren’t able to make complaints, because if we did make complaints, we were threatened by the manager. … We were told we didn’t have a right to file complaints, because we didn’t have rights here in the United States,” she said.

But after four seasons as an H-2B visa worker, Hernandez fought for better labor conditions along with 70 colleagues. She said though work conditions improved, the company decided not to rehire her or co-workers.

Hernandez’s testimony is one of the 34 detailed worker stories featured in a CDM report, Engendering Exploitation: Gender Inequality in U.S. Labor Migration Programs.

Though the report focuses on women migrant workers, CDM policy recommendations say, “All temporary labor migration programs should be subjected to the same rules and protection so that unscrupulous employers and recruiters do not use the patchwork of visa regulations to evade liability.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, about 1.4 million people are recruited to work in the U.S. each year through temporary work visas, including H-1B (specialty occupations), H-2B, J-1 (exchange visitor program) and TN (Canadians and Mexicans in certain occupations under the North American Free Trade Agreement).

The visas may vary, but immigration and labor organizations report that recruited foreign workers face common patterns of abuses.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security cracked down on abuse within the H-2B system, hoping to prevent the exploitation of workers and to ensure U.S. workers’ awareness of available jobs.

Rosa’s story

A licensed veterinarian, who asked to be called only Rosa for fear of retaliation, submitted a statement that was read during CDM’s discussion. Rosa was unable to join the panel because the U.S. government rejected her application for a tourist visa.

“Although the U.S. government had no problem offering me a TN work visa at the employer’s request, it won’t allow me to visit the country as a tourist. Anyway, that’s not going to stop me from sharing my story,” Rosa’s statement said.

Rosa is a former TN visa worker who was hired for an animal scientist position in Wisconsin. She was “thrilled” for the opportunity to work at a place where she would put in practice the skills she acquired as a recent graduate from a top Mexican university.

TN visas were created within NAFTA to allow U.S. employers to hire Canadian and Mexican workers for specialized jobs.

“I was deceived by my employer. They promised me a salary that they failed to pay, a contract they didn’t respect,” Rosa’s statement said.

“The supervisors would yell at us constantly and tell us that our visa was only good for obeying orders. I cleaned animal troughs, unloaded them from trucks. As the only woman, they would also give me jobs they considered ‘women’s work,’ cleaning the bathroom or the kitchen,” she said.

Protecting American workers

Rachel Micah-Jones, CDM’s executive director, said there is a need to ensure workers have basic protections, including the right to understand a contract before entering into an agreement with a U.S. company.

Immigration hard-liners agree about the need to protect visa workers, but they also express concern about the welfare of American workers.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said though she agrees these visa programs “can be beneficial to certain employees for legitimate purposes,” there is a “big problem” with employers abusing the system as a way to bring in “workers who can be paid less, and who end up replacing American and legal immigrant workers.”

“The solution is not necessarily to end the program, but to reform it and for the government agencies that are responsible for these programs to do a better job of oversight to make sure that they are not abused,” Vaughan told VOA.

Vaughan was scheduled to speak about guest worker visa programs at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that had been scheduled for Wednesday. The hearing was postponed because government officials were focused on hurricane response and recovery efforts after two storms struck in Texas and Florida.
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Pittsburgh, once a dynamo of heavy industry, will soon become home to the United States’ largest urban farm, part of what advocates say is a trend to transform former manufacturing cities into green gardens.

The Hilltop Urban Farm will open in 2019, consisting of 23 acres (9 hectares) of farmland where low-income housing once stood, two miles (three kilometers) from the city center, designers say.

On top of farmland where winter peas and other fresh produce will be grown by local residents and sold in the community, the farm will feature a fruit orchard, a youth farm and skills-building program. Hillside land will eventually have trails.

The farm is believed to be by far the largest nationwide to be located in an urban area, said Aaron Sukenik, who heads the Hilltop Alliance that is coordinating the initiative.

“The land was just kind of sitting there, fenced and looking very post-apocalyptic,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

After Pittsburgh boomed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a center of coal production, steel and manufacturing, it was hit by industrial decline in the 1950s, its population cut by half over the next half century.

Reinventing itself, the metropolis has since regained much of its economic vigor with the health care industry replacing manufacturing as the city’s powerhouse.

But while “all the areas that you can see from downtown really have turned around,” several neighborhoods on the city’s outer ring have yet to see a similar resurgence, said Sukenik.

“It’s those neighborhoods that are the focus of our work,” he said.

Open to local residents, the farm will help bring fresh food to surrounding areas that often lack such options, he said. Pittsburgh has the largest percentage of people residing in communities with “low-supermarket access” for cities of 250,000 to 500,000 people, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. Treasury Department.

And local advocates say much of Pittsburgh’s south side, where the farm will be located, is particularly underserved by supermarkets and other retailers of fresh food.

Rust Belt

The Hilltop Urban Farm embodies a trend in cities across America’s Rust Belt from Detroit to Cleveland and Buffalo where manufacturing has died out, said Heather Mikulas, a farm and food business educator for Penn State Extension, an applied research arm of  Pennsylvania State University.

“You just have blight, just so much blight in Rust Belt cities,” she said.

“So you see the long-standing residents of neighborhoods who are used to trying to find their place in the world looking at this blight and just saying, ‘We can do something different, we can do something better,’ ” said Mikulas, who co-authored a report on the feasibility of the Hilltop Urban Farm project in 2014.

What were once often “guerrilla” operations have morphed into projects working hand in hand with municipal authorities to secure land rights and rezone areas to allow for agriculture, Mikulas said.

A common concern with urban farms is their reliance on grants that eventually dry out, said Stan Ernst, a professor of agribusiness development at Penn State.

