MAHENTO

Cars with no steering wheel, no pedals and nobody at all inside could be driving themselves on California roads by the end of the year, under proposed new state rules that would give a powerful boost to the fast-developing technology.

For the past several years, tech companies and automakers have been testing self-driving cars on the open road in California. But regulators insisted that those vehicles have steering wheels, foot controls and human backup drivers who could take over in an emergency.

On Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles proposed regulations that would open the way for truly driverless cars.

Under the rules, road-testing of such vehicles could begin by the end of 2017, and a limited number could become available to customers as early as 2018, provided the federal government gives the necessary permission.

Other states allow tests

Currently, federal automobile standards require steering wheels, though Washington has shown a desire to encourage self-driving technology.

While a few other states have permitted such testing, this is a major step forward for the industry, given California’s size as the most populous state, its clout as the nation’s biggest car market and its longtime role as a cultural trendsetter.

The proposed regulations also amount to the most detailed regulatory framework of any state.

“California has taken a big step. This is exciting,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who tracks government policy on self-driving cars.

Rules maybe ready by year’s end

The rules are subject to a public hearing and a comment period and could change. Regulators hope to put them in effect by December.

The proposal is more than two years overdue, reflecting complex questions of safety and highly advanced technology.

“We don’t want to race to meet a deadline,” said Bernard Soriano, a leader of the motor vehicle agency’s self-driving program. “We want to get this right.”

In one important change from prior drafts, once a manufacturer declares its technology is road-ready, it can put its cars on the market. That self-certification approach mirrors how federal officials regulate standard cars, and represents a big victory for such major players as Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project.

Also under the proposed regulations, any driverless car still must be remotely monitored and able to pull itself over safely in an emergency.

Consumer Watchdog objects

A Waymo spokesman had no immediate comment. The chief skeptic of the technology, California-based Consumer Watchdog, said the proposal does not protect the public.

“The new rules are too industry-friendly,” Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson said in a statement.

The technology is developing quickly. More than a year ago, a Waymo prototype with no steering wheel or pedals drove a blind man on city streets in Texas.

Are they safer?

Supporters say the cars may one day be far safer than those with humans at the wheel, since the machinery won’t drive distracted, drunk or drowsy.

During road-testing in California, self-driving cars with human backup drivers are believed to have caused a few collisions.

A year ago, Waymo reported that during the 424,331 miles its cars had driven themselves, a human driver intervened 11 times to avoid a collision. In an update earlier this year, Waymo said its fleet had driven 636,868 miles in autonomous mode; it did not say how many crashes were avoided.

In all, 27 companies have Department of Motor Vehicles permits to test on California roads.

Waymo was able to legally put its prototype on the road in Texas because state law there does not prohibit a fully driverless car. Other states have explicitly invited the technology onto its roads, including Michigan, whose governor signed a bill in December that allows the public testing of cars with no driver.

In the meantime, the industry has been lobbying the U.S. Transportation Department and Congress for rule changes that could speed the introduction of truly driverless cars.
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Caribbean Nations Huddle in Havana on Migration, Trade

by Mahbiz

Posted: 03/11/2017

Foreign ministers and other officials from 25 Caribbean countries met in Havana on Friday to discuss a joint response in the face of Trump administration threats to migrants and trade.

Opening remarks at the closed-door event, attended by representatives from Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and other countries in Central America and the Caribbean islands, made clear the new U.S. administration and key economic partner was uppermost on the agenda, though the name “Trump” was never uttered.

“We are meeting at an exceptional historic moment when there are geographic changes on the global scene and we have to be prepared,” said June Soomer, from Saint Lucia and secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States.

“We are not going to resign ourselves to what others in the world dictate. We are not a mediocre region, we are one of excellence and peace,” Sooner added.

Cuban President Raul Castro also attended the meeting.

His foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, lit into U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies in his opening remarks and said the organization should come up with a joint response, as they threaten the development models of local economies.

“The excluding and repressive migration policies announced by countries of destination… as well as the implementation of extremely protectionist trade measures, are real challenges for our sub region,” he said.

“In the face of the walls intended to be built, our choice should continue to be unity, solidarity and cooperation to defend the most legitimate interests of our peoples,” he said.
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Tech and Hollywood Head to Texas SXSW Festival

by Mahit

Posted: 03/10/2017

Movie stars, tech moguls and music artists are among those converging in Austin, Texas, starting this week, as part of South by Southwest Conference and Festivals.

Known by its shorthand SXSW, the nine-day event, now in its 31st year, mixes music, film, comedy and digital entertainment, as well as technology and politics.

The event in the Texas capital, normally a low-key tech hub, has become an important nexus where the already successful mix with the aspiring. New movies premiere, music acts perform and startups pitch their wares. Twitter gained traction at SXSW in 2007, putting up flat-panel screens in the hallways.

But not every new tech or its CEO can call SXSW experience a success. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg struggled through his keynote interview in 2008. Meerkat, a video streaming app that took off in SXSW 2015, quickly faded.

This year, among the actors, musicians and tech celebrities, Buzz Aldrin, the former astronaut who walked on the moon in 1969, will speak about human space exploration.

U.S. government officials and American politicians also come to mingle with the celebrities and tech executives. At last year’s SXSW, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama spoke to the festival-goers.

FBI Director James Comey was expected to speak at this year’s event, but he canceled. In his place, James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, is scheduled to discuss the “intersection of national security, technology and First Amendment rights.”

On Sunday, Joe Biden, the former U.S. vice president, will speak about his work on cancer research as part of the Biden Cancer Initiative.

The intersection of politics and technology is one major theme this year, with SXSW organizers creating a “Tech Under Trump” series of discussions. Topics include immigration, self-driving cars and the effects that artificial intelligence may have on jobs. One panel, “Startup investing in the Trump years,” will look at how the Trump administration could affect the investment landscape.

Some panels tout how technology can be used to achieve goals such as helping people seeking faith. Yasmin Green, head of research and development at Jigsaw — a technology incubator that is part of Alphabet, Google’s parent company — will discuss how technology can be used to fight extremism.

Other sessions focus on bleaker possibilities, like how technology can potentially hurt people, such as robots taking jobs.

Ultimately, SXSW this year, as in the past, is a giant party with thousands of people looking for the next big thing.
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Facebook Founder, Wife Expecting 2nd Child

by Mahit

Posted: 03/10/2017

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are expecting their second child.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg says his wife Priscilla Chan is pregnant with a girl. The couple already has a 1-year-old daughter.

In his post, Zuckerberg writes that he’s happy his first daughter, Max, will have a sister. Zuckerberg says he grew up with three sisters and they taught him to learn from smart, strong women. He also says his wife grew up with two sisters.

Zuckerberg says he and his wife can’t wait to welcome the baby and do their best to raise another strong woman.

What the CIA WikiLeaks Dump Tells Us: Encryption Works

by Mahit

Posted: 03/10/2017

If the tech industry is drawing one lesson from the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, it’s that data-scrambling encryption works, and the industry should use more of it.

