Once they acclimate to their new environment, overcoming language, social and cultural barriers, refugees in the U.S. often thrive. Some translate their experiences into assets that are valuable to their new community, as did Parvin and Yadollah Jamalreza. VOA’s June Soh visited their popular tailoring shop in Charlottesville, Virginia.
…
Month: April 2017
Growth in China’s manufacturing sector slowed in April, official data showed Sunday, pointing to an unsteady recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.
The monthly purchasing managers’ index by the Chinese Federation of Logistics and Purchasing fell to 51.2 in April, lower than the 51.8 recorded in March.
The index is based on a 100-point scale on which numbers above 50 indicate expansion.
National Bureau of Statistics statistician Zhao Qinghe said in the release that April’s figure was affected by sluggish growth in market demand and supply, and slower expansion in imports and exports.
April’s index still represented a ninth consecutive month of expansion.
China saw its slowest growth in nearly three decades in 2016. China’s huge manufacturing sector is seen as an important indicator for the wider Chinese economy. It has cooled gradually over the past six years as Beijing tries to pivot it away from heavy reliance on export-based manufacturing and investment toward consumer spending.
The official full-year economic growth target for 2017 is 6.5 percent.
…
Every year, an estimated 15 million babies are born prematurely. It’s believed 1 million children die around the world each year of complications of pre-term birth. Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia may have developed a technology that could change that outlook. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
Despite lingering anxiety over their range, interest in electric cars is rising, especially in industrialized countries. Manufacturers say they are improving the mileage by building more charging stations, but the industry is still waiting for a major breakthrough in battery technology. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…
Cervical cancer is preventable, yet it remains the most common type of cancer in Africa, the World Health Organization says.
WHO data show that Senegal currently has one of the world’s highest rates of the disease, with over 1,400 new cases diagnosed each year.
The country’s health officials have stepped up efforts against the disease with a nationwide campaign to vaccinate girls against the virus that causes cancer.
On a recent day at the Philippe Maguilen Senghor health center on the outskirts of Dakar, women lined up for free breast and cervical cancer screenings. The event was run by young Senegalese volunteers from Junior Chamber International (JCI), a nonprofit organization.
Sassy Ndiaye waited patiently for her turn. At age 60, this was only the second time she had been tested for the disease.
“Before we didn’t know about this,” she said. “I went through eight pregnancies and never did a cervical cancer screening with my gynecologist. I did it after my menopause.”
For comparison, in the United States, it is common for women of all ages to be screened for abnormal cervical cells every three years.
In Dakar, gynecologist Mouhamoudou Moustapha Yade said that by the time patients come to see him, their cervical cancer can be advanced.
“At a later stage, recovery is painful and difficult. And more importantly, the prognosis is not good,” he said. “This is why screening is so important. When you catch the cancer early, treatment is easier and much less expensive.”
But most women in Senegal cannot afford the cost of cervical cancer screening. Doctors and women interviewed at the Philippe Maguilen Senghor clinic said the cost was 40,000 francs ($66).
“Every time we organize free screening days, I am impressed by the number of women that turn up,” said Thiamel Ndiade, a JCI volunteer. “This shows you they are actually informed, but that money is the main issue.”
Ndiade added that most clinics lack the machinery needed to detect the illness, meaning women have to travel long distances just to get checked.
“Not all health centers have a video colposcope, for example,” Ndiade said. “We had to bring our own here today, which shows you just how inaccessible this technology is.”
HPV link
The arrival of a vaccine could help Senegal address these challenges.
Cervical cancer is caused by certain strains of the human papillomavirus; those who are infected with HPV often do not initially display any visible symptoms. A vaccine against HPV has been in use in the United States and other parts of the developed world since 2006, but it has only recently arrived in Africa.
In 2013, Senegal was among 10 African countries chosen by Gavi — a global alliance that strives to create access to vaccines in the world’s neediest countries — for pilot vaccination programs.
The nationwide rollout in Senegal followed a successful pilot program last year in two parts of the country. Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are also set to introduce the vaccine soon.