The $9.9 million Hilltop Urban Farm is funded by foundations, primarily the Henry L. Hillman Foundation.

“Look for ways that you can operate enough like a business that you can hopefully provide a level of sustainability there,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

No comprehensive national study has yet measured the extent of urban farming in the United States, said Michael Hamm, a professor of sustainable agriculture at Michigan State University.

Globally, city dwellers are farming an area the size of the European Union, a 2014 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters found.
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In this upper Midwestern state known for dairy, beer and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, ginseng growers want to make sure that the bitter root also gets its due.

So they’ve organized the first International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival. Set for Friday through Sunday in this mid-state river town, it will feature the root’s role in culinary, health and beauty products and local history. The event, just before the fall harvest, is expected to draw at least several hundred ginseng aficionados from Asia and from U.S. cities with large ethnic Asian populations.

Organizers hope the visitors’ appetite for Wisconsin ginseng will catch on with a broader consumer base. Even state residents, mostly of northern European descent, have limited experience with the plant beyond seeing vast “gardens” shaded with black fabric canopies.

With the festival, “we’re creating awareness,” said Tom Hack, the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin’s international marketing director for several years ending last month.

Leading U.S. production

The state produces about 700,000 pounds or 317,500 kilos a year of cultivated ginseng – roughly 95 percent of the entire U.S. crop, which still totals less than 10 percent of the global yield. The vast majority goes to China and Hong Kong, where it has been used for thousands of years as a tonic to reduce stress, boost energy, focus attention and even treat male sexual dysfunction. A 2012 Mayo Clinic study found American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) eased fatigue among cancer patients.

American ginseng has alleged “cool” or restorative properties. The Wisconsin-grown root, considered especially potent, last year commanded a wholesale price ranging from the low $30s to $55 a pound – roughly double that of Chinese-grown root, Hack said. American wild ginseng root, the most prized, can command hundreds of dollars per pound.

But growers like Will Hsu worry that consumers may not be familiar enough with the root to differentiate.

“It’s global competition,” said Hsu, whose family’s ginseng farm and sales operation near Wausau is among the country’s largest. “If you do not educate consumers on the difference in taste and yield from Wisconsin, they’ll view it as a commodity that’s interchangeable.”

Accommodating climate

The area’s long, cold winters and mineral-rich topsoil provide favorable conditions for ginseng, which takes at least three years to mature. It took off as a commercial crop in 1904 when four brothers – the Fromms – started cultivating the root as well as collecting it in the wild. Production peaked in the early 1990s, when 1,500 growers – mostly hobbyists with full-time jobs – produced over 2.2 million pounds or almost 100,000 kilos.

But some growers sold seed to Canada and China, setting up competition that flooded the market, depressed prices and drove out many Wisconsin growers. Their numbers have dwindled to fewer than 200 today. Their 317,500-kilos yield is dwarfed by output abroad, Hack said. “Canada is, like, 4.5 million pounds” or just over 2 million kilos. “China’s at least 5 million” pounds or 2.26 million kilos.  

“Seeds that came from our industry came to really haunt us,” added Hack, a hobbyist himself.

Growers face two related problems: product fraud and trademark infringement. Shady dealers misrepresent foreign-grown ginseng as American, Hack said. His board introduced a seal in 1991 to certify roots or products made entirely of Wisconsin ginseng, but “we’ve got companies using our logo that are not authorized to do that. Our industry has now started taking legal action” and alerting various regulatory agencies.  

The commodity group also reviews international shipping records and has its handful of worldwide distributors look out for suspect products.

“We have a monitoring program in place in China,” Hack said, “so we can address infringers there.”

Educating consumers

The more challenging task, Will Hsu argues, is cultivating discerning consumers of ginseng root, berries, and the resulting teas, powders, extracts and herbal supplements.

“The biggest problem for our industry, not only with labeling, is now you’re going to have some countries like Taiwan where [there’s] a whole generation of consumers who really only consume Canadian ginseng or Chinese-grown,” he said.

“They don’t even know Wisconsin ginseng,” lamented his father, Paul Hsu.

The Hsus and Hack discussed that quandary last October at the headquarters of Hsu’s Ginseng Enterprises Inc., where workers in the adjoining processing facility sorted and packaged freshly harvested roots. Paul Hsu, who emigrated from Taiwan, began the business in the 1970s. Now Will Hsu, in his early 40s, oversees daily operations.

A marketing ground game  

Armed with a Harvard MBA and sales experience at food giant General Mills, the son promotes the concept of “terroir,” which links an agricultural product to the land on which it’s grown. Just as the French province of Champagne is known for fine sparkling wine, he wants to ensure that central Wisconsin retains global recognition for premium ginseng. The company’s 2017 calendar and other printed materials showcase “Terroir at N45th Parallel” – the area’s latitude.

Wisconsin’s dark loam lends the ginseng a distinctive, earthy taste, Will Hsu said: “It’s bitter, it’s herbal. That is not a taste kids look fondly upon.”

As with beer, it’s an acquired taste, he added. For the festival, the Hsus are partnering with the local Bull Falls Brewery to make a limited-release ginseng brew.

Festival vendors will peddle other items made with ginseng – such as wine, macaroons, teas, muffins and stir fries – and offer cooking demonstrations to show the plant’s versatility.

Visitors also will be able to dig their own roots at certain gardens.

Generational issues

The generational challenge affects both labor supply and consumer demand.    

On a mild day early last October, three dozen workers harvested ginseng, some kneeling in freshly turned soil to gather ginseng roots, others lugging filled buckets to a waiting truck. Almost all were Hmong, who began emigrating from Laos and Thailand to the state four decades ago, after the Vietnam War, and many were advanced in years.

