U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States had no alternative but to defeat an epidemic of opioid drug use, which kills more than 100 Americans daily. Speaking from New Jersey, Trump promised measures to combat the “scurge,” including tougher prosecution of drug-related crimes, better controls at the southern U.S. border. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has a report.
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Month: August 2017
Scientists Find Potential Building Block of Life on Titan
When astronomers look for life, they generally look for water. The saying goes that where there is water, there is life. But some NASA researchers think we may be able to expand that saying to include any liquid, even the methane lakes on Saturn’s moon, Titan. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Transgender Kids Blossom in Summer Camp Just for Them
Many summer camps in the U.S. focus on a single activity – baseball, computers. Many target specific groups – Jewish or Christian camps. Some are available for children with physical disabilities. According to the VOA’s Faith Lapidus, a camp in California is serving a growing population: transgender children, aged four to twelve-years-old.
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‘Despacito’ Opening Doors for Spanish Songs on English Radio
“Despacito” is easily the song of the summer with the success of the hit stretching beyond Spanish-speaking audiences to make it the year’s most recognized song in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s song, which has topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 13 weeks and counting, set a record as the most streamed song on Spotify and is the first YouTube video to reach 3 billion views. The song also has opened the door for other Spanish tracks to get airplay on American radio.
“The beauty behind (‘Despacito’) is that it was never meant to be a crossover song. When I sat down with my guitar to write this song, I just wanted to write a great song that people would automatically connect to, and dance to, and really enjoy, so it was so nice to see how — in a very organic way — the whole world just connected to it,” Fonsi said in an interview from Spain, where he was set to perform the worldwide hit.
“It wasn’t really forced, it wasn’t gimmicky … it’s sort of an accident if you will,” he said. “There’s something magical in that melody and in the beat and in the production … and people in Russia and Australia and U.K. and France and U.S. and South America — everyone’s just dancing.”
Song about falling in love
“Despacito” is the first mostly Spanish song to top the Hot 100 since Los del Rio’s “Macarena” in 1996. The smooth jam about slowly falling in love has become a pop culture phenomenon since its release in January, selling more than 7.7 million tracks — based on digital sales, audio streaming and video streaming — according to Nielsen Music. It has spent 27 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin songs charts, and while some believe Justin Bieber helped make the song a hit when he jumped on its remix, it’s quite the opposite.
“Technically, the reason why Justin Bieber discovered the song was because it was so popular already,” said Rocio Guerra, Spotify’s head of Latin culture.
“Despacito” had reached the Top 40 on the Hot 100, and following the Bieber remix — which includes the pop star singing in Spanish —the song reached No. 1. The remix spent 14 weeks on top of Spotify’s global chart until last week when it was supplanted by J. Balvin’s “Mi Gente” — another Spanish song finding success on U.S. radio and the pop charts.
‘Mi Gente’ the next big hit?
“Mi Gente,” a collaboration with Willy Williams, is No. 30 on the Hot 100 after just a month on the chart.
“I don’t think this is just something that happened overnight … it’s something the Latin music industry and creative community, we’ve been working so long toward this direction, and I don’t think specifically only in the U.S., it’s a global momentum,” Guerra said. “Platforms like Spotify are giving access to the same songs at the same time everywhere, so that’s allowing us to have more (Latin) artists on the (global) chart.”
“There has been a domino effect,” added Guerra, who said there are currently eight Latin songs on Spotify’s global chart, which includes 50 songs. “The more songs that we put on the global chart, people are getting more used to listening to songs in a different language.”
She said that Spotify has spent the last two years pushing Latin music in regions outside Latin America: “We’re proactively trying to push its consumption in countries like Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the U.K. (and) obviously the U.S.”
And there’s proof it is working. Daddy Yankee became the first Latin artist to reach No. 1 on Spotify in June, taking the spot from Ed Sheeran, and the Latin genre is third overall globally on Spotify, just behind pop and hip-hop.
Latin beat on English hits
The Latin beat can be heard on current English-language hits as well, including DJ Khaled and Rihanna’s “Wild Thoughts,” which samples Carlos Santana’s 1999 megahit “Maria, Maria,” and French Montana’s “Unforgettable,” which has a reggaeton vibe (J. Balvin appears on its Latin remix).
Fonsi said he doesn’t want to take credit for the success of Latin music on pop radio, but knows “Despacito” has helped set the mood.
“I hope that it’s a door that will stay open for a long time. I think it’s bigger than just this summer. I think it was (over)due for Latin music to get this attention and I love the fact that we’re all collaborating in different languages,” he said. “It’s not about where you’re from or what language you’re singing in, it’s about bringing cultures together and different styles, and it’s good for music in general.”
‘I think this is a hit’
Erika Ender, who co-wrote “Despacito” with Fonsi at his home in September 2015, said the song felt special when they created it.
