Navigating public transit systems can be difficult, especially if you’re blind. But in Boston the BlindWays app is a virtual GPS for the visually impaired. The app’s contributors aren’t coders or programmers, but everyday citizens. VOA’s Tina Trinh explains.
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Month: July 2017
Indonesia says it’s blocking web versions of the encrypted Telegram instant messaging app and will block the app completely if it continues to be a forum for radical propaganda and violent militants.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said in a statement Friday evening that it has asked internet companies in the world’s most populous Muslim nation to block access to 11 addresses that the web version is available through.
It said “this blocking must be done” because many channels in the service are used to recruit Indonesians into militant groups and to spread hate and methods for carrying out attacks including bomb making.
Samuel Pangerapan, the director general of informatics applications at the ministry, said they are preparing for the complete closure of Telegram in Indonesia if it does not develop procedures to block unlawful content.
The measures against Telegram come as Southeast Asian nations are stepping up efforts to combat Islamic radicalism following the capture of the southern Philippine city of Marawi by IS-linked militants.
Nearly two months after the initial assault, Philippine forces are still battling to regain complete control of the city. Experts fear the southern Philippines could become a new base for IS, including Indonesian and Malaysian militants returning from the Middle East, as an international coalition retakes territory held by IS in Syria and Iraq.
But the government move has sparked a public outcry in Indonesia, with Twitter and Facebook exploding with negative comments and some people reporting they were unable to access the web.telegram.org domain. Indonesians are among of the world’s biggest users of social media.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Suspected militants arrested by Indonesian police recently have told authorities that they have communicated with fellow members of their group via Telegram and received orders and directions to carry out attacks through the app, including from Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian with the Islamic State group in Syria accused of orchestrating several attacks in the past 18 months.
Founded in 2013 by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, Telegram is a free messaging service that can be used as a smartphone app and on computers through a web interface or desktop messenger. Its strong encryption has contributed to its popularity with those concerned about privacy and secure communications in the digital era but also made it useful to militant groups and other criminal elements.
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Ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft have been so disruptive to New York City’s taxi industry, they are causing lenders to fail.
Three New York-based credit unions that specialized in loaning money against taxi cab medallions, the hard-to-get licenses that allow the city’s traditional cab fleet to operate, have been placed into conservatorship as the value of those medallions has plummeted.
Just three years ago, cab owners and investors were paying as much as $1.3 million for a medallion. Now they are worth less than half that, and some medallion owners owe more on their loans than the medallions are worth.
Like subprime loans
“You’ve got borrowers who are under water. This is just like the subprime loan crisis,” said Keith Leggett, a credit union analyst and former senior economist at the American Bankers Association.
LOMTO Federal Credit Union, which was founded by taxi drivers in 1936 for mutual assistance, was placed into conservatorship by the National Credit Union Administration on June 26 “because of unsafe and unsound practices.”
New York City has the nation’s largest taxi industry, with more than 13,000 medallions.
Value went up, then down
Marcelino Hervias bought his medallion in 1990 for about $120,000 and thought its value would hit $2 million by the time he was ready to retire.
Instead, the 58-year-old said he owes $541,000 and is driving 12 to 16 hours a day to make ends meet.
While some medallions are held by large owners with fleets, owning a single medallion was long seen as a ticket to the middle class for immigrants like Hervias, who is from Peru.
Many of them now owe more on their medallion loans than they originally paid for the medallions because they used their equity in the medallion for a home, a child’s education or other expenses.
Other medallion owners tell similar stories.
Constant Granvil bought his medallion for $102,000 in 1987 and said he now owes more than $300,000 to his lender. He could have sold the medallion for two or three times that a few years ago, “but I said no, I’m not going to sell it,” said Granvil, who is 76. “And then I got caught.”
The value of Granvil’s medallion is hard to pinpoint because 2017 sale prices have varied from the $200,000s to the $500,000s depending on whether lenders are willing to finance the purchase.
Meanwhile, Granvil, who no longer drives because of poor health and uses a broker to hire a driver, said he is facing threats from the lender, Melrose Credit Union, to foreclose on not just his medallion, but also his house.
Level playing field
Supporters of the yellow cab industry have sued and pushed for city legislation to try to level the playing field between taxis and ride-hailing apps, which they say enjoy advantages like not paying a public transportation improvement surcharge that’s levied on yellow cabs and not having to outfit a percentage of cars with disabled-access features.
City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, called this week for a panel to investigate the fall in medallion values.
According to a Morgan Stanley report, there were 11.1 million yellow cab trips in the city in April 2016, compared with 4.7 million Uber trips and 750,000 Lyft trips. The 11.1 million taxi rides were 9 percent fewer than the April 2015 number.
Some observers believe that the yellow cab’s market share will continue to shrink and that the value of a medallion won’t recover.
“This is a commodity that has been fundamentally disrupted,” said Leggett, who has written about medallion loans in his online newsletter Credit Union Watch. “I don’t see the value of the medallions getting close to what they were.”
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President Donald Trump turned up the heat Friday on fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate to pass a bill dismantling the Obamacare law, but with their retooled health care plan drawing fire within the party even one more defection would doom it.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has planned for a vote next week on revised legislation, unveiled on Thursday, and he has his work cut out for him in the coming days to get the 50 “yes” votes needed for passage. Republicans control the Senate by a 52-48 margin and cannot afford to lose more than two from within their ranks because of united Democratic opposition, but two Republican senators already have declared opposition.
“After all of these years of suffering thru Obamacare, Republican Senators must come through as they have promised,” Trump, who made gutting Obamacare one of his central campaign promises last year, wrote on Twitter from Paris, where he attended Bastille Day celebrations.
The top U.S. doctors’ group, the American Medical Association, on Friday called the new bill inadequate and said more bipartisan collaboration is needed in the months ahead to improve the delivery and financing of health care. Hospital and medical advocacy groups also have criticized the bill.
“The revised bill does not address the key concerns of physicians and patients regarding proposed Medicaid cuts and inadequate subsidies that will result in millions of Americans losing health insurance coverage,” AMA President Dr. David Barbe said, referring to the government insurance program for the poor and disabled.
A major test for McConnell’s legislation expected early next week is an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which last month forecast that the prior version of the bill would have resulted in 22 million Americans losing insurance over the next decade.
A day after that CBO analysis was issued, McConnell postponed a planned vote on the legislation because of a revolt within his own party, including moderates and hard-line conservatives.
