YCLOAK

Britain Seeks Close EU Relationship on Data Protection After Brexit

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Britain will set out a plan to cooperate closely with Europe on data protection rules after it leaves the European Union, hoping to reassure businesses and law enforcement agencies that there will be no disruption to exchanges of information.

Minister for Digital Matt Hancock said Britain was leading the way on data protection laws and had worked closely with its EU partners in developing standards.

“We want the secure flow of data to be unhindered in the future as we leave the EU,” he said. “So a strong future data relationship between the U.K. and EU, based on aligned data protection rules, is in our mutual interest.”

In the latest paper looking at its future relationship with the EU, the British government said it would outline Thursday how it wanted collaboration in data security to continue.

Privacy, flexibility

“Our goal is to combine strong privacy rules with a relationship that allows flexibility, to give consumers and businesses certainty in their use of data,” Hancock said.

Noting that the digital economy in Britain was worth 118.4 billion pounds ($151.5 billion) in 2015, he said any disruption in the free flow of data could be costly both to Britain and to the remaining members of the bloc.

British lawmakers said last month the country could be put at a competitive disadvantage and the police could lose access to intelligence if the government failed to retain unhindered flows of data.

Britain has published a number of papers this month to try to nudge negotiations with the EU on Brexit forward, tackling subjects such as laws, customs and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
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Economy

US Federal Spending, Debt Ceiling: What You Need to Know

By Yeco on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was willing to shut down the government to get funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, complicating two must-pass measures Congress will take up in September: a spending package and raising the debt ceiling.

Here is what you need to know about both, and the potential for a shutdown of the U.S. government:

What is a shutdown?

Congress must pass annual spending bills around the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30 to fund much of the U.S. government. When disagreements prevent that, which is frequent, lawmakers often pass a temporary bill extending existing spending levels with no changes for days, weeks or months, while they work on a longer-lasting deal. When they cannot agree on either a new spending plan or a short-term extension, the government shuts down. That has happened many times since the 1970s, usually for a few days, and can rattle markets.

Congress will return from its long summer recess September 5. At that time, it will have only about 12 working days to approve spending measures to keep the government open.

What if Congress fails?

If spending measures are not passed before October 1, portions of the government will begin to shut down and nonessential employees will go without pay until an agreement is reached.

The government most recently shut down for about two weeks in October 2013 over funding for former President Barack Obama’s health care law. There were three shutdowns in the 1990s, the longest lasting 21 days. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were 14 shutdowns, some partial and most lasting only a few days.

What is the debt ceiling?

The debt ceiling is a legislative limit on how much money the federal government can borrow through debt issued by the U.S. Treasury. Once the limit is reached, Congress must raise it or the government cannot continue borrowing money and would default, or be unable to pay its bills.

The Treasury has said it wants Congress to increase the debt ceiling by September 29, although default most likely could be staved off until mid-October, thanks to “extraordinary measures” the Treasury put in place in March to delay a debt reckoning.

Legislation to raise the debt limit will need to be adopted, at the very latest, by early to mid-October.

What if the ceiling is not raised?

If the debt ceiling is not raised, the government would not be able to borrow more money or pay its bills, including payments on its debts, which could hurt the U.S. credit rating.

Political gridlock has never led to the United States reaching its debt ceiling and its bills going unpaid, but there have been close calls. An August 2011 standoff cost the country its top-notch bond rating from the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s and caused the most jarring two weeks in financial markets since the 2007-09 global financial crisis.

How are the budget and debt ceiling related?

The two move on separate tracks, but are likely to get tangled together, with Republican opponents of a debt ceiling increase most likely demanding federal spending cuts. Some analysts say Congress may try to tackle both issues at the same time.

What are the politics?

Both the spending and debt ceiling bills can pass the Republican-led House of Representatives by a simple majority vote, but will need 60 votes to pass the Senate, where Republicans hold 52 of 100 seats, meaning they will need some Democratic support.

Trump made his U.S.-Mexico border wall a central promise of his 2016 presidential campaign. He also promised that Mexico would pay for the wall, but Mexico has steadfastly refused and Trump has largely stopped talking about that pledge.

Conservative House Republicans agree with the Republican president on the need for a wall and say funding for it should be a priority in any spending legislation. Some of them have already indicated they are willing to shut down the government to get it.

Moderate Republicans have called a shutdown unwise, and Republican leaders are determined to prevent one, fearing it would worsen doubts about the party’s ability to govern.

Democrats are uniformly opposed to Trump’s wall and say the responsibility for a shutdown would rest solely with Republicans.

The Trump administration reversed course earlier this month and said it would back a “clean” raising of the debt ceiling, meaning it would not be tied to other policy measures.

Democrats and moderate Republicans also support a clean debt-ceiling increase. But conservative Republicans, especially in the House, often use debt-ceiling legislation to insist on changes to spending, making them opposed to a clean bill.
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Technology

Lab-made ‘Mini Organs’ Helping Doctors Treat Cystic Fibrosis

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Els van der Heijden, who has cystic fibrosis, was finding it ever harder to breathe as her lungs filled with thick, sticky mucus. Despite taking more than a dozen pills and inhalers a day, the 53-year-old had to stop working and scale back doing the thing she loved best, horseback riding.

Doctors saw no sense in trying an expensive new drug because it hasn’t been proven to work in people with the rare type of cystic fibrosis that van der Heijden had.

Instead, they scraped a few cells from van der Heijden and used them to grow a mini version of her large intestine in a petri dish. When van der Heijden’s “mini gut” responded to treatment, doctors knew it would help her too.

“I really felt, physically, like a different person,” van der Heijden said after taking a drug — and getting back in the saddle.

