When you are watching a television show and see someone get their heart shocked back into a rhythm, you will see their entire body rise up in the air. That’s what happens when a defibrillator is used, because the shock is that powerful. As VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists are now working on better, more effective, and less-shocking ways to get a heart to start beating once again.
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Month: March 2018
Heat exchangers are some of the most widely used energy-transfer devices, helping cool everything from car engines to power plants.
At the recent ARPA-e conference, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists from the University of Maryland showcased an advanced 3-D printer that, combined with a wire-laying head, cuts in half the time needed to manufacture heat exchangers.
David Hymas, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, said that in most cases in a heat exchanger, the heat is transferred by forcing air over pipes or tubes with circulating water, which is often pumped from a nearby river or lake.
Reduce water use
“Currently power plants draw about 40 percent of all the freshwater supply in the United States,” Hymas said. Water consumption, he added, could be cut in half if lightweight air-cooled heat exchangers were created in 3-D printers.
“The water would flow in through one manifold entering these water tubes, right here, and then flow out through the other manifold. Air would blow across it, cooling these fins,” he said.
Printing a heat exchanger
At the school’s Advanced Heat Exchangers and Process Intensification Laboratory, Hymas showed off a heat exchanger manufactured in a lab-size 3-D printer that includes a wire-laying device. The first head in the machine builds up layers of polymer tubes, while another head lays copper or aluminum wire across them.
The printer used for testing the idea took almost 24 hours to create a shoebox-size heat exchanger, but research associate Farah Singer says the industrial-scale prototype machine proved to be much faster.
“It has 10 polymer heads and it is capable of printing, of laying at the same time, 45 fibers, 45 metal fibers, so we are talking about a full layer,” she said. “This machine is capable of printing in eight hours a 1 meter square heat exchanger. We are talking almost 20 kilowatts or 30 kilowatt heat exchanger.”
Reduction in weight and cost for 3-D-printed heat exchangers reaches 50 percent, depending on the application, which can range from power plants to air conditioning to cooling electronic devices.
“For the electronic cooling, for example, so far our experimental results have shown that we could have up to 52 percent reduction in cost while we have 26 percent increase in performance,” Singer said.
An added advantage is that 3-D printers allow creating very complex geometries, with the resolution between the cooling wires as low as 100 microns. The project was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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China is testing unmanned tanks that could be equipped with artificial intelligence, a state-run newspaper said Wednesday, as the country continues with its military modernization program.
State television showed images this week of the unmanned tanks undergoing testing, the Global Times newspaper reported.
Footage showed a Type 59 tank being driven by remote control, in what the paper said was the first time a Chinese-made unmanned tank has been shown in a public forum.
The Type 59 tank is based on an old Soviet model first used in China in the 1950s and has been produced in large numbers and has a long service life, it said.
“A large number of due-to-retire Type 59 tanks can be converted into unmanned vehicles if equipped with artificial intelligence,” Liu Qingshan, the chief editor of Tank and Armored Vehicle, told the newspaper.
Unmanned tanks will be able to work on other unmanned equipment, integrate information from satellites, aircraft or submarines, the report added.
China is in the middle of a modernization program for its armed forces, including building stealth fighters and new aircraft carriers, as President Xi Jinping looks to assert the country’s growing power.
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Peter G. Peterson, a billionaire and business executive who became one of the most prominent voices to argue for entitlement reform and reducing the U.S. national debt, died of natural causes early Tuesday, his family said. He was 91.
Born in the small town of Kearney, Nebraska, to Greek immigrants, Peterson was CEO of two major U.S. companies and co-founded one of the world’s largest private-equity firms.
He was a national figure in business by the early 1960s, serving as chairman and CEO of Bell and Howell, one of the largest manufacturers of movie cameras at the time.
He left Bell and Howell to work for the Nixon administration in the early 1970s, eventually serving as secretary of commerce from 1972 to 1973.
Lehman Brothers
He took over as chief executive of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in 1973 after leaving the Nixon administration. In 1985, he co-founded the private-equity firm Blackstone Group with Stephen Schwarzman.
“His intelligence, wit and vision made him an inspirational leader who brought people together from the White House to Wall Street,” his family said in a statement.
Blackstone went on to become one of biggest private-equity firms in the world, with $434 billion in assets under management at the end of last year. When the firm went public in 2007, Peterson’s stake in the company made him a billionaire. His wealth was estimated at $2 billion, according to Forbes Magazine.
Fiscal challenges
Peterson dedicated the rest of his life to what he called “key fiscal challenges threatening America’s future,” donating $1 billion to create the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in 2007.
He never publicly endorsed the fiscal ideals of the Tea Party. However, his ideas did give him some common ground with them.
He long argued that the United States’ entitlement programs, principally Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, had to be restructured or benefits cut back to avoid bankrupting the government. Through his foundation, he disseminated his ideas among the public and politicians.
“The fact he was able to start a serious debate about the future of Social Security and other entitlement programs was a huge accomplishment,” said Fred Bergsten, founder of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who worked with Peterson in various capacities going back to the 1970s.
Raising taxes
Peterson was not considered ideological when it came to dealing with Social Security and Medicare. A life-long Republican, he still believed that raising taxes should be considered as part of any major restructuring of the U.S. budget, Bergsten said.
The foundation quickly became a major voice on all budget-related matters, repeatedly quoted in national media outlets. In 2008, his organization helped bankroll the documentary “I.O.U.S.A,” with the goal of making the federal government’s ballooning national debt, then around $10 trillion, a central campaign issue.
“What is most significant is most of our challenges are not really being discussed,” Peterson told The Associated Press in 2008 when he created his foundation. “I’ve been a very lucky beneficiary of the American dream as the son of immigrants. And, the more I look at some of these problems, the more persuaded I am they will pose a serious threat to this country.”
Peterson is survived by his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, who co-founded the Children’s Television Workshop, and children John Peterson, Jim Peterson, David Peterson, Holly Peterson and Michael Peterson, and nine grandchildren.
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The deadly collision between an Uber autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian near Phoenix is bringing calls for tougher self-driving regulations, but advocates for a hands-off approach say big changes aren’t needed.
Police in Tempe, Arizona, say the female pedestrian walked in front of the Uber SUV in the dark of night, and neither the automated system nor the human backup driver stopped in time. Local authorities haven’t determined fault, and federal transportation authorities say they won’t release any findings on the crash until their investigation is complete.
Current federal regulations have few requirements specifically for self-driving vehicles, leaving it for states to handle. Many, such as Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, cede key decisions to companies as they compete for investment that will come with the technology.
No matter whether police find Uber or the pedestrian at fault in the Sunday crash, many federal and state officials say their regulations are sufficient to keep people safe while allowing the potentially lifesaving technology to grow. Others, however, argue the regulations don’t go far enough.
