Feeding the world depends on bountiful harvests, even in the face of changing pests and climate. Scientists are bringing a new tool to the effort, a bacterial gene editing system called CRISPR. The technique works like a molecular pair of scissors that targets a specific location in the DNA to introduce beneficial traits, or delete harmful ones. From Berkeley, California, Shelley Schlender reports.
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Month: April 2018
Scientists have detected the most distant star ever viewed, a blue behemoth located more than halfway across the universe and named after the ancient Greek mythological figure Icarus.
Researchers said on Monday they used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to spot the star, which is up to a million times more luminous and about twice as hot as our sun, residing 9.3 billion lights years away from Earth. It is a type of star called a blue supergiant.
The star, located in a distant spiral galaxy, is at least 100 times further away than any other star previously observed, with the exception of things like the huge supernova explosions that mark the death of certain stars. Older galaxies have been spotted but their individual stars were indiscernible.
The scientists took advantage of a phenomenon called “gravitational lensing” to spot the star. It involves the bending of light by massive galaxy clusters in the line of sight, which magnifies more distant celestial objects. This makes dim, faraway objects that otherwise would be undetectable, like an individual star, visible.
Peering back in time
“The fraction of the universe where we can see stars is very small. But this sort of quirk of nature allows us to see much bigger volumes,” said astronomer Patrick Kelly of the University of Minnesota, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“We will now be able to study in detail what the universe was like — and specifically how stars evolved and what their natures are — almost all the way back to the earliest stages of the universe and the first generations of stars,” Kelly added.
Because its light has taken so long to reach Earth, looking at this star is like peering back in time to when the universe was less than a third of its current age. The Big Bang that gave rise to the universe occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
’15 minutes of fame’
The star spotted in this study is formally named MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star-1, but its discoverers dubbed it Icarus, who flew so close to the sun that his wings fashioned from wax and feathers melted, sending him plunging fatally into the sea.
Kelly said he preferred the nickname Warhol, after the American artist Andy Warhol, owing to the star’s “15 minutes of fame” following its discovery.
“No one liked that, except for one other person, so it ended up Icarus,” Kelly said.
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SpaceX has launched a used supply ship on a used rocket to the International Space Station.
The Falcon rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday, hoisting a Dragon capsule full of food, experiments and other station goods for NASA.
The Dragon and its 6,000-pound shipment should reach the space station Wednesday. The station astronauts will use a robot arm to grab it.
It’s the second trip to the orbiting lab for this particular Dragon, recycled following a visit two years ago. The Falcon’s first-stage booster also flew before — last summer.
SpaceX has combined a recycled Dragon and a recycled Falcon once before. The company aims to reduce launch costs by reusing rocket parts.
The space station is currently home to astronauts from the U.S., Russia and Japan.
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When palm oil farmer Isnin Kasno eventually retires, his three children will turn their backs on the family’s small plantation in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor.
Like many aging oil palm growers in Southeast Asia, the 58-year-old struggles to make ends meet from his 2 hectares (5 acres), and his adult children have little appetite for the physically demanding work and dwindling financial rewards.
“It makes me very sad,” said Kasno, who planted his land in 1983 after working in Singapore’s construction industry. “Soon, when I no longer have the energy to help with the harvesting, my only option will be to lease my farm.”
There are more than 2 million smallholders tending 5.6 million hectares of land in Malaysia and Indonesia – the two countries that dominate the world’s supply of the vegetable oil used widely in food, household products and biodiesel.
This army of farmers produces about 40 percent of palm oil from those two countries.
Over the last decade, growing pressure from green groups and consumers has pushed big companies that produce, trade or buy palm oil to tackle labor abuses on plantations and commit to ending deforestation that is contributing to climate change.
But smallholders like Kasno have been left behind, say industry officials.
Only 78,000 smallholders are certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a body of consumer organizations, environmental groups and plantation firms that aims to make the industry greener and more ethical.
Some 35 years ago, Kasno and three workers spent 12 months clearing a plot of lush forest land near the city of Johor Bahru using chainsaws and burning.
The farmer planted oil palm on the carbon-rich peatland and then registered the land in his name for a nominal fee.
Kasno, who also does a part-time job to support his family, pays two Indonesians a monthly wage of 150 ringgit ($39) each to help harvest his plantation.
The father of three has heard of, but knows little about RSPO certification, a sustainability scheme that promotes best practice and is backed by major European buyers of palm oil.
The challenge for international companies now – faced with a scarcity of land to expand and the need to secure future supplies – is to work with small growers like Kasno, even though many farmers find it hard to follow sustainability rules.
“False Dream”
Smallholders across the region often live in poverty and have only a basic education level, industry officials said.
Averaging from 2 to 7 hectares of land each, they struggle to make large profits because they do not use the latest farming methods, cannot buy the best fertilizers and pesticides cheaply, and their yields are usually lower than the industry average.
Unlike major palm growers, independent farmers also face logistical problems getting their fresh palm fruit to mills for processing, and are inefficient because they cannot afford modern farming equipment.