“Senegal is one of the first three countries in Africa [after Rwanda and Uganda] to introduce the HPV vaccine on a national scale,” said professor Mamadou Diop, head of oncology at the Aristide Le Dantec hospital. “It will be integrated within the country’s national vaccination program and reach the whole targeted population of girls.”
The aim is to roll out the vaccine in two phases, starting with a mass vaccination campaign reaching 889,445 girls aged between 9 and 15 by May 2018. After this, the vaccine will be administered to all girls at age 9 as part of routine immunization programs.
“The vaccine has been jointly subsidized by Gavi and the Senegalese state,” added professor Ousseynou Badiane, head of the Immunization Division for the Ministry of Health in Senegal. “This means it will be free and accessible to all.”
New vaccines can be met with suspicion, so health practitioners are urging the government to also launch a public education campaign. If the rollout is successful, Gavi estimates the HPV vaccine could help prevent up to 90 percent of cervical cancer cases.
Senegal unveiled its action plan as countries across the continent celebrate the 7th African Vaccination Week, an annual event to strengthen immunization programs in Africa by raising awareness about every person’s need and right to be protected against disease.
…
Thousands rallied Saturday in Washington for the People’s Climate March. Organizers said they hoped the day’s events would send a clear message to the Trump administration and lawmakers in Washington about their climate policies. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff has more.
…
His birthplace in a small village outside Mumbai, India, in a home with no running water or electricity, is a far cry from the technology-filled cubicles Pete Tapaskar has come to know well as an information technology (IT) worker.
Tapaskar’s journey from India to the United States through Canada came courtesy of an H1B immigrant visa.
“H1B has been a great contributor for the innovation of America,” Tapaskar told VOA.
Now an American citizen who lives in suburban Chicago, Tapaskar has spent the past 15 years working for the IT company ProSoft as a manager in their immigration program.
Lengthy process
Most of the people Tapaskar has hired have come from India, but he said hiring those workers has not always been ideal.
“It would be cheaper for us to hire Americans where they are available,” he said, “because bringing them from outside, we have to go through the lengthy H1B process and then wait for (a) longer time, and by that time, demand would have changed.”
But Tapaskar says there aren’t enough Americans with experience to fill the jobs.
“We are not able to employ Americans fast enough into the job market to meet the challenges,” he said.
1.4 million jobs unfilled
Richard Burke is CEO of Chicago-based Envoy Global, which sells services to U.S. companies looking to hire foreign workers.
“The U.S. Department of Labor has said 1.4 million unfilled software development — software development alone — 1.4 million unfilled jobs by 2020. So the skills gap is real,” Burke said.
“Envoy helps companies with their visa and immigration needs,” he told VOA from his desk situated in the same workspace as many of his employees. “What we do is help companies bring talented foreign nationals into the country, we help companies deploy their own employees overseas to pursue opportunity, and we provide software that makes reporting and compliance much easier.”
Burke said the skills gap that drives the demand for foreign workers exists because not enough Americans are receiving education or training in high demand jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also called STEM fields, and many foreign students educated in the U.S. aren’t staying to work.
“Every year American universities graduate over 300,000 foreign nationals with STEM degrees. We don’t give them any opportunities to stay,” he said. “So what is the wisdom of a policy when we know we have a skills gap, when we know we are graduating the best and brightest — 300,000 — and sending them home to compete with us.”
Review process
During a recent visit to Wisconsin, President Donald Trump announced he was signing an Executive Order reviewing the H1B visa process. About 85,000 workers come to the United States annually through the program, far fewer than the number of jobs U.S.-based companies say they need experienced technology workers to fill.
Burke hopes the review will lead to an increase in the number of visas issued, to fill the skills gap before the jobs flee the U.S.
“Work is mobile,” Burke said. “Companies are telling us and they are saying to one another, ‘If I can’t get the work done here, I’ll just move it overseas.’”
Which is what happened to Tapaskar, the IT worker.
His employer, ProSoft, was sold to another company, which outsourced his specific job to India, Tapaskar said.
