Month: November 2017

20 Years of Changing Seasons on Earth, Packed Into 2½ Minutes

Posted on 11/18/2017 by Cosc

NASA captured 20 years of changing seasons in a striking new global map of the home planet.

The data visualization, released this week, shows Earth’s fluctuations as seen from space.

The polar ice caps and snow cover are shown ebbing and flowing with the seasons. The varying ocean shades of blue, green, red and purple depict the abundance — or lack — of undersea life.

“It’s like watching the Earth breathe. It’s really remarkable,” said NASA oceanographer Jeremy Werdell, who took part in the project.

Two decades — from September 1997 to this past September — are crunched into 2½ minutes of viewing.

Werdell finds the imagery mesmerizing. “It’s like all of my senses are being transported into space, and then you can compress time and rewind it, and just continually watch this kind of visualization,” he said Friday.

Werdell said the visualization shows spring coming earlier and autumn lasting longer in the Northern Hemisphere. Also noticeable to him is the receding of the Arctic ice caps over time — and, though less obvious, the Antarctic, too.

On the sea side, Werdell was struck by “this hugely productive bloom of biology” that exploded in the Pacific along the equator from 1997 to 1998 — when a water-warming El Nino merged into cooling La Nina. This algae bloom is evident by a line of bright green.

In considerably smaller Lake Erie, more and more contaminating algae blooms are apparent — appearing red and yellow.

All this data can provide resources for policymakers as well as commercial fishermen and many others, according to Werdell.

Programmer Alex Kekesi of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland said it took three months to complete the visualization, using satellite imagery.

Just like our Earth, the visualization will continually change, officials said, as computer systems improve, new remote-sensing satellites are launched and more observations are made.
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UN Panel Agrees to Move Ahead With Debate on ‘Killer Robots’

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cobiz

A U.N. panel agreed Friday to move ahead with talks to define and possibly set limits on weapons that can kill without human involvement, as human rights groups said governments are moving too slowly to keep up with advances in artificial intelligence that could put computers in control one day.

Advocacy groups warned about the threats posed by such “killer robots” and aired a chilling video illustrating their possible uses on the sidelines of the first formal U.N. meeting of government experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems this week. More than 80 countries took part.

Ambassador Amandeep Gill of India, who chaired the gathering, said participants plan to meet again in 2018. He said ideas discussed this week included the creation of legally binding instrument, a code of conduct, or a technology review process.

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an umbrella group of advocacy groups, says 22 countries support a ban of the weapons and the list is growing. Human Rights Watch, one of its members, called for an agreement to regulate them by the end of 2019 — admittedly a long shot.

The meeting falls under the U.N.’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons — also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention — a 37-year old agreement that has set limits on the use of arms and explosives like mines, blinding laser weapons and booby traps over the years.

The group operates by consensus, so the least ambitious goals are likely to prevail, and countries including Russia and Israel have firmly staked out opposition to any formal ban. The United States has taken a go-slow approach, rights groups say.

U.N. officials say in theory, fully autonomous, computer-controlled weapons don’t exist yet, but defining exactly what killer robots are and how much human interaction is involved was a key focus of the meeting. The United States argued that it was “premature” to establish a definition.

Dramatic depictions

The concept alone stirs the imagination and fears, as dramatized in Hollywood futuristic or science-fiction films that have depicted uncontrolled robots deciding on their own about firing weapons and killing people.

Gill played down such concerns.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have news for you: The robots are not taking over the world. So that is good news, humans are still in charge. … We have to be careful in not emotionalizing or dramatizing this issue,” he told reporters Friday.

The United States, in comments presented, said autonomous weapons could help improve guidance of missiles and bombs against military targets, thereby “reducing the likelihood of inadvertently striking civilians.” Autonomous defensive systems could help intercept enemy projectiles, one U.S. text said.

Some top academics like Stephen Hawking, technology experts such as Tesla founder Elon Musk and human rights groups have warned about the threats posed by artificial intelligence, amid concerns that it might one day control such systems — and perhaps sooner rather than later.

“The bottom line is that governments are not moving fast enough,” said Steven Goose, executive director of arms at Human Rights Watch. He said a treaty by the end of 2019 is “the kind of timeline we think this issue demands.”
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How Much Is a Life Worth, Ask Activists Fighting Slavery?

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Coeco

From $7 for a Rohingya refugee to $750 for a North Korean “slave wife,” human rights activists have voiced concerns that it is becoming increasingly easy to enslave another human being as the cost plummets.

The average modern-day slave is sold for $90-100 compared to the equivalent of $40,000 some 200 years ago, said Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery at Britain’s University of Nottingham.

“There has been a collapse in the price of slaves over the last 50 years,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference in London, which focuses on women’s empowerment and modern slavery.

‘Beasts of burden’

Pointing to a photo of boys hauling rocks in Nepal “like beasts of burden,” he said their parents would have sold them for $5-$10. Children are so cheap that if they get injured or fall in a ravine their slave master abandons them, Bales said.

“They understand it’s less expensive to acquire a new child than to call a doctor,” he added.

Bales attributed the fall in price to the population explosion which had “glutted the world with potentially enslavable people.”

40 million people trapped

Worldwide, about 40 million people were estimated to be trapped as slaves in 2016, mostly women and girls, in forced labor, sexual exploitation and forced marriages, with global trafficking estimated to raise $150 billion in profits a year.

North Korean defector Jihyun Park told how she was trafficked to China where she was sold for 5000 yuan ($750) to an alcoholic, violent farmer.

“He said I’ve paid for you so you must work. I spent six years as his slave,” Park said.

