The worst nightmare for parents is probably a child wandering off and getting lost. And for parents who want to keep their kids within their reach and still give them a chance to play freely and be adventurous, a New York company is offering a solution. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Month: January 2018
Fighting the flu usually consists of using predictive research to create a vaccine that fights the strains of the disease most likely to show up. But scientists around the world are closing in on a universal vaccine that takes the guesswork out of the fight. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The 45th annual March for Life rally takes place Friday in Washington. President Trump says he will speak at the anti-abortion event from the White House. The rally also coincides with the 45th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, a Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States. Pro-choice supporters favor the law, while anti-abortionists want the decision reversed. VOA’s Deborah Block looks at the debate over the issue.
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Scientists are reporting progress on a blood test to detect many types of cancer at an early stage, including some of the most deadly ones that lack screening tools now.
Many groups are working on liquid biopsy tests, which look for DNA and other things that tumors shed into blood, to try to find cancer before it spreads, when chances of cure are best.
In a study Thursday in the journal Science, Johns Hopkins University scientists looked to see how well their experimental test detected cancer in people already known to have the disease. The blood tests found about 70 percent of eight common types of cancer in the 1,005 patients. The rates varied depending on the type, lower for breast tumors but high for ovarian, liver and pancreatic ones.
In many cases, the test narrowed the possible origin of the cancer to one or two places, such as colon or lung, important for limiting how much follow-up testing a patient might need. It gave only seven false alarms when tried on 812 others without cancer.
Not ready for use yet
The test is nowhere near ready for use yet; it needs to be validated in a larger study underway in a general population, rather than cancer patients, to see if it truly works and helps save lives, the best measure of a screening test’s value.
“We’re very, very excited and see this as a first step,” said Nickolas Papadopoulos, one of the Hopkins study leaders. “But we don’t want people calling up” and asking for the test now, because it’s not available, he said.
Some independent experts saw great promise.
“It’s such a good first set of results” that it gives hope this approach will pan out, said Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who consults for a gene testing company. “Anything close to 50 percent or 40 percent detection is pretty exciting stuff,” and this one did better than that, he said.
Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, was encouraged that the test did well on cancers that lack screening tests now. If a blood test could find 98 percent of ovarian cancers at an early stage, as these early results suggest, “that would be a significant advance,” he said.
But he cautioned: “We have a long way to go to demonstrate its effectiveness as a screening test.”
Testing the test
The test detects mutations in 16 genes tied to cancer and measures eight proteins that often are elevated when cancer is present.
It covers breast, colon and lung and five kinds that don’t have screening tests for people at average risk: ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic and esophageal. Prostate cancer is not included. A blood test is widely used, the PSA test, but its value for screening is controversial.
Researchers tried the new test on people whose cancers were still confined to where it started or had spread a little but not widely throughout the body. It detected 33 percent of breast cancers, about 60 percent of colon or lung cancers and nearly all of the ovarian and liver ones. It did better when tumors were larger or had spread. It did less well at the very earliest stage.
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Social media companies Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have greatly accelerated their removals of online hate speech, reviewing over two thirds of complaints within 24 hours, new EU figures show.
The European Union has piled pressure on social media firms to increase their efforts to fight the proliferation of extremist content and hate speech on their platforms, even threatening them with legislation.
Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube signed a code of conduct with the EU in May 2016 to review most complaints within a 24-hour timeframe.
The companies managed to meet that target in 81 percent of cases, EU figures seen by Reuters show, compared with 51 percent in May 2017 when the European Commission last monitored their compliance with the code of conduct.
EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has said previously she does not want to see a removal rate of 100 percent as that could impinge on free speech. She has also said she is not in favor of legislating as Germany has done.
A law providing for hefty fines for social media companies if they do not remove hate speech quickly enough went into force in Germany this year.
“I do not hide that I am not in favor of hard regulation because the freedom of speech for me is almost absolute,” Jourova told reporters in December.
“In case of doubt it should remain online because freedom of expression is [in a] privileged position.”
Of the hate speech flagged to the companies, almost half of it was found on Facebook, the figures show, while 24 percent was on YouTube and 26 percent on Twitter.
The most common ground for hatred identified by the Commission was ethnic origins, followed by anti-Muslim hatred and xenophobia, including expressions of hatred against migrants and refugees.
Following pressure from several European governments, social media companies stepped up their efforts to tackle extremist content online, including through the use of artificial intelligence.
The Commission will likely issue a recommendation, a soft law instrument, on how companies should take down extremist content related to militant groups at the end of February, an official said, as it is less nuanced than hate speech and needs to be taken offline more quickly.
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Widow Ahatho Turuga lost 20 of her goats to drought early last year, but the shopkeeper is planning to reinvest in her herd once she has saved enough money.
