The $10 billion-dollar deal to bring a Taiwanese-based electronics manufacturer to Wisconsin is raising questions from critics despite the promise that the investment could provide tens of thousands of new American jobs and other long term benefits. The deal’s critics say Wisconsin taxpayers could lose money in what is the largest U.S. state tax incentive package ever offered to a foreign company. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Racine, Wisconsin.
…
The U.S. holiday shopping season shifts into high gear this week after the Thanksgiving Day Holiday on Thursday. Black Friday, as it’s called, has become an important day for retailers because for some stores – the start of the holiday shopping season marks the transition, in accounting terms – from red, meaning debt – to black, for profitability. Based on the improving outlook for the US economy, retailers may be in for an early Christmas treat. Mil Arcega has more.
…
Pumpkins, squash, beets and collard greens are just a few of the more than 50 different crops that Garner’s Produce in Virginia grows and sells at farmers markets about two hours away in Washington, D.C.
At a small soup shop in the northwest section of the District of Columbia, cooks are chopping Garner’s fresh squash and sweet potatoes for Soupergirl! vegan and kosher soups.
“We are trying to save the world one bowl of soup at a time,” said Sara Polon, a Soupergirl! founder.
Polon’s farm-to-table business model means that she buys produce to use in her soups from farmers markets around D.C. or wholesale from local growers like Garner’s Produce in Warsaw, Virginia.
“We need to think more about where our food comes from,” Polon said. “Where it was grown, who grew it, how it was picked, how it was prepared.”
Much of the produce that is sold in grocery stores is grown in other parts of the world and spends days in a shipping container before reaching a table.
“I didn’t know how corrupted our food system had become,” Polon said, adding that she thinks food should come from just a few miles away. “Why do we need to get apples from New Zealand, if they grow in Virginia?”
Bernard Boyle, farm manager for Garner’s Produce, agrees.
“You don’t know exactly” how farmers elsewhere are producing their crops, Boyle said. If the food is grown by a neighbor, “you know you’re going to get what you’re supposed to get.”
Polon’s mission is to make vegan and kosher soups using local produce to promote a healthful lifestyle. This model has sustained her business for over nine years. Sarah uses only vegetables that are in season, and she says that soup is always in season.
“Soup is not a fad, it’s not a trend. It’s classic, it’s not going anywhere,” she said.
Soupergirl! sells chilled soups in the summer using ingredients like Garner’s Produce watermelons and tomatoes. In the fall, the menu features fall-harvested produce such as lentils, butternut squash, collard greens, kale and potatoes from farms in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.
Polon embraced her Soupergirl! alter ego nine years ago, when she and her mother started delivering soups they had made with local produce to individuals and businesses. She and her mom, whom she calls “the chief anxiety officer,” were making about 10 gallons of soup a day at that time.
Now, Soupergirl! produces 300 to 500 gallons of soup a day for its two D.C. locations, as well as grocery stores across several states and at farmers markets. Polon has even started a soup “cleanse” — a three-day or five-day healthful-eating plan to eat four Soupergirl! soups a day.
“It’s basically everything every doctor says you should be eating delivered right to your door,” she said.
Polon met the family in charge of Garner’s Produce at a Washington farmers market about five years ago, and they have been growing together ever since.
“She’s like family,” said Bernard Boyle. His wife, Dana Boyle, is the daughter of the man who started Garner’s Produce. She now runs the family farm.
Because Polon won’t use produce that’s out of season, she relies on her relationship with the Boyles to build her menu.
“I know that I have a farmer I can count on to get me the high-quality seasonal ingredients and I can rely on to deliver on time,” Polon said.
Polon also wants to know who is picking her produce and that they’re being treated fairly.
Garner’s Produce has the ability to grow produce throughout the winter, not only to help supply Soupergirl! but also to create work for their employees. They use heated tents to grow produce into February, whereas in the past they were done harvesting by late November.
“We treat everybody like family who works with us,” Bernard Boyle said. “We want them to make it through the winter.”
Last year, Garner’s Produce was able to produce 2,000 to 4,000 pounds of butternut squash and sweet potatoes per month. In the past couple of months, Polon has received 300 to 400 pounds of collard greens per week.
Arash Arabasadi contributed to this story.
…
Babies are much more likely to die in their first few weeks of life if their mothers live close to the site of an oil spill, according to new research. Scientists studied data on infant mortality and oil spills in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region – and describe their results as ‘shocking’.
It’s estimated that 240,000 barrels of crude oil are spilled into the Niger Delta every year. The environmental effects are clear to see – waterways running thick with the choking, black liquid; suffocated wildlife; dying mangroves. The effect on the people living in the delta is slowly coming to light.
