Nine teams with members from 25 countries entered the final phase of the $7 million Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition for technologies that could cheaply and efficiently map the floors of the world’s oceans. Using current technology this feat would take up to 600 years. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Nine teams with members from 25 countries entered the final phase of the $7 million Ocean XPRIZE competition for technologies that could cheaply and efficiently map the floors of the world’s oceans. Using current technology this feat would take up to 600 years. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as early as Thursday, with some trading partners receiving temporary exemptions.
White House officials said Mexico and Canada would get a 30-day exception that could be extended.
On Twitter Thursday, Trump said “We have to protect and build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military,”
Reuters quoted a senior U.S. official saying the measures would take place about two weeks after Trump signs the proclamation.
Lawmakers urge caution
Meanwhile Wednesday, a number of members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the president, urging him to minimize negative consequences if he goes through with the tariff plan.
The letter said “tariffs are taxes that make U.S. businesses less competitive and U.S. consumers poorer,” and “any tariffs that are imposed should be designed to address specific distortions caused by unfair trade practices in a targeted way while minimizing negative consequences in American businesses and consumers.”
The lawmakers went on to recommend that Trump exclude fairly traded products and products that do not pose a national security threat; announce a process for U.S. companies to petition for duty-free access to imports unavailable from U.S. sources; and allow exemptions for existing contracts for steel and aluminum purchases. They also recommended doing a short-term review of the effects of the tariffs on the economy to decide whether or not the approach is working.
The tariffs are expected to impose a duty of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports that Trump says undermine U.S. industry with their low prices.
The comment that Canada and Mexico may be spared in the tariffs plan resulted in key stock indexes and the U.S. dollar paring losses in afternoon trading.
The Dow Jones industrial average, after falling more than 300 points during the session, closed off 83 points, a drop of one-third of 1 percent.
Market players say the Tuesday sell-off was sparked by the previous day’s announcement that the president’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, was resigning. The former Goldman Sachs investment bank president had opposed the sweeping tariffs for foreign steel and aluminum.
‘Easy to win’
Trump boasted last week that trade wars “are good and easy to win” after his surprise announcement of the tariffs.
That has prompted widespread criticism from his Republican colleagues in Congress and America’s allies.
The president, according to staffers, acted on recommendations made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, formerly a billionaire investor, and Peter Navarro, an economist who is director of the White House National Trade Council.
Ross said the planned steel and aluminum tariffs were “thought through. We’re not looking for a trade war.”
The tariffs proposal has also won support from economic nationalists in the United States and some Democratic lawmakers in manufacturing states whose fortunes could be boosted by the tariffs protecting their metal industries.
‘Easy to lose’
The chief of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, on Wednesday in a European radio interview, warned of a global trade war, predicting the U.S. tariffs could lead to “a drop in growth, a drop in trade, and it will be fearsome.”
Warning that there would be no victors in such a trade war, Lagarde urged “the sides to reach agreements, hold negotiations, consultations.”
European Council President Donald Tusk echoed Lagarde’s stance saying, “The truth is quite the opposite: Trade wars are bad and easy to lose. For this reason, I strongly believe that now is the time for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to act responsibly.”
The European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union, detailed retaliatory tariffs it plans to impose on prominent U.S. products if Trump carries out his plan to impose the metal tariffs, taxing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, bourbon, blue jeans, cranberries, orange juice and peanut butter.
Moody’s Investors Service said the planned tariffs “raise the risk of a deterioration in global trade relations.”
Trump said on Twitter that since former President George H.W. Bush was in the White House 30 years ago, “our Country has lost more than 55,000 factories, 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs and accumulated Trade Deficits of more than 12 Trillion Dollars.”
“Bad Policies & Leadership. Must WIN again!” Trump also said on Twitter.
Trump claimed the United States last year had a trade deficit of “almost 800 Billion Dollars,” significantly overstating the actual figure of $566 billion, which still was the biggest U.S. trade deficit in nine years.
A new report Wednesday said the U.S. trade deficit in January — the amount its imports exceeded its exports — reached $56.6 billion, the highest monthly total since October 2008.
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The FBI views companies hit by cyberattacks as victims and will not rush to share their information with other agencies investigating whether they failed to protect customer data, its chief said Wednesday. Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, encouraged companies to promptly report when they are hacked to help the FBI investigate and prevent future data breaches.
He contrasted the FBI’s approach to that of other regulators and state authorities. Without naming other agencies, Wray referred to “less-enlightened enforcement agencies,” some of which he said take a more adversarial approach.
“We don’t view it as our responsibility when companies share information with us to turn around and share that information with some of those other agencies,” Wray said in response to an audience question at a cybersecurity conference at Boston College.
Amid a wave of high-profile data breaches at major corporations, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general are investigating how many of them secured consumer data before they were hacked.
Equifax Inc, which suffered a breach in 2017 that compromised the data of more than 147 million consumers, is fighting a lawsuit by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and faces probes by over 40 other states and the FTC.