During low output months when seasonal monsoon rains are at their heaviest, their income can plummet, forcing them to cut down on labor costs or spending on fertilizers. This harms harvests and quality further.
Fluctuating global palm prices also hurt farmers – many of whom cannot access credit or insurance that would help them when extreme weather damages their crops.
Growing oil palm promised big profits 25 years ago but has turned out to be a “false dream” for many smallholders, said Marianne Martinet of The Forest Trust, a non-profit that works with large plantations, consumers and smallholders.
“The common challenge now is low productivity and yields … also the financial ability to manage a business,” she added.
Smallholders outside Johor Bahru said they need lower or subsidized fertilizer prices, training in the best farming practices, more help to increase yields and financial support from governments – especially when palm oil prices drop.
The children of smallholders in Malaysia, who complain about a lack of entertainment and the difficulty of finding a partner in rural areas, often seek better-paid work in urban areas.
Halting that trend is crucial, farmers and dealers said.
“The priorities of smallholders, in most cases, (are) to put food on the table,” said Carl Bek-Nielsen, chief executive director of United Plantations, which has palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia.
“More resources need to be channeled to help smallholders, simply because they make up such a huge part of the (palm) cake. It’s a huge, huge task, but you have to start somewhere.”
Certification
Established back in 2004, the RSPO’s focus has been mostly on making large and medium-sized palm oil companies more sustainable, trying to achieve the maximum with limited funds.
But in 2012, it certified a first batch of smallholders, and three years later, set up a working group to look at how best to help them. In July last year, a roadmap was completed to open up the RSPO to more small growers, aimed at improving their livelihoods, sustainability and yields.
Eventually, with more funding and training, the goal is to make it easier for smallholders to get RSPO certification and access international markets. RSPO-certified palm oil is preferred by many European buyers, and is sold at a premium.
The RSPO launched a two-year pilot project late last year, partly funded by UN Environment, which will train smallholders in Sabah, Malaysia and Central Kalimantan in Indonesia.
“This is not only about economics but access to education, better healthcare,” said Julia Majail, RSPO associate director.
The RSPO project is similar to schemes backed by big palm buyers like Nestle, Unilever and Procter & Gamble (P&G), which partner with sustainability advisors like The Forest Trust, Wild Asia and Proforest.
Such schemes train pockets of smallholders to adopt modern farming techniques and ensure workplace safety, as well as to avoid planting on peatland or burning during land clearance.
Smoke from slash-and-burn agriculture is blamed for the polluting haze that brings health risks across Southeast Asia most years.
Besides helping farmers achieve RSPO certification, the hope is that other smallholders will notice the gains made by participating growers, and change their methods too.
“If we want to drive more production with the same land – improve productivity (and) minimize deforestation – the way to go about it is to work with the smallholders,” said Girish Deshpande, a global business planner at P&G.
Career Choice
But some say achieving RSPO certification is too costly and complicated for most smallholders, citing the remoteness of plantations, the number of middlemen in the supply chain and the scale of monitoring required.
“I’m now beginning to question whether certification is the route for smallholders,” said Simon Lord, chief sustainability officer at Sime Darby Plantation and former chair of the RSPO smallholders’ working group. “It’s just sheer logistics. The number of audit hours to do that just blows it out of the water, in terms of expense.”
Lord, who has more than 30 years of industry experience, said smallholders should form collectives, while government-run schemes offer them an easier “entry level” into sustainability.
The RSPO is reviewing how to simplify its certification process and standards for smallholders, said Majail, a process likely to be finalized by November.
Back in rural Johor, Malaysian navy veteran Farid Harith, 48, spotted a trend of smallholders leaving their land back in 2004, and now manages 70 plantations for owners who have moved to the cities or are too elderly to manage their crops.
“A lot of young people go to study at university and then pursue corporate careers,” said Harith, who employs some 17 Indonesian workers to help him. “It is a great loss, because I see the opportunities there are to make money in the palm plantations,” he added. “We need to change the mindset.”
($1 = 3.8620 ringgit)
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Tiger Woods is back in Green Jacket contention and from country club bars to boardrooms, the former world No. 1 is once again the tide lifting all boats in the golfing world.
Golf television ratings are trending upward, so are equipment and ball sales while Masters tickets and even tips are experiencing a “Tiger Bump” as a rejuvenated Woods returns to the U.S. Masters for the first time in three years.
Much of the buzz being generated around golf’s first major is emanating from a 42-year-old golfer who is closer to qualifying for the Seniors Tour (open to players 50 and over) than his last victory at Augusta in 2005.
But nothing gets the sporting public revved up more than a compelling comeback story and Woods is writing one for the ages.
“This is a little bit like a Lazarus resurrection here with respect to where he was,” Steve Mona, World Golf Foundation CEO, told Reuters. “Only last September he was talking about whether he would be able to come back at all. Now that he is the favorite at the Masters, it is just astonishing. He is certainly in form. I don’t think anyone would be terribly surprised if he were in the hunt.”
The greatest player of his generation, Woods dominated golf like few athletes in any sport ever have.