The study by scientists at Switzerland’s University of Saint Gallen is shocking: babies born in the delta are twice as likely to die in the first month of life if their mothers were living close to an oil spill before they became pregnant. Roland Hodler is lead researcher.
“We looked at the birth histories of more than 2,500 Nigerian mothers,” Holder said. “And we compared siblings, some conceived before and some conceived after a nearby oil spill.”
The researchers compared geographical data on 6,600 recent oil spills, with results from the 2013 national demographic and health survey.
Their results show that even spills that happened five years before conception doubled the chances of babies dying after birth. However, spills that happened during pregnancy appeared to have little effect.
“We think the main reason is that some of the negative health effects are just building up over time,” Holder said. “So, if you think about these negative health effects, these are due to skin contact with crude oil, or to drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated fish or crops. And also inhaling smoke from fires.”
It’s thought unborn and newborn infants are more vulnerable as they haven’t built up natural defenses. The study suggests the effects of oil spills will be felt long into the future.
In 2015 the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell agreed to share the costs of the clean-up – an operation that the United Nations says will likely take 30 years. Critics say only a fraction of the money has been paid. Shell blames oil thieves for causing many of the spills.
The Nigerian government did not respond to requests for comment.
…
Babies are much more likely to die in their first few weeks of life if their mothers live close to the site of an oil spill, according to new research. Scientists studied data on infant mortality and oil spills in Nigeria’s Niger delta region – and describe their results as ‘shocking’. Henry Ridgwell reports.
…
Uber is coming clean about its cover-up of a year-old hacking attack that stole personal information about more than 57 million of the beleaguered ride-hailing service’s customers and drivers.
So far, there’s no evidence that the data taken has been misused, according to a Tuesday blog post by Uber’s recently hired CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. Part of the reason nothing malicious has happened is because Uber acknowledges paying the hackers $100,000 to destroy the stolen information.
The revelation marks the latest stain on Uber’s reputation. It also brought an investigation from New York’s attorney general and threats of larger-than-normal fines from British authorities for failing to promptly disclose the hack.
The San Francisco company ousted Travis Kalanick as CEO in June after an internal investigation concluded he had built a culture that allowed female workers to be sexually harassed and encouraged employees to push legal limits.
It’s also the latest major breach involving a prominent company that didn’t notify the people that could be potentially harmed for months or even years after the break-in occurred.
Yahoo didn’t make its first disclosure about hacks that hit 3 billion user accounts during 2013 and 2014 until September 2016. Credit reporting service Equifax waited several months before revealing this past September that hackers had carted off the Social Security numbers of 145 million Americans.
Khosrowshahi criticized Uber’s handling of its data theft in his blog post.
“While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”
That pledge shouldn’t excuse Uber’s previous regime for its egregious behavior, said Sam Curry, chief security officer for the computer security firm Cybereason.
“The truly scary thing here is that Uber paid a bribe, essentially a ransom to make this breach go away, and they acted as if they were above the law,” Curry said. “Those people responsible for the integrity and confidentiality of the data in-fact covered it up.”
The heist took the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of 57 million riders around the world. The thieves also nabbed the driver’s license numbers of 600,000 Uber drivers in the U.S.
Uber waited until Tuesday to begin notifying the drivers with compromised driver’s licenses, which can be particularly useful for perpetrating identify theft. For that reason, Uber will now pay for free credit-report monitoring and identity theft protection services for the affected drivers.
Kalanick, who still sits on Uber’s board of directors, declined to comment on the data breach that took place in October 2016. Uber says the response to the hack was handled by its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor whom Kalanick lured away from Facebook in 2015.
As part of his effort to set things right, Khosrowshahi extracted Sullivan’s resignation from Uber and also jettisoned Craig Clark, a lawyer who reported to Sullivan.
Clark didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent through his LinkedIn profile. Efforts to reach Sullivan were unsuccessful.
On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office confirmed that it had opened an investigation into the data theft, but a spokeswoman wouldn’t comment further. New York law requires that companies notify the attorney general and consumers if data is stolen.
In London, Britain’s Deputy Information Commissioner James Dipple-Johnstone said Wednesday the company faces “higher fines” because it concealed the hack from the public.
The Information Commissioner’s Office and the National Cyber Security Center are working to gauge the severity of the problem for British Uber users.
Uber’s silence about its breach came while it was negotiating with the Federal Trade Commission about its handling of its riders’ information.
Earlier in 2016, the company reached a settlement with the New York attorney general requiring it to take steps to be more vigilant about protecting the information that its app stores about its riders. As part of that settlement, Uber also paid a $20,000 fine for waiting to notify five months about another data breach that it discovered in September 2014.
…
The fashion and textile industry could generate nearly half a million jobs in sub-Saharan Africa over the next decade. That’s according to the African Development Bank, which launched its “Fashionomics” initiative in 2015 to revitalize the industry. However, designers in the region still struggle to grow their businesses. Lenny Ruvaga reports for VOA from Nairobi.