While the bill’s prospects may look precarious, the same could have been said of health care legislation that ultimately was passed by the House of Representatives. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called off a vote in March in the face of a rebellion involving the disparate factions of the party, but managed to coax enough lawmakers to back it and engineered narrow approval on May 4.
Vice President Mike Pence sought to shore up support among the nation’s governors at a meeting in Rhode Island, but a key Republican governor, Ohio’s John Kasich, came out strongly against the revised bill, saying its Medicaid cuts were too deep and it does too little to stabilize the insurance market.
Alternative options
If the current Senate legislation collapses, some lawmakers have raised the possibility of seeking bipartisan legislation to fix parts of Obamacare but leaving intact the structure of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, commonly known as Obamacare. “There are changes that need to be made to the law,” Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told MSNBC, citing “a bipartisan appetite to tackle this issue.”
Moderate Susan Collins and conservative Rand Paul already oppose the revised Senate bill. Other Republican senators have either expressed concern or remained noncommittal, including Rob Portman, Mike Lee, Shelley Moore Capito, John McCain, Dean Heller, John Hoeven, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Cory Gardner, Todd Young and Thom Tillis. Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy floated an alternative plan.
The new version was crafted to satisfy the Republican Party’s various elements, including moderates worried about Americans who would be left without medical coverage and hard-line conservatives who demand less government regulation of health insurance.
Insurance groups balk
A provision championed by Republican Senator Ted Cruz and aimed at attracting conservatives would let insurers sell cheap, bare-bones insurance policies that would not have to cover broad benefits mandated under Obamacare.
But two major health insurance groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, called on McConnell to drop the Cruz proposal, saying it would undermine protections for pre-existing medical conditions, raise insurance premiums and destabilize the individual insurance market.
The bill retained certain Obamacare taxes on the wealthy that the earlier version would have eliminated, a step moderates could embrace. But it kept the core of the earlier bill, including ending the expansion of Medicaid that was instrumental in enabling Obamacare to expand coverage to 20 million people, and restructuring that social safety-net program.
John Thune, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said in order to complete work on the bill by the end of next week, Senate leaders would have to try to formally begin debate Tuesday or Wednesday, a move that requires a majority vote.
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Portland is well-known as a tree-hugging, outdoorsy city, but the river that powers through its downtown has never been part of that green reputation.
For decades, residents have been repulsed by the idea of swimming in the Willamette River because of weekly sewage overflows that created a bacterial stew.
Now, the recent completion of a $1.4 billion sewage pipe has flushed those worries — and the river once shunned by swimmers is enjoying a rapid renaissance.
The city has partnered with a civic group called the Human Access Project to entice residents into the Willamette this summer with a roster of public swimming events and a flood of announcements that the river, finally, is safe for human use. The campaign is aimed at reversing the impact of decades of public health warnings in an eco-savvy city with a hard-earned green reputation.
The push mirrors efforts to revive ailing rivers in other U.S. cities, from the Charles River in Boston — where occasional city-sanctioned swimming started in 2013 — to the concrete-lined Los Angeles River, where efforts have been underway in recent years to reverse decades of environmental damage along an 11-mile (18-kilometer) stretch.
City’s largest public space
In Portland, the movement has clearly found its moment.
The river is the city’s largest public space, but less than 5 percent of the city’s footprint has access to the waterfront, said Willie Levenson, who heads the Human Access Project and is working closely with Portland to expand swimming options.
Beaches in other communities along the river attract crowds, but swimmers in downtown Portland have nowhere to dive in despite increasing demand. Since the completion of the sewage control project in 2011, swimmers have been congregating on a floating esplanade for bikers and runners and sneaking onto city docks reserved for fire boats.
“We cannot pretend that swimming isn’t happening in downtown Portland anymore. It’s a livability issue, and Portland cares about livability,” Levenson said. “It’s time for our community to stop making jokes about our river and start digging in and looking to make a difference.”
Mayor a willing partner
The Human Access Project has been working for several years to generate interest in the Willamette and has found a willing partner in new Mayor Ted Wheeler.
This week, a new beach with lifeguards and safety ropes opened on the city’s south waterfront, within walking distance of hipster-friendly cafes and shops.
An inner tube river parade planned by the Human Access Project for this weekend is expected to attract several thousand participants, and members of a river swim group cross the Willamette several times a week in fluorescent green swim caps bearing the name River Huggers.
Wheeler, himself a swimmer, laid out a multipoint plan for increasing access to the river earlier this year and plans to swim the river later this month with 500 residents in the inaugural “mayoral swim.” The city hopes to open two more beaches in coming years, install floating docks along the riverbank and place public restrooms, picnic benches, umbrellas and showers on site.
In a recent state-of-the-city address, Wheeler even spoke of one day eliminating Interstate 5 where it snakes along the Willamette’s east bank to improve river access.
“We have a chance to reshape the face of our city,” he said. “I also believe we have a chance to reshape our spirit.”
Warnings are now few, fair between
Portland’s relationship with the Willamette River hasn’t always been easy to navigate.
For decades, the river was considered a watery highway, and industrial pollution severely contaminated its waters. This winter, after a 16-year wait, federal environmental officials released a plan to clean a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch near its confluence with the Columbia River in a project that will take decades of work and billions of dollars.
But in the heart of Portland, the primary problem has been human excrement. Residents grew accustomed to seeing near-weekly warnings about water quality during the winter rainy season, where even one-tenth of an inch (2.5 millimeters) of rain could trigger overflows.
Now, the city issues just a handful of warnings in winter and none during the peak swimming months of July and August, said Diane Dulken, spokeswoman for Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services. Testing at sites where people are already using the river show the water is safe, she added.
“We are really making a push to publicize our weekly testing because there is absolutely still a public perception out there, ‘I will not go in the river.’”
Swimmer takes a chance
On a recent blazing afternoon, Portland resident Alex Johnson was ready to take the city at its word.
The 24-year-old swim teacher and lifeguard began diving into the Willamette with the River Huggers swim group this month.
On this day, he joined 30 others as they swam from the Hawthorne Bridge to the Morrison Bridge — through Portland’s bustling business district — and back in the 70-degree (21 Celsius) water. Teenagers lounged like harbor seals on a nearby dock and jet skis zipped by as the swimmers completed the more than half-mile (0.8-kilometer) journey.
