Sophia, one of the world’s most advanced and perhaps most famous artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid robot, was a big hit at this year’s Information & Communication Technology International Expo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Visitors, including various dignitaries, were excited to meet the life-like AI robot as she communicated with expo guests and expressed a wide range of facial expressions. As VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports, Sophia has become an international sensation.
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Month: July 2018
In the busy summer travel period in Cuba, a long line of people wait for hours in the sweltering heat outside the Havana office of state-owned airline Cubana, many of them eager to visit families in the provinces.
But they are not waiting to book flights. Instead, they hope to get their money back on plane tickets or exchange them for bus tickets across the island.
Cubana, which has a virtual monopoly on domestic flights, has suspended nearly all of them due to a lack of working aircraft, plunging travel on the Caribbean’s largest island into chaos and highlighting problems at what was once a vanguard of Latin American aviation.
The flight suspensions were made a month after a Cubana flight crashed after takeoff from Havana airport in May, killing 112 people. They come at a time when Communist-run Cuba is trying to stimulate tourism, one of the few bright spots in its economy, by promoting beach resorts and colonial towns hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the capital.
“Now I will have to take a 16-hour bus ride to Guantanamo, but what other options do I have?” said kindergarten teacher Marlene Mendoza, who was bathed in sweat and got a bus ticket to eastern Cuba after queuing for more than seven hours.
Analysts say Cubana’s troubles stem largely from dual ills that afflict the whole state-run economy: the U.S. trade embargo and a problematic business model.
Cubana did not reply to requests for comment for this story.
Founded in 1929 as one of Latin America’s first airlines, Cubana was nationalized after Fidel Castro’s leftist 1959 revolution. In its heyday, it flew Cuban troops to Africa and passengers to allied socialist countries around the globe.
For decades it got around U.S. sanctions that restricted it from buying planes with a certain share of U.S. components — including European Airbus and Brazilian Embraers — by acquiring first Soviet and then Russian aircraft.
The carrier maintained a decent safety record, but its reputation for mediocre service and delays prompted many foreign tourists to use mostly land transport.
Then, over the past year, it started canceling more flights than usual, often putting passengers up in hotels for days, without commenting publicly on the disarray.
After the Boeing 737 crashed on May 18, Cubana said it had leased the plane from Mexican company Damojh due to a lack of its own aircraft. A second Damojh plane has been grounded pending a safety audit of its fleet by Mexican authorities, data from Flightradar24 shows, aggravating the shortage.
Cuban, Mexican and U.S. authorities are still investigating the crash and have not commented on possible causes. Damojh has said in a press release that is fully cooperating with those investigations into the “lamentable accident.”
Just four of Cubana’s own 16 planes are flying, according to a Reuters examination of data on Flightradar24 and Planespotters.net.
Not flying high
Over the past month, the airline announced it was axing several routes mainly used by Cubans and reducing the frequency of flights to Santiago, Holguin and Baracoa, all popular tourist destinations. In a statement, it said it was working to resolve the situation and apologized for the disruption.
Cubana also suspended all international routes except to Buenos Aires and Madrid, several staff told Reuters. The company did not comment publicly, leaving would-be travelers sharing their confusion on online forums.
“It has lost a lot of prestige. It’s already not the famous Cubana that used to fly to all parts of the world,” said one former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, who retired 6-1/2 years ago after working for Cubana for 40 years. “Anywhere else in the world, a company like Cubana would have folded.”
Cubana said in mid-June it did not have enough aircraft largely because of maintenance issues and lack of parts, which aviation experts say can cost millions of dollars.
The airline sells tickets to Cuban citizens at heavily subsidized prices. Its budget is also stretched by ferrying official delegations around sometimes at a financial loss, a former Cuban diplomat familiar with Cubana operations said.
Cash-strapped Cuba points the finger at the 56-year-old U.S. trade embargo, saying it has cost its flagship carrier millions of dollars.
The coup de grace was possibly the purchase of six AN-158 regional jets from Ukrainian manufacturer Antonov since 2013.
Cubana has said those planes have had technical problems and getting parts for the joint Russian-Ukrainian project has proven difficult since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
An Antonov representative told Reuters that Cubana had not been paying for the necessary work, but it had signed a deal in April with the airline to cooperate “to resume the use of AN-158 planes before the end of the current year.”
Typically, airlines lease planes when theirs are undergoing maintenance or there is a spike in demand, but the U.S. embargo and financial constraints likely complicate this for Cuba, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of U.S. aviation consulting company the Teal Group.
In May, Lithuanian lessor Avion Express and Italian lessor Blue Panorama both ended their contracts with Cubana, the companies told Reuters, without explaining why. Data from Flightradar24 shows they withdrew respectively four Airbus A320s and one Boeing 737.
That is around the time when Cubana turned to the little-known Damojh, leasing the 39-year-old Boeing 737.
Damojh has faced safety concerns in other countries in the region. Guyana’s aviation authority told Reuters it had revoked Damojh’s permit to fly there last year due to issues such as overloading planes. The airline declined to comment on the matter.
The crash in May has undermined trust in Cubana.
“I like to travel by plane. It’s faster and more comfortable,” said Maylin Lopez, 48, waiting at Havana’s bus station for her 15-hour ride to eastern Cuba. “But I can’t even imagine doing that now.”
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The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday granted a temporary reprieve to ZTE that allows China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker to conduct business needed to maintain existing networks and equipment in the United States as it works toward the lifting of a U.S. sales ban.
The authorization from the department’s Bureau of Industry and Services, dated July 2 and seen by Reuters, runs until August 1.
ZTE and spokespeople for the Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.
ZTE, which makes smartphones and networking gear, was forced to cease major operations in April after the United States slapped it with a supplier ban saying it broke an agreement to discipline executives who conspired to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea.
The company had also agreed to pay a $1 billion penalty and put $400 million in an escrow account as part of the deal to resume business with U.S. suppliers — which provide almost a third of the components used in ZTE’s equipment.
The escrow agreement is still pending, according to a source. Until it is executed, ZTE cannot deposit the $400 million in escrow necessary to get the ban lifted.
While the denial order is still in place, the authorization grants a waiver to some companies that do business with ZTE to do so for one month, a source told Reuters.
The waivers allow for a limited type of activity but do not authorize any new business.
The uncertainty about the ban amid intensifying U.S.-China trade tensions has hammered ZTE shares, which have fallen 60 percent since trading resumed last month following a two-month hiatus, wiping out more than $11 billion of the company’s market valuation.
ZTE announced a new board last week in a radical management shakeup as part of a $1.4 billion deal with the United States.
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Eike Batista, the former mining and oil magnate who was once Brazil’s richest man, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for bribing Rio de Janeiro state’s disgraced ex-governor, according to a court document published Tuesday.
Batista’s conviction and sentencing by federal judge Marcelo Bretas are the latest in a wave of graft investigations that have sent scores of powerful businessmen and politicians to jail.
The eccentric former billionaire’s meteoric rise and fall mirrored the recent fortunes of Brazil, where the commodities boom faded as his energy, mineral and logistics empire fell apart earlier this decade.
His swashbuckling attitude and confident forecasts of a prolonged golden era for Brazil evaporated just as Latin America’s largest economy suffered its worst recession on record.
Batista, whose legal team said he would appeal, was found guilty of paying a $16.5 million bribe to former Rio governor Sergio Cabral, who also was found guilty in the case.