…
Iraq and General Electric have signed a deal to develop Iraq’s power infrastructure, which would help bring much-needed electricity to areas facing significant shortages across the country.
GE says in a statement released Wednesday that the more than $400 million contract will help building 14 electric substations and supply critical equipment such as transformers, circuit breakers and other outdoor equipment to revamp existing substations.
GE says the substations will hook up power plants in the provinces of Ninevah, Salahuddin, Anbar, Baghdad, Karbala, Qadissiyah and Basra to the national grid.
It says GE will also help Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity secure funding through various financial institutions.
Despite billions of dollars spent since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, many Iraqi cities and towns are still experiencing severe power cuts and rolling blackouts.
…
Each year in America, when summer ends and fall begins, it’s a safe bet you’ll find pumpkins and sweet potatoes flavoring everything from coffee to pie. It’s seasonal food that makes its way from farms to tables around the country from Thanksgiving to Christmas time. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from a farm feeding local produce to area businesses stewing seasonal sensations.
…
You can reach into your pocket and tell whether you’ve grabbed coins or keys, and now researchers in California have developed a robot with a similar level of tactile sensitivity. Faith Lapidus reports.
…
Uber Technologies Inc failed to disclose a massive breach last year that exposed the data of some 57 million users of the ride-sharing service, the company’s new chief executive officer said on Tuesday.
Discovery of the company’s handling of the incident led to the departure of two employees who led Uber’s response to the incident, said Dara Khosrowshahi, who was named CEO in August following the departure of founder Travis Kalanick. Khosrowshahi said he had only recently learned of the matter himself.
The company’s admission that it failed to disclose the breach comes as Uber seeks to recover from a series of crises that culminated in the Kalanick’s ouster in June.
“None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it,” Khosrowshahi said in a blog post.
According to the company’s account, two individuals downloaded data from a web-based server at another company that provided Uber with cloud-computing services.
The data contained names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of some 57 million Uber users around the world. The hackers also downloaded names and driver’s license numbers of some 600,000 of the company’s U.S. drivers, Khosrowshahi said in a blog post.
Bloomberg News reported that Uber’s chief security officer Joe Sullivan and a deputy had been ousted from the company this week because of their role in the handling of the incident. The company paid hackers $100,000 to delete the stolen data, according to Bloomberg.
Though such payoffs are rarely discussed in public, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and private security companies have told Reuters in the past year that an increasing number of companies have made payments to criminal hackers who have turned to extortion.
None have previously come to light that aimed to suppress breaches that would have required public disclosure, such as those involving protected personal information. Sullivan did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Sullivan, formerly the top security official at Facebook Inc, is a former federal prosecutor and one of the most admired security executives in Silicon Valley.
Kalanick learned of the breach a month after it took place, in November 2016, as the company was in negotiations with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the handling of consumer data, according to Bloomberg.
Uber representatives did not respond when asked to comment on the Bloomberg report.
Khosrowshahi said he had hired Matt Olsen, former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency, to help him figure out how to best guide and structure the company’s security teams and processes.
“While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes,” he said. “We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”
Sue Brogan’s street is barely above sea level on a good day.
During autumn’s “king tides,” when the sun and moon align to create the highest tides of the year, Biscayne Bay backs up through storm drains and flows into Brogan’s street, in Miami’s low-lying Shorecrest neighborhood.
Roads flood. The salt water rusts cars and kills greenery. For now, it’s mostly a nuisance several days a year. But Brogan knows it’s only going to get worse.
“It’s more of a warning situation. Where is it going to go from this?” she asks.
Climate change is expected to raise sea levels a minimum of three-quarters of a meter by the end of the century, according to the estimates that regional planners use. That puts most of Shorecrest underwater year-round, along with other low-lying waterfront neighborhoods. And higher seas mean increased risk of tidal flooding and storm surges across this hurricane-prone city.
The planners’ high-end estimate is two meters of sea level rise. That would submerge most of the glitzy city of Miami Beach, across the bay.
And scientists say three to three-and-a-half meters is extreme but plausible. In that scenario, Miami Beach is gone and Miami is an archipelago.
Planning for this future is difficult, expensive and often controversial. But the Miami region has little choice.
“Sea level rise is an existential threat,” said City of Miami Chief Resilience Officer Jane Gilbert. “But it is not an imminent existential threat … We have time to plan.”
Miami Beach leads way
As a barrier island with some of the most expensive real estate in the region, Miami Beach is quite literally on the front lines of climate change. The city has the motivation, and the resources, to take some of the most aggressive action in the region.
Residents are paying for roughly half a billion dollars’ worth of seawalls, raised streets, sewer pumps and more.