“There are some songs that come with a special spark, and I think it’s got it. … We looked at each other and said, ‘I think this is a hit,’” she recalled.
Ender also credits the song’s success with Fonsi’s decision to get out of his comfort zone.
“People used to see him like a (balladeer) or a pop singer, and he went out of his way to bring something new to the audience,” she said.
your ads here!Trump Promises to ‘Win’ Fight Against Opioid Abuse in US
President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that the U.S. would “win” the battle against the heroin and opioid plague, but he stopped short of declaring a national emergency as his handpicked commission had recommended.
Trump spoke at an event he had billed as a “major briefing” on the opioid crisis during a two-week “working vacation” at his private golf club in New Jersey. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser Jared Kushner and first lady Melania Trump were among the attendees.
“The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place,” the president said at his golf club in Bedminster. “I’m confident that by working with our health care and law enforcement experts, we will fight this deadly epidemic and the United States will win.”
He said federal drug prosecutions had dropped but promised he would “be bringing them up rapidly.”
Last week, the presidential opioid commission, chaired by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, urged Trump to “declare a national emergency” and noted that “America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks.”
It recommended, among other things, expanding treatment facilities across the country, educating and equipping doctors about the proper way to prescribe pain medication, and equipping all police officers with the anti-overdose remedy Naloxone.
Trump did not address any of the recommendations. Instead, the president repeated that his administration was “very, very tough on the Southern border, where much of this comes in.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33,000 U.S. deaths in 2015, the latest year for which data are available, and estimates show the death rate has continued rising.
But a new University of Virginia study released Monday concluded the mortality rates were 24 percent higher for opioids and 22 percent higher for heroin than had been previously reported.
Some information for this report came from AP.
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Prospective Opioid Crisis Solutions Vie for Grants in Ohio
A call by Republican Governor John Kasich for scientific breakthroughs to help solve the opioid crisis is drawing interest from dozens of groups with ideas including remote-controlled medication dispensers, monitoring devices for addicts, mobile apps and pain-relieving massage gloves.
The state has received project ideas from 44 hospitals, universities and various medical device, software and pharmaceutical developers that plan to apply for up to $12 million in competitive research-and-development grants. The grant money is being combined with $8 million for an Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge, a competition similar to one spearheaded by the National Football League to address concussions.
Research grant-seekers in Ohio, which leads the nation in opioid-related overdose deaths, proposed solutions aimed at before or after an overdose.
Tactus Therapeutics, for example, seeks $2.2 million to develop an improved tamper-resistant opioid, while other applicants seek money to pursue technological advances in the administration of naloxone, a drug used as an overdose antidote. One is a “rescue mask.”
Other grant-seekers propose migrating away from pills altogether to find new ways of fighting pain.
In the Ohio city known for innovations in rubber and plastics, the University of Akron is looking to polymers. It seeks $2 million to advance development of implantable therapeutic meshes loaded with non-opioid pain medications capable of alleviating postsurgical pain for up to 96 hours.
Another company, Cleveland-based Innovative Medical Equipment, seeks $810,000 to make engineering improvements to a medical apparatus that uses heat to fight head pain, headaches, muscle and joint pain, and pain after surgery.
Neural therapies, virtual reality
Additional proposals look to neural therapies, electrical impulses, even virtual reality as ways to overcome or outwit pain. Osteopath Benjamin Bring, of suburban Columbus, seeks $75,000 to develop a prototype of a special glove that helps relieve chronic muscle pain through massage therapy.
Some proposals are specific to particular medical issues, such as chronic low back pain or amputations; others are focused on specific groups, including mothers, children, veterans and dental patients.
Many applicants propose ways of using smart technology to prevent overdose deaths by approaching the problem through the patient, doctor or community.
Ideas include apps for better coordinating medical treatment or addiction care and wearable devices that would speed help in cases of a potential overdose by linking people at risk of addiction with family, emergency workers and other caregivers.
Ascend Innovations seeks $1.5 million to develop an app and sensor system using technology contributed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The app would allow patients to regularly report their medications, pain levels and states of mind, while the sensor would be gathering health indicators, including respiration, heart rate, eye tracking and pupil dilation, and sending them to a central location.
Another firm, iMed MD, seeks $150,000 to continue development of a secure, programmable medication dispensing system that allows doctors or hospitals to remotely limit the amount of medication a patient can receive at any one time.
The Third Frontier Commission selected NineSigma on Tuesday to manage the technology challenge. The Cleveland firm has managed similar competitions at the federal level for NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.
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Glen Campbell, Superstar Entertainer of 1960s and ’70s, Dies
Glen Campbell, the grinning, high-pitched entertainer whose dozens of hit singles included “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Wichita Lineman” and whose appeal spanned country, pop, television and movies, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 81.
Campbell’s family said the singer died Tuesday morning in Nashville and publicist Sandy Brokaw confirmed the news. No cause was immediately given. Campbell announced in June 2011 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and that it was in its early stages at that time.
