Month: July 2017

White House: Foxconn to Bring 3,000 Manufacturing Jobs to Wisconsin

Posted on by Coeco

Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer and major supplier to Apple Inc., has announced plans to build a $10 billion plant in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, to make LCD display screens.

The company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry and which supplies Apple with screens for the iPhone, made the announcement Wednesday as company executives paid a visit to U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House.

Trump said at the meeting that the Foxconn commitment was a result of his election win. And, in fact, just two days after Trump was inaugurated, Foxconn Chief Executive Terry Gou told reporters his company plans to invest $7 billion in a U.S. factory to make computer displays.

 “If I didn’t get elected, he definitely would not be spending $10 billion,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We are going to have some very, very magnificent decades.”

In addition to Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who said the project will be the largest economic development project in Wisconsin history, were at the White House event.

Foxconn has pledged to invest $10 billion over the next four years to build a factory that will create a projected 3,000 jobs with a potential to add 10,000 more, the company said in a statement.

But Foxconn made a similar pledge for a factory in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 2013, promising it would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a plant to be built there. The deal was widely praised by state and local officials, but the factory was never built.

The Washington Post reported that Gou made similar announcements about planned projects in Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Brazil. In some cases, projects have begun, but fallen far short of the expansive results Gou promised.

Foxconn also has a history of worker safety issues and labor unrest. The company got unwanted international attention in 2010 when, between March and May of that year, 10 workers at Foxconn’s Shenzhen committed suicide. Foxconn’s Shanxi site was the site of a four-hour worker riot in September 2012 that involved some 2,000 people. It was eventually quelled by security personnel.

Apple has defended its supplier, but an audit it requested by the Fair Labor Association found that Foxconn workers were subjected to forced overtime, frequent accidents and unrealistic production quotas.

VOA’s Jim Randle contributed to this report.
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Facebook Funds Harvard Effort to Fight Election Hacking, Propaganda

Posted on by Cobiz

Facebook Inc (FB.O) will provide initial funding for a nonprofit organization that aims to help protect political parties, voting systems and information providers from hackers and propaganda attacks, the world’s largest social network said on Wednesday.

The initiative, dubbed Defending Digital Democracy, is led by the former campaign chairs for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney, and will initially be based at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, which announced the project last week.

Facebook said it hoped additional participants would turn it into a freestanding information-sharing center controlled by its members. Facebook, with 2 billion monthly users, bills itself as a vehicle for political debate and education, but was also used as a major platform to spread fake news and propaganda during the U.S. presidential race.

Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos announced the company’s backing at the opening of the Black Hat information security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. The event, named after the term for malicious hackers, is aimed mainly at corporate and government security professionals.

Stamos declined to say how much money the Facebook would spend.

“Right now we are the founding sponsor, but we are in discussions with other tech organizations,” Stamos said in an interview before the speech. “The goal for our money specifically is to help build a standalone ISAO (Information Sharing and Analysis Organization) that pulls in all the different groups that have some kind of vulnerability.”

The project will be managed by Eric Rosenbach, a former assistant secretary of defense who is co-director of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“Most campaigns don’t have the tools right now to defend themselves from cyber attacks,” Clinton campaign chair Robby Mook said in an email. “Our initiative aims to fill that void and to help both Democratic and Republican campaigns defend themselves with greater information-sharing and security tools.”

“This is a forward-looking and bipartisan effort to tackle a real problem,” said 2012 Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades in an email.

Stamos also urged Black Hat attendees, many of whom are leery of government intrusion, to be more open-minded about helping law enforcement track criminals and terrorists.

Unthinking rejection of official requests could lead to legislation forcing companies to break their own encryption, Stamos warned.

Stamos said he would continue to argue against such steps.

“We’re not going to be effective unless we demonstrate that we have the same goals,” he said. “I want to present our position that strong cryptography is a critical part of building a safe, trustworthy future.”

 
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Peer Educators in Cameroon Promote HIV Testing for Mothers, Babies

Posted on by Cosc

As the world’s AIDS experts meet at a conference this week in Paris, health workers in Cameroon still struggle to identify and treat HIV-positive mothers and babies.

Myriam Anang lost her husband and three-month-old baby two years ago to HIV. Now, Anang works as a peer educator in a government-initiated program to help others become better informed.

She was among the speakers in northern Cameroon at a gathering addressing AIDS and HIV.

Anang said that when she tries to persuade sick villagers to go with their babies for HIV screening, they argue that they are not ill, but bewitched by their relatives. She said she knows three men who died of HIV, yet their wives have refused to take their babies to the hospital, claiming the families are suffering from a spell.

Anang did not have prenatal care. She delivered her baby at a traditional birth attendant’s home. It was only afterward, when she became sick, that she went to a hospital and found out she had HIV.

In 2016, the government found that seven out of 10 women in the northern part of the country were not visiting hospitals when they were pregnant. About a third of those who did go to a hospital never returned for postnatal visits, even if they had tested positive for HIV.

The job of the peer educators is to identify pregnant women in their villages and encourage them to get medical care, even reminding them of their hospital appointments.

The government says that since the start of the program, seven out of 10 pregnant women identified by peer educators now visit a hospital.

Obstacles for care

The results of a mother’s HIV test take a day. However, newborns need a special screening, and the bloodwork can only be processed a thousand kilometers away in the capital Yaounde, says Georgette Wekang, head of HIV Control and People Living with AIDS in Cameroon’s Ministry of Health.