“Thankfully, our residents — the folks that are footing the bill for this work — realize that the cost of doing nothing is much greater,” said Public Works Director Eric Carpenter.
There have been some hiccups. Raising roads put adjacent properties below street level. At least one flood-damage insurance claim has been denied as a result, and residents and businesses are worried there will be more.
Miami Beach is working to resolve the dispute.
“I think there are inherent risks with being first,” Carpenter said.
But the city gets credit for moving forward despite the challenges.
“It’s not working perfectly. But they’re at least doing the experimentation,” said Zelalem Adefris with the advocacy group Catalyst Miami.
Redesigning Shorecrest
Across the bay, she added, the City of Miami has been slower to act. But there are signs of progress.
Just this November, city voters approved a $400 million “Miami Forever” bond issue, half of which is earmarked for sea-level rise adaptation.
Shorecrest will likely see some of that money to upgrade sewers and raise roads.
More controversial proposals are on the table, too, like buying up some of the most flood-prone homes and turning the land into a flood-absorbing park. Residents could move to higher-density housing to be built on higher ground.
Brogan’s building would be demolished. But she doesn’t mind.
“With climate change, with rising water, we’re going to have to abandon certain property,” she admitted.
But like many in the mixed-income neighborhood, Brogan rents her apartment. Others are skeptical of the idea.
“I don’t think the homeowners are going to be very happy about that,” said Daisy Torres, president of the Shorecrest homeowners’ association.
Objections come not only from residents whose houses would be torn down. Some people living near the areas where the city proposes building that higher-density housing don’t like the idea, either, she added.
Jane Gilbert stresses that there are no immediate plans to rearrange Shorecrest. “They have a good amount of time to still be in that area,” she said. “It’s really much more long-term.”
“We feel the more we are having those conversations now, the easier it is for everyone to adapt over time,” she added.
High and (not) dry in Highland Village
Meanwhile, in another flood-prone low-lying community just a short drive north, those conversations are further behind.
Frank Burrola lives in a trailer in Highland Village, a mostly low-income neighborhood of homes and trailers on small plots in the city of North Miami Beach. Fall high-tide flooding is a virtual certainty on his street. And a storm several years ago left his yard with knee-high water.
“Right now, we’ve got a real serious problem,” Burrola said. “I don’t know if we’re still going to be around in five years if this keeps up.”
While the cities of Miami and Miami Beach are beginning to prepare, “there are other areas that really don’t have the funding, and they’re the ones that are really suffering,” said climate analyst Keren Bolter with the South Florida Regional Planning Council.
North Miami Beach is considering putting homes on stilts, and replacing trailers that flood with “tiny” homes that meet building codes, according to community development director Richard Lorber. But he doesn’t know where the funding will come from.
“My little city can’t stop king tide,” Lorber said, using the term for the fall high tides.
North Miami Beach officials say Miami-Dade County will have to take the lead. The county says the city is in charge. Neither has immediate plans for Highland Village.
It may take a disaster before major changes happen.
“It’s ironic, but in our way of doing emergency management, it’s tough to get the money before the storm. And after the storm there’s a lot of money,” said Miami-Dade County Chief Resilience Officer Jim Murley.
Barring a disaster, Murley said, “it’s easier to find the money” if a community comes to a collective decision on what it wants to do.
However, “most of the time, you just sort-of continue getting by,” he added. “And people make a decision on their own accord if they want to stay or leave.”
Engineering or retreat?
In the long run, the fate of Miami and many of the world’s coastal cities depend largely on how much, and how fast, the oceans rise. Scientists still have a lot to learn before they can make accurate predictions. But, they warn, the pace of sea level rise is increasing.
For many, retreat from the coast is inevitable.
“We’re going to have to leave sooner or later,” said Caroline Lewis, founder of the climate advocacy group the CLEO Institute. “But if we can have a planned retreat, and we could implement some of our ideas about keeping people as safe as possible for as long as possible, then we would have accomplished a great deal that the whole world could learn from.”
But in a city that carved itself out of a swampy wilderness, optimists abound.
“There’s an engineering solution to every problem,” Carpenter said. “It just comes down to, is there the political will to go through whatever pain may be associated with that solution, and the will to try and fund it.”
…
Venezuelan authorities arrested the acting president of Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), along with five other senior executives Tuesday for alleged corruption.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab told a press conference that interim president Jose Pereira and other managers allegedly arranged contracts that put Citgo at a disadvantage. The company operates refineries in Illinois, Texas and Louisiana with a capacity of 749,000 barrels per day.
“They did it with total discretion, without even coordinating with the competent authorities,” Saab said. “This is corruption, corruption of the most rotten kind.”
The six were accused of misappropriation of public funds, association to commit crimes and legitimation of capital, among other crimes.
