Public opinion studies suggest that Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is likely
to win Sunday's election.
The candidate believes he knows of a resource that may help his nation's economy: niobium.
Niobium is a metal that is added to steel to make it stronger and lighter.
It is in high demand by carmakers, space travel companies and in many other industries.
Brazil produces about 85 percent of the world's supply of niobium.
Bolsonaro wants to keep Brazil's market position.
In 2016, Bolsonaro made a 20-minute YouTube video about the value of the metal and how
it could be a large part of Brazil's economy in the future.
Brazil's military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, wanted to protect natural
resources, such as oil and minerals, from foreign companies.
Bolsonaro is a former military officer.
He has long supported the idea of a military-led government.
But he has said he supports free-market economics as a presidential candidate.
The 2016 video was recorded at a mine owned by a privately-held Brazilian company known
as CBMM.
Bolsonaro praised CBMM for its jobs that pay well, its private pre-school and other support
the company provides for its workers.
He added that Brazil would be better off if it supported CBMM's method of development
and centered its efforts on "future applications" of niobium.
The same year, the Chinese company China Molybdenum Co. Ltd., or COMC, bought a niobium mine 200
kilometers away from CBMM.
Bolsonaro is believed to be the first presidential candidate to make niobium a campaign issue.
Speaking on national television in August, he criticized the CMOC purchase.
He said, "It's something only we have, we should invest in technology and research
to use this mineral.
Instead we sell and deliver the mine to them."
Mining experts say Bolsonaro's niobium fears are exaggerated.
Hugo Nadler is a former CBMM executive.
He says CMOC's Brazil mine makes up just 10 percent of the global market.
That leaves about 75 percent to Brazil's CBMM.
In a statement, CBMM told Reuters it is the only company that sells in all parts of the
niobium market.
That includes products used to make airplanes and superconductors.
CBMM said there is a lot of potential for expanding the use of niobium in applications
such as car batteries and other products.
Nadler said, if the niobium market grows, it is unlikely to have much of an effect on
an economy the size of Brazil's.
"Mining makes up 5 percent of GDP, if you take the portion that is niobium, it's nothing,"
he said.
GDP is the most used measure of all the goods and services produced within a country.
But Bolsonaro remains a believer.
In his video, he said, "[Niobium] can give [Brazil] economic independence."
I'm Jonathan Evans.
U.S. federal agents have arrested a man in Florida in connection with a series of mail
bombs sent to critics of President Donald Trump, including Democratic Party politicians.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions identified the man as Cesar Sayoc of Florida.
He said Sayoc was charged with five crimes, including mailing explosives and threatening
a former U.S. president.
Sessions made the announcement on Friday in Washington.
Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said officials have
recovered 13 of the mail bombs.
He said the pipe bombs were "not hoax devices" and could cause explosions.
Wray added that investigators had matched fingerprints and genetic material on the bombs
to Sayoc.
Sayoc was arrested at an automobile parts store in the city of Plantation.
He lives in Aventura, a town nearby.
Court records show Sayoc has had past arrests for making a bomb threat, theft and other
wrongdoing.
Officials were seen on television examining a white automobile at the site of the arrest.
The vehicle's windows displayed images of Trump, American flags and what appeared to
be small signs of the Republican National Committee and CNN.
The development came as officials found and safely removed at least 13 pipe bombs at sites
across the country.
Several mailings were addressed to Democratic Party politicians, including former President
Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Several of the packages were sent through a U.S. mail office in a town less than 10
miles from where Sayoc lived.
The return address for the mailings was that of Democratic lawmaker Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
None of the devices exploded and no one was injured.
The first package was found Monday at the home of billionaire businessman George Soros,
a long-time Democrat and Trump critic.
On Wednesday, the Secret Service announced that they stopped two bombs in the process
of being sent to Hillary Clinton and former President Obama.
On the same day, officials removed a mail bomb in CNN television offices addressed to
John Brennan, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama.
He also is a fierce critic of President Trump.
