Oceanographers often say we know much more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than we do about nearly 70 percent of our own planet. That is because most of the Earth is covered in water, most of it deeper than 200 meters. There are several initiatives to map the oceans’ floors and the latest comes from Japan. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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In Thailand, the Giant African Snail, once condemned as a slimy pest that ruins crops, is now being bred for the same reason some people found them so unappealing in the first place — their slime. Experts say the slime produced by these giant snails is full of collagen and other ingredients that can regenerate skin cells for use in the cosmetics industry. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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A new study by Johns Hopkins University says urban foraging, the act of finding naturally growing, edible food in urban settings in the U.S. is on the rise. But before setting out with basket and blade, experts recommend would-be foragers to take classes to determine what’s edible and what might make you sick. Fortunately, foraging classes are cropping up across the country. Faith Lapidus reports on one of them.
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Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan and other companies have pledged a total of more than $350,000 toward an effort to repeal Seattle’s newly passed tax on large employers intended to combat homelessness.
Just days after the Seattle City Council approved the levy, the No Tax On Jobs campaign, a coalition of businesses, announced it would gather signatures to put a referendum on the November ballot to repeal it.
Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan, Kroger and Albertsons each promised $25,000 to the effort last week, according to a report filed by the campaign. The Washington Food Industry Association pledged $30,000.
Referendum backers will have to gather 17,632 signatures of registered Seattle voters by June 14 to get the measure on the ballot.
The so-called head tax will charge businesses making at least $20 million in gross revenues about $275 per full-time worker each year. The tax would begin in 2019 and raise about $48 million a year to build affordable housing and provide emergency homeless services.
Opponents say the Seattle measure is a tax on jobs and questioned whether city officials are spending current resources effectively.
Worker and church groups and others praised the tax as a step toward building badly needed affordable housing in an affluent city where the income gap continues to widen and lower-income workers are being priced out.
The clash over who should pay to solve the city housing crisis that’s exacerbated by Seattle’s rapid economic growth featured weeks of tense exchanges, raucous meetings and a threat by Amazon, the city’s largest employer, to stop construction planning on a 17-story building near its hometown headquarters.
Amazon has resumed planning the downtown building, but the company remains “apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here,” said Drew Herdener, Amazon’s vice president for global corporate and operations communications.
Four council members initially pitched an annual tax of $500 per full-time employee before a compromise proposal lowered the tax rate after they could not muster six votes needed to override a potential veto by Mayor Jenny Durkan.
The mayor signed the head tax on May 16, saying “we must make urgent progress on our affordability and homelessness crisis.”
Seattle’s action came as cities around San Francisco consider business taxes to help offset issues created by the growth of tech companies.
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Starbucks Corp. on Wednesday revealed details of the employee anti-bias training program that will take place behind closed doors at 8,000 U.S. company-owned cafes on the afternoon of May 29.
Starbucks announced plans to shutter stores and corporate offices to train 175,000 employees after the controversial April 12 arrests of two black men, who were detained for hours after the manager of a Philadelphia Starbucks called police because they had not made purchases and refused to leave.
The arrests of Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, who were waiting to meet a friend, sparked protests and calls for a boycott of the coffee chain known for its diverse workforce and liberal stances on issues such as gay marriage.
Starbucks said the first training on May 29 “will serve as a step in a long-term journey to make Starbucks even more welcoming and safe for all.”
It will include videos featuring Starbucks executives such as Chief Executive Kevin Johnson, Executive Chairman and co-founder Howard Schultz, board member Mellody Hobson, hip hop artist Common, store managers and experts from the Perception Institute. Employees also will view a film called “You’re Welcome” by Stanley Nelson and participate in discussion and problem-solving sessions on identifying and avoiding bias in every day situations.
Starbucks said the long-term program is being designed and developed with input from researchers, social scientists, employees and other advisers.
Those partners include consultancy SY Partners — which worked with Starbucks to reinvent itself after a business crisis spawned by the “Great Recession”; the Perception Institute; Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; and Heather McGhee, president of public policy group Demos.
Since the Philadelphia incident, Starbucks has said it will allow people to sit in its cafes and use its restrooms without making a purchase. It also said it has outlined procedures for dealing with customers who are disruptive, using tobacco, drugs or alcohol or sleeping in its cafes.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday “a different structure” is needed in trade negotiations with China, but he did not provide further details on the kind of change he seeks.
“Our trade deal with China is moving along nicely,” Trump said in his Twitter post Wednesday morning, “but in the end we will probably have to use a different structure in that this will be too hard to get done and to verify results after completion.”
The stock market reacted negatively after Trump cast doubt on trade negotiations with China but ultimately trimmed its losses, ending the day in the positive territory and gained 52.40 points, or 0.21 percent.
Trump said on Tuesday he was neither pleased nor satisfied with how the recent trade talks with China went, but added, “They’re a start.”
After two days of trade talks between the two countries in Washington last week, China agreed to “substantially reduce” the $375 billion annual trade surplus it has over the U.S. by buying more American goods, but there was no mention of any specific import and export targets in the statement agreed to by the two countries.
On Capitol Hill, concerns appear to be mounting on Trump’s approach to trade talks with China.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas cautioned Wednesday that the United States needs to remain “steely-eyed” and make sure “China isn’t playing us for fools.”
Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan warned, “It’s important we not only talk tough about China, but actually be tough with China.”
“I am really concerned about the president’s hemming and hawing over the last few days when it comes to China. I’m worried that President Xi [Jinping] is crafting a much better deal than President Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Tuesday.
On trade with China, Schumer added that he is “closer to the president’s view” than he was to the views of former Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and a longtime critic of China, said Wednesday that the U.S. needs a “structural rebalance” of trade with China, not a “dollar rebalance.”
