The statistics in the United States are disturbing enough: every year two million people contract bacterial infections that are difficult or impossible to treat with antibiotics; 23,000 of those people die. Doctors gathered in Berlin are warning it’s going to get worse. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
Month: October 2017
Monitoring Pollution in Cities from Space
The European Space Agency ESA has launched a new satellite that will collect data useful to ordinary people everywhere on earth. For at least seven years, the Sentinel 5 Precursor will monitor air pollution caused by both man-made and natural activities, alerting people about the concentration of pollutants that may affect their health. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…
Significant Differences Remain After 4th Round of NAFTA talks End in Washington
Trade ministers from the United States, Canada and Mexico wrapped up a contentious fourth round of talks this week, aimed at modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the Trump administration’s proposals to reshape NAFTA have some trade analysts wondering if the 23-year-old trade pact can survive. Mil Arcega has more.
…
Head of Amazon Studios Resigns After Harassment Charge
Amazon Studios says it has accepted the resignation of its top executive, Roy Price, following sexual harassment allegations made by a producer on the Amazon series Man in the High Castle.
Price was put on leave last week and had not been expected to return. An Amazon spokesman confirmed the resignation Tuesday. Albert Cheng, who had been Amazon’s COO, will be the interim chief.
The accusations against Price came in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that is roiling Hollywood. Producer Isa Hackett charged in an account published in The Hollywood Reporter that Price had repeatedly and crudely propositioned her following a 2015 event in San Diego.
A steady stream of women have gone public with accusations against Weinstein after reports by The New York Times and The New Yorker about the misconduct claims of others. But it has spread beyond that disgraced executive, with women across the world saying they’d been harassed through the social media thread “me too.”
Hackett said in a statement Tuesday that she was pleased that Amazon had taken steps to address the issue.
“An important conversation has begun about the need to create a culture in our industry which values respect and decency and rejects the abuse of power and dehumanizing treatment of others,” she said. “This is truly an opportunity to find a better way forward, and ultimately toward a balanced representation of women and minorities in leadership positions.”
Hackett said in her account on Price that he propositioned her during a cab ride, saying, “you will love my [slang for penis].”
She said he persisted at a company party even after she told him she was a lesbian with a wife and children, even standing near her and loudly saying, “anal sex!”
She wrote that she told Amazon executives about it, and the company brought in an outside investigator. She said she hadn’t seen Price at Amazon events involving her shows, which also include the upcoming Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.
…
Telegram CEO’s Court Appeal Tests Russia Eavesdropping Laws, Technical Acumen
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has announced plans to appeal a Moscow court’s decision Monday to fine the encrypted messaging service some $14,000 (800 thousand rubles) for failing to provide law enforcement agencies with user information and access to private correspondences.
Providing security services with encryption keys to read users’ messaging data violates Russia’s constitution, he said in a post on Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, which he co-founded in 2007.
“Everyone has the right to privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraphic and other communications,” Durov said, quoting constitutional excerpts.
Russian special services need decryption keys to “expand their influence at the expense of the constitutional right of citizens,” he said, building on similar comments Durov made in September, when he announced that FSB officials had requested backdoor access to Telegram.
Russian security officials have said encryption codes are vital to protecting citizens against terror attacks such as those earlier this year in St. Petersburg, in which perpetrators, Kremlin officials says, communicated via Telegram.
According to Pavel Chikov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer, the FSB state security organization (formerly KGB) is trying to gain technical access by announcing ultimatums and making threats. While fines levied aren’t too burdensome for a company of Telegram’s size, they do indicate an FSB willingness to block Telegram from continuing to operate in the country.
Third-party hackers
The situation, Chikov said, is similar to legal proceedings that resulted from FBI requests for encryption access to Apple iPhones — a request that ultimately was dropped, leaving federal investigators to rely on third-party hackers.
Secrecy, anonymity and “the ability to communicate in such a way that representatives of the state do not hear these conversations,” should also be respected in Russia, Chikov told VOA Russian.
“Generally speaking, if we are talking on [a conventional] telephone, the conversation is protected by constitutional guarantees,” Chikov said. However, Russian police and various state security agencies can obtain court-ordered warrants to tap the phone of specific individuals suspected of a plotting criminal activities — and they have the technical acumen required to do it.
Although privacy laws are generally the same for peer-to-peer text-messaging devices, Russian security agencies lack the technical sophistication to hack Telegram’s encrypted conversations.