After 15 years, he’s starting over with a new company and works to help other IT workers as the president of the American Small and Medium IT Employers Association (ASMITEA).
Hope for review
Tapaskar said he supports Trump’s Executive Order, hoping it helps curb any misuse of the program. But he doesn’t want to see those visas only going to companies offering the highest salaries.
“It should be made available for all the sectors,” he told VOA. “(It) should be linked with training programs. America really lacks the training infrastructure at the moment.”
This year, U.S. Immigration officials report almost 200,000 petitions were filed for the 85,000 available H1B visas during the lottery period that ended in April.
…
During a recent visit to Wisconsin, President Donald Trump announced he was signing an Executive Order reviewing the visa program that brings many technical workers to the United States, known as the H1B visa. About 85,000 workers come to the United States annually using an H1B visa. More from VOA’s Kane Farabaugh
…
Tens of thousands of environmental activists are expected to march in the U.S. capital city Saturday in an effort to draw support for climate-related causes.
The event, dubbed the People’s Climate March, is meant to coincide with President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, according to its organizers, who have condemned what they see as the administration’s lack of concern for environmental issues.
“The Trump administration’s policies are a catastrophe for our climate and communities, especially low-income and communities of color who are on the front lines of this crisis,” the People’s Climate Movement, a collection of about 50 liberal activist groups, said in a statement.
The group of partner organizations making up the event’s steering committee consists mainly of environmental groups, but also includes several trade unions, anti-war and minority advocacy groups, like the NAACP.
The presence of so many non-climate-related sponsoring organizations is reflected in the group’s “platform,” which lists issues the activists find important, but don’t feel are being adequately addressed by the Trump administration.
The platform blends the problems organizers say are created by climate change with economic and social justice issues, and calls for changes like increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour and fighting back against “the corporate trade-induced global race to the bottom.”
“This is a moment to bring the range of progressive social change movements together,” the group says on its website.
Protesters are expected to march from the U.S. Capitol building to the White House, where they will hold a rally. Dozens of “sister” marches are expected in cities across the country.
A similar event last weekend saw thousands of activists show up for the March for Science to protest what they claims are denials of science by the Trump administration.
Thousands of environmental activists marched in the U.S. capital Saturday, and in about 300 other cities across the country, to try to draw support for climate-related causes.
The People’s Climate March was meant to coincide with President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, according to its organizers, who have condemned what they see as the administration’s lack of concern for environmental issues. They said they objected to Trump’s rollback of restrictions on mining, oil drilling and greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants, among other things.
“The Trump administration’s policies are a catastrophe for our climate and communities, especially low-income and communities of color, who are on the front lines of this crisis,” the People’s Climate Movement, a collection of about 50 liberal activist groups, said in a statement.
Protesters marched from the Capitol to the White House, where they held a rally. About 300 “sister” marches or rallies were held in cities from Seattle to Boston. In Washington, marchers braved temperatures in the 90s, while in Denver, it snowed on several hundred activists who had gathered.
The partner organizations that made up the event’s steering committee consisted mainly of environmental groups but included several trade unions and anti-war and minority advocacy groups, such as the NAACP.
The presence of so many non-climate-related sponsoring organizations was reflected in the group’s “platform,” which listed issues the activists said they found important but didn’t feel were being adequately addressed by the Trump administration.
WATCH: People’s Climate March Brings Thousands to Washington
The platform blended the problems organizers said were created by climate change with economic and social justice issues, and it called for such changes as increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour and fighting “the corporate trade-induced global race to the bottom.”
“This is a moment to bring the range of progressive social change movements together,” the group said on its website.
A similar event last weekend saw thousands of activists show up in the nation’s capital for the March for Science to protest what they said were denials of scientific truths by the Trump administration. About 600 rallies were held around the world as well.
The national demonstrations on Saturday occurred a day after the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was updating its website to reflect the views of the Trump administration. It then removed several pages from former President Barack Obama’s administration that explained the science behind climate change.
Trump has said he does not believe the science behind climate change.