“Glen is one of the greatest voices there ever was in the business and he was one of the greatest musicians,” said Dolly Parton in a video statement. “He was a wonderful session musician as well. A lot of people don’t realize that. But he could play anything and he could play it really well.”
Tributes poured in on social media. “Thank you Glen Campbell for sharing your talent with us for so many years May you rest in peace my friend You will never be forgotten,” wrote Charlie Daniels. One of Campbell’s daughters, Ashley, said she was heartbroken. “I owe him everything I am, and everything I ever will be. He will be remembered so well and with so much love,” she wrote on Twitter.
In the late 1960s and well into the ’70s, the Arkansas native seemed to be everywhere, known by his boyish face, wavy hair and friendly tenor. He won five Grammys, sold more than 45 million records, had 12 gold albums and 75 chart hits, including No. 1 songs with “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Southern Nights.”
His performance of the title song from “True Grit,” a 1969 release in which he played a Texas Ranger alongside Oscar winner John Wayne, received an Academy Award nomination. He twice won album of the year awards from the Academy of Country Music and was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Seven years later, he received a Grammy for lifetime achievement.
His last record was “Adios,” which came out in June and features songs that Campbell loved to sing but never recorded, including tunes made famous by Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash. Ashley Campbell, also a musician, made a quest appearance and said making the album was “therapeutic.”
Campbell was among a wave of country crossover stars that included Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Kenny Rogers, and like many of his contemporaries, he enjoyed success on television. Campbell had a weekly audience of some 50 million people for the “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” on CBS from 1969 to 1972. He gained new fans decades later when the show, featuring his cheerful greeting “Hi I’m Glen Campbell,” was rerun on cable channel CMT.
“I did what my Dad told me to do — ‘Be nice, son, and don’t cuss. And be nice to people.’ And that’s the way I handled myself, and people were very, very nice to me,” Campbell told The Telegraph in 2011.
He released more than 70 of his own albums, and in the 1990s recorded a series of gospel CDs. A 2011 farewell album, “Ghost On the Canvas,” included contributions from Jacob Dylan, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins.
The documentary “Glen Campbell … I’ll Be Me” came out in 2014. The film about Campbell’s 2011-12 farewell tour offers a poignant look at his decline from Alzheimer’s while showcasing his virtuoso guitar chops that somehow continued to shine as his mind unraveled. The song “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” won a Grammy for best country song in 2015 and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song.
Campbell’s musical career dated back to the early years of rock `n roll. He toured with the Champs of “Tequila” fame when the group included two singers who formed the popular ’70s duo Seals & Crofts. He was part of the house band for the ABC TV show “Shindig!” and a member of Phil Spector’s “Wrecking Crew” studio band that played on hits by the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers and the Crystals. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In the Night,” the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.”
“We’d get the rock ‘n’ roll guys and play all that, then we’d get Sinatra and Dean Martin,” Campbell told The Associated Press in 2011. “That was a kick. I really enjoyed that. I didn’t want to go nowhere. I was making more money than I ever made just doing studio work.”
A sharecropper’s son, and one of 12 children, he was born outside of Delight, Arkansas, and grew up revering country music stars such as Hank Williams.
“I’m not a country singer per se,” Campbell once said. “I’m a country boy who sings.”
He was just 4 when he learned to play guitar. As a teenager, anxious to escape a life of farm work and unpaid bills, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to join his uncle’s band and appear on his uncle’s radio show. By his early 20s, he had formed his own group, the Western Wranglers, and moved to Los Angeles. He opened for the Doors and sang and played bass with the Beach Boys as a replacement for Brian Wilson, who in the mid-’60s had retired from touring to concentrate on studio work. In 1966, Campbell played on the Beach Boys’ classic “Pet Sounds” album.
“I didn’t go to Nashville because Nashville at that time seemed one-dimensional to me,” Campbell told the AP. “I’m a jazzer. I just love to get the guitar and play the hell out of it if I can.”
By the late ’60s, he was a performer on his own, an appearance on Joey Bishop’s show leading to his TV breakthrough. Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers saw the program and asked Campbell if he’d like to host a summertime series, “The Summer Brothers Smothers Show.” Campbell shied from the Smothers Brothers’ political humor, but still accepted the offer. He was out of the country when the first episode aired.
“The whole lid just blew off,” Campbell told the AP. “I had never had anything like that happen to me. I got more phone calls. It was awesome. For the first couple of days I was like how do they know me? I didn’t realize the power of television.”
His guests included country acts, but also the Monkees, Lucille Ball, Cream, Neil Diamond and Ella Fitzgerald.
He was married four times and had eight children. As he would confide in painful detail, Campbell suffered for his fame and made others suffer as well. He drank heavily, used drugs and indulged in a turbulent relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker in the early 1980s.