In a Twitter post, Rubio said he has urged Trump to “follow his initial instincts on China,” and he also asked Trump to “listen to those who understand that a short-term trade deal that sounds good but poses long-term danger is a bad deal.”
According to U.S. media reports, infighting between free-trade advocates and protectionists within Trump’s trade team has led to contradicting policy pronouncements and public statements on trade negotiations with China.
For example, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States would hold off on imposing tariffs on China. But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said hours later the tariffs were still on the table. Earlier this month, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, known for his protectionist views, reportedly feuded with Mnuchin on his approach to trade talks during their trip to Beijing.
The recent rounds of trade talks are aimed at avoiding a full-blown trade war between the United States and China.
In April, Trump imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and the Chinese retaliated with tariffs of their own. Trump announced he had instructed the U.S. trade representative to consider whether tariffs on another $100 billion worth of Chinese goods would be appropriate following China’s announcement.
Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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President Donald Trump’s top health official said Wednesday that the U.S. and global partners will “take the steps necessary” to try to contain a new Ebola outbreak, asserting that the fight against infectious diseases is one of the administration’s top priorities for the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency taking the lead.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar stopped short of predicting whether the outbreak in Congo that’s believed to have killed at least 27 people will be contained, but he praised WHO’s early response and vowed: “If it spreads, we will take further actions.”
Azar’s comments on Ebola came in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, which also touched on universal health care, U.S. prescription-drug prices, and the recent revelations of a $1.2 million payout by Swiss drugs giant Novartis last year to Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Novartis, one of the world’s largest pharma companies, said Cohen was hired to advise on how the Trump administration might approach health care policy. Experts have pointed out that Novartis needs FDA approval for the sale of its drugs and that company officials have spoken approvingly of rolling back the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, a Trump campaign promise largely unfulfilled.
“I don’t and won’t comment on the particulars of any individual situation,” said Azar, a former executive with drugmaker Eli Lilly.
“The president has talked about how extensively ‘pharma’ generally spends money on lobbying. And we have said: You really don’t need to spend that money on lobbying because the president and the secretary have been very transparent about where we are going with drug prices: We’re going to lower drug prices in the United States,” he said.
The response to the Ebola outbreak by WHO and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has emerged as a major concern as ministers like Azar and his counterparts from other nations gather this week for the World Health Assembly in Geneva. The conclave lays out the agenda of the U.N. agency, which reaps hundreds of millions in U.S. funding each year.
“I think it best not to make predictions when dealing with infectious disease,” Azar said cautiously, when asked if the outbreak will be contained. “We will take the steps necessary, we will act aggressively, forcefully, in partnership across the world community to do everything to contain it.”
“I think that what we’re seeing is that we’re taking it very seriously from Day One,” he said.
A day earlier, Azar told the Assembly the U.S. was committing an additional $7 million for the Ebola response, raising its total to $8 million. The WHO has launched a “strategic response plan” for itself and partner organizations that seeks nearly $26 million to battle the outbreak, a figure that’s expected to rise.
“We’re also grateful for other countries that have stepped up to the plate. And we hope others will do the same,” Azar added.
Azar said the “first and foremost mission” that the U.S. and the world community look to the WHO for is its “central role around infectious disease and emergency preparedness and response.”
Azar also underscored a Trump administration grievance: that other developed countries are “free riding off U.S. investment and innovation” in medicines and health care. The White House says countries that regulate the price of drugs contribute to higher costs in the U.S. and keep their own costs artificially low.
Azar said he delivered that message to his peers in Geneva.
“It has been a thoughtful response,” he said, when asked about their reaction. “It has not been reflexive, it has been a sense of, ‘We’re in this together. We do need to work to support innovation.’”
But he said he was leaving the details to others.
“I’m not here to do trade negotiations. I have delivered the message and said our trade negotiators are coming: Be ready!” he said with a laugh. “I have said we have our own job: The president is going to bring down American drug costs. But they’ll have their job.”
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When Ebola broke out in West Africa in late 2013, no one was prepared. A potential vaccine had been in limbo since a previous outbreak a decade earlier. Governments dragged their feet while failing to recognize the risks the outbreak carried. Local health workers were quickly overwhelmed. And aid agencies were scrambling to catch up.
By the time the epidemic was brought under control in 2016, more than 11,300 people had died in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and the costs had risen to $4.3 billion.
Flash forward to May 8, when word emerged about a possible Ebola outbreak in a remote village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Within two days, the DRC had dispatched experts to the scene. International agencies shipped in personnel, mobile medical labs and a batch of vaccine that had been tested during the West African outbreak.
Painful lessons from the last Ebola outbreak are being applied in the current one, in hopes of limiting its scope.
‘Quick and robust response’
“The coordinated action is essential,” said Tarik Jasarevic, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), which so far is reporting 27 deaths among 51 cases of hemorrhagic fever.
“We know how damaging Ebola can be in the communities,” Jasarevic told VOA in a phone interview from Geneva. “And we have to mount a quick and robust response not to get to the point where a transmission chain would get out of control.”
But concerns remain that the virus could elude containment efforts.
The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, reported that three patients left an isolation ward at a treatment center in the port city of Mbandaka sometime between Sunday and Tuesday. Two of the patients died; a third had been scheduled for discharge.
“You can imagine having the Ebola virus in a community is a cause of concern for the local population,” Jasarevic said. The city has roughly a million residents.
The Associated Press quoted MSF emergency coordinator Henry Gray as saying in a statement Wednesday, “One of the men died at home and his body was brought back to the hospital for safe burial with the help of the MSF teams; the other was brought back to the hospital yesterday morning and he died during the night.”
Thursday brought an alarming new development: MSF said that the two patients who died first had attended a prayer meeting with 50 people, Reuters reported.
