Just 50 years ago, the Aral Sea, which straddles the nations of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was the fourth largest lake in the world. But today it is mostly desert, and environmental groups are trying to save what is left. VOA’S Kevin Enochs reports.
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The world’s largest aircraft took off over the Mojave Desert in California Saturday, the first flight for the carbon-composite plane built by Stratolaunch Systems Corp., started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, as the company enters the lucrative private space market.
The white airplane called Roc, which has a wingspan the length of an American football field and is powered by six engines on a twin fuselage, took to the air shortly before 7 a.m. Pacific time (1400 GMT) and stayed aloft for more than two hours before landing safely back at the Mojave Air and Space Port as a crowd of hundreds of people cheered.
First flight ‘fantastic’
“What a fantastic first flight,” Stratolaunch Chief Executive Officer Jean Floyd said in a statement posted to the company’s website.
“Today’s flight furthers our mission to provide a flexible alternative to ground launched systems,” Floyd said. “We are incredibly proud of the Stratolaunch team, today’s flight crew, our partners at Northrup Grumman’s Scaled Composites and the Mojave Air and Space Port.”
The plane is designed to drop rockets and other space vehicles weighing up to 500,000 pounds at an altitude of 35,000 feet and has been billed by the company as making satellite deployment as “easy as booking an airline flight.”
Saturday’s flight, which saw the plane reach a maximum speed of 189 mph and altitudes of 17,000 feet, was meant to test its performance and handling qualities, according to Stratolaunch.
Demand for satellite deployment
Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, announced in 2011 that he had formed the privately funded Stratolaunch.
The company seeks to cash in on higher demand in coming years for vessels that can put satellites in orbit, competing in the United States with other space entrepreneurs and industry stalwarts such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Stratolaunch has said that it intends to launch its first rockets from the Roc in 2020 at the earliest. Allen died in October 2018 while suffering from non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma, just months after the plane’s development was unveiled.
“We all know Paul would have been proud to witness today’s historic achievement,” said Jody Allen, Chair of Vulcan Inc and Trustee of the Paul G. Allen Trust. “The aircraft is a remarkable engineering achievement and we congratulate everyone involved.”
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Experts meeting in emergency session at the World Health Organization agree the Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo does not constitute a public health emergency of international concern.
The experts say the Ebola outbreak does not pose a global threat since the deadly virus has not crossed any international borders. But they warn this is no time to sit back as the epidemic continues to spread. It says efforts to contain the disease must be redoubled.
The assessment follows a warning issued Friday by top Red Cross official Emanuele Capobianco who expressed concern about a possible regional spread of the Ebola virus after a recent spike in cases in the DRC.
The recent spike in Ebola infections has seen the number of cases rise to 1206, including 764 deaths. The current upsurge has occurred in remaining epicenters of the disease in conflict-ridden North Kivu province, notably in Butembo, Katwa, Vuhove and Mandima.
The WHO says these areas have been off limits because of insecurity, seriously hindering the Ebola response. Because of the lack of access, Executive Director of WHO Health Emergency Program, Mike Ryan, says the WHO has fallen behind in starting vaccination rings.
“Vaccination is proving to be a highly effective way of stopping this virus. But if we cannot vaccinate people, we cannot protect them. We can also not get people out to Ebola treatment units. If someone stays in the community with Ebola and begins to have diarrhea or bleeding, they will infect their families. So, getting an Ebola patient to safe and effective treatment center is also very important,” Ryan said.
In the last few days, Ryan says aid workers have been able to get back into these Ebola-affected communities. He says they have been able to begin vaccinations and implement other crucial Ebola-control measures.
The current Ebola outbreak is the worst ever in DRC and the second largest recorded after the 2014 epidemic in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people.
The WHO expert committee recommends scaling up community dialogue and participation of traditional healers to lessen community mistrust and gain its acceptance.
Because of the high risk of regional spread, the committee advises neighboring countries to accelerate current preparedness and surveillance efforts.
The WHO is appealing to the international community to support its Ebola-control operation. It says it desperately needs $148 million to keep the operation running until July. It warns it will not be able to end the epidemic if it does not have the money to implement essential programs.
For months, New York City has been fighting a measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community. The mayor finally declared a public health emergency April 9 because measles continue to spread among unvaccinated children. Parents who refuse to vaccinate now face heavy fines.
Brooklyn is a borough in New York City known for its tight-knit, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Women wear long, modest dresses, and the men are recognizable in large-brimmed hats and long black coats.
Vaccine mandatory
About 100,000 Orthodox Jews live in Brooklyn. It’s in this community where measles has been spreading since an unvaccinated child brought the virus back from a visit to Israel last October. The inability to contain the outbreak prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to declare a public health emergency.
“We have a situation now where children are in danger,” de Blasio said.
De Blasio ordered mandatory vaccinations in the Orthodox neighborhoods. Unvaccinated children will not be allowed to attend school, and their parents may face steep fines.
WATCH: Anti-Vaccine Parents Fuel Worst Measles Outbreak in 30 Years
Their religion does not prohibit immunization, and city health commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot says the duration of this outbreak is alarming.
“We’ve worked closely with the community religious leaders and schools to make sure that vulnerable people are kept safe during this outbreak and to challenge the dangerous misinformation that is being spread by a group of anti-vaxxers,” she said.
Schools honor emergency
The ParCare Community Health Network caters to Orthodox families. Gary Schlesinger is its chief executive. He told VOA that the private, religious schools these children attend will honor the terms of the emergency declaration.
“They were very clear that they will unequivocally deny any parent who does not vaccinate their children,” he said.
