Battery-powered drones have mostly replaced manned aircraft in a range of tasks, from scientific measurements to aerial photography, with one persistent disadvantage – the limit of their power source. A startup company in San Francisco says their airship can do a lot of those tasks while staying in the air much longer. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From a shopping center and an airport to a concert venue or even your own phone, these are all places facial recognition technology can now be used due to technological advancements in the last few years. The types of applications are growing in a world where the idea of privacy is constantly evolving. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.
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Washington is bracing for the start of a possible trade war between the United States and its closest allies and biggest commercial partners and a radical departure from America’s trading posture of the last seven decades. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, the Trump administration is not backing down from last week’s announcement of looming tariffs on foreign-made steel and aluminum, with further details expected in coming days
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A thriving “hotspot” of 1.5 million Adelie penguins, a species fast declining in parts of the world, has been discovered on remote islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, surprised scientists said Friday.
The first bird census of the Danger Islands unearthed over 750,000 Adelie breeding pairs, more than the rest of the area combined, the team reported in the journal Scientific Reports.
The group of nine rocky islands, which lie off the northern tip nearest South America, in the northwest Weddell Sea, housed the third- and fourth-largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world, they found.
“It is certainly surprising and it has real consequences for how we manage this region,” study co-author Heather Lynch of Stony Brook University told AFP.
Just 160 kilometres (100 miles) away on the west of the peninsula — a thin limb jutting out of West Antarctica — Adelie numbers have dropped about 70 percent in recent decades due to sea ice melt blamed on global warming.
“One of the ways in which this is good news is that other studies have shown this area [the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula] is likely to remain more stable under climate change than the western Antarctic Peninsula,” said Lynch.
“So we end up with a large population of Adelie penguins in a region likely to remain suitable to them for some time.”
Adelies are one of five penguin species that live in and around the Antarctic continent.
A medium-sized penguin, they grow to about 70 centimeters (almost 28 inches) tall, and weigh three to six kilograms (about seven to 13 pounds). They are identified by a white ring around the eye.
They are carnivores, and krill — shrimp-like creatures that are commercially fished in the area — is an Adelie staple.
The Danger Islands group was discovered thanks to Earth-monitoring satellites, said the research team from America, Britain and France.
“This is called the Danger Islands for a reason,” said Lynch.
“The area is covered by heavy sea ice most of the year, and even in the height of summer it is difficult to get into this region to do surveys.”
‘Very lucky’
Even the most visited of the isles, Heroina Island at the chain’s northeastern tip, receives only about one ship landing per year.
Evidence of the previously-unknown penguin colony first emerged in data from the Landsat Earth-monitoring satellites run by NASA and the US Geological Survey.
Lynch and her team “then went and looked at higher resolution commercial imagery to confirm the guano staining that our algorithms had picked up in the Landsat imagery,” she said.
When the Landsat data originally suggested the presence of hundreds of thousands of penguins on the islands, she thought it “was a mistake”.
“We were surprised to find so many penguins on these islands, especially because some of these islands were not known to have penguins.”
Then followed a field expedition for a census using a combination of drone footage, pictures taken on the ground, and an old fashioned walk-about headcount.
“We were… very lucky to have a window of time where the sea ice moved out and we could get a yacht in,” said Lynch.
The Danger Islands, said the team, has felt the ravages of climate change less than the western peninsula, and knew very little human activity.
Now it turns out, the area may need stronger protection from overfishing.
“The most important implication of this work is related to the design of Marine Protected Areas in the region,” said Lynch.
“Now that we know this tiny island group is so important, it can be considered for further protection from fishing.”
In addition to Adelies, the team also found about 100 nests of gentoo penguins, and about 27 nests of chinstrap penguins.
The polar regions are warming more rapidly than the rest of Earth as heat-trapping greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel-burning build up in the atmosphere.
China has added its voice to a growing chorus of concern about the rising threat of a trade war and tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to impose on steel and aluminum imports later this week.
A top Chinese diplomat says that while Beijing does not want a trade war with Washington, it will defend its interests if necessary.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of China’s annual legislative meetings, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui also gave assurances that the rise of world’s second largest economy and a rise in military spending was no cause for alarm.
“China does not want a trade war with the Untied States, but we will absolutely not sit idly by and watch as China’s interests are damaged,” Zhang said.
Tit for tat
Last week, the U.S. president announced plans to slap tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports.
China is a key country Washington is aiming to target with the tariffs, but the decision also has sparked a global backlash with leaders of other affected nations such as Canada and Europe, which are warning they, too, are prepared to take countermeasures.
Analysts have said that if President Trump follows through on his pledges to get tough with China on trade, Beijing could respond by targeting the airline and agricultural sectors, even focusing on communities in the United States where support for the president was strong during the 2016 election.
Zhang, who also is serving as the rotating spokesperson of the National People’s Congress (NPC) said the best way to improve trade is to open up markets further and expanding the “pie of cooperation.”
“If policies are made on the basis of mistaken judgments or assumptions, it will damage bilateral relations and bring about consequences that neither country wants to see,” Zhang said.
Rising concerns about a trade war are likely to be a hot topic during the annual political meetings. China’s Premier Li Keqiang will deliver a government work report on Monday to the NPC during its opening session. That speech may highlight Beijing’s concerns as it forecasts the government outlook for the economy in 2018.
Moderate increase
The report also will provide details about another closely watched item, China’s military spending.
Zhang said China will see a moderate increase in its military budget this year, but argued that was to make up for a shortfall from previous years, upgrade equipment, and improve training and living conditions at the grassroots level for troops, among other reasons.
