Category: General

VIENTIANE, Laos’ inflation rate climbed to 12.8 percent in May, on a yearly basis, the highest in 18 years, according to the latest report from the Lao Statistics Bureau.

The fuel crisis, with petrol stations across the country running dry, and the continuing depreciation of the kip, are among the main factors driving inflation.

The surge in the consumer price index survey, which measures the prices of various goods, was the largest after the year-on-year inflation rate hit 12.9 percent in Feb, 2004.

The price of consumer goods jumped faster than expected over the past eight months, with the high cost of fuel, food and other essentials placing a great burden on ordinary people.

In May, 2022, the price of fuel surged by 92.6 percent year-on-year, affecting both the cost of production and the cost of living.

The price of gas, gold and steel jumped by 39.7 percent, 48.5 percent and 68 percent, year-on-year, respectively.

In Jan, 2022, the year-on-year inflation rate was recorded at 6.25 percent, rising to 7.31 percent in Feb, 8.54 percent in Mar, and 9.86 percent in Apr. According to the Lao Statistics Bureau, costs in the communications and transport category rose by 6.2 percent, month-on-month, and 34.5 percent, year-on-year, in May.

In the meantime, prices in the goods and service category surged by 3.9 percent, month-on-month, and 20.6 percent, year-on-year. The cost of medical care and medicines increased by 1.8 percent, month-on-month and 13 percent, year-on-year.

The cost of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 3.2 percent, month-on-month and 8.2 percent, year-on-year.

Meanwhile, the cost of clothing and footwear rose by 2.2 percent, month-on-month and 11.7 percent, year-on-year, according to the report.

Source: Nam News Network

Revenues, generated by over 463,900 domestic visitors, have reached 52 million US dollars in the first four months of the year.

Each visitor spent two and half days and 45 US dollars per day, according to Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism Suansavanh Viyaketh.

Since the reopening of the country on May 9, more than 55,700 foreign tourists have visited the Lao PDR, as the number of people leaving the country in the first four months has reached 56,325.

“We could say that more foreign visitors from the region and other parts of the world have learned about the opening of the Lao PDR,” said Minister Suansavanh.

She expects that Laos will witness a gradual increase in the number of foreign visitors from this month onward.

Source: Lao News Agency

U.S. health officials are working to expand capabilities to test for monkeypox beyond a narrow group of public health labs, heeding calls from infectious-disease experts who say testing for the virus needs to become part of routine care.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a conference call Friday that her agency was working with the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to expand testing capacity to include commercial laboratories.

The CDC did not respond to a request for details.

Currently, preliminary monkeypox testing in the United States is done through a network of 69 public health laboratories, which send results to the CDC for confirmation.

There have been 45 confirmed monkeypox cases in 16 U.S. states so far, with the bulk of the current outbreak outside Africa, where the virus is endemic, occurring in Europe.

The United States has conducted roughly 300 monkeypox tests. While testing for the virus rose by 45% last week, that needs to increase dramatically if the outbreak is to be contained, infectious-disease experts said.

“There is not enough testing going on now for monkeypox in the United States,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

“The commercial labs are used to working with health care providers from across the country, moving samples around quickly, reporting results quickly in a way that providers understand and expect,” he said.

For commercial labs to do this testing, they need access to monkeypox samples to validate their tests, regulatory guidance from the FDA and commercial billing codes set by CMS, said Inglesby, a former senior White House adviser for the COVID-19 response.

“My sense is all of that is moving forward,” he said.

In a detailed report of 17 cases published by the CDC last week, most patients identified as men who have sex with men.

In many of the cases, the monkeypox rash started in the genital area, which could lead some doctors to misdiagnose it as a more common sexually transmitted infection such as herpes or syphilis.

“Monkeypox symptoms are mimicking other sexually transmitted infections,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of Sexually Transmitted Disease Directors. “We need to mount a bigger national response.”

The Association of Public Health Laboratories said it has plenty of capacity now but will work to expand testing to commercial labs should the outbreak continue to grow.

Source: Voice of America

Wall Street’s realization that inflation got worse last month, not better as hoped, sent markets reeling on Friday.

The S&P 500 sank 2.9% to lock in its ninth losing week in the last 10, and tumbling bond prices sent Treasury yields to their highest levels in years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 2.7%, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 3.5%.