A prodigious talent who first appeared on television swinging a golf club at two years old, Woods grew into a champion by winning 14 majors in swashbuckling style. He became a crossover celebrity and very wealthy with career earnings totaling $1.7 billion, according to a 2017 report by Forbes.
Having climbed to such great heights, Woods’ fall from grace that started in 2009 has been all the more shocking.
A tawdry divorce, a DUI and years and years of injuries, surgeries and failed treatments sent sponsors scurrying.
The back that had caused Woods so much pain was getting no better and the golfer who had held the No. 1 world ranking for a collective 683 weeks slumped out of the top 1,000.
Even the ever-positive Woods suddenly seemed resigned to a dour fate.
Yet after undergoing spinal fusion surgery last April, the dark clouds hanging over Woods slowly began to lift.
Shaking off years of competitive rust, Woods returned with an encouraging tie for ninth at the Hero World Challenge, followed by a tie for 23rd at the Farmers Insurance Open and a missed cut at the Genesis Open.
Highest ratings
Then suddenly Woods grabbed the spotlight as only he can, announcing his return to form with three impressive results — 12th at the Honda Classic, a tie for second at the Valspar Championship and a tie for fifth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Woods’ back now appears to be strong enough to carry the hopes of an entire industry that is experiencing a “Tiger Bump.”
With Woods back in contention, NBC/Golf Channel said the final rounds of both the Arnold Palmer and Valspar championships registered the highest ratings for a PGA Tour telecast, outside of the majors, since the 2015 Wyndham Championship.
The golf industry has also seen a spike. Bridgestone said that when Woods (who uses its ball) has been in the field in 2018, the average basket value with Bridgestone products increased by over 120 percent compared with the same period in 2017.
“His endorsement [that we make the best ball] is more valuable than all of the science and data that we throw out to the consumers,” Angel Ilgan, President & CEO of Bridgestone, told Reuters. “It is just ridiculous that we can show them hundreds and thousands of testings with robots and projectile guns that we’re the best ball, the most accurate ball. And the consumer doesn’t believe us until Tiger says, ‘Yeah that’s true.’
“During Tiger’s absence the entire industry, the PGA Tour, we were all kind of looking who is the next player,” he continued. “Then when Tiger came back, the entire industry is jumping on the Tiger bandwagon.”
Far-reaching effects
The trickle-down economics of Woods’ comeback are far-reaching.
During the final round of the Valspar, a bartender at a golf club raved on social media that tips were up 300 percent with Woods in contention.
“I was slammed packed with people watching Tiger play, it was insane,” said Alcaonline in a post on Reddit picked up by several news outlets. “I know it seems minimal but the economic trickle down effect this has when it comes to the golf world is hard to explain. I made at least 3X the amount of money I usually make on Sundays just because Tiger was in contention.”
With Woods at the start of a comeback but on the downslope of a turbulent but spectacular career, it is uncertain how long this Tiger bubble will last.
But with Woods’ stock soaring, everyone is buying in and Mona believes that it could be a good long-term investment.
“That [bartender] obviously takes it down to the grass-roots level and it is felt on many different levels and the most obvious ones are from TV ratings standpoint,” he said. “It’s astronomical how much they have increased and there is one common denominator and that is Tiger in contention.
“You look at attendance at those events and it is much the same story. What Tiger does is he increases interest in the game … they get interested and think maybe this is a game for me,” he added.
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U.S. factory activity slowed in March amid shortages of skilled workers and rising capacity constraints, but growth in the manufacturing sector remains underpinned by strong domestic and global economies.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) survey published Monday also showed a surge in the cost of raw materials and worries among manufacturers about the impact of steel and aluminum import tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump last month to shield domestic industries from what he has described as unfair competition from other countries.
“Demand remains robust, but the nation’s employment resources and supply chains are still struggling to keep up,” said Timothy Fiore, chair of ISM’s manufacturing business survey committee.
The ISM said its index of national factory activity slipped to a reading of 59.3 last month from 60.8 in February. A reading above 50 in the ISM index indicates growth in manufacturing, which accounts for about 12 percent of the U.S. economy.
The survey’s prices index jumped to its highest level since April 2011. There were price increases across 17 of 18 industry sectors last month. While a measure of new orders dropped, a gauge of backlog orders rose to levels last seen in May 2004.
The survey’s customers’ inventories index was at its lowest level since July 2011. A measure of factory employment dropped last month and the ISM said there were indications that labor and skill shortages were affecting production.
Seventeen industries including fabricated metal products, computer and electronic products, machinery, and chemical products reported growth last month. Apparel, leather and allied products was the only industry reporting a decrease.
Eyes on tariffs
Machinery manufacturers said the tariffs on steel and aluminum imports were “causing panic buying, driving the near-term prices higher and leading to inventory shortages for non-contract customers.”
Manufacturers of miscellaneous products reported that “new tariffs are causing concern across the supply chain. Full impact will take a few weeks to reveal itself.” Primary metal producers reported “significant price increases in the steel commodity” as a result of the tariffs.
Trump slapped 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent for aluminum in early March. Fiore said 42 percent of survey comments in March were related to prices and tariffs.