Batista’s companies won state contracts in exchange for the bribe, including one awarding his consortium the rights to run Brazil’s temple of soccer, the Maracana in Rio, the stadium where the 2014 World Cup final was played and the 2016 Olympic Games’ opening and closing ceremonies were held.
The bribes were also linked to the construction of the $3.7 billion Acu port facility, controlled since 2013 by Prumo Logistica, which is majority owned by U.S.-based EIG Energy Partners.
Prosecutors said Batista paid a quarter of the bribes to Cabral in cash and the rest in shares of state-led oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, miner Vale SA and drinks company Ambev SA, a unit of Anheuser Busch Inbev NV.
Batista was last year fined 21 million reais ($5.4 million) for trading shares based on insider information about shipbuilding company OSX Brasil.
Tuesday’s ruling was the sixth corruption conviction for Cabral, who has been sentenced to over 120 years.
Six years ago, Batista, 61, had a net worth exceeding $30 billion and ranked among the world’s 10 richest people, according to Forbes magazine, and he had declared he would soon top the list. He sat atop EBX, then one of the world’s most expansive industrial conglomerates, with units ranging from oil and shipping to entertainment and beauty care.
However, Batista made massive bets on offshore oil plays that did not pan out and the extension of a commodity boom that fizzled as he inflated investors’ hopes.
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When a CIA-backed venture capital fund took an interest in Rana el Kaliouby’s face-scanning technology for detecting emotions, the computer scientist and her colleagues did some soul-searching — and then turned down the money.
“We’re not interested in applications where you’re spying on people,” said el Kaliouby, the CEO and co-founder of the Boston startup Affectiva. The company has trained its artificial intelligence systems to recognize if individuals are happy or sad, tired or angry, using a photographic repository of more than 6 million faces.
Recent advances in AI-powered computer vision have accelerated the race for self-driving cars and powered the increasingly sophisticated photo-tagging features found on Facebook and Google. But as these prying AI “eyes” find new applications in store checkout lines, police body cameras and war zones, the tech companies developing them are struggling to balance business opportunities with difficult moral decisions that could turn off customers or their own workers.
El Kaliouby said it’s not hard to imagine using real-time face recognition to pick up on dishonesty — or, in the hands of an authoritarian regime, to monitor reaction to political speech in order to root out dissent. But the small firm, which spun off from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research lab, has set limits on what it will do.
The company has shunned “any security, airport, even lie-detection stuff,” el Kaliouby said. Instead, Affectiva has partnered with automakers trying to help tired-looking drivers stay awake, and with consumer brands that want to know whether people respond to a product with joy or disgust.
New qualms
Such queasiness reflects new qualms about the capabilities and possible abuses of all-seeing, always-watching AI camera systems — even as authorities are growing more eager to use them.
In the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s deadly shooting at a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, police said they turned to face recognition to identify the uncooperative suspect. They did so by tapping a state database that includes mug shots of past arrestees and, more controversially, everyone who registered for a Maryland driver’s license.
Initial information given to law enforcement authorities said that police had turned to facial recognition because the suspect had damaged his fingerprints in an apparent attempt to avoid identification. That report turned out to be incorrect and police said they used facial recognition because of delays in getting fingerprint identification.
In June, Orlando International Airport announced plans to require face-identification scans of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights by the end of this year. Several other U.S. airports have already been using such scans for some departing international flights.
Chinese firms and municipalities are already using intelligent cameras to shame jaywalkers in real time and to surveil ethnic minorities, subjecting some to detention and political indoctrination. Closer to home, the overhead cameras and sensors in Amazon’s new cashier-less store in Seattle aim to make shoplifting obsolete by tracking every item shoppers pick up and put back down.
Concerns over the technology can shake even the largest tech firms. Google, for instance, recently said it will exit a defense contract after employees protested the military application of the company’s AI technology. The work involved computer analysis of drone video footage from Iraq and other conflict zones.
Google guidelines
Similar concerns about government contracts have stirred up internal discord at Amazon and Microsoft. Google has since published AI guidelines emphasizing uses that are “socially beneficial” and that avoid “unfair bias.”
Amazon, however, has so far deflected growing pressure from employees and privacy advocates to halt Rekognition, a powerful face-recognition tool it sells to police departments and other government agencies.
Saying no to some work, of course, usually means someone else will do it. The drone-footage project involving Google, dubbed Project Maven, aimed to speed the job of looking for “patterns of life, things that are suspicious, indications of potential attacks,” said Robert Work, a former top Pentagon official who launched the project in 2017.
While it hurts to lose Google because they are “very, very good at it,” Work said, other companies will continue those efforts.
Commercial and government interest in computer vision has exploded since breakthroughs earlier in this decade using a brain-like “neural network” to recognize objects in images. Training computers to identify cats in YouTube videos was an early challenge in 2012. Now, Google has a smartphone app that can tell you which breed.
A major research meeting — the annual Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, held in Salt Lake City in June — has transformed from a sleepy academic gathering of “nerdy people” to a gold rush business expo attracting big companies and government agencies, said Michael Brown, a computer scientist at Toronto’s York University and a conference organizer.
Brown said researchers have been offered high-paying jobs on the spot. But few of the thousands of technical papers submitted to the meeting address broader public concerns about privacy, bias or other ethical dilemmas. “We’re probably not having as much discussion as we should,” he said.
Not for police, government
Startups are forging their own paths. Brian Brackeen, the CEO of Miami-based facial recognition software company Kairos, has set a blanket policy against selling the technology to law enforcement or for government surveillance, arguing in a recent essay that it “opens the door for gross misconduct by the morally corrupt.”
Boston-based startup Neurala, by contrast, is building software for Motorola that will help police-worn body cameras find a person in a crowd based on what they’re wearing and what they look like. CEO Max Versace said that “AI is a mirror of the society,” so the company chooses only principled partners.
“We are not part of that totalitarian, Orwellian scheme,” he said.
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India has asked Facebook to prevent the spread of false texts on its WhatsApp messaging application, saying the content has sparked a series of lynchings and mob beatings across the country.
False messages about child abductors spread over WhatsApp have reportedly led to at least 31 deaths in 10 different states over the past year, including a deadly mob lynching Sunday of five men in the western state of Maharashtra.
In a strongly worded statement Tuesday, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said the service “cannot evade accountability and responsibility” when messaging platforms are used to spread misinformation.
“The government has also conveyed in no uncertain terms that Whatsapp must take immediate action to end this menace and ensure that their platform is not used for such mala fide activities,” the ministry added.
Facebook and WhatsApp did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but WhatsApp previously told the Reuters news agency it is educating users to identify fake news and is considering changes to the messaging service.
The ministry said law enforcement authorities are working to apprehend those responsible for the killings.
WhatsApp has more than 200 million users in India, the messaging site’s largest market in the world.
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Major U.S. trading partners including the European Union, China and Japan voiced deep concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday about possible U.S. measures imposing additional duties on imported autos and parts.
Japan, which along with Russia had initiated the discussion at the WTO Council on Trade in Goods, warned that such measures could trigger a spiral of countermeasures and result in the collapse of the rules-based multilateral trading system, an official who attended the meeting said.
More than 40 WTO members — including the 28 countries of the European Union — warned that the U.S. action could seriously disrupt the world market and threaten the WTO system, given the importance of cars to world trade.
The United States has imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminum imports and is conducting another national security study that could lead to tariffs on imports of cars and car parts. Both sets of tariffs would be based on concerns about U.S. national security.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on June 29 that the probe would be completed in 3 to 4 weeks.
