YCLOAK

Mars Research Crew Emerges After 8 Months of Isolation

By Yscien on Monday, September 18, 2017

Six NASA-backed research subjects who have been cooped up in a Mars-like habitat on a remote Hawaii volcano since January emerged from isolation Sunday. They devoured fresh-picked tropical fruits, vegetables and a fluffy egg strata after eating mostly freeze-dried food during their isolation.

The crew of four men and two women are part of a study designed to better understand the psychological impacts a long-term space mission would have on astronauts.

The data they produced will help NASA select individuals and groups with the right mix of traits to best cope with the stress, isolation and danger of a two-to-three year trip to Mars. The U.S. space agency hopes to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.

The crew was quarantined for eight months on a vast plain below the summit of the Big Island’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano. After finishing their stint, they feasted on pineapple, mango and papaya.

While isolated, the crew members wore space suits and traveled in teams whenever they left their small dome living structure. They ate mostly freeze-dried or canned food on their simulated voyage to Mars.

All of their communications with the outside world were subjected to a 20-minute delay — the time it takes for signals to get from Mars to Earth. The crew was tasked with conducting geological surveys, mapping studies and maintaining their self-sufficient habitat as if they were actually living on Mars.

The team’s information technology specialist, Laura Lark, thinks a manned voyage to Mars is a reasonable goal for NASA. The project is the fifth in a series of six NASA-funded studies at the University of Hawaii facility called the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS. NASA has dedicated about $2.5 million for research at the facility.

“There are certainly human factors to be figured out, that’s part of what HI-SEAS is for,” Lark said in a video message recorded within the dome. “But I think that overcoming those challenges is just a matter of effort. We are absolutely capable of it.”

The crew played games designed to measure their compatibility and stress levels and maintained logs about how they were feeling.

To gauge their moods they also wore specially-designed sensors that measured voice levels and proximity to other people in the, 1,200 square-foot (111-square meter) living space.

The devices could sense if people were avoiding one another, or if they were “toe-to-toe” in an argument, said the project’s lead investigator, University of Hawaii professor Kim Binsted.

“We’ve learned, for one thing, that conflict, even in the best of teams, is going to arise,” Binsted said. “So what’s really important is to have a crew that, both as individuals and a group, is really resilient, is able to look at that conflict and come back from it.”

The study also tested ways to help the crew cope with stress. When they became overwhelmed, they could use virtual reality devices to take them away to a tropical beach or other familiar landscapes.

Other Mars simulation projects exist around the world, but Hawaii researchers say one of the chief advantages of their project is the area’s rugged, Mars-like landscape, on a rocky, red plain below the summit of Mauna Loa.

The crew’s vinyl-covered shelter is about the size of a small two-bedroom home, has small sleeping quarters for each member plus a kitchen, laboratory and bathroom. The group shared one shower and has two composting toilets.
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Economy

Irma’s Damage a Reminder of Florida Economy’s Vulnerability

By Yeco on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Florida’s economy has long thrived on one import above all: People.

Until Irma struck this month, the state was adding nearly 1,000 residents a day – 333,471 in the past year, akin to absorbing a city the size of St. Louis or Pittsburgh. Every jobseeker, retiree or new birth, along with billions spent by tourists, helped fuel Florida’s propulsive growth and economic gains.

Yet Hurricane Irma’s destructive floodwaters renewed fears about how to manage the state’s population boom as the risks of climate change intensify. Rising sea levels and spreading flood plains have magnified the vulnerabilities for the legions of people who continue to move to Florida and the state economy they have sustained.

Florida faces an urgent need to adapt to the environmental changes, said Jesse Keenan, a lecturer at Harvard University who researches the effects of rising sea levels on cities.

“A lot is going to change in the next 30 years – this is just the beginning,” Keenan said.

People might need to live further inland, Keenan said, and employers might have to relocate to higher ground, with the resulting competition between offices and housing driving up land prices. It would become harder to adequately insure houses built along canals. Traffic delays could worsen across parts of Florida as more roads flood. Developers might shift away from sprawling suburban tracts toward denser urban pockets that are better equipped to manage floods.

At the same time, the belief remains firm among some developers and economists that for all the threats from rising water levels, the state’s population influx will continue with scarcely any interruption. The allure of lower taxes and easier living, the thinking goes, should keep drawing a flow of residents and vacationers.

“Irma doesn’t change the fact that there is no state income tax,” said Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness. “In a few months, when the first Alberta Clipper starts blowing down cold weather across the United States and it’s 80 degrees and sunny down here, the memories of Irma will be blown away.”

Certainly, the influx of people has been testament to that appeal. After slowing when the housing bubble burst in 2007, the population has marched steadily upward. The number of Floridians, now above 20 million, is projected to hit 24 million by 2030, with more than half the increase coming from retiring baby boomers. Many of them first experienced Florida as tourists. More than 112 million people visited the state last year – a 33 percent increase over the past decade.

All of which means that compared with Hurricane Andrew 25 years ago, Irma struck a far more densely packed state. It is also one marked by greater extremes of wealth and poverty. Luxury condo towers populated by the global elite now crowd the Miami skyline. But the metro area is also cursed by the worst rental housing affordability in the United States, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Flooding washed away mobile home parks in the Florida Keys where lower-income workers live. As a magnet for jobs at restaurants, hotels and other parts of the services sector, the state attracts workers with relatively low incomes who can’t pay higher rents if flooding eliminates a chunk of the housing stock.

Still, Citigroup estimated that damages were just $50 billion – well below initial estimates – in part because some homes were better equipped to weather the wind and rain than during Andrew.

Storms can cause population loss in the near term. A year after Andrew hit in 1992, Miami-Dade County lost 31,000 residents. Many appear to have moved to Broward and Palm Beach counties, where the risks of flooding were lower, a pattern that could be repeated after Irma.

Given the brisk pace of construction and population growth, Florida could endure a heavy economic blow in coming decades if it fails to reduce the risks from climate change. Homes that were too close to eroding beaches could become effectively worthless. Those along canals that flood could become too costly to rebuild. The state’s economic fuel – tourism and residential development – could dissipate.

Sean Becketti, chief economist at Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant, warned in an analysis last year that rising sea levels and widening flood plains “appear likely to destroy billions of dollars in property and to displace millions of people.”

“The economic losses and social disruption,” Becketti added, “may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.”

Federal taxpayers might oppose bailing out these homeowners, Becketti said, mortgage lenders could absorb heavy losses and employers might choose to move to safer parts of the country – and take their jobs with them.