Someday for transplants?

This experiment to help people with rare forms of cystic fibrosis in the Netherlands aims to grow mini intestines for every Dutch patient with the disease to figure out, in part, what treatment might work for them. It’s an early application of a technique now being worked on in labs all over the world, as researchers learn to grow organs outside of the body for treatment — and maybe someday for transplants.

So far, doctors have grown mini guts — just the size of a pencil point — for 450 of the Netherlands’ roughly 1,500 cystic fibrosis patients.

“The mini guts are small, but they are complete,” said Dr. Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute, who pioneered the technique. Except for muscles and blood vessels, the tiny organs “have everything you would expect to see in a real gut, only on a really small scale.”

These so-called organoids mimic features of full-size organs, but don’t function the same way. Although many of the tiny replicas are closer to undeveloped organs found in an embryo than adult ones, they are helping scientists unravel how organs mature and providing clues on how certain diseases might be treated.

Mini kidneys in Australia

In Australia, mini kidneys are being grown that could be used to test drugs. Researchers in the U.S. are experimenting with tiny bits of livers that might be used to boost failing organs. At Cambridge University in England, scientists have created hundreds of mini brains to study how neurons form and better understand disorders like autism. During the height of the Zika epidemic last year, mini brains were used to show the virus causes malformed brains in babies.

In the Netherlands, the mini guts are used as a stand-in for cystic fibrosis patients to see if those with rare mutations might benefit from a number of pricey drugs, including Orkambi. Made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Orkambi costs about 100,000 euros per patient every year in some parts of Europe, and it’s more than double that in the U.S., which approved the drug in 2015. Despite being initially rejected by the Dutch government for being too expensive, negotiations with Vertex were reopened in July.

Making a single mini gut and testing whether the patient would benefit from certain drugs costs a couple of thousand euros. The program is paid for by groups including health insurance companies, patient foundations and the government. The idea is to find a possible treatment for patients, and avoid putting them on expensive drugs that wouldn’t work for them.

About 50 to 60 patients across the Netherlands have been treated after drugs were tested on organoids using their cells, said Dr. Kors van der Ent, a cystic fibrosis specialist at the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, who leads the research.

Mutations in single gene

Clevers made a discovery about a decade ago that got researchers on their way. They found pockets of stem cells, which can turn into many types of other cells, in the gut. They then homed in a growing environment in the lab that spurred these cells to reproduce rapidly and develop.

“To our surprise, the stem cells started building a mini version of the gut,” Clevers recalled.

Cystic fibrosis is caused by mutations in a single gene that produces a protein called CFTR, responsible for balancing the salt content of cells lining the lungs and other organs.

To see if certain drugs might help cystic fibrosis patients, the medicines are given to their custom-made organoids in the lab. If the mini organs puff up, it’s a sign the cells are now correctly balancing salt and water. That means the drugs are working, and could help the patient from whom the mini gut was made.

Mini organs vs. cancer

Researchers are also using the mini guts to try another approach they hope will someday work in people — using a gene editing technique to repair the faulty cystic fibrosis gene in the organoid cells.

Other experiments are underway in the Netherlands and the U.S. to test whether organoids might help pinpoint treatments for cancers involving lungs, ovaries and pancreas.

While the idea sounds promising, some scientists said there are obstacles to using mini organs to study cancer.

Growing a mini cancer tumor, for example, would be far more challenging because scientists have found it difficult to make tumors in the lab that behave like in real life, said Mathew Garnett of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who has studied cancer in mini organs but is not connected to Clevers’ research.

Huge hurdles remain

Also, growing the cells and testing them must happen faster for cancer patients who might not have much time to live, he said.

Meanwhile, Clevers wants to one day make organs that are not so mini.

“My dream would be to be able to custom-make organs,” he said, imagining a future where doctors might have a “freezer full of livers” to choose from when sick patients arrive.

Others said while such a vision is theoretically possible, huge hurdles remain.

“There are still enormous challenges in tissue engineering with regards to the size of the structure we’re able to grow,” said Jim Wells, a pediatrics professor at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He said the mini organs are far smaller than what would be needed to transplant into people and it’s unclear if scientists can make a working, life-sized organ in the lab.

Complex interplay

There are other limitations to growing miniature organs in a dish, said Madeline Lancaster at Cambridge University.

“We can study physical changes and try to generate drugs that could prevent detrimental effects of disease, but we can’t look at the complex interplay between organs and the body,” she said.

For patients like van der Heijden, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a toddler, the research has helped her regain her strength. Vertex agreed to supply her with the drug.

“It was like somebody opened the curtains and said, ‘Sunshine, here I am, please come out and play.’” she said. “It’s strange to think this is all linked to some of my cells in a lab.”
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Technology

US Defense Department Invests $17M in Laser Technology

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

The U.S. Defense Department is making another multimillion-dollar investment in high-energy lasers that have the potential to destroy enemy drones and mortars, disrupt communication systems and provide military forces with other portable, less costly options on the battlefield.

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is a longtime supporter of directed-energy research, announced the $17 million investment during a news conference Wednesday inside a Boeing lab where many of the innovations were developed.

The U.S. already has the ability to shoot down enemy rockets and take out other threats with traditional weapons, but Heinrich said it’s expensive.

High-energy lasers and microwave systems represent a shift to weapons with essentially endless ammunition and the ability to wipe out multiple threats in a short amount of time, he said.

“This is ready for prime time,” Heinrich, who has an engineering degree, said of the concept.

Boeing has been working on high-energy laser and microwave weapons systems for years. The effort included a billion-dollar project to outfit a 747 with a laser cannon that could shoot down missiles while airborne. The system was complex and filled the entire back half of the massive plane.