Every epidemic has its unique challenges. In this case, the villages initially affected were in remote locations. Land had to be cleared, first for helicopters and then planes.
With quick action came the need for funding. Last Friday, the WHO requested $26 million. More than half of that had been pledged as of Tuesday, with the United States committing $8 million of the amount.
Jasarevic said the requested amount was small, given the costs of the last outbreak.
“It’s better to spend more today than to be forced to spend much, much more afterward, because we know what damage, economic damage, was done to the countries in West Africa in 2014,” Jasarevic said.
One upside
The repeated outbreaks have had the positive side effect of developing a core of health workers whose experience is proving priceless, including those in the DRC, now dealing with its ninth outbreak.
“Obviously, they are leading the response,” Jasarevic said of the Congolese.
The DRC’s health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, discussed the country’s experience in responding to the current outbreak. In a separate phone interview Monday with VOA’s French to Africa service, he confirmed that the first patient to test positive for Ebola in the northwestern Bikoro health zone had been discharged.
“From the start, the sick people were put in good conditions,” Kalenga said. “All the complications they developed were correctly treated, and they were healed and discharged. It is not unusual. People survived Ebola in the past.”
He added that WHO also had created an international emergency medical team roster, which includes experts who’ve participated in previous outbreaks.
The experts include anthropologists, who can help explain how individuals can safeguard themselves and others. The experts can instruct that anyone showing symptoms consistent with the virus, such as flu-like symptoms, “should be brought to the treatment center so they don’t affect other people,” Jasarevic said.
Health experts also want to increase awareness of safe burial practices, limiting exposure to the body of someone who has died of the infectious disease. It can spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.
The bottom line now is to keep the outbreak from spreading.
Kalenga, the health minister, emphasized to VOA that “one must know that the virus is present in the forest, and cannot be easily eradicated. In fact, it is a challenge for world scientists.
“The measures taken by the DRC include always having strict monitoring guidelines, and when a case is detected, we want a very effective response,” he said. “The most important thing is an effective response based on case detection, contacts monitoring, and implementation of hygiene measures in all public areas and homes, and the other aspect is burials, which must be secured.”
The vaccine is being used first on health workers and the friends and relatives of those who already have been infected.
If these precautions and responses all work, the aid agencies and various governments soon will be looking for new lessons.
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This week marks six months since Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa took office, after Robert Mugabe gave in to military pressure and resigned.
During the weekend, the 75-year-old Mnangagwa told supporters that since he took over, a lot had improved.
He says Zimbabwe’s annual foreign direct investment had been around $400 or 500 million, but for the past five months it has gone to more than $15 billion committed to investment in the country, with international companies and countries such as Canada, South Africa, China, Britain and the United States coming to invest in power generation and water.
Last Tuesday, the British gave $100 million to aid toward trying to eliminate Zimbabwe’s cash crisis, Mnangagwa said.
The country’s methane gas reserves have improved as well, he added.
“After about three and half years, we should be able to produce eight million liters of fuel per day,” Mnangagwa said. “The country only consumes five million [liters] per day — three million surplus per day. Zimbabwe will prosper, it is going to develop. Zimbabwe will shine not only in SADC [Southern African Development Community], but also in Africa because Zimbabwe is in good hands. Our political party ZANU-PF is a revolutionary party, it caters for the interests of the people.”
Chido Masasai, an unemployed former media student, says Zimbabwe’s people have yet to see the money the president is talking about. She says there is still a shortage of cash, and the black market continues to operate.
What she does see is a greater expression of political views — a significant change from the Mugabe era when authorities regularly harassed the president’s critics and opponents.
“But in terms of freedom of expression, a lot more people are liberal with their views and opinions. You find that there are a lot of political parties that have come into the fore,” Masasai said.
Harare-based economist John Robertson says it is too early for Zimbabwe’s economy to fully recover from Mugabe’s populist policies, which drove away most foreign investment.
“The economy is still in great difficulty, but remember that the difficulties we face were built slowly into the system by 38 years of very badly chosen economic policies, and I think that the media is largely responsible in increasing the expectations of the population beyond what was reasonably possible within a short period of time,” he said.
Robertson added that Mnangagwa might make major policy changes, such as compensating white farmers for land that was confiscated during the Mugabe years, and ensuring that black farmers can get bank loans instead of depending on government handouts.
“I think this is why the president is waiting for the elections,” he said. “Behind him he would have increased amounts of courage to make changes that will prove unpopular to the people who thought they achieved what they were expecting.”
The president is expected to announce a date for the elections soon, which could place in July or August.
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Health Experts at the World Health Assembly in Geneva agree the next few weeks will be crucial in determining whether the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo can be contained and prevented from spreading to highly-populated urban areas.
Two weeks have elapsed since the first laboratory-confirmed case of Ebola was discovered in the remote, rural town of Bikoro in DR Congo’s northwestern Equateur Province.
Soon after the Ebola outbreak was declared May 8, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and several associates went to the region to assess the situation.
Tedros said he was pleased by the government’s quick response.
“The government had already triggered the community committees so that communities can take the ownership and contribute, and they are going house to house to identify cases and to identify contacts.Starting from the Government leadership, everything is triggered,” he said. “We are watching it around the clock, 24/7, and we hope it will have a better outcome.”
This rapid response to the current emergency is a sea change from the way the WHO and other agencies reacted to the West African Ebola epidemic.More than 11,000 people were killed before it was brought under control in 2016.
This is the 9th Ebola outbreak in DRC since the disease was simultaneously discovered in DRC and South Sudan in 1976. In the eight previous outbreaks, Ebola occurred in either isolated rural areas or in small towns where the disease remained largely confined.
Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General, Emergency Preparedness and Response, said the current outbreak has features of two previous typologies — a combination of rural villages, and larger towns and cities. These factors “have given us concern that the outbreak has the potential to expand,” he said.
