Environmental pollution, from filthy air to contaminated water, kills at least 9 million people a year, according to a new study published by the medical journal The Lancet. Two entrepreneurs from Georgia have invented a wearable filter they say can produce clean, fresh air. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The Group of Seven industrialized nations threw their support behind a new technology industry alliance aimed at detecting and blunting online propaganda, saying Friday it had a “major role” to play in combating extremism on the internet.
G-7 interior ministers meeting in Italy invited representatives from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter to a session Friday dedicated to the fight against terrorism. In a final communique, the ministers pressed the industry as a whole to do more.
“Internet companies will continue to take a proactive role and ensure decisive action in making their platforms more hostile to terrorism, and will support actions aimed at empowering civil society partners in the development of alternative narratives online,” the statement said.
Social media companies have long seen themselves as neutral platforms for other people to share information, and have traditionally been cautious about taking down objectionable material. But as social media platforms have increasingly been used to recruit jihadis, radicalize young people, share fake news and incite extremism, they have come under pressure from governments to take action.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube in June created the Global Internet Forum to Combat Terrorism, which got an early boost when British Prime Minister Theresa May used a speech to the U.N. General Assembly to applaud the initiative and demand internet companies develop technology to more quickly identify and remove terrorist content.
The alliance says it is committed to developing new content detection technology, to helping smaller companies combat extremism and to promoting “counter-speech,” content meant to blunt the impact of extremist material.
The G-7 endorsed the aims and pledged to work collaboratively across the industry to counter the “misuse of technology” by terrorist organizations.
Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said “a great alliance” had been formed between world governments and major internet providers. While stressing the internet has been an important tool for promoting freedom, “at the same time we all together have agreed that al-Qaida and Islamic State are enemies of our freedoms.”
Several ministers said that while the industry had made progress to quickly remove extremist content, more needed to be done, and faster.
“Our enemies are moving at the speed of a tweet, so we have to counter them just as quickly,” said acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke.
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President Salva Kiir opened South Sudan’s first-ever kidney hospital Thursday in Juba, calling it a breakthrough for the country’s medical care.
The facility — a welcome positive sign in conflict-torn South Sudan — is to provide free services to all kidney patients in the country, including foreigners who have been residing there for at least six months.
However, the government has not explained how it will pay for the services. Oil production is the country’s main revenue-producer, and output remains far below normal as the country endures its fourth year of a civil war.
The Al Cardinal group of companies, headed by investor Asraf Seed Ahmed, built the hospital, which boasts 10 dialysis machines and the capacity to treat at least 50 patients a day, although no transplants will be performed for the time being.
As Asraf turned over management of the hospital to the government Thursday, he called on Kiir to ensure that the hospital remains well-staffed and continues to provide free care to all patients.
“Mr. President, I want this center to be taken care of. If this center is managed well, it means citizens will get good services. I call upon all the organizations and foreign embassies here to work and provide for the other needs of South Sudanese citizens,” Asraf said.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony, guests clapped and women ululated as Kiir said citizens can now receive “first-class treatment right here at home.”
“They will no longer have to travel abroad for diagnosis and long-term care,” he said.
Dr. Maker Isaac, director of Juba Teaching Hospital, said the new facility will receive 20 patients each month, but the overwhelming majority of kidney patients will be referred to other countries for treatment.
Isaac said a large number of South Sudanese patients suffered from suspected kidney diseases, many of whom died because there were no facilities available to treat or diagnose the disease.
“People die in front of us and we believe this death can be prevented simply by cleaning the blood of the patient, but we were unable to do anything. We just watch them die,” he told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.
“Now, kidney patients can receive treatment, free of charge. This will make a very huge impact in the care of the patients in South Sudan,” Isaac said.
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A mass transit strike in the Philippines this week risks more disruptive collective action unless drivers and the government settle differences over costly upgrades to an aging yet iconic vehicle fleet, analysts say.
Thousands of drivers and operators of “jeepneys” went on strike Monday and Tuesday. The government called for two days off work and school to minimize disruption for commuters. Jeepneys are distinctly Philippine vehicles that are about the size of small buses and provide most urban mass transit.
