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Other studies have found similar results with Hib vaccines in countries including Bangladesh, Kenya and Gambia. But the executive secretary of the alliance, Julian Lob-Levyt, says this is the first time the group has seen rates drop to zero.
Uganda chose to use an injection that contains vaccines against five diseases: Hib as well as diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and hepatitis B.
In November, the GAVI board approved additional financing to pay for Hib vaccine in a total of forty-four countries.
And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. For more health news, and for transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.
TACOMA, Wash. – A Washington state blood center is offering donors a deal: Give a pint of blood, get a pint of beer.
Cascade Regional Blood Services in Tacoma says its "Give blood, get beer" promotion has worked so well that it's being expanded.
The News Tribune of Tacoma reported Monday that donors who are at least 21 years old are given a coupon for a free pint of beer.
Participating pubs and restaurants must wait at least four hours after the blood drive ends before donors can collect their free pint.
Cascade's director of donor resources Dan Schmitt says it's a fun way to get more donors, and it's good for the participating businesses as well.
RuthAnne has always wanted to be true to herself.
Dublin born and Los Angeles based, the songwriter has come a long way, taking her music every step of the journey.
At times, though, she needs to look back, to re-assess. New song 'The Vow' is part of this, with RuthAnne re-connecting with her Irish roots.
She explains: "The verses give you a folky Irish Celtic vibe and the chorus is super soulful. Being able to fuse both in a song is something I’ve been trying to do for age and feel like I finally got it right with 'The Vow'..."
The song itself comes from a very personal place, with RuthAnne drawing on forbidden love, friendship, and hidden feelings.
"I wrote it after talking to a best friend of mine who I secretly had feelings for… he is an artist too and talking to him feels like you’re in a romance novel," she says. "He would say stuff like ‘that’ll be us singing in pubs together when we’re 80’ and I was really struggling to write a real love song."
"After that conversation, I woke up at 5am and wrote a lot of the lyrics down. There was no title yet, just lyrics. I brought it to my producers the next day and we wrote it very quickly then it just took on a life of its own. I named it 'The Vow' because to me it felt like a prayer to someone a blessing and something you’d say to someone at a wedding."
Stirring, powerful pop music, the brooding, soulful vocal has a plaintive, fragile edge, with RuthAnne opening up new aspects of herself with the performance.
A growing number of businesses are tracking social-media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential public-relations problems.
Ford Motor Co. (F), PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) and Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV), among others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They’re also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media.
One morning last December, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, saw Twitter messages alerting him to online comments criticizing Ford for allegedly trying to shut a fan Web site, TheRangerStation.com. The dispute prompted about 1,000 email complaints to Ford overnight.
After an excellent start, Manchester United were undone twice in four minutes by Messi, who first nicked the ball off the careless Ashley Young and then watched as a weak shot from distance squirmed underneath David de Gea.
A dizzying opening spell, in which Marcus Rashford had hit the crossbar, was long-forgotten, even if it could offer Barca's next opponents some encouragement.
Liverpool, who take a 2-0 lead to Porto on Wednesday, are now the most likely obstacle between them and their first Champions League final since they last won this tournament in 2015. Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane might feel emboldened.
"We said all along this was not going to change overnight," United's coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said.
"In the next few years it is going to be a massive effort to get to the level of Barcelona and these sorts of teams."
Around an hour before kick-off, Alex Ferguson was on the side of the pitch, shaking hands with Ryan Giggs and sharing words with Solskjaer, the scorer of the winning goal against Munich here 20 years ago.
Both could have been avoided, even if Young's turn on the edge of his own box was punished in devastating fashion. Young lunged in to atone for his mistake but Messi skipped away from him, poked it through Fred's legs and then whipped the ball into the corner.
The second was simpler. Fred and Scott McTominay closed in on Coutinho and the ball spilled out to Messi, whose dribbling shot with his right foot should have drawn a routine save. Instead, De Gea let it squirm under his body for 2-0.