Schlesinger says about 100 families are solidly against vaccines because they mistakenly believe vaccines cause autism or even death. These are some of the same beliefs people in other, secular communities hold.
Safe vaccine
Dr. Camille Sabella at the Cleveland Clinic says multiple studies involving hundreds of thousands of children prove that the measles vaccine is safe.
“It really is an incredibly safe vaccine. We’ve been using it since the 1960s in this country, and it has an outstanding safety record,” he said.
There have been more than 400 measles cases in 19 states just this year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health officials are concerned because measles outbreaks can also be a sign that children aren’t being vaccinated against other deadly diseases, as well.
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New York City has declared a public health emergency amid an alarming spike in the number of measles cases among largely unvaccinated children. VOA’s Carol Pearson looks at why these parents are reluctant to vaccinate in the face of a serious measles outbreak.
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Even though the U.S. first landed on the moon 50 years ago this year, it’s never been — nor will it ever be — an easy thing to accomplish. The Israelis learned just how difficult it is. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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In the race to beat China in the fifth generation of wireless technology, known as 5G, U.S. President Donald Trump is announcing the largest-ever auction of radio frequencies and a $20 billion fund to build a rural fiber-optics backbone.
“We cannot allow any other country to outcompete the United States in this powerful industry of the future,” Trump said in the White House Roosevelt Room, flanked by a group of telecommunications tower climbers and farmers. “The race to 5G is a race that we must win.”
Starting Dec. 10, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will begin auctioning three chunks of millimeter-wave frequencies (upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz) for cellphone companies to use.
Some Trump allies had tried to persuade him to effectively nationalize this technology as a matter of national security.
Trump acknowledged that he considered such a plan — opposed by the FCC and others — but ultimately backed away from it.
“We don’t want to do that. It wouldn’t be nearly as good, nearly as fast,” Trump said.
“The idea of state-designed and -operated 5G networks in the U.S. makes no sense on its own terms. A competitive, lightly regulated market is the hallmark of the U.S. system. This has delivered success in 4G and will encourage investment and innovation in 5G,” London-based Gabriel Brown, a principal analyst at telecommunications research firm Heavy Reading, told VOA.
“It also makes no sense in relation to competition with China — these are different markets in different phases of development.”
Riley Walters, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, agreed, saying the “private sector is the most efficient way to distribute 5G capabilities, even if it’s not at the pace nationalization proponents would like to see. Deregulation should help cut the costs for domestic developers to move up their time horizon.”
Connecting America
5G — with speeds 100 times faster than the current 4G mobile internet — will allow the emergence of everything from so-called smart cities and farms to self-driving cars.
“We want Americans to be the first to benefit from this new digital revolution while protecting our innovators and our citizens,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “We don’t want rural Americans to be left behind.”
The $20.7 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, to come from existing FCC subsidy coffers, is intended to connect up to 4 million American homes over the next decade.
The expensive fiber rollout is seen as essential for carrying wireless network communications back to internet hubs.
“Intervention at this level will encourage private investment and accelerate coverage in these hard-to-reach areas — the economic and social benefits of rural coverage make it worth intervening to help make the market work,” Brown said.
“Creating a national fund to support these innovators is a great idea,” said Prakash Sangam, the founder of Tantra Analyst, which is involved in marketing and business development of wireless technology. “I also suggest that the U.S. government intervene and facilitate the resolution of conflicts between American technology companies so that they collaborate and effectively compete against the companies sponsored by foreign governments.”
Security concerns
One challenge is the lack of U.S. manufacturers of 5G network equipment, an arena where China’s Huawei and ZTE are set to dominate.
Trump’s 5G goals are in conflict with the Federal Trade Commission’s stance on Qualcomm, the world’s largest chipmaker. The FTC has sued the American company over anti-competitive pricing, according to technology analyst Patrick Morehead.
“Qualcomm is the country’s only hope for 5G and 6G leadership and with the FTC about to potentially hobble it, the U.S. will never be a leader, China will,” predicted Morehead, a former industry executive.
A State Department senior official on Wednesday said the security concerns about Huawei and ZTE extend to all companies headquartered in China, contending they are effectively “under direction” of the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s very important to distinguish how Western democracies operate relative to their private sector companies and vendors, and how the Chinese government operates with its companies,” said Ambassador Robert Strayer, deputy assistant secretary for cyber and international communications and information policy.
Strayer and other officials have warned that Huawei and ZTE could give China’s intelligence services secret access to sensitive communications networks and the ability to send commands to disrupt communications.
Trump did not mention the Chinese companies in his remarks Friday, but he said America’s 5G networks will “have to be guarded from the enemy.”
Riley, at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA that the United States “can still limit the proliferation of imports that have a security concern, but it will be hard for U.S. companies to compete in price in external markets.”
South Korea last week switched on its nationwide 5G network. South Korea-based Samsung is offering itself as a global alternative to Chinese equipment manufacturers, but it still lags Huawei and ZTE, as well as Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia.
Wireless companies operating in the United States, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, are deploying 5G this year, but widespread service for the majority of Americans could still be a decade away.
The radio spectrum coming up for auction will have very limited range, meaning small cell antennas will have to be mounted on about every fourth utility pole along streets, making 5G practical only in central business districts and other congested locations, such as stadiums, convention centers and shopping malls.
Lower frequencies, which are being licensed for 5G in several other countries, would need fewer cell sites, but that spectrum in the United States is held by satellite operators who are reluctant to give it up.
“There are proposals to free some of it for fixed wireless, and the mobile industry wants it for 5G,” Brown said.
