Not all the action now underway at Wimbledon is on the tennis court. In back rooms on the tournament site, technology is taking the matches to a whole new level. It offers the most immersive view to tennis fans, whether they are in the stands, or following the play on screens around the world. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe.
The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years.
Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe.
However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180.
Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well.
U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe.
“We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December 2019 deadline. … If even more are found to be defective, it will take us from being the biggest recall ever to something that could become mind-boggling,” Nelson said.
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Three years ago, at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigerian soldiers stopped all fishing activities in the country’s section of Lake Chad. Militants had infiltrated the ranks of the fishermen, the army said, and were using the guise to fund arms purchases and launch surprise attacks on innocent people.
The local fishermen’s union said it understood the army’s actions but pushed for an easing of the ban, because its members had no other way to earn a living in the largely dry and remote area.
Relief came to the local fishermen over the weekend, when the Nigerian Army commander in charge of the area, Major General Ibrahimn Attahiru, addressed the fishermen and said they could return to work based on some guidelines the army had reached with their leaders.
Fishermen support changes
The president of the Lake Chad Fishermen Association, Alhaji Abubakar Gamande, confirmed the development in an interview Monday with VOA’s Hausa Service and pledged that fishermen will follow the new rules.
“Based on what happened in the past, we will not continue to operate as we used to, where everyone did as he deemed fit,” he said. “We and the army will watch the activities of the fishermen and anyone whose work requires entering the lake. We will not let him operate as he wishes. We will screen all our members. We have to know where they are coming from and where they are going.”
In normal times, the fishermen can still make a decent living off Lake Chad despite the lake’s radical shrinkage over the past 50 years, which scientists believe is a result of overuse and shifting rainfall patterns brought on by climate change.
Local authorities back in control
But Boko Haram’s takeover of northeastern Nigeria severely disrupted a fishing industry that draws traders from Nigeria’s Lake Chad neighbors Chad, Cameroon and Niger and enables many locals to support themselves. By early 2015, the well-armed militants had seized effective control of the areas along the lake, and there was little the fishermen could do to stop Boko Haram activity.
Local authorities are now back in control, following a 30-month regional offensive by the army and a multi-national task force that includes soldiers from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin.
Gamande was full of praise for the army, which he said has worked tirelessly to restore peace to the area.
Quiet on new rules
Asked how the new rules will prevent Boko Haram activity, the union leader said he cannot reveal all the details for security reasons.
“On our own part as a union we have laid down guidelines that enable us to know who comes for fishing, those who buy, and those who come to sell,” Gamande said.
“We will do all we can to ensure that what happened in the past will never happen again. Enough is enough.”
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Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced a new line of microprocessors for data centers, setting up a battle with Advanced Micro Devices and others for the lucrative business of supplying the chips that power cloud computing.
The new Xeon Scalable Processor chips provide far greater support for next-generation computing applications such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars, said Naveen Rao, vice president of Intel’s artificial intelligence products group, in an interview with Reuters.
The chips are aimed at companies including Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com and others that operate data centers with thousands of computers, both to power their own services and to provide computing horsepower for customers who don’t want to own and maintain their own computer systems.
Google Cloud Platform was the first data center to adopt the new Intel processors. Paul Nash, project manager for Google Compute Engine, called the deal an “expansion and deepening of our partnership” with Intel.
But Intel will face stiff competition from historic rival AMD, which recently launched its own next-generation data center processor.
The big Internet companies are also doing more of their own hardware design and experimenting with chips based on technology from ARM Holdings and others, partly as a way of pushing Intel to keep prices in line.
Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner, said the new Intel processor is a step up from its previous generation with better power efficiency, improvement on artificial intelligence workload and more advanced storage.
Reynolds noted that the biggest risk for Intel may be its dependence on a relatively small number of big data center operators.
“The challenge now is so much of our their work is going to these big internet guys,” he said, and thus demand for chips is subject to how successful the companies are in the fierce battle for customers who are moving their computing to the cloud.
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Donor countries at a London summit pledged Tuesday to increase funding for family planning, but proposed cuts to family planning programs by the U.S. government overshadowed the conference.
The largest boost in donations announced at the Family Planning Summit came from the U.S.-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sought to improve women’s access to contraceptives.
“The $375 million that the foundation announced today, that is absolutely not a reaction to President [Donald] Trump,” Melinda Gates said. “There is not anything anyone can do to fill the bucket of the money that the U.S. has committed to family planning.”
The United States is by far the biggest donor to global family planning programs, giving $600 million this year. But Trump announced in April that he planned to withdraw financial support for the U.N. Population Fund, accusing it of using what he called “coercive” family planning practices, including providing abortions. The United Nations strongly rejected the claims.
Nigeria’s minister of health, Isaac Adewole, told VOA the cuts would have an impact.