“I think I will start with four goats and see how it goes,” she said, rearranging soap on the upper shelf of her shop in Loglogo, a few kilometers from Marsabit town.
She recalled how frequent droughts had left her on the edge of desperation, struggling to care for six of her own children and four others she adopted after their mother died.
But Turuga is finding it easier to cope since taking part in a rural entrepreneurship program run by The BOMA Project, a nonprofit helping women in Kenya’s dry northern areas beat extreme poverty and adapt to climate change.
The U.S. and Kenya-based organization provides two years of business and life-skills training, as well as mentorship.
Groups of three women are each given a startup grant of 20,000 Kenyan shillings ($194.55) and a progress grant of 10,000 shillings to set up a business.
After graduating, they carry on operating their businesses — mainly small shops selling groceries and household goods — either together or on their own.
The women also club together in savings groups of at least 15 people, who put away anything from 400 shillings a month each, and make loans to members at an interest rate of 5 to 10 percent.
Habibo Osman, a mother of five who was in the same group as Turuga, has been able to support her family even after divorcing her husband.
The 1,200 shillings she earns each week from the shop she established as a BOMA business has enabled her to enroll her eldest child, aged five, in nursery school. She is now hoping to save enough to buy her own land.
No more aid
Ahmed “Kura” Omar, BOMA’s co-founder and deputy country director, said his native Marsabit is one of Kenya’s driest counties. It is often hit by prolonged drought, with many families losing livestock in its mainly pastoralist economy, he added.
“Given that there is no foreseeable end to these drought patterns, we need to stop relying on food distribution and aid money, and create more sustainable, life-long solutions,” Kura told Reuters.
BOMA CEO Kathleen Colson said the program aimed to help break the cycle of dependency on aid, giving women power over their lives and the means to move out of extreme poverty.
“People need to be treated with dignity and be empowered to achieve self-sufficiency and effect change on a community level,” she said.
BOMA asks villagers to help identify the poorest women among them to participate in the training. After completing the program, they help other women, a process that raises income levels across the entire area.
Bakayo Nahiro, a widow and mother of six, belongs to the Namayana women’s saving group in Kargi in Marsabit. She has amassed 25,000 shillings in savings, but said profit margins go down in drought periods as people take shop goods on credit when they have no livestock to sell.
Money is power
Jane Naimirdik, a BOMA trainer and mentor, said communities in Marsabit are highly patriarchal, but the program helps women gain a voice in society.
The practice of grouping women in threes creates mutual accountability but also offers protection from husbands who may want to take money from them, she added.
“We once handled a case where the husband tried to take the wife’s savings by force, but we approached [him] and told him the money did not belong to his wife but to the women’s savings group and he understood,” said Naimirdik.
Moses Galore, Kargi’s village chief, said no such incidents had been reported to him, and men appreciated their wives’ financial contribution to the household.
Magatho Mifo, a BOMA business owner, said her husband was happy about her commercial activities as she could now provide for her family while he travels for days in search of pasture for his herd.
Her neighbors’ wives and children buy goods on credit when the men are away looking for grazing, and repay her when they return. This helps the community during lean times and generates more income for her business, she said.
“My husband sometimes gets angry when I attend the women’s group meetings, because they can last a long time, but once I arrive home with a bag of food or something else, all is forgotten,” said Khobobo Gurleyo, another entrepreneurship program member.
Business partnerships
BOMA mentor Naimirdik said the women are also trained in conflict management to strengthen their business partnerships.
Ideally, each group includes women of different ages so as to benefit from the experience of older members and to make the program sustainable as it passes to subsequent generations, she said.
In addition, the women receive information about family planning and the importance of having small families, as well as child and maternal health and hygiene, she added.
The BOMA Project has reported positive results in the communities where it works in Marsabit County and Samburu East, with about 15,700 women enrolled in its program since 2008.
Data collected during a 2016 exit survey of participants found that after two years, 99 percent of BOMA businesses were still open.
Members experienced a 147 percent increase in their income, and a 1,400 percent increase in their savings, alongside a 63 percent drop in children going to bed hungry.
The BOMA Project plans to expand its program across East Africa’s drylands by partnering with governments and other development agencies.
In Kenya, it is undertaking a pilot program with the government involving 1,600 women in Samburu, in addition to its existing work.
The project aims to reach 1 million women and children by 2022, said CEO Colson.
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Turkey’s main business lobby on Thursday called on the government to end the state of emergency as parliament extended it for a sixth time since it was imposed after an attempted coup in 2016.
Emergency rule allows President Tayyip Erdogan and the government to bypass parliament in passing new laws and allows them to suspend rights and freedoms. More than 50,000 people have been arrested since its introduction and 150,000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs.
The Turkish parliament on Thursday voted to extend the state of emergency, with the ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition voting in favor.
