YCLOAK

Democrats Cool Toward NAFTA Replacement, Question Labor Standards

By Yeco on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives gave a cool reception to the replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement on Wednesday as the top U.S. trade negotiator opened a campaign to win broad support for the accord in Congress.

Several Democrats said a closed-door meeting between United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and their caucus failed to ease their concerns about the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA) provisions on labor, biologic drugs and some other issues.

A USTR spokeswoman declined to comment on the meeting.

The support of Democrats, who control the House, is considered important to passage of the USMCA, and Wednesday’s meeting at the U.S. Capitol signaled that the Trump administration has a lot of work to do to address the party’s concerns.

Democrats questioned whether new labor standards aimed at ensuring workers have the right to organize can be adequately enforced, as this depends partly on Mexico passing new labor laws.

“What you’re hearing is that a lot of people don’t think it’s good enough,” Representative Pramila Jayapal said of USMCA after the meeting, adding that she was concerned the new pact would not solve the biggest shortcoming of NAFTA, which allowed Mexican wages to stagnate.

“We know that when you don’t have strong enforcement provisions, you are essentially facilitating the outsourcing of jobs and bad worker protections and undercutting of U.S. workers,” said Jayapal.

NAFTA dealt with labor provisions in an unenforceable side-letter, allowing unions in Mexico to remain weak and wages low, drawing factories from the United States and Canada.

While USMCA’s labor chapter is part of the trade agreement itself and requires Mexico to adhere to International Labor Organization standards, Democrats questioned whether this could be adequately enforced through a state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism.

The Mexican government expects its Congress to pass a labor bill by the end of April that it says will strengthen the rights of unionized workers and fulfill its commitments under USMCA. Mexico “could say they passed the laws, but the laws could be very weak,” said Representative Judy Chu, a Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

She said Lighthizer told Democrats that he believed that Mexico’s labor law would meet the terms of the agreement and that any enforcement issues could be resolved through a subsequent agreement following ratification. Jayapal added that Lighthizer said this could be addressed through implementing legislation.

Some Democrats said that Lighthizer listened closely to their concerns and that he would work to address them.

“He understands the concerns of our caucus and he knows we’re not there yet,” said Representative Bill Pascrell.

Other Democrats raised concerns about the prospect for higher drug prices resulting from the USMCA’s provision for 10 years of data exclusivity for biologic drugs. The United States allows 12 years currently and negotiated a five-year exclusivity period in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which President Donald Trump declined to join in 2017.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat who opposed several previous trade deals, called this an “absolutely unbelievable giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, whose panel will handle the USMCA legislation, said the meeting did not provide any further clarity on the timing of the Trump administration’s submission of implementing legislation to Congress, or when a vote might occur.
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Technology

Facebook, Instagram Suffer Outages

By Ytech on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Facebook says it is aware of outages on its platforms including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, and is working to resolve the issue.

According to downdector.com, which monitors websites, the outages started around 12 p.m. E.T. on Wednesday in parts of the U.S., including the East and West Coast, parts of Europe and elsewhere. Both Facebook’s desktop site and app appeared to be affected. Some users saw a message that said Facebook was down for “required maintenance.”

Facebook did not say what was causing the outages, which were still occurring as of 2:15 p.m. E.T., or which regions were affected.
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Technology

Spotify Files EU Antitrust Complaint Against Apple

By Ytech on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Spotify has filed a complaint with European Union antitrust regulators against Apple, saying the iPhone maker unfairly limits rivals to its own Apple Music streaming service.

Spotify, which launched a year after the 2007 launch of the iPhone, said on Wednesday that Apple’s control of its App Store deprived consumers of choice and rival providers of audio streaming services to the benefit of Apple Music, which began in 2015.

Central to Spotify’s complaint, filed with the European Commission on Monday, is what it says is a 30 percent fee Apple charges content-based service providers to use Apple’s in-app purchase system (IAP).

Forced to raise price

Horacio Gutierrez, Spotify’s general counsel, said the company was pressured into using the billing system in 2014, but then was forced to raise the monthly fee of its premium service from 9.99 to 12.99 euros, just as Apple Music launched at Spotify’s initial 9.99 price.

Spotify then ceased use of Apple’s IAP system, meaning Spotify customers could only upgrade to the fee-based package indirectly, such as on a laptop.

Under App Store rules, Spotify said, content-based apps could not include buttons or external links to pages with production information, discounts or promotions and faced difficulties fixing bugs. Such restrictions do not apply to Android phones, it said.

“Promotions are essential to our business. This is how we convert our free customers to premium,” Gutierrez said.

Voice recognition system Siri would not hook iPhone users up to Spotify, and Apple declined to let Spotify launch an app on its Apple Watch, Spotify said.

Spotify declined to say what economic damage it believed it had suffered.

“We feel confident in the economic analysis we have submitted to the commission that we could have done better than we have done so far,” Gutierrez said.
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Technology

Tech to Soon Offer Way for People to Interact Across Generations

By Ytech on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Google, Amazon and Apple have capitalized on technology that makes virtual personal assistants possible.  Now a new application allows the user to have a virtual conversation with a video recording of a real person.  How does that work and why is it needed?  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.
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Science

US Health Officials Move to Tighten Sales of E-Cigarettes

By Yscien on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

U.S. health regulators are moving ahead with a plan designed to keep e-cigarettes out of the hands of teenagers by restricting sales of most flavored products in convenience stores and online.

The new guidelines, first proposed in November, are the latest government effort to reverse what health officials call an epidemic of underage vaping.

E-cigarettes typically heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable vapor. Federal law bans their sale to those under 18, but 1 in 5 high school students report using e-cigarettes, according to the latest survey published last year .

Under proposed guidelines released Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration, e-cigarette makers would restrict sales of most flavored products to stores that verify the age of customers entering the store or include a separate, age-restricted area for vaping products. Companies would also be expected to use third-party identity-verification technology for online sales.

Companies that don’t follow the requirements risk having their products pulled from the market, the FDA said.

“The onus is now on the companies and the vaping industry to work with us to try and bring down these levels of youth use, which are simply intolerable,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview. The restrictions won’t apply to three flavors that the FDA says appeal more to adults than teenagers: tobacco, menthol and mint.

The FDA will accept comments on the guidelines for 30 days before finalizing them later this year.