Size of a suitcase

With advancements over the past two decades, high-powered laser weapons systems can now fit into a large suitcase for transport across the battlefield or be mounted to a vehicle for targeting something as small as the device that controls the wings of a military drone.

“Laser technology has moved from science fiction to real life,” said Ron Dauk, head of Boeing’s Albuquerque site.

The company’s compact laser system has undergone testing by the military, and engineers are working on a higher-powered version for testing next year.

While the technology has matured, Dauk and Heinrich said the exciting part is that it’s on the verge of moving from the lab to the battlefield.

Another $200 million has been requested in this year’s defense appropriations bill that would establish a program within the Pentagon for accelerating the transition of directed-energy research to real applications.

Heinrich said continued investment in such projects will help solidify New Mexico’s position as a leading site of directed-energy research and bring more money and high-tech jobs to the state.

Boeing already contributes about $120 million to the state’s economy through its contracts with vendors.
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Technology

Germany Draws Up Rules of the Road for Driverless Cars

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Protecting people rather than property or animals will be the priority under pioneering new German legal guidelines for the operation of driverless cars, the transport ministry said on Wednesday.

Germany is home to some of the world’s largest car companies, including Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW, all of which are investing heavily in self-driving technology.

German regulators have been working on rules for how such vehicles should be programmed to deal with a dilemma, such as choosing between hitting a cyclist or accelerating beyond legal speeds to avoid an accident.

Under new ethical guidelines — drawn up by a government-appointed committee comprising experts in ethics, law and technology — the software that controls such cars must be programmed to avoid injury or death of people at all cost.

That means that when an accident is unavoidable, the software must choose whichever action will hurt people the least, even if that means destroying property or hitting animals in the road, a transport ministry statement showed.

The software may not decide on its course of action based on the age, sex or physical condition of any people involved.

“The interactions of humans and machines is throwing up new ethical questions in the age of digitalization and self-learning systems,” German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said in a a statement.

“The ministry’s ethics commission has pioneered the cause and drawn up the world’s first set of guidelines for automated driving,” he added.

Germany earlier this year passed legislation under which a driver must be sitting behind the wheel at all times ready to take back control if prompted to do so by the autonomous vehicle, clearing the way for the development and testing of self-driving cars.
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Economy

Egypt Pins Export Hopes on New Leather Production City

By Yeco on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Just beyond the outskirts of Cairo on a desert road to the Suez Canal, a sprawling industrial zone is coming to life as Egypt’s leather industry leaves behind its ancient tanning quarters for modern workshops of Robiki Leather City.

The new complex is part of a major expansion drive of a sector Egypt considers as one of its most competitive. The trade ministry has set an official target for leather exports to reach over $1 billion a year in 2020, from about $200 million a year currently.

By mid-2018, Robiki should house the entire supply chain, from animal slaughtering to finished leather production, allowing global manufacturers to source materials and export final goods in a single location, said Mohamed El Gohary, chairman of a state firm marketing the site.

“The value added of our exports will increase five times when we reach the stage where we’re exporting final products like shoes and bags,” Gohary said.

Foreign investors can begin purchasing space in Robiki in 2018, and the zone has received strong interest from Italian companies, Gohary said.

Egyptian exports were given a boost when Egypt floated its pound currency last year as part of an International Monetary Fund loan program.

With projects like Robiki, Egypt hopes to pull back capital that fled after its 2011 political uprising. In the fiscal year ending in June, it netted $8.7 billion in foreign direct investment and is targeting above $10 billion this year.

Around 220 tanneries are being relocated to Robiki, said Mohamed Harby, head of a leather tanning industry group.

They are moving under the orders of the government, which is paying for the transfer of machinery, constructing subsidized housing for workers and facilitating low-interest loans for businesses looking to expand.

The tanners’ centuries-old home of Magra Al-Ayoon in Old Islamic Cairo, which runs along the city’s ancient aqueduct, will most likely be developed into a tourist site, though plans have yet to be finalized, said Omar Khorshid, a trade ministry adviser to the Robiki project.

There, workers dye animal hides in small, ramshackle buildings without infrastructure for absorbing hazardous waste byproducts.

“Egypt a long time ago was a leader in leather tanning, and for a period of time everyone wanted to expand, but there was just no space to,” Ahmed Al-Gabbas, managing director of Al-Rowad Tannery, said at his factory in Robiki.

Al-Rowad, one of the country’s three largest tanneries, will complete its relocation over the next month. Gabbas said the company was using the space to scale up and triple exports over the next year.
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Technology

Samsung Seeks to Bury Fiery Past with Galaxy Note 8 Launch

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Samsung Electronics set out to wipe the slate clean in New York on Wednesday with a new Galaxy Note 8 phablet, hoping features such as dual rear cameras and its biggest-ever screen will extinguish memories of its fire-prone predecessor.

The world’s largest smartphone maker by market share has put safety at the center of a phone-cum-tablet that is likely to compete for pre-holiday season sales with a widely expected 10th anniversary iPhone from U.S. rival Apple Inc.

The unveiling comes five months after the release of the Galaxy S8 smartphone. Analysts said brisk sales of that device indicate recovery in Samsung’s standing, after battery fires prompted the October withdrawal of the Galaxy Note 7 just two months into sales at an opportunity cost of $5.48 billion.

The fires briefly lost Samsung its No. 1 rank, showed data from researcher Counterpoint. It has since regained ground, with Strategy Analytics putting its April-June share at 22 percent — more than Apple and China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd combined.

Cumulative sales of the S8 and S8+, released in the period, were 15 percent over those of the S7, Samsung said in July.