“I don’t think we need to jump to conclusions and make changes to our business,” said Michigan state Senator Jim Ananich, the chamber’s minority leader. He and other Democrats joined Republicans to pass a bill last year that doesn’t require human backup drivers and allows companies wide latitude to conduct tests.
Ananich called the death of Elaine Herzberg, 49, a tragedy and said companies need to continue refining their systems. “I want that work to happen here, because we have a 100-year history of making the best cars on the planet,” he said. “It’s not perfect by any means, and we are just going to have to keep working until it is.”
Proponents of light regulations, including the Trump administration’s Transportation Department, say the technology could reduce the 40,000 traffic deaths that happen annually in the U.S. The government says 94 percent of crashes are caused by human error that automated systems can reduce because they don’t get drunk, sleepy or inattentive.
U.S. Representative Bob Latta, an Ohio Republican who chairs a House subcommittee that passed an autonomous vehicle bill, said the measure has sufficient provisions to ensure the cars operate safely. It requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop safety standards and allows the agency to update outdated regulations. It also prohibits states from regulating autonomous driving systems to avoid a patchwork of rules, Latta said.
The bill has passed the House. The Senate is considering a similar measure.
About 6,000 pedestrians were killed last year in crashes that involved cars driven by humans, he said. “What we want to do is see that stop or try to get it preventable,” he said.
But safety advocates and others say companies are moving too quickly, and they fear others will die as road testing finds gaps that automated systems can’t handle.
Jason Levine, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said without proper regulations, more crashes will happen. “There’s no guardrails on the technology when it’s being tested without any sense of how safe it is before you put it on the road,” he said.
Others say that the laser and radar sensors on the SUV involved in the Tempe accident should have spotted Herzberg in the darkness and braked or swerved to avoid her. Development should be slowed, with standards set for how far sensors must see and how quickly vehicles should react, they said.
Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst for Navigant Research, expects the Arizona crash to slow research. “Responsible companies will take this opportunity to go back and look at their test procedures,” he said.
Toyota already is taking a step back, pausing its fully autonomous testing with human backups for a few days to let drivers process the Arizona crash and “help them do their jobs with less concern,” the company said. The company says it constantly refines its procedures.
Without standards for software coding quality and cybersecurity, there will be more deaths as autonomous vehicles are tested on public roads, said Lee McKnight, associate professor of information studies at Syracuse University.
“We can say eventually they’ll learn not to kill us,” McKnight said. “In the meantime, they will be killing more people.”
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Women are often short-changed compared to men when communities are compensated or resettled during commercial land deals in Africa, and governments should take action to rectify that, researchers said Tuesday.
The World Resources Institute’s (WRI) research showed men had received up to six times as much for their land. And although women usually had smaller land parcels, they also lost access to resources such as rivers, forests and social networks.
Among other measures, the U.S.-based WRI said governments should enact laws ensuring women receive an equitable share of compensation payments made to households.
“There is usually a power asymmetry between the community and the investor. These deals are presented to the community as almost-done deals with women getting the short-end,” said WRI associate researcher Celine Salcedo-La Vina.
“Most of the time the expected benefits are not legally binding,” she told Reuters by Skype.
WRI focused on Tanzania and Mozambique, which are among the places where major commercial deals in agribusiness, tourism and mining have displaced thousands over the last decade, she said.
Land in Africa is often communally held, with fathers assumed to be the rightful owners who usually pass it on to their sons. That makes it hard for women to own land except through their husbands or by buying it, the World Bank has said.
Women are usually not compensated for lost farms because they are not deemed to own the fields they cultivate, and often grow subsistence crops. Men, on the other hand, typically plant cash crops whose value is easy to determine, WRI said.
Changing land laws
Some African governments, including Tanzania and Mozambique, have enacted new laws to address how investors engage communities during land deals to reduce inequality, WRI said.
But these changes have done little to address how women are compensated or resettled during commercial deals, because most of the laws use “gender-neutral language.”
“When applied in patriarchal contexts [these laws] result in women’s marginalization,” the report said.
Tanzania and Mozambique are working to change their land laws to bring in more rights for women during commercial land deals. However, those would first have to tackle the cultural norms of how women come to own land, Salcedo-La Vina said.
“We have seen where we have men and women working together during land deals, it usually strengthens community rights,” she said.
WRI also recommended that women’s land uses and contributions as heads of households be taken into account, that land titles be in both spouses’ names, and that intangible assets be included when determining compensation.
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Facebook’s latest privacy scandal, involving Trump campaign consultants who allegedly stole data on tens of millions of users in order to influence elections, has some people reconsidering their relationship status with the social network.
There’s just one problem: There isn’t much of anywhere else to go.
Facebook has weathered many such blow-ups before and is used to apologizing and moving on. But the stakes are bigger this time.
Regulatory authorities are starting to focus on the data misappropriation, triggering a 9 percent decline in Facebook’s normally high-flying stock since Monday. Some of that reflects fear that changes in Facebook’s business will hurt profits or that advertisers and users will sour on the social network.
The furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm accused of stealing Facebook data, followed a bad year in which Facebook acknowledged helping spread fake news and propaganda from Russian agents. It also came less than three months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the world that he would devote the year to fixing Facebook. Instead, things seem to be getting worse.
“It’s more serious economically, politically, financially, and will require a more robust response in order to regain users’ trust,” said Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Not so easy
Yet leaving Facebook isn’t simple for some people.
Arvind Rajan, a tech executive from San Francisco who deactivated his account on Monday, suddenly discovered he needs to create new usernames and passwords for a variety of apps and websites. That’s because he had previously logged in with his Facebook ID.
It’s a pain, he said, “but not the end of the world.” And because he is bothered by Facebook’s “ham-handed” response to recent problems, the inconvenience is worth it.
For other users looking to leave, it can feel as if there are no real alternatives. Twitter? Too flighty, too public. Instagram? Whoops, owned by Facebook. Snapchat? Please, unless you’re under 25 — in which case you’re probably not on Facebook to begin with.
Facebook connects 2.2 billion users and a host of communities that have sprung up on its network. No other company can match the breadth or depth of these connections — thanks in part to Facebook’s proclivity for squashing or swallowing up its competition.
What about your photos?
But it is precisely in Facebook’s interest to make users feel Facebook is the only place to connect with others. Where else will grandmothers see photos of their far-flung grandkids? How will new mothers connect to other parents also up at 4 a.m. with a newborn?
“My only hesitation is that there are hundreds of pictures posted over 13 years of my life that I do not want to lose access to. If there was a way to recover these photos, I would deactivate immediately,” Daniel Schwartz, who lives in Atlanta, said in an email.
People eager to delete their profiles may find unexpected problems that point to how integral Facebook is to many activities, said Ifeoma Ajunwa, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University.
“It is getting more and more difficult for people to delete Facebook, since it’s not just as a social media platform but also almost like a meeting square,” she said.
Parents could soon realize that their child’s soccer schedule with games and pickup times is only on a Facebook page, for example. Many businesses also schedule meetings via Facebook.