Anti-smoking activists have questioned whether the in-store restrictions will be enough to stop the unprecedented surge in teen vaping. The FDA has little authority over how stores display and sell vaping products. Instead, critics say the agency is essentially telling companies to self-police where and how their products are sold.

“FDA continues to nibble around the edges and that will not end the epidemic,” said Erika Sward, of the American Lung Association, which has called on the FDA to remove all flavored e-cigarettes from the market.

Health experts say nicotine is harmful to developing brains, and some researchers worry that addicted teens will eventually switch from vaping to smoking.

Under regulations developed by the Obama administration, manufacturers were supposed to submit e-cigarettes for safety and health review by August 2018. But Gottlieb delayed the deadline until 2022, saying both the agency and industry needed more time to prepare. Under Wednesday’s update, the FDA will move the deadline to 2021.

Still, the American Lung Association and several other anti-smoking groups are suing the FDA to begin reviewing the safety and health effects of e-cigarettes immediately.

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Science

UN: DR Congo Intercommunal Violence Was Orchestrated

By Yscien on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

United Nations investigators say intercommunal attacks that killed more than 500 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo were orchestrated. The investigators from the U.N. human rights office in Congo say the attacks may amount to crimes against humanity.

The clashes between the Banunu and Batende communities took place in Yumbi territory, in Mai-Ndombe province, between December 16 and 18.

U.N. investigators who went there found the violence was planned and carried out with the support of traditional chiefs.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani says the investigators verified at least 535 people were killed and more than 100 others injured.

“These figures are most likely an underestimate,” she said. “The number of casualties is believed to be much higher as the bodies of some who died are believed to have been thrown into the Congo River. It is also not possible to confirm the number of people who are still missing as an estimated 19,000 people were displaced by the violence, 16,000 of whom crossed over into the Republic of Congo.”

Shamdasani says fights between the two communities over land and fishing resources have broken out in the past, but never on this scale.

She says the violence was triggered by a dispute over the burial of a Banunu chief. She says the similarity of the attacks carried out over a three-day period across four different villages indicates prior consultation and organization.

“Certain chiefs of the Batende-majority villages were cited by many sources as having taken part in the planning of the attacks. The investigation concluded that the crimes documented in Yumbi may amount to crimes against humanity of murder, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as persecution,” said Shamdasani.

The report warns violence is likely to flare up again if the tensions and resentment between the two communities are allowed to fester.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, is calling for the perpetrators of the crimes to be punished.

She is also urging the government to establish a truth and reconciliation process to address the problems between the Banunu and Batende communities and prevent further violence.

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Science

Americans in Cool States Misjudge Threat From Rising Heat Waves

By Yscien on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Americans most at risk from more frequent and intense heat waves tend to misjudge the deadly dangers hot spells can pose to their health, scientists said on Tuesday.

People’s vulnerability to heat waves is growing as cooler states become hotter, in part because air conditioning and other ways to cool down are less common there, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Right now, people in cooler areas “don’t experience hotter weather as frequently,” said co-author Peter Howe from Utah State University. That means “they have less of that experience… to handle those hot days.”

Global temperatures are on course for a 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) rise this century, overshooting a global target of limiting the increase to 2C (3.6F) or less, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization has said.

In the United States, hot years are projected to soon become more common as annual average temperatures — already a degree higher than in 1901 — continue to rise, according to the National Climate Assessment, a U.S. government report.

After surveying more than 9,000 people in all 50 states, researchers carrying out the heat wave study discovered that people in northern states, including in the northern Midwest, had fewer health concerns about extreme heat than those living in the country’s south.

Residents of the normally temperate Rocky Mountains and Appalachians were among the least concerned by extreme heat, the study said, while those in sweltering Hawaii, Texas and Louisiana were most worried.

But previous research has shown that as climate change pushes temperatures up, residents of the northeastern United States and those living in high elevations are at particularly high risk of heat-related complications, the researchers said.

That’s because they often lack air conditioning and other means of combatting extreme heat, and are less acclimatized to potentially dangerous temperatures.

Heat can exacerbate existing health conditions and contribute to heat strokes, dehydration and heat exhaustion, Howe said.

Elderly people also were often oblivious to the risks of extreme heat to their health, even though they constitute one of the highest risk groups, the findings showed.

“People generally, if they are older, they don’t consider themselves to be elderly,” he said — and so don’t see themselves as particularly at risk.

Heat in 2017 killed more people than any other weather-related disaster except floods, according to the National Weather Service. Over the last 30 years heat has been the biggest cause of weather-related deaths.

A 2014 study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives said a 5 degree Fahrenheit increase in average temperature would lead an extra 1,900 deaths per summer across 105 U.S. cities.
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Science

Hammerhead Shark ‘Nursery’ Found Off Galapagos Islands

By Yscien on Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Researchers have found a new breeding ground for hammerhead sharks off the coast of Ecuador’s Galapagos archipelago.

The head of the team of researchers, Eduardo Espinosa, said the natural refuge off the island of Santa Cruz is home to about 20 of the sharks. The team managed to attach monitors to five of them.

“That site, where the babies spent two or three years, is important not only for the Galapagos but on a world scale, because it gives hope for the protection and conservation of a species,” Espinosa said.

The team hopes to monitor the sharks in an effort to protect both the predators and their environment.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers the hammerhead shark an endangered species. They are not particularly fertile reproducers, and combined with a demand for their fins in Asia, the species is vulnerable.

Marine biologist Alex Hearn of San Francisco University in Quito said researchers believed that the hammerheads gave birth along continental coasts, so the discovery of the island nursery opens new lines of study.
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Economy

Trade Chief: US Working on Steel, Aluminum Tariff Relief for Mexico, Canada

By Yeco on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

The United States is working on a plan to lift tariffs from Mexican and Canadian steel and aluminum but preserve the gains that domestic producers have received from the duties so far, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Tuesday.

“What I’m trying to do is a have a practical solution to a real problem … get rid of tariffs on these two, let them maintain their historic access to the U.S. market which I think will allow us to still maintain the benefit of the steel and aluminum program,” he told the U.S. Senate Finance Committee at a hearing about the World Trade Organization.