Samsung’s Note series usually sport bigger screens than the S series and come equipped with a removable stylus. The trademark curved screen of the latest incarnation measures 6.3 inches corner to corner, a mere 0.1 inch bigger than the S8+.

The South Korean firm has been a principle driver of growth in handsets with 6 inch-plus screens, a category which Strategy Analytics expects to grow 10 times faster than the overall market next year.

Samsung has also installed dual rear cameras on a handset for the first time, adding the Note 8 to a trend which promises improved photographic control and picture quality.

Other features include security technology, such as facial recognition and fingerprint and iris scanning, and artificial intelligence in the form of Samsung’s Bixby voice-command assistant.

The Note 8 will be sold from mid-September, Samsung said, without elaborating on place or price.
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Technology

Dutch Researchers Develop Blazing-fast Wi-Fi Using Light Rays

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Starbucks coffee shops recently installed the fastest Wi-Fi we regular folks can enjoy. It’s a blazing 9 megabits per second. But researchers in the Netherlands have some Wi-Fi that leaves that in the dust. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Economy

Trans-Alaska Pipeline Celebrates 40 Years

By Yeco on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Oil is the main revenue source in Alaska. This year, the trans-Alaska pipeline celebrated 40 years of service. From Alaska, VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya looks at the history of North America’s largest oil field.
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Economy

With Tax Talk Heating Up, Republicans Modify Plan for Businesses

By Yeco on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Congressional Republicans, seeking to address the complaints of small businesses, are floating changes to their controversial proposal to eliminate business tax deductions for debt interest payments, business lobbyists said Tuesday.

A top U.S. Republican on tax policy acknowledged that modifications are in the works but did not provide details.

The debt interest proposal, long seen by Republican policymakers as necessary to help drive economic growth, is backed by large companies with ready access to equity financing that they could substitute for debt if eliminating the interest deduction made issuing debt too costly. Debt-dependent small-business owners, farmers and ranchers don’t have that luxury.

As Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration slog ahead with a push to overhaul the U.S. tax code, a key task is figuring out how to resolve conflicting groups’ priorities, with business debt interest a clear example.

The tax code has not been overhauled since 1986, partly because reconciling these conflicts can be so difficult.

“We’ve asked businesses large and small to look at that, test-drive it and give us back their feedback,” House of Representatives tax committee Chairman Kevin Brady said in remarks at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday, without offering specifics about the modified proposal.

His staff at the committee had no comment.

Businesses lobbyists said the panel’s lawmakers have quietly agreed to focus on exemptions for small businesses, including farmers and ranchers, and an exemption for land.

Interest deduction

Lawmakers have also discussed a possible partial elimination of the interest deduction, with an exemption for existing debt, or eliminating the deduction only for businesses deemed to have an excessive amount of debt, according to lobbyists.

Brady is one of the “Big Six” negotiators from Congress and the Trump administration who are guiding the tax reform debate.

At the Louisville event, he described rolling back the business interest deduction as a “trade-off” for another proposal to accelerate expensing, which would allow businesses to write off investments in plants and equipment more quickly.

He said net interest deduction is one of a number of tax breaks that lawmakers are looking to eliminate to help pay for lower business tax rates. Republicans say tax cuts will help drive annual U.S. economic growth above the 3 percent mark.

Independent analysts say that eliminating the interest deduction would raise more than $1 trillion in federal revenues.

Republicans want to cut the corporate income tax rate to 20-25 percent from 35 percent. But they have been hard-pressed to pay for such a cut since jettisoning a border-adjusted import tax that would have raised more than $1 trillion.
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Science

Florida Lab Sets New Magnet Strength Record

By Yscien on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Engineers at a lab in Florida have been working quietly for 2½ years on building one of the most powerful magnets in the world.

And on Monday, they succeeded. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory — whose main location is housed at Florida State University — met its goal and reclaimed its status as home to the world’s strongest resistive magnet.

They called it “Project 11,” a nod to the comedy film “This is Spinal Tap,” about a fictional heavy metal band whose guitarist boasts an amplifier whose volume goes up to 11, not just 10.

Lab officials said they tested a 41.4-tesla magnet, which is roughly 20 times the strength of a magnet used in medical imaging machines and vastly stronger than the ones that get stuck to the door of a household refrigerator. The Earth’s magnetic field, by comparison, is one-twenty thousandth (.00005) of a tesla. A tesla is a measure of magnetic field strength.

The new magnet, which cost $3.5 million to build, beat the old mark for resistive magnets, which was held by a 38.5-tesla magnet in China. The National MagLab had previously held the record for 19 years.

Greg Boebinger, the lab’s director, said the loss of the record prompted officials to tell engineers, “Go ahead and make the thing bigger, go ahead and use more power, just go full volume to 11 and see what you can do.”

Continuous operation

Resistive magnets are a type of electromagnet used for research. They differ from pulsed magnets, which can reach a higher Tesla but can sustain that power for only a fraction of a second. Resistive magnets can run continuously. Superconducting magnets use less power but tap out at a lower field strength. Hybrid magnets combine superconducting and resistive elements and can reach even higher fields. The National MagLab has the world’s strongest hybrid magnet, which reaches 45 tesla.

Researchers say they can use these powerful magnets to answer many questions, such as: What kinds of materials will work best in quantum computers? How does a potential Alzheimer’s drug change the brain? What molecules make up a sample of crude oil — and will it be worth drilling for?

The new record-setting magnet is powerful enough that lab officials use non-magnetic tools, but it’s not as powerful as some imagine.

“Local people think we change the weather,” said Boebinger, who said he gets asked about Magneto all the time. “We don’t even change the magnetic field outside our building.”