Drake pictured wearing Barça jersey, Today is Barcelona vs Man Utd, UCL 2nd leg fixture.
Fred: I can't see the ball.
Jones: stay back this is big boys thing.
Smalling: I can see the ball Fred.
Them: Messi Won't survive in EPL.
Them: EPL teams are the best.
College Station, The Governor’s Division of Emergency Management State Operations Center has activated the Texas Forest Service Lone Star State Incident Management Team (LSSIMT) in response to the tropical storm anticipated to reach the Texas coast Tuesday morning as a hurricane.
The LSSIMT was mobilized today to the Texas Forest Service headquarters in College Station, TX with the responsibility of support and possible evacuation of the University of Texas Medical Branch on Galveston Island, and the distribution of basic commodities such as food, water and ice throughout the hurricane-impacted area.
The addition of the LSSIMT brings the total number of state IMT’s to five for Tropical Storm Edouard response. Four TFS-led Regional All-Hazard Incident Management teams have mobilized and will work in a coordinated effort with the LSSIMT.
which are part of the National Incident Management System used to organize and direct the safe response to disaster.
A man with a gun tried to rob a leasing office Wednesday morning in southwest suburban Tinley Park.
At 11:09 a.m., the man entered the apartment complex’s leasing office in the 15900 block of Centerway Walk and pointed a handgun at an employee before demanding money, according to Tinley Park police.
The employee told the man she didn’t have any money and advised him to leave because there were many workers and cameras in the building, police said. He walked away.
The suspect was described as black man, about 20 years old, 6-foot-tall and 160 pounds, police said. He was wearing a black puffy jacket with fur trim and dark jeans.
Anyone with information was asked to call police at (708) 444-5300.
World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma brought his Bach Project to the sister cities of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, on Saturday. Laredo's "Day of Action" featured performances in both cities to celebrate the relationship between the two communities.
Ma played the opening notes of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello" in a park next to the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge, one of the crossings that connect the U.S. and Mexican cities.
It was part of his Bach Project, which uses the composer's 300-year-old music to explore connections between cultures. The project has taken him all over the world. On Friday it brought him to Laurie Auditorium at Trinity University in San Antonio, and on Saturday it brought him to Laredo, within a few feet of the Rio Grande.
Mateo Bailey, 16, lives in San Antonio. He grew up in El Paso, plays the cello, and is the son of Grammy Award-winning cellist Zuill Bailey.
Pete Saenz, mayor of Laredo, said despite the river and despite the bridge spanning overhead, the border is one community.
This "Day of Action" also included a performance in Plaza Juarez in Nuevo Laredo, a few blocks from the international crossing. Its overall theme was an appreciation for the connections between the two cities, which see themselves as one community.
Ma was originally scheduled to play on the actual bridge, which would be briefly closed. The planned closure would've been a collaborative effort between officials and residents on both sides of the border. But the traffic and pedestrian delays the performance would have caused convinced officials to move the locale to the Tres Laredos Park right next to the bridge.
In 2018, Ma set out on a two-year journey to perform Bach's six suites for cello in 36 locations around the world. He felt the music had an ability to connect cultures and humanity from all walks of life. He said that is what motivated him to launch the project.
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Apogee's fiscal 2019 fourth-quarter earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, today's conference may be recorded. I would now like turn the call over to Mr. Jeff Huebschen.
David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Apogee Enterprises wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Apogee Enterprises' fiscal 2019 fourth-quarter earnings call. With me today are Joe Puishys, Apogee's chief executive officer; and Jim Porter, chief financial officer. I'd like to remind everyone that there are slides to accompany today's remarks which are available in the investor relations section of Apogee's website.
During this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP measures and the reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release we issued this morning, which is also available on our website. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that our call will contain forward-looking statements reflecting management's expectations which are based on currently available information. Actual results may differ materially.
More information about factors that could affect Apogee's business and financial results can be found in our SEC filings. And with that, I'll turn the call over to you, Joe.