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The team behind the Israeli spacecraft that crashed into the moon moments before touchdown was working Friday to try and piece together what derailed the ambitious mission, which sought to make history as the first privately funded lunar landing.
SpaceIL, the start-up that worked for over eight years to get the spacecraft off the ground, revealed that a technical glitch triggered a “chain of events” that caused the spacecraft’s engine to malfunction Thursday just 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) above the moon, making it “impossible to stop the spacecraft’s velocity.”
The main engine managed to restart soon after, but it was too late: the lander was on a collision course with the moon at 500 kilometers (310.7 miles) per hour. Radio signals from the spacecraft flat-lined as the scheduled touchdown time came and went, leading engineers to assume that the small spacecraft was scattered in pieces after slamming into the landing site.
The crew said it would conduct comprehensive tests next week to better understand what happened.
Had the mission succeeded, it would have made Israel the fourth nation to pull off a lunar landing — a feat only accomplished by the national space agencies of the U.S., Russia and China.
The failure was a disappointing end to a lunar voyage of 6.5 million kilometers (4 million miles), almost unprecedented in length and designed to conserve fuel and reduce price. The spacecraft hitched a ride on a SpaceX rocket launched from Florida in February.
For the past two months, the lander, dubbed Beresheet, Hebrew for “In the Beginning,” traveled around the Earth several times before entering lunar orbit — a first for a privately funded lander. Israel can count itself among seven nations that have successfully orbited the moon.
Although the crash dashed the hopes of engineers and enthusiasts around the world that had been rooting for the scrappy spacecraft’s safe arrival, the team emphasized that the mission was still a success for reaching the moon and coming so close to landing successfully.
Beresheet was about the size of a washing machine. It cost $100 million — more than the entrepreneurs had hoped to spend, but far less than a government-funded spacecraft.
After getting its start in the Google Lunar XPrize Competition, which ultimately ended last year without a winner, Beresheet’s lunar voyage gained momentum over the years, coming to be seen as test of Israel’s technological prowess and potential key to global respect.
“Israel made it to the moon, and Beresheet’s journey hasn’t ended,” said Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn, one of the project’s major sponsors. “I expect Israel’s next generation to complete the mission for us.”
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Cryptocurrency exchanges are growing in the Philippines, despite a downturn last year in the value of the virtual currencies, due to growing popular demand and lenience among regulators.
Authorities in the developing Southeast Asian country have permitted at least 29 exchanges of cryptocurrency following three that the central bank said it approved this week, according to domestic media reports.
That count, which is high for Asia, follows a total of 10 exchanges permitted by the central bank. The Cagayan Economic Zone Authority in the archipelago’s far north has issued 19 additional permits, the zone’s website said in October.
These exchanges feed into the development of a fast-growing financial technology, or fintech, sector in the Philippines, said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila.
“Fintech appears to be very advanced in the Philippines,” he said. Consumers, he said, “eventually look at the mobility of having it in mobile wallets, [which] gives them flexibility to use money.”
Uses for cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency, most notably its standard bearer Bitcoin, became an investment vehicle in much of the world about a decade ago. But a 70% drop in Bitcoin prices last year weakened enthusiasm for crypto overall.
Filipinos generally pick more traditional investments such as equities, Ravelas said, but young companies are eyeing cryptocurrency to raise capital, a process called initial coin offerings. Seven in 10 Filipinos have no bank account, he added, so virtual currency gives those consumers a new option for making payments.
That population would be able to jump on a currency source that’s open to anyone and transparent because of its online transaction ledger called the blockchain.
Government support
The central bank governor may see the cryptocurrency trade as part of his bigger plan to advance the country’s electronic payment systems, analysts say.
Cryptocurrency “probably goes toward those efforts at facilitating electronic payments. I think that’s the key point,” said Christian de Guzman, vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group in Singapore.
The 2016 National Payment Systems Act, among others, “bolsters the central bank’s capacity to foster the efficiency of payment systems as pipelines of funds in the financial market,” the authority’s governor Benjamin Diokno said in a speech last month.
The central bank and Securities and Exchange Commission are “working towards regulating cryptocurrencies to protect the Filipino people,” domestic Bitcoin and blockchain news website Bitpinas said in November. “This is a positive step towards adoption as this move will give users security and confidence in dealing with it.”
Said de Guzman: “A certain segment of the population is certainly very technically sophisticated.”
First mover advantage?
The Philippines, though later than much of East Asia in picking up cryptocurrency, would eventually stand out if regulators embrace rather than restrict it.
China and South Korea have placed curbs on certain types of crypto trade. Both banned initial coin offerings in 2017, and China ordered the closure of cryptocurrency exchanges as part of that move. South Korea has at least 21 exchanges.
Japan is widely seen as Asia’s most liberal place for cryptocurrency. That country, which has let 17 exchanges fully register, overtook China in 2017 as the biggest Bitcoin market in the world with 58 percent of the global volume. Japan declared Bitcoin legal tender in 2017.
The Philippines in its current groove should take a “first mover advantage,” said Kenneth Ameduri, financial analyst and CEO of the crypto-specialized news website Crush the Street in the United States.
“I think the Philippines understand that it’s going to be a very big deal to be involved with cryptocurrency, because it’s going to happen no matter what, and if they’re the ones to treat this capital best, the capital is going to flow there and the other jurisdictions are just going to completely miss out,” Ameduri said.
The Philippines might eventually look harder at the role of cryptocurrency in falsifying tax payments and paying for illegal drugs, de Guzman said. Taxation and drugs are already sticky issues without crypto.
Exchanges contacted for this report declined comment.