Rights groups and some of Turkey’s Western allies fear Erdogan is using the crackdown to stifle dissent and crush his opponents. Freedom House, a Washington-based watchdog, downgraded Turkey to “not free” from “partly free” in an annual report this week.
In order to preserve its international reputation, Turkey needs to start normalizing rapidly, Erol Bilecik, the head of the TUSIAD business lobby said.
“The first step in that regard is bringing an end to the state of emergency,” he told a meeting in Istanbul.
Parliament was due to extend emergency rule after the national security council on Wednesday recommended it do so.
The state of emergency has negatively impacted foreign investors’ decisions, another senior TUSIAD executive said.
“As Turkey takes steps towards becoming a state of law, direct investments will increase, growth will accelerate, more jobs will be created,” Tuncay Ozilhan said, adding that he hoped this would be the last extension of emergency rule.
The government says its measures are necessary to confront multiple security challenges and root out supporters of the cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it blames for the coup attempt. Gulen has denied any involvement.
But critics fear Erdogan is pushing the NATO member towards greater authoritarianism.
Some 30 emergency decrees have been published since the failed coup. They contain 1,194 articles and cover defense, security, the judiciary, education and health, widely restructuring the relationship between the state and the citizen.
A total of 2,271 private educational institutions have been shut down in the crackdown, as well as 19 labor unions, 15 universities, 49 hospitals and 148 media outlets.
The two co-heads of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition party, parliament’s third-largest, are in jail on terrorism charges, as are several of the parties deputies.
The Turkish Journalists’ Association says about 160 journalists are in jail, most held since the failed coup. Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists called Turkey the world’s top jailer of journalists.
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Earth last year wasn’t quite as hot as 2016’s record-shattering mark, but it ranked second or third, depending on who was counting.
Either way, scientists say it showed a clear signal of man-made global warming because it was the hottest year they’ve seen without an El Nino boosting temperatures naturally.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Kingdom’s meteorological office on Thursday announced that 2017 was the third hottest year on record. At the same time, NASA and researchers from a nonprofit in Berkeley, California, called it the second.
The agencies slightly differ because of how much they count an overheating Arctic, where there are gaps in the data.
The global average temperature in 2017 was 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.51 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.84 Celsius (1.51 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average and just behind 2016 and 2015, NOAA said. Other agencies’ figures were close but not quite the same.
Earlier, European forecasters called 2017 the second hottest year, while the Japanese Meteorological Agency called it the third hottest. Two other scientific groups that use satellite, not ground, measurements split on 2017 being second or third hottest. With four teams calling it the second hottest year and four teams calling it third, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization termed 2017 a tie for second with 2015.
“This is human-caused climate change in action,” said Nobel Prize winning chemist Mario Molina of the University of California San Diego, who wasn’t part of any of the measuring teams. “Climate is not weather, [which] can go up and down from year to year. What counts is the longer-term change, which is clearly upwards.”
Which year is first, second or third doesn’t really matter much, said Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi. What really matters is the clear warming trend, he said.
NOAA’s five hottest years have been from 2010 on.
During an El Nino year – when a warming of the central Pacific changes weather worldwide – the globe’s annual temperature can spike, naturally, by a tenth or two of a degree, scientists said. There was a strong El Nino during 2015 and 2016.
But 2017 finished with a La Nina, the cousin of El Nino that lowers temperatures. Had there been no man-made warming, 2017 would have been average or slightly cooler than normal, said National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Ben Sanderson.
On the other hand, NASA calculated if the temperature contributions of El Nino and El Nina were removed from the global data through the years, 2017 would go down as the hottest year on record, NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said.
Carbon pollution is like putting the Earth on an escalator of rising temperatures, with natural variation such as El Nino or the cooling effect of volcanoes like hopping up or down a step or two on that escalator, scientists said. Not every year will be warmer than the last because of natural variations, but the trend over years will be rising temperatures, they said.
The observed warming has been predicted within a few tenths of a degree in computer simulations going back to the 1970s and 1980s, several scientists said.
It has been 33 years since the last month that the globe was cooler than normal, according to NOAA.
Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini has never lived through a month or year that wasn’t hotter than normal.
“I look at pictures of the great winters of the late `70s from my parents and wonder if I’ll ever experience anything like that in my lifetime,” said Gebsini, who’s 31.
A major hacking operation tied to Lebanon’s main intelligence agency has been exposed after careless spies left hundreds of gigabytes of intercepted data exposed to the open internet, according to a report published Thursday.
Mobile security firm Lookout, Inc. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said the haul, which includes nearly half a million intercepted text messages, had simply been left online by hackers linked to Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security.
“It’s almost like thieves robbed the bank and forgot to lock the door where they stashed the money,” said Mike Murray, Lookout’s head of intelligence. Lookout security researcher Michael Flossman said the trove ran the gamut, from Syrian battlefield photos to private phone conversations, passwords and pictures of children’s birthday parties.