President Rodrigo Duterte wants the aging fleet replaced by January 1 to combat air pollution. But operators may lack the money for vehicle replacements. Experts say a new strike could erupt without compromise by officials, disrupting already difficult commutes in major cities such as the capital, Manila.
“They have to meet in the middle,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist with Banco de Oro UniBank in Metro Manila. “So, it’s more of a communication problem to probably try to address both areas, making government aware of certain things. They just have to do a compromise somewhere.”
Costly demand
The drivers went on strike to draw attention to the role of their smoke-belching but colorfully decorated vehicles. Some people carried flags and placards; a few blocked roads. Smaller strikes were held last month and in February for the same cause.
The Philippine government last year approved a modernization program to replace jeepneys older than 15 years with low-polluting vehicles, such as solar-powered ones.
It has neither offered financing to the operators nor addressed a likely increase in passenger fares on newer jeepneys, said Maria Ela Atienza, political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
“It seems like the government is already set to implement the phase-out of the jeepneys by January of next year,” Atienza said. “So it appears to disregard the livelihood of a mass of jeepney drivers who will lose their jobs. They won’t [have] money to pay for the new units, so many of them will be jobless.”
A political camp called Piston Partylist is speaking out for drivers’ interests in the legislature, adding a political element to the dispute. Experts expect more strikes over the next two months unless drivers reach a deal with the government.
Cultural icon
Jeepneys emerged after U.S. colonization of the Philippines ended in 1946. In much of the country, passengers can hail them from any roadside. They pay according to distance traveled, sometimes as little as 14 cents (seven pesos). Passengers normally sit on two long benches facing each other in a pickup truck-style bed covered with a roof. Passengers help one another pass fares up to the driver and pass back any change.
Operators often paint the vehicles in their own style and name them after women or religious figures, making the vehicles a hallmark of Philippine culture.
In Philippine cities, jeepneys provide most of the local mass transit because of the lack of bus systems or wide-reaching commuter rail networks.
Reaching a compromise on vehicle replacement could be tough in today’s political climate, said Christian de Guzman, vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s in Singapore. He cites a “heightened level of noise” and “confrontational politics” since Duterte took office in June last year.
“If you go to social media, there’s certainly a great degree of polarization that has happened over a fairly short amount of time,” de Guzman said. “Since Duterte has come in, there’s this ‘with-us-or-against-us’ type of mentality.”
Threat of more strikes
The strike earlier this week “barely affected the riding public,” the presidential office said on its website.
But repeated transit strikes or a prolonged one would eat away at commerce if people face trouble getting to work, analysts say. Low-paid commuters would also need to pay more for taxis or ride-sharing apps.
Participants in major events such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations leadership summit scheduled for Nov. 10 to 14 in Manila use private cars, leading to little disruption. If the summit coincides with a strike, delegates will find relatively little traffic in the typically gridlocked city.
“It’s sad to say, but if you ask me, traffic was tolerable,” Ravelas said, recounting the strike this week. “It just highlights the main problem, which is too many vehicles.”
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A malaria outbreak has killed at least four people at a refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, according to local residents and health officials.
Hundreds of people have come down with the infectious disease at the Kalobeyei refugee complex in Kenya’s Turkana County.
“Already four to six people have died due to malaria,” Galama Guyo, a health care professional at Kalobeyei, told VOA’s Horn of Africa service. “Weekly, we report more than 200 malaria cases, especially people with low body resistance [immunity].”
Health care providers do not have enough drugs to treat patients, and there is no major hospital in the area, so some patients have to travel to up to 30 kilometers for treatment, he said.
The type of malaria hitting the camps is plasmodium falciparum, one of four types common in the Horn of Africa, said Guyo.
The U.N. refugee agency is tracking the situation at Kalobeyei and the nearby town of Kakuma, says the agency’s communication director in Nairobi, Yvonne Ndege.
“Our health partners have mobilized some resources to ensure they procure enough drugs and diagnostic kits to treat the increased cases of malaria that we have seen in Kakuma and Kalobeyei,” she said. “UNHCR is also planning to provide additional drugs to help address the situation.”
Located in a very arid region, Kalobeyei hosts thousands of African immigrants, mostly from Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan.
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Kenya’s economy is expected to grow next year by 5 percent, down from a projected 6 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. The slowdown is largely blamed on the political uncertainties related to the re-run presidential election scheduled for October 26. Mohammed Yusuf reports from Kisumu, an opposition stronghold in western Kenya.