U.S. financial markets were little moved by the data, with investors worrying about a global trade war after China increased tariffs by up to 25 percent on 128 American products in response to the duties on aluminum and steel imports.
Stocks on Wall Street were trading sharply lower and the dollar fell against a basket of currencies. U.S. government bond prices rose, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note falling to a near two-month low.
Still, the outlook for manufacturing remains upbeat amid dollar weakness, which is boosting the competitiveness of American-made goods on the international market.
“The near-term prospects for the manufacturing sector and the broader economy still appear brighter than they have been at any point over the past five years,” said Michael Pearce, an economist at Capital Economics in New York.
Construction spending
A separate report from the Commerce Department on Monday showed construction spending edged up 0.1 percent in February after being unchanged in January. February’s marginal increase in construction spending supports economists’ expectations for a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter.
Gross domestic product growth estimates for the January-March quarter are mostly below a 2 percent annualized rate. The economy grew at a 2.9 percent pace in the fourth quarter.
Construction spending in February was held back by a 2.1 percent drop in outlays on public construction projects, which almost reversed January’s 2.3 percent rise.
Spending on federal government construction projects plunged 11.9 percent, the biggest decline since October 2004, after surging 13.4 percent in January.
State and local government construction outlays fell 1.0 percent after rising 1.3 percent in January. The drop in public construction spending dwarfed a 0.7 percent rise in investment in private construction projects.
“We expect only limited gains in public construction spending this year, based on the budget constraints at the state and local level,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics in New York.
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U.S. stocks plunged again Monday after President Donald Trump unleashed a new verbal attack on giant online retailer Amazon and China fired its shot at U.S. imports in a developing trade war.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 589 points by the close, shedding 1.9 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 2.3 percent while the NASDAQ fell nearly three percent at the end of trading.
Trump has strongly criticized Amazon three times in the last few days. Amazion founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose revelatory stories on Trump and his administration frequently draw the president’s ire.
The U.S. leader says Amazon’s large-scale operations are detrimental to the business success of small retailers that cannot compete with its high-volume sales. Trump has also complained that the fees Amazon pays to the U.S. Postal Service to deliver merchandise the retailer sells are too low, costing the quasi-governmental agency hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, although the Postal Service says its contract with Amazon is profitable.
“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon,” Trump said in his latest broadside against Amazon. “THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field!”
Since Trump started verbally attacking Amazon, the company has lost more than $37 billion in market value.
China’s announcement that it is increasing duties on 128 categories of U.S. imports worth $3 billion in annual trade also worried investors. They fear Beijing’s response to the Trump tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports could spark an all-out trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
Atsi Sheth, an analyst for Moody’s Investors Service, said, “The importance of tariff announcements by both the U.S. and China lies in what they may portend for overall bilateral trade and investment relations between the two countries.”
Late Monday, White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters issued a statement saying, in part, that China needs to stop “its unfair trading practices which are harming U.S. national security and distorting global markets.”
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The Trump administration on Monday rejected an Obama-era plan to make automobiles more fuel efficient, opening up a long process to weaken current standards and putting California and the federal government on a collision course over vehicle emissions.
Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement that the standards on model year 2022 to 2025 vehicles were not appropriate and should be revised.
The Obama administration set the average fleet-wide fuel efficiency standards “too high” and “made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality,” Pruitt said. He did not offer specifics on revising them.
The standards called for roughly doubling by 2025 the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles sold in the United States to about 50 miles (80 km) per gallon. Proponents said they could help spur innovation in clean technologies.
California has long been allowed by an EPA waiver to impose stricter standards than Washington does on vehicle emissions of some pollutants. And 12 other states, including New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, follow California’s lead on cleaner cars.
That has set up a battle on vehicle efficiency between California, the most populous U.S. state and a massive car market, and the administration of President Donald Trump.
Pruitt is a big proponent of states’ rights to regulate themselves, but opposes California’s push for greener cars.
California’s waiver to impose its own efficiency standards is being re-examined, the EPA said.
It is in “America’s best interest to have a national standard,” Pruitt said in the release.
California Governor Jerry Brown blasted the EPA’s action.
“This cynical and meretricious abuse of power will poison our air and jeopardize the health of all Americans,” Brown said.
Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, said her state “will vigorously defend the existing clean vehicle standards.”
Patchwork of Rules
Auto industry executives have not publicly sought specific reductions in the requirements negotiated with the Obama administration in 2011 as part of a bailout deal. But they have urged Pruitt and Trump to revise the Obama standards so it becomes easier and less costly to meet complex targets, which vary depending on the size of vehicles and whether they are classified as cars or trucks.
Automakers also want to avoid a patchwork of rules that would add costs to engine manufacturing.
“The best way to achieve our collective goals is under a single national program that provides an aggressive but achievable pathway, a variety of compliance tools, and factors in the role of customers,” said John Bozzella, president and chief executive officer of the Association of Global Automakers.
Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said Pruitt made the right decision and that the administration was working on a way to both increase fuel economy and “keep new vehicles affordable to more Americans.”
Changes to the standards could affect car manufacturers, including Ford, General Motors and Tesla.