Still, for now at least, the heads of several major Florida real estate companies say they expect people to keep flocking to Florida despite the increasing risks.

Budge Huskey, president of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, drove around Naples, Florida, and said he observed “very little damage” to homes constructed under new building codes after Hurricane Andrew. These houses had wind-resistant hurricane windows and stronger roofs.

“Let’s face it, people work their whole lives to retire to Florida – that’s where they want to be,” Huskey said.

Jay Parker, CEO of Douglas Elliman’s Florida brokerage, monitored Irma from an Atlanta hotel. He was gratified that Florida escaped much of the expected destruction. And he said would-be buyers, sniffing out potential bargains, were approaching him at the hotel about cut-rate deals on condos in the storm’s wake.

“If anything,” Parker said, “this might create some short-term buying sprees.”
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Science

Warm Water Off US West Coast Has Lingering Effects for Salmon

By Yscien on Sunday, September 17, 2017

The mass of warm water known as “the blob” that heated up the North Pacific Ocean has dissipated, but scientists are still seeing the lingering effects of those unusually warm sea surface temperatures on Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead.

Federal research surveys this summer caught among the lowest numbers of juvenile coho and Chinook salmon in 20 years, suggesting that many fish did not survive their first months at sea. Scientists warn that salmon fisheries may face hard times in the next few years.

Fisheries managers also worry about below average runs of steelhead returning to the Columbia River now. Returns of adult steelhead that went to sea as juveniles a year ago so far rank among the lowest in 50 years.

Scientists believe poor ocean conditions are likely to blame: Cold-water salmon and steelhead are confronting an ocean ecosystem that has been shaken up in recent years.

“The blob’s fairly well dissipated and gone. But all these indirect effects that it facilitated are still there,” Brian Burke, a research fisheries biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Marine creatures found farther south and in warmer waters have turned up in abundance along the coasts of Washington and Oregon, some for the first time.

“That’s going to have a really big impact on the dynamics in the ecosystem,” Burke said. “They’re all these new players that are normally not part of the system.”

Researchers with NOAA Fisheries and Oregon State University Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies have been surveying off the Pacific Northwest for 20 years to study juvenile salmon survival.

In June, they caught record numbers of warm-water fish such as Pacific pompano and jack mackerel, a potential salmon predator. But the catch of juvenile coho and Chinook salmon during the June survey — which has been tied to adult returns — was among the three lowest in 20 years.

Burke and other scientists warned in a memo to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries administrators last month that poor ocean conditions may mean poor salmon returns to the Columbia River system over the next few years.

“There was hardly any salmon out there,” Burke said. “Something is eating them and we don’t know what and we don’t know precisely where,” he added.

Seabirds such as common murres could be the culprits. Researchers caught fewer forage fish, such as herring, anchovy and smelt.

When forage fish are low, avian predators may be forced to eat more juvenile salmon. Seabirds near the mouth of the Columbia River may have feasted on more juvenile salmon as they entered the ocean.

The North Pacific Ocean had been unusually warm since the fall of 2013 with “the blob,” but sea surface temperatures have recently cooled to average or slightly warmer than average conditions. Changes in the marine ecosystem are likely to be seen for a while.

The research surveys also pulled up weird new creatures that had not been netted before. Researchers have caught tens of thousands of tube-shaped, jelly-like pyrosomes, which are generally found in tropical waters. Their impact on the marine food web isn’t yet clear.

Fisheries managers are also seeing lower runs of steelhead to the Columbia River system this year.

Joe DuPont, a regional fisheries manager with Idaho Fish and Game, blames poor feeding conditions when juvenile steelhead went out to the Pacific Ocean last year.

Warm waters brought less nutrient-rich copepods, tiny crustaceans at the base of the food chain. Meanwhile, northern copepods richer in lipids, that young steelhead eat, were less abundant.

It’s the second year of consecutive low steelhead runs, said Tucker Jones, ocean salmon and Columbia river program manager with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to point to an unhappy river experience and meeting ocean conditions that were far from hospitable,” Jones said. “The ‘blob’ especially changed the zooplankton food web structure that was out there,” he added.

Fisheries managers have put some fishing restrictions in place due to low forecast of steelhead expected back this season.

While the mechanisms for steelhead and salmon may be different, “large scale changes to the ocean are driving all of it,” said Burke.
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Economy

Brazil’s Odebrecht Quits Argentine Subway Construction Project

By Yeco on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Scandal-hit Brazilian construction company Odebrecht said on Sunday it has sold its 33 percent stake in a massive subway project in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, but vowed to keep working in the country.

Odebrecht is involved in a sprawling corruption saga and has already paid $3.5 billion in settlements in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland, embroiling politicians across Latin America.

“Present for 30 continuous years, Odebrecht plans to continue contributing to the development of Argentina in an ethical, integral and transparent manner,” the construction company said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

In July the Argentine justice system banned Odebrecht from bidding on new projects in the country a period of one year.
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Technology

New Technology Helps Stranded Refugees in Greece

By Ytech on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Stuck in a refugee camp on the Greek island of Chios with poor internet and little credit, Abrar Hassan, like many others, was unaware that the tech world had been falling all over itself to help him.

More importantly, he was unaware of his rights and how best to prepare for the asylum interviews that would determine whether the 19-year-old, who fled a murderous family feud in Pakistan, had a future in Europe.

There has been an explosion of digital software applications, hackathons and websites since the refugee crisis filtered into Western public consciousness, with the tech world offering a range of solutions, whether to issues like Hassan’s, navigating the sea or job hunting.

Time has revealed the limits of such solutions when applied with little knowledge of the situation on the ground. Some tech tools, however, are bridging the gap.

No internet, no problem

Hundreds of micro SD memory cards that can be used in mobile phones have been given out in Chios. The memory cards are packed with information to help educate people about crucial details of the asylum process, such as the right to replace an inadequate translator during the asylum interview.

“When I came here I didn’t know anything about the Greek asylum system,” said Hassan, who passed his asylum interview and has remained on the island, helping to distribute SD cards to more refugees.

“This is the first time things have been clearly explained.”

The micro SD cards do not need an internet connection for people to access the text, audio and visual help offered in the Arabic, Farsi and Urdu languages.

They are the brainchild of Sharon Silvey, founder of RefuComm, a volunteer group working with refugees.

Silvey said that many tech products are often designed with little awareness of the audience they target.

“I’ve met thousands of refugees and I’ve not met one who said that they needed an app — it’s as simple as that. I’m not sure if refugees are involved at all [in development],” she said.