Instead, the magnetic field created by the new magnet will be used by researchers and scientists from around the world as a way to look at and study various types of materials and perhaps make breakthroughs in medicine, engineering and energy.
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Economy

Chieftain: Indigenous People Seize Some Facilities on Peru Oil Field

By Yeco on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Indigenous people living on Peru’s largest oil field concession have seized some facilities operated by Frontera Energy demanding that the government apply an indigenous rights law before signing a new contract with the Canadian company, a tribal chieftain said on Tuesday.

The so-called prior consultation law, passed in 2011, requires the government to seek input from indigenous people before approving any development plans that might affect them.

Tribal chiefs in Frontera’s Block 192 said the government has refused to carry out the consultation process even though it is negotiating a new contract with Frontera, whose 2-year contract is due to expire this month.

“If the government says it’ll carry out prior consultation, we’ll automatically end the protest,” Wilmer Chavez, chief of the community of Los Jardines, said in a telephone interview.

Chavez said that protesters from the indigenous community had taken control of oil drums and other facilities to curb output in Block 192.

Government offices tasked with oil drilling and indigenous rights did not respond to requests for comment.

Frontera, which produced some 7,500 barrels a day from Block 192 in July, said in a statement that it values community consent and that only the government could legally carry out prior consultation.

“Since our arrival to the area of Block 192, Frontera Energy has been working to gain the community’s trust and act as a mediator to ease potential tensions between the government, the industry and the community,” the company said in the statement.

Amazonian tribes in Block 192 want the government to sign new commitments for the clean-up of oil pollution and for access to health care and education in the remote region before awarding Frontera a new contract, said Chavez.

Four other chiefs, speaking to foreign media in Lima where they had traveled to meet with government officials, described similar demands in the 16 out of 20 villages they represent in Block 192 and vowed to stage their own protests unless prior consultation was applied.

Carlos Sandi, chief of the Corrientes River basin, told reporters that the government must fulfill its promises to clean up oil pollution that is sickening local residents.

U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp operated Block 192 for about 40 years before Argentine energy company Pluspetrol took over in 2001.

Frontera said negotiations with Peru on a new deal for Block192 were ongoing and that in coming weeks it should have a better idea of whether it will continue to operate there.
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Science

Arctic Researchers to Study Wind Effects on Marine Life

By Yscien on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

A federal research vessel will launch on a cruise this week to study how Beaufort Sea wind affects plant and animal life in a changing Arctic Ocean.

The Sikuliaq, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will depart Friday from Nome for the trip through the Bering Strait to waters on and off the continental shelf in the Beaufort.

Climate warming in recent decades has resulted in far less summer seasonal ice in the Beaufort, which stretches from the northeast coast of Alaska across Canada. East winds that formerly blew over sea ice now blow over open water, said Steve Okkonen, a physical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Wind drives water at the surface of the shallow continental shelf, at depths of about 300 feet (91 meters), north to water off the shelf, which drops to depths of more than 10,000 feet (3,050 meters).

The result is a phenomenon called “upwelling.” Deep, cold water rises toward the surface carrying large concentrations of plankton, which scientists hypothesize will attract fish, especially Arctic cod. Large numbers of cod in turn attract beluga whale and seabirds that prey on cod.

Aerial surveys have shown belugas congregating on the shelf break, said Carin Ashjian, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who will serve as chief scientist on the cruise.

“What we hope to do, and what we’re planning to do, is to basically document and describe how the physical forcing of the wind produces this favorable feeding environment for the beluga whales,” she said Tuesday. “It’s one thing to say, `Oh, they can find food along this shelf break.’ But we want to find out why they find their food along the shelf break, with numbers.”

Upwelling events in the Beaufort are projected to increase as sea ice continues to trend downward, Okkonen said. Last year the minimum sea ice for 2016 was recorded Sept. 10, when ice covered 1.6 million square miles (4.14 square kilometers), tied with Sept. 18, 2007, for the second-lowest minimum on records since satellite measurements began in 1978. The lowest year on record was Sept. 17, 2012, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, when sea ice fell to 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).

Wind covering a greater distance over open water becomes a greater force on the ocean.

“We have a much bigger fetch,” Okkonen said.

Researchers on board the 261-foot (80-meter) Sikuliaq will record oceanographic conditions, sample for plankton levels and cod numbers, and survey marine mammals and seabirds.

The ship will sail transects in a box roughly 37 by 62 miles (60 by 100 kilometers) starting 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 kilometers) offshore.

The scientists want to share the research story with the public, particularly with Alaskans, and will offer a Facebook page, with reports from the vessel, titled, “Arctic Winds, Fish, Fins and Feathers.”

Researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Rhode Island and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be on board. Researchers are scheduled to return to Nome on Sept. 18.
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Technology

Researchers: Robot Makers Slow to Address Danger Risk

By Ytech on Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Researchers who warned half a dozen robot manufacturers in January about nearly 50 vulnerabilities in their home, business and industrial robots, say only a few of the problems have been addressed.

The researchers, Cesar Cerrudo and Lucas Apa of cybersecurity firm IOActive, said the vulnerabilities would allow hackers to spy on users, disable safety features and make robots lurch and move violently, putting users and bystanders in danger.

While they say there are no signs that hackers have exploited the vulnerabilities, they say the fact that the robots were hacked so easily and the manufacturers’ lack of response raise questions about allowing robots in homes, offices and factories.

“Our research shows proof that even non-military robots could be weaponized to cause harm,” Apa said in an interview. “These robots don’t use bullets or explosives, but microphones, cameras, arms and legs. The difference is that they will be soon around us and we need to secure them now before it’s too late.”