He is survived by his wife, Kim; their three children, Cal, Shannon and Ashley; and his children from previous marriages, Debby, Kelli, Travis, Kane and Dillon. He had 10 grandchildren.
In late 2003, he was arrested near his home in Phoenix after causing a minor traffic accident. He later pleaded guilty to “extreme” DUI and leaving the scene of an accident and served a 10-day sentence.
Among Campbell’s own hits, “Rhinestone Cowboy” stood out and became his personal anthem. Written and recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974, “Rhinestone Cowboy” received little attention until Campbell heard it on the radio and quickly related to the story of a veteran performer who triumphs over despair and hardship. Campbell’s version was a chart topper in 1975.
“I thought it was my autobiography set to song,” he wrote 20 years later, in his autobiography, titled “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
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New York Film Festival Selects Gerwig, Baker, Varda for Main Slate
Films by Greta Gerwig, Sean Baker and Agnes Varda are headed to the 55th New York Film Festival. The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the selections of 25 films for its main slate on Tuesday, including eight directed by women.
The festival, held annually at Lincoln Center, is one of the most prestigious of the fall season. Among the films selected are Baker’s acclaimed Cannes entry The Florida Project, the 89-year-old Varda’s Faces Places and Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird. Gerwig’s frequent collaborator and romantic partner Noah Baumbach will also return to the festival with his Netflix release The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).
Many of the selections, as usual, include previous festival standouts. Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and Dee Rees’ Mudbound will come to the festival after lauded debuts at Sundance. Other Cannes hits include Ruben Ostlund’s Palme d’Or winning comedy The Square and Robin Campillo’s AIDS activist drama BPM (Beats Per Minute).
The festival previously announced its three galas, all of which are Amazon Studios releases. Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying, a kind of sequel to Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, will open the festival. Todd Haynes’ Brian Selznick adaptation Wonderstruck is the centerpiece, and Woody Allen’s 1950s Coney Island tale Wonder Wheel will close.
The New York Film Festival runs Sept. 28 to Oct. 15.
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History Unearthed as London’s Mail Rail Line Opens to Public
Deep below London’s bustling streets, a piece of once-vital communications technology will soon be roaring back into life after years of disuse — a train.
The train operates on the “mail rail” line — a 6.4-mile underground train track that once transported letters and parcels 70 feet below ground to and from sorting offices on the east and west sides of the city 22 hours each day.
The line, construction of which began in 1915, ceased operations in 2003. It will be opened to the public next month as a tourist attraction, part of the new Postal Museum in the city’s Clerkenwell district.
“Mail rail originally came about because mail was being delayed in London due to congestion in the streets above us,” Adrian Steel, director of the Postal Museum and mail rail, told Reuters.
Visitors can now ride a section of the old track in specially built trains, and explore an engineering depot turned exhibition space.
“One of the biggest jobs we’ve had is finding a way of taking people through these narrow tunnels that were never meant for people to pass through in a way that’s not completely uncomfortable or dangerous,” Steel said.
Apart from their role in delivering mail, the tunnels played a useful role during World War I and World War II.
Construction of the line was halted when war broke out and the space was instead used to store valuable artifacts, and was relied on heavily to avoid mail disruption during the blitz of World War II.
Aside from its unique history, another aspect of the mail rail line sets it apart from other London underground train lines — an absence of rats.
“It’s a rodent-free terminal and under London which is unusual,” Steel said. “Because there were no people on the trains, there is no food for the rats and mice.”
Rail mail at London’s Postal Museum opens to visitors on Sept. 4.
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In Croatia, Harvesting Salt the Centuries-old Way
Dozens of glistening pools in a small village on Croatia’s Adriatic coast stand testament to its annual salt harvests from seawater, which use a method largely unchanged for centuries.
The salt works facility in Ston, which says it is the oldest in Europe, consists of 58 pools and covers about 430,000 square meters where the waters of the Adriatic are allowed to seep in and then evaporate, leaving salt behind.
The first of two salt harvests this year kicked off on Tuesday, with around 35 tourists, friends and family of workers raking salt across the pans into gleaming white piles, before transferring to a nearby warehouse by wooden carts.
They expect to harvest some 200 tons of salt in the harvest, with most of it used for industrial purposes while the rest is sold in local markets for use in cooking.
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Fired Google Memo Writer Draws Scorn, Cheers and a Job Offer
The male Google engineer fired for circulating a memo decrying the company’s diversity hiring program became the center of a heated debate on sexism, drawing scorn, cheers and even a job offer on Tuesday from WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
James Damore, 28, confirmed his dismissal from Alphabet Inc’s Google on Monday, after he wrote a 10-page memo that the company was hostile to conservative viewpoints shaped by a flawed left-wing ideology.
The manifesto was quickly embraced by some, particularly on the political right, branding him a brave truth-teller. Others found his views, which argued that men in general may be biologically more suited to coding jobs than women, offensive.