But the European Union has warned the United States that imposing import tariffs on cars and car parts would harm its own automotive industry and likely lead to countermeasures by its trading partners on $294 billion of U.S. exports.
A Russian official told the WTO meeting that the issue of U.S. investigations had been raised over the past year in different WTO meetings, only to see things change for the worse.
The United States was losing its reputation as a trusted trade partner, the Russian delegate told the meeting, adding that the United States could soon start an investigation into the case for import tariffs on uranium products.
China, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Singapore, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Qatar, Thailand and India all echoed the same concerns and said they doubted the U.S. tariffs were in line with WTO rules.
The U.S. diplomat at the meeting said the matter was already the subject of formal disputes at the WTO, so it should not be on the committee’s agenda, the official who attended the meeting said.
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A measles outbreak is growing in Brazil after cases were imported from neighboring Venezuela where health services have collapsed.
More than 460 cases of the disease have been confirmed in two Brazilian border states, the Health Ministry said Monday. There are also concerns that the outbreak has reached an isolated tribe that lives in the Amazon that has little resistance to such diseases.
The cases in Brazil come after the World Health Organization declared the Americas measles-free in 2016. But outbreaks can still occur even after a country is declared free because cases can be imported. That’s just what has happened in Brazil, where the disease slipped across the border with people fleeing economic and political collapse in neighboring Venezuela.
Measles spreads through the air and is highly contagious. While there is no specific treatment for the disease, the vaccine is very effective. Symptoms of measles include fever, runny nose, cough, sore throat and a rash that spreads over the body.
Last year, measles started spreading in Venezuela, where there have been more than 2,000 cases.
Oil-rich Venezuela was once wealthy, and the health system there was a model for the region. But mismanagement and a fall in oil prices have led to widespread shortages of everything from food to medicine. Doctors have fled and health services have collapsed.
Hardships in general in Venezuela have sent more than 1 million people fleeing to neighboring countries, sometimes bringing disease with them.
To combat the outbreak, authorities in Brazil are offering measles vaccinations to foreigners registering with the federal police and are also increasing efforts to ensure Brazilians are vaccinated. Brazilians should be vaccinated against measles as a matter of routine, but authorities have recently held special campaigns in Roraima and Amazonas to vaccinate those who slipped through the system.
Beyond the usual concerns of containing the extremely contagious disease, Survival International said an outbreak could devastate the isolated Yanomami tribe, which lives on both sides of the Brazil-Venezuela border, deep in the Amazon. So far, 23 Yanomami with measles symptoms have sought medical treatment in Brazil, the indigenous rights organization said, and one of those cases has been confirmed. Many more could be sick in Venezuela, where Survival International said it is harder to get information.
About 100 dementia sufferers in Britain will take part in government-backed trials using virtual reality to help recall lost memories, the firm behind the technology said on Tuesday.
Virtual reality (VR) headsets allow people with dementia to watch films that take them to popular seaside resorts, a 1940s candy store or a 1950s street party, to recall thoughts and emotions and help them re-engage with relatives and caregivers.
“If people remember more of their past, remember more of themselves, it just helps with overall mental wellbeing,” Arfa Rehman, co-founder of Virtue, which created the software, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is testing the new form of reminiscence therapy – where films are played on a smartphone in an inexpensive virtual reality headset – in several hospitals and care homes across the country, she said.
Dementia is caused when the brain is damaged by strokes or diseases such as Alzheimer’s. People with dementia can suffer from memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language.
There are 850,000 people with dementia in Britain, with that number estimated to rise to 1 million by 2025, according to the Alzehimer’s Society, a charity.
Researchers have found that reminiscence therapy improves cognitive functions and reduces depressive symptoms in people with dementia and that it is more effective with those in care homes than those living independently.
Looking at, listening to and discussing objects, images and music from the past triggers memories, which participants enjoy.
“Several of us working on the project had a very positive experience with family and friends using VR,” said the NHS’s Michael Hurt, a dementia expert, who will be helping to implement the pilot in Walsall, a town in central England.
“All of the pilot areas are very keen to see if this software improves wellbeing, mood and sleep and if it reduces anxiety and agitation, as well as the potential to reduce some of the pain experienced in dementia.”
Trials over the next six months aim to find out the potential benefits of more regular use of the technology, said Rehman of Virtue, a social impact-focused business, which has won numerous awards since it was set up last year.
Britain is seen as a global leader in the innovative social enterprise sector, with about 70,000 ethical businesses employing nearly 1 million people, according to Social Enterprise UK, which represents the growing sector.
“We’ve seen our app have amazing impact so far,” Rehman said in emailed comments on Tuesday. “We hope that this collaboration encourages other organizations to embrace immersive technology.”
Marston Court, in the university city of Oxford, is typical of most British care homes in that 70 percent of residents have dementia or severe memory problems, for which there is no cure.
“This is absolutely brilliant,” said Terry Carter, 91, who has lived for two years at Marston Court, where residents have been watching dozens of short films for several months.
Diane Davidson, the home’s care leader, said the immersive experience of using virtual reality goggles has been positive for dementia sufferers because it cuts out distractions.
“A lot of people with dementia can’t focus on things like watching TV or reading a book for a long time. With this, because it’s right there in front of their eyes, it clicks them into the moment,” she said.
“When you’ve got the goggles on, you are in your own little world.”
The U.S. government moved on Monday to block China Mobile Ltd. from offering services to the U.S. telecommunications market, recommending its application be rejected because the government-owned firm posed national security risks.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should deny China Mobile’s 2011 application to offer telecommunication services between the United States and other countries, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said in a statement posted on its website.
“After significant engagement with China Mobile, concerns about increased risks to U.S. law enforcement and national security interests were unable to be resolved,” said the statement, which quoted David Redl, assistant secretary for communications and information at the U.S. Department of Commerce, which NTIA is part of.
China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom carrier with 899 million subscribers, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Its shares fell 2.6 percent at start of trading on Tuesday to their lowest in more than four years.
The Trump administration’s move on China Mobile comes amid growing trade frictions between Washington and Beijing. The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6, which Beijing is expected to respond to with tariffs of its own.
And ZTE Corp., China’s No. 2 telecommunications equipment maker, was forced to cease major operations in April after the U.S. slapped it with a supplier ban saying it broke an agreement to discipline executives who conspired to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea. ZTE is in the process of getting the ban lifted and announced a new board last week.
China Mobile Communications Corp., a state-owned firm, owned almost 73 percent of China Mobile, according to Thomson Reuters data as of December.
In its recommendation, the NTIA said that its assessment rested “in large part on China’s record of intelligence activities and economic espionage targeting the US, along with China Mobile’s size and technical and financial resources.”
It said the company was “subject to exploitation, influence and control by the Chinese government” and that its application posed “substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks in the current national security environment.”
U.S. senators and spy chiefs warned in February that China was trying, via means such as telecommunications firms, to gain access to sensitive U.S. technologies and intellectual properties.
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Halima Sheikh Ali is the proud owner of one of the few ATMs in Wajir town in northeast Kenya. But rather than doling out shilling notes, it dispenses something tastier: a fresh pint of camel milk.
“For 100 Kenyan shillings ($1), you get one liter of the freshest milk in Wajir County,” she says, opening a vending machine advertising “fresh, hygienic and affordable camel milk” in order to check the liquid’s temperature.
One of the world’s biggest camel producers, East Africa also produces much of the world’s camel milk, almost all of it consumed domestically.
In the northeast Kenyan county of Wajir, demand is booming among local people, who say it is healthier and more nutritious than cow’s milk.