Wekang says it takes between six and seven months for the results to be brought back from Yaounde and that, at times, those results are delivered after the babies have died. In addition, she says, fear of stigma prevents some women from returning with their babies for follow-up appointments.

The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates that in northern Cameroon, 40 percent of HIV-positive children do not receive treatment.

Health officials say it is important to begin treatment as soon as possible after diagnosis.

The government of Cameroon has begun trials with new testing machines to reduce the time parents must wait for a baby’s test results. While antiretroviral drugs are provided for free, patients are requested to pay for laboratory tests.

In northern Cameroon, parents are told they can take their children to the town of Garoua for treatment. However, Mireille Yaki, the medical officer in charge of the hospital, says the facility regularly runs short of the antiretroviral drugs, and many parents stop bringing their children for treatment.
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EU Warns US It May Counter New Sanctions on Russia

Posted on by Coeco

The European Union warned on Wednesday that it was ready to act within days to counter proposed new U.S. sanctions on Russia, saying they would harm the bloc’s energy security.

Sanctions legislation overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday has angered EU officials: they see it as breaking transatlantic unity in the West’s response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Brussels also fears the new sanctions will harm European firms with connections to Russia, and oil and gas projects on which the EU is dependent.

“The U.S. bill could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU’s energy security interests,” EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement issued after a meeting at which European commissioners were united in their views, according to a senior EU official.

“If our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. ‘America First’ cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last,” he said, mentioning President Donald Trump’s guiding slogan.

A EU document prepared for the commissioners, seen by Reuters, laid out the EU’s plans to seek “demonstrable reassurances” that the White House would not use the bill to target EU interests.

The bloc, it says, will also prepare to use an EU regulation allowing it to defend companies against the application of extraterritorial measures by the United States.

If diplomacy fails, Brussels plans to file a complaint at the World Trade Organization. “In addition, the preparation of a substantive response that would deter the U.S. from taking measures against EU companies could be considered,” it says.

However, most measures taken by Brussels would require approval from all 28 EU member governments, which could expose potential differences in individual nations’ relations with Moscow and Washington.

Despite changes to the U.S. bill that took into account some EU concerns, Brussels said the legislation could still hinder upkeep of the gas pipeline network in Russia that feeds into Ukraine and supplies over a quarter of EU needs. The EU says it could also hamper projects crucial to its energy diversification goals, such as the Baltic Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project.

The new sanctions target the disputed Nord Stream 2 project for a new pipeline running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. But the EU note says: “the impact would in reality be much wider.”

A list prepared by the EU executive, seen by Reuters, shows eight projects including those involving oil majors Anglo-Dutch Shell, BP and Italy’s Eni that risk falling foul of the U.S. measures.

Voicing frustration at the fraying in the joint Western approach to Moscow, Juncker said “close coordination among allies” was key to ensuring that curbs on business with the Russian energy, defense and financial sectors, imposed in July 2014, are effective.

EU sources said Juncker told Commissioners the risk to EU interests was collateral damage of a U.S. domestic fight between Trump and U.S. lawmakers.

It was unclear how quickly the U.S. bill would reach the White House for Trump to sign into law or veto. The bill amounts to a rebuke of Trump by requiring him to obtain lawmakers’ permission before easing any sanctions on Moscow.

Rejecting the legislation — which would potentially stymie his wish for improved relations with Moscow — would carry a risk that his veto could be overridden by lawmakers.

Industry concerns

European energy industry sources voiced alarm at the potentially wide-ranging damage of the new U.S. measures.

“This is pretty tough,” one industry source told Reuters.

“We are working with EU officials to see what safeguards can be anticipated to protect our investment and give us certainty.”

Five Western firms are partnered with Russia’s Gazprom in Nord Stream 2: German’s Wintershall and Uniper, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV and France’s Engie.

But EU officials warn the U.S. measures would also hit plans for the LNG plant on the Gulf of Finland in which Shell is partnering with Gazprom.

The EU document shows they might jeopardize Eni’s 50 percent stake in the Blue Stream pipeline from Russia to Turkey as well as the CPC pipeline, carrying Kazakh oil to the Black Sea, involving European groups BG Overseas Holdings, Shell and Eni.

It further warns that BP would be forced to halt some activities with Russian energy major Rosneft.
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Lebanese Rock Singer Urges Men to Champion Women’s Rights in Middle East

Posted on by Corts

The lead singer of a Lebanese rock band, which has courted controversy for its songs dealing with homophobia and sexism, has urged more men to champion women’s rights in the Middle East.

Hamed Sinno, the openly gay frontman of Mashrou’ Leila, also called for more women in politics and for discriminatory laws to be repealed.

“No one is saying that we should arbitrarily just get rid of all men in power and substitute them with women, but there is a question about … why it is that we still have this many issues with women’s representation, with women in government and other rights,” he said.

Mashrou’ Leila, which is on a world tour, has made headlines for singing about subjects that are largely taboo in the Arabic pop scene, including politics, religion, social justice, and sexual freedom.

The group has garnered a loyal following in the Middle East, but has also received death threats on social media and was banned from playing in Jordan last month.

Jordanian parliamentarian Dima Tahboub suggested in media interviews that the ban was linked to Sinno’s homosexuality.

In a statement on Facebook, Mashrou’ Leila said the ban was symptomatic of “the fanatical conservatism that has contributed in making the region increasingly toxic over the last decade”.

Speaking by phone from New York, Sinno told the Thomson Reuters Foundation there was a lot of work to be done in the struggle for gender equality in the Middle East.