Assange, who is praised in some circles for exposing government secrets and castigated by others as an underminer of some nations’ security, offered Damore a job.
“Censorship is for losers,” Assange wrote on Twitter. “Women & men deserve respect. That includes not firing them for politely expressing ideas but rather arguing back.”
Legal and employment experts noted, however, that companies have broad latitude to restrict the speech of employees. Some argued that Damore’s views left Google little to no choice but to terminate his employment, since he had effectively created a hostile work environment for women.
Damore said in an email on Monday that he was exploring a possible legal challenge to his dismissal. His title at Google was software engineer and he had worked at the company since December 2013, according to a profile on LinkedIn.
The LinkedIn page also says Damore received a Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard University in 2013. Harvard said on Tuesday he completed a master’s degree in the subject, not a Ph.D. He could not immediately be reached on Tuesday.
Gender equality in Silicon Valley
The world’s tech capital, Silicon Valley has long been criticized for not doing enough to encourage gender equality.
Most headlines have centered on powerful female executives hitting the glass ceiling or on sexual harassment lawsuits.
Many women in the industry say that less visible day-to-day bias often impedes their careers.
Industry experts note that in the early days of tech, it was mostly women who held the then-unglamorous jobs of coding. But as the value of top-notch programming became clear, it became a mostly male domain and the vast majority of programmers in the tech industry are now men.
Google’s response controversial
Some argued that although they may not agree with Damore, the company had gone too far in firing him.
“Dear @Google, Stop teaching my girl that her path to financial freedom lies not in coding but in complaining to HR. Thx in advance, A dad,” Eric Weinstein, managing director at California investment firm Thiel Capital, wrote on Twitter.
Bernice Ledbetter, who teaches leadership to business students at Pepperdine University, praised Google for taking decisive action. She said it would be a different matter if Damore were writing on a personal blog rather than in a memo.
“He’s walking dangerously between who he is personally and who he is professionally,” Ledbetter said in an interview.
Others raised concerns that Damore would discriminate against his female colleagues in peer review.
Damore wrote in an email to Reuters on Monday that he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” His memo had said that he sought the opposite.
“I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles,” Damore wrote in his memo. “I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).”
His arguments were praised by those who view so-called “political correctness” as a left-wing device to suppress conservative speech.
John Hawkins, the owner of the Right Wing News website, summed up his take in a Twitter post: “James Damore: Writes memo respectfully saying Google suppresses conservative views. Google: You’re fired for having conservative views.”
Damore and Kaepernick
Others compared Damore with Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who last year chose not to stand for the U.S. national anthem before games, in protest over police violence.
None of the NFL’s 32 teams were willing to sign Kaepernick during the recent off-season.
“Kaepernick and Damore should’ve been aware that expressing controversial opinions at work has consequences,” Twitter user Greg Lekich wrote from his account, @Xeynon.
Damore said he would fight the dismissal, noting that he had filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board before the firing.
Google, owner of the world’s most used search engine, is based in Mountain View, California. The company said it could not talk about individual employee cases.
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Artist Targets Twitter With Offline Hate Tweets
A German-Israeli artist who accuses Twitter of failing to delete hate speech tweets has taken matters into his own hands – by stenciling the offending messages on the road in front of the company’s Hamburg headquarters.
A post on video-sharing site YouTube showed Shahak Shapira and fellow activists stencilling tweets saying “Germany needs a final solution to Islam” and “Let’s gas the Jews” – clear references to the Nazi regime’s World War II genocide of Europe’s Jews.
Shapira said he had reported some 300 incidents of hate speech on Twitter but had received just nine responses from the company.
“If Twitter forces me to see these things, then they should have to see it as well,” he said in the video, posted on Monday, describing the comments as violations of the social network’s community guidelines.
Hate speech is especially sensitive in Germany, whose history has been shaped by the struggle to atone for the crimes of the Nazis.
A spokesman for Twitter told Reuters the company would not comment on the specifics of individual accounts for reasons of privacy, but said it strictly enforced its rules and had stepped up its policing of abuse on its network.
Twitter is now taking action on 10 times as many abusive accounts now compared to the same time last year, he added.
Shapira said Facebook had been more vigorous than Twitter in replying to his requests, removing 80 percent of some 150 hate speech comments he had reported.
On the handful of occasions when Twitter removed offensive tweets, Shapira said he never received a report of their having done so.
“I selected some of the tweets they didn’t delete, and then came to Hamburg to put them in front of Twitter’s office,” he said. “Tomorrow they will have to see the Tweets they were so happy to ignore.”
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US Diplomats Advised to Give Generalized Answers to Paris Climate Deal Questions
The U.S. State Department is advising its diplomats to sidestep questions from foreign governments about the Trump administration’s stance on the Paris climate deal.