Durov ‘most likely right’
Professor Ilya Shablinsky, a constitutional law expert with Moscow’s National Research University, says Durov is “most likely right” that FSB demands represent a constitutional violation, as allowing FSB access to Telegram would allow for users’ correspondence to be read.
“When that constitutional norm was drafted, correspondence was typically drafted on paper,” he said.
“And the Russian Constitution’s authors never envisaged a technological variant [such as Telegram]. In this case, we do not know exactly what kind of information the FSB requested, and what it means for Telegram to provide that information.”
According to Shablinsky, although a Russian court can demand access to correspondences of a specific individual who is suspected of committing a crime, it is not known whether the provision covers access to the decryption devices for an entire network of users.
The free instant-messaging app, which lets people exchange messages, photos and videos in groups of up to 5,000 people, has attracted about 100 million users since its launch in 2013.
Telegram threatened
In June, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications watchdog, threatened to ban Telegram for failing to provide user registration documents, which were requested as part of a push to increase surveillance of internet activities.
Although Telegram later registered, it stopped short of agreeing to Roskomnadzor’s data storage demands. Companies on the register must provide the FSB with information on user interactions; starting from 2018, they also must store all of the data of Russian users inside the country, according to controversial anti-terror legislation passed last year, which was decried by internet companies and the opposition.
Telegram has 10 days to appeal Monday’s decision.
‘No planned block’
Asked about a potential block of the service, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said, “As far as I know … there is no discussion of a block at this time.”
But observers like Chikov say the risk is quite high.
“It is not necessarily going to happen right after the decision on the penalty comes into effect, as I believe that the authorities will still take a pause and try to negotiate with the company’s management,” he said. “However, with its refusal to provide access to correspondence, Telegram entered into direct conflict with the interests of the special services. Consequently, the political weight of people who decide to block is significantly higher than that of the same Roskomnadzor.”
Telegram, one-tenth the size of Facebook-owned rival WhatsApp, has caught on in many corners of the globe, including for a while with Islamic State as an ultra-secure way to quickly upload and share videos, texts and voice messages.
Durov, who has been described as “the Russian Mark Zuckerberg,” spent years fending off intrusions into his users’ communications, forging an uncompromising stance on privacy after founding VKontakte, only to lose control of that social media company for refusing Russian government demands to block dissidents.
Since leaving Russia in 2014 to set up Telegram in self-exile, Durov and his core team of 15 developers have become perpetual migrants, living only a few months at a time in any one location, starting in Berlin, then London, Silicon Valley, Finland, Spain and elsewhere. The company is incorporated in multiple jurisdictions, including Britain.
This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service. Some information for this report provided by AFP.
your ads here!George Saunders’ ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ Wins Booker Prize
American author George Saunders won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday for Lincoln in the Bardo, a polyphonic symphony of a novel about restless souls adrift in the afterlife.
It is the second year in a row an American has won the 50,000 pound ($66,000) prize, which was opened to U.S. authors in 2014.
The book is based on a real visit President Abraham Lincoln made in 1862 to the body of his 11-year-old son Willie at a Washington cemetery. It is narrated by a chorus of characters who are all dead, but unwilling or unable to let go of life.
By turns witty, bawdy, poetic and unsettling, Lincoln in the Bardo juxtaposes the real events of the U.S. Civil War — through passages from historians both real and fictional — with a chorus of otherworldly characters male and female, young and old. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the transition state between death and rebirth.
Baroness Lola Young, who chaired the Booker judging panel, said the novel “stood out because of its innovation, its very different styling, the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these almost-dead souls.”
Saunders was awarded the prize by Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.
Accepting his trophy, Saunders said the book’s style may be complex, but the question he posed at its heart was simple: Do we respond to uncertain times with fear and division, “or do we take that ancient great leap of faith and try to respond with love?”
The author said he resisted telling the story of Lincoln, an American icon, for 20 years. But the novel, which took four years to write, turned out to be pointedly timely at a divided time for the United States.
Saunders said Lincoln had “a quiet, confident generosity of spirit.”
“He underwent, I think, a kind of spiritual growth spurt that we don’t see very often,” outgrowing the “lazy, racist attitudes” he was raised with, the author said.
“His compassion and his heart kept growing out even as his own life was becoming more and more difficult,” Saunders said.
“Contrast that with the current administration that seems intent on shrinking the commonwealth of compassion until we can only care about people who are exactly like us. It’s a complete eradication of the American ideal.”
Lincoln in the Bardo is the first novel by the 58-year-old Saunders, an acclaimed short story writer who won the Folio Prize in 2014 for his darkly funny story collection Tenth of December.