“People in my age group don’t want to do the work,” said Aaron Kaiser, 28, whose family owns the garden. A third-generation grower, he fits in ginseng duties – including as a director on the marketing board – around his job as a math teacher. 

As for demand, young ethnic Chinese don’t necessarily share their forebears’ enthusiasm for the herb.

“It’s not good for young people, it’s for old people,” said Yongcheng Kuang, a student at the nearby University of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood County campus who hails from Shenzhen in China’s Guangdong province. Nonetheless, it was among the gifts he brought home to relatives during summer break.

Hack, the marketer, acknowledged that “the younger generation has different buying trends. But there are 1.3 billion people in the country of China, and the majority do recognize TCM – traditional Chinese medicine.”

While the board continues its focus on international markets, “we’ve never taken into consideration the market potential right here in the United States,” Hack added.

With the festival, Wisconsin growers hope to make inroads.
…

In the United States, family incomes are up, the poverty rate is down, and the number of people covered by health insurance has improved.

Experts at the Census Bureau published the data Tuesday, and it shows the median household income rose 3.2 percent between 2015 and 2016, hitting $59,039. That is the second gain in two years. The “median” means half the population earns more, half earns less.

The poverty rate declined to 12.7 percent, meaning two and a half million fewer people below the official poverty rate. While that is an improvement, it still leaves 40.6 million Americans in poverty.

Government experts define poverty as an income under $24,563 for a family of four.

The gap between the earnings of women and men narrowed slightly in 2016, with women now earning just more than 80 cents for every dollar men earn.

Among the many ethnic groups in the United States, Asians have the highest median family incomes, little changed from prior years ($81,431). Incomes rose a bit for non-Hispanic white ($65,041), Hispanic ($47,675), and black families ($39,490), but were lower than their Asian neighbors.

The percentage of Americans without health insurance fell three tenths of a percent to 8.8 percent. The slight improvement still leaves 28.1 million people without coverage.

 
…

The Wisconsin Senate was poised to approve nearly $3 billion in cash payments for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group on Tuesday, an unprecedented incentive package for the electronics company to locate a flat-screen factory in the state.

The proposed subsidy would be the largest ever from a U.S. state to a foreign company and 10 times bigger than anything Wisconsin has extended to a private business. It would take at least 25 years for Wisconsin to see a return on its investment, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated.

Foxconn would receive $2.85 billion in cash payments over 15 years if it invests $10 billion in the state and employs 13,000 people. It could also qualify for $150 million in sales tax exemptions for construction equipment.

The Assembly, which like the Senate is firmly in GOP control, takes a final vote Thursday. The bill then goes to Gov. Scott Walker, who led negotiations on the deal and has a deadline to sign a bill by the end of the month.

Critics, including Democrats who don’t have the votes to stop it, say state taxpayers are giving up too much. They also question whether the state economic development agency, which has had trouble tracking much smaller projects, will be able to properly verify that the required investments are made and jobs created.

Walker and other supporters say Foxconn is giving the state a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a foothold in the world electronics market. Foxconn is the largest contract maker of electronics, best known for making iPhones, but with a long list of customers including Sony Corp., Dell Inc. and BlackBerry Ltd.

The Wisconsin plant would be the first outside of Asia to construct liquid crystal display panels for televisions, computers and other uses. Foxconn wants to open the factory by 2020 and initially employ 3,000 people.

Environmental groups and others concerned with the waiving of certain state regulations to speed construction of the plant have been threatening to file lawsuits. Foxconn would be allowed to build in wetland and waterways and construct its 20-million-square-foot (1.86-million -square-meter) campus without first doing an environmental impact statement.

Under the bill up for a vote Tuesday, Foxconn would enjoy a direct path to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on any legal challenges, skipping the state appeals court. The high court is controlled 5-2 by conservatives.

Foxconn is eyeing locations in Racine and Kenosha counties in southeastern Wisconsin, in between Milwaukee and Chicago, but has not yet announced where exactly it will build.
…

Apple on Tuesday will unveil the new model of its popular iPhone, 10 years after then-CEO Steve Jobs showed the world the iPhone for the first time.

Leaks of the iPhone’s design suggest it will feature a higher resolution display, wireless charging and facial recognition technology, among other improvements.

The event Tuesday will take place at Apple’s “spaceship” office in California, though few actual details about the iPhone release are publicly available.

Predictions for the new high-end model, likely to be called the iPhone X, put the price around the $900 point, with some estimates reaching above $1,000. The previous iPhone 7 Plus sold for a top base price of $769.

Brian Blau, an Apple analyst at Gartner, told Reuters the steep price is driven by the need for more advanced parts, like 3D sensors and memory capacity.

“Some of these components are just darned expensive,” he said. “There is just no doubt about that.”

Apple has sold more than 1.2 billion iPhones since it first released the phone a decade ago, but the company took a huge hit to its revenue last year as many customers did not buy an iPhone 7 because they saw it as too similar to the iPhone 6.

With the release of its new phone, Apple hopes to recapture some of the early excitement surrounding its phones and convince critics the company is still on the cutting edge of tech innovation.

Apple is also expected to introduce a big upgrade to its Apple Watch and a higher-definition model of its Apple TV system, which allows users to stream online content.
…

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said at the end of a two-day visit to Algeria Monday that his country and the North African nation were working to achieve “equitable” oil prices.

Maduro said his talks with Algeria’s second-ranking official, Council of the Nation President Abdelkader Bensalah, had a “good climate.” The Council of the Nation operates like a Senate.