The other five detainees were identified as Tomeu Vadell, vice president of Refining Operations; Alirio Zambrano, vice president and general manager of the Corpus Christi Refinery; Jorge Toledo, Vice President of Supply and Marketing; Gustavo Cardenas, Vice President of Strategic Relations with Shareholders and Government, and Jose Luis Zambrano; Vice President of Shared Services.
Last month, a senior executive of PDVSA and a dozen officials were arrested for alleged embezzlement.
But members of the Venezuelan opposition argue that recent investigations do not demonstrate a genuine intention of the government to eradicate corruption, but only reflect internal struggles of PDVSA.
VOA Latin America contributed to this report.
…
U.S. prosecutors charged an Iranian with hacking into computer systems of the cable TV channel HBO earlier this year, stealing information about the hit program “Game of Thrones” and attempting to extort millions of dollars from the company.
In an indictment Tuesday, prosecutors said 29-year-old Behzad Mesri has had ties to Iran’s military and is a member of an Iran-based hacking group known as the Turk Black Hat security team.
Mesril’s stolen material included video of unaired episodes of several original HBO shows, scripts and plot summaries of upcoming episodes of “Game of Thrones,” and confidential cast and crew contact information, according to the indictment.
Mesri claims to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO.
Demanded $6 million in Bitcoin
In late July, Mesri emailed HBO executives on several occasions, threatening to release the material unless the entertainment company paid him $5.5 million worth of Bitcoin digital currency, a ransom amount he later increased to $6 million.
“Hi to all losers! Yes, it’s true. HBO is hacked! Beware of heart attack!!!” he allegedly wrote in one anonymous email. In another he bragged that “HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with but we succeeded.”
After HBO refused to make a payment, Mesri allegedly posted portions of the stolen videos and five scripts from Game of Throne episodes on websites he controlled.
Mesri has not been arrested, and faces multiple charges, including wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and one count of computer hacking, which could be punished with up to five years in prison.
More indictments expects
The indictment is one of several cases involving Iranian suspects prosecutors plan to announce in the coming month, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. In July, the Justice Department indicted two Iranian nationals with hacking a Vermont-based software company.
“Mesri now stands charged with federal crimes, and although not arrested today, he will forever have to look over his shoulder until he is made to face justice,” said Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon Kim.
Prosecutors allege that Mesri “had previously worked on behalf of the Iranian military to conduct computer network attacks that targeted military systems, nuclear software systems, and Israeli infrastructure.”
As a member of the Turk Black Hat, Mesri is alleged to have conducted hundreds of website defacements in the United States and elsewhere using the online pseudonym Skote Vahshat, according to the indictment.
In a note to journalists, HBO said it had been “working with law enforcement from the early stages of the cyber incident.”
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday followed through on his pledge to repeal 2015 regulations designed to ensure that internet service providers treat all online content and apps equally, setting up a showdown with consumer groups and internet companies who fear the move will stifle competition and innovation.
The current rules, known as net neutrality, impose utility-style regulation on ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to prevent them from favoring their own digital services over those of their rivals.
Pai said that he believes the net neutrality rules adopted during the Obama administration discourage the ISPs from making investments in their network that would provide even better and faster online access.
“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Pai said in a statement.
Pai distributed his alternative plan to other FCC commissioners Tuesday in preparation for a Dec. 14 vote on the proposal. He promised to release his entire proposal Wednesday.
The attempt to repeal net neutrality has triggered protests from consumer groups and internet companies. More than 22 million comments have been filed with the FCC about whether net neutrality should be rolled back.
The Internet Association, a group whose members include major internet companies such as Google and Amazon, vowed to continue to fight to keep the current net neutrality rules intact.
“Consumers have little choice in their ISP, and service providers should not be allowed to use this gatekeeper position at the point of connection to discriminate against websites and apps,” the group’s CEO Michael Beckerman said in a Tuesday statement.
Consumers Union predicted a repeal of net neutrality would allow ISPs to raise their prices and give preferential treatment to certain sites and apps.
“Strong net neutrality rules are vital to consumers’ everyday lives and essential to preserving the internet as we know it today _ an open marketplace where websites large and small compete on equal terms and where information and ideas move freely,” said Jonathan Schwantes, the advocacy group’s senior policy counsel.
Two of the FCC’s five voting commissioners signaled they will oppose Pai’s plan.
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel derided Pai’s plan as “ridiculous and offensive to the millions of Americans who use the internet every day.”
Commissioner Mignon L. Clyburn skewered Pai’s proposals as “a giveaway to the nation’s largest communications companies, at the expense of consumers and innovation.”
Rosenworcel and Clyburn are the lone Democrats on the FCC.
Pai’s proposal on net neutrality comes after the Republican-dominated commission voted 3-2 last week to weaken rules meant to support independent local media, undoing a ban on companies owning newspapers and broadcast stations in a single market.