His comments come in the wake of a letter signed by more than 100 leading robotic experts urging the United Nations to ban the development of killer military robots, or autonomous weapons.

Apa, a senior security consultant, said that of the six manufacturers contacted, only one, Rethink Robotics, said some of the problems had been fixed. He said he had not been able to confirm that as his team does not have access to that particular robot.

A spokesman for Rethink Robotics, which makes the Baxter and Sawyer assembly-line robots, said all but two issues — in the education and research versions of its robots — had been fixed.

Apa said a review of updates from the other five manufacturers — Universal Robots of Denmark, SoftBank Robotics and Asratec Corp. of Japan, Ubtech of China, and Robotis Inc. of South Korea — led him to believe none of the issues he had raised had been fixed.

Asratec said that software released for its robots so far was limited to “hobby use sample programs,” and it believed IOActive was pointing to security vulnerabilities in those.

Software it planned to release for commercial use would be different, it said.

Robotis declined to comment. The three other manufacturers did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

The slow reaction by the robot industry was not surprising, said Joshua Ziering, founder of drone manufacturer Kittyhawk.io.

“A new technology bursts on to the market and people fail to secure it,” he said.

Alarming threat

Cybersecurity experts said the robot vulnerabilities were alarming, and cybercriminals could use them to disrupt factories by ransomware attacks, or with robots slowed down or forced to embed flaws in the products they are programmed to build.

“The potential impact to companies, and even countries, could be massive,” said Nathan Wenzler, chief security strategist at AsTech, a San Francisco-based security consulting company, “should an attacker exploit the vulnerability within the applications that control these robots.”

Even in the home, danger lurks, said Apa, demonstrating how a 17-inch- (43.18-cm) tall Alpha 2 robot from Ubtech could be programmed to violently jab a screwdriver.

“Maybe it’s small and it’s not really going to hurt right now, but the trend is that the robots are going to be more powerful,” he said. “We tested industrial ones which are really heavy and powerful, and some of the attacks work with them.”

Apa and Cerrudo released their initial findings in January.

This week, they released details about the specific vulnerabilities they found, including one case where they mix several of those vulnerabilities together to hijack a Universal Robot factory robot, making it lurch about and be a potential threat.
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Economy

Jordan Opens First Job Center in Syrian Refugee Camp

By Yeco on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Jordan has opened its first job center inside a refugee camp, unlocking work opportunities across the country for thousands living in the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, the U.N. labor agency said Tuesday.

So far, more than 800 refugees in the Zaatari camp in Jordan, which borders Syria and is home to nearly 80,000 people, have registered for work permits at the job center, the International Labor Organization said.

“Refugee workers now have a clear address to resort to when searching for jobs and applying for work permits, where they can receive all necessary information and benefit from expert support,” Maha Kattaa, ILO response coordinator in Jordan, said in a statement.

The Jordanian government says the country is home to 1.4 million Syrians, of whom more than 660,000 are registered with the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Allowing refugees to work in host countries relieves pressure on social services, boosts the local economy and gives refugees the financial security to re-establish their lives, said UNHCR, which manages work permits and the flows in and out of the Zaatari camp.

“I am confident that having an increased number of Syrians entering the labor market will positively impact the local economy and bring stability to refugee families,” said Stefano Severe, a UNHCR spokesman in Jordan.

Earlier this month, Jordan became the first Arab country to issue Syrian refugees with a new type of work permit that opens up the growing construction sector.

The center, launched by the Jordanian government, will run job fairs and employment matching services with businesses across the country.

There are also plans to open a second center in a nearby camp in Azraq, ILO said.
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Economy

Argentina Labor Unions Protest Job Losses, Macri Policies

By Yeco on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Argentina’s main labor unions took to the streets of the capital on Tuesday demanding more jobs and protesting center-right President Mauricio Macri’s economic policies.

Tens of thousands of workers gathered in the historic Plaza de Mayo criticizing Macri, who is trying to lower labor costs to attract investment and jump-start an economy that emerged from recession in the second half of last year.

“If some retrograde [in the government] thinks that lowering wages, precarious living conditions and destroying trade unions is going to line up investments … we say that is very wrong,” said Juan Carlos Schmid, a leader of Argentina’s largest umbrella union, the CGT.

Standing on a podium at the protest, he said the CGT would meet in late September to discuss a potential strike.

Macri told Reuters in an interview this month his government was negotiating labor agreements sector by sector rather than trying to pass a comprehensive labor reform like the one approved in neighboring Brazil.

Unions fear more drastic changes could be coming after mid-term legislative elections in October, however, especially after a primary vote on Aug. 13 pointed to strong support for Macri’s coalition.

Macri is trying to open Argentina’s long protected economy and focus on competitive industries like oil and agriculture, but has seen some manufacturing jobs lost in the meantime.

The most recent employment data showed the jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in the first quarter of the year from 7.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
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Science

Vanishing Kelp: Warm Ocean Takes Toll on Undersea Forests

By Yscien on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

When diving in the Gulf of Maine a few years back, Jennifer Dijkstra expected to be swimming through a flowing kelp forest that had long served as a nursery and food for juvenile fish and lobster.

But Dijkstra, a University of New Hampshire marine biologist, saw only a patchy seafloor before her. The sugar kelp had declined dramatically and been replaced by invasive, shrub-like seaweed that looked like a giant shag rug.

“I remember going to some dive sites and honestly being shocked at how few kelp blades we saw,” she said.

Warming oceans probable culprit

The Gulf of Maine, stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is the latest in a growing list of global hotspots losing their kelp, including hundreds of miles in the Mediterranean Sea, off southern Japan and Australia, and parts of the California coast.