Zhang did not say how much of a percentage increase China might see this year in its defense spending, but he stressed that the country’s military does not threaten anyone.
Analysts tell VOA that spending could grow by about 10 percent, but they note that the real figure is perhaps much larger.
“China’s defense budget takes up a smaller share of its gross domestic product [GDP] and national fiscal expenditure than other major world countries. Its military spending per capita is also lower than other major countries,” he said.
Last year, China disclosed that it spent nearly $165 billion on its military about one-fourth of what the United States plans to spend on defense this year.
China model
Despite assurances, China’s broader strategic intentions are still something that Washington and other countries in the region watch closely.
Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has begun assuming a bigger role on the global stage and has launched several initiatives of its own, including a massive trillion-dollar trade and infrastructure project called the “Belt and Road” initiative.
During this year’s annual meetings, China’s communist party aims to solidify its self-proclaimed position as the only political organization qualified to rule the country, with the passage of 21 constitutional amendments.
One key amendment in the package is a proposal to scrap restrictions regarding the number of terms the president can serve in office. The proposal paves the way for Xi to become China’s president indefinitely, although state media denies Xi will be granted tenure for life.
When asked, Zhang did not respond to the question of whether the changes would give Xi lifelong tenure. He only said that the amendments would help unify the country’s leadership under Xi as China’s “core leader.”
The proposal, along with China’s growing ambitions to showcase what it calls the China model or “China Solution” has led to concerns that Beijing’s communist leaders will seek to spread their model of rule.
Zhang said that each country has its own development path and model, and Beijing will not import models from other countries, nor will it export its own.
“We will not ask other countries to copy China’s practices, but of course if some countries are interested in learning China’s experiences and practices, we are ready and willing to share our experiences with them,” Zhang said.
Zhang added that China will not impose anything on others and has no intention of overthrowing the existing international order or trying to start again.
The EU will soon unveil a plan for taxing major internet companies like Amazon and Facebook by imposing a levy of two to six percent on revenues in every country where they operate, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said Sunday.
“The range will be from two to six percent; but closer to two than to six,” Le Maire told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
The European Commission has said it will present by end March an overhaul of its tax rules, which currently allow US digital economy giants to report their income from across the bloc in any member state.
That leads them to pick low-tax nations like Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg, depriving other nations of their share of the revenue even though they may account for more of a company’s earnings.
“The heads of these companies know themselves that this system can’t continue,” Le Maire said.
Critics say the tax-avoidance strategies used by the tech titans known as GAFA — Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple — deprive EU governments of billions of euros while giving them an unfair advantage over smaller rivals.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says such strategies cost governments around the world as much as $240 billion (195 billion euros) a year in lost revenue, according to a 2015 estimate.
Asked if the proposed rate might be criticised as too low, Le Maire said: “I would rather have a law that can be implemented quickly instead of drawn-out negotiations.”
American tech giants appear to believe the European tax revamp is in the cards, with several already announcing pledges to pay more in each country where they operate as governments step up their fiscal demands.
Amazon said last month that it had settled a major tax claim in France and that it would start declaring all its earnings in the country.
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For months, university students Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte had been tracking about 1,500 political propaganda accounts on Twitter that appeared to have been generated by computers when they noticed something odd.
In the hours after the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the bots, short for robots, shifted into high gear, jumping into the debate about gun control.
The hashtag #guncontrol gained traction among the bot network. In fact, all of the top hashtags among the bots were about the Parkland shooting, Bhat and Phadte noticed.
Explainer: What Is a Twitter Bot?
Twitter under fire
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, technology companies have come under fire for how their services were used by foreign-backed operations to sow discord among Americans before and after the election.
Twitter, in particular, has been called out repeatedly for the sheer number of computerized accounts that tweet about controversial topics. The company itself has said 50,000 accounts on its service were linked to Russian propaganda efforts, and the company recently announced plans to curtail automated, computer-generated accounts.
On Monday, executives from Twitter are expected to be on Capitol Hill to brief the Senate Commerce committee about how the service was manipulated in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
For Bhat and Phadte, students at the University of California, Berkeley, the growing public scrutiny on bots couldn’t come fast enough.
Figuring out Twitter fakes
Childhood friends from San Jose, Calif., the two work out of their shared apartment in Berkeley on ways to figure out what is real and fake on the internet and how to arm people with tools to tell the difference.
“Everyone’s realizing how big of a problem this is becoming,” Bhat, co-founder of RoBhat Labs, said. “And I think we’re also at a weird inflection point. It’s like the calm before the storm. We’re building up our defenses before the real effects of misinformation hit.”
One of their projects is Botcheck.me, a way for Twitter users to check whether a person on Twitter is real or fake. To use botcheck.me, users can download a Google Chrome extension, which puts the blue button next to every Twitter account. Or users can run a Twitter account through the website botcheck.me.
Some of the characteristics of a fake Twitter persona? Hundreds of tweets over a 24-hour period is one. Another, mostly retweeting others. A third clue, thousands of followers even though the account may be relatively new.
Polarizing the debate
The result is a digital robot army ready to jump into a national debate, they say.
“The conversation around gun control was a lot more polarizing in terms of for and against gun control, as opposed to seeing in the Parkland shooting other issues, such as mental illness,” Bhat said.
The two do not speculate who may be behind the bots or what their motives may be. Their concern is to try to bring some authenticity back into online discussions.
“Instead of being aggravated and spending an hour tweeting and retweeting, or getting madder, you can find out it’s a bot and stop engaging,” Bhat said.
In recent months, the students say they have seen a lot of Twitter accounts they have been tracking suspended.