“First is the involvement of a town — Mbandaka — which is the capital of the Equateur Province in that region with a population of more than 1 million people,” he added. “Secondly, that town is on the Congo River and its tributaries, which ultimately connects this outbreak potentially to Kinshasa and also to surrounding countries such as the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.”
He said five health care workers in Mbandaka have been infected with the virus, which is a potential signal for further amplification. He noted there are 58 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola, including 27 deaths.He said health agencies and the government are actively following 600 contacts to learn the specific locations of the outbreak.
“It is really the detective work of epidemiology that will make or break the response to this outbreak,” he said. “It is documenting how people are getting infected and, therefore, managing control, the control of transmission. … We are following three separate chains of transmission, and each one has the potential to expand, if not controlled.”
One potentially powerful tool for containing the spread of Ebola is an experimental, protective vaccine that was not available during the West African epidemic. More than 7,500 doses of the vaccine have been sent to DRC.
Salama said a ring vaccination program began Monday in Mbandaka.
“This is not mass immunization,” he noted. “This is highly targeted ring vaccination where concerned or probable cases are identified and then each and every contact is traced and vaccinated, and then the contacts of those contacts are then traced and vaccinated, forming protective rings around that case — to protect the people themselves — the contacts, but also to prevent further community transmission.”
Salama said this is the same approach used in the 1970s for the elimination of smallpox.
Regional risk
On a regional level, the World Health Organization has designated nine neighboring countries, which share porous borders with DRC at high risk of Ebola. Those most at risk are the Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.The others include Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said WHO is helping these countries scale up preparedness so they can detect, investigate, and manage the disease.
“We are helping countries to pre-position the supplies that they will need, including personal protective equipment, infra-red thermometers, rapid diagnostic test kits and other critical supplies,” said Moeti. “We are working with members states and partners at all levels to scale up surveillance, detection, case management at the border areas surrounding the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
Salama said the exceptionally rapid, robust response to the outbreak and strong multi-partner effort bodes well for the work ahead.
“It is not over yet,” he cautioned. “We are really just at the beginning … we are on the epidemiological knife-edge of this response.The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we are going to be able to keep it under control.”
The World Health Organization is appealing for $26 million to keep the operation going for the next six months.It says strong, continued international support is essential for combating this deadly disease.
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Twitter says it’s adding special labels to tweets from some U.S. political candidates ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Twitter says the move is to provide users with “authentic information” and prevent spoofed and fake accounts from fooling users. The labels will include what office a person is running for and where. The labels will appear on retweets as well as tweets off of Twitter, such as when they are embedded in a news story.
Twitter, along with Facebook and other social media companies, has been under heavy scrutiny for allowing their platforms to be misused by malicious actors trying to influence elections around the world.
The labels will start to appear next week for candidates for governor and Congress.
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Ethiopia’s state-run telecoms monopoly has agreed to allow some local firms to provide internet services through its infrastructure, a move seen as spurring competition and expanding the data market, officials said.
Ethio Telecom has more than 16 million subscribers of internet services in the country of over 100 million people.
It generated over 27.7 billion birr ($1 billion) in revenues in the first nine months of 2017/18, 70 percent of which was earned from mobile services and 18 percent from internet.
“Our objective of signing VISP [virtual internet service provider] agreements is to increase subscriptions,” said Abdurahim Ahmed, the company’s head of communications.
“There may be price reductions. There will be competition among themselves — that is the core idea,” he told Reuters.
Abdurahim said eight firms have signed up to provide the services, which include different internet packages. Foreign companies were not allowed to provide services, he said.
Ethiopia is one of few African countries to still have a state monopoly in telecoms. The companies that signed agreements with Ethio Telecom have either just been established to sign up for this new business or they were previously doing other business.
Addis Ababa has ruled out liberalizing the telecoms sector, saying the revenue it generates was being spent on infrastructure projects such as railways.
Abdurahim said the decision to allow private companies to sell services was not a precursor to fully liberalizing the sector.
“This has nothing to do with that. They will be providing downstream services,” he said, referring to data sent from an existing network service provider.
While Ethio Telecom has consistently increased annual revenue, vast parts of the country — including the capital — still suffer from occasionally patchy mobile reception and internet service.
The low internet penetration and poor quality of service in Ethiopia is often a drag on businesses and is especially seen as an obstacle to technology startups such as those that have thrived in neighboring Kenya.
Ethiopia maintains a tight grip on several other industries, with foreign firms also barred from the banking and retail sectors.
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Two infected patients who fled from an Ebola treatment center in a Congo city of 1.2 million people later died, an aid group said Wednesday while asserting that “forced hospitalization is not the solution to this epidemic.”
As the number of suspected Ebola cases continued to rise, experts emphasized that more community engagement is needed to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
Three patients left of their own accord from the isolation zone of the Wangata hospital in Mbandaka city between Sunday and Tuesday, said Henry Gray, emergency coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres.
One patient had been about to be discharged, he said.
“The two others were helped to leave the hospital by their families in the middle of the night on Monday. One of the men died at home and his body was brought back to the hospital for safe burial with the help of the MSF teams; the other was brought back to the hospital yesterday morning and he died during the night,” Gray said in a statement.
Hospital staff made every effort to convince the patients and their families not to leave and to continue treatment, Gray said.
Three Ebola deaths have been confirmed since Congo’s health ministry announced the current outbreak of the often lethal hemorrhagic fever on May 8. It was not immediately clear if the two deaths reported by MSF were confirmed Ebola ones.
Congo’s health ministry on Wednesday announced six new suspected cases in the rural Iboko health zone in the country’s northwest and two in Wangata. There are now 28 confirmed Ebola cases, 21 probable ones and nine suspected. Overall the death toll stands at 27.