The United States imposed the “Section 232” tariffs on steel and aluminum nearly a year ago to protect domestic producers on national security grounds. A plan to lift tariffs on the metals from Canada and Mexico was once linked to the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement but ultimately was excluded from that deal.

Since then, a number of U.S. lawmakers have said they did not believe the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) could win approval in Congress if the metals tariffs — along with and retaliatory duties on U.S. farm and other products — were left in place.

Members of the New Democrat Coalition in the House of Representatives echoed a similar message in a meeting with Lighthizer later on Tuesday.

“Some of us impressed the need to resolve 232 before we have a chance to move forward” on consideration of USMCA, said Representative Ron Kind, a pro-trade Democrat from Wisconsin.

Kind added that Lighthizer expected to meet with Mexican and Canadian counterparts on the issue this week.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office declined to comment, saying there were no scheduling announcements on the 232 issue.

The United States has sought quotas on steel and aluminum in lieu of tariffs, but Canada and Mexico have resisted such restrictions, arguing that they pose no threat to U.S. national security.

A Mexican official said talks were continuing.

“Our position is that we should not have tariffs or quotas.

We have to help the U.S. construct the narrative of why exclusion for Mexico is valid,” added the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.

Kind cautioned that the Trump administration would need to submit the USMCA enabling legislation soon to Congress so it could be considered before the August recess. After that, it could become caught up in another border wall funding fight in the fall and later the 2020 presidential election campaign, which would diminish its approval chances.

“There’s a lot of work and the clock’s ticking,” Kind added.
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Science

NASA to Make Untouched Lunar Samples Available for Study

By Yscien on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

NASA is once again turning its focus to the moon.

Nearly 50 years after the last lunar mission, the U.S. space agency is unsealing some of the samples brought back by Apollo astronauts for study.

The lunar samples were collected by astronauts during the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.

Some of the samples have never been opened, others were resealed in an effort to preserve them.

NASA has picked nine teams of scientists to study the samples. The teams were selected from scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center, the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, the University of Arizona, the University of California, Berkeley, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, Mount Holyoke College and the Planetary Science Institute.

“By studying these precious lunar samples for the first time, a new generation of scientists will help advance our understanding of our lunar neighbor and prepare for the next era of exploration of the moon and beyond,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This exploration will bring with it new and unique samples into the best labs right here on Earth.”

NASA said its officials in the 1970s had the foresight to know that future scientists would likely be better equipped to study the lunar material.
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Economy

Lopez Obrador Rebuts Finance Ministry over $2.5B Mexico Refinery Funding

By Yeco on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday denied any delay to a flagship refinery project in his home state after the deputy finance minister was quoted as saying $2.5 billion for its construction will be moved to state oil firm Pemex.

The planned investment for the Dos Bocas refinery “can go to exploration and production” for Pemex, Arturo Herrera told the Financial Times in an interview during a trip to London for meetings with investors.

However, Lopez Obrador stood by his plan to build the refinery within three years, saying the tender could be unveiled next week. In answer to a question about whether the $2.5 billion would be spent this year on the refinery, said “Yes.”

The president’s plans to fast-track construction of the new refinery in Tabasco, his home state, have concerned investors that it would take away much-needed resources from Pemex, which is creaking under $106 billion of debt.

His energy minister, Rocio Nahle, said she understood Herrera’s budget concerns but said the project was on track.

“The faster we do this project, the cheaper it will be,” she said on Mexican radio.

The conflicting statements appeared to confuse investors.

Mexico’s benchmark stock index reversed gains and weakened 0.7 percent after Lopez Obrador’s rebuttal of Herrera’s comments, while the peso pared gains.

“Contradictions within the federal government do not help financial markets,” said James Salazar, an economist at bank CI Banco.

The government is under growing pressure to dispel doubts Pemex can successfully manage more than $16 billion of debt payments due by the end of next year, halt the firm’s extended oil output slide and avert a threatened credit rating downgrade to “junk.”

Finance minister Carlos Urzua said last week the government would announce new measures to support the ailing company, after unveiling a $3.9 billion bailout in February that failed to impress ratings agencies.

Herrera said the government was in talks with the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral organizations about structuring a fresh capital injection for Pemex, though he noted that those discussions were technical and no borrowing was involved, according to the Financial Times.

Lopez Obrador said it was very likely the government would make an announcement about tenders for the refinery on March 18, a national holiday that celebrates the 1938 nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry.

He also predicted Pemex would reverse its output decline by next year, with “new wells” coming on line by December under a production plan that allows Pemex to hire service companies to help explore mature fields.

He repeated that the refinery would cost between $6 billion and $8 billion, and said that work for now was focused on preparing the ground at the refinery site and readying the framework for the tender.

The refinery has already hit obstacles after the proposed construction site was cleared of protected mangrove without the correct environmental permits. The government has yet to present an environmental impact assessment for the wildlife-rich site.

Herrera said the tender framework was being prepared, but said the finance ministry needed to see a solid financial plan before releasing funds.

“We will not authorize (construction) until we have a final figure that is not very different from the original $8 billion,” said Herrera.

($1 = 19.3083 Mexican pesos)
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Economy

Official: US Plans ‘Very Significant’ Additional Venezuela Sanctions

By Yeco on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

The United States is preparing to impose “very significant” Venezuela-related sanctions against financial institutions in the coming days, U.S. special envoy Elliott Abrams said on Tuesday.

Abrams did not elaborate on the fresh measures but his warning came a day after the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Russian bank Evrofinance Mosnarbank for helping Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA evade U.S. financial restrictions.

Abrams said Washington was also preparing to withdraw more U.S. visas from Venezuelans with close ties to President Nicolas Maduro.

Washington has taken the lead in recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful president after the 35-year-old Congress chief declared Maduro’s 2018 re-election a fraud and announced an interim presidency in January. Most countries in Europe and Latin America have followed suit.

Abrams’ comments came as Venezuela ordered American diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours.

Washington said it had decided to withdraw the remaining diplomats due to deteriorating conditions in Venezuela, which has been plunged into its worst blackout on record.

Abrams emphasized that the withdrawal of diplomats was not a change in U.S. policy.

“This does not represent any change in U.S. policy toward Venezuela, nor does it represent any reduction in the commitment we have to the people of Venezuela and to their struggle for democracy,” he said, adding that the U.S. intended to keep up pressure on Maduro through sanctions.