All right. Thanks, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us.
By now, most of you have had a chance to read our press release. This morning, I'd like to review our fiscal 2019 and the progress we're making on our key strategies. We'll discuss the charge we recorded in the quarter, of course, and highlight our outlook and long-term direction as well as comment on our favorable end markets. I'll turn it over to Jim for more details on the quarter and our guidance.
For 2019, we made progress on many fronts despite a few challenges during the year. We delivered on another year of growth with revenue increasing to a record $1.4 billion. We continue to see solid demand for Apogee's products and services reflecting healthy end markets and the strength of Apogee's portfolio in the markets we serve. Full-year orders for the entire company were up 12% compared to fiscal-year '18.
We ended the year with higher backlogs driven by the long lead time parts of our business. In particular, our architectural services segment, which is our large curtain wall installation business known as Harmon, continued to show great strength. Full-year revenue grew 33%. Strong operating leverage, disciplined project selection and impressive execution at the site led to record profitability.
And we finished the year with a record backlog and a large slate of jobs about to enter backlog. In architectural glass, we made significant progress toward overcoming the challenges we faced earlier in the fiscal year. We saw order growth and began to recover some share in large projects. We hired and trained nearly 400 net new production employees during the year, an increase of over 20% in very tight labor markets.
And we made strong progress to restore productivity, which is reflected in the fourth-quarter operating margin, which is 500 basis point improvement over the first half of the year. Fourth-quarter operating margins would have been even stronger except for some severe winter storms which interrupted production during the fourth quarter, primarily in the month of February. We expect to realize further benefits from our productivity initiatives, and we anticipate continued margin expansion in fiscal-year '20. So even though we had some challenges, we had a lot of positives during the year.
Let me turn to the EFCO-related charges. When I joined Apogee, one of the strategic priorities I laid out was to diversify our revenue base and make Apogee less dependent on more cyclical large project segment of the construction market, where we were very heavily dependent. To that end, over this time, we have expanded architectural framing systems into our largest segment through both organic growth and acquisitions. Given its strong market position and recent acquisitions, it is also our largest opportunity for long-term revenue growth and margin expansion.
We started the installation on the last and significantly largest of these projects late in calendar year 2018 and made substantial progress toward completion in the fourth quarter. The charges we announced this morning are expected to cover the remaining cost related to these legacy projects, and we expect to be substantially complete on these projects by third quarter this year. We are aggressively working to minimize these costs and we are actively pursuing all options available to us to recover these added cost through insurance and other legal actions. These charges announced today, and -- do not include any future recoveries and they are not in our guidance that we're providing for F '20 as well, meaning there -- any potential recoveries.
As we move into fiscal '20, we're focused on putting these issues behind us and positioning EFCO and framing systems segment overall for long-term success. We see tremendous opportunity for EFCO to grow revenue and significantly improve profitability. We've been laying the foundation for these improvements since the acquisition. I put a new leader in place last summer, my top operations executive from Apogee.
We put a more disciplined pricing and project approval process in place. The sales force is reengaged under new leadership, and they established good order momentum in the fourth quarter, which has continued very nicely into the first few weeks of fiscal '20. We have investments under way to improve the facility layout and process flow through the factory, and we're in our second year of implementing our lean and continuous improvement systems into that business. And we're also seeing progress on realizing synergies across the framing systems segment driven by Apogee leadership.
There is still a lot to do, but I'm confident we have the right team in place to begin delivering very positive results from EFCO. Turning to our outlook and long-term direction. Looking at the rest of Apogee, I'm optimistic about the future. Conditions in our end markets remain favorable, particularly the U.S.
architectural markets. The external indicators we track all remain favorable: the architectural billing index has been positive for 17 straight months and 24 of the last 25 months; new construction starts remain at healthy levels; office vacancy rates are at decade-low level, falling below 10% for the first time since 2001; and we're seeing continued employment growth, particularly in the office-occupying sectors, healthcare and education, the three most important end markets for us. And our internal indicators also remain positive: Significant activity with architects and building developers, a strong sales pipeline in bidding activity and we're entering the new fiscal year with a strong backlog in our long lead time businesses which provide us very good visibility well into fiscal '21. Many people comment on the age of the economic recovery and all try to predict a future downturn.