Wall Street came into Friday hoping a highly anticipated report would show the worst inflation in generations slowed a touch last month and passed its peak. Instead, the U.S. government said inflation accelerated to 8.6% in May from 8.3% a month before.

The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates and making other moves in order to slow the economy, in hopes of forcing down inflation. Wall Street took Friday’s reading to mean the Fed’s foot will remain firmly on the brake for the economy, dashing hopes that it may ease up later this year.

“Inflation is hot, hot, hot,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments. “Basically, everything was up.”

The growing expectation is for the Fed to raise its key short-term interest rate by half a percentage point at each of its next three meetings, beginning next week. That third one in September had been up for debate among investors in recent weeks. Only once since 2000 has the Fed raised rates that much.

“No relief is in sight, but a lot can change between now and September,” Jacobsen said. “Nobody knows what the Fed will do in a few months, including the Fed.”

The nation’s high inflation, plus the expectations for an aggressive Fed, have sent the two-year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2008 and the S&P 500 down 18.7% from its record set in early January. The worst pain has hit high-growth technology stocks, cryptocurrencies and other particularly big winners of the pandemic’s earlier days. But the damage is broadening as retailers and others are warning about upcoming profits.

The S&P 500 fell 116.96 points to 3,900.86. Combined with its losses from Thursday, when investors were rushing to lock in final trades before the inflation report, it was the worst two-day stretch for Wall Street’s benchmark in nearly two years.

The Dow lost 880.00 points to 31,392.79, and the Nasdaq tumbled 414.20 to 11,340.02.

Stock prices rise and fall on two things, essentially: how much cash a company produces and how much an investor is willing to pay for it. The Fed’s moves on interest rates heavily influence that second part.

Since early in the pandemic, record-low interest rates engineered by the Fed and other central banks helped keep investment prices high. Now “easy mode” for investors is abruptly and forcefully being switched off.

Not only that, too-aggressive rate hikes by the Fed could ultimately force the economy into a recession. Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive, which drags on spending and investments by households and companies.

One of the fears among investors is that food and fuel costs may keep surging, regardless of how aggressively the Fed moves.

“The fact is that the Fed has very little ability to control food prices,” Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income, said in a statement. He pointed instead to mismatches in supplies and demand, higher costs for energy and wages and the crisis in Ukraine, which is a major breadbasket for the world.

That raises the threat that central banks will overly tighten the brakes on the economy, as they push against a string “and essentially fall into a damaging policy mistake,” Rieder said.

The economy has already shown some mixed signals, and a report on Friday indicated consumer sentiment is worsening more than economists expected. Much of the souring in the University of Michigan’s preliminary reading was because of higher gasoline prices.

That adds to several recent profit warnings from retailers indicating U.S. shoppers are slowing or at least changing their spending because of inflation. Such spending is the heart of the U.S. economy.

Source: Voice of America

NASA is officially joining the hunt for UFOs. The space agency on Thursday announced a new study that will recruit leading scientists to examine unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — a subject that has long fascinated the public and recently gained high-level attention from Congress.

The project will begin early this fall and last around nine months, focusing on identifying available data, how to gather more data in the future, and how NASA can analyze the findings to try to move the needle on scientific understanding.

“Over the decades, NASA has answered the call to tackle some of the most perplexing mysteries we know of, and this is no different,” Daniel Evans, the NASA scientist responsible for coordinating the study, told reporters on a call.

While NASA probes and rovers scour the solar system for the fossils of ancient microbes, and its astronomers look for so-called “technosignatures” on distant planets for signs of intelligent civilizations, this is the first time the agency will investigate unexplained phenomena in Earth’s skies.

With its access to a broad range of scientific tools, NASA is well placed not just to demystify UFOs and deepen scientific understanding, but also to find ways to mitigate the phenomena, a key part of its mission to ensure the safety of aircraft, said the agency’s chief scientist, Thomas Zurbuchen.

The announcement comes as the field of UFO study, once a poorly-regarded research backwater, is gaining more mainstream traction.

Last month, Congress held a public hearing on UFOs, while a U.S. intelligence report last year cataloged 144 sightings that it said could not be explained. It did not rule out alien origin.

NASA’s study will be independent of the Pentagon’s Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, but the space agency “has coordinated widely across the government regarding how to apply the tools of science,” it said in a statement.