Thousands of North Korean women are believed to have been trafficked as wives and sex workers inside China where the one-child policy has skewed the gender ratio.

Natural disasters force issue

In Bangladesh, Asif Saleh, of development agency BRAC, said Rohingya refugee women fleeing Myanmar and arriving in Bangladesh were being sold for as little as 5 pounds ($6.60).

Aid agencies say traffickers often exploit crises to prey on vulnerable people separated from their families and communities.

Nepalese nun and kung fu teacher Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo, who helps families displaced by the country’s 2015 earthquake, told the conference that people were selling their daughters, sisters and mothers to traffickers after the disaster in order to rebuild their homes.

“Some men just see girls as a bunch of money,” she said.

In northern Kenya’s pastoralist region, lawyer Fatuma Abdulkadir Adan said child brides as young as nine were sold for eight cows or eight camels — worth about $800.

“Girls become commodities and they have no voice, no one asks what the girl wants,” said Adan, who uses football to help tackle child marriage and female genital mutilation.

But it is not just rich countries where girls are sold off.

Sarah, forced into prostitution as a child in Britain, said the gang who groomed her said she would have to have sex every day until she had paid off a “debt” of 75,000 pounds.

“They told me I belonged to them and until my debt was cleared I had to work for them,” she said.
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Experts: Puerto Rico May Struggle for More Than a Decade

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Coeco

Puerto Rico could face more than a decade of further economic stagnation and a steep drop in population as a result of Hurricane Maria, experts say.

The stark estimates were presented this wee to members of a federal control board overseeing finances of a U.S. territory that is already in the 11th year of a recession.

“The situation is dire to say the least, with destroyed infrastructure, lack of power and water, and an accelerated pace of migration,” economist Heidie Calero said.

She estimated that the hurricane caused $115 billion in damage, even without counting business losses.

“We believe that is very conservative,” she said.

The administration of Governor Ricardo Rossello said earlier in the week that it was seeking $94 billion in federal aid for an island where power generation remains at 40 percent and where nearly 10 percent of people are still without water almost two months after the storm. More than 20 of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities remain completely without power.

So far, Congress has approved nearly $5 billion in aid for Puerto Rico.

Twin shocks

Economist Juan Lara told board members that the local economy could contract anywhere between 8 percent and 15 percent in fiscal 2018, depending on the restoration of power, with overall revenues falling by 30 percent.

“We are undergoing both a demand and supply shock,” he said, saying that 5,000 businesses could close permanently, representing 10 percent of membership of the island’s National Retail Federation.

Businesses that have reopened have been forced to reduce their hours or depend on costly generators.

“We need electric power to be back and to be reliable,” Lara said. “We need roads to be cleared. We need supermarkets to be able to replenish their inventories. … We need to restore basic operating infrastructure.”

Lack of power remains the biggest obstacle, with the island’s electric company struggling to maintain the 50 percent power generation it had reached Wednesday just as a major blackout occurred for the second time in a week.

Rossello has said the company will reach 80 percent generation by end of November and 95 percent by mid-December, goals that many have called ambitious. In contrast, the U.S. Corps of Engineers has said it expects 75 percent generation by end of January.

More migration

Before Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Rico was trying to restructure a portion of its $73 billion public debt load amid a deep economic crisis that has prompted an exodus of nearly half a million people in the past decade. That migration will only accelerate because of post-hurricane conditions, with an estimated population of 2.8 million people by 2030, compared with the current 3.4 million, said economist Jose Villamil.

“What Maria has done in some ways is to exacerbate that situation, made it more intense,” he said.

The drop in population, coupled with a majority of young, talented people leaving, will hit Puerto Rico’s economy even harder, experts said.

Two more meetings remain as the board continues to gather information to revise a fiscal plan to adjust for the hurricane’s impact. It is unclear how much money, if any, will be set aside in the plan to pay off the island’s debt load.
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Red Cross: 1 Million Yemenis at Risk of Cholera Outbreak

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cosc

One million people across three Yemeni cities are at risk of a renewed cholera outbreak and other water-borne diseases following the closing of airports and sea ports by a Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Shiite rebels, an international aid group said on Friday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement that the cities of Hodeida, Saada and Taiz were not able to provide clean water in recent days due to a lack of fuel.

“Close to one million people are now deprived of clean water and sanitation in crowded urban environments in a country slowly emerging from the worst cholera outbreak in modern times,” said Alexander Faite, head of the Red Cross delegation in the war-ravaged nation.

The Red Cross said other major urban cities, including the capital Sanaa, will find themselves in the same situation in less than two weeks unless imports of essential goods resume immediately.

The U.S.-backed coalition imposed a land, sea and air blockade on November 6th after a missile attack by rebels targeted the Saudi capital Riyadh. Saudi Arabia said Monday the coalition would lift the blockade after widespread international criticism.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote to Saudi Arabia’s U.N. ambassador saying the Gulf kingdom’s failure to reopen key Yemen airports and sea ports is reversing humanitarian efforts to tackle the crisis in the impoverished country.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Guterres welcomed the reopening of the port in the city of Aden, however he said this “will not meet the needs of 28 million Yemenis.”

Suspected airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition killed at least 21 people on Friday in the country’s west and northwest, said Yemeni security officials and witnesses.

One airstrike hit a bus in el-Zaher district in the western province of Hodeida, killing six civilians, they said. At least 15 people were killed in another airstrike on a market in Yemen’s northwestern Hajja province, controlled by the Shiite rebels, the officials and witnesses added.

The officials and witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief reporters or for fear of reprisals.

There was no immediate comment from the coalition.