I'd like to go off script for a minute and comment on this. In March, Wells Fargo and the Department of Commerce issued a report and I'd like to quote, "That while construction has steadily tended higher -- or trended higher for much of this expansion, the pace of activity falls short of prior cycles. For example, at the peak of the 2001 cycle, nonresidential structures investment had expanded a cumulative 81% over the course of six years. The 1990s expansion saw a 75% rise in investment over 10 years.
Nearly 10 years after the end of the last recession, structures in the nonresi investment have risen only 48%." We continue to feel confident that the end markets bode well for everyone in our industry as we continue to bump along the top and see modest growth. We continue to see numerous growth and margin improvement opportunities across our segments. In architectural glass, we're launching a new growth initiative to further expand our presence in the market for fabricated glass for nonresidential construction. We've carefully evaluated this organic growth opportunity and have been thoughtful in determining how to best expand our presence with the new operating facility.
This is a significant long-term opportunity for Apogee which will begin to contribute meaningfully to our glass segment revenues and operating income in fiscal '21. We're very excited about this initiative, but at this point, we are intentionally limiting our comments for competitive reasons. We will provide more details on this investment in the coming quarters. Overall, we believe our glass segment is well-positioned for growth and margin expansion in fiscal-year 2020 and beyond.
Turning to framing systems segment. I previously mentioned the opportunities we have to improve operations at EFCO. Aside from EFCO, we're also targeting numerous other opportunities for long-term growth and margin expansion. These include new product introductions, continued geographic expansion, core business unit synergies for both product and sales efforts and a continued ramp-up of our building renovation initiative which passed the $50 million revenue mark in the last fiscal year.
Architectural services segment has never been stronger. We are coming off an outstanding year in fiscal 2019. As a reminder, our services business is focused on a small number of large projects. This makes the business inherently lumpy due to the timing of projects in the pipeline.
Not every year will look like the one just completed regardless of our momentum. Despite this lumpiness, we have good, long-term visibility in this segment as we regularly engage with our customers well in advance of projects actually getting started. We are experienced and comfortable with this dynamic as we manage this business for long-term success rather than short-term earnings. In fiscal '20, we expect to see a step back from fiscal '19's record level of performance as the timing of project schedules will drive lower revenues and operating income.
Despite this short-term decline, our architectural services segment has never been stronger. Our backlog is substantially higher than just one year ago. Looking further out, fiscal '21 is shaping up to be another terrific year for services, and we see multiple strong years ahead for this segment. We Already have well over $200 million in backlog and customer commitments for fiscal-year '21.
We also have numerous attractive opportunity in our sales pipeline and are continuing our disciplined approach to project selection to focus on those projects that have a best fit for Apogee. We believe our confidence is well-founded and is supported by this segment's performance over the past several years. For example, looking back at fiscal-year '18 results, they were negatively impacted by a similar project schedule-related flow. But our backlogs gave us confidence that that segment would turn around quickly, and we projected that.
And as we projected, fiscal '19, we delivered tremendous results across the board. We believe this segment's historical performance and existing backlog justifies our enthusiasm for the future prospects of this business in this segment. Lastly, our financial condition remains quite solid and we're deploying capital to drive shareholder value. We increased both the dividends and share buybacks in fiscal '19, returning over $60 million of capital to shareholders.
And as I've mentioned, we're investing internally to drive organic growth and margin expansion. We will continue this balanced capital deployment approach in fiscal 2020. With that, I'll pass the call over to Jim, who'll provide details on the quarter and the outlook and the guidance. Before we take your questions, I'll return for a few additional comments.