“Camel milk is everything,” said Noor Abdullahi, a project officer for U.S.-based aid agency Mercy Corps. “It is good for diabetes, blood pressure and indigestion.”
But temperatures averaging 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the dry season, combined with the risk of dirty collection containers, mean the liquid can go sour in a matter of hours, he added, making it much harder to sell.
To remedy this, an initiative is equipping about 50 women in Hadado, a village 80km from Wajir, with refrigerators to cool the milk that remote camel herders send them via tuk-tuk taxi, plus a van to transport it daily to Wajir.
There a dozen women milk traders, including Sheikh Ali, sell it through four ATM-like vending machines, after receiving training on business skills such as accounting.
“The (milk) supply and demand are there. We just have to make it easier for the milk to get from one point to another,” said Abdullahi.
The project, which is part of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) program, is funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) and led by Mercy Corps.
Fresh and Lucrative
Asha Abdi, a milk trader in Hadado who operates one of the refrigerators with 11 other women, said she used to have to boil camel’s milk — using costly and smoky firewood — to prevent it turning sour.
“I spent 100 shillings ($1) a day on firewood, and the milk would often go bad by the time it got to Wajir as the (public) transport took over three hours,” she said.
Now Abdi and the other women in her group send about 500 liters of fresh milk to Wajir every day — a trip that takes just over an hour by van. They then reinvest the profits in other ventures.
“With the milk money I bought 20 goats,” said Abdi as she rearranged bags of sugar in her crowded kiosk. “But my dream would be to export the camel milk to the United States,” she added. “I hear it’s like gold over there.”
Drought-safe Investment
Amid hundreds of camels roaming stretches of orange dirt outside of Hadado, Gedi Mohammed sits under the shade of a small acacia tree.
“The (tuk-tuk) drivers should be here soon to buy my camel milk,” he said, sipping the precious liquid from a large wooden bowl.
In Kenya’s largely pastoralist Wajir County, prolonged drought is pushing growing numbers of the region’s nomadic herders to see camels — and their milk — as a drought-safe investment.
Mohammed, who used to own over 100 cows, said he exchanged them a decade ago for camels, “which drink a lot of water but can then survive eight days without another drop, when a cow will die after two days.”
But even camels suffer when the weather is really dry, he added.
“Drought is bad for business because with less food and water the camels produce less milk,” he said, impatiently waving at a teenage boy to fetch a straying camel.
“Business would be better if I had a vehicle to transport the milk to buyers myself,” said Mohammed, who said he has to travel ever-longer distances to find pastures for his animals. “Right now I rely on the (tuk-tuk) drivers to find me, and you never know how long they will be.”
Technical Issues
Back in Wajir, Sheikh Ali said her group’s cooled milk ATM allows her to save about 5,000 shillings ($50) per month, as she no longer has to buy firewood to boil milk and can sell the fresh liquid at a higher price.
But although the vending machines are proving popular, they also have been plagued by technical issues, said Amina Abikar, who also works for Mercy Corps in Wajir.
“Sometimes the machines break down, or indicate that there is no milk left when there are still 100 liters” inside, she explained.
“So we have to wait for the machine supplier’s technician to travel all the way from Nairobi. It would be better to train someone locally,” she said.
Also slowing down business growth is the high rate of illiteracy among women involved in the project, Abikar said.
Sheikh Ali, who cannot read or write, relies on her son to operate the machine and check its various indicators.
“I would love to do it myself but I don’t know my ABCs,” she said, adding that she still feels “proud that I am one of the only fresh milk traders in Wajir.”
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A Portuguese tech firm is uncorking an Android smartphone whose case is made from cork, a natural and renewable material native to the Iberian country.
The Ikimobile phone is one of the first to use materials other than plastic, metal and glass and represents a boost for the country’s technology sector, which has made strides in software development but less in hardware manufacturing.
A Made in Portugal version of the phone is set to launch this year as Ikimobile completes a plant to transfer most of its production from China.
“Ikimobile wants to put Portugal on the path to the future and technologies by emphasizing this Portuguese product,” chief executive Tito Cardoso told Reuters at Ikimobile’s plant in the cork-growing area of Coruche, 80 km (50 miles) west of Lisbon.
“We believe the product offers something different, something that people can feel good about using,” he said. Cork is harvested only every nine years without hurting the oak trees and is fully recyclable.
Portugal is the world’s largest cork producer and the phone also marks the latest effort to diversify its use beyond wine bottle stoppers.
Portuguese cork exports have lately regained their peaks of 15 years ago as cork stoppers clawed back market share from plastic and metal. Portugal also exports other cork products such as flooring, clothing and wind turbine blades.
A layer of cork covers the phone’s back providing thermal, acoustic and anti-shock insulation. The cork comes in colors ranging from black to light brown and has certified antibacterial properties and protects against battery radiation.
Cardoso said Ikimobile is working with north Portugal’s Minho University to make the phone even “greener” and hopes to replace a plastic body base with natural materials soon.The material, agglomerated using only natural resins, required years of research and testing for the use in phones.
The plant should churn out 1.2 million phones a year — a drop in the ocean compared to last year’s worldwide smartphone market shipments of almost 1.5 billion.
Most cell phones are produced in Asia but local manufacture helps take advantage of the availability of cork and the “Made in Portugal” brand appeals to consumers in Europe, Angola, Brazil and Canada, Cardoso said.
In 2017, it sold 400,000 phones assembled in China in 2017, including simple feature phones. It hopes to surpass that amount with local production this year. Top-of-the-line cork models, costing 160-360 euros ($187-$420), make up 40 percent of sales.
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It was 50 years ago the sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey by author Arthur C. Clarke and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, opened in theaters across America to mixed reviews. The almost three-hour long film, was too cerebral and slow- moving to be appreciated by general audiences in 1968. Today, half a century later, the movie is one of the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time. VOA’s Penelope Poulou explores Space Odyssey’s power and its relevance 50 years since its creation.
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Hey, did my congressman really say that? Is that really President Donald Trump on that video, or am I being duped?
New technology on the internet lets anyone make videos of real people appearing to say things they’ve never said. Republicans and Democrats predict this high-tech way of putting words in someone’s mouth will become the latest weapon in disinformation wars against the United States and other Western democracies.
We’re not talking about lip-syncing videos. This technology uses facial mapping and artificial intelligence to produce videos that appear so genuine it’s hard to spot the phonies. Lawmakers and intelligence officials worry that the bogus videos — called deepfakes — could be used to threaten national security or interfere in elections.
So far, that hasn’t happened, but experts say it’s not a question of if, but when.
“I expect that here in the United States we will start to see this content in the upcoming midterms and national election two years from now,” said Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “The technology, of course, knows no borders, so I expect the impact to ripple around the globe.”
When an average person can create a realistic fake video of the president saying anything they want, Farid said, “we have entered a new world where it is going to be difficult to know how to believe what we see.” The reverse is a concern, too. People may dismiss as fake genuine footage, say of a real atrocity, to score political points.
Realizing the implications of the technology, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is already two years into a four-year program to develop technologies that can detect fake images and videos. Right now, it takes extensive analysis to identify phony videos. It’s unclear if new ways to authenticate images or detect fakes will keep pace with deepfake technology.
Deepfakes are so named because they utilize deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence. They are made by feeding a computer an algorithm, or set of instructions, lots of images and audio of a certain person. The computer program learns how to mimic the person’s facial expressions, mannerisms, voice and inflections. If you have enough video and audio of someone, you can combine a fake video of the person with a fake audio and get them to say anything you want.