The vast majority of scientists who study the climate say the planet is unequivocally warming, and that it is extremely likely the change is predominantly caused by humans.
…
Later this year, two pilots in a sailplane will try to break the world altitude record for a glider, soaring more than 27 kilometers above sea level. But their primary mission will be to explore the little-known phenomenon called “mountain waves” and to carry a number of experiments designed by school students. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…
President Donald Trump will spend his 100th day in office talking tough on trade in one of the states that delivered his unlikely win.
The president is expected to sign an executive order Saturday that will direct his Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative to perform a comprehensive study of the nation’s trade agreements to determine whether America is being treated fairly by its trading partners and the 164-nation World Trade Organization.
It’s one of two executive orders the president will sign at a shovel factory in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland County, the kind of place that propelled his surprise victory.
Rally in Pennsylvania
The last week has been a frenzy of activity at the White House as Trump and his team have tried to rack up accomplishments and make good on campaign promises before reaching the symbolic 100-day mark. In addition to the visit to the Ames tool factory, which has been manufacturing shovels since 1774, the president will hold one of his signature campaign rallies in Harrisburg to cap the occasion.
It’s a return to fundamentals for a president who has, in recent days, sounded wistful reflecting on his term so far.
Earlier this week, Trump announced his intention to work to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. He also said he would begin renegotiating a free trade deal with South Korea, with which the U.S. has a significant trade deficit.
Trade discussed every day
“There isn’t a day that goes by that the president doesn’t discuss some aspect of trade,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at the White House Friday.
The executive orders signed Saturday will mark Trump’s 31st and 32nd since taking office, the most of any president in his first 100 days since World War II. It’s a jarring disconnect from Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign, when he railed against his predecessor’s use of the tool, which has the benefit of not needing congressional sign-off.
The more significant of the two orders will give the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative 180 days to identify violations and abuses under the country’s trade agreements and recommend solutions.
World Trade Organization outdated
Ross said the WTO, the Geneva-based arbiter of world trade rules, is bureaucratic and outdated and needs an overhaul. Ross downplayed the possibility that the United States would consider leaving the organization but didn’t rule it out.
“As any multilateral organization, there’s always the potential for modifying the rules,” he said.
The administration argues that unfair competition with China and other trade partners has wiped out millions of U.S. factory jobs. Ross said dissatisfaction with trade policy is one reason voters turned to Trump.
“They’re fed up with having their jobs go offshore. They’re fed up with some of the destructive practices,” he said. “So in effect, the country said in this last election: It’s about time to fix these things. And the president heard that message.”
Trump, who campaigned on a vow to crack down on China and other trading partners, has announced several other moves on trade in recent weeks. He ordered the Commerce Department to study the causes of the United States’ massive trade deficit in goods, $734 billion last year, $347 billion with China alone. The administration is also imposing duties on Canadian softwood timber and is investigating whether steel and aluminum imports pose a threat to national security.
Ross said Friday that the WTO is too narrowly focused on limiting traditional tariffs — taxes on imports — and does little to counter less conventional barriers to trade or to police violations of intellectual property rights.
Trump has pushed a model of “reciprocal trade” agreements in which the U.S. would raise or lower tariffs on a country’s imports depending on how that country treats the U.S.
…
President Donald Trump is re-opening for oil exploration areas that President Barack Obama had closed, a move that environmental groups have promised to fight.
In an executive order Friday, the president reversed the Obama administration’s decision to prohibit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic waters off Alaska.
The order also instructs the Interior Department to review current restrictions on energy development in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. In addition, it bars the creation or expansion of marine sanctuaries and orders a review of all areas protected within the last 10 years.
Trump cites advantages
The White House says 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried off the U.S. coastline, but 94 percent of the area is off limits.
“Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create countless new jobs and make America more secure and far more energy independent,” Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House.
The action is the latest from the Trump administration aimed at boosting domestic energy production and loosening environmental regulations.
In his first 100 days, Trump has relaxed coal mine pollution rules and ordered a review of vehicle efficiency standards and power plant greenhouse gas rules. His administration has stopped defending Obama-era pollution regulations challenged in court.