Among the world’s most diverse marine ecosystems, kelp forests are found on all continental coastlines except for Antarctica and provide critical food and shelter to myriad fish and other creatures. Kelp also is critical to coastal economies, providing billions of dollars in tourism and fishing.

The likely culprit, according to several scientific studies, is warming oceans from climate change, coupled with the arrival of invasive species. In Maine, the invaders are other seaweeds. In Australia, the Mediterranean and Japan, tropical fish are feasting on the kelp.

Most kelp are replaced by small, tightly packed, bushy seaweeds that collect sediment and prevent kelp from growing back, said the University of Western Australia’s Thomas Wernberg.

“Collectively these changes are part of a recent and increasing global trend of flattening of the world’s kelp forests,” said Wernberg, co-author of a 2016 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that 38 percent of kelp forest declined over the past 50 years in regions that had data.

Great Southern Reef threatened

Kelp losses on Australia’s Great Southern Reef threaten tourism and fishing industries worth $10 billion. Die-offs contributed to a 60 percent drop in species richness in the Mediterranean and were blamed for the collapse of the abalone fishery in Japan.

“You are losing habitat. You are losing food. You are losing shoreline protection,” said University of Massachusetts Boston’s Jarrett Byrnes, who leads a working group on kelp and climate change. “They provide real value to humans.”

The Pacific Coast from northern California to the Oregon border is one place that suffered dramatic kelp loss, according to Cynthia Catton, a research associate at the Bodega Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Davis. Since 2014, aerial surveys have shown that bull kelp declined by over 90 percent, something Catton blamed on a marine heat wave along with a rapid increase in kelp-eating sea urchins.

Without the kelp to eat, Northern California’s abalone fishery has been harmed.

“It’s pretty devastating to the ecosystem as a whole,” Catton said. “It’s like a redwood forest that has been completely clear-cut. If you lose the trees, you don’t have a forest.”

Kelp hasn’t recovered

Kelp is incredibly resilient and has been known to bounce back from storms and heat waves.

But in Maine, it has struggled to recover following an explosion of voracious sea urchins in the 1980s that wiped out many kelp beds. Now, it must survive in waters that are warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans — most likely forcing kelp to migrate northward or into deeper waters.

“What the future holds is more complicated,” Byrnes said. “If the Gulf of Maine warms sufficiently, we know kelp will have a hard time holding on.”

On their dives around Maine’s Appledore Island, a craggy island off New Hampshire that’s home to nesting seagulls, Dijkstra and colleague Larry Harris have witnessed dramatic changes.

30-year-old drive logs

Their study, published by the Journal of Ecology in April, examined photos of seaweed populations and dive logs going back 30 years in the Gulf of Maine. They found introduced species from as far away as Asia, such as the filamentous red seaweed, had increased by as much 90 percent and were covering 50 to 90 percent of the gulf’s seafloor.

They are seeing far fewer ocean pout, wolf eel and pollock that once were commonplace in these kelp beds. But they also are finding that the half-dozen invasive seaweeds replacing kelp are harboring up to three times more tiny shrimp, snails and other invertebrates.

“We’re not really sure how this new seascape will affect higher species in the food web, especially commercially important ones like fish, crabs and lobster,” said Dijkstra, following a dive in which bags of invasive seaweed were collected and the invertebrates painstakingly counted. “What we do think is that fish are using these seascapes differently.”

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Science

White House Halts Study of Mountaintop Coal Mining’s Health Effects

By Yscien on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered a halt to research on the potential health hazards of people who live near mountaintop coal mining operations.

The U.S. Interior Department ordered the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to end a study of surface coal mining sites in the Appalachian Mountains, pending a review of projects that cost more than $100,000.

Last year the Interior Department, under then President Barack Obama, commissioned research into possible health risks among those who live near current or former mining sites in Appalachia.

The agency allocated $1 million in 2015 for a two-year study at the request of officials from West Virginia, located in the heart of Appalachia.

But the Interior Department ordered an immediate halt to the research, defending it as necessary to ensure the responsible expenditure of taxpayer money.

Trump proposed a $1.6 billion cut to Interior’s budget in 2018, including 4,000 jobs.

The decision, which took effect Monday, comes as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers collaborate to eliminate policies they believe restrict the mining and use of coal.

Trump promised during his presidential campaign to create jobs by reviving the coal industry, and signed an executive order in March that lifted a ban on leases for mining coal on federal land.

Environmentalists maintain the removal of coal from mountaintops releases pollutants into water and air, causing numerous health problems such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and birth defects.

Indiana University health science professor Michael Hendryx told House lawmakers in 2015 that his studies have connected mountaintop removal to higher rates of lung cancer, heart and kidney disease and other illnesses.

The Sierra Club’s Appalachia organizer, Bill Price, described the decision as “infuriating.” “Trump has once again shown the people of Appalachia that we mean nothing to him,” he said in a statement.

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Economy

Ford, Chinese Partner Look at Possible Electric Car Venture

By Yeco on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Ford Motor Co. and a Chinese automaker said Tuesday they are looking into setting up a joint venture to develop and manufacture electric cars in China.

Ford’s potential venture with Anhui Zotye Automobile Co. adds to the global auto industry’s rising activity in electric vehicles for China, which passed the United States last year as the biggest market for them.

Chinese planners who see electrics as a promising industry and a way to clean up smog-choked cities are pushing automakers to speed up development.

Ford previously said it plans to offer electric versions of 70 percent of its models in China by 2025.

Privately owned Zotye Auto, headquartered in the eastern city of Huangshan, produces its own electric vehicles and said sales in the first seven months of this year rose 56 percent over the same period of 2016 to 16,000.