Steep learning curve

That criticism is partly acknowledged by some of those who have tracked the explosion of tech-focused assistance since fall 2015.

Ben Mason of Betterplace Lab, a Berlin-based nonprofit organization focused on what he calls “tech for good,” told VOA that the initial surge provided an “inspiring moment with people wanting to help and some good projects.”

“But there was quite a lot of misspent energy on ‘solutionism’ — the idea you can take a complex social problem and find a simple tech solution,” Mason added.

To avoid duplication of services, Techfugees — the most prominent tech network to emerge, with more than 15,000 members — called on users to consolidate their efforts and engage more with refugees themselves, many of whom rely on their own online social networks to get advice.

Tracking the success of this wave of tech support is difficult. Many projects have genuinely helped, such as Kiron Open Higher Education, which offers refugees access to higher education.

In the “fail fast, try again” ethos of the tech industry, meanwhile, other services proved useless or quickly disappeared, and some became notorious.

iSea, a highly hyped, award-winning app, was taken offline after it emerged that rather than live satellite images, it showed a single static image of the sea, rendering it useless for its purported role of helping crowdsource rescue operations.

Stuck in silos

Mason, who recently wrote a report on Germany’s tech response to the refugees crisis, argues that while it had “yet to deliver at scale,” the scene is “maturing,” with a small but emerging number of tech solutions created by refugees themselves.

Meghan Benton, a senior policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, said there have been successes, but for tech to truly impact efforts to help refugees, it will have to be about “a connection to mainstream services — rather than a parallel world, which serves small pockets, and might die from one week to the next.”

Not that such a solution is simple.

The ever-shifting nature of the refugee presence in Europe presents its own issues. For example, the U.N.’s refugee agency in Greece told VOA that as refugees moved from camps into urban settings, helping provide internet services would become even more difficult.

Meanwhile, the slow adaption of many European states to harnessing this tech talent and enthusiasm — for example, in its slow, bureaucratic funding methods — may, to varying extents, be influenced by the politics of the refugee crisis.

A distant prospect

Thousands still languish on the islands and face deportation until their asylum interviews are held.

When it comes to the asylum process, Greek authorities are perceived as more of an obstacle to the fair treatment of refugees than a partner to work with, RefuComm’s Silvey said.

For her, the idea of integrating her services remains a distant prospect.

Silvey said she would not be discouraged, though, and is now hunting for funds to roll out her idea further, and aims to launch it in Italy.

And with a team made up mostly of refugees as volunteers, RefuComm doesn’t lack the contact with beneficiaries that has plagued other tech solutions.

“Millennials are creating all these high-tech solutions, and then some old grandma comes up with a low-tech solution that works,” quips Silvey, 56.
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Economy

India PM Modi Inaugurates Controversial Dam Project

By Yeco on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s biggest dam on Sunday, ignoring warnings from environment groups that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their livelihoods.

The controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river in the country’s western state of Gujarat that will provide power and water to three big states was dedicated to the people of India by Narendra Modi.

The project has been beset by controversies since the laying of the foundation stone by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1961. The construction of the project began in 1987.

The dam is the second biggest dam in the world after the Grand Coulee Dam in the United States.

Ahead of the inauguration Modi said in a tweet, “This project will benefit lakhs of farmers and help fulfil people’s aspirations.” (1 lakh = 100,000)

The dam is expected to provide water to 9,000 villages and the power generated from the dam would be shared among three states — Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), led by social activist Medha Patkar, has been protesting against the project, raising several environmental concerns.

Construction on the dam had been suspended in 1996 following a stay by the Supreme Court which allowed work to resume, four years later, but with conditions.

Patkar and her supporters started the protest against the inauguration of the dam on Saturday and the opening of its gates which would raise the level of water and risk displacing several villages.

“Today is a very sad day for India, and for one of our biggest peoples’ movements and struggle — the Narmada Bacchao Andolan,” Ravi Chellam, executive director at Greenpeace India said in a statement.

“The Sardar Sarovar Project… signals ruin not development for tens of thousands of unsuspecting, hapless and poor farmers,” Chellam added.
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Science

Program Breathes Calmer New Life into Angry Young Men

By Yscien on Sunday, September 17, 2017

In Greek, “Pneuma” means breath and spirit. That’s the core philosophy of a program in Baltimore, Maryland, with the same name. Pneuma combines exercise, yoga and leadership training. Behind this program is a near-death experience that made a young man bitter and angry, then led him to become forgiving and proactive. As Faiza Elmasry reports, Damion Cooper founded Project Pneuma to teach boys how to control their anger and inspire them to achieve their dreams. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Technology

Iceland Experiments with Volcanic Energy

By Ytech on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Iceland is often called the land of ice and fire. It has plenty of ice and glaciers, but is also a geothermal hotspot of bubbling hot water cauldrons, geysers and volcanos. Harnessing all that energy is something Icelanders have been doing for generations, but they’re about to take that concept one step further. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Science

Eye Prosthesis Still the Best Artificial Eye Solution

By Yscien on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Scientists say bionic eyes are not too far away, but, until they become widely available, many people around the world will have to continue living with prosthetic eyes. Still, highly trained technicians called ocularists can manufacture prosthetic eyes hardly distinguishable from normal ones, making the lives of their patients much more pleasant. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Economy

China Builds an ‘Orlando’ Aside its ‘Vegas’ and ‘New York’

By Yeco on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Just a stone’s throw across a narrow waterway from the world’s largest gambling hub Macau, a former oyster farming island is being transformed into China’s newest tourism haven.

Dubbed by some as China’s answer to Florida’s Orlando — a global tourist magnet with its cluster of major theme parks — Hengqin has seen property prices more than double over the past two years.

While still a dusty mass of construction sites, Hengqin now draws millions annually to its anchor attraction, the “Chimelong Ocean Kingdom” theme park, with a slew of hotel, malls and sprawling residential developments being built nearby.

Spanish soccer club, Real Madrid, announced last week they would open an interactive virtual reality complex in Hengqin, in partnership with Hong Kong-listed developer, Lai Sun Group .

The 12,000-square-meter venue, set to open in 2021, will include virtual reality entertainment and a museum showcasing the club’s history.

Oysters to Orlando of China

The transformation of Hengqin, which is three times as large as Macau, is part of Beijing’s efforts to bolster links between Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in the Pearl River Delta region, or so-called “Greater Bay Area,” modeled after other dynamic global bay areas such as Tokyo and San Francisco.