“It was everything. Literally everything,” Flossman said.
Discoveries of state-sponsored cyberespionage campaigns have become commonplace as countries in the Middle East and Asia scramble to match the digital prowess of the United States, China, Russia and other major powers. But Lookout and EFF’s report is unusual for the amount of data uncovered about the spying campaign’s victims and its operators.
Notably, their report drew on data generated by suspected test devices — a set of similarly configured phones that appear to have been used to try out the spy software — to potentially pinpoint the hackers’ exact address.
The report said the suspected test devices all seemed to have connected to a WiFi network active at the intersection of Beirut’s Pierre Gemayel and Damascus Streets, the location of the bulky, sandstone-colored high-rise that houses Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security. The Associated Press was able to at least partially verify that finding, sending a reporter to the area around the heavily guarded, antennae-crowned building Wednesday to confirm that the same WiFi network was still broadcasting there. Other data also points to the spy agency: the report said the internet protocol addresses of the spyware’s control panels mapped to an area just south of the GDGS building.
Electronic Frontier Foundation Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin said the find was remarkable, explaining that she could think of only one other example where researchers were able to pin state-backed hackers to a specific building.
`We were able to take advantage of extraordinarily poor operational security,” she said.
The GDGS declined to comment ahead of the report’s publication.
The 49-page document lays out how spies used a network of bogus websites and malicious smartphone apps — such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Threema and Signal — to steal passwords or pry into communications, eavesdropping on conversations and capturing at least 486,000 text messages. Some victims were tricked into visiting the websites or downloading the rogue apps by booby trapped messages sent over WhatsApp, the report said. Others may have had malicious programs installed physically when they were away from their phones. Still more may have been lured into compromising their devices by a set of apparently fake Facebook profiles set up to look like attractive young Lebanese women.
EFF and Lookout said the spying stretched over 21 different countries, including the United States and several European nations, but they declined to identify any of the victims except in general terms, saying that there were thousands of them and that in many cases it wasn’t always obvious who they were.
Murray said relevant authorities had been notified of the spying but declined to go into further detail.
Lebanon has historically been a hub for espionage and Lebanese spies have a documented interest in surveillance software. In 2015, for example, the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab published evidence that GDGS had tapped FinFisher, a spyware merchant whose tools have been used to hack into the computers of several African and Middle Eastern dissidents.
The hacking campaign exposed Thursday by EFF and Lookout — which they dub “Dark Caracal” — was discovered in the wake of an entirely different cyberespionage campaign targeting Kazakh journalists and lawyers.
An EFF report on the Kazakh campaign published in 2016 caught the attention of researchers at Lookout, who swept through the company’s vast store of smartphone data to find a sample of the smartphone surveillance software mentioned in the write-up. It was while pulling on that string that investigators stumbled across the open server full of photos, conversations and intercepted text messages — as well as the link to Lebanon.
Galperin and Murray both said researchers were marshalling more evidence and that more revelations were coming.
“Stay tuned,” Murray said.
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Nigeria moved closer to turning the first part of a long-awaited oil industry bill into law after the lower house passed the same version of the legislation approved by the Senate last year, a lawmaker in the House of Representatives said on Thursday.
It is the first time both houses have approved the same version of the bill. It still needs the president’s signature to become law.
The legislation, which Nigeria has been trying to pass for more than a decade, aims to increase transparency and stimulate growth in the country’s oil industry.
Under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the Petroleum Industry Bill was broken up into sections to ease passage.
The House of Representatives passed the first part called the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) on Wednesday.
“The PIGB, as passed yesterday, is the same as passed by the Senate. We have harmonized everything and formed the National Assembly Joint Committee on PIB,” Alhassan Ado Doguwa, a lawmaker in the House of Representatives, told reporters in the capital Abuja.
“Every consideration of the bills is now under the joint committee. We have broken the jinx after 17 years. We are working on the other accompanying bills.”
Doguwa is the chairman of the lower house’s Ad-hoc Committee on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) as well as of the National Assembly Joint Committee on PIB.
The joint committee is working on two more bills as part of the PIB.
The governance section deals with management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Uncertainty over terms affecting taxation of upstream oil development has been the main sticking point holding back billions of dollars of investment for the oil industry. This will be addressed later in an accompanying bill.
Shell, Chevron, Total, ExxonMobil and Italy’s Eni are major producers in Nigeria through joint ventures with the state oil firm NNPC.
The PIGB would create four new entities whose powers would include the ability to conduct bid rounds, award exploration licenses and make recommendations to the oil minister on upstream licenses.
“It’s an unprecedented step forward. The PIB is something that has defied the last two governments,” Antony Goldman of PM Consulting said.
“The detail of what is agreed will determine the extreme to which the bill takes politics out of the sector and tackles systemic corruption.”