“You will see very soon a significant number of additional visa revocations. You will see in the coming days some very significant additional sanctions,” Abrams added.

He said the United States was in talks with other countries that could act as its “protecting power” in Venezuela to ensure the safety of the U.S. embassy’s premises and provide assistance to Americans in trouble.

A “protecting power” is a country that represents another in cases where two countries have broken off diplomatic relations.

Washington, for example, has appointed Switzerland as its “protecting power” in Iran.

“We are trying to decide on a protecting power,” Abrams said.

He said the safety of U.S. diplomats was a key factor in the withdrawal decision reached by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the late hours of Monday night.
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Technology

Self-driving Test Vehicle Added to Auto History Museum

By Ytech on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

One of General Motors’ first self-driving test vehicles is going on display at an automotive history museum in suburban Detroit.

The Henry Ford history attraction announced Tuesday that it has acquired a modified pre-production Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle.

The GM-donated vehicle originally made its debut testing on the streets of San Francisco in 2016. Now it will be displayed at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn.

The camera- and sensor-equipped vehicle is the first autonomous car to be added to The Henry Ford collection. It’ll be next to a 1959 Cadillac El Dorado at the “Driving America” exhibit, which chronicles the history of the automobile.

The Henry Ford President and CEO Patricia Mooradian says self-driving capabilities “will fundamentally change our relationship with the automobile.” She says the acquisition “is paramount in how we tell that story.”
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Technology

At Age 30, World Wide Web Is ‘Not the Web We Wanted’

By Ytech on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

At the ripe old age of 30 and with half the globe using it, the World Wide Web is facing growing pains with issues like hate speech, privacy concerns and state-sponsored hacking, its creator says, trumpeting a call to make it better for humanity.

Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday joined a celebration of the Web and reminisced about his invention at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, starting with a proposal published on March 12, 1989. It opened the way to a technological revolution that has transformed the way people buy goods, share ideas, get information and much more.

It’s also become a place where tech titans scoop up personal data, rival governments spy and seek to scuttle elections, and hate speech and vitriol have thrived — taking the Web far from its roots as a space for progress-oriented minds to collaborate.

As of late 2018, half of the world was online, with the other half often struggling to secure access.

Speaking at a “Web@30” conference at CERN, Berners-Lee acknowledged that a sense among many who are already on the Web has become: “Whoops! The web is not the web we wanted in every respect.”

His World Wide Web Foundation wants to enlist governments, companies, and citizens to take a greater role in shaping the web for good under principles laid out in its “Contract for the Web.”

Under the contract, governments are called upon to make sure everyone can connect to the internet, to keep it available and to respect privacy. Companies are to make the internet affordable, respect privacy and develop technology that will put people — and the “public good” — first. Citizens are to create and to cooperate and respect “civil discourse,” among other things.

“The Contract for the Web is about sitting down in working groups with other people who signed up, and to say, ‘Ok, let’s work out what this really means,’” Berners-Lee said. It was unclear, however, how such rules would be enforced.

Berners-Lee cautioned it was important to strike a balance between oversight and freedom but difficult to agree what it should be.

“Where is the balance between leaving the tech companies to do the right thing and regulating them? Where is the balance between freedom of speech and hate speech?” he said.

The conference, which brought together Internet and tech experts, also gave CERN the chance to showcase its reputation as an open-source incubator of ideas. Berners-Lee worked there in the late 1980s, and had been determined to help bridge a communications and documentation gap among different computer platforms.

As a young English software engineer at CERN, Berners-Lee, who is now 63, came up with the idea for hypertext transfer protocol — the “http” that adorns web addresses — and other building blocks for the web.

The “http” system allowed text and small images to be retrieved through a piece of software — the first browser — which Berners-Lee released in 1990 and is considered the start of the web. In practice, the access to a browser on a home computer made the internet easily accessible to consumers for the first time.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Berners-Lee recalled how his research was helped his former boss at CERN, Mike Sendall, who wanted a pretext to buy a then-new Next computer by Steve Jobs’ Apple needed for his research.

Berners-Lee said Sendall told him to ”‘pick a random program to develop on it … Why don’t you do that hypertext thing?’”

Berners-Lee has since become a sort of father figure for the internet community, been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time magazine.

While he now wants to get the debate going, other panelists expressed concerns like the increasing concentration of control of the internet by big corporate players, and fretted about a possible splintering of cyberspace among rival countries.

“The challenges come from the same things that make it (the Web) wonderful, and that’s the difficulty,” said conference panelist Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science.

“The openness is wonderful, the connectivity is wonderful, the fact that it was created as a network for academics who are kind of into trusting each other…” she said.

Now with the Web, “there’s an enormous amount of centralization going on, with a few big players becoming gatekeepers. Those few big players have built, basically, surveillance machines,” she said. “It’s based on surveillance profiling us and then targeting us for ads — which wasn’t the original idea at all.”
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Technology

US Warns of WTO Action Over ‘Discriminatory’ New Digital Taxes

By Ytech on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

The U.S. is weighing a complaint at the World Trade Organization against “discriminatory” new taxes on digital giants such as a Facebook and Google which are being planned by France and other EU nations, a top US trade official said Tuesday.

“We think the whole theoretical basis of digital service taxes is ill-conceived and the effect is highly discriminatory against US-based multinationals,” Chip Harter, a Treasury official and US delegate for global tax talks, said in Paris.

Speaking ahead of two days of talks at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Harter added that “various parts of our government are studying whether that discriminatory impact would give us rights under trade agreements and WTO treaties.”

The OECD is spearheading talks aimed at forging a new global agreement on taxing technology and digital giants who often declare their income in low-tax nations, depriving other countries of billions in revenue.

But that overhaul is expected until next year at the earliest, prompting France, Britain, Spain, Austria and Italy to move ahead with their own versions of a so-called “digital services tax” as soon as this year.

Last week France unveiled draft legislation that would set a 3.0-percent levy on digital advertising, the sale of personal data and other revenue for tech groups with more than 750 million euros ($844 million) in worldwide revenue.

It would be applied retroactively from January 1, 2019, while the measures in the UK and other European countries might not come into effect until next year.

“We do understand there’s political pressure around the world to tax various international businesses more heavily, and we actually agreed that that is appropriate,” Harter told journalists.