A former oil industry engineer who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University in New York state, Saunders is probably best known outside literary circles for a commencement speech he gave in 2013 with the key message “Try to be kinder.” It went viral on the internet, became an animated cartoon and was published as a book.
Booker finalists
He had been bookies’ favorite to win the Man Booker, which usually brings the winning novelist a huge boost in sales and profile.
Saunders beat five other finalists: New Yorker Paul Auster’s quadruple coming-of-age story 4321; U.S. writer Emily Fridlund’s story of a Midwest teenager, History of Wolves; Scottish author Ali Smith’s Brexit-themed Autumn; British-Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s migration story Exit West; and British writer Fiona Mozley’s debut novel Elmet about a fiercely independent family under threat.
Saunders is the second American in a row to win the prize, founded in 1969 and until 2013 limited to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. The 2016 winner was Paul Beatty’s The Sellout.
The move to admit all English-language writers spurred fears among some British writers and publishers that Americans would come to dominate a prize whose previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.
Young said the judges “don’t look at the nationality of the writer. I can say that hand on heart — it’s not an issue for us. The sole concern is the book.”
Prize organizers said 30 percent of the 144 books submitted by publishers for consideration this year were American, a figure slightly down from last year.
Young said the five jurors met for almost five hours Tuesday to choose the winner, finally agreeing unanimously on Saunders.
“I’m not going to pretend it was easy,” she said. “We didn’t have any major meltdowns at all. But we did have quite fierce debates.”
…
Canada: NAFTA’s Proposed Changes ‘Troubling’
Canada’s foreign minister says there are “unconventional” and “troubling” proposals on the table as Canada, the United States and Mexico seek to update the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The fourth round of talks on revising the 23-year-old NAFTA deal wrapped up Tuesday, with more talks set for Mexico next month and additional discussions early next year.
Canada’s Chrystia Freeland said proposals created “challenges,” and “turn back the clock” on NAFTA. Failure could threaten jobs across North America, she said. In addition, ending NAFTA could hurt the North American teamwork that produces cars efficiently and makes them competitive with products from other regions, she added.
Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said it was clear from the beginning that the talks would be tough and “we still have a lot of work to do.” He also said all nations “have limits.”
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the United States faces a large trade deficit, and blamed NAFTA for the loss of manufacturing jobs. He expressed frustration that his negotiating partners were not willing to make changes to reduce those deficits.
NAFTA was harshly criticized by candidate Donald Trump, and press reports say Washington has since proposed renegotiating the deal every five years, requiring more U.S.-made content in automobiles, and scaling back a mechanism to resolve disputes. Trump has blamed what he called poorly negotiated agreements for the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs that hurt the U.S. economy. He promised to drive harder bargains in trade deals.
The Brookings Institution’s Dany Bahar said trade deficits are not the cause of job losses, and called the U.S. focus misplaced. He said NAFTA’s dispute resolution mechanism and some other provisions could use some updating. However, he told VOA that NAFTA is closer to collapse than in previous rounds of talks. Such a collapse would mean U.S.-made cars would become more expensive and less competitive on world markets, likely making the United States the “biggest loser” if the trade deal fails, he said.
…
#MeToo Campaign Prompts Thousands to Share Sexual Harassment Stories
In the past 24 hours, thousands of women have taken to Twitter and Facebook, sharing their personal stories of sexual harassment and assault under the hashtag “Me Too.” The social media rallying cry comes in the wake of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff looks at how this latest social media movement has sparked a global conversation amongst women and men about sexual harassment and assault.
…
Study: Self-driving Cars Could Ease Traffic, but Increase Sprawl
A new study inspired by Boston’s early experiments with self-driving cars finds that the technology could ease congestion, but might also lead to more cars on the road and further encourage urban sprawl.
The report, released Tuesday by the Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum, is a mostly optimistic take on how autonomous vehicles could change cities.
Three companies are now testing self-driving cars in Boston’s Seaport District. One of them, NuTonomy, has also partnered with ride-hailing service Lyft to research how passengers book and route a self-driving car.
The consulting group’s study included a computer simulation of how downtown Boston traffic would change with the advent of self-driving taxis, buses or private cars. It would likely add vehicles to roads while simultaneously reducing traffic time and cutting pollution because of smoother driving patterns, such as steadier speeds and more gradual braking. At the same time, the efficiency and convenience of autonomous technology could encourage more people to live in the suburbs.