“I’ve heard stories that it’s pretty polluted. It tastes a little funny, but it is river water,” Johnson said. “It’s a huge resource, and we don’t take advantage of it — and it feels great.”
The White House said Friday that worsening tax revenues would cause the budget deficit to jump to $702 billion this year. That’s a $99 billion spike from what was predicted less than two months ago.
The report from the Office of Management and Budget came on the heels of a rival Congressional Budget Office analysis that scuttled White House claims that its May budget, if implemented to the letter, would balance the federal ledger within 10 years. The OMB report doesn’t repeat that claim and instead provides just two years of updated projections.
The White House budget office also said the deficit for the 2018 budget year that starts on October 1 would increase by $149 billion, to $589 billion. But lawmakers are already working on spending bills that promise to boost that number even higher by adding to President Donald Trump’s Pentagon proposal and ignoring many of his cuts to domestic programs.
Last year’s deficit registered $585 billion.
The White House kept the report to a bare-bones minimum and cast blame on “the failed policies of the previous administration.”
“The rising near-term deficits underscore the critical need to restore fiscal discipline to the nation’s finances,” said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney. “Our nation must make substantial changes to the policies and spending priorities of the previous administration if our citizens are to be safe and prosperous in the future.”
In late May, Trump released a budget plan proposing jarring cuts to domestic programs and promising to balance the budget within a decade. But the CBO said Trump relied on rosy predictions of economic growth to promise a slight surplus in 2027.
Trump’s budget left Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare alone, though House Republicans are poised next week to again propose cutting Medicare as they unveil their nonbinding budget outline.
Trump’s budget predicted that the U.S. economy would soon ramp up to annual growth in gross domestic product of 3 percent; CBO’s long-term projections predict annual GDP growth averaging 1.9 percent.
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The top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives’ antitrust subcommittee has voiced concerns about Amazon.com Inc.’s $13.7 billion plan to buy Whole Foods Market Inc and is pushing for a hearing to look into the deal’s potential impact on consumers.
The deal announced in June marks the biggest acquisition for the world’s largest online retailer. Amazon has not said what it will do with Whole Foods’ stores and other assets, but analysts and investors worry the move could upend the landscape for grocers, food delivery services and meal-kit companies.
U.S. Representative David Cicilline requested the hearing on Thursday in a letter to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee chairman. Shares of Amazon were up 0.3 percent in mid-morning trading on Friday.
“Amazon’s proposed purchase of Whole Foods could impact neighborhood grocery stores and hardworking consumers across America,” Cicilline said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to fully scrutinize this merger before it goes ahead.”
The deal must be approved by U.S. antitrust enforcers, in this case most likely the Federal Trade Commission. Congress plays no formal role in that process but hearings are often used to highlight the possible impact of deals on consumers. The hearing is unlikely to happen without Republican support.
Amazon and Whole Foods declined to comment.
Also this week, hedge fund manager Douglas Kass from Seabreeze Partners Management Inc. said he was shorting shares of the retailer because of concern about Amazon in Washington.
Kass said he had heard rumblings on Capitol Hill regarding concern about Amazon’s size and clout but did not specify what the concerns were.
“I am shorting Amazon today because I have learned that there are currently early discussions and due diligence being considered in the legislative chambers in Washington, D.C.,” he wrote in a note to investors late on Wednesday. “If I am correct, word of this could lower Amazon’s shares by 10 percent overnight.”
Kass said in emailed comments to Reuters on Friday that he has what he called a “core” short position in Amazon, meaning a sizeable bet based on a long-term outlook.
“This has the potential of being the biggest business news story of [the] year,” he said. Kass declined to comment when asked for more details about pressure from Capitol Hill.
Kass is followed for his bets on declines in companies’ share prices. He shorted Marvel Entertainment in 1992 when its shares were in the high $60s, and the company went bankrupt 1-1/2 years later.
He also bet against big U.S. banks leading into the 2007-2009 financial crisis, shorting Bank of America, MGIC, Citigroup and several other financials that ultimately averaged a 98 percent price decline by the time they bottomed in 2009.
While antitrust experts have said they expect Amazon’s bid to win regulatory approval, some critics argue the deal should be blocked because it gives the retailer a big head start towards domination of online grocery delivery.
They argue the Whole Foods acquisition will give Amazon an unfair advantage over traditional grocers and new players that might emerge in the market, potentially grounds for the deal to be blocked for antitrust reasons.
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A cholera epidemic in Yemen, which has infected more than 332,000 people, could spread during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in September, although Saudi authorities are well prepared, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
The pilgrimage draws 2-4 million Muslims every year, including 1.5-2 million foreigners, raising the risk from diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, Zika virus and meningococcal disease as well as cholera, the WHO said.
“The current highly spreading outbreak of cholera in Yemen, as well as in some African countries, may represent a serious risk to all pilgrims during the [hajj] days and even after returning to their countries,” a WHO bulletin said.
Dominique Legros, a WHO cholera expert, said Saudi Arabia had not had a cholera outbreak in many years thanks to reinforced surveillance and rapid tests to detect cases early.
“Don’t forget that today we are speaking of Yemen but they are receiving pilgrims from a lot of endemic countries, and they managed not to have an outbreak, essentially by making sure that living conditions, access to water in particular, hygienic conditions, are in place,” he told a regular U.N. briefing.
“They are well-prepared in my view.”
The incubation period of the disease, which spreads through ingestion of fecal matter and causes acute watery diarrhea, is a matter of hours. Once symptoms start, cholera can kill within hours if the patient does not get treatment.
But people with symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg because 80 percent of patients show no symptoms, Legros said.
“That’s why we advise countries against airport screening for patients. The Saudis don’t do that. It’s useless, technically speaking.”
The United Nations has blamed the warring sides in Yemen and their international allies, including Saudi Arabia, for fueling the 11-week cholera outbreak, driving millions of people closer to famine, and for hindering aid access.
The WHO has rolled out an emergency treatment program, based on the vestiges of Yemen’s shattered health system, to try and catch new cases early and stop the explosive spread of the disease.
The number of new cases has continued to grow by about 6,000 per day, but the number of deaths appears to have slowed dramatically, according to Reuters analysis of WHO data.
Death rates have slumped from 20-40 in recent weeks to an average of nine per day over the past six days.