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The World Health Organization reports pneumonic plague is continuing to spread at an alarming rate in urban areas of Madagascar and greater effort is needed to bring this deadly disease under control. Latest figures put the number of suspected cases at 1,153, including 94 deaths.
Health agencies are worried at how quickly this disease is spreading so early in Madagascar’s plague season, which runs from September to April. The disease usually infects some 400 people a year. But this year, with six more months to go, the number of suspected cases is nearly three times higher than normal. WHO Regional Emergency Director for Africa, Ibrahima Soce Fall, says the spread of the disease is faster because pneumonic plague, which is transmitted from person to person, has moved from the remote rural areas to congested urban areas. It is mainly found in the capital Antananarivo and the port city of Toamasina.
Nevertheless, Fall tells VOA he is confident WHO in coordination with the Ministry of Health and other agencies will be able to contain the disease in short order. He says WHO has provided enough antibiotics to treat 5,000 patients and to protect up to 100,000 people who may have been in contact with an infected person.
“This can be controlled relatively quickly if we manage to improve the contact tracing as we are doing right now,” said Fall. “So, with the teams who are already used to contact tracing and putting all contacts under antibiotic prophylaxis, we can prevent the disease. I am confident that with the strong team we have on the ground, in common with some partners coming and more health workers, we will be able to revert very quickly the trend.”
Fall cautions, though, it will be important to remain vigilant after transmission is over. He notes stopping the transmission of the plague does not mean the risk is gone. He says the virus is still in the country, and while people continue living in poor, unsanitary conditions, the disease is likely to recur.
Astronauts went spacewalking Friday to provide some necessary focus to the International Space Station’s robot arm.
The main job for commander Randy Bresnik and teacher-turned-astronaut Joe Acaba was to replace a blurry camera on the new robotic hand that was installed during a spacewalk two weeks ago. The two men were supposed to go spacewalking earlier this week, but NASA needed extra time to rustle up the repair plan.
Sharp focus is essential in order for the space station’s robot hand to capture an arriving supply ship. The next delivery is a few weeks away, prompting the quick camera swap-out.
Orbital ATK, one of NASA’s commercial shippers, plans to launch a cargo ship from Virginia on November 11.
Acaba was barely outside an hour when he had to replace one of his safety tethers, which keep him secured to the orbiting outpost and prevent him from floating away.
Mission Control noticed his red tether seemed frayed and worn and ordered Acaba to “remain put” with his good waist tether locked to the structure as Bresnik went to get him a spare.
Spacewalking astronauts always have more than one of these crucial lifelines in case one breaks. They also wear a jetpack in case all tethers fail and they need to fly back to the space station.
This was the third spacewalk in two weeks for the space station’s U.S. residents. Bresnik performed the first two with Mark Vande Hei.
As they ventured out, Bresnik noted they were flying over Puerto Rico.
“Get out of here,” replied Acaba, the first astronaut of Puerto Rican heritage.
Acaba’s parents were born there, and he still has family on the hurricane-ravaged island.
“There’s a whole line of people looking up and smiling today as you get ready to head out the door,” Bresnik said.
Friday’s spacewalk should be the last one for the year. Early next year, astronauts will replace the hand on the opposite side of the 58-foot robot arm, Canada’s main contribution to the space station. The original latching mechanisms are showing wear and tear since the arm’s launch in 2001.
The 250-mile-high complex is currently home to three Americans, two Russians and one Italian.
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When the new school year started in September, 16-year-old Aelina Pogosian couldn’t wait to tell her friends about the most interesting part of her summer vacation: her RISE internship, working three weeks in the biology lab at Montgomery College.
“A lot of the materials and machinery we used is not given at most high schools, which is really important for me to learn how to use these things,” she said. “And I got to learn a lot at the same time I was able to have a lot of fun. And I met some new people.”
Among those new people was Jennifer Sengbusch, instructional lab coordinator, who worked closely with Aelina.
“At first, working in the lab I had to go over safety rules with her to avoid any injury to herself,” Sengbusch said. “We also went through working with chemicals, making solutions, doing calculations. Then we progressed into doing more complicated things as measuring protein concentrations and doing DNA tests.”