Ride-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc is also facing investigations by state attorneys general after a data breach of 57 million accounts. Uber has been sued by the states of Washington and Pennsylvania, and like Equifax faces private class action lawsuits over the breach.
Speaking at the conference, Wray said the FBI needed to partner with the private sector to combat an evolving threat that has “turned into full-blown economic espionage and extremely lucrative cybercrime.”
Wray, who took over as director in August, said in order to prevent cyber threats, companies should approach the FBI as soon as they see signs of unauthorized access to their computer systems or malware infesting them.
“At the FBI, we treat victim companies as victims,” he said.
President Donald Trump is selling Hispanic business owners on his new tax cuts.
Trump is delivering the keynote address Wednesday at the annual legislative summit of the Latino Coalition. It’s his first time addressing Hispanic business owners.
The president says the $1.5 trillion package of tax cuts he signed late last year have finally given American business a “level playing field.” He tells the Latino business owners that they’ll “see more of this in the coming weeks.”
Trump highlighted administration efforts to eliminate regulations that many businesses find burdensome.
Trump also touched on immigration. He blamed Democrats for failing to reach agreement with the White House on a plan to protect immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.
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The International Monetary Fund and European leaders pushed back Wednesday against U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, saying it would provoke a calamitous global trade war.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde told a European radio interviewer, “If international trade is called into question by these types of measures, it will be a transmission channel for a drop in growth, a drop in trade and it will be fearsome. In a trade war that will be fed by reciprocal increases of customs tariffs, no one wins.”
Lagarde said the IMF is “anxious” that U.S. tariff increases not be imposed, saying, “We are urging the sides to reach agreements, hold negotiations, consultations.”
Trump boasted last week that trade wars “are good and easy to win” after he announced plans for a 25 percent U.S. tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent levy on aluminum exported to the United States.
The proposal has drawn widespread criticism from his normal Republican colleagues in Congress and U.S. foreign allies, but support from economic nationalists in the United States and a handful of Democratic lawmakers in manufacturing states whose fortunes could be boosted by the tariffs protecting their metal industries.
EU retaliation
European Council President Donald Tusk rebutted Trump’s contention about trade conflicts, saying, “The truth is quite the opposite: Trade wars are bad and easy to lose. For this reason I strongly believe that now is the time for politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to act responsibly.”
The European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation European Union, detailed retaliatory tariffs it plans to impose on prominent U.S. products if Trump carries out his plan to impose the metal tariffs, taxing Harley-Davidson motorcycles, bourbon, blue jeans, cranberries, orange juice and peanut butter.
Trump has claimed the United States needs to impose the steel and aluminum tariffs to protect its national security, but European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem dismissed his rationale.
“We cannot see how the European Union, friends and allies in NATO, can be a threat to international security in the U.S.,” Malmstroem said. “From what we understand, the motivation of the U.S. is an economic safeguard measure in disguise, not a national security measure.”
Denmark Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said if a trade war starts between the United States and the European Union, “at the end of the day, European and American consumers will pay for it. That is the signal we have to send to Trump that it is not a path we should follow.”
Moody’s Investors Service said the planned tariffs “raise the risk of a deterioration in global trade relations.”
Despite the criticism, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump is “on track” to make the formal announcement on the tariffs by the end of the week.
Cutting the trade deficit
Trump said on Twitter that since former President George H.W. Bush was in the White House 30 years ago, “our Country has lost more than 55,000 factories, 6,000,000 manufacturing jobs and accumulated Trade Deficits of more than $12 trillion.”
Trump claimed the United States last year had a trade deficit of “almost $800 billion,” significantly overstating the actual figure of $566 billion, which still was the biggest U.S. trade deficit in nine years. A new report Wednesday said the U.S. trade deficit in January – the amount its imports exceeded its exports – reached $56.6 billion, the highest monthly total since October 2008.
“Bad Policies & Leadership. Must WIN again!” Trump said.
In another tweet, Trump said the United States has asked China “to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States. Our relationship with China has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!”
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the planned steel and aluminum tariffs were “thought through. We’re not looking for a trade war.”
He said the Trump administration could take a “surgical approach” to new tariffs, exempting some countries, specifically Canada and Mexico, if revisions are reached in the ongoing negotiations over changes in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.
Ross added that it is “not inconceivable that others could be exempted on a similar basis.”
Stocks prices fell in the U.S. markets with the turmoil over the tariffs and the resignation Tuesday of Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, an economic globalist who had opposed the steel and aluminum tariffs, but lost the internal White House debate.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 key stocks dropped a half percentage point in early Wednesday trading and other markets dropped too.
Trump promised to quickly replace Cohn, saying, “Many people wanting the job — will choose wisely!”
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The South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, starts Friday. It’s grown from a grassroots event to a phenomenon that attracts 400,000 people.
For attendees, it can feel overwhelming. What’s worth your time? Where’s the buzz?
The latest AP Travel “Get Outta Here” podcast offers strategies for conquering FOMO (fear of missing out) at SXSW.