Thanks, Joe. And good morning, everyone. I'll begin with our consolidated results, which you can see on Page 6 of our earnings presentation. Total revenue was $346 million, compared to $353 million in last year's fourth quarter.
As Joe mentioned, we recorded pre-tax charges in the quarter. $42.6 million was related to increased project-related charges on the legacy EFCO contracts. This includes an increased estimate of the cost to complete the projects and claims related to project delays and other disputes. We also recorded a $3.1 million noncash charge for the impairment of tradename intangibles related to EFCO.
Including these charges, we had a fourth-quarter operating loss of $14.8 million. Excluding these charges and the amortization of short-lived acquired intangibles, fourth-quarter adjusted operating income was $31.2 million, compared to $34.1 million in last year's fourth quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by reduced volumes and lower margins in architectural framing systems which offset higher operating income in architectural services. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $42.4 million, compared to $46.2 million in last year's fourth quarter.
With the charges included, we had a net loss of $0.45 per share in the fourth quarter. On an adjusted basis, earnings per share was $0.85, compared to $0.96 in the prior-year period. As a reminder, last year's fourth-quarter reported and adjusted earnings per share included a $0.13 per share benefit from implementation of the new tax reform law. During the fourth quarter, unusually severe winter weather impacted several of our business segments.
This included production interruptions at our multiple manufacturing locations in the Midwest as well as disruption at some of our customers' job sites. In total, we estimate the severe weather reduced our fourth-quarter earnings by $0.08 to $0.10 per share through a combination of some lost revenue as well as increased operational cost. Looking at our full-year's results. We had earnings per diluted share of $1.63.
On an adjusted basis, earnings per share was $2.96. I'd like to mention that in our full-year adjusted results, the project-related charges that we recorded in the fourth quarter included some adjustments for profits recognized in the first three quarters of the fiscal year. The details regarding these full-year adjustments for these charges can be found in the non-GAAP reconciliation tables included in today's press release and presentation. Now I'll turn to segment results which is on Slide 7.
architectural framing systems revenue was $171 million, down from $184 million last year, primarily due to lower volumes at EFCO. Adjusted operating income was $12.1 million with an adjusted operating margin of 5.6%, compared to 8.2% last year. The lower margin was primarily due to negative operating leverage on the reduced volumes and a less favorable sales mix. Framing systems' backlog increased slightly to $408.5 million.
Architectural glass continued to make progress toward expanding its workforce and improving productivity following the increased demand we saw in the first half of the fiscal year. The segment's revenues grew 13% in the quarter to $104 million and operating margin came in at 7.1%. The architectural glass segment has now improved its operating margin by 510 basis points, compared to 2% in the second quarter of fiscal 2019. Architectural services turned in another outstanding quarter.
Revenue was $66 million, compared to $68 million in last year's fourth quarter. Operating income grew 44% to $9.1 million and operating margin improved to 13.7% driven by strong execution and a mix of more mature projects allowing favorable project write-ups on a number of projects that came to completion during the quarter. As Joe mentioned, architectural services, as a project business, is inherently lumpy with considerable variability from quarter to quarter and year to year. Fiscal 2019 was an extraordinary year for this segment.
In other years, services' margins can vary considerably depending on project schedules and where projects are in their life cycle. Architectural services had strong order flow during the quarter and backlog increased to $444 million. The slide on Page 8 illustrates the strong backlog growth the segment has achieved over the past two years. Given the project schedules established by our customers, we expect roughly 50% of the services backlog will be converted to revenue in fiscal '20 with the balance scheduled for fiscal '21 or '22.
As Joe mentioned, at this point, it looks like architectural services is set up for another very strong year in fiscal '21, and we have a good pipeline of opportunities that will add to backlog in the coming quarters. The large-scale optical segment continued to deliver solid performance. Fourth-quarter revenue grew 2% to $24 million. The segment operating margin was steady at 29.9%, compared to 29.8% in last year's fourth quarter.