Auto suppliers were cautiously optimistic about the creation of a national fuel efficiency plan. Steve Handschuh, head of the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association, said while his group supports adjustments and flexibilities “we do not support significant changes to the standards.”
Environmentalists decried Pruitt’s decision, saying stricter standards would slash emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Proponents of the corporate average fuel economy standards, or CAFE, say they have led to big gains in auto technology and that relaxing them could eventually hurt sales of U.S. cars in European and Asian countries that are moving toward mandates for electric cars.
It would “take America backward by jeopardizing successful safeguards that are working to clean our air, save drivers money at the pump, and drive technological innovation that creates jobs,” said Luke Tonachel, a clean vehicles advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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Facebook is a company in a hurry.
Since the world learned about the latest customer data controversy at Facebook, the social media network has unleashed a swarm of changes. But it’s unclear whether Facebook’s own reckoning will be enough to satisfy regulators and lawmakers.
“We’ve reached a tipping point with Facebook and privacy,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest advocacy group. “What’s most interesting at this moment are the number of forces — political, economic and social — that are converging. And I think the practical consequences is that something big will change.”
With more than 2 billion customers, Facebook has been in the hot seat in recent weeks over how an outside researcher gave the data of 50 million users to the political research firm Cambridge Analytica.
What if anything Cambridge Analytica has done with the data is unclear — the company claims it deleted it. But the situation has shone a spotlight on how much personal data is available on Facebook and how it is handled.
Pulling advertising
Sonos, a consumer electronics firm, Pep Boys, an auto parts and service retailer, Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser, all stopped advertising on Facebook in response to the controversy.
“We would like to see a bit more transparency to the consumer and a bit more choice to the consumer,” said Denelle Dixon, chief operating officer at Mozilla.
Her message to Facebook: “When you start taking this a bit more seriously and you start focusing and making changes, we’ll go back.”
In a Facebook post and an appearance on CNN, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the controversy and vowed to do more to protect user data. “This was a major breach of trust, and I’m really sorry that this happened,” he said.
The company also placed ads in Britain and the U.S. apologizing for a “breach of trust.”
A bevy of self-imposed changes
As state and federal regulators opened investigations and several congressional committees called on Zuckerberg to testify, Facebook has been busy rolling out changes.
The company made it easier for users to change privacy settings and has given them a quick way to download all the data that Facebook has on them. It has also cut off major data brokers.
Facebook may know soon whether its efforts will be enough.
Regulation or self-government?
Silicon Valley firms have long held that self-regulation, rather than government-imposed rules and regulations, would best allow for innovation. But the company also faces a bevy of state, federal and international regulators, which all may act against the firm.
In the U.S., Facebook’s chief concern is the Federal Trade Commission, which confirmed last month that it had opened an investigation into the company’s practices.
A key question will be if Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree it has with the consumer protection agency to obtain users’ permissions for everything it does with users’ data. Each violation is supposed to come with a $40,000 fine, which some analysts have speculated could cost Facebook billions.
In addition to the FTC, several state attorneys general have opened up an investigation into Facebook.
Beyond regulators, lawmakers in Washington and in state houses around the country are discussing what can be done to better protect social media customers. Zuckerberg is expected to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee next week.
Meanwhile, the company faces possible investigations in Britain and Canada.
Outside scrutiny
It is not just Facebook that deserves more scrutiny but all of the “advertising-powered web,” said Gennie Gebhart, a researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization.
“While Facebook is in the spotlight right now for very good reason, this is not just a Facebook problem,” Gebhart said. “We have a surveillance based business model that powers much of the web that cannot continue to coexist with privacy rights.”
She calls for independent audits done by a “party who is not accountable to Facebook but accountable to users.”
Rotenberg of EPIC said governments around the world shouldn’t leave it to U.S. and European regulators and lawmakers to regulate social media and user privacy.
“Coming up with new solutions that provide for the benefits of technology but at the same time address the real risks is a very good undertaking,” he said. “I think you’ll see throughout Asia, South America, the African continent robust debate about Facebook and other social media.”
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Shares of Amazon.com Inc fell 4 percent on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump again attacked the online retailer over the pricing of its deliveries through the United States Postal Service and promised unspecified changes.
“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon,” Trump tweeted.
“They lose a fortune, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country … not a level playing field!”
Trump has been vocal about his opposition to Amazon’s use of the postal service and Monday’s tweet adds to investor worries that the company could see more regulation.
Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.
Details of Amazon’s payments to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) are not publicly known, but some Wall Street analysts have estimated it pays the postal service roughly half what it would to United Parcel Service Inc or FedEx Corp to deliver a package.
“President Trump’s comments are consistent with industry sources we have spoken to in the shipping industry, who often label Amazon’s deal with the USPS as a sweetheart deal,” DA Davidson analyst Tom Forte wrote in a note.
“An argument, however, could be made that the USPS was losing billions before it expanded its service offerings for Amazon and would, still, likely lose billions if Amazon discontinued its use of the USPS tomorrow,” Forte said.