The energy industry has cheered the moves. Environmental groups have promised strong opposition.
Fragile ecosystems
Conservationists have long opposed oil drilling in the Arctic. A spill would devastate the region’s fragile ecosystems, they say, while extreme conditions raise the risks of a spill and make cleanup harder.
Fishing and tourism on the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico would suffer from an accident, too, environmentalists note.
“By his actions today, President Trump has sent a clear message that he prioritizes the oil and gas industry over the needs of working Americans in our coastal communities who depend on healthy fishing and tourism economies for their livelihoods,” Environmental Defense Fund Vice President Elizabeth Thompson said in a statement.
Reviewing and rewriting the current offshore drilling plans are expected to take several years. Environmental groups plan legal challenges to the changes.
Facebook is acknowledging that governments or other malicious non-state actors are using its social network to sway political sentiment, including elections.
That’s a long way from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion in November that the idea that bogus information on Facebook influenced the U.S. presidential election was “pretty crazy.” It also illustrates how the world’s biggest social network has been forced to grapple with its outsized role in how the world communicates, for better or for worse.
In an online posting Thursday, the company said that it would monitor efforts to disrupt “civic discourse” on Facebook. It is also looking to identify fake accounts, and says that it will warn people if their accounts have been targeted by cyber-attackers.
…
United Nations officials say at least 11 people have died from a mysterious illness in Liberia, and tests have been negative for the Ebola virus.
The World Health Organization said Friday that authorities are looking into whether the people were sickened by something they ate or were exposed to a chemical or bacteria.
Five others remain hospitalized in Sinoe County, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) outside the capital, after complaining of abdominal pains. Two are critically ill.
The cases over the past week have evoked painful memories in Liberia, where more than 4,800 people died during the Ebola epidemic.
Those who fell sick this week all had attended a relative’s funeral. That was how many Ebola victims contracted the disease when they came in contact with victims’ corpses.
…
The latest economic data indicate the U.S. economy is growing at the slowest rate in three years. The GDP or gross domestic product, the broadest measure of all goods and services produced in the country, increased at a disappointing 0.7 percent annual rate, according to new government estimates released Friday. That’s the weakest performance since 2014, as consumer spending stayed flat and business inventories remained small.
Analysts say that’s bound to be a disappointment to U.S. President Donald Trump who predicted strong economic growth on day one, once he took over the White House.
“Remember candidate Trump talked about GDP of about 5 percent and paraphrasing, perhaps something much, much stronger,” said Bankrate.com senior analyst Mark Hamrick.
“Most economists believe the track for the U.S. economy for the intermediate future is going to be very familiar to what has been seen over the last number of years, and that’s somewhere between one and probably 2.5 percent on an annual basis.”
The U.S. economy grew at a 2.1 percent pace in the fourth quarter of 2016. But economists say first quarter estimates tend to be notoriously low for a number of reasons.
“In some years it’s been because of bad weather that kept people in their homes, keeping them from purchasing things but it’s also believed to be somewhat flawed statistically — meaning that what’s actually happening in the economy isn’t being perfectly captured by government statistics,” Hamrick tells VOA. “It ends up being an estimate and most of them are not perfect”.
Most economists say the first quarter estimate should not be seen as a true measure of U.S. economic health.
Other indicators suggest a more positive outlook. The U.S. unemployment rate is near a 10-year low at 4.5 percent, consumer and business sentiment are rising and major U.S. stock indexes are near record highs.
…
A robot zaps and vacuums up venomous lionfish in Bermuda. A helicopter pelts Guam’s trees with poison-baited dead mice to fight the voracious brown tree snake. A special boat with giant winglike nets stuns and catches Asian carp in the U.S. Midwest.
In the fight against alien animals that invade and overrun native species, the weird and wired wins.
“Critters are smart – they survive,” said biologist Rob “Goose” Gosnell, head of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services in Guam, where brown tree snakes have gobbled up nearly all the native birds. “Trying to outsmart them is hard to do.”