And the internship wasn’t all inside a lab, it also included some animal husbandry experience with the lab’s snakes and tortoises.
Real interesting experiences
Aelina is one of more than 400 students from all of Montgomery County’s 25 high schools who took part in the RISE program in its first year. RISE stands for Real Interesting Summer Experience, and those experiences were offered at construction companies, police stations, marketing firms, fire stations and more. More than 140 businesses, government agencies and nonprofits offered to host the students for the paid internships.
Local activist Will Jawando founded the program and says it has two main goals.
“The first goal is to expose our students to career opportunities early on so they can inform their education or training after high school,” he said.
The second is boosting the local economy.
“We said there are 30,000 middle-skill-level jobs here in Montgomery County that are not filled,” Jawando said. “So how do we also expose them to that there are jobs here in the county that they could be doing in a year or two that pay well and are on career track? So it was also an economic development tool. So it not only benefits the students, but hopefully it benefits the county and the region, if they stay here, they become productive citizens and as taxpayers.”
Local government support
The program received partial funding from the Montgomery County Council. Councilman Craig Rice helped secure the money.
“All the time in government, there are always so many needs and so many things that are important, whether it’s our roads or our infrastructure, all the different types of programs that we provide as government, but it is really important to make sure that we’re providing for our future generation,” Rice said.
He stressed that providing high school students with real life career opportunities was a priority.
“It’s really something that if we’re going to be serious about being globally competitive, we’re going to be serious about providing a number of different options for our children, we’ve got to make sure that we put our money where our mouth is,” Rice added.
Active, curious and dedicated
Jennifer Sengbusch says RISE gave her a chance to work with high school students who may soon be applying to attend Montgomery College. She found them curious and eager to learn.
“I think high school students are more inquisitive” than college students, she observed, “the high school students really ask a lot of great questions.”
She was also pleased to find Aelina, engaged and prompt.
“I didn’t realize that she was arriving an hour early just so she would be on time, that she would be sitting on the end of the hallway and I glanced over and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ She said ‘I just didn’t want to be late.’”
After a successful start this summer, RISE participants and organizers hope the program will expand next year and inspire surrounding counties to offer similar Real Interesting Summer Experiences.
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The parliament of Australia’s second largest state passed legislation Friday to allow terminally ill patients to seek medical help to end their lives, a bill that is expected to act as a catalyst for the rest of the country to adopt similar laws.
Any resident of Victoria state older than 18, with a terminal illness and with less than 12 months to live can request a lethal dose of medication, the bill permits. Anyone that is too ill to administer the dosage can ask for a doctor to help.
Many countries have legalized euthanasia or physician-assisted deaths, including Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and some states in the United States.
Federal government opposed
But Australia’s federal government has opposed legalizing euthanasia even though the remote Northern Territory became the first jurisdiction in the world to do so in 1995.
The federal government enacted its own legislation to override the Northern Territory law in 1997 under rules allowed by the constitution. State law cannot be overridden.
The passage of the bill in Victoria is expected to herald assisted death legislation in other Australian states.
“It is a landmark moment. Other states are likely to follow. We have seen this in other jurisdictions and I expect once politicians see how the system works, they will adopt similar models,” said Ben White, director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at Queensland University of Technology.
Divisive issue
The issue has divided lawmakers and medicinal professionals.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews introduced the bill after his father’s death from cancer in 2016.
An opponent of the legalization, Michael Gannon, president of the Australian Medical Association, which represents medical practitioners, said state law should not change because of the death of Andrews’ father. He later apologized for the comment.
Members of the state assembly debated the bill through the night in a 26-hour session that ended with approval by 47 votes to 37.
The legislation needs the approval of Victoria’s senate, though analysts expect it to pass into law.
The legislation will not come into effect for 18 months to allow time to properly implement the assisted dying process.
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The last mass-produced car designed and built in Australia rolled off General Motors Co.’s production line in the industrial city of Adelaide on Friday as the nation reluctantly bid farewell to its auto manufacturing industry.
GM Holden Ltd., an Australian subsidiary of the U.S. automotive giant, built its last car almost 70 years after it created Australia’s first, the FX Holden, in 1948.
Since then, an array of carmakers including Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and Leyland have built and closed manufacturing plants in Australia.