One approach is to let the nostalgia acts go – the former big-name bands promoting comebacks. Instead, pack your schedule with artists that have their best years ahead of them.
And you need a plan. You can’t just wing it. Be ready for long lines. But have some backups. Consider less-crowded venues outside downtown. Film screenings take place at theaters all over, and up-and-coming bands play a lot of shows.
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Kenyan coffee has an international reputation for good quality.
But Kenya’s coffee industry is struggling as production levels have dropped and a younger generation shows little interest in farming. Since the 1980s, coffee production has dropped by two-thirds.
“The German school in Nairobi, when I was there in 1980, ’82, when I went to school there, we were surrounded by coffee fields,” said Stefan Canz with Nestle’s Nescafe Plan in Kenya. “We were doing sports competitions around there in the coffee field. And, now there’s a shopping mall, there’s houses, there’s everything. So, you have to go really up country to find now the next coffee trees.”
Volatile coffee prices, corrupt brokers, and disease discouraged investment.
Coffee yields fell to two kilos per tree, a fifth of what they once were, and fewer of Kenya’s younger generation stayed on the farm.
“After independence, what happened is people were looking for more white collar jobs rather than the farm,” said Peter Kimata, deputy general manager for Coffee Management Services. “The farm was seen to be like a peasant kind of affair. It was seen to be a poor man’s business.”
Coffee farmer Martin Mureithi Alexander wants his children to continue working the family farm. But, he admits their education could take them elsewhere.
“The government may employ them with the time,” he said. “But at this time, they are working on my coffee farm.”
Since 2014, Kenya’s coffee production has been rising-but slowly.
Improving productivity is key to showing Kenyan youth that coffee farming can be profitable, says Kimata.
“Moving the trees from producing two kilos, from producing one and a half kilos, moving them to five kilos, moving them to seven kilos, moving them to fifteen kilos,” he said. “Moving them to that kilos whereby now, with high productivity, there is better return on investment.”
Disease-resistant coffee trees and farmer training are helping. But better implementation is needed or else Kenyan coffee risks losing its significance to bigger producers, warns Nestle’s Stefan Canz.
“Countries like China or Vietnam can serve as inspiration, that people see that it’s possible,” he said. “And then you have to find the African way, the Kenyan way, or the Côte d’Ivoire way, to move towards that.”
The question is whether the investment of time and money on the farm is a cost that Kenya’s younger generation is willing to pay.
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Trade war fears pushed U.S. and some Asian stock markets lower Wednesday, following the resignation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser.
National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn was a leading administration opponent of Trump’s plan to impose 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum imports.
“It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform,” Cohn said in a statement Tuesday announcing his resignation.
In Wednesday’s trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was off more than one percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell less than that. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell one percent, while Japan’s Nikkei stock index had a smaller loss. Key European indexes made gains, with Germany’s DAX up more than one percent, while London and Paris made smaller gains.As director of the NEC, Cohn tried to get Trump to abandon his tariff plan. But the president reiterated Tuesday that he will impose the measures in the coming days.
In a statement released by the White House, Trump praised Cohn.
“Gary has been my chief economic adviser and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again. He is a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.”
Chief of Staff John Kelly also praised Cohn.
“Gary has served his country with great distinction, dedicating his skill and leadership to grow the U.S. economy and pass historic tax reform. I will miss having him as a partner in the White House, but he departs having made a real impact in the lives of the American people,” he said.
There was no immediate announcement from the White House about a replacement for Cohn.
Cohn’s extensive policy portfolio included tax and retirement, infrastructure, the financial system, energy and environment, health care, agriculture, global economics, international trade and development, technology, telecommunications and cybersecurity.
He also played a critical role in advancing the president’s deregulatory agenda and organizing Trump’s successful participation in the World Economic Forum in January.
Cohn, former president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs investment bank, is one of several top-level White House staff members to resign this year, including communications director Hope Hicks, deputy communications director Josh Raffel, and staff secretary Ron Porter.
Cohn was one of several Wall Street veterans tapped by Trump for senior administration positions after the 2016 presidential election.
An observatory telescope in Arizona used to discover the distant Pluto nearly 90 years ago will reopen for business on Saturday after a year of extensive restoration work.
Nearly every part of Lowell Observatory’s Pluto Discovery Telescope and accompanying dome near Flagstaff has been refurbished, from the trio of lenses to historic wooden shutters that open up to the stars, the Arizona Daily Sun reported.
“It’s a beautiful telescope,” said Ralph Nye, part of the restoration team. “This is the way it should look.”
The team removed, cleaned and reused everything down to the nuts, bolts and screws – almost nothing needed to be replaced, said Peter Rosenthal, who also worked on the telescope.
The observatory said the nearly 90-year-old telescope is working as well and is looking even better than it did when Clyde Tombaugh used the instrument to pick out distant Pluto 88 years ago.
Known as an astrographic camera, the telescope’s three lenses focus light onto a single glass photographic plate.