“We’re on the epidemiological knife’s edge of this response. The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we’re going to be able to keep it under control,” Dr. Peter Salama, the World Health Organization emergencies chief, told a World Health Assembly session Wednesday.
Worrying factors include the spread of confirmed cases to Mbandaka city and the fact that five health workers have been infected, signaling “a potential for further amplification,” he said. Front-line workers are especially at risk of contracting the virus, which spreads in contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, including the dead.
Finally, Salama said, the outbreak has “three or four separate epicenters,” making it more challenging to contain. “It’s really the detective work of epidemiology that will make or break the response to this outbreak. It’s documenting how people are getting infected and therefore managing to control the transmission,” he said.
“We are following three separate chains of transmission,” he said. “One associated with a funeral that took place in a neighboring town of Bikoro; one associated with a visit to a health care facility more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) away in the small village of Iboko and one where we’re still gathering data on that’s related to a church ceremony.”
WHO is accelerating efforts with nine countries neighboring Congo to try to prevent the Ebola outbreak from spreading beyond the border.
The top two priorities are Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo near the epicenter of the outbreak, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s director for Africa, told the WHA session. The other countries are Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and, to a lesser extent, Uganda.
WHO began vaccinations this week and is using a “ring vaccination” approach, targeting the contacts of people infected or suspected of infection and then the contacts of those people. More than 600 contacts have been identified, WHO said.
There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
The UK on Wednesday pledged another 5 million pounds ($6.6 million) to help combat the outbreak.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said simply: “We are watching it around the clock, 24-7.”
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In this arid stretch of Kajiado County, where worsening heat and drought have been tough on livestock farmers, Arnold Ole Kapurua is experimenting with a hot new crop: chilis.
Ole Kapurua, 29, a farmer and agronomist, now grows two acres of the fiery pods — and is training other farmers to do the same — as a way to protect their incomes in the face of harsher weather linked to climate change.
“With time we realized that we weren’t making good money as our livestock income stagnated,” he said. “During drought we lost our herds to hunger and diseases while during the rainy season we lost some to floods making us live on a lean budget.”
But after a bit of research, “I realized that chilis had climate friendly features,” he said.
While some farmers still rely entirely on livestock in the region, a growing number are now concentrating their energy on farming chili, which can be grown with limited amounts of water, said Samuel Ole Kangangi, another new chili farmer.
Over the last five years, more than 100 farmers in the region have begun growing chili, most after trying other crops, including maize and beans, that didn’t cope as well with drought and brought in little money, the farmers said.
Well-managed chili farms can produce an ongoing harvest over six months, with an acre of land producing up to two tons of peppers a week, Ole Kapurua said.
That level of harvest can bring as much as 80,000 Kenyan shillings ($800) a season, he said.
“That cannot be compared to livestock rearing as one cannot afford to be selling a cow every week, thus making chili farming a better option,” said the farmer.
Solomon Simingor, another farmer in Kajiado County, said a farmer with at least two acres of land can earn as much as three times more with chili than with cattle, in his experience.
To provide enough water to keep their plants irrigated, farmers in the region are turning to building small dams to catch water in the rainy season.
Mulch around the plants — usually grass or plastic — also helps hold onto limited water and keep down weeds.
Kenyan farmers have been growing and exporting chilies to Britain, Germany, Norway and France for about 10 years. Chili is also sold in local markets and supplied to supermarkets.
Many of the new farmers also have turned to eating the vitamin-rich peppers at home — often fried with onions and meat — in a dietary change for families in the region.
Now, “when children are asked to fetch vegetables from the farm, they also fetch chili as to them it is part and parcel of their diet,” Ole Kapurua said.
Paul Rangenga, a chili farming expert who has been advising farmers on taking up the crop and who runs a produce company, said he believes chlli can provide a workable alternative for herders dealing with worsening drought stress.
“Chili farming is a long-term form of investment and the risks involved are minimal, as the crops are drought resistant and well adapted to arid regions,” he said.
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Turkey’s currency has fallen to a record low against the dollar amid concerns about an outflow of investor capital and the country’s ability to manage the situation.
The lira weakened to over 4.80 per dollar on Wednesday, down some 5 percent since the previous day.
The drop puts pressure on the Turkish Central Bank to sharply increase rates before a scheduled monetary policy meeting on June 7. But it is seen to be reluctant as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants rates low.
Higher rates can support a currency and ease inflation, but also hinder economic growth by making borrowing more expensive.
The lira has lost more than 20 percent of its value against the dollar since the start of the year. The risk is that will increase the price of imports, making Turkish people effectively poorer. It could also encourage more investors to pull their money out if they expect that the value of their investments to drop as the currency declines.
Turkey’s market jitters in part reflect a global trend in which the currencies of emerging economies have come under pressure. Economists say that is partly because the U.S. Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, encouraging investors to place their money in the U.S. instead of other economies.
Because Turkey is particularly dependent on foreign capital, its markets are one of those to have suffered most. Other countries that have seen sharp drops in their currencies include Brazil and Argentina.
But Turkey’s currency has been hit particularly hard because of the complicated political backdrop. While a central bank is in theory independent from the government, Erdogan has put pressure on it to not raise rates as he prepares for early presidential and parliamentary elections next month.
Jason Tuvey, an economist with Capital Economics in London, says that if the central bank “continues to bow to pressure from Erdogan and refrains from raising interest rates, that would lead to an even sharper fall in the currency.”
Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag on Wednesday cast the lira’s drop as a foreign plot to harm Erdogan and affect the results of the polls.
“Those who believe that by manipulating the dollar they will lead to results that will harm the nation and their pockets and change the election result, are mistaken,” the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Bozdag as saying.