Invasive species are plants and animals that thrive in areas where they don’t naturally live, usually brought there by humans, either accidentally or intentionally. Sometimes, with no natural predators, they multiply and take over, crowding out and at times killing native species.
Now, new technology is being combined with the old methods – weed pulling, trapping and pesticides. Finding new weapons is crucial because invasive species are costly – $314 billion per year in damages in just the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, India and Brazil. It’s also one of the leading causes of extinction on islands, such as Guam, according to Piero Genovesi, an Italian scientist who chairs the invasive species task force for an international organization .
“We have totally new tools that were just unthinkable a few years ago,” Genovesi said.
Case in point: There are companies that now market traps for wild pigs that are triggered by cellphones.
“There’s enough activity that there’s starting to be an industry,” said University of California, Santa Cruz research biologist Bernie Tershy.
Lionfish
A new underwater robot is targeting the stunning but dangerous lionfish, which has spread over the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and up the U.S. East Coast as far north as New York’s Long Island, with its venomous spines that are dangerous to touch. With no natural predator in the Atlantic, the voracious aquarium fish devour large amounts of other fish including key commercial fish species such as snapper and grouper. The robot is the creation of Colin Angle, chief executive officer of IRobot, which makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner. Along with his wife, Erika, and colleagues, he created a new nonprofit to turn automation into environmental tools.
The robot, called Guardian LF1, uses what Angle says is a gentle shock to immobilize the lionfish before they are sucked alive into a tube. In its first public outing this month, the robot caught 15 lionfish during two days of testing in Bermuda. Top chefs competed in a cook-off of the captured lionfish. Lionfish go for nearly $10 a pound and Angle is hoping to get the price of the robot down from tens of thousands of dollars to about $500.
“What’s next?” Angle said. “Our ambition is much larger than lionfish.”
Brown tree snakes
A few decades ago, native birds started disappearing from the Pacific island of Guam, baffling scientists until they found that non-native brown tree snakes were eating all the birds and their eggs. The snakes, which live in the trees, had no natural enemies and just trapping them wasn’t working, Gosnell said. The snakes did prove to have one enemy: the painkiller acetaminophen, a generic form of Tylenol.
So biologists came up with a plan : Use a painkiller pill glued to dead fetal mice as bait. The mice are put in tubes, and dropped by helicopter in batches of 3,000. The mice pop out, and the whole contraption dangles in the trees. It’s still experimental but it will soon go to more regular use. There is one problem. Using dead fetal mice as bait is expensive and they have to be kept cold. But biologists are working on a solution: mouse butter. A new bait mixture smells like mice to snakes, but minus the expense and logistical problems.
Asian carp
U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials are using souped-up old technology to catch Asian carp, a fish that’s taken over rivers and lakes in the Midwest. They use a specialized boat – the Magna Carpa – with giant winglike nets that essentially uses electric current as an underwater taser to stun the fish, said biologist Emily Pherigo. At higher doses, the fish are killed and float to the surface. In just five minutes, they can collect 500 fish, and later turn them into fertilizer. Using electro-fishing was written about as a possible conservation technique back in 1933, said biologist Wyatt Doyle.
Wild goats
On the Galapagos islands, wild goats were a major problem. In less than five years, scientists wiped out tens of thousands with sterile “Mata Hari” females. Biologist Karl Campbell of the nonprofit Island Conservation introduced specialized female goats that researchers sterilized and chemically altered into a permanent state of heat, to lure the male goats into fruitless goat sex. Santiago Island, once home to 80,000 goats, is now goat free and larger Isabella Island is getting close, he said.
And now, Campbell and others are going one step further: Tinkering with the genes of mosquitoes and mice to make them sterile or only have male offspring . That would eventually cause a species to die off on an island because of lack of females to mate with. There are worries about regulating and controlling this technology, along with actually being able to get it done, so it is years away, Campbell said.
Qualcomm slashed its profit expectations Friday by as much as a third after saying that Apple is refusing to pay royalties on technology used in the iPhone.
Its shares hit a low for 2017.