The Catholic church is going digital in Paris.
The city’s diocese will introduce a system allowing contactless card payments during Sunday’s mass at Saint Francois de Molitor, a church located in an upscale and conservative Paris neighborhood.
The diocese explained Thursday that five connected collection baskets with a traditional design will be handed out to mass attenders during the service. They will choose on a screen the amount they want to donate – from 2 to 10 euros ($2.4 to $12.2) – and their payment will be processed in “one second.”
The diocese insisted “this new gesture remains extremely close to the usual” one, yet parishioners will still be able to use cash for their donations.
According to the diocese, donations amount to 79 percent of its resources.
“Mass collection represents 14 percent of that contribution,” it said in a statement. “That’s about 98 euros on average, per year and per faithful.” It explained that the move is meant “to anticipate the gradual disappearance of cash money.”
This is not the French Catholic church’s first attempt to keep up with new technologies.
Since 2016, a smartphone app for making donations called “La Quete,” which translates as “The Collection,” has been introduced across 28 French dioceses and more than 2,000 parishes.
About 4,000 donations have been made over 14 months in the eight Paris parishes that have been testing the app, with the average amount spent coming in at 4.71 euros.
“The Church is committed to supporting everyone in the new ways of life and consumption,” the Paris diocese said. “The dematerialization of the means of payment is also part of the challenges the Church has to take up. Whether through a connected basket, with contactless payment, or through a smartphone app.”
Zambia says it has made progress in containing a cholera outbreak that has killed about 70 people in the southern African nation since October.
Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya this week said there had been a “drastic reduction” in the number of new cases in the outbreak, which has mostly affected the capital, Lusaka. He says the provision of fresh water and other preventive measures are being taken.
The World Health Organization is assisting with the vaccination of Lusaka residents against cholera.
Last week, the military moved in after some residents in a densely populated Lusaka slum rioted over the removal of market vendors, a measure designed to curb the disease.
Cholera is caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water and can kill within hours if untreated.
China’s economy surged in 2017, posting a 6.9 percent increase from the year before — its first annual increase in seven years.
The figures announced Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics outstripped the 6.7 percent increase recorded in 2016, which marked the weakest annual expansion in 26 years. The final number was also well above the 6.5 percent target set by government policymakers.
The bureau credited the unexpected gains on robust exports, which rose 10.8 percent from the previous year, and increased consumer spending, with retail sales growing by 10.2 percent.
The figures boost the government’s decision to turn from wasteful and polluting industries, which had fueled China’s rapid rise to become the world’s second-largest economy.
Iraq and British energy giant BP have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop lucrative oil fields in the country’s north.
The Oil Ministry’s statement quotes BP’s president for the Middle East region, Michael Townshend, as saying that his company will conduct surveys and studies to increase production to 750,000 barrels a day. It says the signing took place in Kirkuk on Thursday without giving more details.
As of late last month, the fields around Kirkuk produced around 140,000 barrels a day, all of which went to refineries.
Iraqi forces seized the disputed city of Kirkuk from Kurdish forces in October. The Kurds, who took control of Kirkuk and other disputed areas when Islamic State group swept into Iraq in summer 2014, exported oil through their own pipeline to Turkey.
The Middle East’s largest airline, Emirates, announced Thursday it struck a deal with Airbus to purchase 20 A380 aircraft with the option to buy 16 more in a deal worth $16 billion, throwing a lifeline to the European-made double-decker jumbo jets.
The Dubai-based Emirates already has 101 A380s in its fleet and 41 more on order, making it the largest operator of the jumbo jet.
“This new order underscores Airbus’ commitment to produce the A380 at least for another ten years,” said Airbus chief salesman John Leahy.
“This order will provide stability to the A380 production line,” Emirates Chairman and Chief Executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said in a statement after the deal was signed in Dubai on Thursday morning.
Emirates, which is owned by the Dubai government in the United Arab Emirates, said the additional A380s will be delivered to the airliner from 2020 onwards and that some of the new A380s will be used as fleet replacements.
Airbus chief salesman John Leahy had warned only three days earlier that if the company couldn’t work out a deal with Emirates, it would have to shut down the superjumbo’s production line. Airbus has spent years and billions developing the double-decker jumbo jet, even as skeptics questioned whether it could generate enough demand to justify its cost and the bigger runways it requires.
An Airbus A380 has a list price of $445.6 million, but airlines and manufacturers often negotiate lower prices.
Airbus delivered just 15 of the planes last year, and aims to deliver 12 more this year.
Leahy told reporters Monday that Emirates is the only airline with the ability to commit to a minimum of six planes a year for a minimum of eight to 10 years, or what is needed to make the Airbus program viable.