Over the past two years, more than 10,000 people have been killed and 3 million displaced in the coalition’s air campaign. With the country in a stalemate war, cholera began to rear its ugly head in October 2016, but the epidemic escalated rapidly in April. The fighting has damaged infrastructure and caused shortages of medicine and pushed the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine.

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Controversial Bible Museum to Open in Washington

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Corts

A larger than life entrance greets visitors at the new Museum of the Bible in Washington — dramatic 12-meter-tall doors containing text from Genesis 1, the biblical creation of the world.

The gateway allows entry to all things about the Bible, spanning several floors in the large building, which is located near the National Mall, Smithsonian museums and the U.S. Capitol. Not surprisingly there is a section filled with Bibles, many of them replicas of Bibles the museum was unable to obtain, and various versions from over the centuries that have been adopted by varying religious groups.

WATCH: New, Controversial Bible Museum Opens in Washington

Executive Director Tony Zeiss said the Bible is significant because “it helps people navigate through life,” and he would like people “to commit to being more engaged in this amazing book.”

The Bible is the world’s best-selling book, and the $500 million, privately funded museum has displays ranging from pro- and anti-slavery themes found in the holy book, to Hebrew texts, and even biblically themed contemporary women’s fashions.

What’s missing, some people say, is that there is not enough of the star of the New Testament, Jesus.

Zeiss said the museum is nonsectarian, and more than 100 scholars, who represent a variety of views, designed the exhibits, which also include $42 million in state-of-the-art interactive displays for education and entertainment — even in the elevators.

You can also stroll through a serene recreation of Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up, amid hand-painted trees and the sound of chirping birds.

“It’s meant to create a setting where when you walk in, you feel like you’re in a different place that you would find 2,000 years ago,” said Seth Pollinger, the museum’s director of content.

Family behind museum

The museum was founded by Steve Green, a member of the conservative evangelical family that owns Hobby Lobby, the world’s largest privately owned arts and crafts retailer. In 2014, Hobby Lobby won a Supreme Court case, concerning religious objections, to deny workers at family-owned corporations contraception coverage.

“It would be hard for us as a family to try to hide what we believe,” Green said. “We believe this book is what it claims to be, but our role here is to present the facts of the Bible more in a journalistic look.”

“As much as they want to stay neutral and objective on the Bible, it’s going to be very, very hard to present the Bible in that way,” said John Fea, a liberal evangelical who chairs the history department at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The Bible is “connected to a particular religious tradition and their way of interpreting it,” he added.

Jacques Berlinerbrau, who is Jewish and a professor at Georgetown University, agrees.

“It is really problematic to ever say that one has a nonsectarian view of the Holy Scriptures,” he said.

Berlinerbrau also thinks the museum has an agenda.

“The idea that the museum doesn’t have any intent to convert people to a particular reading of God, of Jesus Christ, of the Scripture is absurd,” he said.

And even though museum officials say the location had nothing to do with being near the seat of the U.S. government, Fea is not buying it.

“It’s hard to see this as anything than other an attempt to try to bring Christian values in the Bible’s teachings as understood by evangelical protestants, like the Greens, into the center of American political life and American cultural life,” Fea said.

Texts and artifacts

The museum contains impressive rare biblical texts and ancient artifacts, some on loan from outside the U.S.; others from the Greens’ massive collection of antiquities. Some antiquities were smuggled out of Iraq, and purchased, inadvertently, by the family, they said. The Greens forfeited the items and paid a $3 million fine.

Green told VOA the museum is willing to return artifacts to their home countries “if there’s any artifact that we have that they would have a claim.”

When Green was asked if he would like to see people who come to the museum become more Christian, he smiled and said, “We want them to know the Bible better.”
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New, Controversial Bible Museum Opens in Washington

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Corts

The world’s best-selling book is the Bible, but the holy manuscript has been interpreted in different ways by different religions. In Washington, a new, privately funded Museum of the Bible opens to the public this weekend. Located near the U.S. Capitol, the $500 million museum features ancient artifacts, interactive displays and Bibles over the centuries. But as we hear from VOA’s Deborah Block, the museum is also controversial.
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Despite Health Risks, Undocumented Immigrants Clean Up Houston

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Coeco

It’s been more than two months since Hurricane Harvey destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes across Houston and east Texas, and cleanup is expected to last 20 months, overtaking Hurricane Katrina as the most expensive rebuilding effort in U.S. history. Undocumented workers are part of the daunting task of reconstructing America’s fourth-largest city. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports they are doing so despite multiple risks.
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Birds Connect People with Nature

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cosc

Millions of Americans feed wild birds in their backyards, from cardinals and English sparrows to blue jays and doves. Making seeds available attracts more birds and gives bird watchers a chance to enjoy seeing and maybe counting them. But it also helps birds, whether they are native or just passing through, survive amid the growing urban sprawl. Faiza Elmasry has the story, Faith Lapidus narrates.
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US Senator in Trouble After Being Accused of Sexual Harassment in 2006

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Corts

A U.S. senator from Minnesota is the latest in a string of well-known personalities from entertainment and politics to be accused of sexual harassment. Democrat Al Franken is under fire after a radio newscaster said he kissed and groped her without consent during a tour to entertain U.S. troops in the Middle East in 2006. Meanwhile, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Alabama is battling charges of sexual abuse of underage girls. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Tesla Adds Big Trucks to Its Electrifying Ambitions

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cobiz

After more than a decade of making cars and SUVs — and, more recently, solar panels — Tesla Inc. wants to electrify a new type of vehicle: big trucks.

The company unveiled its new electric semitractor-trailer Thursday night near its design center in Hawthorne, California.