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A Russian court fined Facebook on Friday for failing to tell authorities where it stores Russian user data, Russian news agency reported, a ruling that highlights wrangling between tech giants and Russia as it ramps up Internet controls.
The court fined Facebook 3,000 roubles ($47) for not providing the information in line with legislation that requires social media companies to store user data on servers located in Russia.
The only tools Moscow currently has to enforce its data rules are fines that often amount to very small sums or blocking the offending online services, an option fraught with technical difficulties.
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In a twist, China has announced that it has persuaded Malaysia to resume a canceled rail project worth $10.7 billion. The sudden about-face by Kuala Lumpur, which had earlier rejected the Chinese-funded project, will be a big boost for China ahead of a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing later this month, say analysts.
China is hosting its second annual Belt and Road Forum from April 25 to 27 in Beijing. The event is likely to include the heads of state and governments of 40 different countries and officials from 60 others as Beijing tries to win more support for the trillion-dollar infrastructure and investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI.
In recent months, the initiative has faced tough challenges as Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Malaysia canceled or reduced the size of previously negotiated deals. Although Malaysia is back on board, it has forced China to accept a 30 percent reduction in the price of the project.
The reworked deal with Malaysia highlights how China is trying to face up to widespread criticism about the financing costs of its projects and concerns expressed by experts and government leaders around the world that the projects are nothing but diplomacy debt traps.
“I think China is trying to make changes. But it is trying to do too much too quickly and with too much skepticism facing it. No wonder it’s having a torrid time,” said Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London.
Analysts said it is likely that the forum will be mostly about optics, but some real deals could be finalized. Given the heavy criticism about the projects, there will be high expectations from participants, which Beijing has said will include 40 heads of states and governments.
“They will presumably want something more than mere protocol. Even the promise of deals is better than none at all,” Brown said.
Analysts add that, despite the criticism of the plan, which has been loud at times, the BRI has been able to attract dozens of foreign governments and has been backed by institutions like the World Bank because it is offering to build much-needed infrastructure and help foot the cost.
“The reason so many countries are interested in BRI is because China is offering something no one else is and there is genuine demand for what BRI represents,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.
Still, it has not been easy for Chinese leaders to wade through the skepticism and sometimes strong opposition to the program from the United States’ and China’s neighbor, India. Critics see BRI as China’s attempt to impose financial imperialism on economically weak but strategically located countries. Many have also raised questions because of the lack of transparency surrounding the projects.
Recently however, there have been signs China is modifying the program to suit the needs of its customers, particularly those like Malaysia and Italy, which are not as desperately in need of Beijing’s financial largesse and deep pockets. Italy recently joined the BRI bandwagon after visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping provided the kind of assurances Rome sought.
“Chinese regulators realize they need to be pragmatic if these projects are to be successful, especially where there is local pushback on political and societal levels,” said Andrew Polk, partner at Beijing-based consultancy firm Trivium China.
There are still serious questions about the kind of changes that Beijing is ready to make. Some analysts believe that China might offer better financial terms and stop its practice of flooding foreign projects with Chinese workers; however, they say Beijing is unlikely to make changes in crucial areas like the transparency of deals and Chinese companies involved in overseas projects.
“Beijing could make the terms of deals public, which would be a major signal of change, but no indications of that happening soon,” said Jonathan Hillman, director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“Greater transparency would constrain Beijing’s ability to funnel cash through BRI projects to its friends in high places,” he said.
There have been problems even in places where Chinese projects have proven to be successful in terms of implementation. For instance, Chinese companies have ensured the commercial success of the Greek port city of Piraeus. “But its political impact is mixed. Greeks might welcome Chinese investment, but they don’t want China’s environmental or labor practices,” Hillman said.
The U.S. recently described BRI as a “vanity project” and announced it would not send a high-level delegation to the forum. Analysts are wondering if the U.S. will stay away from the meeting altogether.
“The U.S. has made its position clear. It opposes the BRI. Attendance under the current circumstances with the trade war unresolved would be odd,” Brown said.
Haenle said he believes the U.S. should engage with the BRI along with its friends and partners.
“The U.S. is right to point out the flaws in the Belt and Road Initiative, but if it wishes to see them corrected, it must also put forward its own alternatives and refrain from knee-jerk reactions,” he said.
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The latest power outage started another tough week for factory owner Antonello Lorusso in the city of Valencia, once Venezuela’s industrial powerhouse.
For the past month, unprecedented nationwide blackouts paralyzed the factory and the rest of the country, cutting off power, water and cell service to millions of Venezuelans.
Lorusso’s packaging plant, Distribuidora Marina, had already struggled through years of hyperinflation, vanishing client orders, and a flight of employees. Now the situation was worse.
For the whole month of March, Lorusso said, his company produced only its single daily capacity: 100 tonnes of packaged sugar and grains. When Reuters visited on April 8, he was using a generator to keep one of his dozen packaging machines working to fulfill the single order he had received. Power had been on for a few hours, but was too weak to run the machines.
“There is no information, we don’t know if the blackouts will continue or not,” said Lorusso, who has owned the factory for over 30 years. He said the plant had just a day’s worth of power over the previous week.
Power has been intermittent since early March, when the first major blackout plunged Venezuela into a week of darkness.
Electricity experts and the opposition have called the government incompetent at maintaining the national grid. President Nicolas Maduro has accused the opposition and the U.S. government of sabotage.
Venezuela’s industry has collapsed during six years of recession that have halved the size of the economy. What is left is largely outside of the capital Caracas, the only big city that Maduro’s government has excluded from a power rationing plan intended to restrict the load on the system.