“It’s more and more difficult for people to feel plugged in if you’re not on Facebook,” Ajunwa said.
Exit can take 90 days
Not surprisingly, Facebook doesn’t make it easy to leave. To permanently delete your account, you need to make a request to the company. The process can take several days, and if you log in during this time, your request will be canceled. It can take up to 90 days to delete everything.
There’s a less permanent way to leave — deactivation — which hides your profile from everyone but lets you return if you change your mind.
Lili Orozco, 28, an office manager for her family’s heating and cooling company in Watkinsville, Georgia, deleted her account in December. She was upset that every new app she downloaded would ask for her Facebook contacts.
And while she liked staying in touch with people, she was irritated by the conspiracy stories her high school friends would share.
“Falsehoods spread faster on Facebook than the truth does,” she said. She now gets her news from Twitter and shares pictures with friends through Instagram.
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A campus in Hawaii is joining a handful of U.S. colleges and universities aiming to use 100 percent renewable energy, it said Tuesday, part of a growing nationwide trend of schools going green.
The move by the University of Hawaii campus on Maui island is forward-looking and makes economic sense given the cost of fuel on the remote Pacific archipelago of islands and atolls, said Michael Unebasmi, a university spokesman.
With plans to replace oil-based electricity from a utility with solar panels, Maui College joins a handful of U.S. schools such as Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the University of New Hampshire’s main Durham campus.
The decision puts Maui College “at the leading edge,” Unebasmi told Reuters.
“We thought by doing this it would be a great example,” he said.
The network of solar panels will fuel the needs of the 78-acre (32 hectares) grounds by 2019, he said.
With a reliance on fossil fuels, Hawaii has particularly high energy prices of more than twice the national average, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
The push by U.S. schools moving away from polluting sources of electricity has picked up pace, said Bronte Payne at the Denver-based nonprofit Environment America.
Growing numbers
About half a dozen colleges and universities have announced commitments over the last two years to use renewable energy sources rather than planet-warming fossil fuel, she said.
Largest among them are Boston University, Colorado State University and Cornell University, she said.
More than 500 other colleges and universities are aiming for carbon neutrality, offsetting the use of fossil fuel with renewable energy or so-called carbon credits from low-level producers of greenhouse gases.
“They will set an example for communities across the country,” she said.
Cornell, in western New York state, aims to replace its on-campus natural gas power plant with a mix of solar and enhanced geothermal energy by 2035, said Sarah Zemanick, director of its campus sustainability office.
The main campus in Ithaca, with some 22,000 students, stretches across 745 acres (301 hectares).
“We’re at the scale of a small city, so it’s a good place for us not only to discover solutions that might work but also try them on our own campus,” Zemanick said.
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When Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross held up a can of Campbell’s soup in a CNBC interview to make the case that the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs were “no big deal,” the canning industry begged to disagree — and they were hardly alone.
President Donald Trump’s strong-armed trade policies have set off an intense scramble among industry groups, companies and foreign countries seeking exemptions from tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum. The push comes ahead of a round of new penalties expected to be slapped on China by week’s end.
The Can Manufacturers Institute, which represents 22,000 workers at manufacturers across the nation, estimates the steel and aluminum tariffs will harm their industry and consumers alike. The institute says there are 119 billion cans made in the U.S., meaning a 1 cent tariff would lead to a $1.1 billion tax on consumers and businesses.
“Secretary Ross has made cans a poster child to dispel concerns about the costs of tariffs,” said Robert Budway, the institute’s president. He said his organization was concerned Ross “is already predisposed to deny our petitions.”
Trump’s one-two punch on trade has set in motion a deluge of requests to the Commerce Department for exclusions for certain steel and aluminum products. Foreign countries, meanwhile, complain the U.S. trade representative’s office has not provided specific guidance on gaining exemptions before the steel and aluminum tariffs are implemented on Friday.
Countries in the dark
“Typically, the countries are determined before tariffs are announced,” said Josh Zive, senior principal at the law firm Bracewell LLP. This time, countries don’t know whether they will end up being targeted or exempted — “that’s weird and no one knows what to make of it.”
The Trump administration, which has said steel and aluminum imports threaten U.S. national security, has already given Mexico and Canada a reprieve — provided they agree to a revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The European Union, South Korea, Australia and Brazil are among the groups and countries seeking the exemptions.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said tariffs are “sometimes necessary tools” to protect national security or fight unfair trade practices. But he said the administration’s approach is producing “chaos, uncertainty and an alienation of our closest allies.”
Emily Davis, a spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, said the U.S “is engaged in discussions with several countries to determine if means other than tariffs can be arranged to address our national security concerns.”
Companies that buy imported steel and aluminum can request tariff relief from the Commerce Department, especially if they rely on types of imported steel and aluminum that aren’t available from domestic U.S. producers.
Expect a deluge: Steel and aluminum producers have 30 days to make their exemption requests. Commerce expects 4,500 requests for relief and 1,500 objections — and it is supposed to reach decisions in 90 days.
Commerce has said it intends to reach decisions on a company-by-company basis, not by making across-the-board exemptions for individual steel and aluminum products. That decision has created anxieties that certain companies could get tariff relief while others would be forced to pay tariffs on the same product — perhaps because in the time between the two requests domestic U.S. production has ramped up to fill shortages.
“The big thing is, it’s arbitrary,” said Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The government is becoming the matchmaker between the purchaser and the supplier.”
“It’s a real question to me whether they understand the magnitude of the requests they are going to get,” Zive said of Commerce. “How they’re going to get through them in 90 days is difficult to understand.”
Industry officials said other aspects of the exemption process will burden companies. Manufacturers are unclear whether companies will qualify for refunds if they end up getting exemptions after they’ve begun paying the tariffs. And since Trump set no timeline for ending the tariffs, the companies will need to reapply for the exemptions annually.
Stocking up
Companies, meanwhile, have been trying to beat the tariffs by stocking up on imports. Steel imports rose 15 percent last year and another 17 percent in January.
The steel and aluminum tariffs may only be the opening salvo.
Administration officials said Trump is expected to announce $60 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports by Friday on a wide array of consumer goods, from apparel to electronics, and even on imported parts for products made in the U.S.
Ross, appearing before a House budget panel on Tuesday, faced questions about the trade moves, with lawmakers warning the tariffs could lead to retaliation from foreign countries and wreak economic havoc for consumers.
“I worry that now we’re engaged in a trade war which is further going to alienate us from our adversaries,” said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Representative Derek Kilmer, a Washington state Democrat, noted that the decision to exclude aluminum and steel producers on a company-by-company basis — rather than by individual products — could create the possibility that some companies will gain a huge advantage over their competitors if they win exemptions.
Ross vowed that “the process will be open and transparent” and that Commerce was working to “minimize the amount of inconvenience that any of the affected parties will suffer as a result of the process. We’re gearing up to be fast, to be fair and to be practical.”