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A cholera epidemic in Yemen, which has infected more than 332,000 people, could spread during the annual haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in September, although Saudi authorities are well prepared, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
The pilgrimage draws 2-4 million Muslims every year, including 1.5-2 million foreigners, raising the risk from diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, Zika virus and meningococcal disease as well as cholera, the WHO said.
“The current highly spreading outbreak of cholera in Yemen, as well as in some African countries, may represent a serious risk to all pilgrims during the (haj) days and even after returning to their countries,” a WHO bulletin said.
Dominique Legros, a WHO cholera expert, said Saudi Arabia had not had a cholera outbreak in many years thanks to reinforced surveillance and rapid tests to detect cases early.
“Don’t forget that today we are speaking of Yemen but they are receiving pilgrims from a lot of endemic countries, and they managed not to have an outbreak, essentially by making sure that living conditions, access to water in particular, hygienic conditions, are in place,” he told a regular U.N. briefing.
“They are well-prepared in my view.”
The incubation period of the disease, which spreads through ingestion of fecal matter and causes acute watery diarrhea, is a matter of hours. Once symptoms start, cholera can kill within hours if the patient does not get treatment.
But people with symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg because 80 percent of patients show no symptoms, Legros said.
“That’s why we advise countries against airport screening for patients. The Saudis don’t do that. It’s useless, technically speaking.”
The United Nations has blamed the warring sides in Yemen and their international allies, including Saudi Arabia, for fueling the 11-week cholera outbreak, driving millions of people closer to famine, and for hindering aid access.
The WHO has rolled out an emergency treatment program, based on the vestiges of Yemen’s shattered health system, to try and catch new cases early and stop the explosive spread of the disease.
The number of new cases has continued to grow by about 6,000 per day, but the number of deaths appears to have slowed dramatically, according to Reuters analysis of WHO data.
Death rates have slumped from 20-40 in recent weeks to an average of nine per day over the past six days.
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A driver mows down six mailboxes, slurs her words and tells police she has a lizard in her bra. Throw in a wisecracking police officer, and what do you get? A flippant post on Facebook, along with photos of the woman, and of course, her lizard.
Not everyone is amused.
Police departments are increasingly using Facebook to inform the community about what they’re doing and who they’re arresting. Some add a little humor to the mix. But civil rights advocates say posting mugshots and written, pejorative descriptions of suspects amounts to public shaming of people who have not yet been convicted.
“It makes them the butt of a joke on what for many people is probably their worst day,” said Arisha Hatch, campaign director of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy organization that recently got Philadelphia police to stop posting mugshots on its Special Operations Facebook page.
“The impact of having a mugshot posted on social media for all to see can be incredibly damaging for folks that are parents, for folks that have jobs, for folks that have lives they have to come back to,” she said.
In Taunton, a city of 57,000 about 40 miles south of Boston, the police department’s post about the woman with a lizard in her bra was shared around Facebook and got heavy news coverage.
Lt. Paul Roderick wrote that Amy Rebello-McCarthy hit mailboxes, sending some airborne, before her car left the road, tore up a lawn and came to rest among trees. When police arrived, she asked them to call a tow truck so she and a male companion “could be on their way,” Roderick wrote.
“Sorry Amy, we can’t move the car right now. If we do, what will you use to hold yourself up?” he wrote.
Roderick described how she told police she had a lizard.
“Where does one hold a Bearded Dragon Lizard while driving you ask? Answer: In their brassiere of course!!”
Many commenters praised police. “Great job [getting drunks off the road and entertaining us],” one woman wrote.
But others said the tone was inappropriate.
“Hey Taunton Police Department … Your holier than thou attitude is part of the reason why people don’t like/don’t respect police,” one man wrote.
Rebello-McCarthy, who has pleaded not guilty to drunken driving and other charges, did not respond to attempts for comment.
Police have traditionally made mugshots and details on suspects available to journalists for publication. But journalists, for the most part, selectively choose to write stories and use mugshots based on the severity or unusual nature of the crime. Many crimes don’t get any coverage.
Roderick said everything he wrote in the posting about Rebello-McCarthy was true.
“I guess I don’t see a problem with it,” he said in an interview.
“Can you go too far? I guess you could. I don’t think I did. I’m just trying to report what’s happening.”
Still, Roderick did get a mild reprimand from the police chief. “He basically said, `Tone it down a little bit,”‘ Roderick said.
Jaleel Bussey, 24, of Philadelphia, said he nearly got kicked out of a cosmetology school when instructors saw his mugshot on Facebook. Bussey was charged in 2016 after drugs were found during a police search of a house he was visiting to style a client’s hair. Most of the charges were dismissed before trial; he was acquitted of the final charge, according to the Philadelphia public defender’s office.
Bussey said he was allowed to continue school after explaining that he did not have any drugs and that the charges had been dropped. He felt humiliated, he said, when his family and teachers saw his mugshot.
“I was angry at the time,” he said. “I was found not guilty. They’re just putting people’s faces up there like it’s OK.”
In Marietta, Georgia, police poked fun at a man suspected of shoplifting from a pawn shop.
“Sir, you must have forgot that you gave the clerk your driver’s license with ALL of your personal information as well as providing him with your fingerprint when completing the pawn ticket before you stole from him which, by the way was also all on camera. … When you make it this easy it takes all the fun out of chasing bad guys!” police wrote in December.
In some communities, posting mugshots and glib write-ups has created a backlash.
In South Burlington, Vermont, Police Chief Trevor Whipple was in favor of posting mugshots at first, but then he started noticing disparaging comments about everything from suspects’ hairstyles to their intelligence. The department stopped the practice after about a year.
“Do we want to use our Facebook page to shame people?” Whipple said. “Legally, there’s no problem — all mugshots are public — but the question became, is this what we want to do?”
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The German Transport Ministry says the country’s motor transport authority will examine cars made by Daimler amid an investigation into suspected manipulation of diesel emissions controls.
Daimler said in May that prosecutors would search several offices in Germany and it was cooperating with the probe.
Company representatives met with a Transport Ministry commission Thursday following a report by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, citing a search warrant, that over a million vehicles may have had engines whose software manipulated emissions levels. Neither the company nor prosecutors commented on that detail.
Ministry spokesman Ingo Strater said Friday the company “set out its position that Daimler is behaving in accordance with the law.”
Strater said the Federal Motor Transport Authority is examining Daimler cars, as it has in the past other manufacturers’ vehicles.
