Hawking's thesis crashed Cambridge's website (audio)

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY/STEPHEN HAWKING

Image captionStephen Hawking's handwriting can be seen on the document

Stephen Hawking

• Born 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England
• Earned place at Oxford University to read natural science in 1959, before studying for his PhD at Cambridge
• By 1963, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live
• Outlined his theory that Black holes emit "Hawking radiation", in 1974
• Published his book A Brief History of Time in 1988, which has sold more than 10 million copies
• His life story was the subject of the 2014 film The Theory of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne

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Argentina's Election Results

President Mauricio Macri of Argentina sharing a selfie with a supporter after casting his vote in midterm elections in Buenos Aires on Sunday. CreditNatacha Pisarenko/Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES — The governing coalition of President Mauricio Macri of Argentina won decisive victories in key districts across the country in midterm elections Sunday that were widely seen as a referendum on the center-right leader’s first two years in office.

The election sweep strengthens Mr. Macri’s ability to carry out economic changes he says are necessary to improve the country’s economy, and the results automatically position him as a candidate for re-election in 2019.

In the closely watched province of Buenos Aires, where the Senate candidate aligned with Mr. Macri, Esteban Bullrich, faced off against Mr. Macri’s predecessor and political rival, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,  the governing coalition won by four percentage points.

“Today, the winner wasn’t a group of candidates nor a party. Today the winner was the certainty that we can change history forever,” a beaming Mr. Macri said at his campaign headquarters before he danced on stage alongside his wife, Juliana Awada, and key members of his coalition.

In Senate contests, the party with the most votes wins two seats, while the runner-up gets one, meaning that Mrs. Kirchner will get a seat in the chamber anyway. On Sunday night, she declared herself the leader of the opposition in attacking the Macri government.

 “We believe in the need to unite all the different political forces that believe this political and social model of austerity will only cause pain to most of the population,” Mrs. Kirchner said.

The center-left Mrs. Kirchner has said Mr. Macri’s policies would hurt the poor and middle class.

In Sunday’s elections, Argentines voted on nearly half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, and for a third of those in the upper house, the Senate.

Although no party will get an outright majority in the legislature, the strong performance of Mr. Macri’s coalition means it will pick up several seats in both chambers.

Final del formulario

In the city of Buenos Aires, long Mr. Macri’s stronghold, his coalition’s ticket received more than half the vote.

“This victory is a huge recognition and a huge dose of support for the change that President Mauricio Macri is leading,” said the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

This results showed Mr. Macri’s young coalition gaining support across the country, including in some surprising corners that have long been under the sway of Peronism, the dominant force in Argentine politics for decades.

In the northern province of Salta, the charismatic Peronist governor, Juan Manuel Urtubey, who had been seen as a possible successor for Mrs. Kirchner to lead the opposition, lost to Mr. Macri’s coalition.

Mr. Marci’s allies seized on the results as evidence of a changing political climate in Argentina.

“We are the generation that will change, for real and forever, this province,” said a visibly emotional María Eugenia Vidal, who shocked pundits in 2015 when she was elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires. She has since emerged as one of the most popular politicians in the country.

From The New York Times  

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USA Medical Students in Limbo

Zarna Patel  a third year student who was brought to the U.S. from India as a 3-year old without any legal documents

Medical student Alejandra Duran Arreola dreams of becoming an OB-GYN in her home state of Georgia, where there’s a shortage of doctors and one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the U.S.

But the 26-year-old Mexican immigrant’s goal is now trapped in the debate over a program protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants like her from deportation. Whether she becomes a doctor depends on whether Congress finds an alternative to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Donald Trump phased out last month.

Arreola, who was brought to the U.S. illegally at age 14, is among about 100 medical students nationwide who are enrolled in DACA, and many have become a powerful voice in the immigration debate. Their stories have resonated with leaders in Washington. Having excelled in school and gained admission into competitive medical schools, they're on the verge of starting residencies to treat patients, a move experts say could help address the nation’s worsening doctor shortage.

“It's mostly a tragedy of wasted talent and resources,” said Mark Kuczewski, who leads the medical education department at Loyola University’s medical school, where Arreola is in her second year. “Our country will have said, ‘You cannot go treat patients.’”

The Chicago-area medical school was the first to openly accept DACA students and has the largest concentration nationwide at 32. California and New York also have significant populations, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

DACA gives protection to about 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and who otherwise would lack legal permission to be in the country. The immigrants must meet strict criteria to receive two-year permits that shield them from deportation and allow them to work.

Then-President Barack Obama created DACA in 2012. Critics call it an illegal amnesty program that is taking jobs from U.S. citizens. In rescinding it last month, Trump gave lawmakers until March to come up with a replacement.

Public support for DACA is wide. A recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that just 1 in 5 Americans want to deport DACA recipients.

Medical students such as Arreola are trying to shape the debate, and they have the backing of influential medical groups, including the American Medical Association.

Arreola took a break from her studies last month to travel to Washington with fellow Loyola medical student and DACA recipient Cesar Montolongo Hernandez to talk to stakeholders. In their meetings with lawmakers, they framed the program as a medical necessity but also want a solution for others with DACA. 

A 2017 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a shortfall of between about 35,000 and 83,000 doctors in 2025. That shortage is expected to increase with population growth and aging.

Hernandez, a 28-year-old from Mexico simultaneously pursuing a Ph.D., wants to focus his research on early detection of diseases. His work permit expires next September, and he's worried he won't qualify for scientific research funding without the program.

“I've shown I deserve to be here,'' said Hernandez, who met with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat who’s called for Congress to quickly pass a replacement for DACA.

For Arreola it's about returning to the state she's called home since she was 14 and giving back to areas in need of doctors.

“My family is from there; I know those people,” Arreola said. “Those are the people that inspired to really give this a push.”

Among those Arreola met with were policy staff for Georgia Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, who believes the Obama program was “an overreach of executive power” but also wants Congress to write a plan to protect DACA recipients.

Medical school administrators say the immigrant students stand out even among their accomplished peers: They're often bilingual and bicultural, have overcome adversity and are more likely to work with underserved populations or rural areas.

“They come with a cultural competency for how to best treat the individuals from their background, whether immigrants or different races and ethnicities,” said Matthew Shick, a government relations director for the Association of American Medical Colleges. “That gets translated over to their peers in education and training.”

Zarna Patel, 24, is a third-year student at Loyola who was brought to the U.S. from India as a 3-year-old without any legal documents. Her DACA permit expires in January, and she's trying to renew it so she can continue medical school rotations that require clinical work. If she’s able to work in U.S., Patel will work in disadvantaged areas of Illinois for four years, part of her agreement to get school loans.

“Growing up, I didn't have insurance,” she said. “I knew what that felt like, being locked out of the whole system.”

For others, there's added worry of being stuck with debt they can’t repay.

Marcela Zhou, who was born in Mexico after her family moved there from China, is in her third year at the University of California at Los Angeles’ medical school. She wants to work in public health.

“Can I even afford to finish medical school?” said Zhou, who was 12 when she came to the U.S. on a visitor visa that eventually expired. “It's sort of hard sometimes to keep going.”

Source: VOA News