Documents purportedly outlining a massive CIA surveillance program suggest that CIA agents must go to great lengths to circumvent encryption they can’t break. In many cases, physical presence is required to carry off these targeted attacks.

“We are in a world where if the U.S. government wants to get your data, they can’t hope to break the encryption,” said Nicholas Weaver, who teaches networking and security at the University of California, Berkeley. “They have to resort to targeted attacks, and that is costly, risky and the kind of thing you do only on targets you care about. Seeing the CIA have to do stuff like this should reassure civil libertarians that the situation is better now than it was four years ago.”

More encryption

Four years ago is when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed details of huge and secret U.S. eavesdropping programs. To help thwart spies and snoops, the tech industry began to protectively encrypt email and messaging apps, a process that turns their contents into indecipherable gibberish without the coded “keys” that can unscramble them.

The NSA revelations shattered earlier assumptions that internet data was nearly impossible to intercept for meaningful surveillance, said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Washington-based civil-liberties group Center for Democracy & Technology. That was because any given internet message gets split into a multitude of tiny “packets,” each of which traces its own unpredictable route across the network to its destination.

The realization that spy agencies had figured out that problem spurred efforts to better shield data as it transits the internet. A few services such as Facebook’s WhatsApp followed the earlier example of Apple’s iMessage and took the extra step of encrypting data in ways even the companies couldn’t unscramble, a method called end-to-end encryption.

Challenges for authorities

In the past, spy agencies like the CIA could have hacked servers at WhatsApp or similar services to see what people were saying. End-to-end encryption, though, makes that prohibitively difficult. So the CIA has to resort to tapping individual phones and intercepting data before it is encrypted or after it’s decoded.

It’s much like the old days when “they would have broken into a house to plant a microphone,” said Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University professor who has long studied cybersecurity issues.

Cindy Cohn, executive director for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group focused on online privacy, likened the CIA’s approach to ” fishing with a line and pole rather than fishing with a driftnet.”

Encryption has grown so strong that even the FBI had to seek Apple’s help last year in cracking the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. Apple resisted what it considered an intrusive request, and the FBI ultimately broke into the phone by turning to an unidentified party for a hacking tool – presumably one similar to those the CIA allegedly had at its disposal.

On Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey acknowledged the challenges posed by encryption. He said there should be a balance between privacy and the FBI’s ability to lawfully access information. He also said the FBI needs to recruit talented computer personnel who might otherwise go to work for Apple or Google.

Government officials have long wanted to force tech companies to build “back doors” into encrypted devices, so that the companies can help law enforcement descramble messages with a warrant. But security experts warn that doing so would undermine security and privacy for everyone. As Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out last year, a back door for good guys can also be a back door for bad guys. So far, efforts to pass such a mandate have stalled.

Still a patchwork

At the moment, though, end-to-end encrypted services such as iMessage and WhatsApp are still the exception. While encryption is far more widely used than it was in 2013, many messaging companies encode user data in ways that let them read or scan it. Authorities can force these companies to divulge message contents with warrants or other legal orders. With end-to-end encryption, the companies wouldn’t even have the keys to do so.

Further expanding the use of end-to-end encryption presents some challenges. That’s partly because encryption will make it more difficult to perform popular tasks such as searching years of emails for mentions of a specific keyword. Google announced in mid-2014 that it was working on end-to-end encryption for email, but the tools have yet to materialize beyond research environments.

Instead, Google’s Gmail encrypts messages in transit. But even that isn’t possible unless it’s adopted by the recipient’s mail system as well.

And encryption isn’t a panacea, as the WikiLeaks disclosures suggest.

According to the purported CIA documents, spies have found ways to exploit holes in phone and computer software to grab messages when they haven’t been encrypted yet. Although Apple, Google and Microsoft say they have fixed many of the vulnerabilities alluded to in the CIA documents, it’s not known how many holes remain open.

“There are different levels where attacks take place, said Daniel Castro, vice president with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “We may have secured one level (with encryption), but there are other weaknesses out there we should be focused on as well.”

Cohn said people should still use encryption, even with these bypass techniques.

“It’s better than nothing,” she said. “The answer to the fact that your front door might be cracked open isn’t to open all your windows and walk around naked, too.”

February Jobs Report: More Solid Growth Expected

by Mahbiz

Posted: 03/10/2017

U.S. employers are thought to have hired at a brisk pace in February, and the unemployment rate is expected to stay low, a result that would provide further evidence of a consistently solid job market.

Economists have forecast a job gain of 186,000 and a decline of one-tenth of a percentage point in unemployment to 4.7 percent, according to data provider FactSet. With employers competing to hire a dwindling supply of applicants and higher minimum wages taking effect in some states, average pay is also thought to have risen.

The Labor Department will release the February jobs report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.

If the economists’ forecasts prove roughly correct, the Federal Reserve will almost surely feel confident enough to resume raising interest rates when it meets next week. It would mark the Fed’s third rate hike in 15 months, a reflection of how far the economy has come since the Great Recession ended nearly eight years ago.

Jobs report for Trump

Friday’s report will also be the first to cover a full month under President Donald Trump. Trump has tweeted cheerfully about a survey of private-sector hiring released earlier this week that suggested a robust job gain in February.

That survey, by payroll provider ADP, concluded that private employers added 298,000 jobs in February, the biggest monthly gain in three years. Construction companies hired the most workers in 11 years and manufacturers the most in five, ADP found.

The surge in construction jobs likely reflected unseasonably warm February weather, particularly in the North, which kept job sites open that would otherwise have been shut down by winter weather. If warm weather boosted the pace of construction hiring in Friday’s government report, other weather-sensitive industries, like retail and restaurants, will likely also show sharp job gains.

Jobs market healthy

Apart from any effects of unusual weather, much evidence suggests that the U.S. job market is fundamentally healthy or nearly so. The number of people seeking first-time unemployment benefits, a rough proxy for the pace of layoffs, reached a 44-year low two weeks ago.

And in January, employers added a vigorous 227,000 jobs, according to the government’s figures, higher than last year’s monthly average of 187,000.

Business and consumer confidence has soared since the presidential election, with many business executives saying they expect faster economic growth to result from Trump’s promised tax cuts, deregulation and infrastructure spending.

The U.S. economy is also benefiting from steadier economies overseas. Growth is picking up or stabilizing in most European countries as well as in China and Japan. The 19-nation alliance that uses the euro currency expanded 1.7 percent in 2016, an improvement from years of recession and anemic growth. Germany’s unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9 percent, although in crisis-stricken Greece, unemployment remains a painful 23 percent.

Wages rising

In the United States, employers have been hiring solidly for so long that in some industries, they’re being compelled to raise pay. Hourly wages for the typical worker rose 3.1 percent in 2016, according to a report Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s much higher than the 0.3 percent average annual pay gain, adjusted for inflation, since 2007, the EPI said.