“Every country in the developing world will be worried, because it really signifies an increase in the [funding] gap,” he said. “We know family planning is one of the strongest anti-poverty strategies the world has ever known. It is a low-hanging fruit for reducing maternal mortality. It will contribute to shared prosperity.”
Call for action
By 2050, Nigeria is on course to be the third most populous country, with more than 400 million people. Nigeria’s minister of budget and national planning, Zainab S. Ahmed, said action was needed fast.
“Our economy cannot grow fast enough to be able to sustain that size of population,” Ahmed said, “so it is a very significant challenge and we need to address it now.”
Nigeria is budgeting $3 million for family planning programs in 2017 and says more is needed. Ministers say reaching young people is key.
The African MTV drama “Shuga” weaves messages around sexual health, contraception and HIV, and it reaches an estimated 720 million people. It’s currently partly funded by the U.S. government.
Georgia Arnold, executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, said, “It is much harder for governments and organizations to be able to speak openly about sex. That is where we come in. We can use our brand. We can use our access to young people and all of the media platforms that they use.”
Delegates expressed hope that partnering between the private sector and governments can provide improved access to contraceptives and family planning advice.
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The Trump administration on Tuesday removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from two lists of approved vendors used by government agencies to purchase technology equipment, amid concerns the cybersecurity firm’s products could be used by the Kremlin to gain entry into U.S. networks.
The delisting represents the most concrete action taken against Kaspersky following months of mounting suspicion among intelligence officials and lawmakers that the company may be too closely connected to hostile Russian intelligence agencies accused of cyberattacks on the United States.
Kaspersky products have been removed from the U.S. General Services Administration’s list of vendors for contracts that cover information technology services and digital photographic equipment, an agency spokeswoman said in a statement.
The action was taken “after review and careful consideration,” the spokeswoman said, adding that GSA’s priorities “are to ensure the integrity and security of U.S. government systems and networks.”
Government agencies will still be able to use Kaspersky products purchased separate from the GSA contract process.
Kaspersky’s anti-virus software is popular in the United States and around the world, and the firm has been a leading player in the cybersecurity market for decades.
In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said it had not received any updates from GSA or any other U.S. government agency regarding its vendor status.
“Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts,” the company said.
It added that it had been “caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight where each side is attempting to use the company as a pawn in their political game.”
The delisting was done the same day that ABC News reported the Trump administration was considering implementing a broader ban that would block agencies from using Kaspersky software.
Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a defense spending policy bill that would ban Kaspersky products from use in the military.
The move came a day after the FBI interviewed several of the company’s U.S. employees at their private homes as part of a counterintelligence investigation into its operations.
In May, senior U.S. intelligence officials said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that they were reviewing government use of software from Kaspersky Lab.
Lawmakers raised concerns that Moscow might use the firm’s products to attack American computer networks, a particularly sensitive issue given allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked and leaked emails of Democratic Party political groups to interfere in the 2016 presidential election campaign. Russia denies the allegations.
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Twitter on Tuesday hired Ned Segal, senior vice president of finance at Intuit and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs Group, as its chief financial officer beginning in late August.
Anthony Noto, who has been serving as Twitter’s CFO and chief operating officer since November, will remain at the company as COO, Twitter said in a statement.
The appointment of Segal, 43, comes as investors are demonstrating renewed optimism in Twitter, which still lags rival social network Facebook in terms of size and profitability.
Twitter shares rose 3 percent on Tuesday, before the announcement of Segal’s hiring after the market’s close. The stock is up 32 percent since April 17, when it hit the low of the year at $14.12.
In April, Twitter reported better-than-expected user growth in the first quarter of the year, partly related to heightened user interest in political news and comment.
Before joining Intuit, Segal was the CFO of RPX Corp , which helps companies manage patent risk, and earlier spent some 17 years at Goldman, according to a biography provided by Twitter.
From 2009 to 2013, Segal was a Goldman managing director and head of its global software investment banking unit, advising tech companies on mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings, Twitter said.
Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said Segal was an ideal fit because of the range of his experience.
“He brings a principled, engaging and rigorous approach to the CFO role, with a track record of driving profitable growth,” Dorsey said in a statement.
Segal said in a statement he was committed to helping Twitter “continue toward its goal of GAAP profitability.”
Segal is entitled to receive a signing bonus of $300,000 and his annual salary will be $500,000, Twitter said in a securities filing. He will also be eligible to receive 1.2 million shares in the company, subject to conditions and vesting, according to the filing.
Twitter is scheduled to report earnings for the second quarter on July 27.
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Small satellites used for observing conditions on the earth are the fastest growing segment of the $260.5 billion global satellite industry, the Satellite Industries Association said in an annual report released on Tuesday.