“Hengqin will be the Orlando of China. Macau is Las Vegas (and) Hong Kong is New York,” said Larry Leung, an executive with Lai Sun that is helping build the Real Madrid complex at its “Novotown” project in Hengqin. “Within an hour you can have them all.”

Novotown’s entertainment mix will also feature China’s first Lionsgate movie world with theme rides from blockbuster films such as the Hunger Games and Twilight, as well as a National Geographic educational center. High-end hotel chains and luxury yacht makers are building more hotels and a marina on Hengqin.

Expanding Macau

Chinese officials see Hengqin helping Macau diversify away from casinos to a more wholesome tourism industry. More than 80 percent of Macau’s public revenues come from the gambling sector.

Businesses in Macau have been encouraged to invest in Hengqin with the government providing cheaper rent and tax subsidies. Galaxy Entertainment, Shun Tak and Macau Legend have also earmarked developments for Hengqin.

Realtors expect property prices to keep rising once a sea bridge linking Hong Kong, and a high-speed rail station are completed.

Hoffman Ma, deputy chairman of Success Universe Group, which operates the Ponte 16 casino in Macau, said Hengqin could take some convention and exhibition business away from the former Portuguese colony.

“It doesn’t make sense for Macau to do that, due to a consistent labor shortage,” he said.

Big population, more theme parks

Wang Lian, from Wuhan in central China, brought his daughter to watch whale sharks and polar bears at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom recently.

Industry reports show 8.5 million people visited China’s top theme park last year, more than Hong Kong Disneyland’s 6.1 million, and almost a third of the 28 million people who visited Macau last year.

“China’s population is so big they need something like this nearby … its (Hengqin’s) economic ties will also help Macau develop,” Wang said.
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Science

New Tropical Storms Forming in Active Hurricane Season

By Yscien on Sunday, September 17, 2017

Hurricane season roared on Saturday as Jose threatened heavy surf along the U.S. East Coast, Tropical Storm Norma edged toward Mexico’s resort-studded Baja California Peninsula, and Tropical Storm Maria formed in the Atlantic and was expected to strengthen into a hurricane, taking aim at some already battered Caribbean islands.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lee formed in the Atlantic far from land.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula because of Norma, which the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported had weakened into a tropical storm on Saturday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 kph (65 mph).

Norma was 355 kilometers (220 miles) south of Cabo San Lucas and moving north at 4 kph (2 mph), with forecasters saying it could approach waters southwest of the peninsula late Sunday or early Monday.

The peninsular region that’s home to the twin resort cities of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo was hit about two weeks ago by Tropical Storm Lidia, which flooded streets and homes and killed at least four people.

The Baja California Sur government readied storm shelters and canceled classes for Monday as well as a planned military parade in the state capital, La Paz, amid Mexican Independence Day celebrations.

In the Atlantic, Hurricane Jose was far from land but generating powerful swells that the center said were affecting coastal areas in Bermuda, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and the U.S. Southeast.

East Coast cautioned

The center added that tropical storm watches were possible for the U.S. East Coast later in the day and advised people from North Carolina to New England to monitor Jose’s progress.

The hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 130 kph (80 mph). It was located about 775 kilometers (485 miles) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and was heading north at 9 kph (6 mph).

Also Saturday, Tropical Storm Lee formed in the eastern Atlantic with sustained winds of 65 kph (40 mph). The storm was about 1,160 kilometers (720 miles) west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands and posed no immediate threat to land.

To the west, Tropical Storm Maria formed and is expected to strengthen, prompting hurricane watches for Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat — some of which were devastated by Hurricane Irma.

The hurricane center said Maria was about 1,000 km (620 miles) east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles. It had maximum sustained winds of 85 kph (50 mph) and was heading west at 31 kph (20 mph). It should approach the Leeward Islands on Tuesday.

The death toll from Irma in the Caribbean was 38.
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Science

EU Climate Commissioner: US Changing Its Tune on Paris Deal

By Yscien on Saturday, September 16, 2017

The European Union’s top energy official says the United States has signaled that it may be willing to re-engage in the Paris climate pact, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement in June that the U.S. would withdraw in order to renegotiate the deal.

Miguel Arias Canete, European commissioner for climate action and energy, said Saturday that the shift came during a meeting in Montreal of more than 30 ministers, led by Canada, China and the European Union.

The Montreal meeting took place in preparation for the annual U.N. General Assembly, the main events of which begin Tuesday.

“The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,” Canete said after the meeting.

Stance ‘has not changed’

However, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted a different message shortly after Canete’s statement was released. “Our position on the Paris agreement has not changed.,” she said. “@POTUS has been clear, US withdrawing unless we get pro-America terms.”

Trump drew international criticism when he declared the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Agreement and seek a renegotiation.

The Paris Agreement is a U.N.-negotiated deal signed in 2015 by every nation except Syria and Nicaragua. A withdrawal by the United States is seen as a possible catalyst for withdrawals by other nations.

The agreement seeks a global response to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

The United States produces the world’s second-highest level of greenhouse gas emissions, next to China.
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Technology

World Hunger Swells as Conflict, Climate Change Grow

By Ytech on Saturday, September 16, 2017

The United Nations reports world hunger is rising because conflicts and problems related to climate change are multiplying. The report finds about 815 million people globally did not have enough to eat in 2016 — 38 million more than the previous year.

The statistics in this report are particularly grim. They show that global hunger is on the rise again after more than a decade of steady decline. The report, a joint product by five leading U.N. agencies warns that malnutrition is threatening the health of and compromising the future of millions of people world-wide.

The report says 155 million children under age five suffer from stunting of their bodies and often their brains, thereby dimming prospects for the rest of their lives. It notes 52 million, or eight percent, of the world’s children suffer from wasting or low weight for their height.

Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund, Anthony Lake, says the lives and futures of countless children are blighted because of food insecurity. And those trapped by conflict are most at risk.

“Millions of children across northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere; innocent victims of a deadly combination of protracted, irresponsible conflicts; of drought, poverty and climate change… If unreached, a generation of children, more likely someday as adults, will replicate the hatred and conflicts of today,” Lake said.

The report also explores the problems of anemia among women and growing obesity among adults and children as well. This study does not present a favorable outlook for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Authors of the report say governments must set goals and invest in measures to bring down malnutrition and to promote healthy eating for healthy living.
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Technology

Russia’s Digital Weapons Refined on Virtual Battlefield’ of Ukraine

By Ytech on Saturday, September 16, 2017

It was a Friday in June, a short workday before a public holiday weekend in Ukraine, and cybersecurity expert Victor Zhora had left the capital, Kyiv, and was in the western city of Lviv when he got the first in a torrent of phone calls from frantic clients.