But as fast as Twitter can get rid of accounts, the students say new ones are popping back up. And suspicious accounts are starting to look more like humans. They may tweet about the weather or cars for awhile before switching over into political content.
“You can sort of see these bots evolve,” Bhat said. “And the scary thing for us is that if we aren’t keeping up on their technological progress, it’s going to be impossible to tell the difference.”
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More people in Columbus, Ohio, are now surviving when their hearts suddenly develop an abnormal beat and stop beating altogether. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports their survival is due to a new procedure developed after the hospital partnered with a local fire department.
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A graphic medicine exhibit has opened at the U.S. National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, showcasing comics that show the medical journeys experienced by patients and caregivers. Organizers hope this ‘new language’ will give clinicians and policy makers a more personalized way of understanding the issues faced by them both. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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Social media users like to have friends and followers on various platforms. But how many accounts are real and how many are generated by computers? Two university students in California say they have a way of detecting if you’re communicating with a human or a “bot”. Michelle Quinn reports.
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President Donald Trump threatened on Saturday to impose a tax on European cars if the European Union chooses to retaliate against his plans to place tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
In a tweet Saturday morning, Trump said the U.S. had an “$800 Billion Dollar Yearly” trade imbalance because of “very stupid” trade deals and policies. He warned that if the EU increased “tariffs and barriers” against American-made products, “we will simply add a Tax on their Cars.”
Presently, the U.S. imposes a 2.5 percent tariff on European-built cars and Europe imposes a 10 percent tariff on U.S.-built cars.
Earlier this week, Trump announced that he plans sometime in the coming week to impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports. He said the tariffs would be in effect for a long period of time.
Trump’s tweet Saturday appeared to be in response to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s warning that the EU could respond by taxing quintessentially American-made products, such as bourbon whiskey, blue jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Juncker told German media Friday that he does not like the words “trade war.” “But I can’t see how this isn’t part of warlike behavior,” he said.
Trump had tweeted earlier in the day: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
Trump’s announcement, made during a meeting with steel and aluminum industry executives at the White House, led a sharp drop in the U.S. markets and sparked concerns of a trade war Friday.
China, Canada respond
Later Friday, China warned about the “huge impact” on global trading if Trump proceeds with his tariff plans.
Wang Hejun, head of China’s commerce ministry’s trade remedy and investigation bureau, said in a statement the tariffs would “seriously damage multilateral trade mechanisms represented by the World Trade Organization and will surely have huge impact on normal international trade order.”
The Chinese official added, “If the final measures of the United States hurt Chinese interests, China will work with other affected countries in taking measures to safeguard its own rights and interests.”
China ranks 11th among the countries that export steel to the U.S.
Canada is the United States’ biggest foreign source of both materials.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that Trump’s tariff plans were “absolutely unacceptable.” He said he is prepared to “defend Canadian industry” and warned the tariffs would also hurt U.S. consumers and businesses by driving up prices.
The director of the World Trade Organization, Roberto Azevedo, responded coolly, saying, “A trade war is in no one’s interests.”
Trump spent Friday defending his threat to impose the tariffs, saying potential trade conflicts can be beneficial to the United States.
“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump wrote in a post on the social media site Twitter. “Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore – we win big. It’s easy!”
A Japanese government official told VOA that Tokyo “has explained several times to the U.S. government our concerns,” but declined to comment further on any ongoing discussions with Washington.
“While we are aware of the president’s statement, we understand that the official decision has not been made yet,” the Japanese official said. “If the U.S. is going to implement any measures, we expect the measures be WTO-rules consistent.”
China on Friday expressed “grave concern” about the matter.
Trump said Thursday the tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports will be in effect for a long period of time. He said the measure will be signed “sometime next week.”
In 2017, Canada, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico accounted for nearly half of all U.S. steel imports. That year, Chinese steel accounted for less than 2 percent of overall U.S. imports.
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On the occasion of World Hearing Day, Saturday, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning one in 10 people globally, or more than 900 million, are at risk of disabling hearing loss by 2050 unless preventive action is taken now.
The World Health Organization reports 466 million people around the world currently suffer from disabling hearing loss. The annual cost to countries in direct health services and lost productivity resulting from this disability is estimated at $750 billion.
Problems resulting from hearing loss are expected to rise because of a growing and aging population – a population that is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
Shelly Chadha, a technical officer in the WHO’s Department of Prevention of Deafness and Hearing Loss, says the rise in the aging population does not mean that an increase in hearing loss is inevitable. She says there are many factors besides aging that affect hearing.
“These may be factors such as infectious diseases, which we may encounter in childhood – rubella or mumps, meningitis or ear infections. There may be factors such as exposure to loud sounds, to loud music or noise at work places. Many of these causes are preventable, and by addressing them, we can reduce or minimize the risk of hearing loss,” Chadha said.
The WHO reports about 60 percent of hearing loss in children can be prevented. Measures include immunizing children against infectious diseases, screening and treating chronic ear infections, avoiding the use of drugs harmful to hearing, and controlling exposure to loud sounds and music.
In cases where hearing loss is unavoidable, the WHO says people can be helped through technologies such as hearing aids and surgically implanted electronic cochlear implants.
It says these devices are of great benefit to the hard-of-hearing because they make it possible for them to better communicate and socialize with others.
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The tiny Marshall Islands is creating its own digital currency in order to raise some hard cash to pay bills and boost the economy.
The Pacific island nation said it became the first country in the world to recognize a cryptocurrency as its legal tender when it passed a law this week to create the digital “Sovereign,” or SOV. In the nation of 60,000, the cryptocurrency will have equal status with the U.S. dollar as a form of payment.