The Reuters news agency reported Tuesday that a cable sent Friday to U.S. embassies by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson provided prospective questions foreign government officials could ask diplomats and suggested answers.
For example, according to Reuters, if asked, “What is the process for consideration of re-engagement in the Paris Agreement?,” the diplomat should give a generalized response, such as, “We are considering a number of factors. I do not have any information to share on the nature or timing of the process.”
Tillerson’s cable came a little more than two months after Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the landmark Paris climate deal and on the day that the administration was reviewing a climate change report prepared by 13 federal agencies, the conclusions of which conflict with administration perspectives.
The document, which was leaked ahead of publication and reported by The New York Times on Tuesday, said Americans were seeing more heat waves and rainfall as a result of climate change.
The report found human activity was “extremely likely” the cause of more than half the Earth’s temperature increase since 1951, a position at odds with the administration’s belief that the cause of global warming is uncertain.
The report said human impact caused an increase in the global temperature of 0.6 degree to 0.7 degree Celsius between 1951 to 2010 and that heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions led the way as the primary contributor.
‘No alternative explanations’
“There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate,” said the study, the Climate Science Special Report.
The Trump administration received a copy of the most recent draft of the report several weeks ago, senior administration officials said. It was unclear whether the administration, which announced in June it would withdraw from the Paris accord, would approve the report. The study will be included in the National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress every four years.
Some scientists were concerned that the administration could amend or suppress the report. Conversely, skeptics of human-caused climate change were equally concerned that the report would be publicly released, along with the more comprehensive National Climate Assessment.
The report concluded that if humans immediately halted greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures would still rise an additional 0.3 degree Celsius this century, compared with the actual projected increase of 2 degrees Celsius.
Small increases in global temperatures can significantly affect the climate. For example, a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees Celsius could cause more intense rainstorms, longer heat waves and lead to more rapid deterioration of coral reefs, scientists say.
Policy recommendations were not included in the study, but it emphasized the need to stabilize the global mean temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius by significantly cutting carbon dioxide levels. An increase above 2 degrees Celsius would push the global environment closer to catastrophic changes, scientists have said.
The Paris climate accord, in which nearly 200 countries participate, includes an agreement to cut or limit fossil fuel emissions. The report said meeting the emissions goals would be a significant step toward managing global warming.
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US FDA to Launch Campaign Against E-Cigarette Use Among Youth
Hot on the heels of its proposal to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans on Tuesday for an education campaign to discourage use of electronic cigarettes among youth.
The plan follows the agency’s proposal last month to both lower nicotine in combustible cigarettes and extend by four years the date by which e-cigarette manufacturers will be required to apply for authorization to sell their products.
Its new policy “aims to strike a careful balance between the regulation of all tobacco products, and the opportunity to encourage development of innovative tobacco products that may be less dangerous than combustible cigarettes,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
Gottlieb is walking a tightrope between satisfying the interests of tobacco control advocates, who like the idea of lowering nicotine levels in cigarettes, and e-cigarette companies that have been lobbying for a lighter regulatory hand.
But while they welcomed the proposal to lower nicotine content in conventional cigarettes, public health experts disapprove of the proposal to extend the deadlines by which e-cigarette companies will be required to seek authorization for new and existing products.
The plan means products with flavors that appeal to children will be available longer than they would have been without the extension. The new education campaign could go some way towards mitigating those concerns.
More than 2 million middle- and high-school students in the United States were current users of e-cigarettes and other vaping devices in 2016 and half of all middle and high school students who used a tobacco product of some sort used two or more, the FDA said.
Gottlieb said the figures reflect “the troubling reality that they are the most commonly-used tobacco product among youth.”
The education campaign will be part of the agency’s “The Real Cost” campaign to discourage cigarette use and will begin this fall. A full-scale campaign will be launched in 2018. It will start by releasing new digital material to educate youth about the potential for nicotine to rewire a teen’s brain and create cravings that can lead to addiction.
The FDA said it estimates “The Real Cost” campaign to have prevented nearly 350,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 from starting to smoke from 2014 to 2016.
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Google Engineer Fired Over Memo Casting Doubt on Need for Gender Diversity
U.S. technology giant Google has fired a male engineer who wrote a memo questioning the need for gender diversity programs in the industry.
In a 10-page internal memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” James Damore asserted that so few women were employed in the technology field because they “prefer jobs in social and artistic areas,” while men are more inclined to become computer programmers — a fact he said was due to “biological causes.”
The memo created a firestorm after it was leaked on social media, reviving the debate over the lack of racial and gender diversity in the tech world. Google is under investigation by the U.S. Labor Department over whether it pays women less than men, while claims of sexual harassment at the ride-sharing firm Uber Technologies has triggered a change in management.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive officer, blasted Damore’s memo in an email for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
Damore revealed he had been dismissed in an email sent to various news outlets. He says he has filed a complaint with the federal National Labor Relations Board accusing Google of trying to shame him into silence.
your ads here!Animals Use Computer Touch Screens in Research and for Fun
The penguins at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California have something in common with Sara Mandel’s cats.