Minimum wage increases last year in 17 states and Washington, D.C., helped raise pay among the lowest-paid workers, the EPI found. Pay increases for the poorest 10 percent of workers were more than twice as high in states where the minimum wage rose as in states where it did not.

U.S. builders are breaking ground on more homes, and factory production has recovered from an 18-month slump, fueling growth and hiring. In February, manufacturing expanded at the fastest pace in more than two years, according to a trade group. Businesses have stepped up their purchases of industrial equipment, steel and other metals, and computers.

And in January, Americans bought homes at the fastest pace in a decade despite higher mortgage rates. That demand has spurred a 10.5 percent increase in home construction in the past 12 months.
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Alleged CIA Hacking Techniques Lay Out Online Vulnerability

by Mahit

Posted: 03/10/2017

If this week’s WikiLeaks document dump is genuine, it includes a CIA list of the many and varied ways the electronic device in your hand, in your car, and in your home can be used to hack your life.

It’s simply more proof that, “it’s not a matter of if you’ll get hacked, but when you’ll get hacked.” That may be every security expert’s favorite quote, and unfortunately they say it’s true. The WikiLeaks releases include confidential documents the group says exposes “the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.”

The CIA has refused to confirm the authenticity of the documents, which allege the agency has the tools to hack into smartphones and some televisions, allowing it to remotely spy on people through microphones on the devices.

Watch: New Generation of Hackable Internet Devices May Always Be Listening

WikiLeaks also claimed the CIA managed to compromise both Apple and Android smartphones, allowing their officers to bypass the encryption on popular services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.

For some of the regular tech users, news of the leaks and the hacking techniques just confirms what they already knew. When we’re wired 24-7, we are vulnerable.

“The expectation for privacy has been reduced, I think,” Chris Coletta said, “… in society, with things like WikiLeaks, the Snowden revelations … I don’t know, maybe I’m cynical and just consider it to be inevitable, but that’s really the direction things are going.”

The internet of things

The problem is becoming even more dangerous as new, wired gadgets find their way into our homes, equipped with microphones and cameras that may always be listening and watching.

One of the WikiLeaks documents suggests the microphones in Samsung smart TV’s can be hacked and used to listen in on conversations, even when the TV is turned off.

Security experts say it is important to understand that in many cases, the growing number of wired devices in your home may be listening all the time.

“We have sensors in our phones, in our televisions, in Amazon Echo devices, in our vehicles,” said Clifford Neuman, the director of the Center for Computer Systems Security, at the University of Southern California. “And really almost all of these attacks are things that are modifying the software that has access to those sensors, so that the information is directed to other locations. Security practitioners have known that this is a problem for a long time.”

Neuman says hackers are using the things that make our tech so convenient against us.

“Certain pieces of software and certain pieces of hardware have been criticized because, for example, microphones might be always on,” he said. “But it is the kind of thing that we’re demanding as consumers, and we just need to be more aware that the information that is collected for one purpose can very easily be redirected for others.”

Tools of the espionage trade

The WikiLeaks release is especially damaging because it may have laid bare a number of U.S. surveillance techniques. The New York Times says the documents it examined lay out programs called “Wrecking Crew” for instance, which “explains how to crash a targeted computer, and another tells how to steal passwords using the autocomplete function on Internet Explorer.”

Steve Grobman, chief of the Intel Security Group, says that’s bad not only because it can be done, but also because so-called “bad actors” now know it can be done. Soon enough, he warns, we could find our own espionage tools being used against us.

“We also do need to recognize the precedents we set, so, as offensive cyber capabilities are used … they do give the blueprint for how that attack took place. And bad actors can then learn from that,” he said.

So how can tech-savvy consumers remain safe? Security experts say they can’t, and to remember the “it’s not if, but when” rule of hacking.

The best bet is to always be aware that if you’re online, you’re vulnerable.
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New Generation of Hackable Internet Devices May Always Be Listening

by Mahit

Posted: 03/10/2017

It’s not a matter of “if” you’ll be hacked, but “when” you’ll be hacked. That may be every security expert’s favorite quote, and unfortunately they say it’s true. A Wikileaks dump of alleged CIA documents that includes electronic hacking techniques makes it abundantly clear that no one is safe. The leaks and the revealing CIA techniques reinforce the notion that when we’re wired 24-7, we are vulnerable. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Gambia Girl Gets Grin Back, Once Melon-Sized Tumor Is Gone

Posted: 03/10/2017

Twelve-year-old Janet Sylva of Gambia wants to be a doctor when she grows up, she says with a broad grin — one that surgeons in New York gave back to her after removing from her mouth one of the largest tumors they’d ever seen.

The 6-pound benign tumor was about the size of a cantaloupe. It prevented Janet from eating, and her breathing had become so difficult that doctors were afraid she might die within a year if nothing was done.

“It made her a prisoner in her own body,” said Dr. David Hoffman, a Staten Island surgeon who became aware of Janet’s plight last year after doctors in the neighboring west African nation of Senegal reached out to international health groups for assistance. She had stopped going to school and wore a scarf around her face to hide the massive tumor.

Hoffman coordinated with the Global Medical Relief Fund and a team of volunteer surgeons and other medical staff at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park on Long Island to arrange for Janet to have the surgery, which was performed for free in January.

Dr. Armen Kasabian, chief of plastic surgery at North Shore University Hospital, led the team in performing the delicate operation, which not only involved removing the tumor but also rebuilding her jaw by using part of a bone from her leg. Kasabian said the team knew they had to get it right the first time because Janet and her mother, Philomena, would only be in the U.S. for a short time.

“We don’t have the luxury of operating on her 10 times,” he said. “We have to try and get the most that we can out of just one operation.”

He and Hoffman said they employed 3-D imaging to build models of the child’s mouth, including the tumor, and were able to use the virtual modeling techniques to practice for the procedure before the actual 12-hour surgery took place January 16.

Both physicians said the tumor wouldn’t have grown so large if Janet had lived in the U.S.

“It would never get to this,” Kasabian said. “This grew over the course of three years, and she had no one to take care of it there. Here, it would have been treated when it was smaller and more manageable.”

Janet and her mother are preparing to return to Gambia next week, said Elissa Montanti of the Global Medical Relief Fund, the Staten-Island based charity that arranged for transportation, housing and travel visas for Janet and her mother.

Before heading home, the pair returned Thursday to Cohen Children’s hospital.

Through an interpreter speaking their native language of Wolof, the mother and daughter shyly thanked the medical staff.

“I’m very happy and grateful because I have my daughter back,” Philomena Sylva said.

Janet smiled and said the scarf she had worn to hide her face has been thrown away.
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Kid Approved Protection Against Air Pollution

Posted: 03/10/2017

Air pollution takes the lives of more than half a million young children every year, according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in London has come up pollution-busting face masks to protect kids from toxic air.
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US Solar Soared in 2016, But Investors Still Leery

by Mahit

Posted: 03/10/2017

New U.S. solar installations nearly doubled last year, but slowing demand for both residential and large-scale systems, falling panel prices and concerns about looming federal tax reform are still dampening investor appetite for the sector.