Trump last Thursday accused Amazon of not paying enough tax, making the postal system lose money and putting small retailers out of business.
But he offered no evidence to back up his criticisms and did not suggest any actions he would take.
Amazon shares have gained nearly 20 percent this year giving the company a market value of about $700 billion.
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The National Transportation Safety Board is “unhappy” about Tesla’s decision to release information in a fatal crash investigation involving its Autopilot system.
A vehicle using the semi-autonomous system crashed into a concrete lane divider in California last week, killing the driver. Tesla said that data shows the driver did not have his hands on the wheel, as recommended, and received several warnings from the system prior to the crash.
Christopher T. O’Neil is a spokesman for the NTSB. He says, “in each of our investigations involving a Tesla vehicle, Tesla has been extremely cooperative on assisting with the vehicle data.” He adds, “the NTSB is unhappy with the release of investigative information by Tesla.”
The NTSB says its next update will come in a preliminary report, which generally takes weeks.
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“We’ve made a bunch of mistakes.” “Everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times.” “Not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.”
Sound familiar? It’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a major privacy breach — seven years ago.
Lawmakers in many countries may be focused on Cambridge Analytica’s alleged improper use of Facebook data, but the social network’s privacy problems back more than a decade. Here are some of the company’s most notable missteps and promises around privacy.
2007
The social media darling unveils its Facebook Platform to great fanfare. Zuckerberg says app developers can now access the web of connections between users and their friends, a set of connections Facebook calls the “social graph.”
“The social graph is changing the way the world works,” he says.
That November, Facebook launches Beacon, which shares what users are doing on other websites with their Facebook friends. Many users find it intrusive and difficult to disable. Massachusetts resident Sean Lane buys his wife a diamond ring for Christmas on Overstock.com, but Facebook ruins the surprise , an incident leading to a class-action lawsuit.
In December, Zuckerberg apologizes and enables users to shut off Beacon. “I know we can do better,” he says .
2008
Facebook launches Facebook Connect , aiming to correct Beacon’s mistakes by requiring users to take deliberate action before they share activity from other websites when logged in using Facebook. More than 100 websites use the tool at launch, including CNN and TripAdvisor.
2009
Facebook announces “privacy improvements” after a yearlong review by Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner found that it geared its default privacy settings toward openness, failed to inform users their data would be used to serve ads, and leaked data to third party developers, including when their friends used apps. Facebook vows to encourage “users to review their privacy settings” but does not agree to all the recommendations.
Beacon is officially shut down, settling Lane’s class action lawsuit.
The American Civil Liberties Union warns people that Facebook’s default settings mean that when a friend uses an app or takes a quiz, the quiz- or app-maker can peer into your profile, even if you’ve made it private.
2010
App-makers exhibit a sophisticated grasp of data they can scoop from Facebook’s social graph.
The Wall Street Journal reports that many popular apps are transmitting personalized Facebook data to dozens of advertising and internet companies, among them, Zynga’s breakout game FarmVille. Facebook responds by shutting down some apps.
Prior to the Journal report, Facebook says it has redesigned its privacy tools, giving its 400 million users “the power to control exactly who can see the information and content they share.”
2011
The Federal Trade Commission reaches a consent decree with Facebook after an investigation of its broken privacy promises to consumers.
The FTC alleges, among other things, that:
- Facebook made its users’ friend lists public in December 2009, even if they had been set to private, without telling them.
- Even if users limited data sharing to “friends only,” data was actually shared with third party apps that friends used.
- Facebook failed to verify the security of apps it put on a “verified apps” list.
- Facebook promised not to share personal information with advertisers, but did.
Facebook promises to submit to a privacy audit every two years for the next 20 years, and Zuckerberg owns up to mistakes.
2012
Facebook introduces new methods to help advertisers reach people in ways “that protect your privacy,” including an encryption tool called Custom Audiences that lets marketers match the email addresses of sales leads to the addresses that Facebook users used to set up their accounts.
Facebook also rolls out new privacy tools aimed at simplifying its convoluted and confusing privacy controls. Among other things, it narrows the scope of app permissions so they don’t suck in as much user data automatically.
2013
Facebook shares two-year-old anonymized data on billions of friendships between countries with Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan and co-authors a research paper with him (published in 2015).
Kogan creates a quiz app, installed by around 300,000 people , giving him access to tens of millions of their friends’ data.
2014
Facebook says it dramatically limits the access apps have to friend data, preventing the type of data scoop Kogan and others were capable of. It also requires developers to get approval from Facebook before accessing sensitive data.
2015
Facebook says it learns from Guardian journalists that Kogan has shared data with Cambridge Analytica in violation of its policies. It bans the app and asks Kogan and Cambridge Analytica to certify they had deleted the data.
It rolls out “Security Checkup,” a new tool aimed at simplifying its convoluted and confusing privacy controls.
2017
Facebook introduces “Privacy Basics,” a Frequently Asked Questions site aimed at simplifying its convoluted and confusing privacy controls.
2018
Facebook says it learns from The Guardian and other media outlets that Cambridge Analytica did not delete improperly obtained Facebook data and suspends the company, Kogan, and whistleblower Christopher Wylie from its service.