Venezuela last month became the first country to launch its own cryptocurrency when it launched the virtual Petro, backed by crude oil reserves. The Marshall Islands said the SOV will be different because it will be recognized in law as legal tender, effectively backed by the government.
Israeli partners
The Marshall Islands is partnering with Israeli company Neema to launch the SOV. It plans to sell some of the currency to international investors and spend the proceeds.
The Marshall Islands says the SOV will require users to identify themselves, thus avoiding the anonymity that has kept bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from gaining support from governments.
“This is a historic moment for our people, finally issuing and using our own currency, alongside the USD (U.S. dollar),” said President Hilda Heine in a statement. “It is another step of manifesting our national liberty.”
The Marshall Islands is closely aligned with the U.S. under a Compact of Free Association and uses the dollar as its currency. Under the compact, the U.S. provides the Marshall Islands with about $70 million each year in assistance. The U.S. runs a military base on Kwajalein Atoll.
Lawmakers passed the cryptocurrency measure Monday following five days of heated debate. It’s unclear when the nation will issue the currency.
Leaders hope the SOV will one day be used by residents for everything from paying taxes to buying groceries.
Initial offering: 24 million
The law states that the Marshall Islands will issue 24 million SOVs in what it calls an Initial Currency Offering. Half of those will go to the government and half to Neema.
The Marshall Islands intends to initially sell 6 million SOVs to international investors. It says it will use the money to help pay the budget, invest in projects to mitigate the effects of global warming, and support those people still affected by U.S. nuclear testing.
The country also intends to hand out 2.4 million SOVs to residents.
Neema Chief Executive Barak Ben-Ezer said the SOV marked a new era for cryptocurrency.
“SOV is about getting rid of the excuses” for not shifting to digital assets, he said in a statement. He said it solved a huge problem with cryptocurrencies, which haven’t previously been recognized as “real” money by banks, regulators and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Some lawmakers expressed concern about the large amount of the new currency that would go to the Israeli company, while others argued the country had urgent needs and the cash would help.
Jehan Chu, the Hong Kong-based co-founder of blockchain platform Kenetic, said he thought it was an amazing move by the Marshall Islands and was the way of the future.
“Physical currency is going by the wayside as an antiquated, obsolete form of transacting,” he said.
But Chu added that he didn’t think the currency would hold much appeal for international investors or be particularly valuable outside the Marshall Islands.
And many people in the Marshall Islands and beyond remain skeptical of cryptocurrencies.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney this week said a global speculative mania had encouraged a proliferation of the currencies, and that they needed to be held to the same standards as the rest of the financial system.
“The prices of many cryptocurrencies have exhibited the classic hallmarks of bubbles … reliant in part on finding the greater fool,” Carney said in a speech to the Scottish Economics conference in Edinburgh.
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In agitating for a trade war, President Donald Trump may have forgotten William Tecumseh Sherman’s adage that “war is hell.”
The Civil War general’s observation can be apt for trade wars, which may create conditions for a shooting war.
A look at Trump’s spoiling-for-a-fight tweet Friday:
TRUMP: “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!”
THE FACTS: History suggests that trade wars are not easy.
The president’s argument, in essence, is that high tariffs will force other countries to relent quickly on what he sees as unfair trading practices, and that will wipe out the trade gap and create factory jobs. That’s his motivation for announcing that the U.S. will impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports.
The record shows that tariffs, while they may help certain domestic manufacturers, can come at a broad cost. They can raise prices for consumers and businesses because companies pass on at least some of the higher costs of imported materials to their customers. Winning and losing isn’t as simple a matter as tracking the trade gap.
The State Department’s office of the historian looked at tariffs passed in the 1920s and 1930s to protect farms and other industries that were losing their markets in Europe as the continent recovered from World War I. The U.S. duties hurt Europe and made it harder for those countries to repay their war debts, while exposing farmers and consumers in the U.S. to higher prices. European nations responded by raising their tariffs and the volume of world trade predictably slowed by 1934.
The State Department says the tariffs exacerbated the global effects of the Great Depression while doing nothing to foster political or economic cooperation among countries. This was a diplomatic way of saying that the economic struggles helped embolden extremist politics and geopolitical rivalries before World War II.
Nor have past protectionist measures saved the steel industry, as Trump says his tariffs would.
The United States first became a net importer of steel in 1959, when steelworkers staged a 116-day strike, according to research by Michael O. Moore, a George Washington University economist. After that, U.S. administrations imposed protectionist policies, only to see global competitors adapt and the U.S. share of global steel production decline.
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China has warned about the “huge impact” on global trading, if U.S. President Donald Trump proceeds with his plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum products.
Wang Hejun, head of China’s commerce ministry’s trade remedy and investigation bureau, said in a statement late Friday the tariffs would “seriously damage multilateral trade mechanisms represented by the World Trade Organization and will surely have huge impact on normal international trade order.”
The Chinese official added, “If the final measures of the United States hurt Chinese interests, China will work with other affected countries in taking measures to safeguard its own rights and interests.”
Allies weigh in
Meanwhile earlier Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Trump’s tariff plans were “absolutely unacceptable.”
Trudeau said Friday he is prepared to “defend Canadian industry.” Canada is the United States’ biggest foreign source of both materials. He warned that the tariffs would also hurt U.S. consumers and businesses by driving up prices.
The European Union was also stung by Trump’s plan, as evidenced by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s warning that the EU could respond by taxing quintessentially American-made products, such as bourbon whiskey, blue jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Juncker told German media Friday that he does not like the words “trade war.”