“It’s positive news for both sides,” airline analyst John Strickland of JLS Consulting said. “The A380 is critical to Emirates’ hub-and-growth strategy and equally the airline is key to Airbus’ continuation of the program. It will be a great relief to Airbus to have secured this order, but they have to work aggressively to secure orders from other airlines too now.”
Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said the deal reflects Emirates’ commitment to advancing “Dubai’s vision to grow further as a world-class destination and aviation hub.” Dubai’s main airport, where Emirates is based, is among the busiest in the world with more than 80 million travelers passing through in 2016.
Airbus tweeted news of the deal, saying it was “glad to announce” Emirates’ commitment to the A380.
Shares in Airbus rose on the news of the deal, gaining 2.2 percent on the day, to 91.67 euros in Paris.
At Dubai’s biennial Air Show in November, Airbus suffered an embarrassment when it was scheduled to announce it had a struck a deal with Emirates for its A380, only to see Boeing sit on the podium with the airline and sign a $15.1 billion deal.
Emirates’ fleet relies solely on the Airbus 380 and the Boeing 777 for its flights.
While the calving of cliff-sized chunks of ice off the polar glaciers is a very visible effect of climate change, what’s happening, unseen, below the ice shelf is a more significant indicator of the warming seas. A new generation of robots is being launched to monitor those changes. Faith Lapidus reports.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would announce a decision soon on whether to slap tariffs on imported solar panels, and quipped that when countries dump subsidized panels in the United States, “Everybody goes out of business.”
The solar industry is anxiously awaiting the decision, which will have wide-reaching implications for the sector. Domestic panel producers opposed to cheap imports would benefit from a tariff. But installers that have relied on the lower-cost hardware for their recent breakneck growth would suffer.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump declined to say how he would land on the case — which was triggered last year by a domestic manufacturer’s trade grievance — but complained about the effect of imports on U.S. panel makers.
“You know, they dump ’em — government-subsidized, lots of things happening — they dump the panels, then everybody goes out of business,” he said.
Asked when the decision would be announced, he said: “Pretty soon. Honestly, pretty soon.”
According to a process governed by the International Trade Commission, Trump has until Jan. 26 to make his decision.
Bankrupt domestic panel producer Suniva triggered Trump’s consideration of tariffs last year when it filed a trade case arguing it could not compete with cheap imports. About 95 percent of the solar cells and panels sold in the United States are made abroad, with most coming from China, Malaysia and the Philippines, according to SPV Market Research.
Suniva was later joined in the case by the U.S. arm of German manufacturer SolarWorld AG.
In October, Trump received a range of options from members of the U.S. International Trade Commission to protect domestic producers, but he has broad leeway to come up with his own alternative or do nothing at all.
Suniva is seeking strong measures.
“A robust tariff will allow Suniva to restart its factories and rehire employees,” Suniva spokesman Mark Paustenbach said.
Jobs at stake
Only about 14 percent of the solar industry’s 260,000 jobs are in manufacturing. The trade case has fueled anxiety among installers that make up most of the rest of the industry and rely on low-priced imports.
The installation sector’s trade group, the Solar Energy Industries Association, has campaigned against tariffs, saying they would drive up the price of solar and cripple demand, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs and ultimately hurting the manufacturers that sought them in the first place.
“I’m staying optimistic that the business aspect of this will come through in the end,” said George Hershman, president of Swinerton Renewable Energy, a privately held firm that constructs large-scale solar projects.
Hershman said Swinerton employed 2,000 full-time employees and up to 8,000 temporary workers, but added several of its projects had been placed on hold pending Trump’s decision.
“If you add 50 percent to the cost of the job, it may not be economic,” Hershman said.
Solaria Corp, a U.S. company that produces panels in both California and South Korea, also opposes tariffs, according to Chief Executive Suvi Sharma. The company said a recent $23million financing round took months longer than it should have partly because of investor jitters about the case.
“The best thing would be to have this whole thing go away,” Sharma said.
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Every year there are an estimated 78,000 new cases of brain cancer diagnosed in the United States, and nearly 400,000 worldwide. It is a particularly challenging cancer and very seldom are patients ever “cured.” But there are new therapies that are helping patients lead longer, more normal lives. Kevin Enochs reports.
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Wall Street roared upward Wednesday, with investor enthusiasm sending all three major stock indices to record finishes, and the Dow to its first close above 26,000 points.
The blue-chip Dow gained 1.3 percent to close at 26,115.65 — just eight trading sessions after breaking the 25,000 mark — with strong showings from Boeing, IBM and Intel.
The broader S&P 500 added 0.9 percent to close at 2,802.56, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained a full percentage point to settle at 7,298.28.
With just 11 trading days so far in 2018, Wednesday’s session marked the seventh time this year all three major indices closed at all-time highs.