“I had actually purchased this game in the app store for my cats,” said Mandel, birdkeeper at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
She wanted to see if these penguins would like the game as much as her cats did and asked her boss.
“He laughed at me. He kind of was like, ‘Well, you can try this if you want. Are you sure you want to give them your iPad? Go for it, but I’m not expecting a big result with it.’” Mandel continued, “I showed him, and he was pretty shocked.”
The tablet computer with the cat game intrigued the penguins right away, said Mandel.
WATCH: Animals like video games too!
Exercise for animals’ brains
The game has the option of a mouse, butterfly, or laser that moves around the screen. When an animal paws or pecks at the object, it scores points and the tablet makes a sound.
Mandel said the penguins enjoy playing with the tablet as much as people do. It is an enrichment exercise for the animals’ brains as well as their bodies.
“While they’re kind of hanging out there, I can look at their flippers. I can make sure everything is good and healthy, and I can even sneak a scale right underneath where Lily’s standing, so I can get a weight on her,” Mandel said as she pointed at Lily the penguin.
Penguins are among the many animals playing with touch screens. Orangutans, gorillas and sun bears at Zoo Atlanta have also worked with this technology.
Tortoise faster than dog
In Britain, the University of Lincoln’s Anna Wilkinson and her fellow researchers at other academic institutions have presented parrots and tortoises with touch screens.
A tortoise’s neck length is an indication of whether it is comfortable with its surroundings. While working with the screen, Wilkinson described the tortoise’s neck as “nice and long doing this, which is good.”
“Everyone thought it would take a really long time to train the tortoises to use the touch screen, but I’ve used the same setup with dogs and the tortoises actually learned to use it much faster than the dogs did,” said Wilkinson.
The touch screen helped researchers study how tortoises learn to navigate around space.
Removing ‘humans from equation’
With the parrots, researchers used the screen to see how the birds explore and approach something new.
“The touch screens are fantastic because they give you lots of flexibility. You can present animals with all sorts of different stimuli. You can present videos. You can present moving things that they have to track. They are also incredibly good because you can remove humans from the equation,” said Wilkinson.
She said a human can be a distraction and less reliable than a computer when providing positive feedback, such as consistent timing when giving the animals food, as they respond a certain way in an experiment.
“We’re seeing how they can see in a visual way that we aren’t able to see before,” said Mandel. “We’re not so different from them. We both like our touch screens too, but I do think in the future this could help do some research on how these animals function.”
Researchers said the animals have a short attention span and become tired after a period of time. Like humans, Mandel said the younger penguins are more fascinated in the game on the tablet. The older penguins lose interest.
your ads here!In Harford County, Volunteers Restore and Preserve Old garments
A group of volunteers are dedicating their time and sewing skills to preserve old garments. As Faiza Elmasry reports, the Textile Project in Harford County in Maryland, makes connections between the past and the present. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Researchers Say Animals Like Video Games Too!
It’s not just people who like playing computer games. Animals of different species also seem to be fascinated with video games and touch screens, as researchers and zoos try this technology on animals. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.
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Social Media Posts Could Help Diagnose Depression
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram allow us to share aspects of our lives with our friends, family and the world. But what does what we are sharing say about our state of mind? Some new research suggests that it may be telling the world a lot more than we think. Kevin Enochs reports.
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Hackers Demand Millions in Ransom for Stolen HBO Data
Hackers using the name “Mr. Smith” posted a fresh cache of stolen HBO files online Monday, and demanded that HBO pay a ransom of several million dollars to prevent further such releases.
The data dump included what appear to be scripts from five “Game of Thrones” episodes, including one upcoming episode, and a month’s worth of email from the account of Leslie Cohen, HBO’s vice president for film programming. There were also internal documents, including a report of legal claims against the network and job offer letters to top executives.
HBO, which previously acknowledged the theft of “proprietary information,” said it’s continuing to investigate and is working with police and cybersecurity experts. The network said Monday that it still doesn’t believe that its email system as a whole has been compromised.
This is the second data dump from the purported hacker. So far the HBO leaks have been limited, falling well short of the chaos inflicted on Sony in 2014. In that attack, hackers unearthed thousands of embarrassing emails and released personal information, including salaries and social security numbers, of nearly 50,000 current and former Sony employees.
Those behind the HBO hack claim to have more data, including scripts, upcoming episodes of HBO shows and movies, and information damaging to HBO.