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Water stress is increasingly driving migration around the world, but efforts to adapt to worsening shortages could help, a new U.N. study suggests.
Water stress — not just shortages, but water-quality issues — is expected to drive more people from their communities permanently and cause rapid growth of cities, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Two-thirds of the world’s people suffer some water scarcity for part of each year, with communities dependent on agriculture affected the most, said FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva in a video message for the 8th World Water Forum in Brazil.
Finding ways to adapt to that reality — rather than simply responding to disasters caused by water shortages — is the most effective way to deal with the problem, the FAO said.
Water use has increased six-fold worldwide over the past century, said the study, which drew on a survey of more than 180 research papers on water scarcity and migration issues.
As climate change brings increasingly irregular rainfall, worsening droughts and higher temperatures, water scarcity will likely increase, particularly as demand for agricultural water remains high, the study said.
Investment in preparing for water crises — such as adopting more water-smart agricultural practices — could cut the need for people to migrate, the study said, although drawing a clear link between water scarcity and migration remains complicated.
Experts believe drought played a role in the early stages of the Syrian conflict when 1.5 million farmers headed to cities as the country suffered its worst drought on record, said Charles Iceland of the World Resources Institute, a research body.
Drought was clearly not the major factor, he said, but instead exerted an additional pressure alongside political and social issues.
He said much of the world would face water scarcity by 2040 as populations and temperatures rise. Combating that would require changes including in agriculture, such as adopting water-saving drip irrigation, he said.
About 70 percent of freshwater used each year goes to agriculture, experts have estimated.
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A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions as authorities stepped up efforts to determine if the personal data of social-media users has been used improperly to influence elections.
The request comes amid allegations that a data-mining firm based in the U.K. used information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. The company, Cambridge Analytica, has denied wrongdoing.
However, the firm’s board of directions announced Tuesday evening that it had suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending an independent investigation of his actions. Nix made comments to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News about various unsavory services Cambridge Analytica provided its clients.
“In the view of the board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” the board said in a statement.
Facebook also drew continued criticism for its alleged inaction to protect users’ privacy. Earlier Tuesday, the chairman of the U.K. parliamentary media committee, Damian Collins, said his group has repeatedly asked Facebook how it uses data and that Facebook officials “have been misleading to the committee.”
“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” Collins wrote in a note addressed directly to Zuckerberg. “Given your commitment at the start of the New Year to ‘fixing’ Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you.”
Facebook sidestepped questions on whether Zuckerberg would appear, saying instead that it’s currently focused on conducting its own reviews.
Personal data
The request to appear comes as Britain’s information commissioner said she was using all her legal powers to investigate the social-media giant and Cambridge Analytica.
Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is pursuing a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s servers. She has also asked Facebook to cease its own audit of Cambridge Analytica’s data use.
“Our advice to Facebook is to back away and let us go in and do our work,” she said.
Cambridge Analytica said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation. However, Denham’s office said the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.
Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.
Chris Wylie, who once worked for Cambridge Analytica, was quoted as saying the company used the data to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.
Undercover investigation
The firm found itself in further allegations of wrongdoing. Britain’s Channel 4 used an undercover investigation to record Nix saying that the company could use unorthodox methods to wage successful political campaigns for clients.
He said the company could “send some girls” around to a rival candidate’s house, suggesting that girls from Ukraine are beautiful and effective in this role.
He also said the company could “offer a large amount of money” to a rival candidate and have the whole exchange recorded so it could be posted on the internet to show that the candidate was corrupt.
Nix says in a statement that he deeply regrets his role in the meeting and has apologized to staff.
“I am aware how this looks, but it is simply not the case,” he said. “I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called ‘honeytraps,’ and nor does it use untrue material for any purposes.”
Nix told the BBC the Channel 4 sting was “intended to embarrass us.”
“We see this as a coordinated attack by the media that’s been going on for very, very many months in order to damage the company that had some involvement with the election of Donald Trump,” he said.
The data harvesting used by Cambridge Analytica has also triggered calls for further investigation from the European Union, as well as federal and state officials in the United States.
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The world’s financial leaders rejected protectionism Tuesday and urged “further dialogue” on trade, but failed to blunt the threat of a trade war days before U.S. metals tariffs take effect and Washington is to announce measures against China.
Finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies, which represent 75 percent of world trade and 85 percent of global gross domestic product, discussed trade disruptions as a risk to growth at a two-day meeting.
But after talks described by participants as “polite” and mainly consisting of read-out statements with no debate, the Group of 20 agreed only to stand by an ambiguous declaration on trade from 2017 and “recognize” the need for more “dialogue and actions.”
“We reaffirm the conclusions of our leaders on trade at the Hamburg Summit and recognize the need for further dialogue and actions. We are working to strengthen contribution of trade to our economies,” the G-20 ministers’ final statement said.
But the declaration did little to dispel concern about a global trade war as the U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum take effect Friday.
Tariffs on Chinese products
Two officials briefed on the matter said U.S. President Donald Trump would also unveil tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese technology and telecoms products by Friday, a move stemming from Beijing’s intellectual property practices.
The 2017 Hamburg declaration, which the financial leaders referred to on Tuesday, said G-20 countries would “continue to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices.”
But it also said G-20 leaders “recognize the role of legitimate trade defense instruments,” an ambiguity that provides the United States with a way to argue its cause on the tariffs.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made clear Washington’s tariff action was such a legitimate defense.
“We need to be prepared to act in the U.S. interest, again, to defend free and fair, reciprocal trade,” he said in a news conference after the talks, adding that there was always a risk that others would reciprocate.
“There’s a risk of a trade war. The president has said we’re not afraid of getting into a trade war, given the size of our market, the size of our economy, and the fact that we have a big trade deficit,” Mnuchin said.
“On the steel and aluminum issue, this is a result of unfair trade practices and that’s why we’ve responded that way.”
Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau, comparing this G-20 meeting to the one in Germany last year, when Mnuchin demanded a rewrite of the long=standing communique language on trade, said the rest of the world now has a better sense of the U.S. view on how the rules of trade should be reworked.
“There’s not a consensus. Everyone around the table doesn’t have the same point of view, but there’s a greater understanding of what it is they’re trying to achieve,” Morneau said.
Europe ready to retaliate
The European Union, the biggest U.S. trading partner, wants to be exempt from the metals tariffs like Canada and Mexico, but so far has not had any success in securing an exemption.
As a result, the EU is preparing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products such as bourbon, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
European officials said that a trade war would produce only losers and that the G-20 ministers were united in support of “multilateralism” — G-20 jargon for solving disputes through negotiations in the World Trade Organization.
“We all agreed trade wars are a negative sum game,” Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting. “There hasn’t been any voice against rule-based multilateralism.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stressed Europe expected to get exemptions from the U.S. tariffs without any conditions and warned protectionism would hurt world growth.