Solar installations soared 97 percent to 14.8 gigawatts in 2016, according to a report released Thursday by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The technology is cheaper than ever, with panel prices dropping 40 percent last year, and many utilities procuring solar on the basis of cost alone.

But the dramatic drop in panel prices has hampered solar manufacturers’ profits and ramped up competition for utility-scale contracts among developers, companies said in recent weeks while reporting fourth-quarter results. Add in a slowdown in the residential market, tax reform pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump, climbing interest rates and falling oil prices, and stock market investors remain skittish about solar.

2017 a transition year

Credit Suisse analyst Andrew Hughes said in a client note on Thursday that the key risk to his “outperform” rating on shares of residential solar player Sunrun was “investor sentiment, which in a rising interest rate and falling oil price market obscured by tax policy uncertainty remains tepid.”

The MAC Global Solar Energy index, which tracks shares of solar power companies, slid 43 percent in 2016. The index has recovered to gain nearly 8 percent so far this year but remains 65 percent below its year-ago level.

U.S. module manufacturers and project developers SunPower and First Solar Inc are both viewing 2017 as a transition year for their businesses, they said after reporting in February losses for the fourth quarter of last year.

SunPower Chief Executive Tom Werner in a conference call predicted “intense competition for the forseeable future in mainstream power plants,” adding that some companies were selling panels at below cash cost.

A slowdown is forecast

Indeed, the solar industry report released Thursday forecasts a slowdown in the market this year after last year’s boom. Utility systems accounted for more than 10.5 GW of the total in 2016, but are not expected to exceed 10 GW again until 2021, the report said.

The 2016 boom was largely due to a rush by developers to claim a federal tax credit for solar systems that had been expected to expire at the end of the year. The five-year extension of that credit, however, has allowed projects to be pushed into this year and beyond.

Though Trump has not called for ending tax credits for solar and other renewable energy, he has expressed doubts about the role of clean power sources.

Home installations are growing

On the solar residential side, installations grew 19 percent to 2.6 GW last year, down from 66 percent growth in 2015. Growth has slowed in major markets like California, where many of the households most interested in solar have already put up panels.

Tesla, which acquired residential market leader SolarCity late last year, said last month that it deployed 201 megawatts of solar in the fourth quarter, a more than 20 percent drop from the same period a year earlier.

SolarCity rival Sunrun reported a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street estimates due to cost cuts, but said growth would be substantially slower in 2016. System deployments rose 40 percent in 2016, but are expected to rise just 15 percent this year, Sunrun said.

“While it may be slowing, it is still growing. That is an important piece of the story,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in an interview. “Some of that resetting is to be expected.”
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Monitoring Droughts’ Movements Would Aid Vulnerable Areas, Researchers Say

Posted: 03/10/2017

It’s a major natural disaster that slowly grows in one place and then moves across a region, gaining intensity and size. As it spreads, it destroys land, ruins agriculture and tears apart communities, and it can kill people.

It’s a drought.

Researchers are just beginning to view droughts as this type of dynamic force, and some hope that soon they will be monitored similarly to hurricanes — with scientists able to predict their development, helping to protect those living in their path.

Ten percent of droughts travel between 1,400 to 3,100 kilometers from where they begin, according to a recent study. The study, which analyzed 1,420 droughts between 1979 and 2009, identified “hot spots” around the world and common directions in which droughts move.

Some droughts in the southwest United States, for example, tend to move from south to north. In Argentina, they usually migrate the opposite direction. In Central Africa, droughts tend to go southeastern toward the coast.

“It can start somewhere, move throughout the continent, and obviously cause harm throughout its way,” Julio Herrera-Estrada, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and leader of the study, said Thursday.

Droughts that travel are usually the largest and most disastrous, the scientists found. They can cause a loss of agriculture, wildlife, wetlands and human life, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Very costly

They are also one of the most expensive natural disasters that people face today, according to Herrera-Estrada, who collaborated on the study with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna.

The most recent moving drought that Herrera-Estrada studied began in 2008 in Ukraine and Russia, and moved 1,700 kilometers northeast, ending in northwest Russia and affecting parts of Kazakhstan on the way. It lasted almost a year.

“People haven’t really thought of droughts in this way,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Future research, Herrera-Estrada said, can shed light on what mechanisms cause some droughts to move and what affects their paths. This can be done accurately, however, only through collaboration among national governments, he said.

“It’s important to have a global or a continental understanding about how droughts are behaving,” he said. Collaboration “benefits people on the ground, farmers, cities that need water, power plants that need water.”

The study was published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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Romania’s Health Care Exodus

Posted: 03/09/2017

Sonia Papiu started her first year of residency as a psychiatrist in the Romanian city of Cluj in January, but she plans to move abroad within the

year, seeking better learning opportunities and hospital conditions.

She will not be alone.

“I don’t think any of my colleagues are planning to stay,” she said. “I think I could learn more abroad. You have higher responsibilities as a resident there.”

In the Romanian system, doctors go through six years of medical school and then three to five years as a hospital resident, treating patients while working under the supervision of senior staff.

Finding a job abroad will be easy. Cluj, one of Romania’s largest cities and a university and business hub, hosts several agencies recruiting for western European hospitals.

Romania has bled out tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, dentists and pharmacists since joining the European Union a decade ago, lured abroad by what the country lacks: significantly higher pay, modern infrastructure and functional healthcare systems. France, Germany and Britain are among the most popular destinations.

The consequences are dire. Romania is one of the EU states with the fewest doctors. Nearly a third of hospital positions are vacant and the health ministry estimates one in four Romanians has insufficient access to essential healthcare.

“Medical staff leaving Romania at an almost massive pace deepens the problems of the healthcare system,” former health minister Vlad Voiculescu has said. “Entire hospitals are facing a major personnel deficit and entire towns don’t have a family physician.”

This despite the fact that Romania is a leading EU state when it comes to the number of medical graduates. But the system — ridden with corruption, inefficiencies and politicized management — has been unable to motivate them to stay. The shortages are even starker in rural areas.

“Because we have one doctor per section for most specialties, when a doctor goes on holiday we need to close down the section,” said Cristian Vlad, the hospital manager in Viseul de Sus, a small town near the Ukrainian border.

Vlad said three hospitals in the region shared one anaesthetist until last year, when his hospital brought in another from neighboring Moldova.

“I live in hope that our resident doctors will change their mind and stay in smaller hospitals, too,” Vlad said.

Turning point

Romania is taking steps to address the issues. Pay has risen significantly, although it still does not measure up to western standards. The net average monthly wage for the healthcare system stood at 2,609 lei ($606) at the end of 2016, nearly double what it was three years ago.

In 2016, the health ministry created a multi-year plan for the medical profession, including a simpler recruitment process, education reform, better promotion opportunities, and subsidies for physicians willing to move to remote villages.

The strategy has yet to be approved by the two-month-old cabinet of Social Democrat Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu.