Each image requires an exposure time of almost an hour, which would have been a chilly experience for Tombaugh on winter nights because the dome’s shutters have to be open to the sky, Rosenthal said.
As a young observatory assistant, Tombaugh took the exposures and then scrutinized the glass negatives using a Zeiss blink comparator. On Feb. 18, 1930, he pinpointed Pluto.
Nye said the repairs came in on time and met the project’s $155,000 budget with a few bucks to spare.
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India’s Tata Steel is concerned about U.S. plans to impose tariffs on steel imports, a senior executive at the group’s European unit said on Wednesday.
“We need appropriate measures against a negative influence on the European market,” Henrik Adam, chief commercial officer at Tata Steel Europe, told an industry conference. “We believe in fair, free trade.”
President Donald Trump announced last week he would impose hefty tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to protect U.S. producers, risking retaliation from major trade partners like China, Europe and neighboring Canada.
Adam said it was still unclear what exactly the tariffs would look like but warned there was a risk that the European market might be forced to absorb imports originally meant for the U.S. market as a result.
Adam said the U.S. market was relevant for Tata Steel Europe, which is currently working on merging with the European steel business of German rival Thyssenkrupp, adding it makes about half a billion euros of annual sales there.
With the rising cost of healthcare in the U.S., and the growing demand for services by those who can least afford them, two doctors in Clarkston, Georgia, made a commitment to do something about it. Founded five years ago, the non-profit Clarkston Community Health Center wanted to make a difference – by providing free treatments and services for lower-income residents in the city of Clarkston and its surrounding communities. Saleh Damiger from VOA’s Kurdish Service filed this report.
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Classic children’s books are getting a 21st century upgrade, as British researchers have begun testing a project that would bring 3D versions of children’s stories to life on gaming platforms. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff reports.
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The fight to keep tiny pollutants from reaching the dinner plate might start in the laundry room.
Innovators are coming up with tools to keep tiny pieces of thread that are discharged with washing machine effluent from reaching marine life. Such “microfibers” are too small to be caught in conventional filters, so they eventually pass through sewage plants, wash out to waterways, and can be eaten or absorbed by marine animals, some later served up as seafood.
So far there are at least four products, with names such as Guppyfriend and Cora Ball, aimed at curbing microfibers.
The developers are taking the war on pollution to a microscopic level after the fight against microbeads — tiny plastic beads found in some beauty products that were banned nationally in 2015.
“Blaming industry or government won’t solve the problems,” said Alexander Nolte, co-founder of Guppyfriend, a polyamide washing bag designed to prevent tiny threads from escaping. “Buy less and better; wash less and better.”
How harmful are they?
The issue has become an increasing focus of environmental scientists seeking to find out just how harmful microfibers are to coastal ecosystems, oceans and marine life and whether they affect human health. One study from 2011, led by Australian ecotoxicologist Mark Browne, found that microfibers made up 85 percent of man-caused shoreline debris.
Exactly how much microfiber pollution exists in the environment is a subject of research and debate. The United Nations has identified microfiber pollution as a key outgrowth of the 300 million tons of plastic produced annually. And a 2016 study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that more than a gram of microfibers is released every time synthetic jackets are washed and that as much as 40 percent of those microfibers eventually enter waterways.
While there’s no question microfibers are escaping into the environment, it’s unclear how harmful they are, said Chelsea Rochman, an ecology professor at the University of Toronto who plans a study at the end of the year.
One of the questions, she said, is whether the problem is the fibers themselves or dyes in them, and whether natural microfibers such as wool and cotton are less harmful than plastic microfibers.
The microfiber trappers take various forms.
Guppyfriend, the laundry bag, is sold by clothing company Patagonia for $29.75. Cora Ball retails at $29.99 and is a multicolored ball designed to bounce around the washing machine, trapping microfibers in appendages that resemble coral. Lint LUV-R costs $140 or more and is a filter that attaches to a laundry water discharge hose.
New items
While the U.S. Census has found more than 85 percent of U.S. households have a washing machine, the items are new to the market and not familiar to most consumers. About 50,000 households use the Guppyfriend bag, Nolte said, and it might be the best known of the bunch.
Exactly how much these nascent products can help reduce microfiber pollution is not yet known, experts say, and it’s important to find out which products best succeed in reducing emissions of microfibers, Rochman said.
The inventor of the Cora Ball is the nonprofit environmental group Rozalia Project, headquartered in Granville, Vermont. Its co-founder says it had its product independently studied and found it can cut the amount of microfibers released through the wash by more than 25 percent. An independent review by a German research institute found that Guppyfriend caused textiles to shed 75 to 86 percent fewer fibers.
“This is a consumer solution for people to be part of by throwing it in their washing machine,” said Rachael Miller, co-founder of Rozalia Project.
The products serve to bring attention to a form of pollution unknown to most people, said Kirsten Kapp, a biology professor at Central Wyoming College, who has studied microfiber pollution on the Snake River in the Pacific Northwest.
“We are learning more and more every day about the risk that microfibers and microplastics have in our aquatic habitats and wildlife species,” Kapp said. “I think it’s something people should be aware of.”