Small satellites, some no bigger than a shoe box, generated an 11 percent jump in annual revenue for Earth imagery in 2016 and a growing share of the 1,459 operating spacecraft that circled the planet at the end of the year, the report said.
The orbital fleet includes 499 satellites that weigh up to 1,323 pounds (600 kg), many of them used for Earth observation and remote sensing, said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of Bryce Technology and Space, which wrote the report for the trade association.
Small satellite launchers
Satellite services, including home television, broadband and Earth observation services, collectively generated $127.7 billion of revenue in 2016, the biggest single piece of the industry, according to the report.
Satellites used for earth imagery accounted for just $2 billion of the total industry but accounted for 11 percent of the sector’s growth, according to the report.
“That’s expected to continue to grow, given the new companies coming into the industry,” association President Tom Stroup said in an interview.
The report found at least 33 dedicated small satellite launchers in development worldwide, including privately owned Rocket Lab, which debuted its Electron booster in May, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, which is expected to fly its LauncherOne rocket this year.
Revenue from Earth observation services would have been higher, but the launches of many small satellites were delayed after a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch pad accident in September 2016, the report said.
SpaceX, owned and operated by entrepreneur Elon Musk, returned its Falcon fleet to flight in January and has launched 10 times so far this year.
126 satellites launch in 2016
In all, 126 satellites were launched last year, including 55 shoe-box-sized spacecraft known as CubeSats. About twice as many CubeSats were launched in 2015, the report said.
The number of small satellite launched during the first half of 2017 already has surpassed last year’s flight rate, Christensen said.
In February, a single Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket put 103 small satellites into orbit, along with a larger Earth-imaging spacecraft called Cartosat.
Facebook Inc. said Tuesday that it was testing advertising on its Messenger app globally as the world’s largest social media company looks to further monetize its popular chat service.
Ads will be displayed on the home tab of the Messenger app, Facebook said, adding that users clicking on the ads will be taken to either the advertiser’s website or a chat window.
The move follows Facebook’s initial tests in Australia and Thailand in January.
The social media giant already allows businesses to have conversations with Messenger’s 1.2 billion monthly users and send them sponsored content.
Facebook, which gets about 85 percent of its ad revenue from mobile, has been trying to make money from the Messenger app to supplement its main revenue stream, which is expected to cool off this year.
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Doctors and parents involved in female genital mutilation will face up to 15 years in prison under new Michigan laws.
Female circumcision or cutting is already a federal crime punishable by five years in prison. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation on Tuesday that creates a state crime with harsher penalties.
The legislation was proposed after six people from an India-based Muslim sect called Dawoodi Bohra were charged in a genital mutilation case involving six girls at a suburban Detroit clinic. Two of the girls are from Minnesota, and four are from Michigan.
Michigan is the 26th state to officially ban the practice, which is common in some parts of the world.
The new laws also require increased public education and lengthen the statutes of limitations to file charges and lawsuits.
The laws take effect in October.
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Reports over the past decade have drawn global attention to shocking abuses some women have been subjected to during childbirth in developed and developing countries.
The maltreatment has ranged from lack of privacy and neglect to forced sterilization, sexual and physical assault, and refusal to release a mother or child from a birth facility without payment. The problems are especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 66 percent of all maternal deaths per year worldwide, according to a February report from UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund.
A four-year study by researchers in the United States and Tanzania looked at ways to reduce abuse of mothers-to-be. Keys included gathering community stakeholders and health care workers to define standards of care and identifying barriers to change.
Previous efforts to reduce mortality of women giving birth focused on getting them into health care facilities to deliver their children. Despite dramatic increases in facility-based childbirth, however, decreases in mortality remained modest. Even when facilities are equipped to save a mother’s life, reports of abuse can keep women from seeking medical treatment during birth.
Site is no guarantee
“It doesn’t matter where you give birth — just because it’s a building doesn’t mean you survive,” Lynn Freedman of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health told VOA.
With colleagues from Columbia, the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania and Harvard University, Freedman designed one of the first attempts to show how abuse could be reduced. The researchers followed facilities in the Tanga Region of Tanzania for their study and randomly selected one to receive the intervention. They called their project Staha, which means “respect” in Swahili.
They first gathered stakeholders in the community and asked them to develop a set of standards for what appropriate care during childbirth should be. The residents were able to provide a unique local perspective. In this case, stakeholders felt it was important to foster a mutual respect between patients and health providers.
Freedman agreed, saying, “Patients can blame the health workers, who are more an expression of systemic problems and not the sole cause of them.”
Quality improvement
Researchers then distributed the standards in the facility and convened a quality-improvement team made up of its employees. The team determined drivers of abuse and implemented changes to correct them. Changes included continuous patient surveys, increased oversight by management and educators, and tea for the staff to show appreciation on difficult days.