“But I can’t see how this isn’t part of warlike behavior,” he said.
Trump had tweeted earlier in the day: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
The director of the World Trade Organization, Roberto Azevedo, responded coolly, saying, “A trade war is in no one’s interests.”
Currency markets
The currency market responded with a drop in the value of the U.S. dollar against most other major currencies. It ended the day at its lowest level against the yen in two years. The euro gained a half-percent against the dollar Friday.
And the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the trading week with its fourth decline in as many days, ending at 24,538.06. The Nasdaq and S&P 500, however, rose slightly after a three-day losing streak.
Trump spent Friday defending his threat to impose the tariffs, saying potential trade conflicts can be beneficial to the United States.
A Japanese government official told VOA that Tokyo “has explained several times to the U.S. government our concerns,” but declined to comment further on any ongoing discussions with Washington.
“While we are aware of the president’s statement, we understand that the official decision has not been made yet,” the Japanese official said. “If the U.S. is going to implement any measures, we expect the measures be WTO-rules consistent.”
Trump said Thursday the tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports will be in effect for a long period of time. He said the measure will be signed “sometime next week.”
In 2017, Canada, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico accounted for nearly half of all U.S. steel imports. That year, Chinese steel accounted for less than 2 percent of overall U.S. imports.
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“A game-changer for weather forecasts.” That’s what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA are calling the just-launched GOES-S satellite. It is the second in a pair of the most advanced weather satellites ever built. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Georgia lawmakers’ decision to punish Delta Air Lines for publicly distancing itself from the National Rifle Association was an extraordinary act of political revenge.
By killing a proposed tax break on jet fuel, pro-gun Republicans won a political victory that could pay off in the short term, but other companies won’t soon forget that Georgia allied itself with the NRA over one of its largest private employers, with 33,000 workers statewide.
“When you inject naked politics — and that’s what this is — into the economic equation, I think that it does have the chance of spooking the business community,” said Tom Stringer, a New York-based consultant for the business-advisory firm BDO. “One thing about the business community is that it has a very long memory.”
How it began
The uproar began last Saturday when Delta stopped offering fare discounts to NRA members in the wake of the school massacre in Florida. On Friday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian insisted in a memo to employees that the company was “not taking sides” on gun control and made the decision in hopes of removing itself from the gun debate. He said the company’s “values are not for sale” and “we are proud and honored to locate our headquarters here.”
Delta recently signed a 20-year lease to keep its hub at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, and business consultants said other Atlanta-based firms, such as Coca-Cola and UPS, will likely stay put, too. But GOP lawmakers’ willingness to use public money to try to intimidate corporations could damage Georgia’s ability to attract new industry, including Amazon, which recently named metro Atlanta a finalist for its coveted second headquarters.
“I think it’s fair to say that this situation would not be helpful to the state of Georgia in potentially securing the Amazon site,” said Jerry Funaro, Chicago-based vice president for global marketing at TRC Global Mobility, a relocation management company. “They could certainly say that this would be a reason to look elsewhere.”
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Stage set with a tweet
Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who is running in a crowded primary for governor in May, set the stage for the fight with Delta with a tweet Monday saying conservatives would fight back. He defended the move Friday.
“We cannot continue to allow large companies to treat conservatives differently than other customers, employees and partners,” Cagle wrote in an opinion piece published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The voters who elected us and believe strongly in our rights and liberties expect and deserve no less.”
Another GOP candidate for governor, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, even suggested using the estimated $38 million the state would save by killing jet fuel tax break to pay for a tax-free “holiday” on purchases of guns and ammunition.
NRA or jobs
Other GOP leaders openly cringed at the combative tone Cagle and others took.
Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, who is term-limited and serving his final year, bemoaned the controversy as an “unbecoming squabble” fueled by election-year posturing. GOP House Speaker David Ralston called it “not one of our finer days” when the firestorm erupted Monday.
Republicans have controlled the governor’s mansion in Georgia since 2003, a deep red streak that makes this year’s GOP gubernatorial nominee a likely favorite in November.
Deal and other governors for decades have made it a priority to ensure Georgia was an attractive location for prospective employers, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia. Before the NRA controversy, he said, many GOP lawmakers defended the jet fuel tax break as necessary to protect jobs.
“What this really does is it says, in terms of setting priorities, that taking a stand on the NRA is more significant,” Bullock said. “The jobs thing now is pushed to the back.”
After Delta announced it was cutting ties with the NRA, it took pro-gun Republicans just days to make good on their threats by passing a sweeping tax bill, minus the jet fuel tax break.
Deal, who said an estimated $5.2 billion in overall tax savings was too important to sacrifice, swiftly signed the measure into law Friday. He vowed to keep pursuing the jet fuel exemption as a separate issue.
13 NRA discounts
Delta revealed Friday that the NRA discount that triggered the showdown had barely been used. Offered recently for NRA members flying to the group’s 2018 convention in Dallas, only 13 discounted tickets had been sold, Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter said.
Delta isn’t the only company to take action since the Feb. 14 slayings of 17 students and educators in Parkland, Florida, by a gunman armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle. Walmart, Kroger and Dick’s Sporting Goods have tightened their gun sales policies. Meanwhile, MetLife, Hertz and others have joined Delta in ending business ties with the NRA.
The extent of the backlash Georgia might face from businesses is unclear. But firms from outside the South may think twice about Georgia if they see a clash of corporate values on guns and other social issues, said Jon Gabrielsen, a business-strategy consultant who worked 17 years in Georgia before moving recently to Mexico.