Maris Ogg of Tower Bridge Associates told AFP the sustained rally was boosted by a “confluence of good news,” including strong company earnings, slashed corporate tax rates, higher worker compensation and new investment.
“This is a boost for productivity” and gave market players greater confidence, she said.
IBM gained 2.9 percent after analysts upgraded their price target for the company’s stock, and chipmaker Intel rose a similar amount, while aviation giant Boeing jumped 4.7 percent after announcing a joint venture to make aircraft seats.
Buoyant markets were comforted in midafternoon as a Federal Reserve survey portrayed the national economy growing at a “modest to moderate” pace.
Persistent cold weather in the United States helped oil prices shrug off weakness early in the weak, helping oil stocks nudge markets higher.
Exxon Mobil rose 1.2 percent, and ConocoPhillips increased 1.7 percent, while Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron each rose 0.3 percent.
The jubilant performance came despite continued pain at General Electric, which sank 4.7 percent as investors worked to evaluate component businesses within the company ahead of a possible breakup.
Goldman Sachs fell 1.8 percent after reporting a steep quarterly drop in trading income.
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Britain has appointed a minister of loneliness to combat social isolation experienced by one in 10 Britons.
Sports Minister Tracey Crouch will add the job to her existing portfolio to advance the work of slain lawmaker Jo Cox, who set up the Commission on Loneliness in 2016.
“For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life,” Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday. “I want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those who have lost loved ones — people who have no one to talk to or share their thoughts and experiences with.”
The British Red Cross says more than 9 million Britons describe themselves as being always or often lonely, out of a population of 65.6 million.
Most people over age 75 in Britain live alone, and about 200,000 older people have not had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month, government data show.
“We know that there is a real impact of social isolation and loneliness on people, on their physical and mental well-being but also on other aspects in society, and we want to tackle this challenge,” Crouch told the BBC.
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Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it would conduct a new, comprehensive search of its records for possible propaganda that Russian operatives may have spread during the run-up to Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU
membership.
Some British lawmakers had complained that the world’s largest social media network had done only a limited search for evidence that Russians manipulated the network and interfered with the referendum debate.
Russia denies meddling in Britain’s vote to exit the European Union, known as Brexit, or in the 2016 U.S. elections.
Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google and YouTube have been under intense pressure in Europe and the United States to stop nations from using tech services to meddle in another country’s elections, and to investigate when evidence of such meddling arises.
Facebook’s new search in Britain will require the company’s security experts to go back and analyze historical data, Simon Milner, Facebook’s UK policy director, wrote in a letter on Wednesday to Damian Collins, chair of the British parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
“We would like to carry out this work promptly and estimate it will take a number of weeks to complete,” Milner wrote.
Facebook said in December that it had found just 97 cents worth of advertising by Russia-based operatives ahead of Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Its analysis, though, involved only accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a suspected Russian propaganda service.
Collins last month described Facebook’s initial Brexit-related search as inadequate, and said on Wednesday he welcomed the company’s latest response.
“They are best placed to investigate activity on their platform,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to seeing the results of this investigation, and I’m sure we will want to question Facebook about this when we know the outcome.”
Facebook told U.S. lawmakers last year that it had found 3,000 ads bought by suspected Russian agents posing as Americans and seeking to spread divisive messages in the United States about race, immigration and other political topics.
In France last year, Facebook suspended 30,000 accounts in the days before the country’s presidential election to try to stop the spread of fake news, misinformation and spam.
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Financial crime fighters at the U.S. Treasury are “aggressively” pursuing virtual currency platforms that lack strong internal safeguards against money laundering, a top official told a Senate panel on Wednesday.
With more criminals using the emerging asset class to store and transmit their ill-gotten gains, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will pursue malfeasant virtual currency platforms even if they are located overseas, Sigal Mandelker, the U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, told the Senate Banking Committee.
U.S.-based platforms for bitcoin and other virtual currencies are required to comply with antimoney laundering (AML) rules including filing suspicious activity reports, with around 100 such platforms registered with FinCEN. But many other countries have no such requirements.
“The real vulnerability that we all have to address is that while we have regulatory authorities in place here in the United States and we do enforce those… we need other countries to do the same,” Mandelker told the committee’s hearing on U.S. antimoney laundering laws.
Mandelker said the U.S. government would also encourage other countries to introduce stricter regulation of virtual currencies, which law enforcement officials say are attractive to criminals making illegal transactions because they can be used anonymously.
In July, the Treasury moved to shut down the website of Russia’s BTC-e exchange, one of the world’s largest bitcoin platforms, and ordered it to pay a $110 million fine for allegedly facilitating transactions involving ransomware, computer hacking, and drug trafficking, among other crimes.
A U.S. jury also indicted a Russian man in July in connection with the alleged crimes perpetrated by the platform.