CEO Elon Musk said the semi is capable of traveling 500 miles on an electric charge and will cost less than a diesel semi considering fuel savings, lower maintenance and other factors. Musk said customers can put down a $5,000 deposit for the semi now and production will begin in 2019.

“We’re confident that this is a product that’s better in every way from a feature standpoint,” Musk told a crowd of Tesla fans gathered for the unveiling.

One-fourth of transit emissions

The move fits with Musk’s stated goal for the company of accelerating the shift to sustainable transportation. Trucks account for nearly a quarter of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to government statistics.

Musk said Tesla plans a worldwide network of solar-powered “megachargers” that could get the trucks back up to 400 miles of range after 30 minutes.

Tesla, Musk stretched

But the semi also piles on the chaos at Palo Alto, California-based company. Tesla is way behind on production of the Model 3, a new lower-cost sedan. It’s also ramping up production of solar panels after buying Solar City Corp. last year. Musk has said Tesla is also working on a pickup and a lower-cost SUV and negotiating a new factory in China. Meanwhile, the company posted a record quarterly loss of $619 million in its most recent quarter.

Musk, too, is being pulled in many different directions. He leads rocket maker SpaceX and is dabbling in other projects, including high-speed transit, artificial intelligence research and a new company that’s digging tunnels beneath Los Angeles to alleviate traffic congestion.

“He’s got so much on his plate right now. This could present another distraction from really just making sure that the Model 3 is moved along effectively,” said Bruce Clark, a senior vice president and automotive analyst at Moody’s.

Uncertain market

Tesla is venturing into an uncertain market. Demand for electric trucks is expected to grow over the next decade as the U.S., Europe and China all tighten their emissions regulations. Electric truck sales totaled 4,100 in 2016, but are expected to grow to more than 70,000 in 2026, says Navigant Research.

But most of that growth is expected to be for smaller, medium-duty haulers like garbage trucks or delivery vans. Those trucks can have a more limited range of 100 miles or less, which requires fewer expensive batteries. They can also be charged overnight.

Long-haul semi trucks, on the other hand, would be expected to go greater distances, and that would be challenging. Right now, there’s little charging infrastructure on global highways. Without Tesla’s promised fast-charging, even a midsized truck would likely require a two-hour stop, cutting into companies’ efficiency and profits, says Brian Irwin, managing director of the North American industrial group for the consulting firm Accenture.

Irwin says truck companies will have to watch the market carefully, because tougher regulations on diesels or an improvement in charging infrastructure could make electric trucks more viable very quickly. Falling battery costs also will help make electric trucks more appealing compared to diesels.

But even lower costs won’t make trucking a sure bet for Tesla. It faces stiff competition from long-trusted brands like Daimler AG, which unveiled its own semi prototype last month.

Fleet operators want reliable trucks, and Tesla will have to prove it can make them, said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst with the car shopping site Autotrader.
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At Latin Grammys, Puerto Rico and ‘Despacito’ Dominate

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Corts

The global hit “Despacito” was the big winner at Thursday’s Latin Grammy Awards, making good on all four of its nominations, including record and song of the year.

Singer-songwriter Luis Fonsi dedicated his awards to his native Puerto Rico, as did several other artists throughout the three-hour show, which opened with a moment of silence for the storm-ravaged island.

“I’m here because of Puerto Rico, and this song is a hymn to Puerto Rico,” Fonsi said backstage. “Everything I do, and everything I will do, now more than ever, is to continue celebrating my island, my culture, my homeland and my music, and to make sure the public knows that Puerto Rico needs help.”

President’s Merit Award

Lin-Manuel Miranda received the President’s Merit Award at the ceremony, held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and broadcast live on Univision. After giving an acceptance speech in Spanish and English, Miranda dedicated the award again and again to Puerto Rico.

He thanked his wife, parents and many collaborators, and paid homage to his Puerto Rican roots. Miranda said he intended to remind the U.S. government that the residents of its island territory “are human beings, too.”

Rapper Residente, who topped all nominees with nine nods, opened the show with a tribute to his homeland, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the Puerto Rican flag as he performed his song “Hijos del Canaveral” (“Sons of Canaveral”). He also won two awards: urban album for his self-titled solo debut and urban song for “Somos Anormales” (“We Are Abnormal”).

Ruben Blades won the top prize, album of the year, for “Salsa Big Band.” Other winners included Shakira, who won for contemporary pop album, Juanes, who claimed the pop-rock album prize, and Vicente Garcia, who was named best new artist.

Person of the year

Alejandro Sanz also received a special award. Juan Luis Guerra described him as “one of the most important composers in the Spanish-speaking world” as he presented Sanz with a golden gramophone statuette. As the Latin Recording Academy’s 2017 Person of the Year, Sanz was feted during a starry ceremony earlier this week. On Thursday, he dedicated his award to the “dreamers” affected by President Donald Trump’s suspension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

“These are our children,” Sanz said, “the children of our community.”

He followed by performing a medley of his hits, closing with a group of young people onstage wearing T-shirts that read, “We have one dream.”

Most of the awards were presented during a pre-telecast ceremony, while the live broadcast is dominated by performances. Performers included Natalia Lafourcade, Maluma, Juanes, J Balvin, Lila Downs, CNCO, Mon Laferte, Nicky Jam and Carlos Vives.
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In ‘Mudbound,’ Rees Crafts a Jim Crow Epic of Two Families

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Corts

The movies have tended to skip from slavery to the Civil Rights movement, but Dee Rees’ Mudbound plunges into the complex tragedies of the in-between era of Jim Crow.