Jeopardy to recovery
“It is of the utmost importance to avoid any unilateral choice that might jeopardize our growth. Unfair trade conditions [and] protectionism might jeopardize the economic recovery all over the world,” he said.
Mnuchin said he’d had very direct conversations with his counterparts in China and that he looked forward to working with Liu He, China’s newly installed, Harvard-educated vice premier in charge of financial and industrial policy, on getting better access to the Chinese market.
“I think there’s a general view among the G-20 that it is our desire to see China open their markets so that we can participate in their markets the way they participate in ours in a much more … reciprocal … relationship,” Mnuchin said.
The G-20 also called for continued international monitoring of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and the risks they posed. It said these assets raised issues with consumer and investor protections, market integrity, money laundering and terrorist financing.
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Despite tensions, sanctions and recriminations between the United States and Russia, two American astronauts will join a Russian cosmonaut blasting off Wednesday from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station.
Even when things get nasty between the two countries, experts say the space program rarely suffers.
The United States has depended entirely on Russia to deliver astronauts to the ISS since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.
After President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 for annexing Crimea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested U.S. astronauts could get to the International Space Station by trampoline.
But the launches continued.
“The politicians can be very cute and make their statements. But that doesn’t seem to have had an impact on day-to-day work on the International Space Station,” said Cathleen Lewis, a curator in the Space History Department at the National Air and Space Museum.
Cold War collaborators
U.S.-Russia cooperation in space dates back to the mid-1970s, during the Cold War.
In the race to the moon, both sides suffered losses. Three U.S. astronauts died in the first Apollo mission in a fire on the launchpad in 1967; the Soviet Union lost a cosmonaut in a crash later that year.
The two sides agreed to cooperate on a space project. In 1975, an American Apollo spacecraft and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft met in orbit, where cosmonauts and astronauts shook hands.
In addition to the political achievement, it was a major engineering feat to make the two crafts compatible.
“That created a bond, but also the knowledge that we could do this, even in the height of the Cold War, and probably one of the worst periods of the Cold War,” Lewis said. “Both sides could get together and do this, unperturbed by the politics around them.”
Reaching beyond Earth
Today, the United States, Russia and 13 other countries collaborate on the International Space Station.
Lewis says that kind of cooperation will likely be essential as humans reach beyond Earth.
“It’s going to take a lot of resources to make either the moon or Mars habitable for humans,” she said.
For now, collaboration is the only option for ISS crews. However, SpaceX and Boeing expect to bring human launch capability back to U.S. soil in a year or so.
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Brazil’s health minister says the country is expanding its campaign to vaccinate people against yellow fever to cover the entire country.
Ricardo Barros says that by including the final four of Brazil’s 27 states, nearly 78 million people will have been vaccinated by 2019.
Barros told a news conference Tuesday that 920 cases of yellow fever have been reported nationwide since July 2017 and 300 people have died from the disease. During the same period last year, 610 cases and 196 deaths were reported.
U.S. health officials last week warned travelers to stay away from certain areas of Brazil if they haven’t been vaccinated against yellow fever.
The virus can be spread by the same mosquito that transmits other tropical diseases, including Zika and dengue.
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President Donald Trump will reap a huge budget increase for the military while Democrats cement wins on infrastructure and other domestic programs that they failed to get under President Barack Obama if lawmakers can agree on a $1.3 trillion governmentwide spending bill before a deadline this week.
Battles over budget priorities in the huge bill were essentially settled Tuesday, but a scaled-back plan for Trump’s border wall and a fight over a tunnel under the Hudson River still held up a final agreement.
Republican leaders were hopeful a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday evening, allowing for a House vote Thursday. If a bill doesn’t pass Congress by midnight Friday, the government will shut down for a third time this year.
The measure on the table would provide major funding increases for the Pentagon — $80 billion over current limits — bringing the military budget to $700 billion and giving GOP defense hawks a long-sought victory.
“We made a promise to the country that we would rebuild our military. Aging equipment, personnel shortages, training lapses, maintenance lapses — all of this has cost us,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican. “With this week’s critical funding bill we will begin to reverse that damage.”
Domestic accounts would get a generous 10 percent increase on average as well, awarding Democrats the sort of spending increases they sought but never secured during the Obama administration.
Opioid problem
Democrats touted billions to fight the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic. More than $2 billion would go to strengthen school safety through grants for training, security measures and treatment for the mentally ill. Medical research at the National Institutes of Health, a long-standing bipartisan priority, would receive a record $3 billion increase to $37 billion.
“We have worked to restore and in many cases increase investments in education, health care, opioids, NIH, child care, college affordability and other domestic and military priorities,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who has been a key negotiator of the measure.
Agencies historically unpopular with Republicans, such as the Internal Revenue Service, appear likely to get increases, too, in part to prepare for implementation of Trump’s recently passed tax measure. The Environmental Protection Agency, always a GOP target, may get a reprieve this year.
Lawmakers agreed on the broad outlines of the budget plan last month, after a standoff forced an overnight shutdown. The legislation implementing that deal is viewed as possibly one of few bills moving through Congress this year, making it a target for lawmakers and lobbyists seeking to attach their top priorities.
But efforts to add on unrelated legislation to tackle politically charged issues, such as immigration and rapidly rising health insurance premiums, appeared to be faltering.
Dreamer measure
An effort to extend protections for so-called Dreamer immigrants brought to the country as children appears to have failed. Democrats seemed likely to yield on $1.6 billion in wall funding as outlined in Trump’s official request for the 2018 budget year, but they were digging in against Trump’s plans to hire hundreds of new Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents.
A dispute over abortion seemed likely to scuttle a Senate GOP plan to provide billions in federal subsidies to insurers to help curb health insurance premium increases.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was working on Trump’s behalf against funding for a Hudson River tunnel and rail project that’s important to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Republicans from New York and New Jersey.
The bill would implement last month’s budget agreement, adding $143 billion over limits set under a 2011 budget and debt pact that forced automatic budget cuts on annual agency appropriations. Coupled with last year’s tax cuts, it heralds the return of trillion-dollar budget deficits as soon as the budget year starting in October.
Republican conservatives are dismayed by the free-spending measure, meaning Democratic votes are required to pass it. That gave Democrats leverage to force GOP negotiators to drop numerous policy riders that Democrats considered poison pills.
Ryan said negotiations were ongoing about adding a widely backed measure that aims to strengthen federal background checks by prodding states to provide all records that disqualify people with severe mental health problems and other issues from buying firearms.
Grain sales subsidies
Republicans continued to press to fix a glitch in the recent tax bill that subsidizes grain sales to cooperatives at the expense of for-profit grain companies, lawmakers said.
“We need to fix that problem,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. Schumer was demanding a provision of his own — tax subsidies to construct low-income housing — in exchange, lawmakers said.