The Venezuelan leader apparently did not meet with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who rarely has been seen in public since he suffered a 2013 stroke.

Algeria and Venezuela both are members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The countries have struggled with low oil prices hitting their economies.

Maduro said he was visiting Algeria “to strengthen cooperation for the development of peace and economic prosperity,” according to Algeria’s official APS news agency.

OPEC and 11 non-OPEC oil producers agreed last year to reduce production until March 2018 to boost prices.

“We are continuing our efforts to obtain equitable oil prices for our industry,” APS quoted Maduro as saying. There was no elaboration.

Maduro also discussed bilateral relations with Algeria, which like Venezuela is a non-aligned nation, and the possibility of establishing an air route between Algiers and Caracas.

Bouteflika’s office had said in a statement that Maduro’s visit would look at “ways and means to consolidate” bilateral relations. It said talks were to address international issues of “common interest,” including the hydrocarbons market.

The United States has escalated its pressure on Venezuela as Maduro has consolidated power in recent months amid deadly protests.
…

International watchdog group Global Witness says powerful political elites and security forces have controlled and secretly exploited Zimbabwe’s diamond sector for a decade.

Zimbabwe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organization and the military are among the state actors accused of holding stakes in private diamond enterprises, trading the country’s precious stones on the international market.

Global Witness says it examined the workings of five of the major diamond companies in Zimbabwe, and found they have actively worked to conceal their finances and beneficiaries.

“Lots and lots of diamonds’ revenue have clearly not ended up in the national budgets,” said Global Witness researcher Michael Gibb. “These resources have, unfortunately, ended up inside the security forces and institutions that have long been implicated in undermining Zimbabwe’s democracy and [committing] serious human rights abuses.”

Government officials declined comment when reached by VOA. Junior Mining Minister Fred Moyo said he could not comment on what he called the “historical part of Zimbabwe’s diamond mining.”

Zimbabwe discovered the diamond fields in 2006 in the eastern part of the country, Marange, and began mining operations three years later.

Meanwhile, the country’s economy has declined. Zimbabwe has no national currency, faces a severe cash shortage and is struggling to pay civil servants.

President Robert Mugabe announced in March 2016 that he was bringing the diamond industry under state control. The president blamed $13 billion in missing diamond revenue on private companies he accused of robbing the nation.

Global Witness said it is a “myth” to blame losses solely on private investors.

“The Marange [diamond] discovery was met with such hope and expectation that it would help the country charge away from [its] difficult economic situation. It is clear that such hope has been dashed,” Gibb said. “Reforms should focus less on how [many] companies are operating in Marange, whether one, five or 10. The people of Zimbabwe deserve to know how much companies are making from their diamonds, and where that money is going and how it is being spent.”

Spokesman Obert Gutu of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, welcomed the Global Witness report. 

“If those diamonds had been properly accounted for, the eastern border of Mutare would be our own Las Vegas of Zimbabwe,” he said. “But if you go to Mutare today, it is a ghost town just like any other city in Zimbabwe. Derelict infrastructure. You then ask yourself: Where has all the money gone?  Obviously, the money has been externalized and a few people have benefited at the expense of the nation of Zimbabwe.”

Mugabe’s nationalization of the diamond sector has not gone unchallenged. Court cases by the private companies ordered to stop work in March 2016 are ongoing. 

Global Witness says the diamond sector under the control of the new government-backed mining company remains shrouded in secrecy.
…

Apple is expected to sell its fanciest iPhone yet for $1,000, crossing into a new financial frontier that will test how much consumers are willing to pay for a device that’s become an indispensable part of modern life.

The unveiling of a dramatically redesigned iPhone will likely be the marquee moment Tuesday when Apple hosts its first product event at its new spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino, California. True to its secretive ways, Apple won’t confirm that it will be introducing a new iPhone, though a financial forecast issued last month telegraphed something significant is in the pipeline.

In addition to several new features, a souped-up “anniversary” iPhone – coming a decade after Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first version – could also debut at an attention-getting $999 price tag, twice what the original iPhone cost. It would set a new price threshold for any smartphone intended to appeal to a mass market.

What $1,000 bucks will buy

Various leaks have indicated the new phone will feature a sharper display, a so-called OLED screen that will extend from edge to edge of the device, thus eliminating the exterior gap, or “bezel,” that currently surrounds most phone screens.

It may also boast facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone and wireless charging. A better camera is a safe bet, too.

All those features have been available on other smartphones that sold for less than $1,000, but Apple’s sense of design and marketing flair has a way of making them seem irresistible – and worth the extra expense.

“Apple always seems to take what others have done and do it even better,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

Why phones cost more, not less

Apple isn’t the only company driving up smartphone prices. Market leader Samsung Electronics just rolled out its Galaxy Note 8 with a starting price of $930.

The trend reflects the increasing sophistication of smartphones, which have been evolving into status symbols akin to automobiles. In both cases, many consumers appear willing to pay a premium price for luxury models that take them where they want to go in style.

“Calling it a smartphone doesn’t come close to how people use it, view it and embrace it in their lives,” said Debby Ruth, senior vice president of the consumer research firm Magid. “It’s an extension of themselves, it’s their entry into the world, it’s their connection to their friends.”

From that perspective, it’s easy to understand why some smartphones now cost more than many kinds of laptop computers, said technology analyst Patrick Moorhead.

“People now value their phones more than any other device and, in some cases, even more than food and sex,” Moorhead said.

The luxury-good challenge

Longtime Apple expert Gene Munster, now managing partner at research and venture capital firm Loup Ventures, predicts 20 percent of the iPhones sold during the next year will be the new $1,000 model.