The film, which Netflix hopes will be its first feature-film Oscar contender, follows two neighboring families — one black, one white — on a hardscrabble farm in 1940s Mississippi.

“I was interested with exploring the idea of who gets to be in possession of the land — how it’s sometimes impossible to go back home, how family can be the thing that drags you down,” Rees said. “It’s not just about race. It’s not just about oppression. It’s about how our histories are intertwined, how we’re connected to be the people who came before us.”

For Rees and many of those involved, making Mudbound was itself an experience interwoven with heritage. Rees, the Nashville-native filmmaker of 2011’s Pariah, drew heavily from the journals of her grandmother, whose Louisiana parents picked cotton. Her grandfathers — one who fought in World War II and one who fought in Korea — also informed the script, which Rees co-wrote with Virgil Williams.

“For me, it was a chance to delve into my own history,” Rees said. One young character was given Rees’ grandmother’s humble ambition: to be a stenographer.

After the debut of Mudbound at the Sundance Film Festival, Netflix plunked down $12.5 million for it; streaming begins Friday, as does a small theatrical release. Should it find Academy Awards attention, Mudbound could be not just Netflix’s first best picture nominee but potentially make Rees the first black woman nominated for best director.

Reverberations for today

In its biracial dichotomy, Mudbound — grippingly dense, expansively empathetic — stands apart from most previous period films. As a rich, earthy moral tale, it has clear reverberations for today’s racial injustices.

Based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, it details the McAllan family, who are white, and the Jackson family, who are black. Swindled out of his family’s savings, Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) brings his wife (Carey Mulligan) and daughters to his family’s swampy Delta farm, where the Jacksons — a family of six led by Hap (Rob Morgan) and Florence (Mary J. Blige) — are their tenants.

“It’s a time period that’s rarely touched in cinema, that sharecropper’s time period,” Morgan said. “For black America, they either see you as a slave or in jail. You don’t get to see that Jim Crow period where the underbelly is still ugly but it’s hidden.”

It’s a thin veil, though. When World War II begins, both families send a young man to war: Henry’s brother, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), and the oldest Jackson son, Ronsel (Jason Mitchell).

When they return, having been exposed to both the horrors of war and, for Ronsel, the comparative freedoms of Europe, they strike up a friendship that provokes the small town’s violently racist elements, including the Ku Klux Klan. The movie opens ominously with the digging of a muddy grave.

Having starred in numerous recent period films (Suffragette, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Great Gatsby), Mulligan initially hesitated to join the film. But she was quickly convinced by Rees’ devotion to depiction of the myriad relationships among the families as each character individually responds to the era’s rigid and prejudiced social hierarchy.

‘There’s no hero’

“There are flaws in each character. There’s no hero. There’s no clear villain because of the social construct at the time,” said Mulligan. “Everyone’s just struggling within the same environment, and all kind of facing away from each other — at least at the start of the story, they are.”

Mudbound, shot over 28 days in New Orleans in the summer of 2016, is a big step into epic storytelling for Rees. She made 2007’s Pariah, about a Brooklyn teenager’s fraught sexual discovery, with $450,000 and followed that up with the 2015 HBO Bessie Smith biopic Bessie. Rees, who’s currently prepping a Gloria Steinem film with Mulligan set to star, has made films that are deeply personal and convincingly intimate without being autobiographical.

“With Pariah, at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn?” said Rees. “The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, ‘No, I’m from Nashville.’ ”

Mudbound also holds particular meaning for Morgan, who co-starred in Pariah. A native New Yorker, Morgan spent his childhood summers working in North Carolina tobacco fields. Hap, he said, is his tribute to his grandfather — a strong and selfless man devoted to his family.

“Hap was my chance to give a voice to the voiceless of countless black men in America who would do for their family whatever it takes, who would be humiliated with dignity for his family to survive,” said Morgan. “Hap is a man who understands he’s in Mississippi. There doesn’t have to be a reason he could be hung. So he has to be smart enough to play dumb enough to survive.”

As Mudbound moves along, Rees intercuts scenes at the farm with snapshots of war. All are fighting their own front, but with varied levels of freedom.

“Each one of these families is striving. Each one wants to have a larger lot in life. They both aren’t there. They’re both stumbling,” said Rees. “The only reason to do this was the chance to tell two stories and the chance to talk about two families.”
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Interstellar Visitor Shaped Like a Giant Pink Fire Extinguisher

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cosc

A newly discovered object from another star system that’s passing through ours is shaped like a giant pink fire extinguisher.

That’s the word this week from astronomers who have been observing this first-ever confirmed interstellar visitor.

“I’m surprised by the elongated shape — nobody expected that,” said astronomer David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the observation team that reported on the characteristics.

Scientists are certain this asteroid or comet originated outside our solar system. First spotted last month by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii, it will stick around for another few years before departing our sun’s neighborhood.

Jewitt and his international team observed the object for five nights in late October using the Nordic Optical Telescope in the Canary Islands and the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

At approximately 100 feet by 100 feet by 600 feet (30 meters buy 30 meters by 180 meters), the object has proportions roughly similar to a fire extinguisher — though not nearly as red, Jewitt said Thursday. The slightly red hue — specifically pale pink — and varying brightness are remarkably similar to asteroids in our own solar system, he noted.

Astronomer Jayadev Rajagopal said in an email that it was exciting to point the Arizona telescope at such a tiny object “which, for all we know, has been traveling through the vast emptiness of space for millions of years.”

“And then by luck passes close enough for me to be able to see it that night!”

The object is so faint and so fast it’s zooming through the solar system at 40,000 mph (64,000 kph) — it’s unlikely amateur astronomers will see it.