“Measures to improve healthcare are in place, but the system suffers from inefficiencies, limited accessibility and corruption,” the European Commission said last month.

Yet not all doctors shy away from remote areas. From the village of Tureni, Andreea Kis has been serving as a family doctor for five villages for nearly five years.

“I chose to be a family doctor because this is compatible with family life,” said Kis, a mother of two. “People in the villages preserve their humanity better.”
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Apple’s Siri Learns Shanghainese as Voice Assistants Race to Cover Languages

by Mahit

Posted: 03/09/2017

With the broad release of Google Assistant last week, the voice-assistant wars are in full swing, with Apple, Amazon.com, Microsoft and now Alphabet’s Google all offering electronic assistants to take your commands.

Siri is the oldest of the bunch, and researchers including Oren Etzioni, chief executive officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, said Apple has squandered its lead when it comes to understanding speech and answering questions.

But there is at least one thing Siri can do that the other assistants cannot: speak 21 languages localized for 36 countries, a very important capability in a smartphone market where most sales are outside the United States.

Microsoft Cortana, by contrast, has eight languages tailored for 13 countries. Google’s Assistant, which began in its Pixel phone but has moved to other Android devices, speaks four languages. Amazon’s Alexa features only English and German. Siri will even soon start to learn Shanghainese, a special dialect of Wu Chinese spoken only around Shanghai.

The language issue shows the type of hurdle that digital assistants still need to clear if they are to become ubiquitous tools for operating smartphones and other devices.

Speaking languages natively is complicated for any assistant. If someone asks for a football score in Britain, for example, even though the language is English, the assistant must know to say “two-nil” instead of “two-nothing.”

At Microsoft, an editorial team of 29 people works to customize Cortana for local markets. In Mexico, for example, a published children’s book author writes Cortana’s lines to stand out from other Spanish-speaking countries.

“They really pride themselves on what’s truly Mexican. [Cortana] has a lot of answers that are clever and funny and have to do with what it means to be Mexican,” said Jonathan Foster, who heads the team of writers at Microsoft.

Google and Amazon said they plan to bring more languages to their assistants but declined to comment further.

At Apple, the company starts working on a new language by bringing in humans to read passages in a range of accents and dialects, which are then transcribed by hand so the computer has an exact representation of the spoken text to learn from, said Alex Acero, head of the speech team at Apple. Apple also captures a range of sounds in a variety of voices. From there,

an acoustic model is built that tries to predict words sequences.

Then Apple deploys “dictation mode,” its text-to-speech translator, in the new language, Acero said. When customers use dictation mode, Apple captures a small percentage of the audio recordings and makes them anonymous. The recordings, complete with background noise and mumbled words, are transcribed by humans, a process that helps cut the speech recognition error

rate in half.

After enough data has been gathered and a voice actor has been recorded to play Siri in a new language, Siri is released with answers to what Apple estimates will be the most common questions, Acero said. Once released, Siri learns more about what real-world users ask and is updated every two weeks with more tweaks.

But script-writing does not scale, said Charles Jolley, creator of an intelligent assistant named Ozlo. “You can’t hire enough writers to come up with the system you’d need in every language. You have to synthesize the answers,” he said. That is years off, he said.

The founders of Viv, a startup founded by Siri’s original creators that Samsung acquired last year, is working on just that.

“Viv was built to specifically address the scaling issue for intelligent assistants,” said Dag Kittlaus, the CEO and co-founder of Viv. “The only way to leapfrog today’s limited functionality versions is to open the system up and let the

world teach them.”
…

Solar Energy Station to Power Hawaiian Island

by Mahit

Posted: 03/09/2017

One of Hawaii’s islands may soon be powered by solar energy, at least during the night.

In the biggest project since it acquired the solar cell giant SolarCity, the Tesla company will build a 13-megawatt solar farm on the island of Kauai, covering more than 44 acres (18 hectares). The solar cells will charge a 53-megawatt hour battery station able to provide most of the island’s power at night.

The batteries, called Powerpacks, will be built by Tesla’s new Gigafactory.

Right now, Kauai residents are paying very high prices for energy, so the plan is to gradually transition to renewable sources, including wind and biomass.

Kauai plans to generate 70 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030 and to completely wean itself from fossil-generated electricity by 2045.

Tesla says that once it’s in full production, the Kauai solar energy plant will lower the fossil fuel burn by over 6,000 metric tons a year.
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Doctors Tie Zika Virus to Heart Problems in Some Adults

Posted: 03/09/2017

For the first time, doctors have tied infection with the Zika virus to possible new heart problems in adults.

The evidence so far is only in eight people in Venezuela, and is not enough to prove a link. It’s also too soon to know how often this might be happening. The biggest trouble the mosquito-borne virus has been causing is for pregnant women and their fetuses.

“I think as awareness increases, the cases will start to show up more,” said Dr. Karina Gonzalez Carta, a Mayo Clinic research fellow working in Venezuela who investigated the heart cases.

She discussed them on an American College of Cardiology press call, ahead of a presentation Saturday at the group’s meeting in Washington.

Many people infected with Zika will have no or only mild symptoms, such as fever, aches, an itchy rash or red eyes. But the virus has caused an epidemic of birth defects in the Caribbean and South America, notably babies with abnormally small heads and brains.

A report last June in the International Journal of Cardiology describes heart problems that have been seen from other viruses spread by mosquitoes, such as West Nile and ones that cause yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya.

Doctors have been watching for the same from Zika, and “we were surprised at the severity of the findings” in the Venezuela cases, Carta said.

She studied nine patients, ages 30 to 64, treated at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Caracas who developed heart symptoms such as palpitations, shortness of breath and fatigue an average of 10 days after typical Zika symptoms began.

Only one had any prior heart-related problem – high blood pressure that was under control with medications – and all had lab tests confirming Zika infection. They were given extensive heart tests and were studied for an average of six months, starting last July.

Eight of the nine developed a dangerous heart rhythm problem, and six of the nine developed heart failure, which occurs when a weakened heart can’t pump enough blood.

Doctors don’t know if these problems will be permanent. So far, they haven’t gone away although medicines have improved how patients feel.

“This is the first time we’ve considered that cardiovascular disease may be associated with Zika,” and people who travel to or live in places where Zika is spreading need to watch for possible symptoms, said Dr. Martha Gulati, cardiology chief at the University of Arizona-Phoenix who is familiar with the results.

Zika infections have been reported in more than 5,000 people in the United States, mostly travelers. After a big outbreak in Brazil in 2015, Zika spread throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The virus also spread locally in parts of southern Florida and Texas last year.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned pregnant women to avoid travel to Zika zones and to use bug spray and other measures to prevent bites.
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Nigeria’s Rice Boom Raises Output but Old Problems Persist

by Mahbiz

Posted: 03/09/2017

Nigerian Abdulhakim Mohammed has just graduated in architecture but, like many people ranging from unemployed locals to foreign investors and Africa’s richest man, he has decided the future lies in rice farming.