His clients’ networks were being crippled by ransomware known as Petya, a malicious software that locks up infected computers and data. But this ransomware was a variant of an older one and wasn’t designed to extort money — the goal of the virus’ designers was massive disruption to Ukraine’s economy.

“I decided not to switch on my computer and just used my phone and iPad as a precaution,” he said. “I didn’t want my laptop to be contaminated by the virus and to lose my data,” he said.

Virus spread like wildfire

The Petya virus, targeting Microsoft Windows-based systems, spread like wildfire across Europe and, to a lesser extent, America, affecting hundreds of large and small firms in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain.

While many Europeans saw the June cyberattack as just another wild disruption caused by anonymous hackers, it was identified quickly by experts, like the 37-year-old Zhora, as another targeted assault on Ukraine. Most likely launched by Russia, it was timed to infect the country’s networks on the eve of Ukraine’s Constitution Day.

The cyberattack started through a software update for an accounting program that businesses use when working with Ukrainian government agencies, according to the head of Ukraine’s cyberpolice, Sergey Demedyuk. In an interview with VOA in his office in the western suburbs of Kyiv, Demedyuk said, “every year cyberattacks are growing in number.”

“Sometimes when targeting a particular government agency or official, they mount complex attacks, first using some disguising action, like a denial-of-service attack, and only then launch their main attack aiming, for example, at capturing data,” he said.

Ukraine’s 360-member cyberpolice department was formed in 2015. The department is stretched, having not only to investigate cybercrime by nonstate actors but also, along with a counterpart unit in the state security agency, defend the country from cyberattacks by state actors. Demedyuk admits it is a cat-and-mouse game searching for viruses and Trojan horses that might have been planted months ago.

Cybersecurity summit

On Wednesday, the director of U.S. National Intelligence, Dan Coats, told a cybersecurity summit in Washington that digital threats are mounting against the West, and he singled out Russia as a major culprit, saying Moscow “has clearly assumed an ever more aggressive cyber posture.”

“We have not experienced — yet — a catastrophic attack. But I think everyone in this room is aware of the ever-growing threat to our national security,” Coats added.

And many of the digital weapons the West may face are being refined and developed by Russian-directed hackers in the cyberwar being waged against Ukraine, said Zhora and other cybersecurity experts.

“They are using Ukraine as a testing laboratory,” said Zhora, a director of InfoSafe, a cybersecurity company that advises private sector clients and Ukrainian government agencies.

Eye of the digital storm

Since the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine has been in the eye of a sustained and systematic digital storm of big and small cyberattacks with practically every sector of the country impacted, including media, finance, transportation, military, politics and energy. Sometimes, the intrusions are highly tailored; other times, more indiscriminate attacks like Petya are launched at Ukraine.

Russian officials deny they are waging cyber warfare against Ukraine. Zhora, like many cybersecurity experts, acknowledges it is difficult, if not impossible most times, to trace cyberattacks back to their source.

“Attribution is the most difficult thing. When you are dealing with professional hackers it is hard to track and to find real evidence of where it has come from,” he said. “But we know only one country is the likely culprit. We only really have one enemy that wants to destroy Ukrainian democracy and independence,” he added.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, has been less restrained in pointing the finger of blame. Last December, he said there had been 6,500 cyberattacks on 36 Ukrainian targets in the previous two months alone. Investigations, he said, point to the “direct or indirect involvement of [the] secret services of Russia, which have unleashed a cyberwar against our country.”

Ukraine’s cyberpolice head agrees. Demedyuk says his officers have been able to track attacks, especially denial-of-service intrusions, back to “Russian special services, tracking them to their own facilities and their own IP addresses.” But the original source of more complex intrusions, he said, are much harder to identify, with the hackers disguising themselves by using servers around the world, including in Asia and China.

Digital weapons refined

Digital intrusions have seen data deleted and networks crippled with real life consequences. And digital weapons are being refined often with the knowledge gained from each intrusion.

Zhora cites as an example of this evolution the difference between two large cyberattacks on the country’s electricity grid, the first in December 2015 and the second at the end of last year, which cut off energy to hundreds of thousands of people for several hours.

With the first attack the hackers used malware to gain access to the networks and then shut the system down manually.

“They sent an email and when someone opened it, the payload was downloaded and later it spread across the network and they used the path created for the hackers to get to the administrator’s work station and then in a live session switched off the subsystems overseeing electricity distribution,” he said.

But with the 2016 attack no live session was necessary.

“They used a malware which opened the doors automatically by decoding specific protocols and there was no human interaction. I think they got a lot of information in the first attack about the utility companies’ networks and they used the knowledge to write the malware for the second intrusion,” he said.

Digital threats to US

In his speech midweek in Washington, Coats specifically cited possible digital threats to America’s critical infrastructure, including electrical grids and other utilities, saying it is of rising concern.

“It doesn’t take much effort to imagine the consequences of an attack that knocks out power in Boston in February or power in Phoenix in July,” he said.

After the second cyberattack on Ukraine’s electrical grid, a group of American government and private sector energy officials was dispatched to Kyiv, where they spent a month exploring what happened, according to Ukrainian officials.

One lesson the visitors drew was that it would be much harder in the U.S. to switch the grid back on after an intrusion. The Ukrainians were able to get the electricity moving again by visiting each substation and turning the system on again manually, an option apparently more challenging in the U.S., where grid systems are even more automated.

“Virtual attacks are every bit as dangerous as military ones — we are living on a battlefield,” Zhora said.
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Technology

New Flip Flop Qubits Could Bring Quantum Computers to Consumers

By Ytech on Saturday, September 16, 2017

Mention quantum computing and people generally think, “what the heck is quantum computing?” Quantum computing uses the “weirdness” of the quantum world to create a new way for computers to do their thinking. It leaves the fastest computers in the dust. Australian researchers may have taken a huge step toward making quantum computers cheap and accessible. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Science

Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere Ending 20 Year Journey

By Yscien on Saturday, September 16, 2017

From tears and hugs to big smiles, the end Sept. 15 of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini was emotional for scientists and engineers. Mission team members say the end of Cassini marks the beginning of a new chapter in planetary exploration and the search for life. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.
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Technology

Key Equifax Executives Leave Company Immediately After Huge Data Breach

By Ytech on Saturday, September 16, 2017

Equifax announced late Friday that its chief information officer and chief security officer would leave the company immediately, following the enormous breach of 143 million Americans’ personal information.