“But we think it should be done on a broader basis than just selecting a particular industry,” he said.

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Economy

Pawn Business Growing in US

By Yeco on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

You never know what you will find in a pawnshop.

Where else can you find a snow blower parked next to a mink jacket? Or an ornate 19th century mantle clock from France next to modern-day laptop computers?

At Top Dollar Pawn in Waldorf, Maryland, a man comes in wanting to sell the gold caps from his deceased grandfather’s teeth. While some would be taken aback, the affable store manager Stuffie Carroll is not. “This happens all the time,” he said, as he explains to the customer that the store would only buy the gold after it had been removed from the teeth.

Top Dollar owner Michael Cohen, who has two pawnshops in Maryland outside Washington, DC, buys and sells “anything of value,” which includes high-end jewelry, musical instruments, and power tools. His biggest seller is the jewelry he says, as he shows off an assortment of diamond rings and gold necklaces.

While sales bring in money, pawn shops make most of their income through cash loans to customers in exchange for an item of value. There is also interest on the loan that is higher than a bank rate. If the money is repaid in 30 days, then the customer gets their item back; otherwise the store keeps it for resale. Eighty-five percent pay back the loan.

For people without credit or other financial resources, pawn shops can help them get the money they need. The average loan is $150.

“In a lot of cases people don’t have any other outlet to get the money they need to get through the week to buy diapers for their babies, put gas in the car, or pay the electric bill,” said Top Dollar Manager, Mike Thomen. He said customers often talk to him about their problems and he “encourages them when they’re down on their luck.”

Long gone are the days when pawn shops were considered seedy places, where only people down on their luck went to. Today’s pawn shops, mostly independently owned, look more like a brightly lit, welcoming second-hand store.

“The pawn shop is the new cool place to come into, the new chic place,” said Eric Rizer, the owner of three stores in northern Virginia called Royal Pawn. “We have tons of different stuff like artwork, antiques, rugs, and sports memorabilia.”

“Customer service is a huge part of our business,” Cohen said, “and hopefully that keeps people wanting to come back to us.”

Like regular customer Anthony Ruggaero who is pawning some tools.

“I came to pawn a few times to pay for my wedding, which is in 3 months,” he explained. “I bought my fiancé’s wedding ring here last week. I have my own business, so as soon as checks come in to help me pay for expenses, I’ll buy my stuff back.”

Hidden treasures

It’s estimated that 30 million people visit the 11,000 pawn shops in the United States every year, perhaps finding some hidden treasures.

“We had an original Picasso,” said Rizer. “We actually had a bird head that I sold to a man for $500.” Later Rizer discovered that the bird had been extinct for more than 100 years, and the head was valued at $20,000.

He says worn vintage guitars are finding a new market.

“These beat up guitars are called reliced,” he said. “People go absolutely nuts over them just because they look like they’re worn from being out on the road.”

Including customer Austen Ballard, a music producer at MMP Studios in Burke, Virginia.

“It’s so much fun to pick up an old instrument from the 1950s or 60s. You never know where a guitar’s been. It might be on a record you’ve heard on the radio.”

Cohen said his business has taken a hit from second-hand merchandise internet sales. Although he realizes more pawn shops may have to start selling items on the internet to survive, he thinks the brick or mortar stores are here to stay.

“There’s people who go from pawn shop to pawn shop looking for a good deal. We definitely have our regulars that like to bargain with us every week.”

Like customer Keith Winslow who haggles over the price of some power tools.

“I want to talk to the people I’m buying products from,” he said. I don’t want something from online that may not be exactly what I want.”
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Economy

China Tweaks Tech Supremacy Plan

By Yeco on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

For the first time in recent years, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s annual Government Work Report did not mention Made in China 2025, the country’s ambitious plan to achieve high-tech dominance, and that has analysts asking whether Beijing is going to completely overhaul the plan or keep it going quietly behind the scenes.

Made in China 2025 relies heavily on government subsidies to Chinese companies and their ability to acquire new technologies covering 10 different sectors such as electric cars, emerging bio-medicine, next-generation information technology, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence.

The plan is part of China’s broader industrial policy outlined in the 13th Five-Year plan, which lays out government goals from 2016-2020. It raised concerns, however, because of China’s use of forced technology transfers and specific targets to capture market share by 2025.

The plan has been a focus of discussion between U.S. and Chinese negotiators, with Washington demanding an end to subsidies given to local companies under the plan. The United States also wanted China to do away with unfair trade practices that include the forcible transfer of technology from foreign companies.

A significant portion of technologies used in China in the 10 listed sectors come from foreign sources.

But the government is now amending laws that will leave Chinese companies in a somewhat difficult situation. It is also expected to cut subsidies it gives to local companies in order to overcome objections raised by the United States during the trade war.

New laws and policy changes that the government is bringing on during the ongoing sessions of China’s legislature, or National People’s Congress (NPC), would seriously affect its ability to acquire foreign technology.

“China will suffer in the short run but in the medium run they seem to be fine,” said Lourdes Casanova, director at Cornell’s Emerging Markets Institute.

To a great extent, Chinese companies have used three means to acquire technology: the use of borrowed or stolen ideas, the forcible transfer of know-how from foreign partners and the purchase of foreign companies.

Acquisitions by Chinese companies have now become problematic because of growing cautiousness and recent legislation in the United States and European Union.

Some analysts believe there were design defects in the 2025 plan itself, and the government has been rethinking it for some time now.

“The original 2025 plan was too nationalistic and too top down. It was wasteful,” Mats Harborn, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told VOA.

“They [government leaders] thought technology should be owned by Chinese companies. There was a ‘we can do this on our own’ attitude,”

“There is a shift or maturity in understanding. There is an understanding that China cannot do all things on its own. It has to use international value chains and integrate as much as possible,” Harborn said.

New information emerging now suggests there has been a struggle within the government about the suitability of this grandiose plan.

“It [the strategy] should not have been done that way anyway. I was against it from the start, I did not agree very much with it,” Lou Jiwei, China’s finance minister between 2013 and 2016, said on the sidelines of the legislative meeting in Beijing.

Other legislators told VOA the government is making adjustments in accordance with public opinion.