Muharrem Ince, the main opposition party’s candidate who is challenging Erdogan at the June 24 presidential race, called on the Turkish leader to urgently halt interfering in the central bank’s monetary policy and to ease concerns over fiscal discipline, warning that the “economy is about to hit the wall.”
French President Emmanuel Macron is taking on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other internet giants at a Paris meeting to discuss tax and data protection and how they could use their global influence for the public good.
Macron on Wednesday welcomed Zuckerberg and the leaders of dozens of other tech companies, including Microsoft, Uber, and IBM, at a conference named “Tech for Good” meant to address things like workers’ rights, data privacy and tech literacy.
The meeting comes as Facebook, Google and other online giants are increasingly seen by the public as predators that abuse personal data, avoid taxes and stifle competition.
“There is no free lunch!” Macron joked to express his expectations of “frank and direct” discussions.
He said tech giants could not just be “free riding” without taking into account the common good. He called on them to help improve “social situations, inequalities, climate change.”
Zuckerberg came to Paris after facing tough questions Tuesday from European Union lawmakers in Brussels, where he apologized for the way the social network has been used to produce fake news and interfere in elections. But the Facebook founder also frustrated the lawmakers as the testimony’s setup allowed him to respond to a list of questions as he sought fit.
Macron sees himself as uniquely placed to both understand and influence the tech world. France’s youngest president, Macron has championed startups and aggressively wooed technology investors.
But Macron is also one of Europe’s most vocal critics of tax schemes used by companies like Facebook that deprive governments of billions of euros a year in potential revenue. And Macron has defended an aggressive new European data protection law that comes into effect this week. The so-called GDPR regulation will give Europeans more control over what companies can do with what they post, search and click.
Several companies took advantage of the meeting to announce new initiatives.
Microsoft said it would extend the EU principles to its clients worldwide. Google committed $100 million over the next five years to support nonprofit projects, like training in digital technologies. Uber said it will finance insurance to better protect its European drivers in case of accidents at work, serious illness, hospitalization and maternity leave. And IBM announced the creation of 1,400 new jobs by 2020 in France.
Aides to Macron acknowledged companies like Facebook have become more influential than governments. The aides insisted that Macron isn’t trying to kiss up to such companies or let them whitewash their reputations through philanthropic gifts.
The aides spoke only on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to be publicly named.
Privacy and taxes are among issues Macron was raising with Zuckerberg and the other tech executives in one-on-one meetings and a mass lunch Wednesday in the presidential palace with philanthropists and politicians.
Macron, Zuckerberg and others are then expected to attend the Vivatech gadget show in Paris on Thursday.
At Tuesday’s hearing in the European Parliament in Brussels, Zuckerberg said Facebook “didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibilities,” adding: “That was a mistake, and I’m sorry for it.”
But lawmakers left frustrated. Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt asked whether Zuckerberg wanted to be remembered as “a genius who created a digital monster that is destroying our democracies and our societies.”
The last thing Lizabeth Loud, a month from giving birth, wanted was to be forced into treatment for her heroin and prescription painkiller addiction.
But her mother saw no other choice, and sought a judge’s order to have her committed against her will. Three years later, Loud said her month in state prison, where Massachusetts sent civilly committed women until recent reforms, was the wake-up call she needed.
“I was really miserable when I was there,” the 32-year-old Boston-area resident said. “That was one bottom I wasn’t willing to revisit again.”
An Associated Press check of data in some key states has found that the use of involuntary commitment for drug addiction is rising. And in many places, lawmakers are trying to create or strengthen laws allowing authorities to force people into treatment.
But critics, including many doctors, law enforcement officials and civil rights advocates, caution that success stories like Loud’s are an exception. Research suggests involuntary commitment largely doesn’t work and could raise the danger of overdose for those who relapse after treatment.
And expanding civil commitment laws, critics argue, could also violate due process rights, overwhelm emergency rooms and confine people in prison-like environments, where treatment sometimes amounts to little more than forced detox without medications to help mitigate withdrawal symptoms.
At least 35 states currently have provisions that allow families or medical professionals to petition a judge, who can then order an individual into treatment if they deem the person a threat to themselves or others. But the laws haven’t always been frequently used.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a law last year allowing police officers to civilly commit a person into treatment for up to three days. In Washington state, legislation that took effect April 1 grants mental health professionals similar short-term emergency powers. In both states, a judge’s order would still be required to extend the treatment.
Related bills have also been proposed this year in states including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts, where involuntary commitment has emerged as one of the more controversial parts of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s wide-ranging bill dealing with the opioid crisis.
Massachusetts already allows for judges to order people to undergo up to three months of involuntary treatment, but lawmakers are considering giving some medical professionals emergency authority to commit people for up to three days without a judge’s order.
Burden on hospitals?
The proposal is a critical stopgap for weekends and nights, when courts are closed, said Patrick Cronin, a director at the Northeast Addictions Treatment Center in Quincy, who credits his sobriety to his parents’ decision to have him involuntarily committed for heroin use almost 15 years ago.
But giving doctors the ability to hold people in need of treatment against their will, as Massachusetts lawmakers propose, will burden emergency rooms, which already detain people with psychiatric problems until they can be taken to a mental health center, said Dr. Melisa Lai-Becker, president of the Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians, an advocacy group.
“We’ve got a crowded plane, and you’re asking the pilots to fly for days waiting for an open landing strip while also making sure they’re taking care of the passengers and forcibly restraining the rowdy ones,” Lai-Becker said.
Baker’s administration stressed the proposal wouldn’t take effect until 2020, providing time to work out concerns.
Rising numbers
Even without the state legislative efforts, use of involuntary commitment for drug addiction is rising, according to information the AP obtained from states that have historically used it the most.
Florida reported more than 10,000 requests for commitment in both 2016 and 2015, up from more than 4,000 in 2000, according to court records.