“This presents us with an exciting opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths,” Zotye chairman Jin Zheyong said in a joint statement.

Sales of pure-electric and gasoline-electric hybrids in China rose 50 percent last year over 2015 to 336,000 vehicles, or 40 percent of global demand. U.S. sales totaled 159,620.

Beijing has supported sales with subsidies and a planned quota system that would require automakers to produce electric cars or buy credits from companies that do.

Ford said it expects China’s market for all-electrics and hybrids to grow to annual sales of 6 million by 2025.

Volvo Cars announced plans this year to make electric cars in China for global sale starting in 2019. General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG, Nissan Motor Co. and others also have announced plans to make electric vehicles in China.

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Science

Japan Mulls Release of Fukushima Tritium-Contaminated Water Into Ocean

By Yscien on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

It is estimated the huge water storage tanks surrounding the site contain more than 750,000 tons of water contaminated with tritium, considered one of the less harmful radioactive isotopes.

Watch: Japan Considers Release of Fukushima Tritium-Contaminated Water Into Pacific

Local media reported last month that plant owner TEPCO planned to release the water into the Pacific Ocean, prompting an outcry from environmental groups and local fishermen. The general manager of TEPCO’s nuclear division, Takahiro Kimoto, says the company has yet to make a decision.

“One option is to release the tritium-contaminated water into the ocean. However, there are other options such as vaporizing it, but we have not decided yet which option to take to dispose of the water. Since there may be an influence on the environment, and because there have been harmful rumors about what effects it may have on people and the environment, we are still consulting with various stakeholders before finally deciding on the solution,” Kimoto told VOA in an interview.

Tritium releases

TEPCO points out all nuclear power plants around the world release tritium into the environment.

Tritium is considered one of the less dangerous radioactive isotopes, said leading marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. He has been monitoring the effects of the Fukushima disaster on the Pacific Ocean.

“There are natural sources up in cosmic rays interacting in the atmosphere. And the biggest source by far was the weapons testing in the 1960s. So you’re talking about adding to what’s already there. If it’s all released on one day, that’s a very different scenario for the oceans than if it’s released sequentially over the course of several years.”

A purification system called ALPS is designed to remove other, more harmful isotopes from the contaminated water. Buesseler said more oversight is needed.

“Independently, I want to see for each tank, what are the levels not only of the tritium, which dominates by far the radioactivity, but all those minor elements, cesium, strontium, that are still there to some degree.”

Nuclear fuel removal

Longer-term, Japanese authorities face the task of trying to remove the nuclear fuel. Robots have recorded footage of what appear to be melted fuel rods inside reactor 3, but in other reactors soaring levels of radioactivity have crippled the robots within minutes.

“Around the fall of this year, we are hoping to reveal a big plan on our future policy, and the method we will use to remove this fuel,” said TEPCO’s Kimoto.

The Japanese government estimates the total cleanup cost, including compensation, decommissioning and decontamination, will reach $190 billion in a process likely to take at least 40 years.
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Science

Japan Considers Release of Fukushima Tritium-Contaminated Water into Pacific

By Yscien on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Authorities in Japan are trying to decide what to do with the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of contaminated water being stored at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went into meltdown following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Tokyo, plant operator TEPCO says it is safe to release the water into the Pacific Ocean, but scientists want a closer analysis of the water’s radioactivity levels.
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Science

Demand for Geothermal Heating Heats Up

By Yscien on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Heat from deep within the earth is an underused source of renewable energy. The United States is the world’s largest producer of geothermal energy, but it makes up less than 1 percent of the nation’s power generation. By contrast, geothermal plants in the Philippines and Iceland contribute around 30 percent of their electricity production. Now, geothermal power is heating up in Australia. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Economy

Ford Offers Brits Incentives to Trade in Older Cars

By Yeco on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Ford Tuesday became the latest carmaker to launch a car scrappage scheme in Britain, joining the likes of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, after months of procrastination from the government over whether to begin a national program.

The U.S. automaker is offering customers a 2,000 pound ($2,580) discount off a range of Ford models when they trade in vehicles registered before the end of 2009.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Vauxhall, the British version of the Opel brand sold on the continent, have all launched similar schemes in recent weeks to incentivize motorists to reduce emissions by replacing their gas-guzzling models with greener cars.

The plans come after Britain delayed in July a decision over whether to introduce a nationwide or targeted vehicle scrappage scheme, with a consultation due to take place later this year, despite worries over emissions levels.

“Ford shares society’s concerns over air quality,” its managing director in Britain Andy Barratt said Tuesday.

“Removing generations of the most polluting vehicles will have the most immediate positive effect on air quality.”

Car sales slowing

Ford, BMW, Vauxhall and Mercedes sell around 1 million cars in Britain, more than a third of all new car registrations.

The scrappage schemes will help support sales at a time when demand for new cars is beginning to slide substantially for the first time in around six years.

In July, new car registrations fell for the fourth consecutive month, hit by a number of factors including uncertainty over Brexit and lack of clarity over future government plans around new levies on diesel models.

Britain’s last government-backed scrappage scheme came in the wake of the financial crisis and ran for nearly a year from mid-2009, helping to support the car sector, which had been hit by nose-diving sales.
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Science

Small Missouri Town Is a Big Draw for Solar Eclipse

By Yscien on Tuesday, August 22, 2017

There is a saying that “lightning never strikes twice” in any location. The same could be said for a total solar eclipse over the United States, a rare event … except in a small patch of the United States that includes a small Missouri town, a place VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports is a prime location for current and future stargazers to study a rare phenomenon.
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