“If you’re not there yet, why would you want to subject yourself to that potential grief with what the legislature just pulled?” Gabrielsen said.
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“Absolutely unacceptable” were the words Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used to describe U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that he plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum products.
Trudeau made the comment Friday, adding that he is prepared to “defend Canadian industry.” Canada is the United States’ biggest foreign source of both materials. He warned that the tariffs would also hurt U.S. consumers and businesses by driving up prices.
The European Union was also stung by Trump’s plan, as evidenced by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s warning that the EU could respond by taxing quintessentially American-made products, such as bourbon whiskey, blue jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Juncker told German media Friday that he does not like the words “trade war.” “But I can’t see how this isn’t part of warlike behavior,” he said.
Trump had tweeted earlier in the day: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
The director of the World Trade Organization, Roberto Azevedo, responded coolly, saying, “A trade war is in no one’s interests.”
The currency market responded with a drop in the value of the U.S. dollar against most other major currencies. It ended the day at its lowest level against the yen in two years. The euro gained a half-percent against the dollar on Friday.
And the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the trading week with its fourth decline in as many days, ending at 24,538.06. The Nasdaq and S&P 500, however, rose slightly after a three-day losing streak.
Trump spent Friday defending his threat to impose the tariffs, saying potential trade conflicts can be beneficial to the United States.
“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump wrote in a post on the social media site Twitter. “Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore — we win big. It’s easy!”
A Japanese government official told VOA that Tokyo “has explained several times to the U.S. government our concerns,” but declined to comment further on any ongoing discussions with Washington.
“While we are aware of the president’s statement, we understand that the official decision has not been made yet,” the Japanese official said. “If the U.S. is going to implement any measures, we expect the measures be WTO-rules consistent.”
China on Friday expressed “grave concern” about the matter.
Trump said Thursday the tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports will be in effect for a long period of time. He said the measure will be signed “sometime next week.”
In 2017, Canada, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico accounted for nearly half of all U.S. steel imports. That year, Chinese steel accounted for less than 2 percent of overall U.S. imports.
William Gallo, Fern Robinson, Wayne Lee contributed to this report
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A tiny Nebraska startup awarded the first border wall construction project under President Donald Trump is the offshoot of a construction firm that was sued repeatedly for failing to pay subcontractors and accused in a 2016 government audit of shady billing practices.
SWF Constructors, which lists just one employee in its Omaha office, won the $11 million federal contract in November as part of a project to replace a little more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of a current fence with post-style barriers 30 feet (9.1 meters) high in Calexico, California. The project represents a sliver of the president’s plan that was central to his presidential campaign promise for a wall at the border with Mexico.
It remains unclear why SWF was listed on the bid for the wall contract instead of Edgewood, New York-based Coastal Environmental Group, which online government documents list as its owner.
Thomas Anderson, an Omaha lawyer who initially represented a subcontractor that sued Coastal in 2011, said he wouldn’t be surprised if it was an attempt to dodge scrutiny of past legal problems. He says such a practice is relatively common in construction projects.
“If you kick up a little dust on the trail, it makes the trail harder to follow,” Anderson said.
Richard Silva, who is listed in government documents as the primary contact for both SWF and Coastal, did not return numerous phone and email messages left by The Associated Press seeking comment. Messages left with a general voicemail box for Coastal also were not returned.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Fort Worth, Texas, bid the Calexico wall project, according to federal records. The agency told The Associated Press that by Thursday afternoon it would provide information on the process used to vet SWF. It didn’t immediately return a follow-up call Friday seeking that information.
In 2011, the federal government sued Coastal on behalf of Anderson’s client as part of a multimillion-dollar lead cleanup project at an EPA Superfund site in northeast Omaha. The lawsuit accused Coastal of failing to pay the subcontractor, Enviroworks Inc., nearly $400,000 in labor and equipment costs and of reneging on a profit-sharing agreement that cheated the subcontractor out of about $1.7 million.
Government lawyers said Coastal’s refusal to pay forced the subcontractor to lay off most of its employees. Immediately after employees were notified of the layoffs, the lawsuit alleged, “Coastal hired and used the Enviroworks employees as its own and continued to perform the work that Enviroworks was entitled to do,” the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit was settled in 2015 for an undisclosed amount.
In 2014, Coastal was again sued by the federal government for failing to pay another subcontractor, SF Marina Systems of Gloucester, Virginia, more than $175,000 for construction of concrete docks at the U.S. Coast Guard facility at Fire Island, New York.
The government said that after repeated requests for payment, Coastal sent SF Marina a photocopy of a check for payment in full, along with a “release and waiver of lien” that Coastal said had to be signed before the check could be sent. But when SF Marina returned the signed release, Coastal still refused to pay and attempted to rely on the signed release to claim SF Marina could not collect on the debt. The lawsuit was settled in 2015, also for an undisclosed amount.
A year later, an audit by the U.S. Interior Department found $2 million in questionable spending that should have flagged it as a problem company, but did not.
That audit looked at billing by Coastal Environmental for work to clean up two wildlife refuges in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. The report found that Coastal billed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for labor and material, subcontractors, lodging and meals and miscellaneous items without providing supporting documents like timesheets, invoices and receipts.
Nancy DiPaolo, with the Interior Department’s Office of the Inspector General, said the department negotiated the repayment of the audit’s findings to $200,000, and Coastal was given five years to pay it back.
The audit’s findings required the Interior Department to file a “past performance report” on Coastal that would have flagged it to other government departments, DiPaolo said. But that report was never filed, she said, for reasons she didn’t know.
“It was probably an oversight,” she said.