In Valencia, a few multinational companies like Nestle and Ford Motor Co cling on. But the number of companies based there has fallen to a tenth of the 5,000 there were two decades ago, when Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez became president, according to the regional business association.
‘The game is over’
The government said on April 4 that the power rationing plan meant Valencia would spend at most 3 hours a day without electricity, but a dozen executives and workers there said outages were still lasting over 10 hours. Generators are costly and can only power a fraction of a business’s operations, they said. Many factories have shut down.
“The game is over. Companies are entering a state of despair due to their inviability,” said an executive of a food company with factories in Valencia, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Industrial companies this year are operating below 25 percent of capacity, according to industry group Conindustria. It estimated companies lost about $220 million during the days in March without power, and would lose $100 million more in April.
Nestle’s factory, which produces baby food, halted during the first blackout in early March and operations again froze two weeks later, with employees sent home until May, according to Rafael Garcia, a union leader at the plant. He blamed the most recent stoppage on very low sales of baby food which cost almost a dollar per package, or about what a person on minimum wage earns in a week.
“My greatest worry is the closure of the factory,” said Garcia, as he sat at a bus stop on Valencia’s Henry Ford avenue, in the city’s industrial outskirts where warehouses sit empty and streets are covered in weeds.
Nestle did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Ford’s plant along the avenue was working at a bare minimum for several months, union leaders said. In December, the carmaker began offering buyouts to staff after it received no orders for 2019, they said. Ford, in December, said it had “no plans to leave the country.”
The outages have idled more than just factories. In the countryside, lack of power has prevented farmers from pumping water to irrigate fields.
Since January, farmers have sown 17,500 hectares of crops, a third of the area seeded last year, and they fear losing the harvest due to the lack of water, according to agricultural associations. In the central state of Cojedes, several rice growers have already lost their crops, farmers said.
“In the rural areas, the blackouts last longer,” said Jose Luis Perez, spokesman for a rice producers federation. Producers of cheese, beef, cured meats and lettuce told Reuters orders had dropped by half in March as buyers worried the food would perish once their freezers lost power in the next blackout.
Back in Valencia, Lorusso was preparing his factory for the new era of scarce power. He has converted one unused truck in his parking lot into a water tank. He plans to sell another to buy a second generator.
“We’ve spent years getting used to things. Then we were dealt this hard blow, and now we’re trying to find ways to cope,” he said.
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A top Red Cross official says he’s “more concerned than I have ever been” about the possible regional spread of the Ebola virus in Congo after a recent spike in cases.
Emanuele Capobianco spoke by phone ahead of a key World Health Organization meeting in Geneva later Friday about whether to declare the Ebola outbreak in northeastern Congo an international health emergency.
Capobianco, head of health and care at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, cited Congolese health ministry statistics announced on Thursday showing 40 new cases over two days this week.
He called that rate unprecedented in the current eight-month outbreak.
He cites lack of trust about Ebola treatment in the community and insecurity caused by rebel groups that has hurt aid efforts.
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As scientists get better at sifting through our past, more and more variations of human beings are turning up in archaeological digs. In the early 2000s there was the discovery in Indonesia of a tiny hominid called Flores man, this week an archaeologist says he has found the remains of another human cousin buried in a Philippine cave. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos on Thursday challenged retailers to hike their minimum wages to $16 an hour, prompting a comeback from Walmart Inc which asked its rivals to pay taxes.
“Today I challenge our top retail competitors (you know who you are!) to match our employee benefits and our $15 minimum wage,” the billionaire entrepreneur said in a letter to shareholders. “Do it! Better yet, go to $16 and throw the gauntlet back at us.”
The online retailer raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour for U.S. employees from November, giving in to critics of poor pay and working conditions at the company.
Some critics have said the hike was insufficient and note that Amazon paid zero U.S. federal income tax on more than $11 billion in profits before taxes in 2018, and received a $129 million tax rebate from the federal government.
Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, Dan Bartlett, responded to Bezos by tweeting, “Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?”
Walmart, which has raised its minimum wage twice since 2015, pays an entry wage of $11 per hour. CEO Doug McMillon has said Walmart’s average U.S. hourly wage is $17.50 including bonuses based on store performance, and excluding health care benefits.
The two retailers, which are fierce rivals, rarely go after one another other publicly.
Amazon’s wage hike came as U.S. unemployment was at a near two-decade low, with retailers and shippers competing for hundreds of thousands of workers for the all-important holiday shopping season.
Bezos said in his letter that the wage hike has benefited more than 250,000 Amazon employees and over 100,000 seasonal employees who worked during the last holiday season at Amazon sites in the United States.
Amazon’s third-party sales in 2018 accounted for 58 percent of total sales, up from 56 percent in 2017, Bezos said.
Amazon has said that it pays all the required taxes in every country where it operates, including $2.6 billion in corporate tax and reporting $3.4 billion in tax expense over the last three years.
“Corporate tax is based on profits, not revenues, and our profits remain modest given retail is a highly competitive, low-margin business,” according to recent Amazon statements.
Walt Disney Co on Thursday said its new family-friendly streaming service will cost $7 monthly or $70 annually with a slate of exclusive TV shows and movies from some of the world’s most popular entertainment franchises in a bid to challenge the digital dominance of Netflix.
The ad-free monthly subscription called Disney+ is set to launch on Nov. 12 and in every major global market over time, the company said. In addition to Disney films and TV shows, it will feature programming from the Marvel superhero universe, the “Star Wars” galaxy, “Toy Story” creator Pixar animation and the National Geographic channel.