“Urban sprawl is definitely one of the biggest challenges,” said Nikolaus Lang, a co-author of the study. “If people don’t really see commutes as a painful exercise, they might tend to live further away.”
The research adds to another study published this month by researchers at the University of California, Davis, who found users of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft are less likely to use public transit. The Davis study — which looked at Boston and six other metropolitan regions — says that the trend away from public transit could have broader implications once autonomous vehicle technology becomes commercially viable and a feature of ride-hailing apps.
All of this raises questions for city planners, said Nigel Jacob, co-chair of Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, which has partnered with the consulting group and autonomous car developers as part of a long-term plan to improve to transportation safety and equity.
“All these companies are going to make money off the public infrastructure without actually paying back into it,” Jacob said.
In the meantime, Jacob said the city is working to help companies as they try to understand the future market for self-driving vehicles, as well as the technical challenges of navigating the city’s “old, bizarre roadway system that’s constantly subject to freezing and thawing.”
“If you can pass the Boston test, you can drive anywhere,” Jacob said. “That’s basically been the idea.”
…
Google’s Pixel 2: A Phone Built for Artificial Intelligence
What’s most fascinating about Google’s new Pixel 2 phone is what’s to come.
The phone sets itself apart with promises to bake in Google’s powerful artificial-intelligence technology for quick and easy access to useful, even essential information. But much of the neat stuff will come later. The phone coming out Thursday is more of a teaser.
To be sure, the Pixel 2 is a solid phone. It’s not as elegantly designed as an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy phone. But it delivers a strong tie-in to Google’s services, including those intended to fetch what you need automatically.
Visual search engine
The Pixel 2 comes with Google Lens, a way of searching Google just by pointing your camera at a landmark, object or storefront. This can give you quick access to reviews and store hours. It might help identify that mysterious building you walk by every day. Google Lens will also pull out web addresses and phone numbers from signs so you can browse or call with just at tap.
The feature correctly identified paintings of obscure figures in American history at a museum in New York, and it knew which Starbucks I was standing in front of, out of several in the neighborhood. But it’s not foolproof: The iconic United Nations building came across as a generic tower.
I found Google Lens slightly more reliable than a similar Samsung feature, Bixby Vision. Bixby tended to miss on identifying businesses; a Chinatown bakery serving pork buns was thought to be a CrossFit gym — quite the opposite. On the other hand, Bixby identified a plaque dedicated to a Titanic victim, while Google just said, “Hmm.”
It’s a good start, but both still have work to do. And for now, Google Lens requires you to take a photo first. Seamless, instant analysis is “coming soon.” All you’ll have to do is squeeze the bottom of the phone for the Google Assistant to pop up.
Last year’s Pixel phone will also get Google Lens, though without the squeezing capability. Eventually, other Android phones and iPhones should get it, too, but Google isn’t saying when.
Better camera
Last year’s Pixel had a great camera, but it fell short in some shots because software processing made colors look too strong and clean at times. With the Pixel 2, colors look good without looking fake.
The Pixel 2 also introduces a “portrait” mode, which blurs out backgrounds to focus attention on the subjects. Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus and 8 Plus and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 manage this effect via a second camera lens to sense depth. Google does it all with software, so the regular-size model gets the capability as well, not just the larger XL.
Google says the feature works best with people and small objects. I got it to work for flowers and selfies (yes, it works with the front camera, too, something limited elsewhere to Apple’s upcoming iPhone X). But I couldn’t blur out tourists ambling behind statues; Apple and Samsung phones managed that with the depth lens. Not to mention that second lens offers a 2x zoom without a reduction in quality.
More smarts
When locked, the phone continually listens for songs and automatically identifies the name and artist. There have been times songs ended before I could pull up SoundHound to do this. Google says all this is done on the phone itself, so it’s not sending your music tastes to its servers. Google says the battery drain should be minimal.
Next month, $159 wireless headphones called Pixel Buds will offer real-time audio translation, so two people can communicate using different languages, while hearing instant translations in a native tongue. A separate Google Translate app offers this now, but having the feature built into Pixel should make it easier to use.
And speaking of translations, I’m hoping Google Lens will one day translate signs instantly when traveling. A camera feature in the Translate app isn’t as automatic as Lens tends to be. Google says more capabilities are coming to Lens, but it didn’t provide details.
Patience, please
The fact that the Pixel is unfinished shouldn’t deter would-be buyers. This is common these days, as more power comes through software updates rather than hardware. Samsung’s Galaxy S8 phones shipped this spring without its much-touted Bixby assistant ready.