Two other mail bombs were sent to Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat who has
clashed with the president.
One addressed to Eric Holder, who served as Attorney General under Obama, was sent return
mail to the office of Wasserman Schultz.
She is a former chair of the Democratic National Committee.
A day later, investigators found three more pipe bombs: one sent to actor Robert De Niro
and two to former Vice President Biden.
Both are major critics of Trump.
On Friday, officials said they discovered three more mail bombs addressed to Senator
Cory Booker of New Jersey, Senator Kamala Harris of California, and former National
Intelligence Director James Clapper.
The one to Clapper was addressed to him at CNN's New York office.
Clapper told CNN that he was not surprised he was targeted and that he considered the
actions an act of terrorism.
Earlier on Friday, Trump complained on Twitter that he was being blamed for the mail bombs.
He added, "Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now
this "Bomb" stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics.
Republicans, go out and vote!"
The U.S. holds elections November 6 that could bring a change of political party control
to Congress.
I'm Caty Weaver.
A work of art created by artificial intelligence (AI) has been sold by a major art seller for
the first time.
The print sold for an unexpectedly large amount of $432,500.
The artwork was bought during an auction Thursday at Christie's, an art house, in New York
City.
Officials had predicted it would sell for between $7,000 and $10,000.
The buyer was not immediately announced.
In a website post, Christie's said the AI-created work was the first ever sold by a major auction
house.
It praised the sale as a signal of "the arrival of AI art on the world auction stage."
The artwork, called "Portrait of Edmond Belamy," was made by a machine learningalgorithm.
The AI system was created by members of an art collective called Obvious in Paris, France.
It shows the portrait of a man, looking similar to subjects shown in historical paintings.
A description by Christie's noted that since the man appears to be wearing dark clothes
with a white collar, he is possibly a "man of the church."
Christie's described some differences of the AI-created work compared to other art
it sells.
For example, it said some parts of the face were not as clearly defined as those painted
by artists.
Also, some parts of the print were left empty.
However, Christie's sale organizer Richard Lloyd said the piece was very similar to many
others sold over many years.
While the piece was not painted by a major artist, "it is exactly the kind of artwork
we have been selling for 250 years," Lloyd said in a statement.
Three creators from the art group Obvious cooperated on the process that made the print.
First, they put a collection of 15,000 portraits into a machine learning system.
The portraits were painted by artists from the time period between the 14th and 20thcenturies.
Then a tool called the "Generator" made a new image based on the information entered
into the system.
After that, another tool, called a "Discriminator," attempted to find differences between the
human-made image and one created by the Generator.
"The aim is to fool the Discriminator into thinking that the new images are real-life
portraits.
Then we have a result," Obvious collective member Hugo Caselles-Dupré said in a statement.
Obvious has created a series of AI-produced art works.
Caselles-Dupré said the team has experimented with other kinds of historical paintings.
These included subjects from nature to paintings of the whole human body.
But the results always came out better with portraits.
This, he said, supports the idea that AI algorithms are not just good at copying other works,
but can actually "emulate creativity."
Christie's admits that artwork created by machine learning methods leaves open questions
about who or what should get credit for creating the pieces.
"If the artist is the one that creates the image, then that would be the machine,"
Caselles-Dupré said.
'If the artist is the one that holds the vision and wants to share the message, then
that would be us."
Ahmed Elgammal is director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Rutgers University
in New Jersey.
He told Christie's he believes ownership of AI artworkneeds to be shared because humans
and machines both take part in the process.
"You could say that, at this point, it is a collaboration between two artists - one
human, one a machine.
And that leads me to think about the future, in which AI will become a new medium for art."
In the case of the Portrait of Edmond Belamy, only one "artist" appears at the bottom,
where the signed name usually appears.
This print does not contain a human's name.
Instead, it lists part of the actual machine learning algorithm that created it.
I'm Bryan Lynn.
In West Africa, dancing is an important part of many family traditions.
An ocean away, in the United States, a German-Jamaican-American family has made performing those dances part
of their tradition.