The company said it has struck deals with Roku Inc and Sony Corp to distribute Disney+ on streaming devices and console gaming systems and expects it to be widely available on smart televisions, tablets, and other outlets by launch.
Disney kicked off its presentation to Wall Street analysts at its Burbank, California, headquarters on Thursday with a video that demonstrated the breadth of its portfolio, showing clips from dozens of classic TV shows and movies from “Frozen” and “The Lion King” to “Avatar” and “The Sound of Music.”
Executives said they see opportunities to take its ESPN+ sport streaming video service to Latin America and are looking into international expansion of its Hulu streaming video business, which offers movies and shows targeted to adults.
The entertainment giant is trying to transform itself from a cable television powerhouse into a leader of streaming media. Chief Executive Bob Iger in February called streaming the company’s “No. 1 priority.”
Wall Street has pinned high hopes on the new service, which analysts expect would cost about $7.50 monthly and lure about 7.2 million U.S. subscribers in 2020 and 13.66 million by 2021, according to a poll of analysts conducted by Reuters.
The digital push is Disney’s response to cord-cutting, the dropping of cable service that has hit its ESPN sports network and other channels, and the rise of Netflix Inc. The Silicon Valley upstart has amassed 139 million customers worldwide since it began streaming 12 years ago.
The Mouse House, as Disney is known, will join the market at a time when audiences are facing a host of choices, and monthly bills, for digital entertainment. Apple Inc, AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia and others plan new streaming services. To bolster its potential digital portfolio, Disney recently purchased film and TV assets from Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox and gained prized properties such as “Avatar.”
In a January regulatory filing, Disney reported losses of more than $1 billion for streaming-related investments in Hulu and technology company BAMtech.
Disney had been supplying new movies such as “Black Panther” and “Beauty and the Beast” to Netflix after their runs in theaters but ended that arrangement this year to feed its own streaming ambitions. The company estimated it is foregoing $150 million in licensing revenue this fiscal year by saving programming for its own platforms.
The Disney+ programming will draw in part from Disney’s deep library of classic family films. It also will include exclusive original content such as a live-action “Star Wars” series called “The Mandalorian,” a show focused on Marvel movie villain Loki, and animated “Monsters at Work,” inspired by hit Pixar movie “Monsters Inc.”
Some new Disney movies, such as a “Lady and the Tramp” remake, will go directly to the Disney+ app. Other new releases will appear on Disney+ after their run in theaters and after the cycle out of the home video sales window, executives have said.
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SpaceX launched its second supersized rocket and for the first time landed all three boosters Thursday, a year after sending up a sports car on the initial test flight.
The new and improved Falcon Heavy thundered into the early evening sky with a communication satellite called Arabsat, the rocket’s first paying customer. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in use today, with 27 engines firing at liftoff — nine per booster.
Eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX landed two of the first-stage boosters back at Cape Canaveral, side by side, just like it did for the rocket’s debut last year. The core booster landed two minutes later on an ocean platform hundreds of miles offshore. That’s the only part of the first mission that missed.
“What an amazing day,” a SpaceX flight commentator exclaimed. “Three for three boosters today on Falcon Heavy, what an amazing accomplishment.”
Launch from Apollo pad
The Falcon Heavy soared from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, using the same pad that shot Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago and later space shuttle crews.
Prime viewing spots were packed with tourists and locals eager to catch not just the launch but the rare and dramatic return of twin boosters, accompanied by sonic booms. The roads were also jammed for Wednesday night’s launch attempt, which was scuttled by high wind.
Because this was an upgraded version of the rocket with unproven changes, SpaceX chief Elon Musk cautioned in advance things might go wrong. But everything went exceedingly well. SpaceX employees at company headquarters in Southern California cheered every launch milestone and especially the three touchdowns.
“The Falcons have landed,” Musk said in a tweet that included pictures of all three boosters.
Tesla Roadster still in orbit
Musk put his own Tesla convertible on last year’s demo. The red Roadster, with a mannequin, dubbed Starman, likely still at the wheel, remains in a solar orbit stretching just past Mars.
The Roadster is thought to be on the other side of the sun from us right now, about three-quarters of the way around its first solar orbit, said Jon Giorgini, a senior analyst at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
A couple dozen ground telescopes kept tabs on the car during its first several days in space, but it gradually faded from view as it headed out toward the orbit of Mars, Giorgini added.
The Roadster could still look much the same as it did for the Feb. 6, 2018, launch, just not as shiny with perhaps some chips and flakes from the extreme temperature swings, according to Giorgini. It will take decades if not centuries for solar radiation to cause it to decompose, he said.
Air Force mission next
SpaceX plans to launch its next Falcon Heavy later this year on a mission for the U.S. Air Force. The boosters for that flight may be recycled from this one.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine last month suggested possibly using a Falcon Heavy, and another company’s big rocket, to get the space agency’s Orion capsule around the moon, minus a crew, in 2020. But the preferred method remains NASA’s own Space Launch System mega rocket, if it can be ready by then.
Bridenstine said everything is on the space table as NASA strives to meet the White House’s goal of landing astronauts back on the moon by 2024.
NASA’s Saturn V rockets, used for the Apollo moon shots, are the all-time launch leaders so far in size and might.
SpaceX typically launches Falcon 9 rockets. The Falcon Heavy is essentially three of those single rockets strapped together.
Until SpaceX came along, boosters were discarded in the ocean after satellite launches. The company is intent on driving down launch costs by recycling rocket parts.
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Uber Technologies Inc. has 91 million users, but growth is slowing and it may never make a profit, the ride-hailing company said Thursday in its initial public offering filing.
The document gave the first comprehensive financial picture of the company, which was started in 2009 after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night.