Putting less emphasis on Made in China 2025 “reflects a more rational approach by the government, to reduce unnecessary obstacles, noises and reaction, to keep moving forward in a positive direction,” said Tang Nong, a NPC delegate from Guangxi.

“The government is moving forward with the 13th Five-Year plan. What is Made in China 2025, is it a plan or a broad outline?” asked Sun Xianzhong, an NPC delegate and professor of international law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Analysts believe the government may revamp and repackage the plan, but it is unlikely to soften its efforts.

“The government remains committed to moving China’s economy up the value chain and will continue to use a variety of active industrial policies to achieve this goal,” said Duncan Innes-Ker, regional director for Asia at The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Harborn believes the government will shift from the idea of acquiring new technologies to absorbing them in the industrial value chain.

“This is a wakeup call. The new focus will be on integrating the best technologies at the best price and creating the best final product or service,” he said.

State owned companies in China may be better able to readjust themselves if the 2025 plan is revamped because their focus is more on revenues than on profit.

“For a state-owned company, profits going down in favor of revenues or jobs, so what’s the problem? They are fine,” said Casanova adding, “Profits are less or not of primary consideration.”

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Technology

US Warns Germany a Huawei Deal Could Hurt Intelligence Sharing

By Ytech on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

The United States on Monday warned Germany about future “information sharing” if it uses “untrusted vendors” in its 5G telecom infrastructure amid debate over whether Chinese IT giant Huawei is an espionage risk.

The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell sent a letter to German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Friday warning that in such a case the US could scale down intelligence and other information exchanges.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson told AFP on Monday it would not comment on diplomatic communications, but added that its position on 5G network security was well known.

“To the extent there are untrusted vendors in the networks of an ally, that could raise future questions about the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive communications within that country, as well as between that country and its allies,” the spokesperson said.

“This could in the future jeopardize nimble cooperation and some sharing of information. We are engaging intensively with our allies on how to secure our telecommunications networks to ensure continued interoperability.”

German minister Altmaier confirmed he had received the letter, but told AFP he could not comment on its contents, adding: “We will respond quickly”.

Germany, like other EU countries, has relied heavily on US intelligence on terror and other threats provided by the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy services.

The US and several other Western nations, fearful of the security risks posed by the company closely tied to the Chinese government, have shut Huawei out of tenders for the development of the newest 5G infrastructure.

The Chinese telecoms behemoth has strenuously denied the espionage allegations.

Germany, anxious to not get sucked into the maelstrom of an ongoing U.S.-China spat over a multitude of issues including trade, has taken a cautious stance on the issue.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said it was necessary to talk to Beijing “to make sure that the company does not simply give up all data that is used to the Chinese state, but that there are safeguards”.

Some measures in the works include adding a non-spying clause, a requirement to publish code sources used in the infrastructures as well as allowing independent laboratories to carry out tests on the components used.

Huawei has quietly become a leading supplier of the backbone equipment for mobile networks, particularly in developing markets thanks to cheaper prices.

Germany, although it is Europe’s leading economy, has seen its mobile infrastructure lag behind, with most Germans having access only to 3G.

The 5G network is meant to be 100 times more rapid than 4G, and is viewed as the next major step in the digital revolution that makes data transfers almost instantaneous.

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Economy

Global Backlash Over Boeing 737 MAX-8 Growing After Deadly Crash

By Yeco on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Australia and Singapore have suspended the Boeing 737 Max 8 passenger jet from operating in their respective airspaces, joining a growing list of countries taking precautionary measures involving the troubled plane after its second fatal crash in five months.

Airlines in countries across the globe, including China, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico, have grounded all the 737 Max 8 jets in their respective fleets after 157 passengers and crew were killed when a 737 Max 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed Sunday shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa.

Statements from both Australia’s and Singapore’s civil aviation authorities say the suspensions are temporary while the investigation into Sunday’s tragedy continues. The suspensions affect Fiji Airlines and Singapore’s SilkAir, which was already suspended from operating by the city-state.

The Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 was the same model as the one that crashed into the Java Sea in October, just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing 189 people.

At least two witnesses say they saw smoke coming from the back of the plane before it crashed.

Investigators have found the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, which they hope will give them clues as to why the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet went down en route to Nairobi.

Indonesian investigators said information from the flight data recorder showed the plane’s automatic safety system repeatedly pushed the plane’s nose downward despite the pilots’ desperate attempts to maintain control.

Tributes and condolences poured in Monday for the victims of Sunday’s crash, who hailed from at least 35 countries and included 22 United Nations staff members heading to a U.N. environmental conference in Nairobi.

Flags at the conference were lowered to half-staff Monday. The Nairobi conference and a General Assembly meeting in New York both opened with moments of silence.

“A global tragedy has hit close to home, and the United Nations is united in grief. I extend my deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of all the victims, to the government and people of Ethiopia, and all these affected by this disaster,” Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in New York.

The victims were also remembered at U.N. refugee headquarters in Geneva and at the State Department in Washington.

Menur Nur Mohamed lost his brother Ahmed on the doomed plane. Ahmed Nur Mohamed was the co-pilot.

“Me and my brother grew up together. He wasn’t only my brother, but also my friend,” Mohamed told Tsion Tadesse of VOA’s Horn of Africa service.

Mohamed said he learned of his brother’s death when the head of Ethiopian Airlines mentioned his name.

Boeing shares plunged seven percent Monday on Wall Street.

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Science

UN: Methamphetamine Output Booming in Southeast Asia

By Yscien on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Production of methamphetamine is skyrocketing in Southeast Asia, with prices dropping and usage expanding, the U.N.’s anti-drug agency said Monday.

Even as seizures of the drug known as speed, ice and “ya ba” in its various forms reached a record high last year, street prices have dropped, indicating increased availability, said a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The agency said methamphetamine has become the main drug of concern in 12 out of 13 East and Southeast Asian countries, up from five a decade ago. The only exception was Vietnam, where heroin is considered the major problem.

In Thailand alone, 515 million methamphetamine tablets were seized in 2018, 17 times the total amount of the drug seized a decade ago in all 13 countries combined, the U.N. agency said. Much of the supply comes from neighboring Myanmar.

“Data on seizures, prices, use and treatment all point to continuing expansion of the methamphetamine market in East and Southeast Asia,” said Tun Nay Soe, the agency’s inter-regional program coordinator.