Zuckerberg tells CNN that “I’m really sorry that this happened.” He promises to audit app makers that gathered massive amounts of data prior to 2014 and to notify affected users. Amid calls for investigations in the U.S. and U.K., the FTC begins investigating whether Facebook broke its 2011 consent decree.
“Our responsibility now is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Zuckerberg says.
Facebook redesigns its privacy settings menu on mobile devices and says in a blog post, “It’s time to make our privacy tools easier to find.”
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When Cameroonian medical doctor Conrad Tankou won the top health award at an international innovation competition, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Winning the $25,000 prize at the Next Einstein Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, last week was the culmination of years of struggle.
“Sometimes, I doubted I would get this far,” 30-year-old Tankou said. “We’ve come a long way. It’s the first time this project is actually getting any recognition. So, many people didn’t believe in it in the beginning, and up ‘till now, some people are still doubting.”
WATCH: Next Einstein Forum
Tankou, a general practitioner based in Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon, led a team to invent what he calls GIC Med. It’s a portable digital microscope that connects to a smartphone to remotely scan for cervical cancers for medical analysis. About 7,000 cases of cervical cancer are discovered yearly. The disease is the second most frequent cancer among women in Cameroon.
While creating his technology and seeking support, Tankou said he faced resistance from medical professionals. There was also the challenge of an unreliable internet, which he said is necessary for today’s scientists. Only about 25 percent of Cameroon’s population has Internet access, and the connection is prone to blackouts.
Some of the blackouts are political. The Cameroonian government has periodically shut down the internet in Anglophone regions, including Bamenda, where citizens are accusing the Francophone-dominated government of marginalizing English-speaking people. One blackout last year reportedly lasted a record 93 days.
Tankou said he also had to confront what he described as a “sad” mindset.
“There is mindset here in Africa where we don’t believe in the ability of another African to solve our problems. We have doubts that solutions in Africa can come from an African. We expect solutions to come from the West,” he explained.
Tankou is determined to make his technology available to help save lives. He said the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) was the best platform to showcase his innovation.
Africa has been left behind
Created by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) with the underlying belief that “the next Einstein will be African,” NEF brings together the largest gathering of African scientists to discuss innovations in climate change research, health and data technology to solve local problems. The first was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2016, where nearly 1,000 people convened.
More than 1,600 people gathered in Rwanda last week for the second edition. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame opened the forum.
“For too long, Africa has allowed itself to be left behind, but that’s starting to change, as we see in the important work on display at this forum,” Kagame said in his opening address.
Kagame’s government has heavily pushed education in science-based fields.
According to the World Bank, less than 2 percent of total global scientific research output comes from Africa. Some of the barriers are cultural.
“There’s also this old mentality prevailing in Africa where elders are respected more than youth. So, young people are not always supported. They have to find their own way,” said Joel Gasana, who is in his final year as a medical student at the University of Rwanda.
Gasama received $5,000 from an organization affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Nigeria-based Tony Elumelu Foundation awarded him another $5,000 grant.
The mobile app he created to help HIV patients keep up with their treatments lost to Tankou in the competition.
Rachel Sibande, a Malawian scientist who devised a tool to generate electricity from maize (corn), won in the “climate smart” category.
She noted that 90 percent of Malawi’s population is not connected to the national power grid.
Sibande, 32, said Africa is left behind when it comes to scientific research and innovation, due to a lack of funding, lack of opportunities for collaboration, few incentives and an educational system that does not enable students to think critically.
Abdoulaye Diallo, whose artificial intelligence project won in the “deep tech” category, said he did not think he would have been able to develop his technology in his native Guinea. He created it in Canada, where he has access to world-class labs as a university professor. But he admits that many scientists in Africa do not have such opportunities.
Steps of progress
These days, several initiatives are springing up to boost research-based science in Africa. A report jointly issued by the World Bank and Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of academic journals, revealed that between 2003 and 2012, African researchers more than doubled their production of research in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
At this year’s NEF, Elsevier and AIMS announced the launch of The Scientific African, a first-of-its-kind pan-African, peer-reviewed, open-access publishing journal dedicated to amplifying the global reach and impact of African research. News of the launch has generated positive buzz on social media over the past few days.
Scientists in Africa have long felt they were at a disadvantage simply by being in Africa, but NEF hopes to change that. The next edition will be in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2020.
NEF is setting up a $1 million fund to encourage scientific breakthroughs in Africa.
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Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has released a specially-bred group of critically endangered yellow-spotted bell frogs into the wild. Yellow-spotted bell frogs were thought to have become extinct until a chance discovery a decade ago. It allowed scientists to breed a so-called insurance population’ in captivity to help the species recover.
Historically, yellow spotted-bell frogs were found in two separate highland ranges in the north and south of New South Wales state in eastern Australia.
But disaster struck in the 1970s following an outbreak of an infectious disease that affects amphibians around the world.
For 30 years there were no recorded sightings of yellow-spotted bell frogs and scientists thought they were extinct.