Regulators and governments around the world are still debating how to address risks posed by cryptocurrencies. In recent weeks, South Korea, Japan and China have all made noises about a regulatory crackdown while officials in France vowed to investigate the emerging asset class.
Senators on Wednesday expressed concerns over the risks posed by cryptocurrencies to the global financial system with Democratic Senator Mark Warner saying the U.S. had “a lot of work to do” to get a grip on the issue.
U.S. markets regulators said this month they plan to take more aggressive enforcement action against exchanges that may be defrauding investors or allowing market manipulation.
The price of bitcoin slumped to $10,000 on Wednesday, halving in value from its peak price of almost $20,000 hit just in December, with investors gripped by fears regulators could clamp down on the volatile currency.
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A prestigious scientific panel is recommending that states significantly lower their drunken driving thresholds as part of a blueprint to eliminate the “entirely preventable” 10,000 alcohol-impaired driving deaths in the United States each year.
The U.S. government-commissioned, 489-page report by a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released Wednesday throws the weight of the scientific body behind lowering the blood-alcohol concentration threshold from 0.08 to 0.05. All states have 0.08 thresholds. A Utah law passed last year that lowers the state’s threshold to 0.05 doesn’t go into effect until December 30.
The amount of alcohol required to reach 0.05 would depend on several factors, including the person’s size and whether the person has recently eaten. A 150-pound man might be over the 0.05 limit after two beers, while a 120-pound woman could exceed it after a single drink, according to the American Beverage Institute, a national restaurant group.
The panel also recommended that states significantly increase alcohol taxes and make alcohol less conveniently available, including reducing the hours and days alcohol is sold in stores, bars and restaurants. Research suggests a doubling of alcohol taxes could lead to an 11 percent reduction in traffic crash deaths, the report said.
It also calls for cracking down on sales to people under 21 or who are already intoxicated to discourage binge drinking, and putting limits on alcohol marketing while funding anti-alcohol campaigns similar to those against smoking.
All the proposals are likely to draw fierce opposition from the alcohol and restaurant industries. The beverage institute took out full-page newspaper ads opposing Utah’s new law that featured a fake mugshot under a large headline reading, “Utah: Come for vacation, leave on probation.”
The recommendation in the academies’ report for lowering the BAC threshold would “do nothing to deter” repeat offenders and high BAC drivers, who represent the “vast majority” of alcohol-impaired driving deaths, the Distilled Spirits Council said in a statement. The council said it also doesn’t support the report’s recommendations for “tax increases and advertising bans, which will have little or no impact on traffic safety.”
‘Deadliest and costliest danger on US roads’
The report points out that “alcohol-impaired driving remains the deadliest and costliest danger on U.S. roads,” accounting for 28 percent of traffic deaths. Each day, 29 people in the U.S. die in alcohol-related crashes and many more are injured. Forty percent of those killed are people other than the drunken driver.
Rural areas are disproportionately affected. In 2015, 48 percent of drunken driving fatalities occurred in rural areas.
The report says many strategies have been effective to prevent drunken driving, but “a coordinated multilevel approach across multiple sectors will be required to accelerate change.”
“The problem isn’t intractable,” the report said.
From the early 1980s to the early 2000s, there was significant progress as the result of an increase in the drinking age to 21, decreases in the blood-alcohol threshold, and other measures, the report said. But since then, progress has stagnated and recently has begun to reverse.
Action to address drunken driving can’t wait for the advent of self-driving cars immune to the lures of a cold beer or a fine wine – it will take too long for autonomous vehicles to replace all the human-driven machines on the road, said the panel’s chairman, Steven Teutsch, a senior fellow for health policy and economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“In the meantime, we have 10,000 people a year dying and we ought to do something about it,” he said.
The report cites studies that show the United States lags behind other high-income countries in preventing drunken driving fatalities. More than 100 countries have adopted the 0.05 threshold lower. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the National Transportation Safety Board said in 2013. The safety board has also recommended the 0.05 threshold.
Alcoholic beverages have changed significantly over the past 25 years. “They are more affordable, of far greater variety, and more widely advertised and promoted than in earlier periods,” the report said. The lack of consistency in serving sizes and the combination of alcohol with caffeine and energy drinks make it harder for drinkers to estimate their level of impairment.
The report was commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which asked the academies to determine which strategies for reducing drunken driving have been proven effective.
Apple is planning to build another corporate campus and hire 20,000 workers during the next five years as part of a $350 billion commitment to the U.S. economy.
The pledge announced Wednesday is an offshoot from the sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code championed by President Donald Trump and approved by Congress last month.
Besides dramatically lowering the standard corporate tax rate, the reforms offer a one-time break on cash being held overseas.
Apple plans to take advantage of that provision to bring back more than $250 billion in offshore cash, generating a tax bill of roughly $38 billion.
The Cupertino, California, company says it will announce the location of a second campus devoted to customer support later this year.