What you get in the $650 Pixel 2 is a great workhorse. For elegance, you need the $700 iPhone 8 or the $750 Galaxy S8. The larger Pixel 2 XL starts at $850, more than the iPhone 8 Plus and the S8 Plus. Apple and Samsung include headphones; Google doesn’t. But the Pixel 2 comes with a USB-C adapter so you can plug in ordinary headphones; like the latest iPhones, the Pixel 2 has eliminated the standard headphone jack.
Verizon is again the only U.S. carrier to offer the latest Pixel, although you can buy models that will work with other carriers — and Google’s own Project Fi service — at Google’s online store. The phone is also coming to the U.K., Canada, India, Australia, Germany, Italy and Spain.
…
US Homebuilder Sentiment Rises in October
U.S. homebuilders are feeling more optimistic than they have in months, looking past a recent slowdown in new home sales and the risk of rising labor and materials costs following hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index released Tuesday rose four points to 68 this month. That’s the highest reading since May.
Readings above 50 indicate more builders see sales conditions as good rather than poor. The index has remained above 60 since September of 2016.
According to the latest survey by FactSet, the index easily exceeded expectations for a reading of 64 among industry analysts.
Readings gauging builders’ view of single-family home sales now and over the next six months rose from September. A measure of traffic by prospective buyers also rose.
The deadly hurricanes that swept into Texas, Louisiana and Florida raised concerns among builders that that their new-home projects could be delayed and face rising construction and materials costs as the focus turned to rebuilding properties that were flooded or damaged by the fierce winds and rainstorms. Homebuilders were grappling with a shortage of skilled construction labor before the hurricanes hit.
Those concerns remain, but builders appear to be drawing encouragement from the thin supply of homes on the market, which has helped lift sales of new homes ahead of last year’s pace.
“It is encouraging to see builder confidence return to the high 60s levels we saw in the spring and summer,” said Robert Dietz, the NAHB’s chief economist. “With a tight inventory of existing homes and promising growth in household formation, we can expect the new home market continue to strengthen at a modest rate in the months ahead.”
A shortage of homes for sale coupled with rising prices has turned affordability into a challenge for many would-be buyers.
Sales of new U.S. homes slid 3.4 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 560,000. It was the second straight monthly decline, though sales are running 7.5 percent higher year-to-date than in 2016, thanks to solid sales gains earlier this year. New-home sales figures for September are due out next week.
This month’s builder index was based on 323 respondents.
A measure of current sales conditions for single-family homes rose five points to 75, while an outlook for sales over the next six months climbed five points to 78. Builders’ view of traffic by prospective buyers increased one point to 48.
your ads here!Forbes: Trump’s Net Worth Declined by $600 Million in Past Year
U.S. President Donald Trump’s net worth declined by some $600 million to $3.1 billion in the past year, according to Forbes magazine.
The biggest contributing factor to Trump’s declining fortune was his real estate holdings, much of which is in New York City. Several of his Manhattan properties have declined in value, reducing his fortune in this sector by nearly $400 million.
Some of Trump’s golf properties overseas and in the United States also have declined in value, the apparent result of potential guests being offended by Trump’s politics and bluster, Forbes reported.
The presidential campaign also contributed to a decline in Trump’s net worth. His cash holdings were reduced to about $100 million since last year after he spent $66 million on his campaign.
The reduction in Trump’s cash holdings also was the result of a $25 million payment Trump made to settle a lawsuit over Trump University.
Forbes said it calculated Trump’s net worth “after months of digging through financial disclosures and public property records and conducting dozens of interviews.”
Forbes now ranks Trump as the 248th richest person in the U.S., down from 156 in 2016.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates topped the list of wealthiest Americans for the 24th consecutive year with a net worth of $89 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos came in number two with a net worth of $81.5 billion.
…
Microsoft Rolls Out New Windows 10 Update, Laptops
Microsoft has begun rolling out an update to its Windows 10 operating system, hoping to spark enthusiasm for its virtual- and augmented-reality ambitions.
The Windows 10 update became available Tuesday.
Several of Microsoft’s partners — Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo — are simultaneously launching their first “Windows Mixed Reality” headsets Tuesday. Samsung is also releasing one early next month.
Microsoft is also announcing a new generation of laptops in its Surface line. Two versions of the new Surface Book 2 — one 13.5 inches and the other 15 inches — will go on sale next month.