It also presented a litany of security efforts it made after noticing suspicious network traffic in July.

The credit data company said that Susan Mauldin, who had been the top security officer, and David Webb, the chief technology officer, are retiring from Equifax. Mauldin, a college music major, had come under media scrutiny for her qualifications in security. Equifax did not say in its statement what retirement packages the executives would receive.

Mauldin is being replaced by Russ Ayers, an information technology executive inside Equifax. Webb is being replaced by Mark Rohrwasser, who most recently was in charge of Equifax’s international technology operations.

Equifax has been under intense public pressure since it disclosed last week that hackers accessed or stole the millions of Social Security numbers, birthdates and other information.

On Friday it gave its most detailed timeline of the breach yet, saying it noticed suspicious network traffic on July 29 associated with its U.S. online dispute portal web application. Equifax said it believes the access occurred from May 13 through July 30.

Equifax had said earlier that it identified a weakness in an open-source software package called Apache Struts as the technological crack that allowed hackers to heist the data from the massive database maintained primarily for lenders. That disclosure, made late Wednesday, cast the company’s damaging security lapse in an even harsher light. The software problem was detected in March and a recommended software patch was released shortly afterward.

Equifax said its security officials were “aware of this vulnerability at that time, and took efforts to identify and to patch any vulnerable systems in the company’s IT infrastructure.”

The company said it hired Mandiant, a business often brought in to deal with major technology security problems at big companies, to do a forensic review.

Equifax has been castigated for how it has handled the breach, which it did not disclose publicly for weeks after discovering it.

Consumers calling the number Equifax set up initially complained of jammed phone lines and uninformed representatives, and initial responses from the website gave inconsistent responses. The company says it has addressed many of those problems. Equifax also said Friday it would continue to allow people to place credit freezes on their reports without a fee through November 21. Originally the company offered fee-free credit freezes for 30 days after the incident.

Equifax is facing a myriad of investigations and class-action lawsuits for this breach, including Congressional investigations, queries by the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as several state attorneys general. The company’s CEO Richard Smith is scheduled to testify in front of Congress in early October.

Three Equifax executives — not the ones who are departing — sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million just a few days after the company discovered the breach, according to documents filed with securities regulators.

Equifax shares have lost a third of their value since it announced the breach.
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Science

Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere, Ending 20-year Journey

By Yscien on Friday, September 15, 2017

Tears, hugs and celebrations Friday marked the end of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini.

In mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Cassini program manager Earl Maize’s voice was heard loud and clear: “The signal from the spacecraft is gone, and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft.”

WATCH: Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere Ending 20 Year Journey

At a news conference afterward, Maize paid tribute to Cassini.

“This morning, a lone explorer, a machine made by humankind, finished its mission 900 million miles away. The nearest observer wouldn’t even know until 84 minutes later that Cassini was gone. To the very end, the spacecraft did everything we asked,” he said.

Launched in 1997, Cassini’s trip to Saturn took seven years.

“When I look back at the Cassini mission, I see a mission that was running a 13-year marathon of scientific discovery, and this last orbit was just the last lap,” Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker said.

Saturn and its moons

Cassini has been exploring Saturn and some of its moons, making discoveries along the way.

“The discoveries that Cassini has made over the last 13 years in orbit have rewritten the textbooks of Saturn, have discovered worlds that could be habitable and have guaranteed that we’ll return to that ringed world,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Michael Watkins said.

Cassini discovered ocean worlds on the Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus. It also detected strong evidence of hydrothermal vents at the base of Enceladus’ ocean.

These discoveries prompted the decision to destroy Cassini as it ran out of fuel, so there would be no risk of contaminating these moons with bacteria from Earth.

In its last hours, Cassini took final images, including Enceladus setting behind Saturn; Saturn’s rings; Titan’s lakes and seas; and an infrared view of Saturn.

As Cassini plunged into Saturn, its sensors experienced the first taste of the planet’s atmosphere, sending critical information to Earth until it disintegrated.

“It just really tells us about how Saturn formed and the processes going on and really how all the planetary bodies in our solar system have formed,” said Nora Alonge, Cassini project science and system engineer.

Bittersweet moments

The final moments of the spacecraft’s journey were bittersweet for Alonge, who has been working on the Cassini mission for more than a decade.

“I’m feeling so many emotions. I’m very proud and I’m honored to be part of such an amazing mission, such a fruitful scientific mission, an engineering feat for a robust spacecraft that has lasted for so long, and of course I’m sad,” she said. “I feel like I’ve lost a friend. We’ve been talking to Cassini for years. We check on the health and safety. It talks back to us and gives us data. That’ll be missed. It’ll be a big change for many of us.”

“This, this has truly been beyond my wildest dreams,” said Julie Webster, Cassini’s spacecraft operations manager. She was with this mission from the time Cassini was built.

The members of the Cassini mission team said the end of the spacecraft was picture perfect.

“We found the best possible solution to get scientific data that would have been too risky to take at any other time by diving between the planet and the rings. We’re going into a region we could have never explored before. Cassini is becoming now a part of Saturn, and it’s the perfect ending point,” Alonge said.

IN PHOTOS: Cassini’s Amazing Pictures of Saturn, Rings & Moons

Scientists said the end of Cassini also marked the beginning of other planetary explorations and more discoveries as scientists continue to analyze the unprecedented data on Saturn collected by Cassini.
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Science

Space Business Booming at Florida’s Cape Canaveral

By Yscien on Friday, September 15, 2017

After the last space shuttle mission ended in July 2011, the activity at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, seemed to be waning. NASA’s next launch vehicle was still in the early stages of design, so launch activity was transferred to the Russian space center in Baikonur. But this opened new opportunities for the space center, and today it is booming with private business activity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Economy

For Muslim Relief Workers, Faith & Charity Form an Inextricable Bond

By Yeco on Friday, September 15, 2017

When Hurricane Irma hit the Florida Coast, the Islamic Circle of North America arranged shelter. After it passed, they provided relief. Its volunteers — made up of immigrant and nonimmigrant, Muslim and non-Muslims — has opened minds and hearts wherever they go, to their shared desire to give back to the country.
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Economy

For Muslim Relief Workers, Faith and Charity Form Inextricable Bond

By Yeco on Friday, September 15, 2017

When Hurricane Irma battered the Florida Coast, volunteers of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) arranged shelter.