He criticized the lack of female representation in government in the region, wage inequality, women’s right to govern their own bodies, and Lebanon’s rape laws, which include a provision that allows a rapist to avoid punishment by marrying his victim.

The 29-year-old American-Lebanese singer said men should celebrate the achievements of leading women in the Middle East and he praised Muslim feminists, including the writers Mona Eltahawy and Maya Mikdashi, for “disturbing patriarchal codes”.

Sinno, who has described his all-male band as “extremely vocal feminists”, also said he was fed up of western stereotyping of Middle Eastern women as “passive”.

The band’s new music video by female Lebanese director Jessy Moussallem – released last week with their song “Roman” – is intended to challenge the way Muslim and Arab women are portrayed, he said.

The video shows dozens of women wearing traditional Islamic dress uniting around a powerful central figure who performs a striking contemporary dance wearing an abaya (loose-fitting robe) and hijab. Sinno said the video was a celebration of Muslim women’s ability to empower each other.

The male members of the band take a backseat in the video. “Having men there not doing anything was basically what the point was,” Sinno added.

 
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From Humble Start, NASA Engineer Uplifts Herself, Others

Posted on by Cosc

Forty-eight years ago this month (July), U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. That image transfixed a little Costa Rican girl as she watched on a neighbor’s TV.  VOA Vero Balderas explains how that moon walk launched Sandra Cauffman’s journey to a leadership role at the U.S. space agency.
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Amazon Goes on Hiring Spree as Labor Market Tightens

Posted on by Coeco

 Amazon has some job openings. Lots of them.

The company said Wednesday that it’s looking to fill more than 50,000 positions across the U.S.

 

It’s planning to make thousands of offers on the spot on Aug. 2, when it opens the doors to potential hires at 10 Amazon.com Inc. shipping sites.

 

There will be more than 10,000 part-time jobs available at sorting centers, and some supporting and managerial positions.

 

The labor market is growing tight with back-to-school and holiday shopping around the corner. Others will be competing for those same hires.

 

The unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, near a 16-year low, yet the average hourly pay rose just 2.5 percent in the past year. The last time unemployment was this low, wages were rising at roughly a 4 percent rate.

 

 
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Twitter No Longer at ‘Death’s Door’ as Earnings Report Approaches

Posted on by Cobiz

Twitter Inc heads toward its quarterly earnings report on Thursday with a stock that has risen more than 40 percent since April when much of Wall Street was ready to write off the tech company.

 

The company’s share price popped after its most recent earnings report in April, when Twitter disclosed better-than-expected user growth.

The number of people on Twitter will be in sharp focus on Thursday, when investors and analysts will see if it has kept up the 6 percent year-over-year growth in monthly active users it reported in April. Twitter said then that it had 328 million users.

“For a company that people thought six months ago was knocking on death’s door and going the way of Myspace and AOL, the double-digit rebound and the continued acceleration in users has really surprised investors,” BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield said.

Twitter shares closed on Tuesday at $19.97, nearly flat on the day but up 41.4 percent since its stock hit an intraday low of $14.12 on April 17.

The S&P 500 information technology index is up 10.6 percent since its April 17 closing price.

The surge of interest is a morale boost for Twitter, which has limped through past earnings announcements, struggled to keep a stable management and suffered unfavorable comparisons to its bigger and more profitable competitor Facebook Inc.

This month, Twitter had a streak of 12 days when its shares closed up.

The business is expected to report quarterly revenue of $536.6 million, according to a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S forecast average. That would be a drop of 10.9 percent from $602 million a year earlier.

What has investors upbeat, though, is the number of people on the service, which public figures including U.S. President Donald Trump use to blast out 140-character messages.

“People are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they start to grow again,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

Other positive signs cited by analysts include co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey purchasing additional shares and co-founder Biz Stone announcing in May his return to Twitter. Ex-banker Ned Segal starts next month as Twitter’s next chief financial officer.

Meanwhile, advertisers and investors have gotten used to Twitter existing as a niche platform, Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser said. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

 

 
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Study: Brain Disease Found in Nearly All Deceased US Football Players

Posted on by Cosc

Tests on deceased former professional American football players showed nearly all of them had a chronic traumatic brain disease, according to scientific research published Tuesday in the JAMA medical journal.

The disease, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is believed to be caused by repeated head trauma and has been known to cause memory loss, disorientation, depression and impaired judgement, among other symptoms.

Of the 202 total deceased former players studied for the report, which included high school, college and professional players, 177 were diagnosed with CTE. National Football League players seemed particularly prone to CTE, with 110 of the 111 former NFL players examined in the study being diagnosed with the disease.

“There’s no question that there’s a problem in football. That people who play football are at risk for this disease,” study author and director of Boston University’s CTE Center Dr. Ann McKee said. “And we urgently need to find answers for not just football players, but veterans and other individuals exposed to head trauma.”

The study marks the most recent research published linking head trauma sustained while playing football to chronic brain injuries, though it is by no means conclusive.

As pointed out in the study, the brains examined for the research were donated by family members of football players who may have exhibited symptoms of chronic brain injury prior to death. This creates a selective sample that may not be representative of all football players.

The NFL released a statement praising the study for its role in advancing the science related to chronic head injuries and said it is working with “a wide range of experts to improve the health of current and former NFL athletes.”

“There are still many unanswered questions relating to the cause, incidence and prevalence of long-term effects of head trauma such as CTE,” the statement read.