Clocking out for last time
After the last gleaming red Holden VF Commodore, a six-cylinder rear-wheel drive sedan, left the plant in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth that had grown over decades to provide its workforce, 955 factory workers will clock off the last time
“It’s pretty tragic really that we’ve let go probably one of the best cars around the world,” an auto painter who identified himself as Kane told reporters.
The 36-year-old was worked at Holden for 17 years and starts a new job with an air conditioner manufacturer Monday. But he knows many other former Holden employees won’t find jobs so quickly.
Dozens of Holden enthusiasts gathered outside the factory, bringing with them generations of Holdens dating back to favored FJ models that were built between 1953 and 1956.
South Australia state Premier Jay Weatherill said car manufacturing was seminal to the state’s industrial know-how.
“It has provided the backbone for our manufacturing capability in this state,” Weatherill told reporters. “It’s given us … the capacity to imagine ourselves as an advanced manufacturing state.”
Iconic Australian brand
Holden is an iconic Australian brand and has been a source of national pride for generations.
The V8 Holden Commodore has sold in the United States since 2013 as the Chevrolet SS.
The brand will survive although Holdens will all now be imported from GM plants around the globe.
Holden retains design and engineering teams, a global design studio, a local testing ground, 1,000 employees and a 200-strong national dealer network.
The brand that became known as “Australia’s own car,” accounted for more than half the new cars registered in Australia by 1958.
The reasons behind the demise of Australian auto manufacturing are numerous.
The first Holden cars were built in an era of high Australian tariffs and preferential trade with former colonial master Britain, which encouraged global carmakers to set up local factories to increase market share.
Australian import tariffs have since tumbled through bilateral free trade deals with car manufacturing countries like the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.
The Holden workers’ union blames a lack of government support through subsidies for GM’s decision to end manufacturing.
There had been debate about whether the 7 billion Australian dollars ($5.5 billion) that the government spent on the car industry in subsidies since 2001 was worth the jobs that it created.
“We’re not just losing a car, we’re not just losing an industrial capability. We’re losing an icon and that is a tragedy,” Labor lawmaker Nick Champion, who represents the Holden factory region, told reporters Thursday.
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An aquatic robot, small and nimble enough to fit inside the smallest of openings, is being tested in Japan ahead of being deployed into the damaged core of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Faith Lapidus reports.
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American teens have crowned a new king of social media. According to a recent poll, Snapchat is the most popular app for teens, toppling even Facebook for their neck-bending attention. Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington.
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Technology firms have improved cooperation with the authorities in tackling online militant material but must act quicker to remove propaganda fueling a rise in homegrown extremism, acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said Wednesday.
The United States and Britain will push social media firms at a meeting of G7 interior ministers this week to do more on the issue, Duke told reporters in London where she had been meeting British Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Duke said there has been a change in the attitude of tech companies since a rally organized by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August turned deadly when a counter-protester was killed by a car driven into a crowd.
“There has been a shift and for us somewhat with the Charlottesville incident,” she said. “There are a lot of social pressures and they want do business so they really have to balance between keeping their user agreements and giving law enforcement what they need.
“The fact they are meeting with us at G7 is a positive sign. I think they’re seeing the evidence of it being real and not just hyperbole.”
Series of attacks
After a series of Islamist militant attacks this year, British Prime Minister Theresa May and her ministers such as Rudd have been demanding action from tech leaders such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to do more about extremist material on their sites.
British politicians have also called for access to encrypted messaging services like Facebook’s WhatsApp, a campaign that U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave his backing to after meeting Rudd and the head of the UK domestic spy agency MI5 last week.
Internet companies say they want to help governments remove extremist or criminal material but say they have to balance the demands of state security with civil liberties.
“We would like to have the ability to get encrypted data with the right legal processes,” Duke said.
Propaganda’s role
Asked what action governments might take if social media firms failed to act to improve their removal of extremist material, she said: “We will continue to push as far as we can go. I think that we have the cooperation of those companies and we just need to work on that.”
Authorities say propaganda from Islamic State has played a major part in radicalizing people in the West but despite its defeat in its capital Raqqa in Syria, Duke said the group’s online presence was likely to increase.
“I would surmise being able to put terrorist propaganda on the internet might become more imperative,” said Duke, who described the terrorist threat to the United States as being as high as it had been since pre-9/11.