Massachusetts reported more than 6,000 forced commitments for drug addiction in both fiscal years 2016 and 2017, up from fewer than 3,000 in fiscal year 2006.
In Kentucky, judges issued more than 200 orders of involuntary commitment for alcohol or drug abuse in the last calendar year, up from just five in 2004, according to court records. The state has so far reported nearly 100 such commitments this year.
But researchers caution there hasn’t been enough study on whether forced treatment is actually working. And many states don’t track whether people are being civilly committed multiple times, let alone whether they get sober for good, the AP found.
In Massachusetts, where fatal overdoses dropped for the first time in seven years in 2017, state public health officials don’t credit increased use of civil commitment, but rather better training for medical professionals, tighter regulations on painkillers, more treatment beds, wider distribution of the overdose reversal drug naloxone, and other initiatives.
A review published in the International Journal of Drug Policy in 2016 found “little evidence” forced treatment was effective in promoting sobriety or reducing criminal recidivism.
Another 2016 study by Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health found the involuntarily committed were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those who went voluntarily, but those findings shouldn’t be viewed as an indictment of the process, argues Health and Human Services office spokeswoman Elissa Snook.
“Patients who are committed for treatment are among the sickest, most complex and at the greatest risk for an overdose,” she said. “Involuntary commitment is an emergency intervention, to help individuals stay alive until they are capable of entering treatment voluntarily.”
Most states send the civilly committed to treatment facilities run or contracted by public health agencies. The costs generally fall on patients, their families or insurance providers.
Minimum-security prison
Massachusetts stands out because, until recently, it sent those civilly committed for drug addiction to prisons. That decadeslong practice ended for women in 2016, but many men are still sent to the Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center, which is housed in a minimum-security prison in Plymouth, near Cape Cod.
Patients wear corrections-issued uniforms and submit to prison regulations like room searches and solitary confinement. They also aren’t given methadone or buprenorphine to help wean off heroin or other opioids, as they might in other treatment centers.
Michelle Wiley, whose 29-year-old son David McKinley killed himself there in September after he asked her to have him civilly committed for the third time, said she isn’t opposed to expanded use of the practice as long as those with addiction aren’t sent to places like Plymouth.
In the days before he hanged himself in his room, Wiley said, her son had complained to her about dirty conditions, poor food and not enough substance abuse counselors while he went through withdrawal.
“You think it’s going to be helpful until you hear what it’s like,” she said. “If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t send him to that place.”
The corrections department has since taken steps to improve conditions, including more frequent patrols by prison guards and extended hours for mental health professionals, department spokesman Jason Dobson said.
As for Loud, the Massachusetts woman civilly committed while pregnant, she said she has found peace.
After briefly relapsing following her son’s birth, she has been sober for about a year and a half. She focuses her energies on raising her son, attending regular support meetings and pursuing a passion sidelined by her addiction: competitive Muay Thai fighting. Her fourth bout is in July.
Loud has also reconciled with her mother. The two now live together, along with her son.
“It took me a long time to understand what she was going through,” Loud said. “She was just trying to save her daughter.”
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The dangers posed by cybercrime are on the rise across the globe – with high profile incidents like the recent ‘Wannacry’ ransomware attack an example of the growing threat. As the adoption of Internet and mobile technology grows, cyber experts say Africa is particularly at risk, as the continent’s cyber security lags behind. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Across the globe, the dangers posed by cybercrime are on the rise – with high-profile incidents like the recent ‘Wannacry’ ransomware attack an example of the growing threat. Cyber experts say Africa is particularly at risk as the use of internet and mobile technology increases rapidly, but cyber security on the continent is failing to keep pace.
The adoption of technology across Africa is growing exponentially. Online commerce is predicted to be worth $75 billion by the year 2025. But with the opportunity comes risk, says London-based cybersecurity consultant William Kapuku-Bwabwa.
“The cybersecurity infrastructure, most of the [African] countries don’t have it. And those who’ve got it, it’s in a very infancy level,” he said.
A report by security firm Norton says close to 9 million South Africans say they experienced cybercrime in 2016. Across Africa the cost is huge, says Stephanie Itimi, an adviser to the Africa Business Portal.
“Africa as a continent loses over 2.5 billion U.S. dollars a year to cybercrime. And over $500 million is from Nigeria,” she said.
Like the internet, cybercrime easily crosses borders, and Africa has been hit by recent global attacks. Ransomware — where criminals demand money in return for unfreezing affected devices – plus other viruses and social media scams all have affected the continent. But experts warn the lack of preparedness in Africa poses additional dangers.
“Most of the African states do not have a cybersecurity crisis management plan in place. And they don’t have any kind of education, and the legislation is very weak because they do focus on traditional crime,” said William Kapuku-Bwabwa.
Nigeria is one of the few African states to have passed specific cybercrime legislation. But there have been very few prosecutions, says Stephanie Itimi.
“With the act in place, it’s not been enforced properly. And the reason why there’s implementation problems is because we don’t have lawyers who are well educated on cybercrimes to be able to put a case to a judge,” she said.
Africa is a global leader in the adoption of mobile technology for money transfers, with more than 1 in 10 people using the technology. Experts warn cyber criminals see that as a vulnerability — and are increasingly targeting mobile devices for identity theft and scams.
Health officials in Nigeria say 12 people have died from cholera in recent days.
More than 100 people have been sickened in the outbreak located in the Mubi district in the northeastern state of Adamawa.
Cholera is a bacterial disease spread by contaminated food or drinking water. It causes severe diarrhea and subsequent dehydration, and can kill within hours if not treated.
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Households are feeling more stable, small businesses are making money and many expect to expand and hire in the coming year, signs of continued optimism in two key parts of the economy, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday in a pair of annual surveys.