Last year, the NFL acknowledged for the first time publicly a link between head blows sustained on the football field and brain disease and agreed to a $1 billion settlement to compensate former players who suffer from head trauma-related injuries.
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Daimler Stands by Diesel Despite Growing Controversy

Posted on by Cosc

German automaker Daimler’s profits barely rose and were short of market expectations as its Mercedes-Benz luxury car division boomed while earnings lagged at its truck, van and bus businesses.

 

The second-quarter results were overshadowed by the growing controversy over diesel technology hanging over the automaker — and the auto industry in general — ahead of a meeting in Germany of carmakers and government officials next week.

 

The Stuttgart-based company reported Wednesday that net profit was up a scant 2 percent compared with a year ago, to 2.51 billion euros ($2.9 billion). Revenue increased 7 percent to 41.16 billion euros ($48 billion).

 

The profit was short of analyst estimates for 2.61 billion as compiled by financial information provider FactSet. On the bright side, the Mercedes division had its best quarter for unit sales ever and 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in operating profit. Mercedes division profits were boosted by strong sales of the E-Class sedan, which is equipped with extensive driver assistance technology, and of the company’s SUVs, which bring high profits per vehicle.

 

But operating earnings fell 13 percent in its truck business, and also lagged at the van and bus divisions.

 

The company reiterated that profits would “increase significantly” once again in 2017. Daimler shares traded 0.1 percent higher at 61.06 euros in Frankfurt.

 

The earnings announcement takes place amid extensive public discussion of the future of diesel and what to do about excessive pollution emissions. The government has summoned carmakers to a diesel summit on Aug. 2 to try to lower pollution levels and ensure the technology has a future. There have been calls for diesel bans in several German cities.

CEO Dieter Zetsche said during a conference call with journalists that the company’s new generation of diesel engines offered lower emissions and that diesel can make an important contribution to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

 

He said he saw “no reason to forego the advantages” of diesel in reaching goals for lowering carbon dioxide emissions. Automakers must meet new, tighter carbon dioxide emissions limits imposed by the European Union by 2021.

 

Daimler has said it will update engine software on 3 million diesel cars to improve their emissions performance and reduce customer uncertainty about the technology. Zetsche said customers were responding positively to the service action.

 

Diesel vehicles need pollution controls to limit emissions of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant that harms people’s health, but they emit less carbon dioxide than do gasoline motors.

 

Der Spiegel reported Friday that German automakers including Daimler had colluded for years on diesel technology and other issues and had agreed to limit the size of the tanks for the urea solution used to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides. The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, is assessing the matter. The company has said it cannot comment on “speculation.”  An antitrust ruling that the companies illegally restrained competition could lead to heavy fines.

 

German prosecutors have searched Daimler offices as part of a probe into possible emissions manipulation, and U.S. authorities have asked Daimler to conduct an internal investigation into its emissions certification procedures. The company said Wednesday it could not answer questions about either investigation.

Diesel was subjected to new scrutiny after Volkswagen was discovered in September 2015 to have equipped 11 million cars with illegal software that cheated on U.S. emissions tests by turning emissions controls on during lab examinations and off during every day driving to improve performance.

The company has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. and agreed to more than $20 billion in civil and criminal settlements and penalties.

 
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US Treads Water on Cyber Policy as Destructive Attacks Mount

Posted on by Cobiz

The Trump administration’s refusal to publicly accuse Russia and others in a wave of politically motivated hacking attacks is creating a policy vacuum that security experts fear will encourage more cyber warfare.

In the past three months, hackers broke into official websites in Qatar, helping to create a regional crisis; suspected North Korean-backed hackers closed down British hospitals with ransomware; and a cyber attack that researchers attribute to Russia deleted data on thousands of computers in the Ukraine.

Yet neither the United States nor the 29-member NATO military alliance have publicly blamed national governments for those attacks. President Donald Trump has also refused to accept conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections using cyber warfare methods to help the New York businessman win.

“The White House is currently embroiled in a cyber crisis of existential proportion, and for the moment probably just wants ‘cyber’ to go away, at least as it relates to politics,” said Kenneth Geers, a security researcher who until recently lived in Ukraine and works at NATO’s think tank on cyber defense. “This will have unfortunate side effects for international cyber security.”

Without calling out known perpetrators, more hacking attacks are inevitable, former officials said.

“I see no dynamics of deterrence,” said ex-White House cyber security officer Jason Healey, now at Columbia University.

The government retreat is underscored by the departure at the end of July of Chris Painter, the official responsible for coordinating U.S. diplomacy on cyber security. No replacement has been named and the future of the position in the State Department is in flux.

Some of Trump’s cyber officials have publicly highlighted a strategy to focus less on building global norms and more on bilateral agreements. Trump and the Kremlin have said Russia and the United States are in discussions on creating a cyber security group.

But at the big Black Hat and Def Con security conferences this week in Las Vegas the U.S. government will have an unusually light footprint. Past government speakers have included a head of the National Security Agency and senior Homeland Security officials.

A session featuring U.S. law enforcement officials discussing the purported theft by Russia of hundreds of millions of Yahoo account credentials was pulled at the last minute. A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the presentation was canceled because the Yahoo expert slated to talk, Deputy Assistant Director Eric Sporre, had been reassigned to run the Tampa FBI office.

The policy vacuum left by the United States is also affecting private security firms, which say they have grown more cautious in publicly attributing cyber attacks to nation-states lest they draw fire from the Trump administration.

Trump suggested in an April interview that the security firm CrowdStrike, which worked on investigating the election hack of the Democratic National Committee, might not be trustworthy because he was told it was controlled by a Ukrainian. It is not.