The report warns that organized crime groups in the region have stepped up their involvement in making and trafficking methamphetamine and other drugs in the Golden Triangle, the region where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet that has historically been a major source of opium and heroin.

It said the drug market in East and South-East Asia had shifted from such opiates to methamphetamine since the latter part of the 2000s.

“The shift to methamphetamine has affected even countries traditionally known to have a relatively large market for heroin, such as China and Malaysia,” it said. “In Malaysia, the number of methamphetamine users detected by law enforcement authorities surpassed that of heroin users for the first time in 2017.”

In another indicator of the methamphetamine epidemic, medical treatment related to its use dominated the number of drug-related admissions in several East and Southeast Asian countries, the report said.

The drug agency warned that other synthetic drugs were also gaining traction in Asian markets.

“Potent synthetic opioids (e.g. fentanyl), implicated in fatalities in other parts of the world, are being identified by some countries in the region,” it said. Fentanyl is one of a number of opioids responsible for growing deaths of drug users in the United States.

“Aside from methamphetamine which is getting most of the attention because of the surge in seizures and street price drops, synthetic opioids and other drugs have also been found across the region,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
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Technology

Apple: ‘It’s Show Time’ March 25, TV Service Announcement Expected

By Ytech on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Apple on Monday invited media to a March 25 event at the Steve Jobs Theater on its campus in Cupertino, California, where it is expected to launch a television and video service.

Sources previously told Reuters that the company is targeting April for the launch of a streaming television service that will likely include subscription TV service.

Apple often launches products and services in the weeks following an event.

In its invitation, Apple did not specify the focus of the event and gave a single-line description: “It’s show time.”

Apple has long hinted at a planned video service, spending $2 billion in Hollywood to produce its own content and signing major stars such as Oprah Winfrey. Sources familiar with the matter earlier told Reuters that the service may resell subscriptions from CBS, Viacom and Lions Gate Entertainment’s Starz among others, as well as Apple’s own original content.

The TV service is expected to launch globally, an ambitious move to rival services from Netflix Inc and Amazon.com’s Prime Video. Apple’s App Store, where the service is likely to be distributed, is currently available in more than 100 countries.

The potential sales from a television service have become a focus of investors after Apple in January reported the first-ever dip in iPhone sales during the key holiday shopping period and said it would lower iPhone prices in some markets to account for foreign exchange rates.

Apple is also in discussions with HBO, part of AT&T-owned WarnerMedia, to become part of the service and it could yet make it in time for the launch, according to a person familiar with the matter.

While there is a chance Apple will update its iPads or Apple TV devices later this month, the event is likely to be Apple’s first major media event in which hardware is not the primary focus, said Ben Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

That is a big shift for Apple, which earlier this year moved to make its Apple Music services work on smart speakers from rivals such as Amazon and partnered with Samsung Electronics to let Samsung television owners watch video purchased from Apple on Samsung sets.

“I don’t look at that as saying Apple has given up on the (Apple smart speaker) HomePod or the Apple TV – those will be the products where Apple Music or an Apple movie experience work the best,” Bajarin said. “But Apple is smart to not limit the places people can consume their services.”
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Science

Study: US Minorities Consume Less But Suffer More From Pollution

By Yscien on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

U.S. air pollution is disproportionately caused by white consumers, while African-Americans and Hispanics are burdened most by the emissions, a peer-reviewed study showed on Monday.

On average, African-Americans are exposed to about 56 percent more fine particulate matter pollution than is caused by their consumption of goods and services, said the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Hispanics, on average, bear a burden of 63 percent excess exposure, it said.

Whites, on the other hand, experience a “pollution advantage,” meaning they are exposed to 17 percent less pollution than is caused by their consumption.

“What surprised me the most was the magnitude of the discrepancy,” said Jason Hill, a biosytems engineering professor at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the study. “It’s surprisingly large.”

The study was the first to quantify what it called “pollution inequity” and to track it over time.

Particulate matter pollution has a wide variety of sources including coal-fired power plants, agriculture, road dust and industry. Blacks and Hispanics bear a higher proportion of the pollution because of where most of them live, compared with where most white people live, said the study, which tapped census data.

The problem occurs across the country, not just in industrial areas alongside major cities like Houston and New York, it said.

The study was paid for in part by a five-year grant that included money from federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency and was launched when Barack Obama was president. The grant has continued to be funded by the administration of President Donald Trump.

Both racial minorities and whites have benefited from clean air regulations, the study found, with fine particulate pollution falling about 50 percent on average between 2003 and 2015.

But the pollution inequity remains stubborn, it said.

Public-health advocates and environmentalists say the Trump administration’s push to unravel regulations on power plants, industry and vehicles while pursuing increased drilling and mining will make air pollution worse.

The study found that fine particulate pollution from domestic sources caused about 102,000 premature U.S. deaths a year from heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and other diseases.

Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Washington and co-author of the study, said its approach could be extended to other pollutants.

“When it comes to determining who causes air pollution, and who breathes that pollution, this research is just the beginning.”
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Science

Governments Seek UN Scrutiny of Technologies to Cool the Climate

By Yscien on Tuesday, March 12, 2019

As climate change accelerates, the United Nations Environment Assembly will this week consider whether to start assessing, and setting rules on, technologies that could pull carbon out of the atmosphere or block some of the sun’s warmth to cool the Earth.

Delegates at the week-long meeting in Nairobi will debate a proposal from Switzerland, backed by 10 other countries, to begin examining geoengineering technologies, which backers say could help fend off the worst impacts of runaway climate change.

If adopted, the proposal could lead to the highest-level examination yet of the controversial technologies, which have gained prominence as efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions fall short.

“We need to have an understanding on the implications of using such technologies, and how they would be governed in the future,” Siim Kiisler, Estonia’s environment minister and president of the Nairobi meeting, told journalists on Monday.

“Just ignoring the issue does not help. We have to talk about it,” he said.

Franz Xaver Perrez, Switzerland’s environmental ambassador and head of its delegation in Nairobi, said his nation had concerns that sun-dimming technology, in particular, could have “a tremendous negative impact.”

Nonetheless, “we should not be guided by concerns, but have a better understanding of the situation first”, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, noting that “we might need multilateral control of these technologies.”