So far, deepfakes have mostly been used to smear celebrities or as gags, but it’s easy to foresee a nation state using them for nefarious activities against the U.S., said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of several members of the Senate intelligence committee who are expressing concern about deepfakes.
A foreign intelligence agency could use the technology to produce a fake video of an American politician using a racial epithet or taking a bribe, Rubio says. They could use a fake video of a U.S. soldier massacring civilians overseas, or one of a U.S. official supposedly admitting a secret plan to carry out a conspiracy. Imagine a fake video of a U.S. leader — or an official from North Korea or Iran — warning the United States of an impending disaster.
“It’s a weapon that could be used — timed appropriately and placed appropriately — in the same way fake news is used, except in a video form, which could create real chaos and instability on the eve of an election or a major decision of any sort,” Rubio told The Associated Press.
Deepfake technology still has a few hitches. For instance, people’s blinking in fake videos may appear unnatural. But the technology is improving.
“Within a year or two, it’s going to be really hard for a person to distinguish between a real video and a fake video,” said Andrew Grotto, an international security fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in California.
“This technology, I think, will be irresistible for nation states to use in disinformation campaigns to manipulate public opinion, deceive populations and undermine confidence in our institutions,” Grotto said. He called for government leaders and politicians to clearly say it has no place in civilized political debate.
Crude videos have been used for malicious political purposes for years, so there’s no reason to believe the higher-tech ones, which are more realistic, won’t become tools in future disinformation campaigns.
Rubio noted that in 2009, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow complained to the Russian Foreign Ministry about a fake sex video it said was made to damage the reputation of a U.S. diplomat. The video showed the married diplomat, who was a liaison to Russian religious and human rights groups, making telephone calls on a dark street. The video then showed the diplomat in his hotel room, scenes that apparently were shot with a hidden camera. Later, the video appeared to show a man and a woman having sex in the same room with the lights off, although it was not at all clear that the man was the diplomat.
John Beyrle, who was the U.S. ambassador in Moscow at the time, blamed the Russian government for the video, which he said was clearly fabricated.
Michael McFaul, who was American ambassador in Russia between 2012 and 2014, said Russia has engaged in disinformation videos against various political actors for years and that he too had been a target. He has said that Russian state propaganda inserted his face into photographs and “spliced my speeches to make me say things I never uttered and even accused me of pedophilia.”
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Carlos Garcia was three years into his first job in technology at Merrill Lynch when he first learned what a 401K retirement savings account was. He was floored when he learned that a colleague had already saved $30,000 in three years, and the company had matched it.
The concept of making money off money was foreign to Garcia, an MIT graduate who was born in Texas to immigrants from Mexico. His story is not uncommon among U.S. Hispanics, who lag behind other demographic groups when it comes to saving for retirement. But for Garcia, the episode became the inspiration many years later for Finhabits, a bilingual digital platform designed to make savings and investment accessible for Latinos.
Finhabits launched last year into a crowded world of robo-advisers, savings apps, online lending platforms and other financial-technology companies.
But it is one of the few aimed at demystifying stocks and bonds for Hispanics, particularly young professionals who have the means to start investing but may have inherited a fuzzy understanding of the financial system from their immigrant parents.
“Hispanics are very hard workers and we are able to generate quick income for our families. Sometimes we are good at savings but we put the money under the mattress,” said Garcia, who previously founded two other companies, including an internet analytics service for hedge funds.
Other financial-tech startups aimed at Latinos have focused on immediate financial needs: paying off debt, building credit and gaining access to loans. Few besides Finhabits are dedicated to encouraging investing and long-term financial planning.
Another is Mi Dinero Mi Futuro, a personal financial planning platform started by Ramona Ortega, a former New York corporate attorney who became preoccupied with the lack of financial literacy among Latinos while working in bankruptcy and securities litigation.
“No one talked to me about money,” said Ortega, the daughter of Napa Valley farm worker and the first in her family to go to college. “The fact is that our communities have not had a legacy of talking about money.”
Finhabits follows in the footsteps of robo-advisors Betterment, Wealthfront and Acorn, which use computer algorithms instead of a traditional wealth adviser to manage customer funds across various types of investments. Ortega’s platform is similar to more well-known personal finance apps Mint and Credit Karma; it offers personalized budgeting tools and recommendations for affiliated financial products.
More than competing with established players, the founders of Finhabits and Mi Dinero Mi Future see themselves as creating a new market among Latinos, who they believe are overlooked by traditional financial institutions and even many of the digital newcomers.
It is not an easy market to penetrate, however.
According to a 2014 Prudential Research study, just 19 percent of Latinos had individual retirement accounts and less than 10 percent had investments in individual stocks, bonds of mutual funds. Only about 60 percent of Hispanics had a savings account, compared to 80 percent of the general population. The study cited various factors, including uncertainty among immigrants about what will happen to investments if they leave the country, distrust of financial institutions and difficulty understanding products.
Another study, done in 2016 by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that more than 60 percent of Latino workers lacked access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, compared to 40 percent for white workers.
“This demographic has been very tough to crack historically,” said William Trout, head of wealth management research at Celent, a consulting firm focused on financial services technology. “Will that second generation look for a platform that is speaking to a Hispanic population? Well, somebody has to test it. I think it’s worth a shot.”
With Finhabits, beginner investors can start with $5 weekly contributions into traditional IRA, Roth IRAs or taxable investment accounts for shorter-term goals. Finhabits asks users about their priorities and risk tolerance and then recommends investment portfolios. The money goes into low-fee exchange trade funds from Vanguard and BlackRock.
Through its app, blogs and text-messaging services, Finhabits explains financial concepts (portfolio diversification? It’s like ordering different types of tacos) and compound interest to persuade people that investing their money is safer and wiser than trying to “hit the fat one,” as Latinos refer to the lottery jackpot.
Crucial to the Latino community, Finhabits lets users open an account with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, a processing number issued by the Internal Revenue Service for people who are required to pay taxes but do not have Social Security numbers. That makes the service accessible to immigrants who are not legal residents but still pay federal taxes.
Savvier investors can simply set up accounts directly with Vanguard or BlackRock, which require more active knowledge of investing. But most often, those big players don’t have formal marketing strategies for Hispanics.
Garcia said Finhabits has about 10,000 active clients who invest an average of $40 a week. It is signing up about 1,000 new clients each week and aiming for 50,000 by the end of the year.
One challenge for financial start-ups is earning the public’s trust. Finhabits and Mi Dinero Mi Futuro are trying to that through partnerships with institutions already targeting minority and underserved communities.
Finhabits is a provider in Washington state’s newly established Retirement Marketplace, which helps individuals and small businesses find low-cost retirement saving plans. Nearly 80 percent of the West Coast state’s 385,500 Hispanic workers are not covered by an employer-sponsored plan, said marketplace director Carolyn McKinnon.
Finhabits also has partnerships with credit unions, including Neighborhood Federal Credit Union, which serves New York City’s predominantly Latino neighborhoods of West Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.
Rosa Franco, director of lending at the credit union, said the partnership is still in development. She anticipates a challenge in marketing the service to her clients, many of whom are consumed by pressing concerns like debt repayment and or sending money to relatives abroad.
“It’s difficult for many people to think about the future. They live paycheck to paycheck. Many people just think Social Security is their only option for retirement,” said Franco, who used the Finhabits app herself to open a Roth IRA.