Cyber policy veterans are particularly alarmed about the lack of U.S. and NATO response to the destructive attack, dubbed NotPetya, in June that struck computers worldwide but was especially harmful for Ukraine, which is in armed conflict with Russia in the east of the country.

Cyber security experts, such as Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a government veteran who advised former President Barack Obama, believe Russia carried out the attack. The Russian defense ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lewis and others predicted that Trump will not publicly accuse Russia, and NATO has only said it appears to be the work of a government agency somewhere.

“If you are not ringing alarm bells in an eloquent way, then I think you’re dropping the ball,” said retired CIA officer Daniel Hoffman, who worked on Russian issues. “When we fail to do enough, that just emboldens them.”

 

 

 
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Origami Robot Can be Folded into a Variety of Shapes

Posted on by Cobiz

Origami – the ancient Japanese art of paper folding – can create cranes whose wings flap and frogs that jump. Engineers are taking the same idea and apply it to robotics. VOA’s Deborah Block reports.
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From Humble Start, NASA Engineer Uplifts Herself and Others

Posted on by Cobiz

Forty-eight years ago this July, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. That image transfixed a little Costa Rican girl as she watched on a neighbor’s TV.  VOA Vero Balderas explains how that moon walk launched Sandra Cauffman’s journey to a leadership role at the U.S. space agency.
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If Funding Stays, HIV Epidemic May Be Put Under Control

Posted on by Cosc

Science seems to be finally starting to win in the war against the human immunodeficiency virus HIV that causes AIDS. But experts gathered at the Paris conference on the deadly disease say proposed cuts in global funding may delay the final blow. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Artist Uses Iraq Refugees, War Veterans in Radio Project

Posted on by Corts

In 2016, an Iraqi-American artist sat down with Bahjat Abdulwahed — the so-called “Walter Cronkite of Baghdad” — with the idea of launching a radio project that would be part documentary, part radio play and part variety show.

 

Abdulwahed was the voice of Iraqi radio from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, but came to Philadelphia as a refugee in 2009 after receiving death threats from insurgents.

 

“He represented authority and respectability in relationship to the news through many different political changes,” said Elizabeth Thomas, curator of “Radio Silence,” a public art piece that resulted from the meeting with Abdulwahed.

 

Thomas had invited artist Michael Rakowitz to Philadelphia to create a project for Mural Arts Philadelphia, which has been expanding its public art reach from murals into new and innovative spaces.

 

After nearly five years of research, Rakowitz distilled his project into a radio broadcast that would involve putting the vivacious and caramel-voiced Abdulwahed back on the air, and using Philadelphia-area Iraqi refugees and local Iraq war veterans as his field reporters. It would feature Iraqi music, remembrances of the country and vintage weather reports from a happier time in Iraq.

 

“One of the many initial titles was “Desert Home Companion,” Rakowitz said, riffing on “A Prairie Home Companion,” the radio variety show created by Garrison Keillor.

Rakowitz recorded an initial and very informal session with Abdulwahed in his living room in January 2016. Two weeks later, Abdulwahed collapsed. He had to have an emergency tracheostomy and was on life support until he died seven months later.

 

At Abdulwahed’s funeral, his friends urged Rakowitz to continue with the project, to show how much of the country they left behind was slipping away and to help fight cultural amnesia.

 

Rakowitz recalibrated the project, which became “Radio Silence,” a 10-part radio broadcast with each episode focusing on a synonym of silence, in homage to Abdulwahed.

 

“The voice of Baghdad had lost his voice,” Rakowitz said, calling him a “narrator of Iraq’s history.”

 

It will be hosted by Rakowitz and features fragments of that first recording session with Abdulwahed, as well as interviews with his wife and other Iraqi refugees living in Philadelphia.

 

Rakowitz and Thomas also worked with Warrior Writers, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia that helps war veterans work through their experiences using writing and art.

 

The first episode, on speechlessness, will launch Aug. 6. It will be broadcast on community radio stations across the country through Prometheus Radio Project.

One participant is Jawad Al Amiri, an Iraqi refugee who came to the United States in the 1980s. He said silence in Iraq has been a way of life for many decades.

 

“Silence is a way of survival. Silence is a decree by the Baath regime, not to tell what you see in front of your eyes. Silence is synonymous with fear. If you tell, you will be put through agony,” he said at a preview Tuesday of the live broadcast. He said he saw his own sister poisoned and die and wasn’t allowed to speak of it.

 

When he came to the U.S. in 1981, his father told him: “We send you here for education and to speak for the millions of Iraqis in the land where freedom of speech is practiced.”

 

Lawrence Davidson is an Army veteran who served during the Iraq War and works with Warrior Writers also contributed to the project. He said the project is a place to exchange ideas and honestly share feelings with refugees and other veterans.

 

The project kicks off on July 29 with a live broadcast performance on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall — what Rakowitz calls the symbolic home of American democracy. It will feature storytelling, food from refugees and discussions from the veterans with Warrior Writers.
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US Startups Led by Women Attract Sliver of Venture Cash, Study Finds

Posted on by Coeco

Promising startups in the United States receive a shred of the billions of dollars investors pump into them when led by women, a major study found Tuesday.

Between 2011 and 2013, companies with a female CEO received $1.5 billion of the $51 billion that venture capital investors poured into those they deemed promising, or a mere 3 percent of available dollars, according to the study by U.S. researchers.

They also found that all-male teams were four times more likely to win venture funding than teams counting at least one woman among them.