…
A New Generation of Weather Tech on Display in Amsterdam
What’s it like outside? In this era of extreme weather events, it’s more than an idle question, because an accurate answer can save lives. A new generation of weather technology is ready to be deployed to provide those answers. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
Roman Era Theatre Uncovered in Jerusalem’s Old City
Jerusalem is one of the most excavated cities in the world, and archaeologists have uncovered 7000 year old stone houses, an Egyptian amulet bearing the name of Thutmose III, and what could be the world’s first landfill. Monday, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced finding the first known Roman-era theatre in Jerusalem’s Old City, a unique 1,800-year-old structure next to the Western Wall. Faith Lapidus has details.
…
TV Analyst and New York Deli Owner: An Immigrant’s Pursuit of a Dream
For the last year, the deli that Egyptian-American Hatem El-Gamasy owns in Queens, New York has been the backdrop to on-air discussions on U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs that are broadcast in Egypt. But when Egyptian broadcasters caught wind of his daytime job, the calls suddenly stopped. But VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports that El-Gamasy’s dream to achieve journalistic success carries on.
…
Cybersecurity Firm: North Korea Likely Behind Taiwan SWIFT Cyber Heist
Cybersecurity firm BAE Systems Plc said on Monday it believes the North Korean Lazarus hacking group is likely responsible for a recent cyber heist in Taiwan, the latest in a string of hacks targeting the global SWIFT messaging system.
“The likely culprit is Lazarus,” BAE cyber-intelligence chief Adrian Nish told Reuters by telephone.
The British firm has previously linked Lazarus to last year’s $81 million cyber heist at Bangladesh’s central bank, as have other cyber firms including Russia’s Kaspersky Lab and California-based Symantec Corp.
BAE’s claim that Lazarus is likely responsible for the hack on Taiwan’s Far Eastern International Bank demonstrates that North Korea continues to seek to generate cash through hacking.
Nish said he expects the group to continue to target banks.
“They are not just going to go away. They’ve built the tools. They are going to keep going back,” he said.
Still, he noted that the group appears to have had difficulty in pulling funds out of the banking system, after the massive Bangladesh heist, which prompted SWIFT and banks to boost security controls.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported last week that while hackers sought to steal some $60 million from Far Eastern Bank, all but $500,000 had been recovered by the bank.
BAE previously disclosed that Lazarus attempted to steal money from banks in Mexico and Poland, though there is no evidence the effort succeeded.
A security executive with SWIFT, a Belgium-based co-operative owned by banks, last week told Reuters that hackers have continued to target the message system this year, though many attempts have been thwarted by the new security controls.
SWIFT declined comment on the findings, which BAE detailed in a report on its website.
The report provides technical details on malware samples that BAE believes were likely used to target the Taiwan bank.
…
Scientists: Plant More Trees to Combat Climate Change
Planting forests and other activities that harness the power of nature could play a major role in limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris agreement, an international study showed Monday.
Natural climate solutions, also including protection of carbon-storing peat lands and better management of soils and grasslands, could account for 37 percent of all actions needed by 2030 under the 195-nation Paris plan, it said.
Combined, the suggested “regreening of the planet” would be equivalent to halting all burning of oil worldwide, it said.
“Better stewardship of the land could have a bigger role in fighting climate change than previously thought,” the international team of scientists said of findings published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The estimates for nature’s potential, led by planting forests, were up to 30 percent higher than those envisaged by a U.N. panel of climate scientists in a 2014 report, it said.
Trees soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they burn or rot. That makes forests, from the Amazon to Siberia, vast natural stores of greenhouse gases.
Overall, better management of nature could avert 11.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2030, the study said, equivalent to China’s current carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use.
The Paris climate agreement, weakened by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision in June to pull out, seeks to limit a rise in global temperature to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
Current government pledges to cut emissions are too weak to achieve the 2C goal, meant to avert more droughts, more powerful storms, downpours and heat waves.
“Fortunately, this research shows we have a huge opportunity to reshape our food and land use systems,” Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, said in a statement of Monday’s findings.
Climate change could jeopardize production of crops such as corn, wheat, rice and soy even as a rising global population will raise demand, he said.
The study said that some of the measures would cost $10 a ton or less to avert a ton of carbon dioxide, with others up to $100 a ton to qualify as “cost-effective” by 2030.
“If we are serious about climate change, then we are going to have to get serious about investing in nature,” said Mark Tercek, chief executive officer of The Nature Conservancy, which led the study.
…
#MeToo: Thousands Share Stories of Sexual Abuse
In the wake of sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, tens of thousands of women are identifying themselves as victims of sexual harassment or assault.