Ortega, who recently received a new round of investment from venture fund Backstage Capital for Mi Dinero Mi Futuro, crisscrosses the country giving workshops at universities and Hispanic professional organizations.
At a financial boot camp in Los Angeles City Hall, Ortega won over Liliana Aide Monge, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico at age 5 and is now the co-founder of Sabio, web development and cybersecurity training company.
Growing up, Monge said her family was “not part of the formal banking structure at all. The money came in and you pay the rent and you pay for food.”
Now a mother of two boys, Monge has used Mi Dinero Mi Futuro to budget her money, buy life insurance and open a high-yield savings account.
“It was an eye-opening experience,” she said.
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Bees are having a much harder time finding food in the region known as America’s last honeybee refuge, a new federal study found.
The country’s hot spot for commercial beekeeping is the Northern Great Plains of the Dakotas and neighboring areas, where more 1 million colonies spend their summer feasting on pollen and nectar from nearby wildflowers and other plants.
But from 2006 to 2016, more than half the conservation land within a mile of bee colonies was converted into agriculture, usually row crops such as soybeans and corn, said the study’s lead author Clint Otto of the U.S. Geological Survey. Those crops hold no food for bees.
For more than a decade, bees and other pollinators in America have been dwindling in numbers because of a variety of problems, including poor nutrition, pesticides, parasites and disease. And outside experts said this study highlights another problem that affects the health of bees.
This area — which Otto called “America’s last honeybee refuge” — lost about 629 square miles (1,630 square kilometers) of prime bee habitat, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
And bees that have a hard time finding food are less likely to survive the winter, Otto said. They may not be hungry, he said, but they aren’t healthy either.
John Miller, in his 49th year as a North Dakota commercial beekeeper, said the Dakotas and Minnesota were once the last best place for bees.
“Now they are the least worst,” he said.
Miller, whose business was started in 1894 by his great-grandfather, has watched the average colony honey production drop from 120 pounds per hive 30 years ago to about 50 pounds now. But the price has gone up five-fold, and beekeepers like Miller are getting paid to truck their bees to California to pollinate crops there, mostly almonds.
The federal government pays farmers to keep some land wild and that benefits bees that feast on grasslands, flowers and weeds, Otto said. But the conservation program has a cap on how much land it will pay for — and during the ethanol boom, farmers found they could make more money in corn and soybeans.
“Commercial beekeepers are scrambling to try to find places to take their bees when they are not in a crop requiring pollination,” U.S. Department of Agriculture bee researcher Diana Cox-Foster, who was not part of the study, said in an email.
“The conservation lands of the Northern Great Plains were a go-to spot,” she wrote.
More than one-third of America’s commercial colonies spend summer in the Northern Great Plains. The area east of the Dakotas is too developed, and the weather to the west is too dry, Otto said.
Bees are crucial pollinators for more than 90 percent of the nation’s flowering crops, including apples, nuts, avocados, broccoli, peaches, blueberries and cherries.
“Without honeybees,” Otto said, “our dinner plate looks a lot less colorful.”
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NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is sending back incredible close-ups of the dwarf planet Ceres.
The spacecraft has been circling Ceres since 2015. In June, it reached its lowest orbit yet, skimming the surface from just 22 miles (35 kilometers) up.
The latest pictures released Monday offer unprecedented views of a huge impact crater known for its bright salty deposits. Landslides are clearly visible on the rim.
Chief engineer Marc Rayman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says the results are better than hoped.
Before arriving at Ceres, Dawn explored the asteroid Vesta. Both are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Launched in 2007 with an ion engine, Dawn is nearing the end of its extended mission. NASA expects the spacecraft to last just another few months.
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Go ahead and have that cup of coffee, maybe even several more. New research shows it may boost chances for a longer life, even for those who down at least eight cups daily.
In a study of nearly half-a-million British adults, coffee drinkers had a slightly lower risk of death over 10 years than abstainers.
The apparent longevity boost was seen with instant, ground and decaffeinated, results that echo U.S. research. It’s the first large study to suggest a benefit even in people with genetic glitches affecting how their bodies use caffeine.
Overall, coffee drinkers were about 10 percent to 15 percent less likely to die than abstainers during a decade of follow-up. Differences by amount of coffee consumed and genetic variations were minimal.
The results don’t prove your coffee pot is a fountain of youth nor are they a reason for abstainers to start drinking coffee, said Alice Lichtenstein, a Tufts University nutrition expert who was not involved in the research. But she said the results reinforce previous research and add additional reassurance for coffee drinkers.
“It’s hard to believe that something we enjoy so much could be good for us. Or at least not be bad,” Lichtenstein said.
The study was published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
It’s not clear exactly how drinking coffee might affect longevity. Lead author Erikka Loftfield, a researcher at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, said coffee contains more than 1,000 chemical compounds including antioxidants, which help protect cells from damage.
Other studies have suggested that substances in coffee may reduce inflammation and improve how the body uses insulin, which can reduce chances for developing diabetes. Loftfield said efforts to explain the potential longevity benefit are continuing.
Adam Taylor, fetching two iced coffees for friends Monday in downtown Chicago, said the study results make sense.
“Coffee makes you happy, it gives you something to look forward to in the morning,” said Taylor, a sound engineer from Las Vegas.
“I try to have just one cup daily,” Taylor said. “Otherwise I get a little hyper.”
For the study, researchers invited 9 million British adults to take part; 498,134 women and men aged 40 to 69 agreed. The low participation rate means those involved may have been healthier than the general U.K. population, the researchers said.
Participants filled out questionnaires about daily coffee consumption, exercise and other habits, and received physical exams including blood tests. Most were coffee drinkers; 154,000 or almost one-third drank two to three cups daily and 10,000 drank at least eight cups daily.
During the next decade, 14,225 participants died, mostly of cancer or heart disease.
Caffeine can cause short-term increases in blood pressure, and some smaller studies have suggested that it might be linked with high blood pressure, especially in people with a genetic variation that causes them to metabolize caffeine slowly.
But coffee drinkers in the U.K. study didn’t have higher risks than nondrinkers of dying from heart disease and other blood pressure-related causes. And when all causes of death were combined, even slow caffeine metabolizers had a longevity boost.
As in previous studies, coffee drinkers were more likely than abstainers to drink alcohol and smoke, but the researchers took those factors into account, and coffee drinking seemed to cancel them out.
The research didn’t include whether participants drank coffee black or with cream and sugar. But Lichtenstein said loading coffee with extra fat and calories isn’t healthy.
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The polar bear may be the classic poster child for climate change, but it is far from the only animal threatened by a warming Arctic. Because the region is warming two to three times more quickly than the rest of the planet, the rapidly melting sea ice is opening new shipping lanes. New research suggests increased vessel traffic through Arctic waters is putting narwhals and other cetaceans at risk.
The receding ice has cleared the historically dangerous Northwest Passage, and the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s northern coast, dramatically increasing maritime traffic in what was once relatively untouched ocean.
“We’re on the precipice,” Donna Hauser from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said. “We’re poised for a lot of vessel traffic to increase in the Arctic. Part of what motivated the study [was to] understand where we’re at and where we need to go.”
Hauser was interested in assessing the vulnerability of Arctic marine mammals to shipping activity, to protect both the species themselves and the people who rely on them. “All of these species are really important resources for indigenous communities throughout the Arctic as well as in Alaska and in the Alaskan Arctic in particular.”