Wireless carriers eager to connect with Apple’s generally affluent clientele are likely to either sell the iPhone at a discount or offer appealing subsidies that spread the cost of the device over two to three years to minimize the sticker shock, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.

Even Munster’s sales forecast holds true, it still shows most people either can’t afford or aren’t interested in paying that much for a smartphone.

That’s one reason Apple also is expected to announce minor upgrades to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. That will make it easier for Apple to create several different pricing tiers, with the oldest model possibly becoming available for free with a wireless contract.

But the deluxe model virtually assures that the average price of the iPhone – now at $606 versus $561 three years ago – will keep climbing. That runs counter to the usual tech trajectory in which the price of electronics, whether televisions or computers, falls over time.

“The iPhone has always had a way of defying the law of physics,” Munster said, “and I think it will do it in spades with this higher priced one.”

WATCH: Related video report by tech reporter George Putic
…

Hurricane Irma’s path of destruction up Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday threatens to disrupt a thriving state tourism industry worth more than $100 billion annually just months ahead of the busy winter travel season.

Some of the state’s biggest attractions have announced temporary closures, including amusement park giants Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios, Legoland and Sea World, which all planned to close through Monday.

About 20 cruise lines have Miami as a home port or a port of call, according to the PortMiami website, and many have had to move ships out of the area and revise schedules.

Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean have canceled and revised several sailings as a result of the storm and have offered credits and waivers on trips where passengers are unable to travel.

A Carnival spokesman said the situation in Florida on Sunday was still not clear enough to fully assess how widespread the effects will be.

“We will know more in the hours ahead since the hurricane is active in Florida right now,” spokesman Roger Frizzell said.

Irma made a second Florida landfall on Sunday on southwestern Marco Island as a Category 3 storm bringing winds of 115 miles per hour (185 kph) and life-threatening sea surge.

Disney canceled the Monday sailing of one of its cruise ships and said it is assessing future sailings, which stop throughout the Caribbean and in the Bahamas.

Florida is one of the world’s top tourism destinations. Last year nearly 113 million people visited the state, a new record, and spent $109 billion, state officials said earlier this year.

The first half of 2017 was on track to beat that record pace, officials said.

The damage Irma’s winds and storm surge do to Florida’s 660 miles (1,060 km) of beaches and the structures built along them during more than 30 years of explosive population growth will be critical to how quickly the state’s ‘s No. 1 industry recovers.

The Gulf beaches west of St. Petersburg and Clearwater,  are squarely in the storm’s path.

In 2016, more than 6.3 million people visited Pinellas County, which encompasses those cities, and generated more $9.7 billion in economic activity.

Up and down the wide, sandy beaches of Pinellas County are traditional “old Florida” waterfront hotels such as the Don Cesar, a coral pink 1920s hotel on St. Pete Beach, which was closed by the storm. There are also modern high-rises and resorts that are part of the nation’s biggest chains and brands including Hyatt Hotels, Marriott International, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

The low-lying barrier islands would be inundated if Irma’s storm surge reaches forecast heights of as high as 15 feet (4.6 meters).

While some newer structures in the area are built on elevated pilings, many older homes and businesses are not.
…

The White House’s decision this week to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries: The undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children.

But the cost, which is difficult to quantify for a workforce faced with the real possibility of losing their job and forced to leave the country, is evident to employers, who largely view both the moral and economic implications of ending the program as intertwined.

“Losing [the economic contributions of DACA recipients] is a direct cost,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s business leadership. She said the state’s DACA workforce contributes several billion dollars a year to the local economy.

WATCH: DACA Repeal to Cost U.S. Businesses, Economy Billions

“It’s also a signal to the rest of the world that somehow America is no longer a place that is embracing talent and hard work and the energy of immigrants,” Wylde told VOA. “That message has a ripple effect in terms of hurting recruitment efforts by our major companies, because they need talent — multilingual talent — from all over the world.”

Employers bear the brunt

To date, more than 400 U.S. entrepreneur and business leaders have signed an open letter that calls on U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress to preserve DACA and provide a permanent solution that ensures recipients’ ability to continue working legally in the country without risk of deportation.

“Our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions,” the letter reads, referencing research conducted by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, over a 10-year period.

The conservative-leaning CATO Institute places that figure at $280 billion.

​Lose-lose

Following the announcement of DACA’s repeal, the White House suggested unemployed American workers might somehow benefit, based solely on the age of the workforce.

“There are over 4 million unemployed Americans in the same age group as those that are DACA recipients,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

“Over 950,000 of those are African-Americans in the same age group; over 870,000 unemployed Hispanics in the same age group. Those are large groups of people that are unemployed that could possibly have those jobs,” Sanders said.

But economists and immigration analysts find fault with Sanders’ argument: The native-born unemployed population is not a perfect substitute for the DACA workforce, and the displacement of one worker for another does not increase productivity.

Under the repeal of DACA, CATO estimated employers would incur $6.3 billion in turnover costs, a figure that includes the recruiting, hiring and training of 720,000 new employees in often highly skilled positions. Thirty-six percent of DACA recipients 25 and older hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree.

Many DACA recipients “are highly educated and working in positions such as health care and education, where they are more highly paid and therefore more productive,” said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at CATO Institute. “[Those are] the industries where you’re going to see a greater impact as a result of this forced turnover caused by the DACA repeal.”

“Contracting the labor force, kicking people out of the country, will not create jobs. It will just shrink the overall size of the economy,” Bier said.

Over the long term, Wylde said, failing to find a permanent solution for DACA workers would inhibit U.S. businesses’ ability to compete.