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For tech entrepreneurs in Turkey, the unstable situation after last year’s coup attempt has made it harder to get the word out about the country’s tech scene and to solicit outside investment. Some entrepreneurs recently traveled to the United States for Etohum San Francisco, an event bridging the Turkish startup community with Silicon Valley. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
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A NASA spacecraft circling Jupiter is revealing the up-close beauty of our solar system’s biggest planetary storm.
Juno flew directly over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot on Monday, passing an amazingly close 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the monster storm. The images snapped by JunoCam were beamed back Tuesday and posted online Wednesday. Then members of the public — so-called citizen scientists — were encouraged to enhance the raw images.
Swirling clouds are clearly visible in the 10,000-mile-wide (16,000-kilometer-wide) storm, which is big enough to swallow Earth and has been around for centuries.
“For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,” said lead researcher Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm.”
Information was still arriving Thursday from Juno’s science instruments. Bolton said it will take time to analyze everything to shed “new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot.”
Juno’s next close encounter with the giant gas planet will be in September. The Great Red Spot won’t be in Juno’s scopes then, however.
Launched in 2011, Juno arrived at Jupiter last July. It is only the second spacecraft to orbit the solar system’s largest planet, but is passing much closer than NASA’s Galileo did from 1995 through 2003.
Radio Flyer is rolling its largest “little” red wagon into its hometown of Chicago in celebration of the company’s 100-year anniversary.
Radio Flyer’s gargantuan wagon was the centerpiece for the company’s anniversary event Thursday in the city’s downtown area, the Chicago Tribune reported. The wagon was created 20 years ago for the brand’s 80th anniversary.
Attendees of the event had the opportunity to take a photo with the large wagon and participate in free giveaways. Radio Flyer also will donate 2,000 wagons to children’s hospitals across the country in partnership with Starlight Children’s Foundation.
According to Guinness World Records, the wagon, which is 27 feet (8.23 meters) long and weighs over 15,000 pounds (6803.96 kilograms), is the world’s largest toy wagon. It was inspired by a 1930s statue featured in the World’s Fair in Chicago.
Radio Flyer has locations around the world, but Robert Pasin, chief wagon officer of Radio Flyer, said Chicago is still the company’s home.
“Chicago has so much to do with our heritage and story,” Pasin said. “It’s truly a part of the brand’s DNA.”
The company has evolved since its establishment in 1917 and now offers customizable wagons made of various materials and other products, including tricycles, bicycles and scooters.
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A new mosquito net made by German chemicals company BASF has been given an interim recommendation by the World Health Organization (WHO), containing a new class of insecticide that the company hopes will aid the fight against malaria.
Death rates from malaria have dropped by 60 percent since 2000, according to the WHO, but attempts to end one of the world’s deadliest diseases — which kills around 430,000 people a year — are under threat as mosquitoes become increasingly resistant to measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets and anti-malarial drugs.
BASF’s new net is based on chlorfenapyr, which has been used in agriculture and urban pest control for over two decades, but BASF reworked it to make it effective on mosquito nets and meet targets for the public health market.
It said the net will provide protection for at least three years or 20 washes.
The new Interceptor G2 insecticide-treated net is expected to be available to health ministries and aid organizations beginning toward the end of this year, BASF said.
A WHO spokesman said the Geneva-based organization’s interim recommendation meant it still had to evaluate the net’s public health impact and it was requesting more data from the chemicals company.
BASF is also waiting for the WHO to evaluate another chlorfenapyr product, an indoor spray for walls and ceilings called Sylando 240SC.
“This development breakthrough strengthens my personal belief that we really can be the generation to end malaria for good,” said Egon Weinmueller, head of BASF’s public health business.
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The electricity supply to Gaza’s 2 million residents has dropped to unprecedented lows, with blackouts lasting for more than 24 hours, the territory’s power distribution company said Thursday, prompting fears of a humanitarian and environmental crisis.
The Palestinian enclave needs at least 400 megawatts of power a day, but only 70 megawatts were available as of late Wednesday, when Gaza’s power plant shut down after fuel shipments from Egypt were interrupted following a militant attack last week.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the power cuts have caused a rapid deterioration in basic services, “especially health and environmental services, including water and sewage draining.”
The coastal strip had been experiencing the worst electricity shortage in years, limiting Gazans to about four hours of electricity per day.
Abbas asks Israel to cut shipments
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently asked Israel, the main provider of power to Gaza, to cut shipments as a way of pressuring the Islamic militant group Hamas, which seized power in Gaza a decade ago.
Several neighborhoods were without electricity for more than 24 hours Thursday.
Late Thursday, Hamas said 27 Egyptian trucks with 1.5 million liters of diesel entered Gaza for the power plant. It was unclear when operations would resume.
Diesel fuel from neighboring Egypt had kept the station running at half capacity since June 21, but deliveries were interrupted after a deadly attack on Egyptian soldiers last week near the border. Gaza’s power station has low storage capacity, and requires new fuel shipments on an almost daily basis.
Abbas pressures Hamas
Abbas has tried to squeeze Hamas financially in recent months, hoping to force it to cede power. He slashed salaries of his employees there, stopped payments for ex-prisoners and reinstated heavy taxes on the power plant’s fuel.
Palestinians have been split since 2007, with Hamas ruling Gaza and Abbas governing parts of the West Bank. Repeated reconciliation attempts have failed.
The Egyptian diesel shipments were facilitated by Mohammed Dahlan, a former leading figure in Abbas’ Fatah movement who fell out with the Palestinian president in 2010, went into exile and has since forged strong ties with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
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The malaria parasite owes its devastating success to a finely tuned genome that can survive attacks and evade human immune defenses because it retains only the bare essential genes it needs to thrive, scientists have found.
In a detailed study analyzing more than half the genes in the genome of Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria, researchers found that two-thirds of those genes are essential for survival. This is the largest proportion of essential genes found in any organism studied to date, they said.
The scientists discovered that the parasite often disposes of genes that produce proteins that give its presence away to its host’s immune system. This allows malaria to swiftly change its appearance to the human immune system and hence build up resistance to a vaccine, posing problems for the development of effective shots.
“Our study found that below the surface the parasite is more of a Formula 1 race car than a clunky people carrier: The parasite is fine-tuned and retains the absolute essential genes needed for growth,” said Julian Rayner, who co-led this study at Britain’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
Good and bad
He said this discovery, published Thursday in the journal Cell, had both positive and negative implications.