In a paper to the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists report that our solar system could be packed with 10,000 such interstellar travelers at any given time. It takes 10 years to cross our solar system, providing plenty of future viewing opportunities, the scientists said.

Trillions of objects from other star systems could have passed our way over the eons, according to Jewitt.

It suggests our solar system ejected its own share of asteroids and comets as the large outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune — formed.

Why did it take so long to nail the first interstellar wanderer?

“Space is big and our eyes are weak,” Jewitt explained via email.

Anticipating more such discoveries, the International Astronomical Union already has approved a new designation for cosmic interlopers. They get an “I” for interstellar in their string of letters and numbers. The group also has approved a name for this object: Oumuamua (OH’-moo-ah-moo-ah) which in Hawaiian means a messenger from afar arriving first.
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FCC Upgrade: Better Picture, Less Privacy — And You’ll Need a New TV

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cobiz

U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the use of new technology that will improve picture quality on mobile phones, tablets and television, but also raises significant privacy concerns by giving advertisers dramatically more data about viewing habits.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to allow broadcasters to voluntarily use the new technology, dubbed ATSC 3.0, which would allow for more precise geolocating of television signals, ultra-high definition picture quality and more interactive programming, like new educational content for children and multiple angles of live sporting events.

The system uses precision broadcasting and targets emergency or weather alerts on a street-by-street basis. The system could allow broadcasters to wake up a receiver to broadcast emergency alerts. The alerts could include maps, storm tracks and evacuation routes.

The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.

Advertisers excited

Current televisions cannot carry the new signal, and the FCC on Thursday said it was only requiring broadcasting both signals for five years after deploying the next-generation technology.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. last month called the new standard “the Holy Grail” for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.

But Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan said the new technology “contemplates targeted advertisements that would be ‘relevant to you and what you actually might want to see.’ This raises questions about how advertisers and broadcasters will gather the demographic information from consumers which are necessary to do targeted advertisements.”

New TV, higher costs

Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the new technology would force consumers to buy new televisions.

“The FCC calls this approach market driven. That’s right — because we will all be forced into the market for new television sets or devices.”

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai defended the proposal, calling concerns about buying new devices “hypothetical.” He added five years is “a long time. We’ll have to see how the standard develops.”

One issue is whether broadcasters will be able to pass on the costs of advanced broadcast signals through higher retransmissions fees and demand providers carry the signals.

The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents Tegna Inc, Comcast Corp., CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co., Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. and others, petitioned the FCC in April 2016 to approve the new standard.

“This is game-changing technology for broadcasting and our viewers,” the group said Thursday.

Many companies have raised concerns about costs, including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. Cable, satellite and other pay TV providers “would incur significant costs to receive, transmit, and deliver ATSC 3.0 signals to subscribers, including for network and subscriber equipment,” Verizon said.

Many nations are considering the new standard. South Korea adopted the ATSC 3.0 standard in 2016.
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Passenger Pigeons, Now Extinct, Needed Big Flocks to Survive

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cosc

Passenger pigeons were once so plentiful they could darken the daytime sky when they flew over North America, but oddly, their abundance may have played a role in their extinction, researchers said Thursday.

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, the pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius), evolved quickly and in the process, lost certain traits that might have been useful for surviving in smaller groups, said the study in the journal Science.

The findings have implications for other creatures threatened by swift changes in the world around them.

“Our results suggest that even species with large and stable population sizes can be at risk of extinction after a sudden environmental change,” said the study led by Beth Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Numbering three to five billion before they began to decline in the 1800s due to a surge in hunting, these social birds were once “the most abundant bird in North America, and possibly the world,” said the report.

And although large populations of animals tend to be genetically quite diverse, researchers were stunned by their analysis of four extinct pigeon genomes, which were compared to two modern carrier pigeons.

They found that passenger pigeon diversity was “surprisingly low,” said the study.

Researchers also found areas of very high diversity in the genomes, which told researchers the birds had been around for 20,000 years or more — another surprise.

The last passenger pigeon died in a U.S. zoo in 1914.

Until now, the prevailing theory was the birds went extinct due to a booming commercial hunting industry that forced their populations to become demographically isolated, leading to lots of inbreeding, lower genetic diversity and weaker health.

But the latest findings suggest the reason was more complex. The birds evolved quickly and may have adapted to large social groups, hunting and breeding together.

Flying in gargantuan masses, their sheer size protected them against predators.

But in smaller groups, the theory goes, these defenses fell short, leading the birds’ relatively quick die-off in the matter of a few decades.

“Passenger pigeons may have evolved traits that were adaptive when their population was large but that made it more difficult for them to survive after their population was diminished by the commercial harvest,” said the report.
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$1 Million Price Tag in Spotlight as Gene Therapy Becomes Reality

Posted on 11/17/2017 by Cosc

Battle lines are being drawn as the first gene therapy for an inherited condition nears the U.S. market, offering hope for people with a rare form of blindness and creating a cost dilemma for health care providers.

Spark Therapeutics, whose Luxturna treatment has been recommended for U.S. approval, told investors last week there was a case for valuing it at more than $1 million per patient, although it has yet to set an actual price.

However, the U.S. Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said this week “at a placeholder price of $1,000,000, the high cost makes this unlikely to be a cost-effective intervention at commonly used cost-effectiveness thresholds.”

The ICER analysis did concede Luxturna was likely to be more cost-effective for younger patients.

The expected U.S. approval of Luxturna by Jan. 12 is seen as kick-starting the sector, following disappointing sales of the first two gene therapies in Europe.