…
Denmark intends to invest to boost efforts to prevent cyber attacks in a strategy to be presented early next year, its defense minister said on Tuesday.
“We are going to spend more money in this area,” Claus Hjort Frederiksen told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Copenhagen, though he declined to disclose a figure.
Cybersecurity is “very high on the agenda” for the right-leaning government, but also for the broad selection of Danish political parties negotiating a new defense strategy for the coming six years, he said.
The government would like to expand an early warning system with sensors that detects when Danish companies or authorities are under attack from, for example, malware.
“To some degree we do have a system today, but we would like to expand it to the strategic infrastructure and to private companies,” he told Reuters.
The government also wants to increase the preventive capacity at the Danish center for cybersecurity to increase its ability to better catch and inform about imminent cyber threats, he said.
World’s no.1 container shipper and one of Denmark’s largest companies Maersk was hit by major cyber attack in June, one of the biggest-ever disruptions to hit global shipping.
The government also works for a deeper cooperation between authorities and private companies in battling cyber attacks, Frederiksen said.
He said he believed companies were sometimes reluctant to inform they had been hit by cyber attacks, because they were afraid to scare off customers or investors.
Frederiksen said he saw the overall cyber threat as “one of the greatest threats of our time.”
“If you can undermine our democratic nations by hacking the energy systems or the communication systems or the financial systems it will undermine our own people’s belief in our societies’ ability to protect them,” he said.
Russia hacked the Danish defense network and gained access to employees’ emails in 2015 and 2016, Frederiksen said in April.
Danish troops will get training in how to deal with Russian misinformation before being sent to join a NATO military build-up in Estonia in January, Frederiksen said in July.
Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake, which lies in the center of the country, is home to hundreds of species of fish that provide the Southeast Asian nation with up to 60 percent of its protein. But the lake’s rich fishery is at risk because of overfishing, pollution and hydroelectric dams. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
It is a simple, but startling, statistic: one in four people around the world will have a mental or neurological disorder at some point in their lives. But dealing with mental health issues is so much easier if they are caught early. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports that is the thinking behind a new method using virtual reality to gauge mental health.
…
The European Union’s top court Monday ordered Poland to stop logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest, or pay an $118,000 daily fine.
“Poland must immediately cease its active forest management operations in the Bialowieza Forest, except in exceptional cases where they are strictly necessary to ensure public safety,” the European Court of Justice wrote.
The forest is home to rare plants, birds and mammals and is one of Europe’s last remaining primeval habitats. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The court first warned Poland against logging in July.
Poland says the trees are weak and damaged by a beetle outbreak. It says cutting them down is necessary to prevent people foraging for mushrooms from getting hurt if the trees fall.
The logging argument is another in a series of a war of words between the European Union and the right-wing Polish government, which accuses the EU of infringing on its sovereignty.
The EU has said it is worried about the decline of democratic values in Poland.
…
The U.S. Justice Department is suing to stop AT&T’s multi-billion dollar bid to take over another communications giant, Time Warner, calling it illegal and likening it to extortion.
“The $108 billion acquisition would substantially lessen competition, resulting in higher prices and less innovation for millions of Americans,” a Justice Department statement said Monday.
“The combined company would use its control over Time Warner’s valuable and highly popular networks to hinder its rivals by forcing them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for the right to distribute those networks.”
CNN, HBO top Time Warner products
Time Warner’s products include CNN, HBO, TNT, The Cartoon Network, and Cinemax — these networks broadcast highly popular newscasts, movies, comedy and drama series, and sports.
AT&T and its subsidiary DirectTV distribute these programs, as well as others, thorough cable and satellite.
The Justice Department decries the possibility of AT&T not just controlling television productions, but also the means of bringing them into people’s homes.
In its lawsuit, it threw AT&T’s words right back at the communications giant, noting that AT&T recognizes that distributors with control over the shows “have the incentive and ability to use … that control as a weapon to hinder competition.”
It also cited a DirectTV statement saying distributors can withhold programs from their rivals and “use such threats to demand higher prices and more favorable terms.”
Assured transaction would be approved
AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson told reporters the Justice Department’s lawsuit “stretches the reach of anti-trust law to the breaking point.”
He said the “best legal minds in the country” assured AT&T that the transaction would be approved and said the government is discarding decades of legal precedent.
AT&T and Time Warner are not direct competitors, and AT&T says government regulators have routinely approved such mergers.
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his contempt for one of Time Warner’s crown jewels — CNN, the Cable News Network — because of his perception of CNN being a liberal biased provider of “fake news,” including direct attacks against his administration.
Trump vowed during last year’s presidential campaign to block the merger.