“We want to be at the forefront of the attraction and support of our talent,” she said. “We don’t want to be deporting them.”
…

The White House’s decision to repeal DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries who arrived in the U.S. as children. Over the next two years, more than 700,000 employed recipients will find themselves without a job. And for their employers, laying off a qualified workforce carries not only moral implications, but billions in lost revenue and an overall reduction in U.S. economic growth. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports.
…

Two back-to-back storms will have a significant impact on U.S. growth and productivity, according to economists tracking the impact of Hurricanes Harvey in Texas, and Irma — expected to make landfall in Florida this weekend. Despite the potential catastrophic loss in lives and capital, economists who spoke with VOA say the damage to the U.S. economy is likely to be short-lived. Mil Arcega has more.
…

The U.S. credit monitoring company Equifax is facing a storm of criticism, lawsuits and investigations after a data breach that may have compromised personal data for about 143 million Americans.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Friday that his office would formally investigate the data breach, saying that more than 8 million New Yorkers had been affected by the hack.

“The Equifax breach has potentially exposed sensitive personal information of nearly everyone with a credit report, and my office intends to get to the bottom of how and why this massive hack occurred,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

Illinois’ attorney general also opened an investigation into the data breach, and more states are likely to follow suit.

Also Friday, U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he would call for congressional hearings on the Equifax breach.

Two proposed class-action lawsuits, one filed in Portland, Oregon, and another in Atlanta, Georgia, alleged that Equifax had been negligent in protecting consumer data.

Stock price slides

Investors were also showing their displeasure about the hack by dropping their stock in the company. Equifax’s share price fell more than 13 percent in trading Friday, to $123.32. The decline equates to more than $2 billion in lost market value.

The Atlanta company said Thursday that the hackers had obtained names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses of more than 40 percent of the U.S. population.

“Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017,” the company said in a statement.

The company said credit card numbers were also compromised for 209,000 U.S. consumers, as were credit dispute accounts for 182,000 people.

Equifax discovered the hack July 29 but waited until Thursday to warn consumers.

Although other cyberattacks have been bigger than this one, such as a data breach at Yahoo last year that affected more than 500 million accounts, this one could be the most damaging because of the type of data collected.

Equifax is one the largest credit-reporting companies in the United States.
…

The combined damage from Hurricanes Irma and Harvey could cut U.S. economic growth by one-third for a few months, according to business analytics firm IHS Markit.

Bankrate.com’s Mark Hamrick said, however, that analysts wouldn’t know for sure until Irma passed. He said Harvey alone might cut growth by half of a percent in the third quarter.

As far as the impact from Irma, “No doubt it is a substantial negative,” said Hamrick.   

Florida accounts for about 5 percent of the the U.S. gross domestic product and 6 percent of U.S. jobs. PNC Bank Chief Economist Gus Faucher said U.S. economic growth might briefly slow in the third quarter because of Harvey and Irma, but that he thought it would bounce back late this year and early next year.

“Obviously, there is destruction in the near term, there are people who lose their jobs in the near term, but then there’s a lot of activity following that, so we have more jobs as reconstruction funds flow in from insurance payments and federal aid. So there’s a lot of rebuilding to expect,” said Faucher.

Jim Baird of the Plante Moran financial firm told VOA that storm damage to the national economy could be significant but temporary. He said post-storm rebuilding with more modern facilities might increase productivity, which could reduce the “sting” of economic loss a bit.

Commonwealth Financial Network’s Brad McMillan said previous major stiorms like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy caused huge local problems, though they did not change the national economy in a “fundamental” way. He noted that the recovery in this case might take “longer than usual.”

Real estate experts said Hurricane Irma’s winds threatened 8.5 million homes and businesses in Florida. The data analysis firm CoreLogic said storm surges — floodwaters driven by high winds and low pressure — also might endanger 3.5 million commercial and residential buildings.

Standard & Poor’s analysts said they were still adding up the costs of Hurricane Harvey, but that Irma seemed likely to cost even more. Researchers at Barclays Bank said hurricane claims costs might rise high enough to wipe out a year of earnings for certain insurance companies.  

Hurricane Irma also is hurting airlines, which have canceled 4,600 flights to and from airports in the Caribbean and Florida, according to FlightAware.com. Bad weather was forcing Miami to stop operating Friday and Orlando to end flights on Saturday. Together, these major airports handle about 2,000 flights on normal days.

Online Hotel adviser Kelsey Blodget said airport closures would hurt the tourism and hospitality trades.
…

In Rwanda, less than 15 percent of the population has access to electricity. In rural areas, it can be as low as one percent.

In order to increase Rwanda’s energy capacity, a 17-hectare solar field with 28,000 panels was constructed in six months in 2014 by private power companies.

It is East Africa’s first large-scale commercial solar field, bringing in 8.5 megawatts of power at its peak — four percent of the country’s total power capacity. The project has brought power to more than 15,000 homes.

“We are living in the world and we have to contribute or to eradicate or eliminate polluting the atmosphere,” said Twaha Twagirimana, plant supervisor for Scatec Solar, which operates the project. “We need energy, and we need clean energy.”

Twagirimana said this investment in solar power is a step toward reducing global warming. Rwanda’s power grid relies heavily on diesel fuel, which is expensive and bad for the environment.

According to Scatec Solar, the solar field reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 8,000 tons per year.

Orphanage land

Private homes aren’t the only ones to benefit from the project. The solar panels are on land owned by the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village.

The choice of the site, about 60 kilometers from the capital, Kigali, was no accident. The rent paid for the land helps vulnerable children and young adults who were orphaned during or after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

About 500 young Rwandans live, study and play on the 144-acre residential community.

Mediatilice Kaytitesi, the community’s art center and theater coordinator, says she uses art to help youth cope with their losses.