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Wealthy cities are responsible for a huge share of greenhouse-gas emissions when calculations include goods they consume from developing countries, researchers said on Tuesday, challenging traditional estimates that put blame on manufacturing nations.
Looking at emissions based on consumption, affluent cities, mostly in North America and Europe, emit 60 percent more greenhouse gases than they do using traditional calculations, researchers said at a United Nations-backed climate summit.
Calculating emissions of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming, traditionally looks at where goods such as cellular phones or plastic cups are produced, they said.
But consumption-based emissions presents a fuller picture by attributing emissions to the consumers rather than the manufacturers, said Mark Watts, head of C40, an alliance of more than 90 global cities.
The newer method of calculation puts the responsibility on richer consumers and “increases the scope of things that policy makers in cities can address to reduce emissions,” Watts said.
Cities account for an estimated 75 percent of carbon emissions, according to U.N. figures used at the summit.
Big cities, big problem
The estimate by C40 comes amid concern that national governments are not on track to meet the pledges they made in 2015 in Paris to reduce greenhouse gases and curb climate change.
Traditional calculations put manufacturing countries such as China and India amid the lead emitters of greenhouse gases.
Using consumption-based calculations, emissions in 15 affluent cities were three times more than they were with traditional figuring, the researchers said.
Using consumption-based emissions is “revolutionary” although still “on the periphery,” said Debra Roberts, a co-chairwoman on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“But … these are ideas whose time is probably almost imminent,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the Edmonton summit.
The researchers used trade and household data from 79 cities that are members of C40.
Some 750 climate scientists and city planners from 80 countries are gathered in the western Canadian city to help chart a global roadmap for cities to battle climate change.
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The Trump administration Tuesday launched a new effort under the direction of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner to overcome years of problems with electronic medical records and make them easier for patients to use.
Medicare will play a key role, eventually enabling nearly 60 million beneficiaries to securely access claims data and share that information with their doctors.
Electronic medical records were ushered in with great fanfare but it’s generally acknowledged they’ve fallen short. Different systems don’t communicate. Patient portals can be clunky to navigate. Some hospitals still provide records on compact discs that newer computers can’t read.
The government has already spent about $30 billion to subsidize the adoption of digital records by hospitals and doctors. It’s unclear how much difference the Trump effort will make. No timetables were announced Tuesday.
The government-wide MyHealthEData initiative will be overseen by the White House Office of American Innovation, which is headed by Kushner. His stewardship of a broad portfolio of domestic and foreign policy duties has recently been called into question due to his inability to obtain a permanent security clearance.
Medicare administrator Seema Verma said her agency is working on a program called Blue Button 2.0, with the goal of providing beneficiaries with secure access to their claims data, shareable with their doctors. Software developers are already working on apps, using mock patient data.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is also reviewing its requirements for insurers, so that government policy will encourage the companies to provide patients with access to their records.
“It’s our data, it’s our personal health information, and we should control it,” Verma said, making her announcement at a health care tech conference in Las Vegas.
The longstanding bipartisan goal of paying for health care value — not sheer volume of services — will not be achieved until patients are able to use their data to make informed decisions about their treatment, Verma added.
Independent experts said the administration has identified a key problem in the health care system.
“This is a good first step, but several key challenges need to be addressed,” said Ben Moscovitch, a health care technology expert with the Pew Charitable Trusts.
For example, the claims data that Medicare wants to put in the hands of patients sometimes lacks key clinical details, said Moscovitch. If the patient had a hip replacement, claims data may not indicate what model of artificial hip the surgeon used.
“Claims data alone are insufficient,” said Moscovitch. “They are incomplete, and they lack key data.”
The administration could address that by adding needed information to the claims data, he explained.
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Tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google are taking steps to police terrorists and hate groups on their sites, but more work needs to be done, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Tuesday.
The organization released its annual digital terrorism and hate report card and gave a B-plus to Facebook, a B-minus to Twitter and a C-plus to Google.
Facebook spokeswoman Christine Chen said the company had no comment on the report. Representatives for Google and Twitter did not immediately return emails seeking comment.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean, said Facebook in particular built “a recognition that bad folks might try to use their platform” into its business model. “There is plenty of material they haven’t dealt with to our satisfaction, but overall, especially in terms of hate, there’s zero tolerance,” Cooper said at a New York City news conference.
Rick Eaton, a senior researcher at the Wiesenthal Center, said hateful and violent posts on Instagram, which is part of Facebook, are quickly removed, but not before they can be widely shared.
He pointed to Instagram posts threatening terror attacks at the upcoming World Cup in Moscow. Another post promoted suicide attacks with the message, “You only die once. Why not make it martyrdom.”
Cooper said Twitter used to merit an F rating before it started cracking down on Islamic State tweets in 2016. He said the move came after testimony before a congressional committee revealed that “ISIS was delivering 200,000 tweets a day.”