Stephenson called the matter “the elephant in the room,” saying he said he “frankly does not know” if the White House disdain for CNN is at the heart of the Justice Department lawsuit.
But he said a proposal that Time Warner sell-off CNN as part of a settlement with the Trump Justice Department would be a “non-starter.”
…
A small fly that thrives at an inhospitable California lake east of Yosemite National Park long has perplexed observers who watch as it crawls into the severely salty and alkaline water, snacks on some algae or lays some eggs, then emerges dry as a desert.
Research published on Monday finally explains the secrets of this scuba-diving insect.
These quarter-inch-long (6-mm) alkali flies possess specialized traits that let them conquer Mono Lake, scientists found. They are covered in a large quantity of fine hairs coated with special waxes that let them encapsulate themselves in a body-hugging bubble that protects them from water that would doom an ordinary insect.
“The flies have found a great gig — all the food they want with few predators. They just had to solve this one tricky problem,” said California Institute of Technology biologist Michael Dickinson, co-author of the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
All insects are hairy and water repellant to some degree.
These alkali flies, whose scientific name is Ephydra hians, have magnified both traits to overcome the extreme conditions of Mono Lake, considered among the “wettest” water on Earth with a slippery, nearly oily feel. The water tends to attach to any surface due to exorbitant amounts of sodium carbonate, a chemical used in laundry detergent.
“The study provides a clear example of evolution in action,” added co-author Floris van Breugel, a former Caltech postdoctoral scholar now at the University of Washington.
“The flies have evolved to crawl under water so they can feed on the abundant food, alga, that grows there. The lake has no fish because the fish cannot live in the harsh chemicals of the lake. Thus, the flies have no major predators in the lake. Fish are why most insects would be crazy to crawl under water.”
American author Mark Twain was among those who remarked about these flies at the 12-mile-wide (19-km) Mono Lake, which is three times saltier than the Pacific Ocean. They also live at Oregon’s Lake Abert and Utah’s Great Salt Lake, also salty and alkaline.
The flies use sharp foot claws to crawl into the water from rocky outcroppings. Their hairy bodies trap a layer of air that envelops them in a protective bubble, except for the eyes to permit good underwater vision. After eating or laying eggs, they let go and float to the surface, where the bubble pops, leaving them safe and dry.
…
Businessman Kyle Graves shot himself in the ankle so emergency room doctors would feed his opioid habit.
Ex-trucker Jeff McCoy threatened to blow his brains out if his mother didn’t hand over his fentanyl patches.
Bianca Knight resorted to street pills when her opioids ran out, envisioning her law career dreams crumble.
These are three Americans who started using powerful painkillers legitimately but, like millions of others, got caught in the country’s worst drug epidemic.
Now they’re fighting the same recovery battle, on anti-addiction medicine similar to pills that nearly did them in. Their doctor, Dan Lonergan, a Vanderbilt University pain and addiction physician, sometimes recommends the same drugs to pain patients that brought his addiction patients to the brink.
He’s heard criticism about doctors “who get ’em hooked on drugs and then turn around and treat ’em for addiction.” And he’s seen the finger-pointing from those who think faith and willpower are the only answer.
“Doctors have contributed to this problem. In the past three decades we have gotten a lot of patients on medications that can be very dangerous,” he said. “The pharmaceutical industry has contributed significantly to this problem. This is a problem that we all need to own.”
This is a snapshot from Nashville of America’s addiction crisis. More than 2 million people are hooked on opioids. Overdoses kill, on average, 120 Americans every day. Even for survivors, success can be precarious.
An unsure future
At 53 and on disability, Kyle Graves still feels stabbing pains that a daily handful of pills used to ease.
His troubles began more than a decade ago when he sought relief for excruciating arthritis. He was prescribed oxycodone, opioid pills that can help short-term pain but can become addictive when used long-term.
When he lost his finance manager job, they helped with that pain, too. When his sixth child, a baby boy, died from spinal meningitis, Graves sunk deep into addiction.
He’d use up a month’s supply in days, followed by terrible withdrawals — vomiting, shaking uncontrollably, intense pain.
After a doctor refused more refills, Graves grabbed a pistol from his nightstand, pulled the trigger, then called an ambulance.
At the hospital, two shots of morphine for the ankle wound “did the trick.”
Graves thinks only his wife suspected the ruse; she left with the kids.
“It just devastated and ruined my life,” he said.
Graves went to rehab, treated with hard work and prayer. It worked for a time, but after relapsing Graves sought help three years ago from Lonergan, who prescribed recovery medicine containing buprenorphine, an opioid that reduces cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
He hasn’t relapsed for two years, but tries not to dwell on the future.
“Anything could happen,” Graves said.
Problem for a lifetime
Jeff McCoy has been a drummer, a Harley rider and long-haul trucker. These days he prefers baking cookies and doting on his wife, Joanne. Recovery from opioid painkillers prompted the turnaround.