“It’s something that can help open the mind of the kids,” she said. “Some draw tears, which means they have the tears in their hearts, their wounds. You can see their expressions.”

Pascal Atismani Claudien lost his father in 2006 and his mother in 2010. He said he doesn’t exactly know why they died — just that they were sick.

“When I have a problem, I take a paper and a pencil and draw and that problem goes away. When I have stress, I draw or paint,” said Claudien, who is starting his final year of high school at the village. “And when I am painting or drawing, I feel very happy.”

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village was modeled after similar ones built for orphans in Israel after the Holocaust. In the Rwandan language of Kinyarwanda, Agahozo means “tears are dried.” In Hebrew, Shalom means peace. 

“The mission was really to help bring back all the children who have lost parents and siblings and everything in their lives, to try to recreate the next best family that these children should have had, had their parents been alive,” explained Jean-Claude Nkulikiyimfura, the youth village’s executive director.

Claudien said he considers it more of a family than a school. “That’s why we call each other brothers and sisters,” he said.

Learning engineering

During his time at the school, Claudien visited the nearby solar panels and learned from the staff about how Rwanda’s largest solar field is positively impacting the country. He, himself, is from a small village with limited access to electricity.

About 50 students also received technical training at the solar field on engineering and solar technology to encourage them to work in green jobs in the future. 

The construction of the nearly $24 million solar field employed more than 350 Rwandan workers.

Gigawatt Global developed the project with early-stage funding from the U.S. government’s Power Africa initiative.

“Rwanda had the right leadership and the right conditions to be really the test case and the positive fruits of concept for the entire sub-Saharan Africa for commercial scale solar,” said Yosef Abramowitz, the CEO and founder of Gigawatt Global.

About 600 million Africans don’t have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.

Rwanda’s government aspires to nearly triple its power capacity by the end of 2018, through renewable power sources like methane, hydro, mini-hydro, peat, thermal and more solar fields. 

In 2016, Rwanda partnered with developer Ignite Power to provide rooftop solar to 250,000 houses by the end of next year. Users will pay about $5 per month for the solar power system in a rent-to-own model.

Efforts like this will go toward the Rwandan government’s goal of bringing power to 70 percent of households.

Abramowitz said he’s convinced “solar is the future of Africa.” His firm wants to replicate this model throughout sub-Saharan Africa, increasing energy capacity while also benefiting the social good.

“There’s every reason in the world — economic, social and political — that solar should be the main generation source of energy on the continent,” he said.
…

With Republicans in Congress under pressure to deliver on taxes, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday the GOP plan will aim to reduce the corporate tax rate to low- to mid-20 percent — a smaller cut than what President Donald Trump wants.

Ryan provided some specifics as the Republicans start to write legislation overhauling the tax system, with help for the middle class a main goal. He spoke as Congress was consumed with providing billions of dollars in relief for hurricane-ravaged Texas, and prospectively for Florida, and with addressing the plight of immigrants facing possible deportation as a result of Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program for young immigrants.

Trump, who made overhauling taxes a pillar of his push for economic growth, has called for a 15 percent tax rate for corporations. The rate now ranges from 15 percent to 35 percent. The average tax rate paid by corporations is around 19 percent to 25 percent, according to the Treasury Department and congressional analysts.

Some experts say a 15 percent rate isn’t possible without blowing a hole in the deficit.

Ryan recognized that as he discussed a higher range during an appearance at a New York Times forum. “Numbers are hard to make that work,” he said.

A popular idea among lawmakers is to reduce tax rates for both individuals and corporations, and make up the lost revenue by eliminating special-interest loopholes. But even if Congress eliminated nearly every tax break enjoyed by corporations, it would raise only enough revenue to lower the corporate tax rate to 28.5 percent, according to an analysis by Scott Greenberg, a senior analyst at the conservative Tax Foundation.

Ryan expects tax legislation to pass Congress this year.

“This is our No. 1 priority this fall,” he said at a Capitol Hill news conference later Thursday. “It’s about growth. It’s about fairness. It’s about finally giving American families a tax break.”

Revising the nation’s tax system for the first time in three decades is a GOP priority in the wake of the collapse of efforts to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

But Hurricane Harvey and Trump’s decision to rescind a program protecting some 800,000 immigrants from deportation have saddled Congress with new challenges. When Trump blocked the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, created by Obama through administrative action in 2012, he gave Congress six months to act.

To ensure money for hurricane relief, Trump overruled congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary Wednesday to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government operating and raise the U.S. debt limit.

The already compressed timetable for coming up with an overhaul of the tax system came under further pressure with Congress’ additional and urgent workload.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he thinks “it’s still very viable to get it done this year.”

“We’ve made a lot of progress” in talks with GOP congressional leaders, Mnuchin said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.” “Our objective is to get this done.”

Asked whether he was worried about a revolt by Republicans in Congress if a tax overhaul isn’t achieved, Mnuchin said, “I’m not worried about any GOP revolt at all. You know we’ve been meeting with them on the tax plan. We have an understanding on this tax plan.”

The head of the House tax-writing committee also rejected suggestions that the tax overhaul could get sidelined by Congress’ pressing new priorities. “I don’t think it changes the trajectory or the timing,” Rep. Kevin Brady, the Texas Republican who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, told reporters.

Brady declined to comment specifically on Ryan’s low- to mid-20 percent range for corporate taxes. “We’re trying to drive those rates as low as we can,” he said.

Not only will tax legislation pass by year end, but it will provide for retroactive tax cuts back to the start of 2017, predicted the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney.