She also warned that those who turned to violence by being radicalized by such material posed a bigger problem than the comparatively small number of fighters who had joined the militant group returning to United States.
“The number of foreign fighters we have returning is declining,” she said. “The number of home-grown violent extremists, most of them inspired by terrorist organizations, is increasing.”
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With U.S. midterm elections barely a year away, lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a bipartisan proposal to regulate online political advertising in the United States, an effort prompted by revelations that Russian elements spent large sums on internet ads targeting Americans ahead of the 2016 U.S. election.
“Our entire democracy was founded on the simple idea that the people in our country should be self-governing,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, at a news conference.
“Our democracy is at risk,” Klobuchar added. “We recently learned that $100,000 was spent in [Russian] rubles on Facebook political ads during the 2016 election. We know that [Russian-funded] ads were purchased in other venues, as well.”
To prevent a repeat, Klobuchar, along with Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, unveiled the Honest Ads Act, which would require Facebook, Twitter, Google and other technology giants to post information about the source of political ads, just as U.S. television and radio broadcasters are required to do.
The bill has the backing of Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“Unfortunately, U.S. laws regulating transparency in political campaigns have not kept pace with rapid advances in technology, allowing our adversaries to take advantage of these loopholes to influence millions of American voters with impunity,” McCain said in a statement.
The bill also would require tech companies to make “reasonable efforts” to ensure that foreign entities are not using social media platforms for political purposes. Earlier this year, Facebook shut down a multitude of suspicious accounts that targeted elections in France.
Since its creation, the internet has been more free-wheeling and less regulated than other media forms, a feature that technology firms and others have argued is critical to its success.
Warner, a former cellphone executive, insisted he has no desire to alter cyberspace’s fundamental nature.
“We don’t want to slow down innovation in the internet,” the Virginia senator said. “But I think Americans deserve to know if the ads they are seeing are generated by Americans or generated by foreign interests.”
Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter will have a chance to weigh in on the legislation when they testify in an open hearing the Senate Intelligence Committee has scheduled for next month.
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Two weeks ago Carla Rountree of Washington, D.C., was enjoying an autumn afternoon with friends at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, gaily dressed in a tutu with a goofy unicorn horn tied to her head. While ordering a drink at a beverage stall, a man standing next to her said, “You know, I could grab that horn like you’re an ice cream cone, flip you over, and just lick you.”
She retorted, “I don’t think you’d like the results of that.” He smirked and replied, “YOU might.”
“No one within earshot, including the female bartender, said anything about it,” Rountree says. “It was just accepted, which infuriated me just as much as the god-awful comment.”
That incident occurred as women all over the United States are tweeting and posting #MeToo, sharing their experiences with sexual harassment.
The movement followed the fall from grace of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, the latest rich, famous and powerful man to be brought down by a series of allegations of sexual harassment dating as far back as 30 years and involving more than 20 women. Weinstein’s attorneys say he did not participate in any nonconsensual sex.
If the number of women harassed by Weinstein looks dramatic, the number who have spoken up via #MeToo to reveal their own sexual harassment experiences is more startling.
On Oct. 15, actress Alyssa Milano called for sexual harassment victims to post or tweet the two-word phrase. By the next day, Time magazine reported, more than 27,000 people had responded. By mid-week, women from around the globe were tweeting their stories.
By the numbers
Meanwhile, a poll released Tuesday by ABC/The Washington Post, indicated 54 percent of female respondents said they have been the victim of sexual assault.
A third of female respondents said they have experienced sexual advances from a male coworker or a man who had influence over their career. Fifty-eight percent of the women who said they had been harassed on the job said they didn’t report it. And 94 percent of women who were harassed at work believe men usually don’t face consequences for those actions.
An all-too-common thread among #MeToo stories: When the behavior was reported, no one did anything.
Kellie Dickson Johnson of Chattanooga, Tennessee, says she was frustrated by just such an experience while working at a restaurant. A patron pursued her relentlessly with flowers, poems and invitations to go out. She began to dread going to work.
“When I finally told the managers, their response was that it was ‘cute’ and ‘sweet.’ They absolutely did not see the problem. The next week, they were down one employee.” In other words, she quit.