The president, meanwhile, has privately threatened to veto the whole package if a $900 million payment is made on the Hudson River Gateway Project. Trump’s opposition is alarming Northeastern Republicans such as Representative Peter King of New York, who lobbied Trump on the project at a St. Patrick’s luncheon in the Capitol last week.
The Gateway Project would add an $11 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River to complement deteriorating, century-old tunnels that are at risk of closing in a few years. The project enjoys bipartisan support among key Appropriations panel negotiators on the omnibus measure who want to get the expensive project on track while their coffers are flush with money.
“I think we ought to get it done and it has good bipartisan support,” Schumer said. “I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with the president. This is a needed project, and I hope Congress rises to the occasion.”
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Alphabet’s Google is launching the Google News Initiative to weed out fake news online and during breaking news situations, it said in a blog post Tuesday.
Google said it plans to spend $300 million over the next three years to improve the accuracy and quality of news appearing on its platforms.
The changes come as Google, Facebook and Twitter face a backlash over their role during the U.S. presidential election by allowing the spread of false and often malicious information that might have swayed voters toward Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In a separate blog post, Google said it was launching a tool to help subscribe to news publications.
Subscribe with Google will let users buy a subscription on participating news sites using their Google account and manage all their subscriptions in one place.
Google said it would launch the news subscription with the Financial Times, The New York Times, Le Figaro and The Telegraph among others. The search engine said it plans to add more news publishers soon.
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A fatal pedestrian crash involving a self-driving Uber SUV in a Phoenix suburb could have far-reaching consequences for the new technology as automakers and other companies race to be the first with cars that operate on their own.
The crash Sunday night in Tempe was the first death involving a full autonomous test vehicle. The Volvo was in self-driving mode with a human backup driver at the wheel when it struck 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was walking a bicycle outside the lines of a crosswalk in Tempe, police said.
Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The ride-sharing company has been testing self-driving vehicles for months as it competes with other technology companies and automakers like Ford and General Motors.
Though many in the industries had been dreading a fatal crash they knew it was inevitable.
Tempe police Sgt. Ronald Elcock said local authorities haven’t determined fault but urged people to use crosswalks. He told reporters at a news conference Monday the Uber vehicle was traveling around 40 mph when it hit Helzberg immediately as she stepped on to the street.
Neither she nor the backup driver showed signs of impairment, he said.
“The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk, so it was midblock,” Elcock said. “And as soon as she walked into the lane of traffic, she was struck by the vehicle.”
The National Transportation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which can enact regulations, sent investigators.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on his Twitter account and said the company is cooperating with investigators.
The public’s image of the vehicles will be defined by stories like the crash in Tempe, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies self-driving vehicles. It may turn out that there was nothing either the vehicle or its human backup could have done to avoid the crash, he said.
Either way, the fatality could hurt the technology’s image and lead to a push for more regulations at the state and federal levels, Smith said.
Autonomous vehicles with laser, radar and camera sensors and sophisticated computers have been billed as the way to reduce the more than 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the U.S. alone. Ninety-four percent of crashes are caused by human error, the government says.
Self-driving vehicles don’t drive drunk, don’t get sleepy and aren’t easily distracted. But they do have faults.
“We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”
In 2016, the latest year available, more than 6,000 U.S. pedestrians were killed by vehicles.
The federal government has voluntary guidelines for companies that want to test autonomous vehicles, leaving much of the regulation up to states.
Many states, including Michigan and Arizona, have taken a largely hands-off approach, hoping to gain jobs from the new technology, while California and others have taken a harder line.
California is among states that require manufacturers to report any incidents during the testing phase. As of early March, the state’s motor vehicle agency had received 59 such reports.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey used light regulations to entice Uber to the state after the company had a shaky rollout of test cars in San Francisco. Arizona has no reporting requirements. Hundreds of vehicles with automated driving systems have been on Arizona’s roads.
Ducey’s office expressed sympathy for Herzberg’s family and said safety is the top priority.
The crash in Arizona isn’t the first involving an Uber autonomous test vehicle. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe. No serious injuries were reported, and the driver of the other car was cited for a violation.
Herzberg’s death is the first involving an autonomous test vehicle but not the first in a car with some self-driving features. The driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in 2016 when his car, operating on its Autopilot system, crashed into a tractor-trailer in Florida.
The NTSB said that driver inattention was to blame but that design limitations with the system played a major role in the crash.
The U.S. Transportation Department is considering further voluntary guidelines that it says would help foster innovation. Proposals also are pending in Congress, including one that would stop states from regulating autonomous vehicles, Smith said.
Peter Kurdock, director of regulatory affairs for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety in Washington, said the group sent a letter Monday to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao saying it is concerned about a lack of action and oversight by the department as autonomous vehicles are developed. That letter was planned before the crash.
Kurdock said the deadly accident should serve as a “startling reminder” to members of Congress that they need to “think through all the issues to put together the best bill they can to hopefully prevent more of these tragedies from occurring.”
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Children in South Asia and Africa continue to face the threat of infection from meningitis. Despite progress in vaccines, there are still poor health infrastructures in key areas and inadequate access to medical services.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says promoting vaccination programs faces challenges, with outbreaks of several forms of meningitis causing child mortality rates as high as 60 percent across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Meningitis still threatens children
Mathuram Santosham, a professor of pediatrics and pediatric medicine at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine, said while vaccinations programs have been very successful in the West and developed regions, children in developing countries remain at risk.
“The disease pretty much disappeared in the U.S., Europe and other countries. It’s now working well; but the places where children are dying are not Western countries and European countries, it’s India and Africa,” he said.
“When a child gets meningitis, even when the best care is available the mortality is between three and 10 percent. But in the poor countries where there isn’t good access to medical care, it can be as high as 60 percent,” Santosham told VOA.
The disease largely affects young children.
Meningitis has lasting effects
Even for those who survive, there is a 30 to 40 percent chance of serious neurological complications affecting the child’s long term health.
The major cause of bacterial meningitis – one of several forms of the disease – is the Haemophilus Influenza type b or Hib.
The disease causes an acute inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known together as the meninges.
Vaccines have been very effective since 2000
In 2000, the WHO estimated Hib was responsible for 8.13 million cases of serious illness worldwide, leading to some 371,000 deaths a year. Reports say the annual death toll has now fallen to less than 200,000.
A 2015 paper in The Lancet magazine noted the success of the new vaccines, such as Hib, in reducing mortality rates and globally an almost two-thirds decline in global meningitis deaths by 2030.
Developing a vaccine for meningitis has been a long term challenge.
A professor at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Porter W. Anderson, began work on a Hib vaccine in 1968 with a vaccine effective for older children, but not in those under the age of two.
Help for children under age 2
A breakthrough in the research for younger children came in the collaborative work between U.S. scientists John B. Robbins and Rachel Schneerson, who succeeded in developing a vaccine for children under two years of age.