A year after they finished working with the facility, the researchers went back to see whether there had been changes in reported abuse and if progress had been sustained. They found that there was a 66 percent decrease in levels of reported abuse. The sharpest decreases were seen in reports of neglect and physical assault.
But Freedman warned against immediately recommending that others implement these changes. Getting the community involved is most important, she said.
It’s not, ” ‘Here’s the best practice. Do this,’ ” she said. It’s vital “that people themselves analyze the situation and develop the intervention.”
While attention has been growing, Freedman hopes for more. This is an issue that “everyone who actually lives with and works in the system knows is there, but has been so not the priority of policymakers and donors — almost like a silent emergency.”
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American technology companies are bringing automation and robotics to the age-old task of battling mosquitoes in a bid to halt the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne maladies worldwide.
Firms including Microsoft and California life sciences company Verily are forming partnerships with public health officials in several U.S. states to test new high-tech tools.
In Texas, Microsoft is testing a smart trap to isolate and capture Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known Zika carriers, for study by entomologists to give them a jump on predicting outbreaks.
Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division based in Mountain View, California, is speeding the process for creating sterile male mosquitoes to mate with females in the wild, offering a form of birth control for the species.
While it may take years for these advances to become widely available, public health experts say new players bring fresh thinking to vector control, which still relies heavily on traditional defenses such as larvicides and insecticides.
“It’s exciting when technology companies come on board,” said Anandasankar Ray, an associate professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside. “Their approach to a biological challenge is to engineer a solution.”
Smart traps
The Zika epidemic that emerged in Brazil in 2015 and left thousands of babies suffering from birth defects has added urgency to the effort.
While cases there have slowed markedly, mosquitoes capable of carrying the virus — Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus — are spreading in the Americas, including large swaths of the southern United States.
The vast majority of the 5,365 Zika cases reported in the United States so far are from travelers who contracted the virus elsewhere. Still, two states — Texas and Florida — have recorded cases transmitted by local mosquitoes, making them prime testing grounds for new technology.
In Texas, 10 mosquito traps made by Microsoft are operating in Harris County, which includes the city of Houston.
Roughly the size of large birdhouses, the devices use robotics, infrared sensors, machine learning and cloud computing to help health officials keep tabs on potential disease carriers.
Texas recorded six cases of local mosquito transmission of Zika in November and December of last year. Experts believe the actual number is likely higher because most infected people do not develop symptoms.
Pregnant women are at high risk because they can pass the virus to their fetuses, resulting in a variety of birth defects.
Those include microcephaly, a condition in which infants are born with undersized skulls and brains. The World Health Organization declared Zika a global health emergency in February 2016.
Most conventional mosquito traps capture all comers — moths, flies, other mosquito varieties — leaving a pile of specimens for entomologists to sort through. The Microsoft machines differentiate insects by measuring a feature unique to each species: the shadows cast by their beating wings. When a trap detects an Aedes aegypti in one of its 64 chambers, the door slams shut.
The machine “makes a decision about whether to trap it,” said Ethan Jackson, a Microsoft engineer who is developing the device.
The Houston tests, begun last summer, showed the traps could detect Aedes aegypti and other medically important mosquitoes with 85 percent accuracy, Jackson said.
The machines also record shadows made by other insects as well as environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. The data can be used to build models to predict where and when mosquitoes are active.
Mustapha Debboun, director of Harris County’s mosquito and vector control division, said the traps save time and give researchers more insight into mosquito behavior.
“For science and research, this is a dream come true,” he said.
The traps are prototypes now. But Microsoft’s Jackson said the company eventually hopes to sell them for a few hundred dollars each, roughly the price of conventional traps. The goal is to spur wide adoption, particularly in developing countries, to detect potential epidemics before they start.
“What we hope is [the traps] will allow us to bring more precision to public health,” Jackson said.
Sorting mosquitoes with robots
Other companies, meanwhile, are developing technology to shrink mosquito populations by rendering male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes sterile. When these sterile males mate with females in the wild, their eggs don’t hatch.
The strategy offers an alternative to chemical pesticides.
But it requires the release of millions of laboratory-bred mosquitoes into the outdoors. Males don’t bite, which has made this an easier sell to places now hosting tests.
Oxitec, an Oxford, England-based division of Germantown, Maryland-based Intrexon Corp, is creating male mosquitoes genetically modified to be sterile. It has already deployed them in Brazil, and is seeking regulatory approval for tests in Florida and Texas.
MosquitoMate, a startup formed by researchers at the University of Kentucky, is using a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia to render male mosquitoes sterile.
One of the biggest challenges is sorting the sexes.