The reason is that domestic rice prices have more than doubled in the last two years due to an import ban and a dive in the Nigerian currency. At the same time, the government is subsidizing tractors, mills and fertilizers as well as arranging cheaper loans to boost production – with considerable success.

And yet the drive to cut an annual food import bill of $20 billion has run into the kind of problems that have long bedeviled Nigeria’s efforts to build up an economy outside its dominant the oil industry.

Despite rice growing being a government priority, many farmers still work with their bare hands in fields lacking irrigation channels. Mills are often ramshackle while poor roads make getting the crop from the main growing areas in northern Nigeria to consumers in the south difficult and costly.

As a result, the industry has so far failed to fill a supply shortfall amounting to about 3 million tonnes of milled rice created by the import ban. In the commercial capital of Lagos, supermarkets mainly sell rice from India or Thailand.

Mohammed took up growing rice three years ago to help fund his university studies in the northern state of Bauchi. When he finished last year, he opted for a career in the fields around the town of Gadau, rather than in architecture.

“My advice to the youth is to join rice farming,” said Mohammed, who is expanding his own area from 1.5 to 2 hectares (3.7 to 5 acres) as well as working as a supervisor on a new farm that workers are preparing nearby.

“One bag of rice sells for 10,000 to 11,000 (naira). Two years ago I was selling for 4,500,” he told Reuters.

That makes a bag worth almost $25 at the exchange rate on the black market, where many Nigerians go due to restrictions and dollar shortages in the official banking system. In Bauchi state, hundreds of farmers are busy expanding, preparing new fields and drilling water holes for irrigation.

Farms have been opening across much of the country, lifting output of unmilled rice to 7.85 million tons in 2016 – a 17.4 percent jump from 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics told Reuters. That compares with just 4.54 million in 2010, before the campaign began.

Talking vs Implementing

Until 2015, Nigeria imported up to 4 million tons of rice annually, much of which was smuggled from the western neighbor Benin Republic. But this has fallen to about 700,000 tons as authorities now monitor the border, industry players say.

That lifted prices for the staple, along with currency curbs imposed to prop up the naira which has been hit by a fall in revenues from Nigeria’s oil exports.

Part of the rise is because farmers are passing on higher costs, saying the government subsidies are not enough. Importers have to pay a premium of 30 percent over the official rate to get dollars on the black market for buying the foreign-made machinery and fertilizers that growers need.

On top of this, farmers complain that endemic corruption means the government help doesn’t always reach the right people.

“Some people who got fertilizers were not even farmers. They sell it then,” said Mohammed Tafida, the local head of a rice farmers’ association, who is also expanding his own fields.

“Fertilizers are very expensive,” he told Reuters, standing by a new paddy field being prepared. “Our production costs are very high. You now pay workers 500 to 700 naira a day; before it was 200 naira.”

President Muhammadu Buhari has made fighting graft a priority since coming to power two years ago. But he has to work with Nigeria’s 36 states where officials executing the federal programs often help out supporters or relatives.

Farmers and food producers can get subsidized loans well below the benchmark interest rate of 14 percent. But one processor of garri – another local staple, made from cassava – said he had waited six months to get his loan approved as banks are new to the farming business.

“In Nigeria talking is one thing and implementing plans another,” said Idris Salihu, another rice farmer in Bauchi. “We need more support.”

Pot-holed roads

The rice boom has also drawn large scale investment from Africa’s richest man, Nigerian Aliko Dangote, and foreign firms to supply the huge market of 190 million people.

Dangote Group said last month it planned to launch a rice mill with a farm scheme which will produce 225,000 tons of parboiled, milled rice by the year-end.

Wacot Rice, part of Lagos-based food and farming conglomerate TGI, will open a rice mill next month with a capacity of 100,000 tons annually. It works with rice farmers on 15,000 hectares and plans to expand to 165,000 hectares within 10 years.

Abroad, Singapore-based Olam plans to increase its Nigerian rice farming to 6,000 hectares from 4,300 hectares “in a couple of years or so”, a spokesman said.

Nigeria hopes such large-scale investors will improve rice yields, measuring output per hectare. These are among the lowest in Africa as the market is dominated by relatively inefficient farmers running fields of two to five hectares.

The lack of good roads also means that rice from the north hardly reaches Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city. The government plans to increase capital spending by nearly a quarter in 2017 to fix pot-holed routes and help trade. However, a collapse in oil revenues due to low world prices has slowed many projects.

Nigerian growers also struggle to meet quality standards set by foreign agri-businesses, with consumers complaining about having to extract grit from the rice.

“I like better the taste of the local rice. The only problem is the stones in it,” said Samuel Ativ, 38, as he shopped in the busy Bauchi market. “If I am in hurry I prefer the foreign rice because there are no stones.”

Nigeria has imported 110 mills which remove grit in the process but most farmers still go to villagers to handle their rice with home-made machines.

Larger investors hope Nigeria will not repeat the mistakes of the past by losing interest in domestic food production if and when global oil prices pick up again, helping the naira to recover and making imports cheaper.

“Important is that they started the journey to become food self-sufficient,” said Rahul Savara, TGI Group Managing Director. “They are going on the right track, and the government has to continue the same policies it is doing now.”

Iran’s Khamenei: Economic Progress Limited Despite Lifted Sanctions

by Mahbiz

Posted: 03/09/2017

Iran’s supreme leader criticized the country’s slow pace of economic recovery on Thursday despite the lifting of sanctions and called on President Hassan

Rouhani’s government to champion greater self-sufficiency, state TV reported.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s criticism comes ahead of Iran’s presidential election in May, when the pragmatist president is expected to seek re-election.

“Of course the government has taken remarkable steps but if the resistance economy had been implemented fully and widely, we could witness a tangible difference in people’s lives,” state TV reported Khamenei as saying.

The “resistance economy” promoted by Khamenei is aimed at making Iran’ economy more self-sufficient.

Rouhani’s popularity and his efforts to end Iran’s economic and political isolation have panicked hardline allies of Khamenei, who fear losing power and aim to reclaim the presidency for their faction.

Most sanctions imposed on Iran over its disputed nuclear program were lifted in 2016, in exchange for Iran curbing its nuclear work under a deal with six major powers in 2015.

Khamenei and his allies have criticized Rouhani’s government for failure to bolster the economy since the sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted a year ago.

“We receive complaints from people … People should feel improvements regarding creation of jobs and manufacturing. It is not the case now,” he said.

Rouhani and his ministers have defended the government’s record, citing economic reports and figures pointing to improvements.

“Presenting reports and figures is good but will not impact people’s lives in mid and long-term,” Khamenei said.

Hit hard by the double hammer blows of years of embargo and the plunge in oil prices since the middle of 2014, Iran’s economy has slowly recovered since the lifting of sanctions but deals with Western investors are few and far between.

Foreign investors are cautious about trading with or investing in Iran, fearing penalties from remaining unilateral U.S. sanctions and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tough approach to the Islamic Republic.