Opponents say the technologies present huge potential risks to people and nature, and could undermine efforts to cut emissions, not least because many are backed by fossil-fuel interests.

“These technologies provide a perfect excuse for delaying action or weakening our current emissions reduction targets,” warned Carroll Muffett, president of the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law, in a telephone interview.

Rapidly slashing emissions – by switching to greener power, preserving forests and similar measures – remains the cheapest and safest way to fend off worsening droughts, floods, storms and other impacts of global warming, he said.

But research is moving ahead fast on two groups of alternative technologies to curb climate change, as emissions continue to rise.

One set aims to suck heat-trapping carbon out of the atmosphere and store it underground, or use it in other ways.

The other focuses on cooling the planet by blocking some of the sun’s energy, through measures such as high-altitude planes that spray reflective sulphur particles into the stratosphere.

‘Light’ use

In a paper published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists modeling the use of solar geoengineering technology said limited deployment – to halve expected warming over the next century, rather than stop it entirely – could dramatically lessen risks from stronger tropical cyclones, for instance.

Earlier modeling of solar geoengineering to avert all projected warming flagged the possibility of changes in water availability, sparking fears the technology could shift monsoons, and create “winners” and “losers.”

Opponents of the technology have suggested it could even be “weaponized,” with a water-short country deploying the technology to improve its rainfall at the expense of neighbors.

But the new modeling suggests no region would see dramatic shifts with lighter use of the technology, although the scientists noted the results were based on an “idealized” study.

Lead author Peter Irvine, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University, said solar management would need to work hand-in-hand with reducing emissions, and could not “replace mitigation.”

David Keith, the leader of a team focused on solar geoengineering research at Harvard and a co-author of the study, said the modeling suggested “geoengineering could enable surprisingly uniform benefits” if used with mitigation efforts.

Option to ban

A high-profile report released by climate scientists last October, exploring how to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, the most ambitious goal set by governments in the 2015 Paris Agreement, specifically did not consider the use of solar geoengineering.

It said the technology was untested, had “substantial” risks, and would not address the problem of oceans becoming more acidic as they absorb growing amounts of carbon dioxide.

Muffett said bodies such as the U.N. Environment Assembly, if they did begin exploring geoengineering technologies, should leave open the possibility of banning them entirely, as progress on their development could boost pressure to deploy them.

The assembly also should make sure any panel assessing the technologies included representatives of poorer countries and indigenous groups, while excluding those who held patents on the technologies or stood to profit from them, he said.

This week’s meeting is not the first effort to explore and potentially regulate the emerging technologies.

Member nations of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010 set a non-binding moratorium on the use of geoengineering technologies, though agreed to permit research on them.

And an ocean pollution convention has banned the dumping of iron into the sea to boost uptake of carbon dioxide by algae, while also allowing research on the topic.

Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, which hopes to spur effective governance of the emerging technologies, described the U.N. Environment Assembly’s focus on them as a positive step.

“What is needed is governments to engage and start a serious conversation about these issues,” he said.

If approved, the Swiss-backed proposal being presented in Nairobi this week would require U.N. Environment to analyze the technologies and report by August 2020 on how they could be governed and used at scale, among other things.
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Economy

Pakistani Politician: US Should Have a Marshall Plan for South Asia

By Yeco on Monday, March 11, 2019

The United States should announce a Marshall Plan for South Asia if it wants to compete with China in projecting its “economic soft power” in the region, according to Pakistan’s young political leader, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.

“I think (the) United States and other powers that are now considering cutting and running from Afghanistan, instead of jealously trying to undermine CPEC or the One Belt One Road should come and compete in good old-fashioned capitalism,” Bhutto-Zardari, the son of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said in an exclusive interview with VOA’s Urdu service. The Marshall Plan was a recovery plan that helped rebuild war-ravaged Europe.

Bhutto-Zardari now leads his mother’s Pakistan People’s Party, which now is one of the most important opposition parties in the country.

CPEC – the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is one of the projects under the One Belt, One Road, or OBOR, umbrella that connects China’s Xinjiang province to a deep-sea port in Gwadar, Pakistan.

The project includes Chinese investment and loans upward of $50 billion, and infrastructure and energy projects that the Pakistani government has termed a game changer for the struggling economy.

Some economists, however, have asked questions about transparency and warned of the dangers of falling into a debt trap. Pakistan is already facing a financial crisis and may have to get a bailout package worth billions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned that the United States would be opposed to any IMF loans that may be used to service Chinese debt. Pakistan has denied any links between CPEC and IMF loans.

Bhutto-Zardari said CPEC was a brainchild of his party, even though the government of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took credit for the project.

Bhutto-Zardari also criticized the current government of Prime Minister Imran Khan for insufficient engagement with Pakistan’s neighbors.

“I don’t believe that they’ve invested or engaged appropriately with Iran. Not this government, not the last government,” he said. “I don’t believe that we’ve had proper engagement with Afghanistan. I don’t believe we’ve had proper engagement with India. And as far as this government is concerned, I believe we could have better engagement with China.”

Answering a question about the recent escalation of India-Pakistan tensions, when a suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that India blamed on a Pakistan-based group brought the two countries to the brink of war, Bhutto-Zardari called Pakistan’s response “mature.” He did, however, accuse the Indian government of using the crisis for domestic political mileage before India’s parliamentary elections next month.

“It was a despicable politicization not only of a terrorist attack but potential nuclear war,” he said.

India has long accused Pakistan of harboring groups that carry out attacks on Indian soil. The Indian government also says it has given Pakistan proof of such militants and their activities in the past but that Pakistan has never taken appropriate action. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, recently said India has not provided proof that is acceptable in a Pakistani court.

In a speechto parliament recently, Bhutto-Zardari also criticized what is widely believed to be a policy introduced by Pakistan’s military to try to” mainstream” militant groups.

Bhutto-Zardari said the idea was against the unanimous decision of the country’s parliament that passed an initiative, called the National Action Plan, on how to deal with these groups.

“For us to even consider mainstreaming, there has to be policy input by those who should be making policy. There have to be confidence-building measures. You have to have re-education, de-radicalization, before we talk about re-integration. And of course the very first step should have been de-weaponization – none of which I believe has taken place,” he said.

Ali Furqan contributed to this report.
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