Cooper and Eaton said that as the big tech companies have gotten more aggressive in shutting down accounts that promote terrorism, racism and anti-Semitism, promoters of terrorism and hate have migrated to other sites such as VK.com, a Facebook lookalike that’s based in Russia.
There also are “alt-tech” sites like GoyFundMe, an alternative to GoFundMe, and BitChute, an alternative to Google-owned YouTube, Cooper said.
“If there’s an existing company that will give them a platform without looking too much at the content, they’ll use it,” he said. “But if not, they are attracted to those platforms that have basically no rules.”
The Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center is dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism.
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Emergency rooms saw a big jump in overdoses from opioids last year — the latest evidence the nation’s drug crisis is getting worse.
A government report released Tuesday shows overdoses from opioids increased 30 percent late last summer, compared to the same three-month period in 2016. The biggest jumps were in the Midwest and in cities, but increases occurred nationwide.
The report did not differentiate between prescription pain pills, heroin, fentanyl and other opioids.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently started using a new system to track ER overdoses and found the rate of opioid overdoses rose from 14 to 18 per 100,000 ER visits over a year.
Almost all those overdoses were not fatal. Opioids were involved in two-thirds of all overdose deaths in 2016.
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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says his agency should be a partner with oil and gas companies that seek to drill on public land and that long regulatory reviews with an uncertain outcome are “un-American.”
Speaking Tuesday to a major energy-industry conference, Zinke described the Trump administration’s efforts to increase offshore drilling, reduce regulations, and streamline inspections of oil and gas operators.
“Interior should not be in the business of being an adversary. We should be in the business of being a partner,” Zinke said to a receptive audience that included leaders of energy companies and oil-producing countries.
Shorten permit process
Zinke said the government should shorten the permitting process for energy infrastructure — it shouldn’t take longer than two years.
“If you ask an investor to continuously put money on a project that is uncertain because the permit process has too much uncertainty, ambiguity, (it) is quite frankly un-American,” he said.
The Interior Department manages 500,000 million acres — one-fifth of the U.S. land mass — as well as the lease of offshore areas for oil drilling. One-fifth of U.S. oil production takes place on land or water that the Interior Department leases to private energy companies.
Environmentalists accuse Zinke and the administration of undercutting environmental rules to help oil, gas and coal companies.
Alex Taurel, a legislative official with the League of Conservation Voters, said Tuesday that Zinke “thinks our public lands are nothing more than an ATM for his industry friends. If anything is un-American, it’s this administration’s persistent attacks on America’s public lands.”
In January, the Trump administration proposed to open up nearly all coastal areas to oil drilling, although Florida was dropped after the Republican governor and lawmakers objected, citing risk to the state’s tourism business.
States have leverage
As he has before, Zinke defended the plan, which faces fierce opposition from governors and lawmakers along the entire West Coast and much of the East Coast.
Zinke said he would listen to local objections, and he noted that states have leverage if they oppose drilling in federal water off their coastlines — they would have to approve pipelines and terminals to handle the oil.
“You can’t bring energy ashore unless you go through state water,” he said.
Zinke said the United States won’t exhaust its resource of fossil fuels in our lifetime, but that cleaner-burning natural gas will take on a bigger role.
Trump ‘a delightful boss’
The Trump administration, he said, is “pro-energy across the board,” and he tried to dismiss an environmental disadvantage to burning fuels that emit carbon linked to climate change. All fuels, he said, have consequences.
When solar facilities are built on public land, people can’t hunt or pursue other recreation there, he said, and wind turbines “probably chop up as many as 750,000 birds a year.”
Zinke acknowledged, however, that “certainly oil and gas and coal have a consequence on carbon.”
Zinke began his comments with a shout-out to his boss, President Donald Trump, calling him “a delightful boss,” before explaining Trump’s goal of encouraging U.S. “energy dominance.” He has frequently criticized former President Barack Obama.
U.S. oil production surged during Obama’s tenure and has kept growing, recently surpassing 10 million barrels a day, thanks to increasing output from shale formations in Texas, North Dakota and elsewhere.
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The European Union is cool to the idea of Britain’s “associate membership” in various agencies of the bloc as proposed by London to make Brexit less disruptive for British business.
Britain started a process to leave the EU last year because it no longer wants to accept the authority of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the free movement of workers, and it does not want to contribute to the EU budget.
But it is keen to keep most of its other links with the EU, especially unfettered access to the EU’s market.
EU officials call this approach “cherry-picking,” where London chooses the areas it wants for closer association but does not accept the obligations linked to it in other areas.
Last Friday, Prime Minister Theresa May floated the idea of Britain’s remaining an associate member of the European Medicines Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and the European Aviation Safety Agency after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
She said London understood this meant abiding by the rules of those agencies and financial contributions. But EU officials involved in the negotiations on the terms of Britain’s exit from the bloc and deciding on the future trade relationship were not impressed.
“It is not so much ‘how’ they participate. That’s a technicality. The bigger question is ‘if’ they should participate. Why would we let them in?” one official said.
“The bottom line is that the U.K. approach is cherry-picking.