Among more than 8,000 small businesses and more than 12,000 households covered in separate surveys late last year by the Fed and its 12 regional banks, the message was similar: economic conditions have been getting better and the expectation is for the good times to continue.
“We see a decided uptick” in the economic and credit conditions faced by small businesses, said one Fed official involved in the small business survey. “We are seeing improved business confidence and improved business performance,” with profitability and access to finance increasing in 2017, more than 70 percent of firms expecting revenue growth next year, and 48 percent expecting to add employees.
Among households, 74 percent of U.S. adults said they were financially comfortable or at least okay in 2017, four percentage points higher than in 2016 and 10 percentage points higher than the first survey year of 2013. Improvement was strongest in lower income households. The percentage of households that reported they were struggling financially fell to 7 percent from 9 percent last year.
The results from the surveys show that improvements in household and business conditions that took root under President Obama continued through the first year of the Trump administration.
Both findings are potentially significant for the economy’s future performance. Businesses with fewer than 500 employees generate perhaps 60 percent of new jobs, the New York Fed estimated in material released with the small business survey, and many report plans to expand in 2018.
Consumer spending, meanwhile, accounts for the bulk of U.S. gross domestic product, and strong household income growth in recent years has buoyed the economy overall.
“The mass of the consumer sector is in pretty good shape and that should continue,” Nathan Sheets, chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income said in an interview.
However, based on answers to a series of questions, about 2-in-5 adults faced what the Fed judged to be a “high likelihood of material hardship,” such as an inability to afford sufficient food, medical treatment, housing or utilities. About 4 in 10 said they could not meet an unexpected expense of $400 without carrying a credit card balance or borrowing from a friend.
Among the smallest firms, those with less than $100,000 in revenue, about 74 percent had trouble paying their bills, and a majority of those were either averse to borrowing or worried they would be turned down and so did not apply for credit.
But in overall the results for positive, said Fed officials.
Among firms that did apply for loans, for example, 46 percent received all they requested, compared to 40 percent last year. Nearly 60 percent wanted to use the money to expand.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told EU lawmakers Tuesday that the social media network will always be in “an arms race” with those who want to spread fake news, but that the company will be working to stay ahead and protect the network’s users. The social media giant has been under scrutiny since April when it became known that the Cambridge Analytica company harvested information on Facebook users to help Donald Trump during his 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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The Trump administration is preparing to publish on Thursday long-delayed proposed rule changes for the export of U.S. firearms, a State Department official said on Tuesday.
The rule changes would move the oversight of commercial firearm exports from the U.S. Department of State to the Department of Commerce.
The action is part of a broader Trump administration overhaul of weapons export policy that was announced in April.
Domestic gun sales drop
Timing for the formal publication of the rule change and the opening of the public comment period was unveiled by Mike Miller the acting secretary for the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, the State Department’s body that currently oversees the bulk of commercial firearms transfers and other foreign military sales.
He was speaking at the Forum on the Arms Trade’s annual conference at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.
Reuters first reported on the proposed rule changes in September as the Trump administration was preparing to make it easier for American gun makers to sell small arms, including assault rifles and ammunition, to foreign buyers.
Domestic gun sales have fallen significantly after soaring under President Barack Obama, when gun enthusiasts stockpiled weapons and ammunition out of fear that the government would tighten gun laws.
A move by the Trump administration to make it simpler to sell small arms abroad may generate business for gun makers American Outdoor Brands and Sturm, Ruger & Company in an industry experiencing a deep sales slump since the election of President Donald Trump.
Remington recovers from bankruptcy
Remington, America’s oldest gun maker, filed for bankruptcy protection in March, weeks after a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people and triggered intensified campaigns for gun control by activists. Remington emerged from bankruptcy last week.
The expected relaxing of rules could increase foreign gun sales by as much as 20 percent, the National Sports Shooting Foundation has estimated. As well as the industry’s big players, it may also help small gunsmiths and specialists who are currently required to pay an annual federal fee to export relatively minor amounts of products.
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U.S. civil liberties groups on Tuesday called on Amazon.com Inc. to stop offering facial recognition services to governments, warning that the software
could be used to target immigrants and people of color unfairly.
More than 40 groups sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos saying technology from the company’s cloud computing unit was ripe for abuse. The letter underscores how new tools for identifying and tracking people could be used to empower surveillance states.
Amazon has marketed a range of uses for its Rekognition service, unveiled in late 2016. These include detecting offensive content, identifying celebrities and securing public safety.
In a blog post last year, Amazon said a new feature let customers “identify people of interest against a collection of millions of faces in near real-time, enabling use cases such as timely and accurate crime prevention.”
Customers provide the data for Amazon’s tool to search.
“Seconds saved in the field can make the difference in saving a life,” Chris Adzima, an analyst in the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, said in the blog post.
Freedom from being watched
But rights groups say the powerful tool raises concerns.
“People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government,” said the letter to Bezos. “Facial recognition in American communities threatens this freedom. In overpoliced communities of color, it could effectively eliminate it.”
Amazon has helped various U.S. jurisdictions use Rekognition, said the letter, citing public records obtained by affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In Oregon, law enforcement uploaded 300,000 mug shots dating to 2001 into Amazon’s cloud and indexed them in Rekognition, according to another Amazon blog post.
Rekognition identified four faces with more than 80 percent similarity to an image of an unidentified hardware store thief; a Facebook search subsequently helped with the case, the post said.
The City of Orlando Police Department has also used Rekognition, according to Amazon’s website.
In a statement, Amazon Web Services said, “Our quality of life would be much worse today if we outlawed new technology because some people could choose to abuse the technology.”
Amazon requires customers to abide by the law and be responsible when using Rekognition, it added.
The world’s largest online retailer is not alone: Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc.’s Google offer recognition services as well.
Identifying faces has become a common feature in consumer products from Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc.
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