Coastal’s new Omaha company, SWF, is not registered with either the Nebraska Secretary of State’s office or the Nebraska Department of Labor, which is required for any company doing business within the state. Labor department officials are investigating whether SWF violated state registration requirements.
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Instagram users fed up with the service becoming more and more like Facebook are flocking to a hot new app called Vero.
Vero lets you share photos and video just like Instagram, plus it lets you talk about music, movies or books you like or hate. Though Vero has been around since 2015, its popularity surged in recent days, thanks in part to sudden, word-of-mouth interest from the cosplay community — comic book fans who like to dress up as characters. That interest then spread to other online groups.
There’s also a growing frustration with Instagram, with a flood of ads, dearth of privacy options and a recent end to the chronological ordering of posts. Instagram users have been posting screenshots of Vero, asking their friends to join.
But don’t ring Instagram’s death knells just yet. Hot new apps pop up and fizzle by the dozen, so the odds are stacked against Vero. Remember Ello? Peach? Thought so.
“Young people are super fickle and nothing has caught on in the way that Snapchat or Instagram has,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an eMarketer analyst who specializes in social media.
From 2015 until this past week, Vero was little known, with fewer than 200,000 users, according to CEO Ayman Hariri. Then cosplay members started posting photos of elaborate costumes and makeup. Photographers, tattoo artists and others followed. As of Thursday, Vero was approaching 3 million users, Hariri said.
A fee, eventually
Vero has gotten so popular in recent days that some users have reported widespread outages and error messages. Vero says it’s working to keep up in response “a large wave of new users.”
Vero works on Apple or Android mobile devices and is free, at least for now. The company eventually wants to charge a subscription fee.
There are no ads, and the service promises “no data mining. Ever.” That means it won’t try to sell you stuff based on your interests and habits, as revealed through your posts. Of course, Facebook started out without ads and “data mining,” and it’s now one of the top internet advertising companies. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and started showing ads there the following year.
Instagram’s privacy settings are all or nothing: You either make everything available to everyone on Instagram, or make everything visible only to approved friends. Vero lets you set the privacy level of individual posts. If you don’t want something available to all users, you can choose just close friends, friends or acquaintances.
Another big difference: Vero shows friends’ posts in chronological order rather than tailored to your perceived tastes, as determined by software. Instagram got rid of chronological presentations in 2016, a change that hasn’t gone well with many users.
Founder was already wealthy
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire after starting the service. Vero’s founder was already one.
Hariri is the son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and helped run the family’s now-defunct construction company in Saudi Arabia. He got a computer science degree from Georgetown and returned to Saudi Arabia after his father was assassinated in 2005. His half brother, Saad, is Lebanon’s current prime minister.
Hariri’s ties with the family business, Saudi Oger, have come into question. The company has been accused in recent years of failing to pay workers and stranding them with little food and access to medical care. Vero says Hariri hasn’t had any operational or financial involvement with the business since late 2013.
Hariri said he started the service not to replace Instagram but to give people “a more authentic social network.” Because Vero doesn’t sell ads, he said, it isn’t simply trying to get people to stay on longer. More important, he said, is “how you feel when you use [it] and how you feel it’s useful.”
Newcomers like Ello and Peach can quickly become popular as people fed up with bigger services itch for something new. But reality can set in when people realize that their friends are not on the new services or that these services aren’t all they promised to be.
Williamson, the eMarketer analyst, said it’s difficult for a new service to become something people use for more than a few weeks.
A rare exception is Snapchat, which was founded in 2010, the same year as Instagram. Unlike Instagram, it has remained an independent company and is still a popular service among younger people. But even Snapchat is having trouble growing more broadly.
EMarketer recently published a report that predicted 2 million people under 25 leaving Facebook for other apps this year. But that means going to Snapchat and the Facebook-owned Instagram, not necessarily emerging services like Vero.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports sparked concerns of a trade war Friday, with emerging markets trading lower and some world leaders threatening to take retaliatory measures.
Japan’s Nikkei share average fell to a more than two-week low Friday. The Nikkei ended 2.5 percent lower at 21,181.64 points, its lowest closing since Feb. 14.
“Automakers will have to bear the cost, and they may also have to raise prices while auto sales are already sluggish,” said Takuya Takahashi, a strategist at Daiwa Securities. “This isn’t looking good to the auto sector.”
China, EU, Canada react
China on Friday expressed “grave concern” about the apparent U.S. trade policy but had no immediate response to Trump’s announcement that he will increase duties on steel and aluminum imports.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker denounced Trump’s trade plan as “a blatant intervention to protect U.S. domestic industry.” He said the EU would take retaliatory measures, it Trump implements his plan.
Canada said it would “take responsive measures” to protect its trade interests and workers if the restrictions are imposed on its steel and aluminum products.
Trump said Thursday the tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports will be in effect for a long period of time. He said the measure will be signed “sometime next week.”
The trade war talk had stocks closing sharply lower on Wall Street.
The American International Automobile Dealers Association said Trump’s tariff plans would increase prices substantially.
“This is going to have fallout on our downstream suppliers, particularly in the automotive, machinery and aircraft sectors,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade official. “What benefits one industry can hurt another. What saves one job can jeopardize another,” she said.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president’s decision “shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” She said Trump had talked about the trade plans “for decades.”
Republicans speak out
Not all of Trump’s fellow Republican politicians agreed with his trade war talk.
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska said, “You’d expect a policy this bad from a leftist administration, not a supposedly Republican one.”
A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said the House majority leader hoped the president would “consider the unintended consequences of this idea and look at other approaches before moving forward.”
Trump posted on Twitter Thursday about trade policy.