“Attracting foreign investment is a positive measure but so far a very limited of foreign contracts have been materialized,” Khamenei said. Iran needs foreign capital to modernize its key oil and gas sectors.
…

China Says it Followed Law in Approving 38 Trump Trademarks

by Mahbiz

Posted: 03/09/2017

China on Thursday defended its handling of 38 trademarks it recently approved provisionally for President Donald Trump, saying it followed the law in processing the applications at a pace that some experts view as unusually quick.

Democrats in Congress were critical of Trump after The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the potentially valuable trademarks had been granted, raising questions of conflict of interest and political favoritism. One senator said the issue “merits investigation.”

Trump has sometimes struggled to win trademarks from China; he secured one recently after a 10-year fight that turned his way only after he declared his candidacy for the presidency.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a regular briefing with reporters that Chinese authorities handle all trademark applications “in accordance with the law and regulation.” He declined to comment on speculation about political influence on Trump’s trademark approvals.

Critics fear foreign governments might gain leverage from Trump’s global portfolio of brands.

Democrats in Congress have been pushing Trump to sever financial ties with his global businesses to avoid potential violations of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars federal officials from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless approved by Congress.

The monopoly right to a successful brand in a market like China can be worth huge sums. Former top ethics lawyers from the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush say any special treatment from Beijing in awarding Trump intellectual property protection would violate the Constitution.

Concerns about political influence are particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party, and foreign companies and the lawyers that work for them regularly ask embassy staff for help lobbying Chinese officials.

Spring Chang, a founding partner at Chang Tsi & Partners, a Beijing law firm that has represented the Trump Organization, declined to comment specifically on Trump’s trademarks. But she did say government relations are an important part of trademark strategy in China. She said she has worked with officials from both the U.S. and Canadian embassies to help her clients. The key, she said, is “you should communicate closely with the government to push your case.”

Drawing on public records from the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the AP compiled a detailed list of 49 trademarks Trump’s lawyers applied for in 2016, even as he railed against China on the campaign trail. On Feb. 22, seven of those marks were rejected, though public records do not indicate why. China granted preliminary approval for 38 marks on Feb. 27 and Mar. 6. Four applications are pending.

Matthew Dresden, a China intellectual property attorney at Harris Bricken in Seattle, said the rejections suggested that the trademark office hadn’t done Trump any special favors. “Some did not go through, that suggests it’s just business as usual,” he said.

Dan Plane, a director at Simone IP Services, a Hong Kong intellectual property consultancy, said it would be difficult to draw firm conclusions without in-depth research. However, he said the efficiency of China’s trademark office in handling Trump’s caseload suggested favor for a man whose decisions could have a powerful impact on China.

“For this many marks to all sail through to preliminary approval this quickly, with nary an issue in sight – that is unheard of to me, and I have been doing this for 16 years,” he said. “I wish my clients’ applications would be dealt with half as expeditiously and graciously.”

If no one objects, the new marks will be officially registered after 90 days, bringing the number of Trump’s trademarks in China to 115. Nearly all are in the president’s own name; a few are registered to a Delaware company called DTTM Operations LLC.

The new marks could lay the groundwork for an expanded range of branded businesses, including financial, insurance and real estate services, golf clubs, educational institutions, restaurants and bars. A number of the trademarks granted, including those for “social escort” and “body guard” services, appeared to relate specifically to hotels. Other international hotel companies whose documents were reviewed by AP sought similar trademarks.

It’s unclear whether any of these Trump-brand businesses will materialize in China. Many companies here register trademarks just to prevent others from using their name inappropriately. Trump has also said he will refrain from new foreign deals while in office.

Trump began to file trademark applications in China in late 2005, an effort that accelerated in 2008 as Trump’s lawyers fought for control of Chinese variations of his name, public records show. Years of ambition in China, however, have yet to yield a single marquee development. And despite all the recent activity, Trump still doesn’t have a firm hold on his brand in China. More than 225 Trump-related marks are held or sought by others in China, for an array of things including Trump toilets, condoms, pacemakers and even a “Trump International Hotel.”

Trump Organization chief legal officer Alan Garten said the latest registrations were a continuation of efforts that long predate Trump’s presidential run. “Any suggestion to the contrary demonstrates a complete disregard of the facts as well as a lack of understanding of international trademark law,” he said in an email.

But a growing number of Democrats disagree.

After AP reported Wednesday about the sweep of new approvals, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Ben Cardin called a press conference to lambaste President Trump for his growing Chinese entanglements. Also citing AP’s report, Senator Richard Blumenthal said on the Senate floor that Trump’s intellectual property in China “merits investigation.”

“This President’s conflicts of interest are creeping into every corner of the world,” he said in an email to the AP. “The consequence is that he has done nothing to counter Chinese currency manipulation, trade rules violations, military buildup, and other aggressive Chinese actions. Standing up for a great America means putting our nation before personal profit.”

Democrats have also written to Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urging scrutiny of Trump’s intellectual property interests in China.

“It’s time for Republicans in Congress to join our efforts to hold President Trump accountable,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said in a statement Wednesday. “The Constitution demands it and the American people deserve it.”
…

Report: China Developing Advanced Lunar Mission Spaceship

Posted: 03/09/2017

China is developing an advanced new spaceship capable of both flying in low-Earth orbit and landing on the moon, according to state media, in another bold step for a space program that equaled the U.S. in number of rocket launches last year.

The newspaper Science and Technology Daily cited spaceship engineer Zhang Bainian as saying the new craft would be recoverable and have room for multiple astronauts. While no other details were given in the Tuesday report, Zhang raised as a comparison the Orion spacecraft being developed by NASA and the European Space Agency. The agency hopes Orion will carry astronauts into space by 2023.

China’s Shenzhou space capsule used on all six of its crewed missions is based on Russia’s Soyuz and is capable of carrying three astronauts in its re-entry module.

China came late to crewed space flight, launching its first man into space in 2003, but has advanced rapidly since then. In its most recent crewed mission, two astronauts spent a month aboard a Chinese space station late last year.

A fully functioning, permanently crewed space station is on course to begin operations in around five years and a manned lunar mission has been suggested for the future.

Now firmly established among the big three in space travel, China last year moved ahead of Russia for the first time in number of rocket launches and equaled the United States at 22, according to Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Russia had 17 launches, while the U.S. might have had several more if Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet hadn’t been grounded following a Sept. 1 launchpad explosion.

China Seeking International Law for State Control of Internet

by Mahit

Posted: 03/09/2017

China is seeking an international agreement to enhance state control over the internet in order to fight cyberattacks and cyberterrorism. Beijing wants to extend the existing idea of sovereignty over land and sea to cyberspace.

Beijing has released its first white paper discussing how it will persuade different countries to join together in an international partnership. The idea is to enhance the power of individual governments over cyberspace and reduce the role of the private sector.

“Countries in the whole world have increasing concerns [about cyberattacks] in this regard. Cyberspace should not be a space of no laws,” Long Zhou, coordinator of the Cyber Affairs division of the Foreign Ministry said last week while releasing copies of “International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace,” China’s first policy paper on the issue.