More treatments based on fixing faulty genes using viruses to carry DNA into cells are coming from companies like Bluebird Bio, BioMarin and Sangamo.

Spark’s Chief Financial Officer Stephen Webster said Thursday that gene therapy was upending conventional thinking by offering a one-time cure, rather than years of repeat prescriptions, but health systems were struggling to keep pace.

“Gene therapy creates an unusual conundrum because we are fitting a round peg in a square hole … it’s tough,” he told a Jefferies health care conference in London.

Spark would like to say “if it works, pay us, and if it stops working, stop paying us,” Webster told the meeting.

But for Luxturna, which cost some $400 million to develop, such an offer was impractical, given the mechanics of the U.S. system and a reluctance by big health plans to move away from upfront payments for rare disease drugs.

Longer-term, pay-for-performance models could be adopted for hemophilia, where the benefits of one-time treatment can be weighed against the huge cost of regular infusions of blood-clotting factors, Webster said.

A one-off treatment would slash the need for such expensive care. But there are also indirect costs and quality of life benefits — especially in a condition like blindness — that manufacturers argue should be recognized.

Nightstar Therapeutics CEO David Fellows, whose company is also developing gene therapies for eye disorders, said calculating gene therapy’s true value was not easy.

“Trying to capture all this into some sort of price algorithm is very challenging. But we are trying to quantify the emotional impact, the care-giver impact, the effect on careers and so on,” he told the conference.
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Experts Question Role of Data Mining Firms in Kenya’s Annulled Election

Posted on 11/16/2017 by Cobiz

Kenya’s annulled 2017 presidential election was among Africa’s most expensive. President Uhuru Kenyatta and main challenger Raila Odinga spent tens of millions of dollars on their campaigns, including sizeable investments in global PR firms that mined data and crafted targeted advertisements.

As experts sort through the historic election’s aftermath, the involvement of data analysis companies has come to the forefront, raising questions about privacy, voter manipulation and the role of foreign firms in local elections.

Mercenary outfits

Data mining and PR companies conduct surveys to gauge public sentiment and sift through reams of data across social media. They stitch that information together to build detailed profiles and deliver targeted, customized messages aimed at changing behaviors.

Some see it as smart campaigning. But others point to the ethical concerns of manipulating voters with false information.

“You have a lot of these organizations, these PR firms, lobby firms, out there, and they’re essentially just mercenary outfits that do work for the highest bidder, regardless of their bloodstained track record,” Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa, an organization that advocates for good governance on the continent, told VOA.

“It’s all legal. It’s a business, and these businesses exist to make a profit … It’s the ethical and moral side where I tend to question.”

Democratic practices falling behind

According to media reports, Kenyatta’s campaign paid $6 million to Cambridge Analytica, the analytics and PR firm tied to the Brexit referendum, the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and, as recently reported by The Wall Street Journal, WikiLeaks.

Owned in part by the influential Mercer family, U.S.-based billionaires and political donors, Cambridge Analytica compiles demographic information to build vast databases of voter profiles. It then delivers personalized advertisements to key voters in an attempt to sway them.

Kenyatta wasn’t the only candidate to enlist the services of a high-tech PR firm. According to new reporting by The Star, one of Kenya’s leading newspapers, Odinga’s campaign employed Aristotle International, a U.S.-based company focused on campaign data mining.

The exact impact of these firms on the outcome of the August election is impossible to gauge, but their prominence in Kenya points to the role high-tech campaigning will play in future elections across the continent.

That’s raising questions about whether these companies undermine the democratic process by giving their clients an unfair advantage and manipulating the public.

“We have reached a point where our technological advances now exceed the ability of democratic practices to catch up,” said Calestous Juma, a professor of international development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

“That has created a window where people can exploit platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google to amplify certain messages that play on ethnic stereotypes for purposes of creating fear and winning elections,” Juma told VOA.

Previous involvement

This isn’t Cambridge Analytica’s first foray into Kenyan politics. Although it won’t acknowledge working on the recent campaign, the company boasts of its role in the 2013 elections, when Kenyatta contracted with the firm.

According to its website, Cambridge Analytica “designed and implemented the largest political research project ever conducted in East Africa” by sampling and interviewing 47,000 respondents to provide key political issues and identify voting behaviors, from which it drafted an “effective campaign strategy based on the electorate’s real needs (jobs) and fears (tribal violence).”

New frontier

Cambridge Analytica and other data-driven PR firms have worked throughout Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. The African market, with a projected population of 2.5 billion people in 2050, represents an enticing new frontier, with Kenya emerging as an especially appealing place to do business.

A unique mix of high mobile phone penetration, fast mobile internet, pervasive social media use and a young electorate — people under 35 comprise more than half of Kenya’s 19 million registered voters — makes the country ripe with opportunities for data mining and digital PR companies to invest in, or exploit.

For Smith, the lack of transparency inherent in how companies like Cambridge Analytica operate undermines the democratic process.

“What they do is essentially help propagate false news stories,” Smith said. “Me and my organization, Vanguard Africa … were portrayed as somehow financing and supporting the Kenyan opposition, which was fundamentally not true,” he said.

“That didn’t make those stories go away, of course. The truth becomes the victim in all of this.”
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News Outlets, Social Media Team Up to Qualify Credible News

Posted on 11/16/2017 by Cobiz

Seventy-five news organizations teamed with social media giants Facebook and Twitter as well as Google and other tech firms Thursday in an initiative to identify “trustworthy” news sources shared online.

The “Trust Project,” a consortium of news agencies and tech firms meeting in Santa Clara, California, is creating a “trust indicator” to make readers aware of a news story’s credibility.