“The EU has a vast number of agencies, and I think we’d think twice to let the U.K. ‘associate’ itself with a selected number they choose because they have an interest,” the official said.
Brussels officials pointed out that an “associate membership” — a status that does not exist yet and would have to be created especially for Britain — would not give London the kind of access to the EU single market it sought.
“It is not possible to accept ECJ oversight in only some segments of business in the EU and not in others,” a second EU official said. “The single market is not made of bits and pieces you can pick and choose.”
An “associate membership” status would also likely involve complex legal work in the EU to create it.
“The willingness to change regulations in order to accommodate the U.K.’s wishes … is limited because it entails lengthy legislative procedures,” a third official said.
The chairman of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, will present draft guidelines for the EU’s future trade deal with Britain in Luxembourg on Wednesday.
‘Freedom implies responsibility’
The closest to an “associate membership” the EU has now is with countries in the European Economic Area but not EU members — Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland — which can take part in meetings, but they do not have voting rights.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said last November that the work of the EU agencies was based on EU laws, which Britain no longer wants to accept and should then go on and build its own.
“The same people who argue for setting the U.K. free also argue that the U.K. should remain in some EU agencies. But freedom implies responsibility for building new U.K. administrative capacity,” Barnier said.
“On our side, the 27 will continue to deepen the work of those agencies, together. They will share the costs for running those agencies. Our businesses will benefit from their expertise. All of their work is firmly based on the EU treaties, which the U.K. decided to leave,” he said.
May argued in her speech last week that every trade agreement, which focused on some aspects of an economy more than on others, was some form of “cherry-picking.”
“With all its neighbors the EU has varying levels of access to the single market, depending on the obligations those neighbors are willing to undertake,” she said.
“What would be cherry-picking would be if we were to seek a deal where our rights and obligations were not held in balance. And I have been categorically clear that is not what we are going to do,” she said.
But EU officials said that Britain would get the trade agreement it sought with the EU only if it agreed to balance the rights and obligations in a way that would not pick apart the EU single market.
The bloc would also have to make sure that the deal is less attractive than EU membership.
“Nobody asked after the EU trade agreement with Canada, or Korea: ‘Why can’t we be like Canada or Korea?’ The point is that also after Brexit, nobody should ask themselves: ‘Why can’t we be like Britain?’ ” the second official said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s net worth fell by $400 million last year, down to an estimated $3.1 billion, causing him to plummet 222 places on Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s billionaires, released Tuesday.
Trump slipped from 544th richest in 2017 to 766th in 2018. It is the second consecutive year that Trump’s fortune has dwindled.
Trump’s slide down the rankings of the world’s wealthy comes as a record 35 people have joined Forbes list of billionaires.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was named the richest man in the world, with a fortune of $112 billion, up $39.2 billion from the year before. Rounding out the top three are Microsoft’s Bill Gates with $90 billion and investor Warren Buffett with $84 billion.
The richest person in Europe and fourth on the list is the boss of luxury goods firm LVMH, Bernard Arnault, who has a fortune of $72 billion.
The U.S. has the most billionaires by country, with 585, followed by China. California alone has 144 billionaires, more than any country besides the U.S. and China.
Germany has the most of any European country, with 123. India has 119 billionaires, and Russia has 102. Hungary and Zimbabwe made their first appearances on the annual list, with one billionaire each.
Ten Saudi Arabians who usually feature among the top 100, including prominent tech investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, were left off the list, “due to a lack of clarity about what they currently own,” Forbes explained, following a recent Saudi government crackdown on corruption within its ranks.
The list featured a record 256 women, led by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, worth $46 billion.
According to Forbes, the 2,208 billionaires who made this year’s list together are worth $9.1 trillion, roughly 4 percent of all the money in the world.
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Top economic adviser Gary Cohn is leaving the White House after breaking with President Donald Trump on trade policy, the latest in a string of high-level departures from the West Wing.
Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, has been the leading internal opponent to Trump’s planned tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, working to orchestrate an eleventh-hour effort in recent days to get Trump to reverse course. But Trump resisted those efforts, and reiterated Tuesday he will be imposing tariffs in the coming days.
Cohn’s departure comes amid a period of unparalleled tumult in the Trump administration, and aides worry that more staffers may soon head for the doors.
The announcement came hours after Trump denied there was chaos in the White House. Trump maintained that his White House has “tremendous energy,” but multiple White House officials said Trump has been urging anxious aides to stay.
“Everyone wants to work in the White House,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. “They all want a piece of the Oval Office.”
In a statement, Cohn said it was his honor to serve in the administration and “enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people.”
Trump praised Cohn despite the disagreement on trade, issuing a statement saying Cohn has “served his country with great distinction.”
Cohn is a former Goldman Sachs executive who joined the White House after departing the Wall Street firm with a $285 million payout. He played a pivotal role in helping Trump enact a sweeping tax overhaul, coordinating with members of Congress.