The filing underscores the rapid growth of Uber’s business in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders.
$3B loss from operations
The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to “increase significantly in the foreseeable future” and it “may not achieve profitability.” Uber lost $3.03 billion in 2018 from operations, excluding one-off gains.
The S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Uber had 91 million average monthly active users on its platforms, which include ride-hailing and Uber Eats, at the end of 2018. This was up 33.8 percent from 2017, but growth slowed from 51 percent a year earlier.
Uber in 2018 had revenue of $11.3 billion, up around 42 percent over 2017, again below the 106 percent growth in the prior year.
Uber set a placeholder amount of $1 billion but did not specify the size of the IPO. Reuters reported this week that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion worth of stock at a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion.
Investment bankers had previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion.
Uber will follow Lyft Inc. in going public. Shares in its smaller rival closed at $61.01 on Thursday, 15 percent below its IPO price set late last month, a development that has sent chilling signals to other tech startups looking to go public.
Adverse events
After making the public filing, Uber will begin a series of investor presentations, called a road show, which Reuters has reported will start the week of April 29. The company is on track to price its IPO and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early May.
Uber faces questions about how it will navigate any transition toward self-driving vehicles, a technology seen as potentially dramatically lowering costs but also as possibly disrupting its business model.
One advantage Uber will likely seek to play up to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it operates. Analysts consider building scale crucial for Uber’s business model to become profitable.
In addition to answering questions about the company’s finances, Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi will be tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the culture and business practices after a series of embarrassing scandals over the last two years.
Those have included sexual harassment allegations, a massive data breach that was concealed from regulators, use of illicit software to evade authorities and allegations of bribery overseas. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 from Expedia Inc. to replace company co-founder Travis Kalanick, who was ousted as CEO.
Uber said in its filing its ridesharing position in the United States and Canada was “significantly impacted by adverse publicity events” and that its position in many markets has been threatened by discounts from other ride-hailing companies.
A #DeleteUber campaign surged on social media in 2017 after a public relations crisis, which Uber said in its filing meant hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using its platform within days.
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An Israeli spacecraft lost contact with Earth moments before it was to land on the moon and crashed late Thursday, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately funded lunar mission.
The spacecraft lost communication with ground control as it was making its final descent to the moon. Moments later, the mission was declared a failure.
“We definitely crashed on surface of moon,” said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division of Israel Aerospace Industries. He said the spacecraft was in pieces scattered at the planned landing site.
Engine shut down
Doron said that the spacecraft’s engine turned off shortly before landing. By the time power was restored, he said the craft was moving too fast to land safely. Scientists were still trying to figure out the cause of the failure.
One of the inertial measurement units failed. And that caused an unfortunate chain of events we're not sure about,'' he said.The engine was turned off. The engine was stopped and the spacecraft crashed. That’s all we know.”
The incident occurred in front of a packed audience that included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was broadcast live on national television.
The small robotic spacecraft, built by the nonprofit SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, had hoped to match a feat that has been achieved only by the national space agencies of three countries: the U.S., Russia and China.
If at first you don't succeed, try try again,'' Netanyahu said. He vowed to put an Israeli spacecraft on the moonintact” in the next two years.
Scientists, who were giddy with excitement only seconds earlier, were visibly distraught, and celebrations at viewing centers across the country were dashed.
President Reuven Rivlin hosted dozens of youngsters at his official residence. The children, some wearing white spacesuits, appeared confused as the crash unfolded.
We are full of admiration for the wonderful people who brought the spacecraft to the moon,'' Rivlin said.True, not as we had hoped, but we will succeed in the end.”
Launched in February
The failure was a disappointing ending to a 6.5 million-kilometer (4 million-mile) lunar voyage, almost unprecedented in length, that was designed to conserve fuel and reduce price.
The spacecraft hitched a ride on the SpaceX Falcon rocket, launched from Florida in February. For the past two months, Beresheet traveled around the Earth several times before entering lunar orbit.
The U.S. space agency NASA broadcast the landing attempt live on its dedicated TV channels, as well as online.
“While NASA regrets the end of the SpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing of the Beresheet lander, we congratulate SpaceIL, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the incredible accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress,'' he added.I have no doubt that Israel and SpaceIL will continue to explore, and I look forward to celebrating their future achievements.”
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Lin Feng contributed to this report
WASHINGTON — A senior official in the U.S. Department of State said Wednesday the security concerns the government has raised related to Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE extend to all companies headquartered in China, saying they are effectively “under direction” of the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s very important to distinguish how Western democracies operate relative to their private sector companies and vendors, and how the Chinese government operates with its companies,” Ambassador Robert L. Strayer, deputy assistant secretary for Cyber and International Communications and Information Policy, said during a conference call with reporters.
Chinese companies don’t have the ability to mount a legal challenge to directives from the government, he said.
“They don’t have the ability to go to court,” he said. “They’re basically under direction — what we call extra-judicial command — of the Communist Party of China … to take actions, when requested by the government. There’s not the same rule of law that we consider a part of our daily lives and all of our business dealings in Western democracies.”
Strayer has been the point person in the Trump administration’s effort to block Chinese firms, and Huawei in particular, from participating in the global rollout of 5G mobile communications technology, insisting that Chinese law requires the companies to cooperate with Beijing’s intelligence services.
Strayer and other officials have warned that Chinese telecommunications firms could give Beijing intelligence services secret “back-door” access to sensitive communications networks, or that in a crisis, they could disrupt communications on command.
His comments were among the administration’s most comprehensive justification for trying to block Huawei’s entry into the U.S. and European 5G markets.