Their family name is Von Hendricks.
Six years ago, two sisters and their brother formed an African dance company.
They named it "Keur Khaleyi," which means the House of Children in Wolof, a language
in Senegal.
The group is based in the eastern U.S. city of Baltimore, Maryland.
Its members perform in local and national festivals.
They also recently set up a school to teach dance moves to others.
At first, the dance company was made up of two dancers, sisters Jihan and Ayana, and
their brother Shakai, who played the drum.
Soon, two younger family members joined them.
Later, a sister-in-law joined the group.
The family performs dances from Senegal, Mali and Guinea, but has no family ties to those
places.
My grandfather was German and my grandmother was from Jamaica, Jihan Von Hendricks told
VOA.
She said her interest in dance started when she was a child.
Her parents made her attend an African dance school.
She learned a few dance moves, then taught her brother and sister.
In time, the West African culture became part of who they were.
"My heart really is with Senegal," Jihan added.
There, she said, people dance for all kinds of reasons: to play with children; to honor
a woman before she is married; to mark the end of the harvest.
Her brother, Shakai, says his heart is also with Senegal.
He loves African drumming.
"Ever since I saw it when I was 10, I was hooked," he remembers.
Performing together strengthens family ties and fuels creativity.
Shakai added "Our parents knew what they were doing.
They put us into this at a young age to keep us together."
The Von Hendricks family uses the dance company to keep generations close.
Jihan's daughter, 13 year old Diallo, dances and plays the drum with the group.
She started dancing when she was 18 months old.
She says it helped her develop social skills and make friends.
She likes everything about performing: the music, the costumes and the feeling of accomplishment.
Dancing is "my happy place," Diallo said.
The Von Hendricks share their joy and knowledge with their neighbors in Baltimore.
One of their students is a 71-year old hair stylist, Shakoorah El Sharief.
She learned many African dances in the past, but says she likes West African dances best.
"I love everything about it," she says.
"It's like my medicine."
The Von Hendricks' dream is to teach more members of their community and family about
West African dances and drumming.
I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
The English word "foot" has more than one meaning.
In the United States, one meaning is a unit of measurement equal to 12 inches, or .3 meters.
We use feet to measure height, length and short distances.
Today's question is about when to use the plural or singular form.
It comes from Wéifēng of China.
I am often confused with the choice between "foot" and "feet."
How do I choose the right word in a particular situation?
– Wéifēng, China Hello, Wéifēng, that is a great question!
For the unit of measurement, we often use the singular form even when we are talking
about more than one foot.
This can make things confusing for learners.
Luckily, there are three easy rules that can help:
1.
When used as an adjective, we use "foot," which is the singular form.
Let's hear some examples: The children climbed a 15-foot tree.
Here, the adjective is "15-foot" and it describes the noun "tree."
Here's another: I have a 10-foot ladder that you can borrow.
Here, the adjective "10-foot" describes the noun "ladder."
Notice that both 15-foot and 10-foot come before the noun and there is a hyphenbetween
the words.
A hyphen is needed when a unit of measurement acts as an adjective.
2.
When used as a noun, we use the plural form: feet.
Take a listen: The tree is 15 feet high.
Here, the noun is "15 feet" and the adjective is "high."
The ladder is 10 feet tall.
Here, the noun is "10 feet" and the adjective is "tall."
Notice that the noun form does not use a hyphen.
These two rules also apply to many other units of measurement.
3.
Lastly, we usually use the singular form when talking about a person's height.
This is an exception to the plural noun rule in #2.
Here's an example: I am 5-foot-6.
This is a common way of saying, "I am 5 feet 6 inches tall."
However, when the person's height is an exact number of feet --without inches -- we
use the plural form.
I am 5 feet.
He is 6 feet tall.
The addition of "tall" is not required in everyday conversation.
For all other meanings of "foot," we use "foot" for the singular form and "feet"
for the plural.
And that's Ask a Teacher.
I'm Alice Bryant.
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