A paucity in the number of UFO observations make it difficult at present for the scientific community to draw conclusions.

Therefore, said astrophysicist David Spergel, who will lead the research, the first task of the group would be identifying the extent of data out there from sources including civilians, government, nonprofits and companies.

Another overarching goal of NASA is to deepen credibility in this field of study.

“There is a great deal of stigma associated with UAP among our naval aviators and aviation community,” said Evans.

“One of the things we tangentially hope to do as part of this study, simply by talking about it in the open, is to help to remove some of the stigma associated with it, and that will yield obviously, increased access to data, more reports, more sightings.”

Source: Voice of America

Teslas with partially automated driving systems are a step closer to being recalled after the U.S. elevated its investigation into a series of crashes with parked emergency vehicles or trucks with warning signs.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that it is upgrading the Tesla probe to an engineering analysis, a sign of increased scrutiny of the electric vehicle maker and automated systems that perform at least some driving tasks.

Documents posted Thursday by the agency raise some serious issues about Tesla’s Autopilot system. The agency found that it’s being used in areas where its capabilities are limited, and that many drivers aren’t taking action to avoid crashes despite warnings from the vehicle.

The probe now covers 830,000 vehicles, almost everything that the Austin, Texas, carmaker has sold in the U.S. since the start of the 2014 model year.

NHTSA reported that it has found 16 crashes into emergency vehicles and trucks with warning signs, causing 15 injuries and one death.

Investigators will evaluate additional data, vehicle performance and “explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks, undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision,” the agency said.

A message was left Thursday seeking comment from Tesla.

tesla

An engineering analysis is the final stage of an investigation, and in most cases the NHTSA decides within a year if there should be a recall or if the probe should be closed.

In the majority of the 16 crashes, the Teslas issued collision alerts to the drivers just before impact. Automatic emergency braking intervened to at least slow the cars in about half the cases. On average, Autopilot gave up control of the Teslas less than a second before the crash, NHTSA said in documents detailing the probe.

NHTSA also said it’s looking into crashes involving similar patterns that did not include emergency vehicles or trucks with warning signs.

The agency found that in many cases, drivers had their hands on the steering wheel as Tesla requires, yet they failed to take action to avoid a crash. This suggests that drivers are complying with Tesla’s monitoring system, but it doesn’t make sure they’re paying attention.

In crashes were video is available, drivers should have seen first responder vehicles an average of eight seconds before impact, the agency wrote.

The agency will have to decide if there is a safety defect with Autopilot before pursuing a recall.

Investigators also wrote that a driver’s use or misuse of the driver monitoring system “or operation of a vehicle in an unintended manner does not necessarily preclude a system defect.”

The agency document all but says Tesla’s method of making sure drivers pay attention isn’t good enough, and that it’s defective and should be recalled, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies automated vehicles.

“It is really easy to have a hand on the wheel and be completely disengaged from driving,” he said. Monitoring a driver’s hand position is not effective because it only measures a physical position. “It is not concerned with their mental capacity, their engagement or their ability to respond,” he said.

Similar systems from other companies such as General Motors’ Super Cruise use infrared cameras to watch a driver’s eyes or face to ensure they’re looking forward. But even these may still allow a driver to zone out, Walker Smith said.

In total, the agency looked at 191 crashes but removed 85 of them because other drivers were involved or there wasn’t enough information to do a definite assessment. Of the remaining 106, the main cause of about one-quarter of the crashes appears to be running Autopilot in areas where it has limitations, or in conditions that can interfere with its operations.

Other automakers limit use of their systems to limited-access divided highways.

In a statement, NHTSA said there aren’t any vehicles available for purchase today that can drive themselves.

“Every available vehicle requires the human driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws hold the human driver responsible for operation of their vehicles,” the agency said.

Driver-assist systems can help avoid crashes but must be used correctly and responsibly, the agency said.

Tesla did an online update of Autopilot software last fall to improve camera detection of emergency vehicle lights in low-light conditions. NHTSA has asked why the company didn’t do a recall.

NHTSA began its inquiry in August of last year after a string of crashes since 2018 in which Teslas using the company’s Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control systems hit vehicles at scenes where first responders used flashing lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, or cones warning of hazards.

Source: Voice of America