Robbins told VOA the breakthrough was significant. “The ability to prevent an infection that not only killed infants and children but maimed them after they were treated was wonderful. It kept on pushing us,” he said.
Up to the end of 2016, the WHO says the Hib vaccine has been introduced in 191 countries. Vaccine coverage varies from 90 percent in the Americas but falls to around 28 percent in the Western Pacific Region.
In Africa, the WHO recommends large scale vaccinations of “population groups that are at risk” amid the constant threat of outbreaks especially in Sub Saharan regions.
Schneerson said it is crucial the vaccine reaches globally.
“It’s for everybody and most of those infectious diseases are more prevalent in poor countries. We live in one world. We live in a boat which is becoming smaller and smaller. We all live together. We have to take care of each other,” Schneerson said.
In the U.S., the success of the vaccination program has led to a dramatic decline in cases.
Prior to the launch of the immunization program in the mid-1980’s, Hib-meningitis infected 20,000 U.S. children a year with five percent of those dying and one-third left with intellectual disabilities. Since then the the annual death toll has been less than 100.
Opposition to vaccines
But Santosham said there was resistance to the vaccination program’s implementation.
“There’s also a tremendous amount of anti-vaccine lobbies in countries like India and even the United States and in many parts of Europe also. They were putting out false information saying this vaccine is dangerous,” he said.
In India, a strong anti-vaccine lobby stalled a national vaccination program, leading medical authorities to directly appeal to the individual states and local politicians about the need for the program.
But Santosham said China and Thailand had not yet signed up for the program, but he expected China’s private medical sector to play a key role, while Thai health care workers are looking for government funding “in the next year or two”.
Projections of the success of the vaccinations led experts to predict more than seven million lives would have been saved due to the program by 2020. “So this is a tremendous success story,” Santosham said.
The four scientists, Rachel Schneerson, John B. Robbins, Porter W. Anderson and Mathuram Santosham, recently visited Thailand as recipients of the Prince Mahidol medical awards in Public Health.
The Weinstein Co. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday with a buyout offer in hand from a private equity firm, the latest twist in its efforts to survive the sexual misconduct scandal that brought down co-founder Harvey Weinstein, shook Hollywood and triggered a movement that spread out to convulse other industries.
The company also announced it was releasing any victims of or witnesses to Weinstein’s alleged misconduct from non-disclosure agreements preventing them from speaking out. That step had long been sought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who filed a lawsuit against the company last month on behalf of its employees.
“Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers. Effective immediately, those ‘agreements’ end,” the company said in a statement. “No one should be afraid to speak out or coerced to stay quiet.”
In a statement, Schneiderman praised the decision as “a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace.”
The movie and TV studio becomes the first high-profile company to be forced into bankruptcy in the nationwide outcry over workplace sexual misconduct. Dozens of prominent men in entertainment, media, finance, politics and other realms have seen their careers derailed, but no other company has seen its very survival as tightly intertwined with the fate of one man as the Weinstein Co.
Some 80 women, including prominent actresses, have accused Harvey Weinstein of misconduct ranging from rape to harassment. Weinstein, who was fired as his company’s CEO in October, has denied any allegations of non-consensual sex.
The Weinstein Co. said it has entered into a “stalking horse” agreement with an affiliate of Dallas-based Lantern Capital Partners, meaning the equity firm has agreed to buy the company, subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Lantern was among a group of investors that had been in talks for months to buy the company outside of bankruptcy. That deal was complicated when Schneiderman filed his lawsuit, citing concerns that the sale would benefit executives accused of enabling Weinstein’s alleged misconduct and provide insufficient guarantees of compensation for his accusers. Talks to revive the sale finally fell apart two weeks ago when the group of buyers said they had discovered undisclosed liabilities.
The Weinstein Co. said it chose Lantern as a potential buyer because the firm was committed to keeping on the studio’s employees as a going concern.
“While we had hoped to reach a sale out of court, the Board is pleased to have a plan for maximizing the value of its assets, preserving as many jobs as possible and pursuing justice for any victims,” said Bob Weinstein, who co-founded the company with his brother Harvey in 2005 and remains chairman of the board of directors.
Lantern co-founders Andy Mitchell and Milos Brajovic said they were committed to “following through on our promise to reposition the business as a pre-eminent content provider, while cultivating a positive presence in the industry.”
Under bankruptcy protection, civil lawsuits filed by Weinstein’s accusers will be halted and no new legal claims can be brought against the company. Secured creditors will get priority for payment over the women suing the company.
Schneiderman’s lawsuit will not be halted by the bankruptcy filing because it was filed by a law enforcement agency. Schneiderman said his investigation would continue and that his office would engage with the Weinstein Co. and Lantern to ensure “that victims are compensated, employees are protected moving forward, and perpetrators and enablers of abuse are not unjustly enriched.”
Other bidders also could emerge during the bankruptcy process, particularly those interested in the company’s lucrative 277-film library, which includes award-winning films from big-name directors like Quentin Tarantino and horror releases from its Dimension label. Free of liabilities, the company’s assets could increase in value in a bankruptcy.
In more fallout over the scandal, New York’s governor directed the state attorney general to review a decision by the Manhattan district attorney’s office not to prosecute a 2015 case involving an Italian model who said Weinstein groped her.
The bankruptcy process will bring the company’s finances into public view, including the extent of its debt. The buyers who pulled out of the sale earlier this month said they discovered up to $64 million in undisclosed liabilities, including $27 million in residuals and profit participation. Those liabilities came on top of $225 million in debt, which the buyers had said they would be prepared to take on as part of a $500 million acquisition deal.
The Weinstein Co. already had been struggling financially before the scandal erupted in October with a news stories in The New York Times and The New Yorker. Harvey and Bob Weinstein started the company after leaving Miramax, the company they founded in 1979 and which became a powerhouse in `90s indie film with hits like “Pulp Fiction.” After finding success with Oscar winners “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech,” the Weinstein Co.’s output and relevance diminished in recent years. The company let go 50 employees in 2016 and continuously shuffled release dates while short of cash.
Last year, the studio sold distribution rights for the movie “Paddington 2” to Warner Bros. for more than $30 million.
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The world’s last male northern white rhino, Sudan, has died after “age-related complications,” researchers announced Tuesday, saying he “stole the heart of many with his dignity and strength.”
A statement from the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya said the 45-year-old rhino was euthanized on Monday after his condition “worsened significantly” and he was no longer able to stand. His muscles and bones had degenerated and his skin had extensive wounds, with a deep infection on his back right leg.
The rhino had been part of an ambitious effort to save the subspecies from extinction after decades of decimation by poachers, with the help of the two surviving females. One is his daughter, Najin, and the other is her daughter, Fatu.
“He was a great ambassador for his species and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity,” said the conservancy’s CEO, Richard Vigne.
Sudan was something of a celebrity, attracting thousands of visitors. Last year he was listed as “The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World” on the Tinder dating app in a fundraising effort.