In a video directed to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, “Mr. Smith” used white text on a black background to threaten further disclosures if HBO doesn’t pay up. To stop the leaks, the purported hackers demanded “our 6 month salary in bitcoin,” which they implied is at least $6 million.
your ads here!Tesla Seeks $1.5B Junk Bond Issue to Fund Model 3 Production
Tesla said on Monday it would raise about $1.5 billion through its first-ever offering of junk bonds as the U.S. luxury electric carmaker seeks fresh sources of cash to ramp up production of its new Model 3 sedan.
The move to issue junk bonds — lower-quality investments that offer higher yields — represents a bet by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk that bond investors will be as hungry as stock investors to back the company on expectations that its Model 3 will be a hit.
Tesla shares are up 67 percent this year, pushing the company’s market value to about $60 billion, above that of top U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford Motor Co., even though Tesla has yet to make an annual profit.
“Bond investors, who typically don’t love companies that don’t make money, will be far more forgiving when it comes to Tesla,” said bond expert Robbie Goffin, managing director of FTI Consulting, citing the company’s stellar stock market value.
Automaker draws a ‘B-‘
Tesla was to start pitching potential investors on Monday, IFR reported, citing lead bankers on the deal.
So far, Tesla has been raising money to pay its bills with a combination of equity offerings and convertible bonds, which eventually convert into shares. In March, the company raised $1.4 billion through a convertible debt offering.
Following the announcement, Standard & Poor’s reaffirmed its negative outlook for the automaker and assigned a “B-” rating for the bond issue — deep into junk credit territory. S&P also maintained its “B-” long-term corporate credit rating on Tesla.
“We could lower our ratings on Tesla if execution issues related to the Model 3 launch later this year or the ongoing expansion of its Models S and X production lead to significant cost overruns,” S&P said in a statement on the bonds.
Rating outlook is stable
Moody’s assigned a junk “B3” rating to the bond issue and said the company’s rating outlook was stable.
The rating agency said the overall company’s “B2” rating was supported by the fact that if Tesla ends up in serious financial trouble, its brand name, products and physical assets would be of “considerable value” to other automakers.
The automaker’s debt load increased significantly last year when it bought solar panel maker SolarCity.
CFRA equity analyst Efraim Levy said the bonds provide Tesla with funds “at least into mid-2018.”
“There is a risk they could still run out of money,” he said. “Then you’d go back to the equity markets and hope it’s not too late” to raise more money.
Burning cash
The latest effective yield on single-B rated bonds maturing in seven to eight years, the class for a Tesla issue, is around 5.5 percent, according to Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Fixed Income Index data.
Tesla’s bond will price later this week after several days of meetings with credit investors, who will weigh factors including the absence of a borrowing history, its lack of profit and its high cash-burn rate against its growth potential and its attractiveness as an environmentally friendly “green” issuer.
Ultimately, the depth of investor interest will determine the bond’s interest rate.
Tesla is counting on the Model 3, its least pricey car, to become a profitable, high-volume manufacturer of electric cars.
Tesla said last week that it had 455,000 net pre-orders for the Model 3, which has a $35,000 base price, and that the sedan was averaging 1,800 reservations per day since it launched late last month.
At the launch, Musk, however, warned that Tesla would face months of “manufacturing hell” as it increases production of the sedan.
Tesla had over $3 billion in cash on hand at the end of the June quarter, compared with $4 billion on March 31.
The company has said it expects capital expenditures of $2 billion in the second half of this year to boost production at its Fremont, California assembly plant and a battery plant in Reno, Nevada.
Tesla’s cash burn has prompted short-sellers like Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn to bet against the Palo Alto, California company.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and RBC are the book-runners on the bond offering, IFR reported.
Shares of Tesla closed down 0.5 percent at $355.17 on Monday.
your ads here!Rocket Lab Says Fixes Test Flight Glitch Which Terminated First Launch
Rocket Lab, a Silicon Valley-funded space launch company, said a contractor’s error was to blame for its maiden flight failing to reach orbit in May, but that the problem had been fixed ahead of another planned launch in the next two months.
The Los Angeles and Auckland-based firm, which is aiming to build to weekly commercial launches, had to terminate its first flight four minutes in when equipment on the ground lost contact with the rocket, the firm said in a statement late on Monday.
After trawling through thousands of pieces of data, Rocket Lab said in an emailed statement that an unnamed contractor’s equipment had a glitch that stopped it conveying important information from the battery-powered rocket to safety officials monitoring the launch.
“It was disappointing to see the flight terminated in essence due to an incorrect tick box,” said Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck in the statement, adding that the rocket’s failure to reach orbit had nothing to do with the rocket itself.
The successful launch of a low-cost rocket is an important step in the commercial race to bring down financial and logistical barriers to space while also making New Zealand an unlikely space hub.
The rocket had soared 224 km (139 miles) high, reaching space, before Rocket Lab ended the flight and the vehicle burnt up when re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.
Rocket Lab said the equipment problem had been fixed and it was preparing for its second of three test launches before starting commercial operations at the beginning of 2018.
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