Censorship

Analysts see it as a grandiose plan to extend the Chinese idea of censorship across large parts of the world. China has been criticized in developed countries for controlling the internet with a heavy hand and not allowing Google, Facebook, Twitter and many foreign news websites to be seen in China.

The first set of organizations that will be hit, if the Chinese campaign gains momentum, are American companies that play a dominant role in the internet space, analysts said.

“The inventors of cyberspace were idealistically and ideologically convinced that they had created a domain of perfect freedom, where anyone could gain entry and behave as if no laws existed,” Sheila Jasanoff, director of the program on science, technology and society at Harvard University’s Kennedy School told VOA.

“It has been interesting to see how this allegedly wide open and free space has gradually been ‘written over’ with all the markers of national sovereignty and rivalry,” she said.

Russian role in U.S. polls

China is taking advantage of the uproar in the United States over alleged cyberattacks by Russia to interfere in the recent presidential election.

Asked about the alleged Russian interference, Long said, “Especially in recent years, the number of cybersecurity events throughout the world is increasing, posing challenges to all countries’ efforts to maintain political, economic stability and protecting all citizens’ rights and interests.”

Lee Branstetter, an associate professor of economics at the Heinz School of Policy and Management of the Carnegie Mellon University, saw the situation differently.

“The China solution is a proposal to create huge barriers to the free flow of information across borders. It is hard to see how a global digital economy could function under such a regime,” he said.

Beijing action plan

China is trying to persuade world governments and international agencies, including the United Nations, to accept the principal of “cyber sovereignty” that allows each country to govern the internet in the manner it wants without interference from other governments. Long said the concept of land and sea sovereignty, which is recognized by the U.N., should be extended to the cyber world because the problems and situations are similar.

He said the international community is discussing the need to “produce new international legal instruments to deal with the security situation in cyberspace.” These situations include cyberterror or cross-boundary cybercrimes.

China plans to raise the issue at different international forums including U.N. agencies, the BRICS group — for Brazil, Russia, India and China — and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Chinese endeavor has the support of Russia, which will join in the campaign for making international rules on cyberspace, Long said at a recent news conference.

Jasanoff is skeptical of the Chinese rationale.

“There is good reason to believe that China will do more to limit the freedom of information of its citizens than to ensure its own security with regard to things like critical infrastructure,” she said. “The most effective firewall will likely be against the creation of domestic networks of civilian information exchange and protest.”

Assertions of cybersovereignty from China and elsewhere are happening at a time when national sovereignty is in decline for many reasons, not least because the technological capability for both creating and breaking through security systems is highly dispersed, she said.

“Hackers for hire are distributed throughout the world, and recent experiences at all kinds of major institutions shows that hardly any are free from threats (and even the reality) of cyberattacks,” Jasanoff said.
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On Channel 972, Viewers Become Show Hosts

Posted: 03/09/2017

Senior citizens who move to Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville, Maryland, have a chance to start new careers in television. No matter what they did before retiring, they’re encouraged to participate in creating a range of programs broadcast on channel 972, a closed circuit 24-hour TV station. Their active participation benefits them and their community.

Accepting aging

Retired physician Stephen Schimpff is one of the residents-turned-TV-stars at Charlestown. He hosts two shows, Megatrends in Medicine and Aging Gracefully. Both deal with nutrition and lifestyle.

“It’s not giving medical advice on a problem,” he said. “I clearly avoid doing that. I say to people, if you have a problem go to the health center and see your doctor. But we deal with issues about aging. How our bodies age, the actual physiology of it, some of the mechanisms, and how we can affect that. We can affect it with our lifestyle. How can we increase the quality of food and reduce stress? What type of exercise do we really need? We’ve been also asked about supplements, should we be taking vitamins?”

Schimpff says the biggest issue about aging for most people is accepting it.

“If I go look in a mirror, I see a person who is older than I think I am. I say, ‘Gosh, when did he get older?’ because I don’t feel old. It is a thing about accepting, but not in a negative way, in a very positive way. We’re all getting older, everyone does. How can we make the best use of that time?”

Seeing themselves on TV

Community TV manager Tom Moore says viewers like Schimpff’s shows because they see themselves in it. That’s also the case with the other shows hosted by residents.

“When I have residents involved in TV production,” he said, “it truly becomes public TV because they can voice things from their perspective, which myself and the staff may not be able to adequately do.”

Residents participate in reading announcement and the daily newscasts. They are creating shows that cover a wide variety of topics, from history and careers to fitness and hobbies.

“We have shows that talk about residents and their pets,” Moore said. “We can easily highlight residents’ pets, but we also want to talk about how to take care of a pet as you get older, both the pet and ourselves, to take care of a pet while living in a community with 2,000 people. We do a program that looks at people’s apartments. People love to go behind the doors of other people’s homes and see what’s in there. We have programs where we interview our residents and staff. We do garden tours because the residents have their own gardens here, whether it’s outside of their patios of their apartments. Or we have a public space where you can grow gardens, where if you want to grow vegetables, you can do that. So we tour those gardens with that resident and show people what the gardens look like and give them some gardening tips also.”

Exploring the world

The environment at Charlestown invites new show ideas.

“We’re open to almost everything,” Moore said. “So if a resident comes to me and says, ‘You should do a program about something,’ I will often say, ‘Will you help me with that?’”

That’s what happened when Eugenia High, a former social worker, moved to the community a couple of years ago.

“I told him that travel is my passion,” she said. “That’s when he said, ‘Well, maybe you might want to use a video camera to record some of your trips and you could share it with other residents here.’”

So she learned to use a video camera. On each trip, High explores on a certain theme. On her recent trip to Iceland, for example, she focused on nature, while in Mongolia, she was attracted to culture and traditions.

“We went to one place in Iceland where the tectonic plates come together. And we were able to look down that reef and it was scary. In Mongolia, we visited a school or a cultural center where they teach children about traditional values and culture, like dancing and playing music on traditional instruments.”

High is now preparing to host another show that’s also about traveling.

“What I will be doing is interviewing residents who have gone on different trips, and I’ll be asking them questions about maybe why they chose that trip? What happened during the trip?”

Active retirement

Shortly after the Charlestown Retirement Community was founded in 1983, the directors launched the closed circuit TV station, hoping to connect residents. The television channel has evolved over the years and became more popular when residents started to volunteer to help with its programming. The community’s executive director, Clara Parker, says Channel 972 reflects what active retirement can be.

“Retirement living here is not a place where you come and be taken care of, it’s a place to come and live and thrive,” Parker said. “We do have residents who are homebound and can’t get out. So the TV is a way for them to be part of the community, to engage with their neighbors, to experience from a peer’s perspective what’s going on and it makes it relatable for them.”

That’s how Channel 972 keeps the community connected and helps the residents stay active and creative.
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Rubber Robots Could Help People with Weak Muscles

by Mahit

Posted: 03/09/2017