“The bad news is it can easily get rid of the genes behind the targets we are trying to design vaccines for, but the flip side is there are many more essential gene targets for new drugs than we previously thought,” he said.
Malaria kills about half a million people a year, the vast majority of them children and babies in the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Beyond that, almost half the world’s population is at risk of becoming infected with malaria, and more than 200 million people fall sick with it each year, according to World Health Organization figures.
Despite decades of scientific endeavor, the genetics of Plasmodium parasites have proved tricky to decipher.
This is partly because they are ancient organisms and about half their genes have no similar genes — homologs — in any other organism, Rayner’s team explained, making it difficult for scientists to find clues to their function.
Francisco Javier Gamo, a malaria expert at GlaxoSmithKline, a British drugmaker active in this field of research, said the highest achievement for malaria scientists would be to discover genes that are essential across all of the parasite life cycle stages.
“If we could target those with drugs, it would leave malaria with nowhere to hide,” he said.
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Venezuela’s crude and fuel deliveries to Cuba have slid almost 13 percent in the first half this year, according to documents from state-run oil company PDVSA viewed by Reuters, threatening to worsen gasoline and power shortages in the communist-run island.
Cuba’s government since 2016 has reduced fuel allocations 28 percent to most state-run companies, and has cut electricity consumption. Public lighting was cut 50 percent, while residential electric use was spared.
Beginning in March, Cubans also have reported minor gasoline and diesel shortages at service stations.
Cuba’s economy depends heavily on Venezuelan crude shipments under a series of bilateral agreements started in 2000 by the South American country’s late President Hugo Chavez. In return, the island nation has provided Venezuela with Cuban doctors and other services.
Venezuela’s shipments of crude for Cuba’s refineries dropped 21 percent to 42,310 barrels per day (bpd), the documents showed. Last year, Venezuela made up for a shortfall in crude shipments by sending Cuba more fuels, but this year’s data showed refined products sent to Cuba remained almost unchanged at around 30,040 bpd.
In total, PDVSA sent Cuba an average of 72,350 bpd of crude and refined products in the first half of 2017, down almost 13 percent from the same period of last year, according to the data from internal PDVSA trade reports.
“Cuba needs at least 70,000 bpd from Venezuela to cover its energy deficit and avoid deeper rationing. A larger or total loss of the Venezuelan supply would have a high political and financial cost for Cuba,” which has been gearing up to welcome more tourists, said Jorge Pinon, a Cuban energy expert at the University of Texas in Austin.
Cuba suffered severe energy rationing in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, an ally that had provided cheap fuel. In 2016, Cuba’s economy went into recession for the first time since those days, declining almost 1 percent as shrinking export earnings left it short of funds to import oil on the open market and replace declining Venezuelan supplies.
With Venezuela’s crude production sliding in 2017 for the sixth year in a row, the OPEC nation has had less oil to send Cuba and other customers in regions from Asia to North America and the Caribbean.
Cuba, which produces extremely heavy crude used by industry and power plants, received 103,226 bpd of oil from Venezuela in the first half of 2015, according to the same data.
PDVSA, whose full name is Petroleos de Venezuela SA, did not reply to a request for comment.
Venezuela’s oil shipments to Cuba have been falling since 2008, when they peaked at 115,000 bpd mainly due to a decline in crude exports. The poor shape of Venezuelan refineries cut into fuel exports this year, and Venezuela has also had to boost fuel imports to meet domestic demand.
Cuba, in addition to rationing fuel, is seeking oil cargoes from other producers including Russia, something it had not done for more than a decade.
In one of several recent shipments, the Ocean Quest tanker loaded with fuel oil at Russia’s Tuapse terminal, arrived in Havana on July 9 and is waiting to discharge, according to Reuters vessel tracking data. The Tuapse terminal is operated by state-run Rosneft.
Cuba’s three aged refineries have been operating at reduced rates since last year due to a shortage of light crude, which also affects Venezuela’s 1.3-million-bpd refining network.
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Corruption is undermining all efforts to rebuild Ukraine in line with European Union norms, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday, as President Petro Poroshenko vowed to pursue ever-closer integration with the bloc.
Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk were in Kyiv for a 24-hour summit with Poroshenko following the final ratification of a new trade pact that has angered Russia.
“What we are asking … is to increase the fight against corruption, because corruption is undermining all the efforts this great nation is undertaking,” Juncker said at a joint briefing. “We remain very concerned.”
The criticism suggests the EU delegation may have taken a tougher-than-expected line in talks forecast to be largely upbeat after the confirmation on Tuesday of an association agreement for closer political and trade ties.
Seven conditions still in works
Separately, European Commission Vice president Valdis Dombrovskis said Kyiv had a shrinking window to meet 21 conditions to unlock 600 million euros ($684 million) of further financial assistance from the EU, of which seven are outstanding.
These conditions include making sure that a landmark reform forcing officials to declare their assets online is properly implemented, and Kyiv lifting a ban on wood exports.
“What we are emphasizing currently is that we have quite limited time,” Dombrovskis told reporters. “So all the conditions need to be implemented already in October … because the macrofinancial assistance program ends on Jan. 4 next year.”
Reforms lead to investments
The pro-Western government in Kyiv has sought to boost EU relations since the ousting of a Moscow-backed president in 2014, implementing reforms in exchange for billions of dollars in aid and a new visa-free travel deal with the European Union.
But Ukraine’s allies have repeatedly expressed concern that vested interests and corrupt practices remain entrenched, partly due to weak rule of law.
The European Union and the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine’s main financial backer, have called for the creation of a specialized anti-corruption court, but Juncker said a new solution had been agreed at the summit.
“Today we agreed that if Ukraine establishes … a special chamber devoted to this issue, that will be enough,” he said.
EU membership remains far off
Mykhailo Zhernakov, a judicial expert at the non-governmental coalition Reanimation Package of Reforms, said the agreement would be a disappointment to those campaigning for greater accountability.
“There’s no way that a chamber in any court will be as independent as a separate court,” he told Reuters. “It’s not going to help.”
While full EU membership for Ukraine remains far off, Poroshenko stressed that Kyiv hopes to integrate further by joining the customs union and becoming a member of the bloc’s Schengen open-border zone.
“As early as today, it’s important to start developing a roadmap to the realization of our dreams,” he said.
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An expert panel of scientists says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should review the safety and effectiveness of all opioids and consider the real-world impacts the powerful painkillers have, not only on patients but also on families, crime and the demand for heroin.