“If you stop to think what the priorities are right now for the administration, No. 1 priority is Houston, No. 2 is Florida, and the No. 3 is the tax reform package,” Mulvaney said on Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto Coast to Coast.”

So “clearing the decks” first on hurricane aid with Trump’s debt limit deal was the right way to proceed, he said.
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About 143 million Americans could be affected by a cyberattack on the credit monitoring company Equifax.

The Atlanta-based company said Thursday the hackers obtained names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses of more than 40 percent of the U.S. population.

“Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017,” the company said in a statement.

The company said credit card numbers were also compromised for some 209,000 U.S. consumers, as were credit dispute accounts for 182,000 people.

Additionally, limited personal information was also compromised for some in Britain and Canada.

Equifax said it doesn’t believe that any consumers from other countries were affected.

The company has established a website to enable consumers to determine if they are affected and will be offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to customers.

Equifax is one the largest credit-reporting companies in the U.S.
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Germany’s BMW is gearing up to mass produce electric cars by 2020 and will to have 12 different models by 2025, it said on Thursday, as traditional manufacturers race to catch up with U.S. electric car pioneer Tesla.

Car buyers shunned electric vehicles because of their high cost and limited operating range until Tesla unveiled the Model S in 2012, a car that cracked the 200 mile (322 km) range barrier on a single charge.

Since then, big advances in battery technology and a global crackdown on pollution in the wake of Volkswagen’s diesel scandal have raised pressure on carmakers to speed up development of zero-emission alternatives.

BMW, which launched the i3 electric car in 2013, said it was now readying its factories to mass produce electric cars by 2020 if demand for battery driven vehicles takes off.

“By 2025, we will offer 25 electrified vehicles — 12 will be fully-electric,” Chief Executive Harald Krueger told journalists in Munich, adding the electric cars would have a range of up to 700 km (435 miles).

It marks a significant foray by a major manufacturer into electrification. BMW, which includes the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands and sold 2.34 million cars last year, announced the move on the day smaller rival Jaguar said it would offer electric or hybrid variants of all its models by 2020.

On Wednesday, Nissan unveiled a new version of its Leaf electric vehicle in its latest move to take on Tesla, the U.S. firm co-founded by Elon Musk that sold 83,922 vehicles last year.

Rolls-Royce

Traditional carmakers have been slow to embrace the electric vehicle market because it remains unprofitable, largely due to the cost of batteries which make up between 30 percent and 50 percent of the cost of an electric vehicle.

A battery pack with 60 kWh capacity and 500 km range costs around $14,000 today, compared with a gasoline engine that costs around $5,000. Add to that the $2,000 for the electric motor and the inverter, and the gap is even wider.

But capacity investments into the battery sector may bring down costs of electric vehicles to a “tipping point” when they reach parity with combustion-engine equivalents some time between 2020 and 2030, according to analysts at Barclays.

With cities threatening to ban combustion-engine vehicles or to tax diesel cars more heavily, the total cost of ownership of electric cars could drop below their combustion-engine equivalents, and Europe could become a 100 percent pure battery electric vehicle market by 2035, according to analysts at ING.

The Frankfurt motor show, starting next week, will be used by BMW to unveil a new four-door electric car positioned between the i3 city car and the i8 hybrid sportscar, Krueger said.

“We will be increasing the share of electrified models across all brands and model series. And, yes, that also includes the Rolls-Royce brand and BMW M vehicles,” he said.

German rivals will also be showing electric cars, with Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz brand unveiling the EQA, a concept mass market electric car, Volkswagen taking the wraps off the ID Crozz.

Aside from vehicle cost, a key obstacle to making electric cars popular is the amount of time it takes to recharge, and a lack of charging stations.

London needs to spend 10 billion euros ($12 billion) to get charging infrastructure to a level where retail buyers can practically own an electric car, consultancy AlixPartners has said. Almost none of that spending has been earmarked so far.

($1 = 0.8331 euros)
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A Belgium-based start-up is on its way to making the world a bit sunnier, by printing the first 3-D sunglasses out of recycled plastic.

The Antwerp-based company w.r.yuma – pronounced “We are Yuma” and named after one of the sunniest places on earth – began a month-long online crowd-sourcing campaign on Kickstarter on Wednesday.

After two years of prototyping and testing different materials, it promises to transform old car dashboards, soda bottles, fridges and other plastic waste into different colored shades.

“It’s the icon of cool, really, and when you wear, literally you are looking to the world through a different set of lenses, and that’s exactly the message that I want to bring,” Founder Sebastiaan de Neubourg said of the company, named after Yuma, Arizona.

“I want to inspire people to have, quite literally, another look at waste.”

The plastic waste is sourced from the Netherlands and Belgium’s Flemish region. The waste is fed into the 3-D printer, melted to form thin strands of plastic wire and layered together to construct the frames.

These are then assembled by hand and fitted with Italian made Mazzuchelli lenses.

Marketing schemes include setting up stands at music festivals to transform plastic drinking cups into sunglasses on the spot.

The company is also making a limited number of soda white sunglasses made from 90 percent recycled PET plastic from soda bottles.

It is also inviting would-be clients to return the glasses once they are done with them to be turned into a new pair of glasses.

“The idea … [is] also to make sure that the materials eventually come back to us in a closed loop system,” de Neubourg said.

With five unique designs and three colours of lenses to choose from, de Neubourg is trying to make sustainable recycling fashionable and useful. The sunglasses will be shipped to customers in January 2018.

“I think that sustainability should become mainstream,” said de Neubourg, a former mechanical engineer for a sustainability consultancy.

“We’re not going to solve the plastic waste problem by just taking this plastic and putting it in sunglasses, but it’s a first step. … I want to touch a lot of people with that message.”
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