In The Washington Post poll, 64 percent of women who had been harassed said they felt intimidated, 52 percent said they felt humiliated, 31 percent said they felt ashamed.
Many of the stories happened when the victims were children.
Deirdre Launt says she was 14 and working at a hometown grocery store in Portage, Michigan, when it happened to her.
“It was my first job,” she says in an email. “There were two guys a bit older than me who worked there, too … They used to poke me really hard, all over, and laugh and be like, ‘What are you gonna do, go tell?”‘
When she reported the incident, Launt says, “I got something like a ‘boys will be boys’ brush off and nothing was done. They didn’t see the guy’s behavior as a problem, they saw me as a problem.” Launt quit the job and 29 years later, she rarely enters the store.
Many women have wondered if their experience counts as sexual harassment if it wasn’t considered too bad, if they didn’t feel psychological damage, or if they were drinking or dressed provocatively when it happened.
Biggest question
But the biggest question is this: What do we do about it?
Cheryl Colbert of Arlington, Virginia, recalls an incident in the early 1990s when a man accosted her in the courtyard of her apartment building. She is now raising a teenage son and daughter, and says she feels guilty the rules she sets for her daughter are different than those she sets for her son, such as coming straight home after a practice at school so she won’t be walking alone at night.
Colbert says she takes heart that men and women are responding to #MeToo with support.
“While my story isn’t public, those that need to know are aware. But speaking up wasn’t easy so please listen, acknowledge & accept.,” actor Alex Winter tweeted this week.
The hashtag #HowIWillChange has also cropped up, posted by men who detail what they will do differently in future to help protect women. Some of the methods mentioned are teaching children respect, proactively learning about women’s issues, and calling out predatory behavior.
“Men, keep in mind women don’t owe us their stories for us to become advocates for them in public/private spaces,” Phillip Lewis wrote.
Other men and women are tweeting #WithYou.
“I’m raising my son to treat all women with respect and compassion. I am speaking out against misogyny. I am listening,” U.S. military veteran Dave Harrell said.
Colbert has a pretty straightforward plan, which she describes in an email. “The only thing I feel we can do is each one do the right thing. And say something when it happens. SAY SOMETHING WHEN IT HAPPENS.”
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Iridium Communications says its next two launches of new-generation satellites will use refurbished SpaceX Falcon 9 first-stage boosters that have flown previously.
The announcement Thursday is another step in SpaceX’s effort to reduce launch costs.
The company has launched a few used boosters and is trying to expand acceptance of reusability across the industry.
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has had successful landings of Falcon 9 first stages after launches from both coasts.
Iridium is in the midst of seven launches to replace its satellite fleet that provides global mobile voice and data communications.
The McLean, Virginia, company says insurers confirmed there is no increase in premiums for “flight-proven” rocket use.
Thirty new satellites are in orbit and the fourth launch is scheduled for Dec. 22 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
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Hundreds of workers streamed through dark streets, blocking an entrance to an Apple iPhone supplier’s factory in eastern China to protest unpaid bonuses and factory reassignments, two witnesses and China Labor Watch, a New York based non-profit group, said Thursday.
The protest Wednesday night at Jabil Inc.’s Green Point factory in Wuxi city prompted Apple to launch an investigation and vow to redress the payment discrepancies. “We are requiring Jabil to send a comprehensive employee survey to ascertain where gaps exist in payment and they must create an action plan that ensures all employees are paid for the promised bonus immediately,” Apple said Thursday in an email to China Labor Watch.
The incident highlights the complexity of overseeing global supply chains that can involve hundreds of manufacturers and subcontractors, as well as third-party labor brokers — and their subcontractors — that are tasked with recruiting workers for those factories. Companies differ in the amount of responsibility they are willing to take on. Apple stepped up oversight and disclosure following a spate of negative reports about worker suicides and injuries at suppliers.
After Tim Cook took over as chief executive, in 2011, Apple began publicly identifying top suppliers. It also publishes annual audits detailing labor and human rights performance throughout its global web of suppliers. Apple said it did comprehensive audits of 705 sites last year and documented significant improvements in compliance with its supplier code of conduct.