In a sweeping report Thursday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine pushed the FDA to bolster a public health approach that already has resulted in one painkiller being pulled from the market. Last week, the maker of opioid painkiller Opana ER withdrew its drug at the FDA’s request following a 2015 outbreak of HIV and hepatitis C in southern Indiana linked to sharing needles to inject the pills.
“Our recommendation is for a much more systematic approach, integrating public health decision-making into all aspects of opioid review and approval,” said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard Medical School, a member of the report committee. “It would be an ambitious undertaking.”
The report details how two intertwining epidemics — prescription painkillers and heroin — led to the worst addiction crisis in U.S. history and provides a plan for turning back the tide of overdose deaths.
Gateway drugs
Prescribed, legal drugs are a gateway to illicit drugs for some, the report says. Other users start with pills diverted to the black market. Crush-resistant pills and other restrictions have unintended consequences, shifting use to heroin and illicit fentanyl.
The epidemic’s broad reach into rural and suburban America “has blurred the formerly distinct social boundary between use of prescribed opioids and use of heroin and other illegally manufactured ones,” the report says.
The authors say it will be possible to stem the crisis without denying opioids to patients whose doctors prescribe them responsibly. But long-term use of opioids by people with chronic pain should be discouraged because it increases dangers of overdose and addiction.
Requested by the FDA last year under the Obama administration, the report was greeted by FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Trump appointee. Gottlieb said in a statement that the opioid epidemic is his “highest immediate priority” and he “was encouraged to see that many of [the] recommendations for the FDA are in areas where we’ve already made new commitments.”
Still, no immediate review of opioids as a class of drugs is planned by the FDA, other than the agency’s routine safety surveillance. Gottlieb said the FDA re-evaluates the safety of approved drugs with post-market information required from drugmakers and other sources.
“We will continue to consider what additional information is needed to ensure we have the right data to make important, science-based decisions,” he said.
Other strategies
Beyond the FDA, the report recommends:
— Better access to treatment for opioid addiction, including use of medications such as buprenorphine, in settings including hospitals, prisons and treatment programs.
— Year-round programs that allow people to return unused opioids to any pharmacy at any time, rather than only at occasional events. Some pharmacies, including Walgreens, have installed kiosks where people can get rid of pills.
— Insurers pay for pain control that goes beyond opioids to include non-drug treatment. The report doesn’t specify which treatments insurers should cover, but it does outline what early evidence exists for acupuncture, physical therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation, calling them “powerful tools.”
— More research on the nature of pain and dependency on opioids and development of new non-addictive treatments.
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United Nations human rights experts on Thursday called on Peru to suspend negotiations on a new contract for a large oilfield in the Amazon until past pollution was cleaned up and the rights of indigenous groups respected.
Canada’s Frontera Energy Corporation now operates Block 192 in the Peruvian Amazon and is in talks with Peru about renewing its contract once the current one expires in September.
U.N. Special Rapporteurs Baskut Tuncak and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, independent experts tasked with investigating human rights issues, said Peru had failed to clean up pollution from oil spills in the region and was not doing enough to ensure indigenous groups had a voice in talks.
“The Peruvian Government must suspend the direct negotiations with companies until the right to free, prior and informed consent is guaranteed, and all environmental damage has been remedied,” Tuncak and Tauli-Corpuz said in a statement from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The remarks will likely be welcomed by indigenous rights activists in Peru who say a law requiring the government to include native groups in talks on projects affecting them has not been fully enforced.
Peru’s environment ministry and energy and mines ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In previous years, the government has declared several environmental emergencies in the region due to oil pollution.
Frontera did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Peru’s government has been trying to jump start investments in the country’s oil industry that have dropped sharply since global oil prices fell and a series of ruptures largely shuttered the main pipeline serving the sector.
The aging pipeline, operated by state-owned oil company Petroperu, suffered a new rupture this week, Petroperu said Wednesday. The company has blamed most of the dozen spills from the pipeline last year on attacks from unknown parties.
In June, Frontera reached a deal with indigenous people who had occupied Block 192 in a land-use dispute. The company agreed to pay them for use of land and finance community projects.
Block 192 has produced an average of 2,565 barrels of oil per day this year, a sharp drop from previous years when it churned out some 10,000 bpd, according to data from state regulator Perupetro.
U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum produced oil from Block 192 for decades before Argentine energy company Pluspetrol took over operations in 2001. Frontera was awarded a two-year contract in 2015.
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Moon dust that Neil Armstrong collected during the first lunar landing was displayed Thursday at a New York auction house — a symbol of America’s glory days in space now valued at $2 million to $4 million.
The late astronaut brought the dust and some tiny rocks back to Earth in an ordinary-looking bag.
It’s one of 180 lots linked to space travel that Sotheby’s is auctioning off July 20 to mark the 48th anniversary of the pioneer lunar landing on that date in 1969.
The moon dust is the first sample of Earth’s satellite ever collected.
The bag has had a storied existence, a decades-long trajectory during which it was misidentified and nearly landed in the trash. About two years ago, it appeared in a seized assets auction staged on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service. The owner, whose name has not been made public, purchased the treasure and sent it to NASA for testing.
After a legal tussle, a federal judge granted the owner full rights over the curiosity.
Other items on the block are Armstrong’s snapshot of fellow Apollo 11 astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin standing on the moon, with an estimated value of $3,000 to $5,000.
A documented flight plan astronauts used to return to Earth is valued at $25,000 to $35,000.
In a photo valued at $2,000 to $3,000, astronaut Gene Cernan from Apollo 17 is seen rolling around in the lunar rover through a valley on the moon.
Capping the sale is a touch of humor: The Snoopy astronaut doll that was the mascot of the Apollo 10 crew, at an estimated pre-sale price of $2,000 to $3,000.
Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. He died in 2012 in Ohio.
The first human to venture into outer space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who orbited Earth in a spacecraft in April 1961.
Gagarin’s description of the planet — translated from Russian — is being offered as part of his observations on being in space, at an estimated price of $50,000 to $80,000.
Calling it “a magnificent picture,” he wrote: “The Earth had a very distinct and pretty blue halo. This halo could be clearly seen when looking at the horizon. It had a smooth transition from pale blue to blue, dark blue, violet and absolutely black.”
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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to unveil a revised health care bill to Republican colleagues Thursday, as he makes a push to achieve one of the top legislative goals for the party and President Donald Trump.