Apple Inc. sued Qualcomm earlier this year, saying that the San Diego chipmaker has abused its control over essential technology and charged excessive licensing fees. Qualcomm said Friday that Apple now says it won’t pay any fees until the dispute is resolved. Apple confirmed Friday that it has suspended payments until the court can determine what is owed.
“We’ve been trying to reach a licensing agreement with Qualcomm for more than five years but they have refused to negotiate fair terms,” Apple said. “As we’ve said before, Qualcomm’s demands are unreasonable and they have been charging higher rates based on our innovation, not their own.”
Qualcomm said it will continue to vigorously defend itself in order to “receive fair value for our technological contributions to the industry.”
But the effect on Qualcomm, whose shares have already slid 15 percent since the lawsuit was filed by Apple in January, was immediate.
Qualcomm now expects earnings per share between 75 and 85 cents for the April to June quarter. Its previous forecast was for earnings per share between 90 cents and $1.15.
Revenue is now expected to be between $4.8 billion and $5.6 billion, down from its previous forecast between $5.3 billion and $6.1 billion.
Shares of Qualcomm Inc. tumbled almost 4 percent at the opening bell to $51.22.
…
Just weeks after receiving official approval, an Apple self-driving car has been seen making its way through the streets of Silicon Valley.
The Lexus fitted with various sensors is the latest entrant in the quest to make driverless cars commercially viable. Apple, a late comer, likely will face fierce competition from Google’s Waymo, which has carried out millions of miles of road testing, and Uber, which has been testing autonomous cars for months.
Apple’s initiative, officially called Project Titan, is driven by hardware developed by Velodyne Lidar, while Apple is expected to develop the software.
Based on documents obtained by Business Insider, Apple’s cars sound very much like other self-driving cars. The cars are “capable of sending electronic commands for steering, accelerating, and decelerating and may carry out portions of the dynamic driving task,” according to the documents.
As with other driverless cars, humans are still present and can override the self-driving mode at any time.
Despite being somewhat late to the game, Apple may find an opening in the way of a potentially lengthy legal battle between Waymo and Uber, with Waymo alleging that Uber stole its trade secrets.
On Thursday, Uber executive Anthony Levandowski recused himself from work on driverless cars in the wake of the lawsuit, which alleges he stole intellectual property while employed at Google.
…
Another protest march will take place in Washington Saturday. The People’s Climate March targets President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo action on climate change. A movement that began with a few scientists has grown to include everyone from low-income people of color to major corporations. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
…
Drug overdose deaths in the United States continue to rise. The majority of those deaths can be attributed to opioids, synthetic or natural drugs that when used correctly relieve pain. But, according to health authorities, nearly 100 Americans die every day from opioid abuse. While the nation tries to figure out ways to end the flood of opioids on U.S. streets, others are trying to help those who are trying to put opioid abuse behind them. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
“I would like for you to have a pencil out on your desk,” fifth-grade teacher Mary Fucella said to her reading class at Point Pleasant Elementary School in Glen Burnie, Maryland. A kilometer and a half away, in a pink bedroom, Cloe Gray pulled a pencil out, too, and listened.
Cloe, 11, is at home, recuperating from leg surgery. For the first month after the operation, a home tutor visited her. But the precocious child grew withdrawn and didn’t want to leave her bed. She missed routine. She missed her friends. She missed real school.
“You could tell she wasn’t happy,” said Rob Gray, Cloe’s dad.
The Anne Arundel County school system in Maryland had a cure. Cloe now attends class virtually through a $3,000 robot. Hers, which she named Clo-Bot, was donated by the local Rotary Club. Since she began using it, the learning hasn’t stopped.
Clo-Bot is basically an iPad attached to a pole on wheels. Cloe uses the keyboard on her home computer to remotely control the device, rolling it into and out of the classroom. She speaks through a headset and is heard through the iPad. When the class breaks up into small groups, one classmate holds materials up to the iPad, and Cloe contributes to the project.