Women and some men shared their stories on social media under the hashtag #MeToo after actress Alyssa Milano posted a message Sunday on Twitter that said, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘Me too’ as a reply to this tweet, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”
By mid-day Monday, the hashtag had been retweeted more than a million times, a Twitter spokesman told Hollywood Reporter. Among those who weighed in were Lady Gaga, Monica Lewinsky, Rosario Dawson and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“Being raped once made it easier to be raped again. I instinctually shut down. My body remembered, so it protected me. I disappeared. #metoo,” actress Evan Rachel Wood wrote as part of a series of tweets on her experience.
Hamilton star Javier Munoz tweeted, “Me too. I don’t know if it means anything coming from a gay man but it’s happened. Multiple times.”
Milano’s former co-star on TV’s Charmed, Rose McGowan, tweeted in support of the campaign. McGowan had her Twitter account suspended after she accused Weinstein of raping her.
McGowan’s account was reinstated after the hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter began trending.
A similar social media campaign is playing out on Instagram among models who are sharing stories of abuse and harassment in the fashion industry.
Model Cameron Russell put out a post four days ago offering help to models and has been deluged with responses.
That effort has launched the hashtag #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse.
Early last week, Weinstein was fired by the board of his production company, the Weinstein Co., following an explosive New York Times report just days earlier, in which 13 women accused him of sexually harassing or assaulting them.
In another report in The New Yorker, three women accused Weinstein of raping them.
…
Water Gets Washed Before it Gets Anywhere Near Your Lips
It covers almost three-fourths of the planet, but it’s probably not a good idea to fill your cup from a river. Drinkable water flows to most of our taps only after it gets a good scrubbing. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from a drinking water treatment plant in the Washington metropolitan area.
…
Urban Farms Provide Fresh Produce for City Residents
New York City is known for its tall buildings, financial markets and centers for the arts, but America’s most populated city is becoming known for something you might not expect — farms.
New York City’s government announced last month that it is providing $500,000 to create two urban farms. Both will use space in New York public housing developments. The new farms will join four other farms already operating with city government help.
The idea is to get more fresh fruits and vegetables to communities in the city. City officials see it as a public health issue.
“These new urban farms will not only provide access to healthy produce, but also provide jobs to young residents,” said New York City Councilman Ritchie Torres.
The new farms will be in the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and the Bronx.
These farms are supported by the local government but there are also privately run farms in the city.
In the New City neighborhood of Tribeca, Robert Laing has opened up a privately-run indoor farm called Farm.One, where he grows many kinds of herbs. His customers include well-known restaurants in New York City.
The restaurants can pick up fresh herbs hours for that night’s dinner because his Laing’s indoor farm can be reached by bicycle from much of the city. Laing’s website tells customers that they can buy fresh herbs, even in a snowstorm.
Farm.One is very different than farms in less populated communities. The major difference is size. It is only 112-meters. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the average farm in America is 176 Hectares.
Farm.One’s crops are grown on vertical shelves so more can be grown in less space.
“The nice thing about farming vertically indoors is that you don’t need a lot of space,” Laing said. “I can see some bodega [a small grocery story] setting one up on the roof.”
Urban farms are growing in other cities besides New York City.
The website Inhabitat.com recently released a list of the top four U.S. cities for urban farms. They are Austin, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan.
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future released a report on urban farms in 2016. It said there are important benefits to turning unused land into sources of healthy food.
But it said that urban farming still has a long way to go to produce the environmental and health benefits claimed by supporters.
“In some cases, the enthusiasm is ahead of the evidence,” the Johns Hopkins research said.
For example, the report said that supporters of growing food close to the people who eat it claim that it reduces pollution compared to transporting food long distances.
But the researchers found that smaller farms do not do as a good a job as larger farms in reducing use of water and other natural resources.
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research based in Washington D.C. wants more urban farms. It said the benefits are almost unlimited.
The group announced last month that it will give $2 million to help pay for a new farm in Newark, New Jersey, just outside of New York City.
Aero Farms will work with scientists from Cornell University in New York State and Rutgers University in New Jersey. The goal is to grow salad greens with improved taste and color.
The funding announcement said that because the farm is indoors the farmers can control the environment, including temperature, to improve their crops.
Sally Rockey, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture, said that more than half the world’s population lives in cities and that it is important to provide healthy food to this population. Whenever possible, Rockey said, food should be “grown locally.”
Brian Massey writes and farms. He recently wrote about managing an urban farm in a Washington D.C. neighborhood near Howard University.