“About 600 workers went protesting for failing to get their bonus,” a worker who asked that only his family name, Zhang, be published for fear of retribution, said Thursday. He said that like many of his colleagues, he was promised a bonus of up to 7,000 yuan ($1,056) if he stayed for 45 days when he signed up for the job through a labor broker. “It has already been over three months but I still haven’t got the money,” he said.
Tu Changli, a security guard at Jabil’s Green Point factory, said a labor broker promised him 2,000 yuan ($302) if he stayed for two months. “I didn’t get it at all,” he said. He also said he saw hundreds of workers protesting. The company he said he works for, Wu Tai Security Co., declined comment.
A spokeswoman for U.S.-based Jabil, Lydia Huang, disputed those accounts, saying only 20 to 40 employees were actually protesting and the rest were night-shift workers trying to enter the factory. “As long as they can present evidence of promises by brokers we will help them to get paid,” she said.
Jabil, in a statement late Thursday, said it was “committed to ensuring every employee is paid fairly and on time.”
Tensions had been running high at Jabil’s Green Point factory. Tu, the security guard, said he saw a worker talked down from the edge of a rooftop in late September. And Zhang said that on Sept. 30, he saw a security guard hit a worker with a wooden stick so hard the stick broke.
Apple in its email to China Labor Watch said both incidents had to do with disputes with security guards, not underpayment, and added that it was working with Jabil “to make sure their security guards are properly trained to avoid and de-escalate situations.”
The current iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 plus had a 2 percent share of the iOS device market nearly a month after their launch, significantly lagging the 5 percent share grabbed by the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus at a similar point last year, according to Localytics, a mobile engagement platform that analyzes iPhone adoption rates. Analysts attribute iPhone 8 sluggishness to the pending release of the iPhone X.
Missouri officials were submitting a bid Thursday for Amazon’s second headquarters that would involve an innovation corridor between Kansas City and St. Louis rather than a single location in one of the state’s major metropolitan areas.
That’s proposal is in addition to individual applications submitted by Kansas City and St. Louis, two of a number of North American metropolitan areas vying to become the company’s second home. Amazon in September opened the search for a second headquarters and promised to spend more than $5 billion on the site. The Seattle-based company says it would bring up to 50,000 jobs.
Missouri Chief Operating Officer Drew Erdmann said the state’s bid could be aided if it succeeds in landing a high-speed Hyperloop track connecting the cities.
The number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since Richard Nixon was president.
THE NUMBERS: The Labor Department said Thursday that claims for jobless aid dropped by 22,000 to 222,000, fewest since March 1973. The less volatile four-week average slid by 9,500 to 248,250, lowest since late August.
The overall number of Americans collecting unemployment checks dropped to 1.89 million, lowest since December 1973 and down nearly 9 percent from a year ago.
THE TAKEAWAY: Unemployment claims are a proxy for layoffs. The low level suggests that employers are confident enough in the economy to hold onto workers.
The unemployment rate last month hit a 16-year low 4.2 percent. Employers cut 33,000 jobs in September — the first monthly drop in nearly seven years — but only because Hurricanes Harvey and Irma rattled the economies of Texas and Florida; hiring is expected to bounce back.
KEY DRIVERS: The economic impact of Harvey and Irma is fading; claims dropped in Texas and Florida as more people returned to work. But the Labor Department said that Hurricanes Irma and Maria have disrupted the ability of people to file claims in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
The idea of gravitational waves has been around for over 100 years since Albert Einstein posited their existence. But in 2016 scientists proved they were out there using giant L-shaped detectors called gravitational wave observatories. But this week more news was made when scientists were able to watch the creation of gravitational waves. VOA’s Kevin Enochs report
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In Iraq, young entrepreneurs cash-in on a food trend popularized in the West. Trucks serving American-style fast food serve meals on-the-go and opportunities for those hungry for work. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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The U.S. Military is looking at technologies such as wearable sensors, virtual and augmented reality to enhance the training of its recruits. At a recent meeting of military personnel and academics at the University of Southern California’s Global Body Computing Conference, commanding officers talked about why there is a need for ever more modern technology. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Los Angeles on some of the emerging technologies that can help the military.
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Back in the old days, movies were edited by simply cutting out a piece of film you didn’t want and replacing it with a new shot. That’s almost exactly how the CRISPR gene editing technology works, but on a cellular level. Researchers now say they are close to being able to use this technology to fix some genetic diseases. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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