Fucella said Cloe was a little shy at first about “raising” Clo-Bot’s hand, “but now I feel like it’s just like having the normal Cloe in the classroom.”
To answer a question, Cloe clicks on a slider, and the iPad raises to the teacher’s eye level. Cloe said the robot had given her confidence to participate. “I’ll try it and I’ll get it right,” she said. “Woo-hoo! Personal victory!”
The Anne Arundel schools have six of the robots. Patrick Malone of the district’s Office of Instructional Technology said he and his colleagues had been stunned at their effectiveness.
“Every kid that uses this technology starts to smile again,” Malone said. “They start to feel like a regular kid again, and I cannot put a price on that.”
Devices like Clo-Bot are the brainchild of Double Robotics, a privately held technology company in Burlingame, California.
The telepresence robot can be used for business or education, anywhere people need a physical presence. Double Robotics co-founder and CEO David Cann said he understood the importance of school attendance, educationally and socially, and that it was humbling “to be able to provide a way for all students to attend school, no matter their situation.”
Double Robotics has 300 of its robots in the United States, with 25 others placed in education facilities in China, Japan, Australia and Canada.
When it’s lunchtime at Point Pleasant, Cloe’s best friend, Kyla Jones, walks with Clo-Bot to the lunchroom. The sight of a fifth-grader walking with an iPad rolling beside her seems like a scene from a science fiction movie.
“At first it was kind of weird because it was Cloe, but not really Cloe,” Kyla said. But now, it’s natural for the two to discuss, well, whatever fifth-graders discuss. On a recent day, the topic was flip-flops.
Cloe uses the device’s 150-degree wide-angle lens to look down as she maneuvers the robot beside the cafeteria table. Cloe’s dad delivers her lunch to her desk at home, and classmates start joining Clo-Bot at the lunch table.
Cloe said it’s sometimes nerve-racking to enter the lunchroom. “Everyone’s like, ‘Hi, Cloe!’ ‘Bye, Cloe!’ ” she said.
Clo-Bot waits until school is over to get its energy. Cloe maneuvers it to a charging station, where it sits until the bell rings the next morning. Then Cloe will happily drive her virtual self back to Ms. Fucella’s class.
…
Think back to grade school. If you were sick, you stayed home. If you had a serious illness, you’d miss weeks, or even months of classes. Technology could change all this, with a robot attending school in place of the sick child. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to a Baltimore girl who is homebound no more.
…
New climate-change findings mean the Pacific Ocean off California may rise higher, and storms and high tides hit harder, than previously thought, officials said.
The state’s Ocean Protection Council on Wednesday revised upward its predictions for how much water off California will rise as the climate warms. The forecast helps agencies in the nation’s most populous state plan for climate change as rising water seeps toward low-lying airports, highways and communities, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Discoveries that ice sheets are melting increasingly fast in Antarctica, which holds nearly 90 percent of the world’s ice, largely spurred the change.
Antarctic ice melting
As fossil-fuel emissions warm the Earth’s atmosphere, melting Antarctic ice is expected to raise the water off California’s 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) of coastline even more than for the world as a whole.
“Emerging science is showing us a lot more than even five years ago,” council deputy director Jenn Eckerle said Thursday.
Gov. Jerry Brown has mandated that state agencies take climate change into account in planning and budgeting. The council’s projections will guide everything from local decisions on zoning to state action on whether to elevate or abandon buildings near the coast and bays.
In the best-case scenario, waters in the vulnerable San Francisco Bay, for example, likely would rise between 1 foot and 2.4 feet (one-third to three-fourths of a meter) by the end of this century, the ocean council said.
Rising water alters weather patterns
However, that’s only if the world cracks down on climate-changing fossil-fuel emissions far more than it is now.
The worst-case scenario entails an even faster melting of Antarctic ice, which could raise ocean levels off California a devastating 10 feet by the end of this century, the state says. That’s at least 30 times faster than the rate over the last 100 years.
Scientists say rising water from climate change already is playing a role in extreme winters such as this past one in California, contributing to flooding of some highways and helping crumble cliffs beneath some oceanfront homes.