He said that a lot of people liked the fresh fruit and vegetables his farm produced. But he said others worried the farm was there to help the newly arrived, wealthier residents, not the poor.
There was a concern that the farm would add to Washington’s continuing shortage of low-income housing, Massey wrote.
…
Scientists Witness Huge Cosmic Crash, Find Origins of Gold
It was a faint signal, but it told of one of the most violent acts in the universe, and it would soon reveal secrets of the cosmos, including how gold was created.
Astronomers around the world reacted to the signal quickly, focusing telescopes located on every continent and even in orbit to a distant spot in the sky.
What they witnessed in mid-August and revealed Monday was the long-ago collision of two neutron stars – a phenomenon California Institute of Technology’s David H. Reitze called “the most spectacular fireworks in the universe.”
“When these things collide, all hell breaks loose,” he said.
Measurements of the light and other energy emanating from the crash have helped scientists explain how planet-killing gamma ray bursts are born, how fast the universe is expanding, and where heavy elements like platinum and gold come from.
“This is getting everything you wish for,” said Syracuse University physics professor Duncan Brown, one of more than 4,000 scientists involved in the blitz of science that the crash kicked off. “This is our fantasy observation.”
It started in a galaxy called NGC 4993, seen from Earth in the Hydra constellation. Two neutron stars, collapsed cores of stars so dense that a teaspoon of their matter would weigh 1 billion tons, danced ever faster and closer together until they collided, said Carnegie Institution astronomer Maria Drout.
The crash, called a kilonova, generated a fierce burst of gamma rays and a gravitational wave, a faint ripple in the fabric of space and time, first theorized by Albert Einstein.
The signal arrived on Earth on Aug. 17 after traveling 130 million light-years. A light-year is 5.88 trillion miles.
NASA’s Fermi telescope, which detects gamma rays, sent out the first alarm. Then, 1.7 seconds later, gravity wave detectors in Louisiana and Washington state that are a part of the LIGO Laboratory , whose founders won a Nobel Prize earlier this month, detected the crash. It issued a worldwide alert to focus telescopes on what became the most well-observed astronomical event in history.
Before August, the only other gravity waves detected by LIGO were generated by colliding black holes. But black holes let no light escape, so astronomers could see nothing.
This time there was plenty to see, measure and analyze: matter, light, and other radiation. The Hubble Space Telescope even got a snapshot of the afterglow.
“The completeness of this picture from the beginning to the end is unprecedented,” said Columbia University physics professor Szabolcs Marka. “There are many, many extraordinary discoveries within the discovery.”
The colliding stars spewed bright blue, super-hot debris that was dense and unstable. Some of it coalesced into heavy elements, like gold, platinum and uranium. Scientists had suspected neutron star collisions had enough power to create heavier elements, but weren’t certain until they witnessed it.
“We see the gold being formed,” said Syracuse’s Brown.
Calculations from a telescope measuring ultraviolet light showed that the combined mass of the heavy elements from this explosion is 1,300 times the mass of Earth. And all that stuff – including lighter elements – was thrown out in all different directions and is now speeding across the universe.
Perhaps one day the material will clump together into planets the way ours was formed, Reitze said – maybe ones with rich veins of precious metals.
“We already knew that iron came from a stellar explosion, the calcium in your bones came from stars and now we know the gold in your wedding ring came from merging neutron stars,” said University of California Santa Cruz’s Ryan Foley.
The crash also helped explain the origins of one of the most dangerous forces of the cosmos – short gamma ray bursts, focused beams of radiation that could erase life on any planet that happened to get in the way. These bursts shoot out in two different directions perpendicular to where the two neutron stars first crash, Reitze said.
Luckily for us, the beams of gamma rays were not focused on Earth and were generated too far away to be a threat, he said.
Scientists knew that the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. By using LIGO to measure gravitational waves while watching this event unfold, researchers came up with a new estimate for how fast that is happening, the so-called Hubble Constant. Before this, scientists came up with two slightly different answers using different techniques. The rough figure that came out of this event is between the original two, Reitze said.
The first optical images showed a bright blue dot that was very hot, which was likely the start of the heavy element creation process amid the neutron star debris, Drout said. After a day or two that blue faded, becoming much fainter and redder. And after three weeks it was completely gone, she said.
Scientists involved with the search for gravitational waves said this was the event they had prepared for over more than 20 years.
The findings are “of spectacular importance,” said Penn State physicist Abhay Ashtekar, who wasn’t part of the research. “This is really brand new.”
your ads here!