McConnell last month withdrew an earlier plan after it became clear there was not enough support for it in the Republican-led Senate.
Trump has been vocal this week in pushing Senate Republicans to finish work on a health care bill before leaving for their annual August vacation.
His latest comments came Wednesday in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, with Trump saying he would be “very angry” if a health care bill does not pass.
McConnell has postponed the scheduled recess by two weeks in order to give lawmakers more time.
An assessment of the previous Senate bill by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the number of uninsured Americans would rise by 22 million during the next decade when compared to the current system.
Without details of the new plan, it is unclear how different it will be, but McConnell faces a similar challenge in keeping the support of his fellow Republicans. The party has a 52-48 majority in the Senate, and with no Democrats voicing support for the effort to revamp the health care system they passed under President Barack Obama, only a few Republicans can oppose the measure and still have it succeed.
The main Republican criticisms of the existing Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are that it is too costly and unfairly requires people to purchase health insurance or else face a penalty.
Sen. Ted Cruz has proposed allowing health insurance companies that are currently required to cover certain services in their plans to be allowed to offer much more basic options that would be less costly for healthier people who need less care. But opponents of that initiative say that will only serve to allow coverage for people with more medical problems to become unaffordable.
Some senators want to eliminate as much as possible of Obama’s signature law, while others are looking to preserve popular parts of it, including insurance funding for poorer Americans.
The House of Representatives narrowly approved repeal of the legislation in May. Trump initially cheered the passage of that bill at a White House rally, but since has called it “mean” and lobbied the Senate to approve an overhaul with “heart.”
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McDonald’s is hoping to make a difference in its future seven seconds at a time.
The company that helped define fast food is making supersized efforts to reverse its fading popularity and catch up to a landscape that has evolved around it. That includes expanding delivery, digital ordering kiosks in restaurants, and rolling out an app that saves precious seconds.
Much of the work is on display in an unmarked warehouse near the company’s headquarters in suburban Chicago, where a blowup of a mobile phone screen shows the app launching nationally later this year. McDonald’s estimates it would take 10 seconds for a customer to tell an employee their order number from the app, down from the 17-second average of ordering at the drive-thru, a difference that could help ease pileups. Elsewhere at the Innovation Center, the digital ordering kiosk shows how customers can skip lines at the register.
“Five, 10 years ago, we were the dominant player in convenience, as convenience was defined in those days,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said last month. “But convenience continually gets redefined, and we haven’t modernized.”
The push come as McDonald’s Corp.’s stock has hit all-time highs as investors cheer a turnaround plan that has included slashed costs and expansion overseas. Yet the asterisk on the headlines is the chain’s declining stature in its flagship U.S. market, where it is fighting intensifying competition, fickle tastes and a persistent junk food image.
In an increasingly crowded field of places to eat, the number of McDonald’s locations in the U.S. is set to shrink for the third year in a row. At established locations, the frequency of customer visits has declined for four straight years, even after the launch of a popular “All-Day Breakfast” menu.
The chain that popularized innovations like drive-thrus in the 1970s acknowledges it has been slow to adapt, and is scrambling to better fit into American lifestyles.
Running to keep up
Lots of once-dominant restaurant chains are feeling the pressure of people having more eating options.
An estimated 613,000 places were selling either food or drink in the U.S. last year, up 17 percent from a decade earlier, according to government figures. Supermarkets and convenience stores are offering more prepared foods, and meal-kit delivery companies have been expanding.
“Better burger” places like Shake Shack and Habit Burger Grill don’t come close to McDonald’s roughly 14,000 U.S. locations, but they’re growing. And even if Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts don’t serve burgers and fries, they are among those promoting food more aggressively.
“They’re still taking customers from the same market pool,” said Nick Karavites, a McDonald’s franchisee with 22 locations in the Chicago area and chairman of a regional leadership committee.
Richard Adams, a former McDonald’s franchisee who is now a consultant to those businesses, has questioned whether the chain can return to the height of its popularity in such a fragmented marketplace. He also noted that many of the new offerings the company is pursuing, such as delivery, are already available at other places.
Still, McDonald’s needs to make changes to keep customer visits from falling further.
‘Turning a very large ship’
One main focus is the drive-thru, where McDonald’s gets roughly 70 percent of its business.
Customers who place orders on the mobile app, for instance, could also pull into a designated parking spot where an employee would bring out their order. That would theoretically ease backups at the drive-thru, which in turn might prevent potential customers from driving past without stopping during peak hours.
Then there’s the partnership with UberEats to offer delivery. McDonald’s gives an undisclosed percentage of the sale to UberEats, in addition to a fee of about $5 that customers pay. So a risk is that delivery could draw from in-store sales, eating into profitability.
So far, however, McDonald’s says delivery is bringing in new business during slower times at the roughly 3,500 locations where it has rolled out since the start of the year.
Either way, such changes aren’t likely to transform operations overnight, since most of McDonald’s customers might prefer to order the way they always have.
“That’s like turning a very large ship,” said Karavites, noting the range of company efforts intended to build sales over time. At his remodeled restaurant in Chicago where delivery was recently launched, he said sales are climbing.
To bring more people in over the short-term, the company is promoting $1 sodas and $2 McCafe drinks. Glass cases displaying baked goods are also popping up in stores. And at about 700 locations, the company is testing “dessert stations” behind the counter where employees can make sundaes topped with cake or brownie chunks.
Those stations could eventually handle an expanded menu of sweets.
Junk food image
At the same time, McDonald’s is trying to shake its image for serving junk food, especially since its appeal to families with children has long helped keep it ahead of rivals like Burger King and Wendy’s.
It’s made changes to its Happy Meal, and made a high-profile pledge to offer healthier options. It plans to start using fresh beef instead of frozen patties in Quarter Pounders. But as other chains emphasizing quality or health keep emerging, it may get harder for McDonald’s to hold onto families or change perceptions.
Larry Light, a former chief marketing officer at McDonald’s, says the company strayed in recent years by chasing customers who may have been going to places like Chipotle, but that it is refocusing on burgers and fries. He thinks that will help get people visiting more often.
“You cannot build an enduring, profitable business on a shrinking customer base,” Light said.
And Bernstein analyst Sara Senatore cited the changes the company is pursuing in raising her rating on McDonald’s to “buy” in April.
“I wouldn’t underestimate the power of scale,” Senatore said.
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