After it passed, they provided relief — from flood-damaged homes in Naples to uprooted tree trunk clearings in Cooper City, Florida.

Abdulrauf Khan, a Pakistani immigrant and assistant executive director at ICNA Relief USA — a network of disaster relief and social services — has been through all of it. Anytime a natural calamity strikes, he’s present.

Khan describes his motives as two-fold: a desire to assist his neighbors, while empowering his three children.

“I have a son who is 18 years old,” he begins to recount a vivid memory. “He asked me five years ago, ‘Dad, what have you done for this country?’”

It’s a simple question that would provide clarity to Khan’s mission.

“We have to work and we have to make sure our children feel that ownership of the country,” he said. “We have to give back.”

‘A basic part of the religion’

From Hurricanes Harvey to Irma, there are many Texans who embrace the work of Muslim relief volunteers, and select others who are hesitant to grant their trust, based solely on religion. But regardless of their reception, ICNA answers the call to assist, and changes some minds in the process.

“Charity is a big part of Islam, and giving back to the community is a big part of Islam,” says Aqsa Cheema, administrative coordinator for ICNA Relief South Florida.

Cheema, 22, a generation Pakistani-American who assisted with Irma relief, says she has been in the habit of giving back since she was a kid, attending mosque.

“You go along with it, and you get the chance to distribute food and do things that can benefit the community,” she says. “That’s just a basic part of the religion.”

Open hearts, open arms

Earlier in the week, as Irma’s ruthless winds pounded the state indiscriminately, ICNA facilitated shelter for Floridians — any and all Floridians — in a Boca Raton-based Islamic Center.

Some of their guests said they had never met a Muslim.

“It was their first experience coming to an Islamic Center,” Khan said. “They felt like, ‘this is what we feel like when we go to church, when we go to synagogue’” — welcome, and at home.

Cheema, who is studying to be a social worker, describes her work as enriching, but never complete.

“That lack of true fulfillment is what keeps me going,” she says.

“I accept the fact that I can’t help everyone, but maybe if I help one person, and someone sees me helping that person, they will be like, ‘Hey, you know what? It felt nice to bring a smile on a person’s face. I can help them too.’”
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Science

Somalia Gets First Forensic Lab Dedicated to Rape Investigation

By Yscien on Friday, September 15, 2017

A new forensic lab launched in central Somalia could transform how the Puntland state government handles cases of rape and gender-based violence, and possibly create a model for the rest of the country to follow.

The Puntland Forensic Center, funded by the Swedish government and supported by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), was opened September 6. It brings advanced DNA testing capabilities to a country still lacking in paved roads and reliable electricity.

The lab opened less than a year after Puntland enacted its Sexual Offenses Act, the first law in Somalia to criminalize sexual offenses and impose harsh penalties, including jail time, fines and public lashing, on the perpetrators.

The lab was designed to provide critical scientific evidence to the police and officials investigating and prosecuting crimes under this new law.

“As we were helping [the Puntland government] develop that piece of legislation, the question came of, ‘How do we enforce that legislation when it is finally approved?'” said Nikolai Botev, UNFPA’s Somalia representative.

“This is when the realization came that there are actually no forensic facilities within Somalia.”

Culture of silence

Rape and sexual assault are pervasive in Somalia, where decades of conflict have created persistent instability and crippled the institutions meant to uphold the law.

Thirty-year-old Fatima was collecting firewood outside her family’s home in a camp for displaced people in Puntland when she was attacked by three strangers. The men gang-raped her so violently that it caused Fatima, who was pregnant, to miscarry.

“After I came home, I started to bleed the next night. After three to four days, I lost my four-month-old baby,” Fatima told VOA in an interview at a women’s health clinic in Garowe.

Like many women in this conservative country, Fatima preferred to stay silent rather than endure the stigma of her community. The blame and shame survivors face deters many women from reporting rapes and assaults, creating a culture of silence.

“I was shy and said to myself, ‘Don’t tell your story to anyone because it is shameful,'” Fatima said. She was dressed in a full black niqab that revealed nothing but her eyes through a small slit.

Although statistics on the numbers of sexual crimes are largely unavailable, Somalia has been ranked as one of the worst countries to be a woman, and stories like Fatima’s are alarmingly common.

UNFPA says reports of rape and sexual assault have increased this year, after a devastating drought pushed women like Fatima into displacement camps where they become even more vulnerable.

“We’re seeing a significant increase of sexual violence, particularly targeting internally displaced people,” Botev said. “The whole idea of the forensic center was born out of a bigger idea of how to address gender-based violence, sexual violence in the context of Somalia.”

A broken system

Somalia’s government, even at the state level, has yet to recover from decades of war. Many Somali women do not bother to report crimes because they lack faith that the system can, or wants to, help them get justice.

Officer Kis Shamis Kabdi Bile stands out in her bright orange sneakers, blue hijab and mirrored sunglasses. As the only woman in Garowe’s Criminal Investigation Division, she handles every case of rape and gender-based violence because, she says, most male officers don’t even consider them to be crimes.

“There are some police officers who say rape is not a big deal and consider it a minor thing,” she told VOA in an interview at the police station. “They say that it is nothing new.”

Bile hasn’t been paid in over a year, and conducts her investigations on foot, as the police department doesn’t have a car. She says the police need resources and specialized training in how to handle sexual crimes.

Many of Bile’s cases are taken over by community elders, who settle disputes through Somalia’s traditional herr system. Often the rapist’s family pays a fine of camels or goats to the survivor’s family, or the survivors are forced to marry their attackers.

It’s frustrating, Bile said. “As you are in the middle of the case, those elders will come and say, ‘We are going to negotiate before you finish the case.'”

During our interview, a young girl, no older than 15, came to plead for Bile’s help. The male police officer assigned to her rape case was insisting she lacked the evidence to go to court, she said, and was encouraging her to resolve her case through the community elders. Bile called the officer in for a strong scolding, and then took over the case.

Changing times

There are promising signs that Puntland’s efforts are already helping more rape survivors to hold their attackers accountable.

Data from Puntland’s attorney general shows that of the 108 rapes reported in Puntland in 2016, only 14, or 12 percent, resulted in convictions. Almost a third were dropped due to lack of evidence.

But since the Sexual Offenses Act was implemented this year, the conviction rate has risen to 27 percent, while the number of cases thrown out for insufficient evidence has dropped to 21 percent.

The trend is encouraging to local politicians, who hope the forensic laboratory will build upon the law’s early success by providing authorities with stronger evidence in a shorter time so they can investigate and prosecute more cases that will stand up in a court of law.