Venture capital is money invested in small businesses thought to have high-return potential.

The findings published in the journal Venture Capital confirmed a pattern of historically low levels of venture funds flowing into businesses led by women.

A prior milestone study, the Diana Project, had found that venture capital injected into female-led companies never exceeded 4 percent of total funds invested between the early 1950s and the turn of the century.

In the new study, researchers examined nearly 7,000 U.S. companies that received venture capital between 2011 and 2013. They then identified companies with women on their executive teams.

‘Not in the right network’

Just why female-led companies were recipients of less venture capital raised questions about the industry’s inner workings, said co-author Candida Brush, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in Massachusetts.

“What is the disconnect?” Brush said in a phone interview.

“My hypothesis on the disconnect is that women are not in the right network [or] they’re either being put through a tighter screen,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The report’s authors, who include other Babson College professors and an entrepreneurial consultant, found there was no significant performance difference between companies whose CEOs were women and those whose leaders were men.

The ratio of male to female startup entrepreneurs is fairly equal, according to the 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Global Report.

But the venture capital industry in the United States, where most leading venture capital firms are located, is 92 percent male, said Brush.

“Those are things that have to be looked at,” she said.

Earlier this month, prominent Silicon Valley investor Dave McClure resigned from his position as a partner at the venture capital firm 500 Startups following allegations of sexual harassment.

McClure’s resignation came after entrepreneur Sarah Kunst accused the investor of misconduct in a New York Times story.
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WSJ: Trump Names Yellen, Cohn as Possible Fed Chair Picks

Posted on by Coeco

U.S. President Donald Trump named on Tuesday two possible candidates to run the Federal Reserve over the next few years: current Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn, according to an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Yellen, whose four-year term expires in February, “is in the running, absolutely,” to be renominated, Trump was quoted as saying. In addition, Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president who is now director of the National Economic Council, “certainly would be in the mix,” he said.

Trump said he probably would make the announcement at the end of the year, the paper reported. He was also quoted saying that there are “two or three” other contenders, though he declined to name them.

Any Fed nominee would need Senate confirmation.

Trump’s comments could sharpen speculation over who will take the helm of the world’s most influential central bank, which is leading a global shift toward tighter monetary policy.

Earlier this month, Politico reported that Yellen was increasingly unlikely to serve another term, while Cohn was the top candidate.

Cohn, a Democrat who is managing the White House’s search for candidates, did not work on Trump’s campaign and only got to know him after the November election. “I’ve gained great respect for Gary working with him,” the paper quoted Trump as saying on Tuesday.

Yellen took over from Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in February 2014 with the U.S. economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis still on shaky ground. As unemployment has since fallen, she has overseen four interest rate hikes and aims for at least one more before the end of this year.

“I like her. I like her demeanor. I think she’s done a good job,” Trump was quoted as saying. “I’d like to see rates stay low. She’s historically been a low-interest-rate person.”

During last year’s presidential election campaign, Trump had accused the Fed of keeping rates low to help President Barack Obama, saying the Fed had created a “false economy” and that rates should change.

In an April interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump did not rule out a second term for Yellen.
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Stories of Survival, Women to Highlight Toronto Film Festival

Posted on by Corts

Stories of survival in turbulent times, including David Gordon Green’s world premiere of Stronger about a victim of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, are among the highlights in store at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father, set in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge reign, and horror mystery Mother! by Darren Aronofsky, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, were also among the films announced Tuesday in the first look at the festival’s lineup for 2017.

Audiences can also catch social satire Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne and starring Matt Damon, and George Clooney-directed crime-comedy Suburbicon. Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical The Shape of Water will also screen.

The Toronto event, which kicks off September 7, has become one of the world’s largest film festivals, known for debuting critically acclaimed films that have later won Academy Awards for best picture.

Stronger stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeff Bauman, who lost both his legs during the Boston Marathon, and Tatiana Maslany as his girlfriend.

“It’s a moment of incredible transformation, disruption, change, challenge, so I think you’ll see that reflected in the films we’re showing,” said Piers Handling, chief executive and director of the film festival, now in its 42nd year.

“One of the ideas that struck me is the whole notion of survival,” he said about the films announced so far. “It seems to be a topic that a lot of people are thinking about.”

Hany Abu-Assad’s The Mountain Between Us, starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, is about two strangers stranded on a mountain after surviving a plane crash.

Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier’s Long Time Running is a documentary about the 2016 tour of The Tragically Hip, a Canadian rock band, as frontman Gord Downie battles terminal brain cancer.

Organizers did not announce which film would kick off the 10-day festival, but said the world premiere of C’est La Vie! by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, the duo behind The Intouchables, would close.

Women will also grab the festival spotlight, with Haifaa Al Mansour’s Mary Shelley and Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston & the Wonder Women having their world premieres in Toronto.

“We don’t program for themes, but as you begin to step back … and you look at the films that you’ve chosen, some things begin to emerge,” Cameron Bailey, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview.

The festival will run until September 17.
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Apple CEO Promised to Build 3 ‘Big’ Plants in US, Trump Tells WSJ

Posted on by Coeco

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has committed to build three big manufacturing plants in the United States, the Wall Street Journal quoted U.S. President Donald Trump as saying.

“I spoke to [Cook], he’s promised me three big plants — big, big, big,” Trump told the Journal in an interview on Tuesday.

Trump didn’t elaborate on where those plants would be located or when they would be built, the paper reported.

Cook said in May that Apple planned to create a $1 billion fund to invest in U.S. companies that perform advanced manufacturing. He also said the company intended to fund programs that could include teaching people how to write computer code to create apps.