At MosquitoMate’s labs in Lexington, immature mosquitoes are forced through a sieve-like mechanism that separates the smaller males from the females. These mosquitoes are then hand sorted to weed out any stray females that slip through.
“That’s basically done using eyeballs,” said Stephen Dobson, MosquitoMate’s chief executive.
Enter Verily. The company is automating mosquito sorting with robots to make it faster and more affordable. Company officials declined to be interviewed. But on its website, Verily says it’s combining sensors, algorithms and “novel engineering” to speed the process.
Verily and MosquitoMate have teamed up to test their technology in Fresno, California, where Aedes aegypti arrived in 2013.
Officials worry that residents who contract Zika elsewhere could spread it in Fresno if they’re bitten by local mosquitoes that could pass the virus to others.
“That is very much of a concern because it is the primary vector for diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and obviously Zika,” said Steve Mulligan, manager of the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District in Fresno County.
The study, which still needs state and federal approval, is slated for later this summer.
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Eleven of the world’s biggest banks pledged on Tuesday to find out how much exposure they have to risks related to climate-change, a move backed by environmentalists who say better information on the costs of global warming will push lenders to transition towards green investments.
With more than $7 trillion under management, some of the biggest names in global finance have signed onto the United Nations-backed disclosure effort for information on new risks presented by climate change.
Information on banks’ climate risks could eventually be reviewed by regulators as part of their financial disclosures, said Simone Dettling, a researcher with the U.N. Environment Program working on the transparency plan.
“The goal is to shift lending away from carbon intensive sectors that are becoming risky towards green technologies that are becoming more attractive,” Dettling told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.
Before banks can change their lending patterns they need to understand how their portfolios will be impacted by climate change. Most currently do not have this information, Dettling said.
“They have committed to finding these numbers,” she said of the voluntary plan.
Once banks have information on their exposure to climate risks they can begin disclosing how these risks will impact investors while looking for new sustainable alternatives, she said.
That disclosure could happen within the next year, she said, although banks and U.N. officials are still hammering out the details.
Information on investments in fossil fuel firms, renewable energy businesses and transportation companies is likely to be among the data disclosed as part of banks’ climate-risk assessments, Dettling said.
Banks backing the plan for new research into climate risks include ANZ, Barclays, Bradesco, Citi, Itaú, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, Standard Chartered, TD Bank Group and UBS, said the U.N. Environment Program.
“The scale and sophistication of climate risk and opportunity continue to grow,” Citi Bank spokesman Ed Skyler said in a statement on Tuesday. “Working together to refine our approaches to enhanced disclosure will help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
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The former chief executive officer of the failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox pleaded not guilty to charges that he stole hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the virtual currency.
French-born Mark Karpeles appeared Tuesday in Tokyo District Court at the start of his trial on embezzlement and data manipulation charges. Prosecutors have accused the 32-year-old of manipulating Mt. Gox’s data and moving millions of Bitcoins into his personal account before the exchange shut down in February 2014.
Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy after losing about 850,000 bitcoins, then worth close to half a billion U.S. dollars. The exchange blamed the loss on hackers who exploited a security flaw. The company later claimed it found about 200,000 of the missing bitcoins in another location.
The collapse of Mt. Gox, which handled much of the world’s Bitcoin trading activity, angered investors and damaged the reputation of the alternative currency. The scandal prompted Japanese lawmakers to enact laws regulating the use of bitcoins and other digital-based currencies.
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Every now and then, it pays to revisit abandoned methods for using a waste product of an industrial process. Researchers in Scotland found a profitable way to use byproducts of whiskey production to power cars, without any modifications to the engines. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Average households use a lot of water that cannot be re-used and it goes to waste. A new project in Sweden is testing a water treatment system that would put to use the nutrients and other useful elements from used water while eliminating the toxic parts. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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Insecticides, mosquito nets, and disrupting breeding grounds all reduce mosquito populations and slow the spread of malaria. Now, researchers want to take away the insect’s food to fight the disease that kills a child every two minutes.
Mosquitoes mostly feed on plant sugars that can be hard to find during the dry season in Africa, where 90 percent of malaria cases develop. Researchers thought one potential source of food might be from the flowers on a small type of mesquite tree. The tree, imported from Mexico 40 years ago to provide firewood and shore up irrigation dykes, quickly became invasive and grew out of control.
To test their idea, researchers monitored mosquito populations in six villages in the Bandiagra District of Mali. After a week, they removed the flowers from the mesquite trees in half of the villages.
The report, published in Malaria Journal, found that with less food around, the mosquitoes didn’t live as long and populations dropped 69 percent. This didn’t just mean fewer mosquitoes, it meant fewer old mosquitoes. That’s important because it takes 12 days for the malaria virus to get to the salivary glands of a mosquito where it could infect a human. So if mosquitoes die even a couple of days earlier, that could greatly reduce the number of mosquitoes that pose a threat.