“We used to send DNA from here to Nairobi or from here to South Africa,” said Salah Habib Haaji Hama, Puntland’s Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs. “So those restraints now are easy. We can manage this and get answers within a timely period. Within hours, within minutes, when we used to have days, sometimes months, to receive those.”

An important component to the lab’s success is providing education, both to the survivors and the wider community, about how DNA testing works and why it’s so important.

“There’s a limited time that they have to report or the results of the lab will not be successful. So we will try to educate them,” said Maryan Ahmed Ali, Puntland’s Minister of Women. “What is the time limit? What do they have to do? Do they have to take a shower? Do they have to change or wash their clothes?”

Understanding the implications of DNA testing could deter potential attackers from committing crimes for fear of being caught. It could also be a game changer for women like Fatima, who said she didn’t report the crime because she didn’t know her attackers’ names.

“Who am I going to accuse? I can only accuse a person I know. I can’t catch someone who I only saw in the jungle. I can barely remember the faces,” she said.

A multitude of challenges, including poor infrastructure, potential security threats and lack of qualified technicians, could impede the lab’s success, said UNFPA’s Botev. Somalia lacks advanced universities and hospitals, so the technicians overseeing the facility all studied abroad. They hope to make the lab a training ground for aspiring Somali scientists.

But the greater hope is that more successful convictions will foster increased confidence in Puntland’s new system, and encourage more women to report. Ultimately, Ali said, this will help reduce the social stigma and break the culture of silence surrounding rape and sexual assault.

“There will not be a stigma. There will not be a discussion about who did this, who did the crime, who did the rape. So it’s a big encouragement,” Ali said.
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Economy

Cashless Dreams Feature Motorbike Bankers, E-wallets in Vietnam

By Yeco on Friday, September 15, 2017

Think of it as motorbike banking.

For Vietnamese who live far from a retail bank branch, VietinBank scrambles scooters so its officers can meet clients where they live, tablet in hand.

There’s also the strategy of DongA Bank, which decks out a van with four ATMs and parks it near factories to reach laborers.

All across Vietnam, people are heeding the government’s call for “financial inclusion,” the global buzzword for bringing banks to the masses, and all the better if it can be digital. Hanoi has staked out some national targets for the year 2020, including an ambitious reduction in the share of transactions based on cash, down to a whopping 10 percent.

That goes hand in hand with other targets, like increasing the number of point-of-sales (POS) devices to 300,000, and getting 70 percent of utility payments done electronically.

But most seem to think those will be a tough goal to meet and that cash, the Vietnamese dong, will stay king.

“Cash will not disappear in Vietnam soon,” State Bank of Vietnam payment director Le Anh Dung conceded, even as he’s promoting a cashless society.

But nevertheless, the communist country is seeing a very visible sea change in the digitization of the economy.

Take utilities. To pay for water or power, Vietnamese used to have only the cash option, which meant either stopping in at the post office, or waiting for a collector to ring the doorbell. But now convenience stores from 7-Eleven to Circle K have mushroomed around cities, and with them comes an explosion of POS devices that accept utility payments.

Downsides to branchless banking

But the push toward more sophisticated finance is not all smooth sailing. Customers worry their bank accounts can be hacked, in the same way that thieves can purloin Vietnamese dong stashed in the mattress. Programs that let workers borrow against their salaries to buy phones or fridges risk breeding a culture of debt and consumerism. And citizens have been slow to adopt branchless banking tools like e-wallets Moca, MoMo, and Payoo, which are Vietnam’s answer to PayPal.

“At the moment, the mobile wallet has really taken off — in terms of institutions,” but not so much in terms of customer use, said Kalidas Ghose, CEO of the consumer finance company FE Credit, speaking last week at the Seamless e-commerce conference in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the conference, Dung praised the innovations of global brands like Alibaba’s use of QR codes, Amazon’s one-click pay option, and Uber’s “invisible” transactions, meaning users don’t have to lift a finger and the app charges them instantly after each ride. What the three have in common is to make it close to effortless for customers to hand over their money.

Uber, though, also provides a counter-example of a foreign business adapting to the indigenous reliance on cash in Vietnam. This is one of the few countries where the San Francisco-based company allows riders to pay with hard currency.

Google, similarly, allows people in a number of places, including Vietnam, to make purchases in Google Play through their phone credits.

These are a workaround to keep customers who don’t have debit cards, and they demonstrate the transition that societies undergo on the road to cashless economies.

For Vietnam the transition has been multifaceted.

Vietnam’s financial evolution

About a decade ago, most businesses paid their employees in physical dong. Then policymakers and bankers campaigned to turn that process into direct deposits.

“We encountered huge challenges because everybody wanted salary in cash and thought it was a hassle to use the card,” DongA Bank deputy CEO Nguyen An said. But the bank collaborated with employers and union leaders to change people’s minds.

Then came online retail. Vietnam’s e-commerce market was worth $400,000 in 2015 but will grow to $7.5 billion in 2025, according to a report from Google and Temasek, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund.

Officials are happy to see more people move to the Internet, but they’re not quite as digital as hoped: 89 percent of Vietnam’s online shoppers use cash on delivery, said Dung, who wants more buyers to pay with plastic or wire transfers.

Next in the Southeast Asian country’s financial evolution are plans to digitize public services,so that Vietnamese can pay electronically for hospitals, traffic tolls, schools, and other fees.

After that, locals predict further use of blockchain, the virtual ledger system behind bitcoin. Nicole Nguyen, head of marketing at Infinity Blockchain Labs, expects Vietnam will find applications for agriculture, the internet of things, and financial technology.

“We think that these are the three areas where blockchain can thrive in the next few years,” she said.

For now, mobile banks will continue to roam the cities of Vietnam, searching for customers.

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Science

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Takes ‘Death Dive’ Into Saturn

By Yscien on Friday, September 15, 2017

After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the spacecraft Cassini is preparing to make a final “death dive” Friday into the planet Saturn.

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect the spacecraft to plunge into the planet at 11:55 GMT.

NASA said their decision to end the life of the spacecraft in this way is because of what they found during the mission, the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.

“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s Assistant Project Science Systems Engineer of the Cassini.

The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.

“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer, said.

Instruments on Cassini have been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.

“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.

Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.

“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.

These discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do with as it runs out of fuel. They do not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.

“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.

Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.

“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” said Cable.

As Cassini plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere, it continues to send critical data to Earth until the very end. The data will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.

In Photos: Cassini & Saturn
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