Turning to Slide 9. Full-year cash flow from operations came in at $96 million. Full-year capex was $61 million as we continued our investments to drive organic growth, add capabilities and increase productivity, including the investments at EFCO and in our architectural glass segment that Joe mentioned. Total debt stands at $246 million with net debt of $229 million or roughly 1.4 times trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA.
During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 658,000 shares of stock for $20 million, bringing our full-year stock buybacks to nearly 1.3 million shares, more than 4% of shares that were outstanding at the beginning of the fiscal year. With that, let me turn to our guidance for fiscal 2020. Slide 10 and 11 present details on our outlook. We expect continued top-line growth with revenue up 1% to 3% driven by growth in three of our segments: architectural glass, architectural framing systems and large-scale optical, offset by a decline in architectural services due to the execution schedules of projects in backlog.
We expect total company margins between 8.2% to 8.6%. We anticipate full-year margin gains in architectural glass and architectural framing systems which will be offset by lower margins in architectural services due to negative leverage on lower volume and less favorable project maturity. The leverage impact is significant as we cannot aggressively cut overhead cost, key resources such as engineering and project management that are needed to execute the segment's robust backlog and project pipeline scheduled to flow in fiscal '21 and '22. Company operating margins will also be impacted by $4 million to $5 million of start-up costs for the new architectural growth -- architectural glass growth initiative.
And we anticipate increased corporate cost from other legal and other advisory expenses. We expect a tax rate of approximately 24.5% and full-year interest expense slightly above fiscal 2019's level. Depreciation and amortization is projected to be approximately $50 million. Putting it all together, we expect earnings per share in the range of $3 to $3.20.
As in past years, we expect the first quarter will be our seasonally weakest quarter with progression to the year similar to what we've seen in the past couple of fiscal years. Going into fiscal 2020, the amortization of short-lived acquired intangibles that we've excluded from our adjusted EPS the past few years will be complete. As a result, we're not presenting adjusted earnings per share guidance for fiscal 2020. Looking at our segments, we expect the following.
architectural framing systems, we expect mid-single-digit growth with operating margins between 8% to 8.5%. We expect growth and margin improvements will be weighted to the back half of the fiscal year as we work through some remaining less-favorable mix along with initiatives we have under way at EFCO generate positive contributions. In architectural glass, revenue growth is expected of approximately 10% and operating margins of approximately 7%. We expect the segment to make further progress toward restoring its productivity levels which will benefit both revenue and profitability.
These segment margins are impacted by 100 to 150 basis points of start-up costs related to the new growth initiative. We currently expect these start-up costs will have the greatest impact in the second and third quarters and then will begin to generate limited revenue in the fourth quarter. In architectural services, we expect revenues to be down approximately 15% due to the timing of project schedules with operating margins between 6% to 7% on negative leverage from lower volumes and less favorable project maturity as we are at the early execution stage on a number of projects. Based on current project schedules, services revenue will likely be -- roughly balanced throughout the year.
In large-scale optical, we expect mid-single-digit growth as we make progress on our initiatives to extend into adjacent market opportunities. Segment margins are expected to be approximately 25%, just slightly below the fiscal 2019 level. This short lead time business has quarter-to-quarter variability within the year. With that, I'll turn the call back to you, Joe.
All right. Thanks, Jim. To wrap up, I'd like to reiterate our confidence about Apogee's direction. Despite some challenges in F '19, we're making continued progress on the strategy to strengthen our company and create shareholder value for the long term.
Our end markets remain healthy and solid as I've demonstrated today, and the demand for Apogee's products and services also remain healthy. We have market-leading businesses and numerous opportunities for organic growth and margin expansion. And finally, our financial position remains quite strong, giving us significant flexibility to invest in profitable growth, and also at the same time, return capital to our shareholders. With that, Chelsea, I'd like you to open up the call for questions, please.
[Operator instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

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