“This suggests that removal of the flowers could be a new way to shift inherently high malaria transmission areas to low transmission areas,” said Gunter Muller, lead author of the study from Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School.
Devil tree
But getting rid of mesquite is easier said than done. It’s not as if people haven’t tried to control the tree before. It encroaches on crop lands, makes areas inaccessible, and can use up what little water there is. It has been known to grow up though the floors of huts. Even getting to the flowers is a challenge, due to the 10-centimeter-long thorns that grow along the branches.
Many refer to it as the devil tree, but Medusa tree may be just as apt a name, since it can grow back from just its roots after it is cut down.
Biologist Dawn Wesson from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine said this was one of the first attempts she has seen to control mosquito populations by restricting their food source.
Wesson, who was not involved in the research, highlighted that not only were populations depressed, but that the degree of impact varied greatly depending on the species of mosquito. In this case all of the species can carry malaria, but Wesson hopes that in other contexts this could be used to help a benign species of mosquito displace a dangerous species of mosquito. That impact could extend beyond the end of any food control measures.
Approach could backfire
But Wesson also cautioned that removing mesquite might backfire. Without flowers to feed on, these mosquitoes might turn to blood meals. This could lead to more frequent bitings and increased transmission of malaria. “It’s probably unlikely,” she told VOA. “They did show a nice decrease … in the older female mosquitoes. But remember their study only took place over a period of about eight days.”
The next step, she suggests, should be to measure the impact of removing mesquite, not just on mosquito populations, but also on the incidence of malaria.
U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate former Treasury official Randal Quarles to be the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, the White House said on Monday.
If confirmed by the Senate, Quarles would be the first vice chair of supervision at the Fed, a role created after the 2008 financial crisis but never filled during the Obama administration.
Quarles is viewed as an industry-friendly figure who will likely listen to banks that have complained about the impact of regulations implemented since the financial meltdown. His nomination has been widely expected since April.
Former Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo effectively ran banking supervision until he stepped down in February, overseeing a strict implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and administering rigorous “stress tests” annually to banks on how prepared they are to withstand unexpected shocks.
Quarles currently runs a private investment firm that he founded, the Cynosure Group, from Salt Lake City, Utah. He was previously a partner at private equity firm the Carlyle Group.
He was also under secretary for domestic finance at the Treasury under President George W. Bush and was the U.S. executive director of the International Monetary Fund.
In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in March 2016, Quarles and Lawrence Goodman, another former U.S. Treasury official, argued against breaking up big banks because it would risk damaging the wider economy. He has also talked about refining Obama-era financial rules, introduced after the financial crisis.
Quarles will be a central figure in pushing the Trump administration’s plans to loosen the leash put on Wall Street banks following the crisis.
Trump laid out his plans last month but he needs officials at key regulatory posts to carry out his agenda. He has gradually been nominating heads of financial agencies, but only Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton have been approved by Congress.
Other agencies are either awaiting presidential picks or are operating under “acting” chiefs. Others have leaders appointed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama.
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President Donald Trump’s administration is postponing and plans to drop a program to provide visas for foreign entrepreneurs who launch companies in the United States.
The visa program, proposed last year by former President Barack Obama, was intended to give entrepreneurs who are not eligible for other types of visas permission to live in the U.S. for 30 months to get their enterprises up and running.
Leading figures in the technology industry had lobbied strongly for the visa program as a way for immigrants to come to the U.S. to start companies, contribute to the economy and create more jobs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has estimated that nearly 3,000 entrepreneurs would be eligible for such visas each year.
The so-called startup visa program was to have taken effect next week, but DHS will issue a notice Tuesday postponing implementation of the International Entrepreneur Rule until March 14, 2018.
A draft of the notice posted online by the Federal Register said DHS plans to rescind the rule, but is requesting public comments before issuing a final decision.
The program would permit non-U.S. citizens to stay in the country for renewable 30-month terms if they have $250,000 in capital investments or win $100,000 in government grants to support their proposals.
The president of the National Venture Capital Association, Bobby Franklin, said Monday the administration’s decision was “extremely disappointing.”
“At a time when countries around the world are doing all they can to attract and retain talented individuals to come to their shores to build and grow innovative companies,” Franklin said, “the Trump administration is signaling its intent to do the exact opposite.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the DHS, has said it decided to delay the rule to ensure it is consistent with an executive order Trump issued during his first days in office, limiting federal officials’ authority to grant permission for foreign nationals to remain in the U.S., except on a case-by-case basis.
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Investigators said Monday that targets of high-tech spying in Mexico included an international group of experts backed by the Organization of American States who had criticized the government’s probe into the disappearance of 43 students.