It started nearly 17 years ago, after surgery for a back injury — maybe from too much time on the road, he’s not really sure, but it forced him to quit trucking. His doctor prescribed Vicodin — painkillers that contain the opioid hydrocodone. Soon he was hooked.
“I just went full bore,” McCoy says. “I was popping pills like crazy.”
When those stopped working, he was prescribed powerful fentanyl skin patches that deliver medicine gradually. McCoy found that chewing them worked faster.
McCoy needed ever more to avoid withdrawals.
His wife would lock the patches in a safe, but when he found the key, his mother stored them at her house nearby.
“Got to the point where I got on the phone with mom, ‘You better bring me that patch right now else I’m splattering my brains all over this living room.’”
When his wife threatened to leave, he checked in to a detox center, in 2009, enduring two hellish weeks of withdrawal.
Now he calls his wife his addiction and figures he’ll be on anti-craving medicine for life.
“I finally wanted to stop,” McCoy said. “If I can survive with no life, come on, it’s worth it, but you gotta want to.”
Do I have problem?
After law school graduation, Bianca Knight had a nagging question: “How do I know if I have a problem?”
After injuring her back carrying law books, Knight had spent the past two years medicated, on hydrocodone pills from a different doctor.
They eased the pain, but “also gave me a euphoric feeling and helped me get through my long day in law school,” she said.
Knight is nearly blind from a rare optic nerve condition. A state program paid for a reader to help with school work.
A doctor warned vaguely about addiction risks but Knight thought she’d be immune. Soon she was taking far more than the prescribed amount.
“Toward the end, I resorted to buying off the street,” Knight said. That’s when she sought out Lonergan.
He explained that the average person doesn’t think about opioid pain pills 24/7.
Knight started buprenorphine treatment. Church and support group meetings also help, she says. Her baby girl, born this past summer, is extra incentive for her to stay clean.
Still, Knight said, “For anyone in recovery, it is a daily struggle and I’d be a fool not to think so.”
Cancer doctors struggling to work out the best way to use modern immunotherapy drugs now have further evidence of the benefits of adding them to chemotherapy, despite earlier skepticism.
News that Roche’s immune system-boosting drug Tecentriq delayed lung cancer progression when given alongside chemo and its older drug Avastin validates the approach for the first time in a large Phase III clinical trial.
It is a significant milestone for physicians, patients and investors, who are trying to assess the competitive landscape as drugmakers race to develop better ways to fight tumors in previously untreated lung cancer.
Lung cancer is by far the biggest oncology market and first-line treatment provides access to the most patients, opening up potential annual sales forecast by some analysts at $20 billion.
Roche and Merck & Co have led the way in pioneering so-called “chemo-combo” treatment, while AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers are betting primarily on mixing two immunotherapies. AstraZeneca notably failed to show a similar
benefit in a high-profile clinical trial in July.
Stefan Zimmermann, an oncologist at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland, said the Roche data would help scotch concerns that chemo might hamper the new class of immuno-oncology medicines.
“Many experts in the field will be relieved because there has been uncertainty … I think this will really encourage many of us to use this combination upfront,” he told Reuters. “For now, the only positive data that we have is for chemo combination.”
Merck, in fact, already has U.S. approval to add chemo to its immunotherapy drug Keytruda – but this was based on a small trial and the company withdrew a similar European application last month, knocking confidence in its strategy.
Since Keytruda, Bristol’s Opdivo, Roche’s Tecentriq and AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi are all rival inhibitors of biological switches known as PD-1 or PD-L1, the market is “largely a zero-sum game,” according to Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson.
“Roche’s good fortune means there is less to go around for other companies,” he said.
In the case of Merck, the U.S. drugmaker now faces a rival with a different and perhaps superior drug combination. Roche believes adding Avastin in addition to chemo can further help restore anti-cancer immunity.
For AstraZeneca and Bristol, the bar has just been raised for two other key clinical trials sponsored by the drugmakers that are expected to report results in 2018.
Roche itself will present full results on the ability of its new combination to delay the worsening of lung cancer at a European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Geneva on December 7. Data on whether it also helps patients live longer is expected in the first half of next year.
Overall survival is the gold standard in cancer care but proving a treatment extends the time before disease progresses is an important marker on the way.
“If there is positive progression-free survival then I think it is very, very likely this will also translate into an overall survival benefit over time,” said Zimmermann.
Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Mark Potter.
…
Preparing for a century of steadily higher tides is a central challenge for city officials from Boston to Bangkok. The U.S. city of Miami, Florida, and its neighbors are home to nearly 3 million people and billions of dollars of real estate development. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look at what rising seas mean for one of the most vulnerable cities in the United States.
…