Apple came under fire from Trump during his campaign because it makes most of its products in China.

“We’re gonna get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries,” Trump had said in a speech in January last year.

Apple, on its part, had been making disclosures to highlight how it had been contributing to job creation in the United States.

Cook said in February that Apple spent $50 billion in 2016 with its U.S. suppliers.

The world’s largest company by market valuation had also claimed that it created 2 million jobs in the United States, 80,000 of which are directly at Apple and the rest coming from suppliers and developers for the company’s app ecosystem.

Trump’s comments on Tuesday were some of the first he has made regarding Apple’s manufacturing since assuming the presidency.

“I said you know, Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I won’t consider my administration an economic success,” the Journal quoted Trump as saying.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump also said that Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, plans to build a big plant in the United States and is “strongly considering” putting it in Wisconsin, the Journal reported.

Foxconn said last month it plans to invest more than $10 billion in a display-making factory in the United States.
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Colombian Officials Got $27M in Odebrecht Bribes, Prosecutor says

Posted on by Coeco

Colombian officials received $27 million in bribes from Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, more than double previously thought, as the company sought to win a road-building contract, Colombia’s attorney general said on Tuesday.

As fallout from a massive corruption scandal continues to bite Odebrecht, Attorney General Nestor Humberto Martinez said bribes paid for the contract to build a 528-km (328-mile) highway were much more than the $11 million originally estimated.

Martinez said criminal charges for money laundering would be filed against two Brazilian citizens, one Portuguese and three Colombians. He will also ask the Supreme Court of Justice to investigate five congressional lawmakers.

Seven people, including a former senator and an ex-vice minister of transport, have been jailed for involvement in the corruption scandal.

Odebrecht’s bribes in Colombia spilled over into the election campaigns of President Juan Manuel Santos, who in March acknowledged that his 2010 election campaign received illegal payments. He said he had no knowledge at the time of the payments.

Odebrecht allegedly paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes in association with infrastructure projects in 12 countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela, between 2002 and 2016.
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Trump Administration Cuts Short Anti-teen Pregnancy Grants

Posted on by Cosc

Dozens of teen pregnancy prevention programs deemed ineffective by President Donald Trump’s administration will lose more than $200 million in funding following a surprise decision to end five-year grants after only three years.

The administration’s assessment is in sharp contrast with that of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which credited the program with contributing to an all-time low rate of teen pregnancies.

Rachel Fey of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy said Tuesday that grantees under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program were given no explanation when notified this month their awards will end next June. The program, begun under President Barack Obama’s administration, receives about $100 million a year.

“We know so little about the rationale behind cutting short these grants,” said Fey, who said the teen birth rate has fallen by about 40 percent nationally since the program went into effect in 2010. The focus of the program is on evidence-based interventions aimed at preventing teen pregnancy. It does not pay for or provide contraceptives.

Competing outcomes

A Health and Human Services spokesman said late Tuesday that an evaluation of the first round of grants released last fall found only four of 37 programs studied showed lasting positive impacts. Most of the other programs had no effect or were harmful, the department said, including three that it said increased the likelihood that teens would have unprotected sex and become pregnant.

“Given the very weak evidence of positive impact of these programs, the Trump administration, in its … 2018 budget proposal, did not recommend continued funding for the TPP program,” the department statement said.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists urged the administration “not to turn back the clock” on progress.

“It’s as though the evidence and the facts don’t matter,” ACOG President Dr. Haywood Brown said.

The North Texas Alliance to Reduce Unintended Pregnancy in Teens, one of more than 80 current grantees around the country, will lose just under $1 million a year, about three-quarters of its budget, Executive Director Terry Goltz Greenberg said. The program worked with more than 1,700 kids last year in high-poverty neighborhoods where the teen birth rates are three to five times the national average, she said.

“Most of the evidence-based programs are not just talking about contraception but are putting it in the context of bigger goals in life, such as, `Where do you want to be in three years?’ `How does a kid fit into that,”‘ she said.

Elizabeth Gomez, 44, said the Texas program’s after-school classes taught her how to discuss difficult topics with her three daughters in a respectful way that made them listen and respond.

“For Hispanics, it’s difficult, because it’s a taboo to talk about sex,” she said.

A letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price signed by 37 Democratic senators called the decision short-sighted. Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grantees served a half-million youths from 2010 to 2014 and were on their way to serve an additional 1.2 million through 2019 when the grant was scheduled to end, the senators said. Their letter asked Price for an explanation and questioned the timing of the notifications in advance of congressional action on fiscal year 2018 appropriations.

‘Line of communication’

Two of Shawanda Brown-Cannon’s children take classes once a week through a southwest Georgia program called Quest for Change which, according to its director, will lose about 87 percent of its total budget.

The classes prompted both her 17-year-old daughter, Amaya, and her 13-year-old son, Chandler, to talk with their mother about what they’ve learned, for instance a Valentine’s Day class on how to show love without sexual activity.

“It opens up a line of communication,” Brown-Cannon said.

Angelina Jackson, a 17-year-old high school senior, is a member of Quest for Change. She helps run classroom lessons and organize events as a member of the youth leadership council focused on her school.

“Some people are not able to talk to their parents at home about the stuff that Quest does,” Jackson said. “They provided a comfortable environment where people could ask questions or talk about their concerns.”