Previous investigations by the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab found that the spyware had been directed at journalists, activists and opposition politicians in Mexico. But targeting foreign experts operating under the aegis of an international body marks an escalation of the scandal, which so far involves 19 individuals or groups.
“This must be investigated to find out who sent these messages, because they could put at risk a lot of contacts and sources,” said former Colombian prosecutor Angela Buitrago, a member of the group of experts.
Buitrago said she and another expert, Carlos Beristain, received the messages.
“I didn’t open it because I am used to spying,” Buitrago said. “When you work in a prosecutors’ office, a government office, there are strange messages and you pass them on to the analysts.”
Beristain said the spying attempt “may be a more serious crime given the diplomatic protected status that we had in order to carry out our work.”
A report released by the University of Toronto-based cyber-sleuths found that someone sent emails with links to the spyware to the International Group of Independent Experts, named by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The experts had been critical of the government’s investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state — a politically sensitive incident that deeply embarrassed the government.
Jose Eguiguren Praeli, the president of Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, called the revelations “extremely worrying.”
“There should be an investigation that is completely independent and impartial, to find out who carried out the supposed espionage and who ordered it,” he said.
Cellphone becomes eavesdropper
While the Mexican government bought such software, it’s not clear who used it. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last week dismissed allegations that his government was responsible and promised an investigation. Arely Gomez, who was attorney general at the time some of the hacking attempts occurred but now heads the country’s anti-corruption agency, said Thursday that her office had intelligence tools “like any other attorney general’s office in Mexico and anywhere else in the world.”
“During my term, they were always applied in accordance with the legal framework,” Gomez said.
The spyware, known as Pegasus, is made by the Israel-based NSO Group, which says it sells only to government agencies for use against criminals and terrorists. It turns a cellphone into an eavesdropper, giving snoopers the ability to remotely activate its microphone and camera and access its data.
The spyware is uploaded when users click on a link in email messages designed to pique their interest.
Citizen Lab said the spyware attempts against the international experts occurred in March 2016 as the group was preparing its final, critical report on the government investigation into the disappearances.
“In March 2016 a phone belonging to the GIEI group received two messages designed to trick the recipient into clicking. The two messages related to the purported death of a relative,” the group reported.
It was unclear if the link was opened or the phones were compromised.
The 43 students from a rural teachers college in Guerrero state were detained by local police in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26, 2014, and were turned over to a crime gang. After an initial investigation, the government said it had determined the “historical truth:” that all of the students were killed and that their bodies were incinerated at a dump and then tossed into a river.
But only one student’s remains have been identified, with a partial DNA match on another. The experts criticized the government’s conclusions, saying there was no evidence of a fire large enough to incinerate the bodies and that government investigators had not looked into other evidence.
‘Seemingly political ends’
Citizen Lab said it found similarities in the messages on the sender’s phone number with a previous spyware attack. In a June 19 report, the group said at least 76 spyware text messages were sent to 12 prominent journalists and rights activists in Mexico, all of whom were investigating or critical of the government. Some had uncovered corruption.
The conservative National Action Party was also a target.
The investigators said they had no conclusive proof of government involvement in the attacks, but John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab said National Action case “makes it crystal clear that NSO has been used widely and recklessly across a swath of Mexican civil society and politics. Once again we see ‘government-exclusive’ spyware being used for seemingly political ends.”
“As cases continue to emerge, it is clear that this is not an isolated case of misuse, but a sustained operation that lasted for more than a year and a half,” Scott-Railton said.
The Centro Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez, a human rights group that has investigated a number of high-profile human rights cases, has said its staff members were targeted. Other targets included well-known journalists Carmen Aristegui and Carlos Loret de Mola.
In February, Citizen Lab and its Mexican partners published a report detailing how Mexican food scientists and anti-obesity campaigners who backed Mexico’s soda tax were also targeted with Pegasus.
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Tanzanian President John Magufuli said on Monday he has signed into law new mining bills which require the government to own at least a 16 percent stake in mining projects.
The laws, which also increase royalties tax on gold and other minerals, were passed by parliament last week despite opposition from the mining industry body.
Magufuli reiterated on Monday that no new mining licenses would be issued until Tanzania “puts things in order” and that the government would review all existing mining licenses with foreign investors.
“We must benefit from our God-given minerals and that is why we must safeguard our natural resource wealth to ensure we do not end up with empty mining pits,” Magufuli told a rally in his home village in Chato district, northwestern Tanzania.
The president has sent shock-waves through the mining community with a series of actions since his election in 2015, which he says are aimed at distributing revenue to the Tanzanian people.
The new mining laws, which were fast-tracked through parliament, raise royalties tax for gold, copper, silver and platinum exports to six percent from four percent.
They also give the government the right to tear up and renegotiate contracts for natural resources like gas or minerals, and remove the right to international arbitration.