At the Thursday meeting, President Trump said the NAFTA trade pact and the World Trade Organization have been disasters for the United States. He asserted “the rise of China economically was directly equal to the date of the opening of the World Trade Organization.”
Trump told officials from steel and aluminum companies that the United States “hasn’t been treated fairly by other countries, but I don’t blame the other countries.”
In 2017, Canada, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico accounted for nearly half of all U.S. steel imports. That year, Chinese steel accounted for less than 2 percent of overall U.S. imports.
President Trump said he has a lot of respect for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and when he was in China, he told President Xi, “I don’t blame you, if you can get away with almost 500 billion dollars a year off of our country, how can I blame you? Somebody agreed to these deals. Those people should be ashamed of themselves for what they let happened.”
Xi’s top economic adviser, Liu He, is set to visit the White House Thursday to meet with top administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn.
A White House official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters that they expect a “frank exchange of views” and will focus on “the substantive issues.”
Ryan L. Hass, the David M. Rubenstein Fellow at John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings Institution told VOA he believes in the best-case scenario, Liu’s visit will assure both sides that “they are committed to solving underlying problems in the bilateral trade relationship.” Hass noted, “In such a scenario, both sides would agree on the problems that need to be addressed, the framework for addressing them, and the participants and timeline for concluding negotiations.”
Hass said if Liu’s visit fails to exceed the White House’s expectations, then the probability of unilateral U.S. trade actions against China will go up.
“If the U.S. takes unilateral actions, China likely will respond proportionately, and that could set off a tit-for-tat cycle leading to a trade war,” Hass said.
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Australia’s corporate watchdog is taking mining giant Rio Tinto and two former executives to court over the global miner’s “misleading and deceptive conduct” in reporting the coal reserves of a Mozambique mine purchased for $4 billion.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) launched the court action Friday against Rio Tinto, former Chief Executive Tom Albanese and former Chief Financial Officer Guy Elliott.
“ASIC alleges that RTL (Rio Tinto Ltd) engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct by publishing statements in the 2011 annual report, signed by Mr. Albanese and Mr. Elliott, misrepresenting the reserves and resources of RTCM (Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique),” the watchdog said in a statement.
Rio Tinto bought the mine in 2011 for $4 billion and wrote off $3.5 billion in loses several years later when it sold the mine. The mining company fired Albanese and Elliott over their involvement with the sale.
ASIC said in a statement, “… by allowing RTL (Rio Tinto Limited) to engage in such conduct, Mr. Albanese and Mr. Elliott failed to exercise their powers and discharge their duties with the care and diligence required by law as directors and officers of RTL.”
ASIC wants the court to fine the two former Rio Tinto executives and bar them from managing corporations “for such periods as the court thinks fit.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged the mining giant and the two executives with fraud last year over similar allegations.
Rio Tinto said last year the U.S. charges were “unwarranted.”
The company did not immediately respond to the Australian charges.
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An Egyptian teenager has turned cables and sheets of aluminum and metal into a robotic exoskeleton that he says can one day help the disabled walk. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Temperatures in the Arctic in recent days have surged above the freezing point, raising fears that climate change is affecting the planet’s atmospheric system far faster than predicted.
The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard sits high above the Arctic Circle. It is still late winter, and the sun won’t rise above the horizon for another three weeks, and yet the ice is melting. Waves lap the shoreline of fjords that just a few years ago would have been frozen solid. Snowmobiles lie trapped in muddy meltwater.
In the past 30 days, temperatures in Svalbard have soared 10 degrees Celsius above average, and weather station data suggests it’s even gone above freezing at the North Pole.
WATCH: Huge Arctic Temperature Spike May Be Linked to Europe Cold Snap
“We’ve seen what are called these winter warming events before. But what we know is they’re becoming more common, and they’re lasting longer, and they’re becoming more intense as well,” NASA climatologist Alek Petty told VOA.
Warm Arctic, cold Europe
Warm, cyclonic low-pressure systems are being drawn into the Arctic. At the same time, winter sea ice cover is at its lowest since records began. Scientists say the arctic region is warming twice as fast as the global average.
“The ocean stores huge amounts of heat, and as soon as you remove that sea ice then this heat can essentially be transferred into the atmosphere, and so we think these lows are now gaining some additional heat,” professor G.W.K. Moore of the University of Toronto said.
The warm arctic weather coincides with an unusually severe cold snap across Europe. Temperatures in Germany have dipped to minus 27 degrees Celsius, while in Ukraine the severe weather has caused blackouts. Snow has covered Rome’s Colosseum and the palm-fringed shores of the Bay of Naples.
A theory known as “warm Arctic, cold continents” suggests that the winds that circulate around the Arctic and normally keep it cold, known as the polar vortex, become unstable. Warm air is taken in and cold air expelled into lower latitudes.
“Is this loss of sea ice and this rapid warming we’re seeing in the Arctic making the likelihood of these cold snaps in Europe, say, more common? And that’s the more contentious issue here. Unfortunately, we just don’t have many years of data here,” NASA’s Petty said.
Jet stream perturbed
Thirty kilometers up, there has also been what’s called stratospheric sudden warming, which is having a big influence on the weather, Moore said.
“Essentially, it perturbs the jet stream, which is this core of high winds that go around the Earth. And that perturbed jet stream is now leading to Europe being under the influence on easterly winds from Siberia,” he said.
Short term, the plunging temperatures have caused travel chaos in Europe, with several airports closed, and rail lines and roads blocked.
Longer term, the impact — though not yet fully understood — could be far more profound for the whole planet.
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