Vermont-based Youth Catalytics was informed July 5 that its five-year, $2.8 million federal grant had been cut off June 30, the end of the first year. The grant provided about half of the organization’s annual budget. As recently as July 3, people from the organization had been working with HHS officials about the details of the program, said Meagan Downey, the group’s director of special projects. The grant covered about half of her salary.

Downey said her organization was one of five grant recipients nationwide that lost their funding immediately. Others were given until July 1, 2018, to prepare for the loss of the funds.

Leaders of the HOPE Buffalo program always had an eye toward establishing partnerships with city and community leaders that would enable its work to continue beyond the five-year lifespan of the grant, which provided $2 million a year, Project Director Stan Martin said. With less time and less funding, he said, “our efforts were just accelerated.”
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In ‘Detroit,’ Bigelow Revisits Still-burning Flames of 1967

Posted on by Corts

Kathryn Bigelow hasn’t forgotten the out-of-body experience she felt when she won the best director Academy Award for her 2009 The Hurt Locker. At that moment, she became the first woman to win the award. None have been nominated since.

“The gender inequity that exists in the industry, I thought it would maybe be the beginning of that inequity not being quite so pronounced,” said Bigelow in a recent interview. “Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. And I don’t know why that is. I just don’t know. But I sort of feel like on behalf of all the women who might yearn to tell challenging, relevant, topical, entertaining stories, that I was standing there for them. And that emboldened me.”

Boldness is not a fleeting quality for Bigelow. Since The Hurt Locker, she has, with the reporter-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal, continued to craft an ambitious, intrepid kind of cinema that marries visceral big-screen immersion with deeply researched journalism. Their previous collaboration, the Osama bin Laden-hunt thriller Zero Dark Thirty, proved an unparalleled flashpoint in both Hollywood and Washington, prompting debates over its representation of the role torture played in the manhunt.

“I’m the messenger. I didn’t invent the message,” she said. “I’m just compelled to make these challenging pieces. And I’m compelled by stories that are informational, that tell you what you didn’t know going in — that I didn’t know going in.”

Incident amid 1967 riots

Her latest film, Detroit, is a no less challenging dive into the violent soul of America, but this time, she’s on the home front. The film, also from a script from Boal, is about the Algiers Motel incident, a relatively little-remembered event that took place amid the 1967 Detroit riots — an uprising sparked by a police raid of an after-hours club — and a reaction to a long history of oppression of the city’s African-Americans. The riots, among the largest in U.S. history, left 43 dead and led to the deployment of thousands of national guardsmen to a Detroit that raged in fire and fury.

Detroit seeks to show the historical context and individual reality of the riots, which many say should be called a “rebellion.” Within the chaos was the particularly heinous act at the Algiers Motel. Three unarmed black males were killed in an encounter with police, and nine others (seven of them black) were beaten and terrorized. Three officers were charged with murder, as well as other crimes, but found not guilty.

Boal approached Bigelow about making a film about the incident shortly after a St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014 prompted the protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The relevance of the Detroit tale, Bigelow said, fueled her motivation for making it.

“There was something sadly, tragically contemporaneous about this story,” Bigelow said. ” ‘How can this conversation happen in a meaningful way?’ is what I walk away asking. I’m just telling this story in as authentic and truthful and honest a way as we could, given the information that is out there.”

Swept into a nightmare

The story for Boal began with Cleveland Larry Reed. During the riots, Reed (played by Algee Smith in the film) was an 18-year-old singer in the Dramatics, an up-and-coming Motown group whose concert was canceled that night. He and another bandmate hunkered down at the Algiers, only to find themselves swept into a nightmare. Reed, who met with Boal and later with Smith, never recovered from the ordeal; he gave up professional music, singing instead in church choirs.

“In the summer of 2014, I was drawn to this story after meeting Larry Reed and hearing him recount what had happened to him 50 years ago, and then, later on, hearing from other survivors of the Algiers,” Boal wrote in an email. “My idea for the movie was driven from the start by real people, being moved by the fine-grained particulars of what they went through.”

Smith, a 22-year-old actor from Saginaw, Michigan, described the set as a profoundly emotional one where the cast merely needed to “log on to our social medias for inspiration.” 

“We were shooting a movie about history but it felt like today,” he said.

He and other actors playing the terrorized victims weren’t given scripts for much of the production so that their reactions of shock and horror were more genuine.

“She wanted us to have a tomorrow’s-not-promised type of mindset,” Smith said. “We just got there and then the first day it was just total chaos. It was: ‘Put your hands on the wall.’ Screaming. I’m getting lightheaded because I’m breathing so hard in between takes. It was emotionally and physically draining every day for those first two weeks. Will Poulter (who plays the ringleader officer) broke down on set. In the middle of a scene, he just started crying. The whole set just stopped. Everyone stopped. Will went outside and I put my arm around him, but I just started crying, too.”

Not the perfect storyteller

Some may say Detroit is a story that ought to have been told by black filmmakers. Bigelow, who has spent her career either ignoring or exploding gender stereotypes, understands such criticism.

“Am I the perfect person to tell that story? Absolutely not,” Bigelow said. “But I felt honored to tell this story. It’s a story that’s been out of circulation for 50 years. And if it can encourage a conversation about race in this country, I would find that extremely encouraging and important.”

Her films, she said, are about creating empathy and, she hopes, dialogue. Earlier this year, she co-directed an eight-minute virtual reality film about park rangers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers’ Shoes.

“Institutionalized racism is at the heart of the piece,” Bigelow said of Detroit. “I think the purpose of art is to agitate for change. But you can’t change anything unless you’re aware of it.”
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