“I would like to thank parliament for making the legislative changes. I signed the bills into law the same day Parliament concluded its session on July 5,” Magufuli said.
Passage of the new legislation also followed months of wrangling between the government and the country’s biggest gold miner, London-listed Acacia Mining Plc, over mining contracts after Magufuli decided in March to ban exports of gold and copper concentrates to push for the construction of a domestic mineral smelter.
Magufuli said on Monday that talks between Tanzania and Barrick Gold Corp., Acacia’s majority owner, would begin in two days to try to resolve allegations of tax evasion against Acacia.
Tanzania accused Acacia of tax evasion in 2016 in a case that is ongoing.
Acacia, which denies all allegations, said on July 4 it was seeking an adjudicator to resolve its dispute with the Tanzanian government.
Tanzania is also pushing for the mandatory listing of mining companies on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) by August as part of measures aimed at increasing transparency and spreading wealth from the country’s natural resources.
Other major foreign-owned mining companies in Tanzania include AngloGold Ashanti and Petra Diamonds.
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Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted pictures of the first Model 3 sedan to roll off the assembly line.
Tesla board member Ira Ehrenpreis was the first to put down a $1,000 deposit on the Model 3 and gifted the car to Musk for his 46th birthday, Musk said in a tweet.
Musk has high hopes for the $35,000 Model 3, aimed at the mass market, and expects the rollout to help the company deliver five times its current annual sales volume.
Tesla’s shares have taken a beating in the last few weeks, as investors have become increasingly concerned that demand for the company’s existing Model S sedan is weakening.
Musk said in May that some “confused” Tesla buyers considered the new Model 3 as an upgrade to the Model S, hurting orders for the older car.
Registrations for Tesla’s vehicles in California, its largest market, fell 24 percent in April from a year ago, according to data from research firm IHS Markit.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that new registrations of Tesla cars fell to zero in Hong Kong after authorities slashed a tax break for electric vehicles in April.
Last week, Musk said production of the Model 3 would increase exponentially — from 100 cars in August, more than 1,500 in September to 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in December.
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A cholera outbreak in Yemen “continues to spiral out of control,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which says there are now over 300,000 suspected cases of the water-borne disease.
The country is also struggling to battle famine in the midst of a two-year war between a Saudi-led coalition and Shiite rebels who control the capital city of Sana’a.
The World Food Program has reported that two-thirds of Yemen’s population does not know where their next meal will come from.
“Disturbing. We’re at 300k+ suspected cases with ~7k new cases/day,” ICRC Regional Director Robert Mardini said in a tweet.
“More than 1,600 have died,” the ICRC tweeted.
Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can be spread through contaminated food and water. The disease thrives in impoverished areas like Yemen.
Although easily treatable, the disease is spreading in war-torn Yemen as less than half of all medical facilities have become useless.
According to the U.N’.s Humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, most of the $1.1 billion in aid promised to Yemen has not been delivered yet, causing food security to become even more of a problem.
“Humanitarian Organizations have had to reprogram their resources away from malnutrition and reuse them to control the cholera outbreak,” he said in Sana’a last week. “We’re trying to do our best, but its very much beyond what we can cope with.”
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China’s biggest shipping company, state-owned COSCO Shipping Holdings Co., is creating the world’s No. 3 container shipping giant by acquiring rival Orient Overseas (International) Ltd.
Shares in both companies surged Monday following the announcement of the $6.3 billion deal.
A wave of consolidation has created huge competitors in a global shipping industry that is struggling with sluggish trade and depressed prices.
On Monday, COSCO’s shares traded in Hong Kong jumped 4.7 percent while Orient Overseas’ shares soared 19.5 percent.
On its own, COSCO ranks No. 4 globally with 317 ships and 8.4 percent of container traffic, according to Alphaline, an industry database. Adding Orient Overseas would give it market share of 11.7 percent, moving it ahead of Marseilles, France-based CMA CGM Group.
The No. 1 shipper is Denmark’s AP Moeller-Maersk with 643 ships and 16.4 percent of container traffic.
Orient Overseas, with 103 ships, is controlled by the family of former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa.
The transaction is subject to antitrust review by Chinese, European and U.S. authorities, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The filing said COSCO will pay $10.07 per share (HK$78.67), a premium of 38 percent over Orient’s Friday share price on the Hong Kong Exchange. The total price tag for the deal will be $6.3 billion (HK$49.2 billion).
AP Moeller-Maersk acquired Hamburg Sud of Germany in December. CMA CGM bought Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines last year.
Orient Overseas reported a loss of $219.2 million last year. It blamed a glut of capacity, slow growth and rising fuel prices as well as freight rates that sometimes dipped below those seen in 2009 during the financial crisis.
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