Trump loved to boast about the former executive’s wealth, but Cohn’s tenure in the White House was rocky. Cohn nearly departed the administration last summer after he was upset by the president’s comments about the racial violence in Charlottesville, Va. Cohn, who is Jewish, wrote a letter of resignation but never submitted it.
“Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK,” Cohn told The Financial Times at the time. “I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”
The comments came as Cohn was under consideration to serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Earlier in the administration, Cohn found himself on the losing side of several contentious battles, including the announcement of plans to pull the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Cohn had also hoped to steer more than $1 trillion into infrastructure investments, including updates to the U.S. air traffic control system that would make air travel faster and easier. But the multiple infrastructure rollouts by the Trump administration failed to gain traction, often overshadowed by controversial statements made by the president himself.
Cohn often faced ridicule among some inside the White House for being a registered Democrat who last year met with former Republican officials pushing a form of a carbon tax that was designed to reduce the risks from climate change.
Yet his stock improved to the point that he was one of names Trump was floating for chief of staff last month, when it looked like John Kelly was on thin ice.
Cohn told other White House aides in recent weeks that he would have little reason to stay if Trump followed through with his tariff plans, according to a White House official familiar with his views. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
“I mean it is no secret that he disagreed with Trump on trade and he was opposed to the policy,” said Stephen Moore, who served as an economic adviser to Trump’s campaign.
The White House did not immediately announce a replacement for Cohn, whose deputy, Jeremy Katz, departed in January. Among those under consideration for Cohn’s job are CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow and Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
In a tweet earlier Tuesday, Trump sought to portray himself as the architect of the White House staff changes, writing, “I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection).”
Trump acknowledged he is a tough boss to work for, saying he enjoys watching his closest aides fight over policy. “I like conflict,” he said during the press conference.
Cohn was nowhere in sight at the press conference and a seat reserved for him in the East Room was filled by a different aide.
Dating back to the campaign, Trump has frequently and loudly complained about the quality of his staff, eager to fault his aides for any mishaps rather than acknowledge any personal responsibility. But the attacks on his own staff have sharpened in recent weeks, and he has suggested to confidants that he has few people at his side he can count on, according to two people familiar with his thinking but not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.
Coinciding with the heated debate over tariffs, Trump’s communications director Hope Hicks, one of his closest and most devoted aides, announced her resignation last week, leaving a glaring vacancy in the informal cadre of Trump loyalists in the White House.
Turnover after just over a year in office is nothing new, but the Trump administration has churned through staff at a dizzying pace since taking office last January, and allies are worried the situation could descend into a free-fall.
Making matters worse, the list of prospects to replace departing aides grows shorter as the sense of turmoil increases. Vacancies abound throughout the West Wing and the administration at large, from critical roles like staff secretary to more junior positions in the press office.
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Porsche is studying flying passenger vehicles but expects it could take up to a decade to finalize technology before they can launch in real traffic, its head of development said Tuesday.
Volkswagen’s sports car division is in the early stages of drawing up a blueprint of a flying taxi as it ponders new mobility solutions for congested urban areas, Porsche R&D chief Michael Steiner said at the Geneva auto show.
The maker of the 911 sports car would join a raft of companies working on designs for flying cars in anticipation of a shift in the transport market toward self-driving vehicles and on-demand digital mobility services.
“We are looking into how individual mobility can take place in congested areas where today and in the future it is unlikely that everyone can drive the way he wants,” Steiner said in an interview.
VW’s auto designer Italdesign and Airbus exhibited an evolved version of the two-seater flying car called Pop.Up at the Geneva show. It is designed to avoid gridlock on city roads and premiered at the annual industry gathering a year ago.
Separately, Porsche expects the cross-utility variant of its all-electric Mission E sports car to attract at least 20,000 buyers if it gets approved for production, Steiner said.
Porsche will decide later this year whether to build the Mission E Cross Turismo concept, which surges to 100 kph (62 mph) in less than 3.5 seconds, he said.
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A note written by Albert Einstein to an Italian woman scientist who had declined to meet him sold at auction Tuesday along with a batch of other letters left by the renowned physicist.
“To the scientific researcher, at whose feet I slept and sat for two full days, as a friendly souvenir,” reads the note in his native German, signed and dated October 1921, which fetched $6,100 at Winner’s Auctions & Exhibitions in Jerusalem.
The auction house said Einstein, then 42 and soon to win the Nobel Prize, wrote the letter to Elisabetta Piccini, a chemistry student half his age who lived one floor above his sister, Maja, in Florence.
During a visit to the city, “Einstein was very interested in meeting her. However, Elisabetta was introverted and too shy to meet with such a famous person,” Winner’s said on its website.
Also sold Tuesday for $103,000 was a 1928 note in which the auction house said Einstein outlined ideas for his “Third Stage of the Theory of Relativity.” A 1946 English-language letter of encouragement that he penned to an American World War II veteran who aspired to be a scientist also fetched $6,100.
Last October, Winner’s sold another Einstein letter, a 1922 meditation on happiness that he wrote upon learning he had won the Nobel, for $1.3 million.
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