The push has included warnings that the United States may restrict the kind of intelligence it shares, even with close allies, if Washington is not satisfied that communications networks are secure.
To this point, the U.S. has failed to produce hard evidence of Huawei or ZTE engaging in espionage for the Chinese government. However, both firms have been charged with theft of intellectual property from rival companies, and Huawei has been charged with conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.
Huawei and ZTE have consistently denied they ever have or will act as an arm of Chinese intelligence services.
Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s 74-year-old founder and president, recently told the BBC that to do so would be economic suicide.
“Our sales revenues are now hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “We are not going to risk the disgust of our country and our customers all over the world because of something like that. We will lose all our business. I’m not going to take that risk.”
Samm Sacks, cybersecurity policy and China digital economy fellow at the New America Foundation, said, “The reality is the Communist Party of China uses the law selectively as an instrument as it sees fit.”
“What does worry me is this hypothetical situation of what Huawei would be employed to do by the Chinese government,” she told VOA. “I think we have to look at what Huawei as a commercial company needing to succeed in global markets have in its interest. And I’d say right now, it’s not in its interests to use those vulnerabilities. But that could change in another scenario.”
The U.S. effort so far has achieved only limited success in its efforts to get allies to impose blanket restrictions on the use of equipment made by Huawei and ZTE in cutting edge, high-speed, next-generation infrastructure. However, Strayer said that as countries around the world begin looking closely at the risks, he believes an eventual ban on the two firms’ products is inevitable.
He cited a recent analysis of Huawei equipment by government investigators in the United Kingdom, which found myriad security flaws and engineering deficiencies in devices meant to support the rollout of 5G in that country. In Germany, he said, a set of strict security standards under consideration would amount to a de facto ban on Chinese-made 5G equipment.
The proposed German standards would require that telecommunications systems “be sourced from trustworthy suppliers whose compliance with national security regulations and provisions for the secrecy of telecommunications and for data protection is assured.”
Given the legal requirement that Chinese companies assist the intelligence services —and keep that assistance secret — “It’s hard to see how Chinese technology would meet that standard for protection of data,” he said.
Strayer said the U.S. is encouraging all countries to consider similar regulations.
“We have encouraged countries to adopt risk-based security frameworks,” Strayer said. “And we think that a rigorous application of those frameworks, if they include supply chain security risk and the consideration of the relationship between a 5G vendor and their government, will lead, inevitably, to the banning of Huawei and ZTE.”
In his remarks Wednesday, Strayer focused on the issue of 5G infrastructure, but at times broadened his critique of Chinese government policies to encompass all firms based in China that deal with sensitive technology.
“We think it’s very important that countries deploying 5G networks consider the relationship between a foreign government, where a vendor is headquartered, and the companies themselves and that country,” he said. “When we look at the Chinese laws, relative to intelligence and national security, those allow the Chinese government to direct the actions of companies for their national interest of China, as well as require that companies to maintain secrecy, about the actions they’ve taken at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He also echoed a common complaint from Western countries that Chinese government policies provide advantages to domestic firms that give them an unfair competitive advantage when they move into international markets.
“The Chinese government, through state-owned banks and other sources, has provided in some cases zero percent interest, 20-year loan offers, which are not commercially reasonable,” he said. “That kind of unfair playing field is not one that Western technology should have to compete with. It should be a level playing field for technology vendors.”
In addition, he said, government-supported “cross subsidization” allows Chinese firms another avenue by which they can undercut the prices of Western firms.
“They can get large profits on what they sell into the Chinese market, which they largely have under their control through the government, and then use those subsidies to then offer lower prices in our markets in the West.”
The arched stone-built hall in Jerusalem venerated by Christians as the site of Jesus’ Last Supper has been digitally recreated by archaeologists using laser scanners and advanced photography.
The Cenacle, a popular site for pilgrims near Jerusalem’s walled Old City, has ancient, worn surfaces and poor illumination, hampering a study of its history.
So researchers from Israel’s Antiquities Authority and European research institutions used laser technology and advanced photographic techniques to create richly detailed three-dimensional models of the hall built in the Crusader era.
The project helped highlight obscure artwork and decipher some theological aspects of the second-floor room, built above what Jewish tradition says is the burial site of King David.
“We managed, in one of the… holiest places in Jerusalem, to use this technology and this is a breakthrough,” Amit Re’em, Jerusalem district archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told Reuters of the project, which began in 2016.
Re’em pointed to reliefs of what he described as the symbols of the “Agnus Dei,” a lamb that is an emblem of Christ, and the “Lion of Judah” on keystones in the hall’s vaulted ceiling.
“It tells the story of this room,” Re’em said. “It delivers the message of the Last [Supper] Room, Christ as a Messiah, as victorious, as a victim — and the lion, the lion is a symbol of the Davidic dynasty. They combine together in this room.”
Some archaeologists have questioned whether the room is the actual venue of the Last Supper, the final meal which the New Testament says Jesus shared with disciples before his crucifixion.
Ilya Berkovich, a historian at the INZ research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who worked on the project, said the endeavor opens “incredibly new horizons” with enormous potential.
The world will need new breakthroughs to tackle the growing threat of climate change. Whoever comes up with them stands to make a lot of money. And the places where those entrepreneurs do business will reap the benefits. Greentown Labs outside Boston, Massachusetts, wants to play a major role in spawning new clean technology. VOA’s Steve Baragona went to have a look.
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Scientists have been monitoring what black holes do to the space around them for decades. Their immense gravity warps time and space in a way that Albert Einstein predicted and that researchers can see. But they’ve never seen a black hole until now. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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