However, a small group of these rare frogs was found near the New South Wales town of Yass in 2009 on the Southern Tablelands. Researchers moved quickly to harvest eggs and they became part of a so-called insurance population. It has been a success.This week experts from Taronga Zoo in Sydney released 200 juvenile frogs back into the area near Yass in an attempt to re-establish a wild population.
Michael McFadden is a supervisor at the zoo.
“In the Northern and Southern Tablelands this species used to be extremely common up until the late 1970s and at that time the species almost went extinct over a couple of years. So it disappeared, it was thought to have gone extinct. The reason for that decline was due to the introduction of an introduced pathogen called chytrid fungus. Unfortunately for this species they showed very little immunity and as a result they were wiped out over a period of one or two years,” he said.
Insurance populations’ of endangered Tasmanian Devils have also been bred in captivity in Australia. In the wild, the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial has been devastated by a contagious facial cancer that was first recognized in the 1990s. A small number of animals bred in captivity have been released into the wild, fueling hopes this iconic species can recover.
There are hopes, too, the yellow-spotted bell frogs can do the same.
Chytrid fungus causes chytridiomycosis, which has been described by scientists as one of the most devastating wildlife diseases ever known. It has devastated frog populations in Australia, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.
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Sixteen African scientists competed in Rwanda last week for a chance to solve some of the most pressing problems in their communities. Chika Oduah reports for VOA from Kigali, which hosted the 4th annual Next Einstein Forum March 26-28.
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Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the world’s ocean beds, yet they are home to a quarter of all marine life on the planet. But they are facing serious challenges that threaten their survival. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean island nation of the Seychelles, conservationists are coming up with new ways to save the reefs. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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A defunct Chinese space lab met its expected end early Monday morning as its remaining fragments plunged into the South Pacific.
China’s Manned Space Engineering Office said the Tiangong-1 spacecraft “mostly” burned up in the atmosphere.
Any pieces that failed to disintegrate during the fiery trip back to Earth fell harmlessly into the ocean.
It took about two hours for the craft burn up once it hit Earth’s atmosphere.
There had been predictions parts of the space lab would land in the South Atlantic with some pieces posing a very small threat to people on the ground
Tiangong-1, was the size of a school bus and weighed eight and a half tons.
Tiangong-1, which means “Heavenly Palace” in English, was the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade.
It was launched in 2011 and served as an orbiting laboratory for manned Chinese space missions until officials determined its lifespan was complete. It was taken out of service in 2016.
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Having robots to do the dirty, tedious parts of the job is a dream come true in the construction business. Automation technology developers say robotics are transforming the industry, making it safer, and helping companies take on more projects and finish them faster. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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More than 1 billion people around the world have some sort of disability. Rong Shi of VOA’s Mandarin service toured an exhibit in New York that showcases the latest gadgets and inventions designed to help those with a range of physical, sensory or cognitive abilities lead more independent lives and engage more fully in the world. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The fallout continues for Facebook over how it handles user data and privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers are calling for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify, and regulators have opened investigations. Michelle Quinn reports on how the social media giant is facing a tipping point when it comes to dealing with user privacy.
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Atlanta’s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a nine-day-old cyberattack that
plunged the Southeastern U.S. metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper.
On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend, city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come.
Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives, re-creating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating “ransomware” virus attacks to hit an American city.
Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta’s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems.
“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” said Councilman Howard Shook, whose office lost 16 years of digital records.
One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with “weapologize” and “imsorry” added to file names.
Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyberextortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations, including businesses, health care organizations and government agencies. Previous high-profile attacks have shut down factories, prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations.
Not theft, usually
Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it. The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents’ information is in the hands of hackers, but they do not know for sure.
City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices, including courts and the water department.
Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450,000 people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded $51,000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files.
“Everything on my hard drive is gone,” City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall.
City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom.
Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish.
City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building.
Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device.
Not all computers were compromised. Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected, Noble said.
Old-school analog
Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases, department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters. He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files.
“Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future,” he said. By the weekend, he added, officers were returning to digital police reports.
Meanwhile, some city employees complained they have been left in the dark, unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers.
“We don’t know anything,” said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday.
Like City Hall, whose 1930 neo-Gothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing, the city’s computer system is a combination of old and new.
“One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems,” Noble said.
The city published results from a recent cybersecurity audit in January, and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit. The audit called for better record-keeping and hiring more technology
workers.
Councilman Shook said he was worried about how much the recovery would cost the city, but that he supported funding a cybersecurity overhaul to counter future attacks.
For now his staff members are temporarily sharing one aging laptop.
“Things are very slow,” he said. “It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that.”
No word on payment
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who took office in January, has declined to say whether the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note, whose image was released by a local television station.
Shook, who chairs the city council’s finance subcommittee, said he did not know whether the city was negotiating with the hackers, but that it appeared no ransom had been paid to date.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is helping Atlanta respond, typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up.
FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency was helping Atlanta respond to the attack, but declined to comment further.
Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid, said Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyberofficial.
Weatherford, who previously served as California’s chief information security officer, said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment.
“The longer it goes, the worse it gets,” he said. “This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back.”
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