Hauser and her co-authors looked at seven species: beluga whales, narwhals, bowhead whales, ringed seals, bearded seals, walruses, and polar bears. They created a vulnerability measure based on a combination of the animal’s exposure to shipping traffic and their general sensitivity. Importantly, these measures refer only to vulnerability during September, when sea ice is at its lowest point and most ships pass through Arctic waters.
Their research found that narwhals and other whale species were the most vulnerable to late summer ship traffic, and polar bears were the least, with pinnipeds (walruses and seals) in between.
That does not surprise Randall Reeves, chairman of the Marine Mammal Commission Committee of Scientific Advisors.
“They [narwhals and belugas] are used to living in an extremely quiet world,” he told VOA.
The noise of ice-breaking ships and other maritime vessels is extremely disruptive to these cetaceans, as co-author Kristin Laidre of the Polar Ice Center points out.
“That underwater noise is a disturbance for marine mammals, especially different whale species that rely on sound to pretty much do everything,” she said.
Narwhals in particular are at risk because of their high exposure to vessels in the Northwest Passage which receives more traffic than the Northern Sea Route. The combined effect of high exposure and sensitivity mean these so-called unicorns of the sea are in the most perilous position of all the Arctic marine mammals, with other whales facing similar but less extreme circumstances.
Polar bears, on the other hand, seem to be the best equipped to deal with vessel traffic during September.
“At that time of year,” said Laidre, “polar bears tend to be either on land or they followed the pack ice north.”
This means they were not exposed to the same level of noise and disruption as the marine mammals like whales and seals.
In addition, Hausers noted that polar bears “don’t use sound in the same way as the other marine mammals do and so some of those things that make the other species sensitive to vessels aren’t as big a factor for polar bears.”
This is the first study to compare effects of increased ship traffic across the major Arctic marine mammal species and determine which animals might be most in need of conservation efforts.
“We’re no longer in an Arctic state that was experienced by [1845 British Captain Sir John] Franklin or some of those early Western explorers,” said Hauser. “There’s a whole suite of different aspects that are potentially impacting the Arctic marine mammal species.”
In order to help protect these sentinel species’ and the whales in particular, the authors of the study suggest requiring ships to move at slower speeds to reduce strikes of whales that swim or rest at or just below the surface.
In addition, placing limits on the amount of noise vessels can make will protect whales’ delicate hearing.
“It’s not realistic to think we’re going to stop people from taking advantage of these passages through formerly pristine regions,” said conservationist Reeves. The ships are going to go there.”
However, by understanding which marine mammals are at risk, researchers can help plan for an uncertain future.
This research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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P.B. Smith Elementary School in Warrenton, Virginia, is one of a growing number of schools around the United States that have vegetable gardens. Teaching children about gardening gives them a chance to get hands-on experience with growing and eating vegetables, learning about nutrition and nature in the process. Last year, this school’s beautiful, well-kept green space got a valuable addition — a garden filled with plants that attract butterflies.
Learning about butterflies
In class, members of the P.B. Smith Elementary School’s ecology club learn about butterflies — monarch butterflies, in particular. They talk about the need for certain plants for an organism to survive. They learn about life cycles, from eggs to larva, pupa and adult.
But the learning is not complete without the hands-on part. Ecology Club teacher Barbara Dennee said that happens when her class visits the garden. There, they wait patiently to see this life cycle unfold.
The students’ patience was rewarded when monarch butterflies landed in their garden. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants, which have been disappearing due to the use of herbicides and unfavorable weather conditions. That means monarchs have fewer places to stop their migration journey between Canada and Mexico.
“We had probably about a dozen monarchs, and in years past, we never had any,” Dennee said. “So, we feel like we’ve definitely been a good station for the monarchs. Once they emerge from their chrysalis, they fly away. They know where to go. I don’t know how to go to Mexico, but they do. They follow the sun, and the kids have helped them in that.”
Observations and discoveries
Eleven-year-old Amelia Jakum loves to observe nature, and gets excited for the discoveries she makes in the garden.
“We saw several swallowtails, caterpillars,” she said. “There is this really fat one that should be turning to chrysalis very soon. I’m quite surprised at how it can turn into chrysalis. And just how does its body form into a beautiful body of a butterfly?”
The kids’ excitement motivated them to learn more about butterflies, how they survive and what plants they feed on, particularly milkweeds.
“That’s the host for the butterfly, the monarch especially,” Dennee explained. “We planted from seeds the milkweed plant. Today, we didn’t see any monarchs, but we did see swallowtail caterpillars. They like dill and parsley. So, the kids learn that different kinds of butterflies are not competing for the food. They live harmoniously.”
Ten-year-old Keenan Whitney said learning about butterflies was an eye-opener.
“I only thought they pollinated one flower, for some reason. But I learned they pollinated a lot of flowers, and that if we didn’t have butterflies, we probably wouldn’t have any food. We wouldn’t be alive,” he said.
When kids become that aware of the interconnections between humans and nature, Dennee said, it means her club succeeded in its mission.
“One of our missions for the Ecology Club is to be good stewards of the earth, and they can save this world,” she said. “They can say these words, but they don’t really understand until they actually do something.”
A gift to her old school
When the ecology club created its vegetable garden a couple of years ago, students started to learn how to plant and harvest a variety of herbs and vegetables. They give part of the produce to the school’s cafeteria and donated the rest to a local food bank.
Adding a new garden to attract butterflies was the brainchild of Keely Scott, a former student who has always been involved in school activities and clubs. Last year, the high school student needed a Girl Scout project. She went back to P.B. Smith and created a butterfly garden.
“We had a butterfly bush at my house,” she said. “We actually had to cut it down when we built our deck, and I missed it so much. I loved looking at the butterflies and to increase its population in our area. I thought I can fix that. So, I developed this idea, and Mrs. Dennee supported me 100 percent.”
School principal Linda Payne Smith said Scott not only presented her old school with a beautiful garden, she also served as a positive role model for its students.
“We want the kids to take ownership of those gardens and come back like our senior Keely Scott has come back and created the butterfly garden,” she said. “We hope that their love for the environment started at P.B. Smith, that we have seen it evolve.”
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The European Union has warned the United States that President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 20 percent tariff on imported European cars would seriously hurt the U.S. economy and invite retaliatory levies on up to $294 billion in U.S. exports.
In a 10-page letter sent to the U.S. Commerce Department last Friday, the European Union said that new tariffs on European-made vehicles and auto parts were unjustifiable and would be an economic mistake.
Trump has often attacked the EU trade surplus with the United States — $101 billion last year — and criticized the 28-nation bloc for its 10 percent tariff on U.S. car imports compared to the 2.5 percent levy the U.S. imposes. In late May, Trump ordered the Commerce agency to investigate whether the 20 percent tariff should be imposed on national security grounds, although it was not immediately clear what security concerns there might be.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Monday it was “premature” to say whether Trump will go ahead with the tariff increase.
Meanwhile, Trump criticized the World Trade Organization, telling reporters at the White House, “They have been treating us badly for many, many years.”
He added, “If they don’t treat us fairly, we’ll be doing something,” but offered no further explanation.
The European Commission, the EU executive that handles trade issues, said Monday, “We’ll spare no effort, be it at the technical or political level, to prevent” the United States from imposing the higher tariffs on European car imports. Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission’s president, is headed to Washington later in July in an effort to try to persuade Trump officials to back off the new levies.
“We should de-dramatize these relations,” Juncker told a news conference last week.