The last male northern white rhino had been born in Sudan, the last of his kind to be born in the wild.
He was taken to a Czech zoo and then transferred to Kenya in 2009 with the three other remaining fertile northern white rhinos at the time. They were placed under 24-hour armed guard and fed a special diet. “However, despite the fact that they were seen mating, there were no successful pregnancies,” the conservancy said.
Rangers caring for Sudan described him as gentle and, as his condition worsened in recent weeks, expressed sadness over his imminent death.
The rhino “significantly contributed to survival of his species as he sired two females,” the conservancy said. “Additionally, his genetic material was collected yesterday and provides a hope for future attempts at reproduction of northern white rhinos through advanced cellular technologies.”
The only hope for preserving the subspecies “now lies in developing in vitro fertilization techniques using eggs from the two remaining females, stored northern white rhino semen from males and surrogate southern white rhino females,” the statement said.
Sudan’s death “is a cruel symbol of human disregard for nature and it saddened everyone who knew him. But we should not give up,” said Jan Stejskal, director of international projects at Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic. “It may sound unbelievable, but thanks to the newly developed techniques even Sudan could still have an offspring.”
Northern white rhinos once roamed parts of Chad, Sudan, Uganda, Congo and Central African Republic, and were particularly vulnerable because of the armed conflicts that have swept the region over decades.
Other rhinos, the southern white rhino and another species, the black rhino, are under heavy pressure from poachers who kill them for their horns to supply illegal markets in parts of Asia.
Roughly 20,000 southern white rhinos remain in Africa. Their numbers dipped below 100 around a century ago, but an intense effort initiated by South African conservationist Ian Player in the mid-20th century turned things around.
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The rising production of livestock feed, such as soy, gobbles up more and more valuable agricultural land that could be used to feed people. So farmers in Uganda are being encouraged to use insects as livestock feed, and some are turning the practice into a business. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Some people have abnormally fast heartbeats, sometimes as fast as 400 beats per minute. A heartbeat this fast can be life-threatening. The solution is an implantable defibrillator. VOA’s Carol Pearson has the stories of two people whose lives have been saved by devices implanted directly into their heart.
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Some coastal states opposed to President Donald Trump’s plan to allow oil and gas drilling off most of the nation’s coastline are fighting back with proposed state laws designed to thwart the proposal.
The drilling Trump proposes would take place in federal waters offshore in an area called the Outer Continental Shelf. But states control the 3 miles of ocean closest to shore and are proposing laws designed to make it difficult, or impossible, to bring the oil or gas ashore in their areas.
A look at the issue:
What States Are Doing
States including New Jersey, New York, California, South Carolina and Rhode Island have introduced bills prohibiting any infrastructure related to offshore oil or gas production from being built in or crossing their state waters. Washington state is threatening such a bill. Maryland has introduced a bill imposing strict liability on anyone who causes a spill while engaged in offshore drilling or oil or gas extraction.
“We started thinking about how we control the first three miles of ocean, and there are state rights that we have,” said New Jersey state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who represents the state’s southern coast. “Even if we don’t succeed in banning it outright, we can still make it a lot more expensive to do it in this area. It’s a back-door, ingenious way to block this.”
California Democratic state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson said a ban on pipelines and docks could force the industry to rely on ships that would then have to sail to the waters of a different state to bring their cargo ashore. “What we can do is make drilling for offshore oil and gas so prohibitively expensive that it won’t pencil out,” she said.
Any Precendent?
In 1985, voters in Santa Cruz, California, required that any zoning changes to accommodate onshore facilities for offshore oil exploration or production must be approved by a vote of the electorate, one of 26 similar ordinances that were adopted in California. An oil and gas industry association unsuccessfully sued 13 of the communities, claiming they were interfering with lawful interstate commerce.
Oil Industry, U.S. Response
Andy Radford, a senior policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute, said it has been 30 years since the last detailed analysis of potential offshore oil and gas supplies. He said states ought to welcome offshore drilling for the revenue it can produce for them. Offshore energy production in the Atlantic Ocean alone could support 265,000 jobs and generate $22 billion a year within 20 years, he said.
“We should take that step forward to advance our energy future,” he said. “Local communities and workers benefit from energy exploration and production, in addition to these investments generating significant state revenues to fund schools, hospitals and other public services.”
Connie Gillette, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said “the laws, goals, and policies” of a state adjacent to the Outer Continental Shelf are among the factors the federal government must consider in approving oil and gas leases.
Conflicted in South Carolina
In May 2017, eight months before Trump proposed the nearly nationwide expansion of offshore drilling, a South Carolina legislator introduced a bill to prohibit oil drilling infrastructure in state waters. The bill remains in committee.
South Carolina’s House and Senate both introduced a resolution expressing support for drilling off their state’s coast and criticizing Republican Gov. Henry McMaster’s request to be exempted from the plan, saying the request is “tantamount to the state exercising excessive control of South Carolina’s free market.”
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Venezuela’s health system is sinking into further disarray, a survey led by the opposition-dominated Congress showed on Monday, with most hospitals plagued by water outages, unable to feed patients and lacking even basic devices like catheters.
In the midst of a crushing economic crisis that has caused medicine shortages and emigration of doctors, President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government has stopped issuing weekly bulletins on health.
To fill the gap, Venezuela’s Congress and a health group have for five years asked doctors and hospital workers to report the situation in their institutions. Those in government-run hospitals have usually been ordered to keep quiet, and so communicate surreptitiously with the pollsters.
“The government has decided not to inform, to hide the truth. The truth is that every day Venezuelans are dying due to lack of supplies and medicines,” said opposition lawmaker and oncologist Jose Manuel Olivares as he presented the findings on Monday.
All indicators worsened in 2018 and the private sector is increasingly hit, the survey said. Some 94 percent of x-ray units are out of service or only partially functional. Around 79 percent of hospitals have poor or in existent water service. Only 7 percent of emergency services are fully operative.
“Behind each number you see here, there is a story. There is a father, a mother, a son … there is a Venezuelan suffering,” said Olivares.
“We hope the government reflects on this. Political differences can never supersede the problems of the people.”
The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the survey. The poll was conducted between March 1 and March 10. Information was drawn from 137 hospitals in 55 cities.
A crumbling state-led economy and low global prices for oil, which is Venezuela’s main export, have led to a shortage of medicine and vaccines, sparking the return of diseases that were once controlled such as diphtheria and measles.
Venezuelans suffering from chronic illnesses like cancer or diabetes are often forced to forgo treatment. Transplant patients who had gotten a second shot at life are terrified as anti-rejection medicine runs short, heightening chances that their body will reject the foreign organ. Epileptic patients are struggling with seizures due to drug shortages.
Amid the dire panorama, patients and health groups have been lobbying for international aid. But Maduro’s government says there is no humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and has refused to accept aid.
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