“In today’s digitized and socially networked world, it’s harder than ever to tell what’s accurate reporting, advertising, or even misinformation,” said Sally Lehrman of Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, the project leader. “An increasingly skeptical public wants to know the expertise, enterprise and ethics behind a news story.”

The new indicators will appear as “i” symbols alongside articles posted online and will indicate how a story was reported, the media company’s standards and the writer’s credentials.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter have been criticized for spreading fake news, particularly during the election in 2016, some of which was perpetuated by Russia.

In a Senate hearing earlier this month, Twitter said it has taken action against the suspected Russian trolls, suspending 2,752 accounts and implementing new dedicated teams “to enhance the quality of the information our users see.”
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Tesla to Enter Trucking Business With New Electric Semi

Posted on 11/16/2017 by Cobiz

After more than a decade of making cars and SUVs — and, more recently, solar panels — Tesla Inc. wants to electrify a new type of vehicle: big trucks.

The company was set to unveil its new electric semitractor-trailer Thursday night near its design center in Hawthorne, California.

The move fits with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s stated goal for the company of accelerating the shift to sustainable transportation. Trucks account for nearly a quarter of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to government statistics.

Tesla also could equip its trucks with the semiautonomous driving features found in its cars, like automatic braking and lane changing.

But the semi also piles on the chaos at Palo Alto, California-based company. It’s way behind on production of the Model 3, a new lower-cost sedan. It’s also ramping up production of solar panels after buying Solar City Corp. last year. Musk has said Tesla is also working on a pickup truck and a lower-cost SUV and negotiating a new factory in China.

Meanwhile, the company posted a record quarterly loss of $619 million in its most recent quarter.

Tesla hasn’t released any details about the semi. Some analysts expect it to get around 200 miles per charge and be used for daily tasks like transporting freight from a port to a distribution center. Musk has said it should take about two years for the semi to go on sale.

Projected sales growth

Long-haul semis, on the other hand, would be expected to go greater distances, and that would be challenging. Right now, there’s little charging infrastructure on global highways. And charging even a mid-sized truck would likely require a two-hour stop, cutting into companies’ efficiency and profits, said Brian Irwin, managing director of the North American industrial group for the consulting firm Accenture.

But even lower costs won’t make trucking a sure bet for Tesla. It faces stiff competition from long-trusted brands like Daimler AG, which unveiled its own semi prototype last month. Fleet operators want reliable trucks, and Tesla will have to prove it can make them, said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst with the car shopping site Autotrader.
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Influenza Virus Can Be Deadlier Than War

Posted on 11/16/2017 by Cosc

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the deadliest flu pandemic in recorded history. More people died in the 1918 flu pandemic than in World War I. Despite medical breakthroughs in controlling many diseases, influenza is one that remains elusive. VOA medical correspondent Carol Pearson reports.
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Big Businesses From Apple to Walmart Say Train Suppliers to Stamp Out Slavery

Posted on 11/16/2017 by Coeco

Businesses striving to stamp out slavery from their supply chains should not dismiss struggling suppliers but train them to improve the lives of workers, and technology can play a part, leading companies including Apple and Walmart said on Wednesday.

In recent years modern-day slavery has increasingly come under the global spotlight, putting ever greater regulatory and consumer pressure on firms to ensure their supply chains are free of forced labor, child labor and other forms of slavery.

From cosmetics and clothes to shrimp and smartphones, supply chains are often complex with multiple layers across various countries – whether in sourcing the raw materials or creating the final product – making it hard to identify exploitation.

As companies delve deeper into their supply chains to examine workers’ conditions, they should not punish suppliers who violate human rights but help them raise standards and work more efficiently, said Paula Pyers of U.S. tech giant Apple.

“We are loathe to terminate a business relationship in cases of violations,” Pyers, Apple’s head of supplier responsibility, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference, which focuses on slavery and women’s empowerment.

“We want to teach and train suppliers to make them better,” said Pyers, adding that Apple has helped more than 11.5 million workers to learn their rights, and returned at least $28 million to 35,000 employees forced to pay fees to obtain their jobs.

Turning to tech

About 25 million people globally were estimated to be trapped in forced labor in 2016, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) and rights group Walk Free Foundation.

With consumers increasingly conscious of slave labor and willing to pay more for ethically sourced goods, big brands should lead by example to inspire their suppliers to get into line, and also to boost profits, said Jan Saumweber of Walmart.

“Responsible sourcing is key towards our goal of being the most trusted retailer,” said Saumweber, senior vice president of responsible sourcing at Walmart, the world’s largest retailer.

She said Walmart has turned to technology to improve workers’ rights worldwide – from hotlines to a smartphone app in the style of TripAdvisor that allows Burmese migrants working in Thailand’s fishing industry to review their employers.

Speaking on a panel about best business practices to tackle modern slavery, several experts said cleaning up supply chains would only be sustainable if this resulted in greater profits.

“Investors can direct trillions of dollars to companies with strong human rights policies and clean supply chains,” said Jean Baderschneider, head of Global Fund to End Slavery, a public-private partnership seeking $1.5 billion to combat the crime.

“But it can’t be a case of charity or philanthropy – they need to see better returns through having clean supply chains.”

But firms’ efforts to tackle slavery, from codes of conducts to audits, are often lip service and deflect attention from a need for tougher measures, said Bobby Banerjee, professor of management at the University of London’s Cass Business School.

“The problem with CSR (corporate social responsibility) is that there is too much C, and not enough S or R,” he said.

“Forced labor is not an aberration, but a viable management practice … an outcome of the economic system we live in.”
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