On Sunday, Trump attacked EU trade practices, telling Fox News, “The European Union is possibly as bad as China, only smaller. They send a Mercedes in, we can’t send our cars in. Look what they do to our farmers. They don’t want our farm products. Now in all fairness they have their farmers. … But we don’t protect ours and they protect theirs.”
Europe sent $43.6 billion worth of vehicles to the U.S. last year, compared to $7.1 billion worth of cars the U.S. shipped to Europe. In addition, the European Union says European companies manufactured nearly 2.9 million cars in the United States, directly supporting 120,000 U.S. jobs, or 420,000 jobs if car dealerships and car parts retailers are included.
The U.S.-EU tariff dispute on cars comes at a time Trump has feuded with the European Union, China and Canada over his imposition of new levies on steel and aluminum imports to the U.S.
Last week, the EU retaliated by imposing 25 percent tariffs on U.S. motorcycles, orange juice, bourbon, jeans and other products.
Canada said Sunday it has imposed higher tariffs on $12.6 billion worth of U.S. steel products, toffee, maple syrup, coffee beans and strawberries.
China and the United States, the world’s two biggest economies, are set Friday to impose tit-for-tat higher tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods the two countries export to each other.
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Just call her Professor Fiona.
The Cincinnati Zoo’s famous premature baby hippo does more than delight social media fans and help sell a wide range of merchandise. She’s also an educational and literary force; heroine of a half-dozen books so far and a popular subject for library and classroom activities.
The latest book is “Saving Fiona” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) written by the zoo’s director, Thane Maynard.
“She has taught us a lot,” Maynard said. It’s believed Fiona is the smallest hippo ever to survive. Born nearly two months early, she was 29 pounds (13 kilograms), a third the size of a typical full-term Nile hippo and unable to stand or nurse.
A zoo staffer hand-milked her mother Bibi, and Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington helped develop a special formula. Nurses from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital were enlisted to put in a hippo IV.
“We were a nervous wreck every day,” Maynard said of Fiona’s first six months after her birth in January 2017.
His book is aimed at young readers, telling Fiona’s against-the-odds story while loading in facts about hippos, such as that they can outrun humans and are herbivores that can be dangerous because of their size of up to 5,000 pounds (2,267.96 kilograms).
“Part of the zoo’s mission is public education,” Maynard said. “(The book) is reaching kids and families with a message of hope … never giving up.”
The combined Fiona library of books by various authors and illustrators has sold tens of thousands so far.
Educators say students are attracted to lessons themed around animals. Fiona has been on the cover of three Scholastic News Magazines that reached millions of students with stories accompanied by reading exercises or math formulas such as finding how many bathtubs the water in her zoo would fill.
“Everybody just falls in love with her,” said Stephanie Smith, editorial director for Scholastic News grades 3-6. “Kids will just gobble it up. It makes teaching easy.”
Mike Shriberg, Great Lakes regional director for the National Wildlife Federation, said conservationists see celebrity-type attention to Fiona that glosses over the serious challenges for hippos and other animals facing shrinking habitats and illegal hunting.
“There is a deeper message to be conveyed,” he said.
However, Shriberg, who said growing up in Cincinnati as a frequent zoo visitor helped lead him into wildlife conservation, said the Fiona mania – which has seen her image marketed on items from playing cards to beer – is a positive development overall.
“We are certainly in favor of anything that is engaging people with wildlife, and Fiona has been a phenomenal success,” he said. “You’ve got the American public and people around the world really caring about hippos and animals, through the lens of Fiona.”
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Tesla Inc nearly produced 5,000 Model 3 electric sedans in the last week of its second quarter, with the final car rolling off the assembly line on Sunday morning, several hours after the midnight goal set by Chief Executive Elon Musk, two workers at the factory told Reuters.
The 5,000th car finished final quality checks at the Fremont, California, factory around 5 a.m. PDT (1200 GMT), one person said. It was not clear if Tesla could maintain that level of production for a longer period.
Musk said the company hit its target of 5,000 Model 3s in a week, according to an email sent to employees on Sunday afternoon and seen by Reuters. Tesla also expects to produce 6,000 Model 3 sedans a week “next month.”
“I think we just became a real car company,” Musk wrote. The company hit the Model 3 mark while also achieving its production goal of 7,000 Model S and Model X vehicles in a week, Musk said in the email.
Tesla confirmed the contents of the email.
After repeatedly pushing back internal targets, Tesla vowed in January to build 5,000 Model 3s per week before the close of the second quarter on Saturday to demonstrate it could mass produce the battery-powered sedan.
Money-losing Tesla has been burning through cash to produce the Model 3, and delays have also potentially compromised Tesla’s first-to-market position for a mid-priced, long-range battery electric car as a host of competitors prepare to launch rival vehicles.
Production of the Model 3, which began last July, has been plagued by a number of issues, including problems from an over-reliance on automation on its assembly lines, battery issues and other bottlenecks.
As the end of the quarter neared, Musk spurred on workers, built a new assembly line in a huge tent outside the main factory, and fanned expectations that Tesla could hit its target, including tweeting pictures of rows of auto parts and robots over the final days of the quarter.
“It was pretty hectic,” said one worker who described the atmosphere as “all hands on deck.”
Another worker speaking after the 5,000th car was made described the factory as a “mass celebration.”
Tesla is likely to announce production and delivery numbers for the quarter later this week, and investors will watch to see whether the company can keep up its end-of-quarter production speed and increase efficiency to produce the cars at a profit.
Repeatable?
Tesla will have to prove to investors that it can sustain and increase its production pace, and some skeptics have bet against the company.
Short sellers lost over $2 billion in June due to Tesla’s rising share price and this latest achievement could buoy the company’s shares at market open on Monday.
Shares of Tesla, which closed on Friday at $342.95, are up 40 percent since a year low in April.
In recent months, the company has engaged in so-called “burst builds,” temporary periods of fast-as-possible production, which it uses to estimate how many cars it is capable of building over longer periods of time.
Analyst Brian Johnson of Barclays warned investors in March to be wary of brief “burst rates” of Model 3 production that were not sustainable.
One worker told Reuters that, to meet the goal, employees from other departments were dispatched to parts of the Model 3 assembly line to keep it running constantly, and breaks were staggered “so the line didn’t stop moving.”
The worker also said some areas within the factory were shut down to divert their workers to help out on the Model 3, such as the Model S line.
That suggests that Tesla was able to generally meet its production target through manual labor, rather than the automation Musk originally promised would make Tesla a competitive force in manufacturing. Earlier this year, Musk – who has described his vision for the Fremont factory as an “alien dreadnought” – acknowledged error in adding too much automation, too fast, to the Model 3 assembly line.
In May, Tesla sent a new battery assembly line via cargo planes to its Gigafactory battery plant outside Reno, Nevada, in order to speed production, as first reported by Reuters.
When first unveiled in March 2016, the Model 3 generated thousands of reservations from consumers in an unprecedented show of support for the new vehicle. Most recently in May, Tesla said that despite the delivery delays, its net Model 3 reservations – accounting for new orders and cancellations – exceeded 450,000 at the end of the first quarter.
Despite touting the Model 3 as a $35,000 vehicle, Tesla has yet to begin building that basic version and instead is currently building a higher-priced version. It is not clear how many of the orders are for the more premium version.
Steady progress has enthused others, however, and Tesla’s market value is close to that of General Motors Co.
The company has said it will not need to raise cash this year.
Researchers at a public university in Sweden are creating a 3-D, virtual reality model of the Milky Way. They say their work could change how surgeons separated by oceans collaborate on medical examinations. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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